Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, is a revealing look at the Trump administration during his first year in office. It shows a lot of the infighting which has been hinted at in the news, but here revealed in all its “fury”. It gives realistic looks at the various personalities inhabiting the Trump White House. It speaks of the games being played to gain influence and power within the administration.

This book helps explain so much about what we hear snippets of in the evening news. It gives a broader perspective and background to the news.

And what it shows is a man totally unfit to occupy the office of president of the United States. It is really a frightening scenario. With so much influence and power at his disposal, the unhinged rantings and ratings of this man are truly scary.

I urge everyone, especially my American friends and family, to read this book if you really want to understand some of what is occurring today in US politics.

Deon Meyer, the author of this stunning novel, is South African. He sets the story in South Africa. In fact, it is translated from the original Afrikaans. And it is a great read. I could hardly put the book down, once I got it out of the library.

The basic premise (and I will not give away the ending!!!) is that a disease has hit Earth, killing most of the people. Some find themselves immune, and slowly begin to put their lives back together. As they do, civilization begins to reassert itself. And all of the problems of society begin to emerge.

The story includes some incredible, hair-raising episodes of survival. It includes discussions of how to form this new society and disagreements of how to structure it. In various areas there are different attempts at doing this. And of course, as in all societies, there are dysfunctional people who want nothing more than to destroy what successful groups accomplish.

The story mostly follows the life of a boy, Nico Storm, who was about 13 years old when he and his father find themselves survivals of the original onslaught of the fever. The book follows Nico until his late teens or early twenties. There are many adventures, many threads to his story. It’s complexity includes the coming-of-age of Nico, his relationship with his father, religious conservatives, open-minded people, all of the dimensions of human society.

And it is a page-turner! I recommend this book to anyone desiring a really, really good read!

This book, by Paul Kalanithi, is an incredible story of dying. Paul Kalanithi was a medical student, specializing in neurosurgery. He was in his last years or months of residency, nearing the end of his training. He was good, very good, at what he was doing. He was being noticed already, even as a resident surgeon.

He got lung cancer, had never smoked, but knew the seriousness of his diagnosis. As a doctor, especially one who took very seriously helping his patients die well, he took his own diagnosis as a chance to experience this in his own life.

The book details his path through medical training, and through his own disease. Throughout he showed incredible integrity, a calmness with what was happening to him. He details going through the various stages of grief, in a somewhat backwards order from the usual.

I can’t say enough good about this book. Kalanithi details very carefully his brief life and his travel through his disease. He does so with great articulation, no preachiness, no life-changing revelations.

His wife finishes the book after he dies, carrying out Paul’s final project.

It was a breath of fresh air (to paraphrase the title!) to read this account. Anyone would be well-served reading this story.

This book, by William F. Mann, is a fascinating look at the possibility that the Templar treasure, so long sought by kings and others, was brought to North America in pre-Columbian days.

First of all, the author is himself a high degree Mason, and descended from Templars. On his mother’s side he is also related to the Mik’maq aboriginals. He spends a fair amount of time outlining his genealogy, to the point it gets quite confusing to a reader, such as myself, new to all these theories. Along the way he deals with the Merovingian ideas, Cathar beliefs, etc. I think that Mann ends up convincing himself that he is one of the carriers of the blood of Jesus and Mary Magdalene!

What I found most fascinating in this book is Mann’s dealing with the pre-Columbian history of the Americas. There is, of course, wide-spread acceptance today of visitors to North America centuries before Christopher Columbus. Mann expands this to a fairly regular going back and forth from North America to the Old World. These early visitors went to much more than only the east coast line. He shows that Europeans visited most of the continent at various times, and indeed settled and lived in many places. Relics like the Kensington Rune Stone in Minnesota are some of the evidence of this. Apparently there are similar finds all through central North America.

Mann’s theory then, is that the Templars received a lot of information including maps of the North American continent. He posits that they ended up travelling to the headwaters of the Missouri River (so-called in today’s language) in the present state of Montana and depositing their treasure in a cave in the mountains.

Along the way the author deals with many fascinating aspects of these theories, including the Oak Island mystery in Nova Scotia. For myself, since I heard of Oak Island a few years ago, I have read a couple books on the subject. The most convincing argument for the existence of the Oak Island booby-trapped well, was that it was built by Templars. The engineering required to build an elaborate system of levels, and channels to the ocean tripped by digging into the well, could only have come from an advanced group such as the Templars.

Overall, I found the book a bit overwhelming as to the amount of new (to me) information I was trying to absorb. I wondered if this could have been helped somewhat by a reading of some of the author’s earlier books; this is the third in a trilogy on this subject. He goes off in such detail on trails that seem irrelevant to the main subject that I found myself slogging through some chapters of the book.

But the book left me wondering! Could there be some measure of truth behind all this research and surmising? Fascinating to consider!!!

We watched this movie the other night. Profound, positive, a real joy to experience. But be prepared! Bring Kleenex!!!!

Billed as a modern fable, the movie stars Will Smith as a father who has lost his six-year old daughter. The loss sends him into a tail spin. He ceases functioning in his job as co-owner and creative genius of a media company. His business partner, played by Edward Norton, and a couple other partners and fellow-workers conspire to get him out of his lethargy, at least long enough to sign a deal to sell the company before it totally collapses.

Howard (Will Smith) writes letters to “Love”, “Time”, and “Death” as part of his attempts to deal with his grief. His co-workers, and friends, hire three actors to play the parts of these concepts and confront him.

That is the gist of the story. I will refrain from telling more; you need to see this movie!!!

The movie stars some big-name actors. In addition to the above, Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Kate Winslet also star. The movie is done very well; it is a well-told tale. Check it out.

Tracks, by Robyn Davidson, and Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, are similar stories. Tracks: One Woman’s Journey Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback was written in the late 1970’s, published in 1980, a few years after her incredible journey across western Australia with camels. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail was published in 2012.

Separated by around two decades, these two young women undertook life-changing journeys. Their stories are so similar I decided to review them in one post. Both were in their twenties when they undertook their odysseys.  Both of them lost their mothers early in their lives. Both of their stories have been made into movies, both of which are very well done.

But I would certainly recommend the books. Their written stories reveal much more of the interior struggles these women underwent to accomplish their treks. (I cannot tell you which to do first: read the books, or watch the movies; I myself watched the movies first in both cases, and then read the books.)

Tracks shares the story of Robyn Davidson who found herself at loose ends in the 1970’s. In her twenties, just coming out of the hippie anti-establishment movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s, she did not know what to do with her life. Working at low-end jobs, she just couldn’t get herself interested and invested in anything. She got the idea of hiking across the Australian outback, using camels to carry supplies.

Without much of a plan she headed to Alice Springs, Northern Territory. This isolated town became her home for several years as she attempted various approaches to realizing her dream. She had no money, very little knowledge or survival skills; she hardly knew where to begin. But she persisted. After a few years, she had learned camel handling skills, had acquired a couple camels, and began learning how to survive in the desert.

While the movie necessarily focusses mainly on the journey itself, the book goes into depth on the interior struggles she fought, especially starting the journey itself. She learned to appreciate aborigine people, their culture, language, knowledge of the desert, and survival skills. She gloried in the wondrous landscape. Most people view the Australian Outback as dreary wasteland. Robyn came to see its beauty; she came to realize the land as experienced by Aboriginal peoples, how it identified them, how they cared for it, how it sustained them.

Here’s one quote from Davidson’s book to whet your appetite for more!

Those days were like a crystallization of all that had been good in the trip. It was as close to perfection as I could ever hope to come. I reviewed what I had learnt. I had discovered capabilities and strengths that I would not have imagined possible in those distant dream-like days before the trip. I had rediscovered people in my past and come to terms with my feelings towards them. I had learnt what love was. That love wanted the best possible for those you cared for even if that excluded yourself. That before, I had wanted to possess people without loving them, and now I could love them and wish them the best without needing them. I had understood freedom and security. The need to rattle the foundations of habit. That to be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one’s weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and best of all I had learnt to laugh. I felt invincible, untouchable, I had extended myself, and I believed I could now sit back, there was nothing else the desert could teach me. And I wanted to remember all this. Wanted to remember this place and what it meant to me, and how I had arrived there. Wanted to fix it so firmly in my head that I would never, ever forget. (p 220f)

Amazing stuff!! Robyn is so incredibly and articulately insightful. And she is so open in letting the reader in to the processes she experienced during her trek across the desert.

Very different, yet so similar, is Wild. Cheryl Strayed was also a young woman at loose ends. In the early nineties she lost her mother to cancer when Cheryl was 22. This loss really threw her for a loop. She ended up spiraling into dysfunction, using drugs and sex to bury her pain. But she recognized the downward course she was on and decided she had to do something to get herself out of this destructive lifestyle.

A book caught her eye one day while standing in a checkout line. It was a book about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). She looked at it briefly, thought about it for a time, and eventually went back to purchase it. And decided to do it!!

Totally inexperienced in anything even remotely resembling this sort of venture, having no equipment, having no one to whom she could turn for advice, she began assembling what she needed for the trip. Using her meagre waitressing earnings, and continuing to use drugs right up until the day before the trip, she planned out her journey.

The film captures her heroic efforts to even get her backpack on and stand up! But the insights from the book reveal her deep insecurity about her capabilities in undertaking this trip. She doubted herself through most of the hike. Any little roadblock in her plans, any unexpected hurdle, would throw her into self-doubt and several times almost caused her to back out.

One example: unusually high snowfall in the Sierra Nevadas that year (mid 1990’s) caused the trail to be impassable that summer she was hiking. She had to detour via bus to Reno, Nevada. The highest section of the trail was unavailable, and this had been the portion she had most anticipated. It was devastating.

But by the time this occurred she was quite a few weeks into her hike, and she found enough flexibility to adjust her plans. Originally she was going to hike only the California portion of the PCT. With her renewed plans she hiked on through Oregon, coming out at the Bridge of the Gods over the Columbia River at the border of Washington State.

Throughout her hike she meets people who help her in various ways. She meets obstacles she must overcome. She endures pain constantly. Fellow hikers are amazed at the size and weight of her pack. She carries more than hikers much more fit that she was. But she bumbles on determinedly.

Once again, like Robyn Davidson, she grows during her journey, both physically, but also mentally and emotionally. It turns her life around. She finds herself a different person at the end of the road than who she’d been at the beginning.

Both these books are well worth reading. Both are easy, entertaining reads, well-written and inspiring. Page-turners. And both movies are also well worth watching. Enjoy!!!!

This book, by J. D. Vance, is a memoir of the author’s life: his young years, since he is only in his thirties as he writes! His grandparents came from the coal mining area of northern Kentucky. They moved to an industrial town in Ohio to find jobs. But their “hillbilly” culture came with them, as it did with multitudes who followed a similar pattern.

This is an intimate look at this culture, and how it has shaped American life and politics. Although written before the 2016 presidential campaign, the people Vance writes about are basically the ones who elected Trump as president.

When taken together with the people and culture demonstrated in the movie I reviewed just previous to this review, Hell or High Water, it provides insight into how people could come to support someone like Donald Trump. There is a deep-abiding suspicion of those in power. There is a need to be able to feel at some level of control of ones life and destiny.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a great book on numerous levels. On a personal level, it is a story of survival and success against unbelievable odds. That someone could come out of an environment like JD did is incredible. That he became a successful lawyer and is living as successful a life as he is makes it even more special. It really is a credit to JD Vance that he has made of his life what he has, so far.

On another level, the stories of JD’s family members is also very intriguing. Often times, and by many peoples’ standards, there was a lot of dysfunction in the various members of his family. And yet they got by, at some level. And they were able to install in JD values which, as he grew up, enabled him to rise above his environment. Vance gives such an informed view of the “hillbilly” culture. He was raised in it. He was raised by members of this culture. His “mamaw”, as he called his grandmother, was his primary caretaker during his childhood. And she seemed to be the epitome of the hillbilly grandma! She certainly outdid the sanitized view of the grandma in the popular TV series, The Beverly Hillbillies!! And yet she instilled in her grandson values of education, hard work, never giving up, etc, which allowed him to succeed as he grew into adulthood. Vance’s portrayal of his family-of-origin is both enlightening and personal. Deeply personal, as it is the primary environment which shaped him into the adult he is today.

On yet a bigger level, J. D. Vance’s story provides a glimpse into the wider hillbilly culture. So many small cities and towns in the so-called “rust-belt” were built up by migrations of “hillbillies” to work in the factories. But the culture of the coal-mining communities from where they came survived the migrations. And Vance is able to see this now, from his vantage point of a well-educated, intelligent survivor of this culture. Even though he now lives in California, he provides articulate insight into this large subculture of the USA.

He helps me understand the previously incredulous election of Donald Trump. I am almost completely unable to understand how anyone could have voted for such a despicable excuse of a human being. I know that many of my own family members did just such an action. But I do not understand it. Vance has helped me put this political debacle into some sort of perspective. If not yet completely understandable, it does help!!

I am thankful to J. D. Vance for opening up his personal experience to help us to understand a little better how a large portion of American society thinks and acts. Hillbilly Elegy is a very well-written memoir. It is an engaging read, both for its writing style and for its content. I urge any readers of this humble blog to search out this book and read it. You will not regret it.

My wife and I watched this movie not long ago. It takes place in the part of the world my wife was raised in, west Texas. As such, it shows a subculture she is very aware of. It is a life she would’ve been a part of had her daddy not ensured she got out of there.

As such, it is a riveting story of two brothers who hatch a plot to save their family farm. Essentially, without giving too much of the plot away, they start holding up banks to get enough money to avoid defaulting on their mother’s loans made on the farm before she died. And they specifically target branches of the bank which holds the loans, and who will get title to the land if the family defaults.

It is a very well-done movie, with well-developed characters, and a good pace. It shows well the character of that land, the often desolate landscape, and the types of people inhabiting that part of the country.

Highly recommended!!!

My wife and I both grew up in the USA. Therefore we are quite interested in US politics; we watched the fascinating campaign last fall avidly. Our favourite place for political news ended up being MSNBC. A frequent commentator there was Nicolle Wallace. I always appreciated what she had to say. She seemed very knowledgeable and insightful.

Also, as an outspoken Republican in a mostly liberal-minded environment, her take on events was a welcome alternative to the usual opinions. She was one of only a handful of Republicans regularly appearing on that network.

At some point she mentioned in passing  a novel of hers. Immediately my interest was piqued. I sought out the information on this and discovered that Wallace has written a trilogy of novels, all centring around the White House.

These three novels are titled, Eighteen Acres, It’s Classified, and Madam President. They follow the same characters through several years. They are a fascinating peek into the life of a president and White House staff.

When I began to realize that Nicolle Wallace herself had spent numerous years in the White House and was intricately involved in Republican politics, I give the stories a lot of credibility. She knows whereof she speaks!!

She was a White House communications director under George W. Bush. She served as a senior advisor for the McCain-Palin campaign of 2008. Her husband is a former ambassador to the United Nations.

So I’d say she is eminently qualified to speak of Washington politics!!

I will not go into any detail of the contents of the trilogy of novels. The books should be quite accessible; I had no trouble accessing them up here in Canada!!! But I will encourage anyone with even a bit of curiosity of what goes on behind the scenes in the White House to check these books out. They are well worth it. They are not long; they are written in fairly light style. An average reader can breeze through one in a day if you wish. And they are that gripping. Once you start, you are hooked!

This book, by Frank Scully, written in 1950, begins the story of the crash and subsequent recovery of unidentified flying objects in the state of New Mexico. It led to the research and publication of more information on these crashes, one in particular, by Scott and Suzanne Ramsey in the 1980’s and ’90’s. The incident with the most information occurred in Aztec, New Mexico in 1948. The Ramseys published their research in a couple books. The one I have read is, The Aztec UFO Incident.

Another book I want to include in this summary is, MO41: The Bombshell Before Roswell. This book outlines the scant information on a UFO crash in Missouri in 1941.

If we take a look at all of these incidents, alongside the Roswell incident of 1947, there are numerous similar details. All of them were quickly taken charge of by the military establishment. The military moved in, removed any materiel and bodies, and swore any onlookers to secrecy under threat of death. Only recently, as some of these witnesses neared the end of their natural lives were they motivated to share what they had seen many decades before. They thought that this was information which needed to be more widely known. They understood the profound effects this could have on society, and did not understand why military organizations wanted to keep the information secret. Most of them felt it was very wrong to have been kept from public perception.

None of these books about early UFO crashes are particularly well-written. But the information they outline is so fascinating it is worth a look. It is, after all, where it all began!!

What we hear coming out now is that the information retrieved from these crashes has been reverse-engineered and is now the basis for a rapidly growing secret space program. If you read David Wilcock’s latest book, The Ascension Mysteries, you will begin to see the extent of this vast program, involving thousands of people and incorporating technology beyond most of our wildest imaginations.

I do not understand where this is all heading. But writers like Wilcock and others think that some level of disclosure will occur soon. No one can predict what effect this will have on society but there is widespread agreement that just about any level of information regarding this will have quite a profound impact. I, personally, can hardly wait!!!!