Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude, Dick Pountain and David Robins, Reaktion Books, 2000
The Black Chalice, Marie Jakober, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing,2000
If Your Dreams Are Big Enough, The Facts Don’t Count!, Michael S. Long and Karl Williams, Massey-Reyner Publishing, 1999
To Kill a King, Mary V. Welk, Kleworks Publishing Co, 2000
Gun Lust, Mark Pilnick, Xlibris Corp., 2000
Stealing Thunder, Peter Millar, Bloomsbury, 2000
An Uncertain Currency, Clyde Lynwood Sawyer Jr and Frances Witlin, Avocet Press, 1999
Labyrinth of Chaos, Brian Wallace, New Falcon Publications, 2000
Volcano, Rosa Turner Knapp, Pulsar Books, 2001
Dead Birds Don't Sing, Brenda M. Boldin, ebooksonthe.net (e-book), 2000
Rogue States: The Role of Force in World Affairs, South End Press, 2000
Death and Redemption in London and L.A., Lionel Rolfe, deadendstreet.com (e-book), 2000
The Road to Wounded Knee, Robert Burnette and John Koster, Bantam, 1974
Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude, Dick Pountain and David Robins, Reaktion Books, 2000
The Black Chalice, Marie Jakober, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2000
If Your Dreams are Big Enough, The Facts Don’t Count!, Michael S. Long and Karl Williams, Massey-Reyner Publishing, 1999
To Kill a King, Mary V. Welk, Kleworks Publishing Co, 2000
Gun Lust, Mark Pilnick, Xlibris Corporation, 2000
Stealing Thunder, Peter Millar, Bloomsbury, 2000
An Uncertain Currency, Clyde Lynwood Sawyer Jr and Frances
Witlin, Avocet Press, 1999
Labyrinth of Chaos, Brian Wallace, New Falcon Publications, 2000
Volcano, Rosa Turner Knapp, Pulsar Books, 2001
Dead Birds Don’t Sing, Brenda M. Boldin, ebooksonthe.net (e-book), 2000
Rogue States: The Role of Force in World Affairs, Noam Chomsky, South End Press, 2000
Death and Redemption in London and L.A., Lionel Rolfe,
http://deadendstreet.com (e-book), 2000
The attitude of “cool” can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of West Africa, from which it was brought west by the slave trade. It can also be found in the English aristocratic reserve and the Romantic irony of
nineteenth-century poets. The modern version of cool was kept alive among
black musicians, until it was discovered by Hollywood scriptwriters and crime
writers of the 1930s and 1940s, and injected into white culture by Elvis Presley
and rock and roll. Along the way, cool found its way into the Surrealists, the
Beat Generation, film noir, conceptualism, rock, soul, funk, hip-hop and
techno.
A general definition of cool might be as a permanent state of private
rebellion. Permanent because cool isn’t a “phase’ in life; private because cool
means individual, not collective, defiance. Today, cool, which originally
opposed humiliation and subjugation, has become a means for the media and
advertisers of the world to push their way into the wallets of young consumers.
Cool still flirts with living on the edge, and loves the night. Despite
government health warnings, cool still loves cigarettes, drugs and liquor. It has started to admit women, but is more in love with violence than in the past.
Even though cool has emerged in different societies during different periods in
history, it can be recognized as a combination of three personality traits:
narcissism, hedonism and ironic detachment.
This book won’t reveal how to achieve cool (because the definition
keeps changing), but it otherwise does an excellent job at analyzing the subject
for those of us on the outside. It is well worth reading.
Set in 12th century Germany, soon after the First Crusade to
Jerusalem, this is the story of Karelian, Crusader knight and youngest son of a
formerly noble House. Troubled by his violent past, and disillusioned with war
and the church, he, like many of his countrymen, is not yet ready to give up his
pagan roots. Karelian meets Raven, half-human and half-veela and queen of a
hidden castle. He falls madly in love with her, and. later, he betrays everything for her.
The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire dies before his son, Konrad,
can be officially sworn in as the new emperor. At the same time, Duke
Gottfried also claims the throne. He claims descent from Jesus himself, and
possesses what might be a relic from the time of Christ that claims to show
him, Gottfried, on the throne. The group of nobles that choose the emperor is
deadlocked, setting off a major power struggle. Karelian joins the side of Prince Konrad, even though Karelian is accused of all sorts of terrible crimes, because Duke Gottfried’s plan for a Christian empire must be stopped. The whole
empire rests on a one-on-one battle between Gottfried and Karelian, acting as
Konrad’s champion.
The whole tale is told in flashback from the point of view of Paul,
Karelian’s ex-squire, who switched sides when Karelian abandoned the church,
and is now an elderly monk. Instead of writing the tale expected by his
superiors, Paul is forced, through sorcery, to write what really happened.
This is a first-rate piece of writing. It has all the elements a fantasy
lover could want, in an interesting and well-done story. This book runs rings
around most of what is packaged as fantasy in the local chain bookstore.
This is the autobiography of Long, who was born in 1962 with mild
cerebral palsy and mental retardation as a result of the umbilical cord wrapped
around his neck at birth. Growing up on a California walnut farm, it would
have been very easy for his parents to put him in the disabled “system,”
sheltered workshops, special classes, etc. But his parents were determined to
raise him as normally as possible, so Long spent his school years in regular
classes.
Long does a fine job talking about his experiences in school, a mostly
forgettable time. If the problem wasn’t that the school work was too much for
him, then it was being picked on by the other students. In, and after, high
school, when it came to the opposite sex, Long made friends very easily. But,
when he suggested a more serious relationship, they backed off, because of his
disabilities. After graduating from high school, Long told his parents that he
realized they had to keep him in the regular classes, but except for one high
school course in government, he hated school.
After high school, Long discovered a talent as a motivational speaker.
Working for a regional organization for the disabled in northern California, he
traveled all over the region (by bus or getting a ride with others) giving talks on disabled issues. His eloquence really comes through in this book. Speaking to
civic groups and special education teacher candidates, he attracted attention in
Sacramento, California’s capital. In 1992, Governor Pete Wilson appointed
him Consumer Coordinator in the Department of Developmental Services, the
first disabled person appointed to a state-wide position in America.
This book works on a couple of levels. It’s a very well done look at life
with a disability, as seen from the “inside.” It’s also a fine motivational book
that shows that anyone can achieve great things. For those who think that life is too difficult, read about someone who started with less than most people.
Caroline Rhodes agrees to return to Ascension Medical Center, near
Chicago, for the summer to work in the severely understaffed ER. Her best
friend, Molly O’Neal, the ER Nurse Manager, practically begs Caroline, also a
nurse, to nose around and see if there is a way around the horrendous working
conditions.
Dr Roger MacGuffie, the head ER doctor, runs the ER with an iron
fist; his word is law. One reason why ER staff have been quitting in droves is
because accusations of sexual harassment by Dr MacGuffie have been flying
fast and furious. He has had a relationship with Angela Horowitz, Director of
Nursing, another “iron fist” type of manager. He is also having an affair with
Michelle Devine, a twentysomething technician with a dynamite body and one
desire in life, to be Mrs Wealthy Doctor. The fact that the ER is in the middle
of a major renovation, and that the area is in the middle of a major heat wave
push Molly almost to the point of nervous breakdown.
Things get very interesting when, the day after Caroline arrives,
Angela is found dead in her own bed, smothered by her own pillow. The police
and FBI descend on the hospital and find that all of the remaining employees
had plenty of motive to want Angela dead. Caroline is summoned to the home
of an aging Mafia don, Angela’s father, who would like Caroline to prove that
The Mob wasn’t involved in her death. Otherwise, the don’s son, and current
head of the Family, is ready to take a machine gun to the other Families in
retaliation.
The next day, Dr MacGuffie is found hanged in the construction area.
Molly is arrested by the police, having jumped to the top of the suspect list.
Caroline calls on some friends from previous detective adventures to enter the
ER as fake patients or temp employees, and find the killer.
This one is very good. The author does a fine job with the story and
characters, keeping the reader guessing until the end, and providing lots of
possible suspects. The only downside is that there are several references to
things that happened in earlier books in this series (this is the third), so reading these in order would help. Otherwise, I found it to be very much worth reading.
This is a satire about the American obsession with guns and the forces
arrayed on both sides of the issue. On one side is the National Weapons
Federation, headed by actor Winston Lawton. Out west, Michael Klyter is the
head of an obscure militia group. He and his wife start an “independent”
foundation to give money to conservative politicians just before the family
moves to Washington so Michael can assume a senior position with the NWF.
Reverend Jim Pennington is host of the nationally televised Fellowship Club.
There is also a smattering of venal, self-serving politicians and right-wing
radio talk show hosts who make little or no attempt at on-air impartiality. On
the other side is the radical People Against Handguns, who conduct an
aggressive guerrilla campaign against the NWF and Rev. Pennington.
The NWF is pushing through Congress a bill called the Citizen
Self-Defense and Crime Control Bill, which would exempt from punishment
anyone who uses a gun to stop a crime. The NWF feel they have the votes to
override a promised Presidential veto. Both sides put everything they have into
this one, turning Washington into the political equivalent of a war zone. Things
get very interesting when the President crashes an NWF rally in Washington
and suggests that he might push for repeal of the Second Amendment of the US
Constitution.
This book will get thrown across a lot of rooms. Sometimes, those are
the best kind, those that grab a reader and violently shake them. Love it or hate it, no one will be ambivalent about this book. I loved it, and can heartily
recommend it.
British-American journalist Eamonn Burke is on a
less-than-promising assignment. He has been asked by Sabine Kotzke, a
German magazine editor, to investigate the rumor that Russian atom bomb spy
Klaus Fuchs was killed to keep him from revealing something about the atom
bomb. The conventional wisdom is that he died peacefully behind the Iron
Curtain after being exchanged in an East-West prisoner swap.
Burke makes a few inquiries in British Intelligence, and manages to
get certain people very interested in what they are doing. The story then shifts
into high gear, and moves to Berlin and Moscow, where a man who was about
to give important information to Burke and Kotzke is helped out an 11th floor
window just before their arrival. Now they know they’re onto something big.
Sometime just after World War II, an American bomber equipped to
carry atomic bombs went missing. For unknown reasons, it was on a flight to
Russia, but only got as far as Iceland. Lots of people, on both sides, will stop at nothing to make sure the secret of what the bomber was carrying stays secret.
Switching back and forth between present-day Europe and Los Alamos
in 1945, this story takes a while to get going, but once it does, watch out. This is an intelligent and compelling story that makes the reader re-think
assumptions about the Cold War. This well-researched tale of alternate history
actually reaches the rarefied atmosphere of Wow.
Mario Castigliani is an aging Italian aristocrat with a real, but erratic,
talent for clairvoyance. His last-ditch tour brings him to the dying cotton mill
town of Floraville, Georgia. A local black civil rights activist, Roy Washington, is found hanged. All the signs point to suicide (he was suffering from brown lung disease), but Beaufort Tyler, the local Chief of Police, doesn’t agree. Tyler asks Mario if he would unofficially help out in the investigation. Mario has something of a reputation in that area, having solved a couple of high-profile cases in the past. Mario readily agrees; he could sure use the money.
At times, the murder mystery is secondary to the story of Mario’s life.
As a boy in Italy, Mario hung around a local archeological site. One day, he
picked up an ancient coin, and, at that moment, la Lucia, his clairvoyant muse,
entered his life. He disappointed his family by joining a traveling mind
reader/showman named Willie Winckler, instead of following his father as a
veterinarian Willie is one of those who has perfected the art of staying one step ahead of the authorities, having several wives all over Europe. After the duo has moved to New York City, and Willie has married several more women, the
authorities catch up with him, leaving Mario on his own. One night, Mario
finds Oriana, his sweetheart from back home, sitting on his doorstep. They get
married, but Oriana gets caught up in American materialism, and the marriage
eventually fails.
This is an excellent read. The authors do an excellent job from start to
finish, with the settings, the mystery and the characters. It is highly
recommended.
Alan Agrippa is a young American with the money, and the desire, to
embark on an open-ended excursion through Great Britain and Ireland. He
starts in London, visiting an aunt and uncle who live there. They happen to
have a young French woman named Ronia living with them while she works on
her graduate degree. The sparks between Ronia and Alan are immediate. In
between academic requirements, Ronia spends a lot of time with Alan
exploring London. Along the way, they meet members of a reggae band who
invite them to an outdoor concert being held in the city.
Ronia has to stay behind while Alan decides to explore the rest of
Britain. He drives north toward Wales, then stops in Oxford, and eventually
finds himself north of the border in Scotland, staying in bed and breakfasts
along the way. He meets a lot of interesting people along the way, including a
Jesuit priest, a female purveyor of voodoo and a quantum physicist. Ronia
rejoins Alan in Scotland and they finish their journey in Ireland.
Lest you think that this is your average travelogue novel, it isn’t. Alan
and Ronia spend their time journeying through the terrain of mysticism,
physics and the human mind. When they aren’t talking advanced psychology,
they’re reading about Joseph Campbell or the non-fiction writings of Aldous
Huxley. They do some of their journeying with a little “help” (specifically from
pot and acid).
This is a very specialized novel that is not for everyone. Some
familiarity with the writings of people like Carl Jung or John C. Lilly would
help in reading this novel. For those who want to give their brain a major
workout, this is the book.
In this sequel to Force of Fire, Ana Kane and Mark Neal are now
husband and wife. Mark is still active in the intelligence field in Washington,
working for one of those agencies about which the public knows nothing, while
Ana stays home to be a full-time mother. Ana has recently been going through
a period of mental fogginess, like leaving doors open and losing her keys, more
than once. The stress between Ana and Mark has started to affect their
marriage. Ana asks her father, Albert Kane, a senior member of US
intelligence, for a simple, low-level assignment so she can show Mark that she
hasn’t totally lost her mind.
This “simple”assignment gets Ana kidnapped by a group of Chinese
terrorists. Meantime, reports come in about people all over the country
suddenly up and quitting their jobs, and heading home fearing for the safety of
their families. They all suffered some sort of minor computer glitch just
beforehand. This “glitch,” much more than a computer virus, has even hit the
supposedly impenetrable computers of the Defense Operations Service (DOS),
of which Mark is a senior member, causing most of the staff to leave.
It seems that during the height of the Cold War, a secret US plan was
hatched which only three people knew about (Albert Kane was one of them) to
destabilize communist societies from the inside. Au Yang was supposedly
killed by the Chinese Secret Service several years previously. Tom Mooney,
now a US Ambassador in Central America, seems to be helping a group of
Chinese and Middle Eastern terrorists use the plan on the US. When the people
of America clamor for a strong leader to save them, he will be perfectly placed
to accept the ‘burden of leadership’. The plan’s crowning moment will be a
terrorist attack on New Year’s Eve 2001 celebrations in Washington. After all,
one year after Y2K, everyone’s guard will be down.
This is another excellent novel from Ms. Knapp. She knows her way
around Washington, the story is plausible with good characters, and, for
political junkies like me, it’s more than juicy enough. Highly recommended.
The town of Bay City is divided into three sections. In the east,
Bayside, on the water, is the land of six figure incomes. To the west, Lafayette
is the sort of place where people are lucky to have any income at all. Everyone
else lives in the aptly named Centercity. The three parts of town have little, or no, interaction with each other.
Alex Masters is a former resident of Lafayette, and former prostitute,
trying to go “straight” in Bayside. She was a former consort of King Marshall,
the former “head” of Lafayette, now in state prison. The current ruler of
Lafayette, a man named Beau, wanted to keep Alex for himself, but, with
Marshall’s help, she refused. Beau hasn’t forgotten.
One day, while standing in line at the local bank, Alex gets caught in
a bank robbery by Beau and a couple of his goons. She is recognized and taken
hostage. Beau plans to turn her back into a junkie, then kill her with a drug
overdose, but she is rescued in the nick of time by the same handsome blond
stranger that she, literally, ran into at the bank, police detective Cole
Armstrong.
The police are convinced that Alex knows more than she is willing to
admit. There was a fourth person involved in the robbery, who has disappeared
with the loot. Alex thinks it is Detective Armstrong. Beau, the sort of person
who shoots first and asks questions later, is also looking for that fourth person, and looking for Alex, to prevent her from talking to the police, permanently.
Along the way, a couple of friends of Alex from the old days end up
dead, and Alex is the main suspect. She must rely on her Lafayette instincts to
stay away from the murderer and away from Beau (if they aren’t one and the
same person) and keep from having to tell the police what she knows,
convinced that they are in on the whole thing.
This is quite good and quite entertaining. The author does a fine job
from start to finish with good characters and an interesting mystery. This is a
strong, you-won’t-go-wrong sort of story.
Here is another chronicle of American political actions around the
world. The US talks a lot about human rights, and respecting the rule of law.
The reality is very different.
One of the reasons for the US embargo on Cuba for the last 40 years is
the fear that the “virus” of taking matters into one’s own hands might stimulate
the poor and underprivileged to demand opportunities for a decent living. The
new leading recipient of US military aid, Colombia, has the worst human rights
record in the western hemisphere at the same time that US military aid and
training are scheduled to increase. The US instigated a military coup in
Guatemala in 1954, because the government’s agrarian reform program, which
would aid peasants against the upper classes, had a strong appeal to its
neighbors, where similar conditions prevail. Such a thing could not be allowed
to happen (the Cuban “virus”). Contempt for the rule of law is deeply rooted in
US practice and intellectual culture. When Indonesia invaded East Timor in
1975, the UN Security Council ordered an immediate withdrawal. The US
secretly increased arms shipments to Indonesia; meantime, UN Ambassador
Daniel Moynihan rendered the UN “utterly ineffective in whatever measures
they took”, beacuse the State Department wanted things to turn out exactly the
way they did.
Chomsky also looks at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Kosovo, labor rights, Nicaragua, NAFTA/GATT/WTO, the international debt
crisis, and the way all of these subjects have been reported, or not reported, in the US media.
This book deserves a rating higher than Must Read. Chomsky paints a
devastating picture of US actions around the world, where the boom is lowered
on countries who don’t do things the way the US wants. Highly recommended.
This sort-of autobiography from Rolfe is about the general subject of
death.
He talks about attending a 1999 memorial service at Westminster
Abbey in London for his late uncle, the virtuoso violinist, Yehudi Menuhin.
Rolfe grew up in a household full of classical music. Rolfe’s mother, Yaltah,
and aunt, Hephzibah, were themselves musical prodigies, giving concerts
before their teens. Rolfe’s relationship with the rest of the family had been
difficult, including being cut out of the family will, ever since in the 1970s he wrote a less-than-flattering book about the family. While in London, he visited Yaltah, living alone in a London suburb. From the outside she looks like the quintessential British eccentric, going out in public dressed as a bohemian all in blue. But she can provide a rich, very detailed description of her
neighborhood and the people living in it. London is the sort of place where one
might hear a person on the street whistling Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata,
Rolfe’s favorite piece of music, in great contrast to Los Angeles, Rolfe’s home,
a land of strip malls and tract houses.
Have you ever heard the term “dying with dignity?” An old friend of
Rolfe’s, Nieson Himmel, a veteran LA police reporter from the old days, was
not afforded that opportunity when his time came. Another friend, Carl
Kessler, who called himself the last Stalinist in L.A., lived with Rolfe for a
time. A long-time union organizer and activist, being bedridden with
emphysema didn’t stop him from being on the phone, all day, every day.
Rolfe also talks about the end of his 25-year marriage to Nigey
Lennon, his wife. They met in the 1960s, while both hung around with Frank
Zappa, with an 11-year age difference between them. One day, she left Rolfe for
another man; but she never really leaves. She would live with the boyfriend for
weeks at a time, then come back to Rolfe, leaving him again for the boyfriend.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. Rolfe certainly isn’t
afraid to open up his emotions and pour them into his words. Parts are a good
history of modern California, and the whole book is a fine piece of writing.