The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
Ben Mezrich writes books by looking at things most of society didn’t notice. His book on how Facebook starter The Accidental Billionaires or his one on how MIT ruled poker tables at casinos Bring Down The House made us aware of the stories we’d missed. When I heard he was taking on unexplained phenomena in a new book I went looking. He’s never part of the world he writes about but he gets to know it as an outsider then explains it to us, the other outsiders. I’ll admit I’m not an outsider on reading about and pondering the unexplained. So the things in The 37th Parallel didn’t shock or surprise me. This time I wanted to see how he treated the topic. In the end it was how he treated his subject that intrigued me more as a reader.
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
Every Halloween I see articles about The Mutter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The piece usually plays up the ‘creepy’ and ‘macabre’ aspects of the collection. While I owe a debt to one of these articles for making me aware of the museum I feel they do a disservice to what the museum really was and is – a teaching collection. It’s a tribute to the human body’s amazing diversity and endurance. The cases documented there are stunning and were collected to teach physicians of yesterday and today how to do no harm but help. So when I saw the book Dr. Mutter’s Marvels I was drawn to it. I wanted to know the history of the collection and the cases documented within. However, when I picked up the book I learned it was Dr. Mutter’s biography. My disappointment didn’t last through the introduction. The man is as riveting today as his collections.
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
What I know of the Kennedys is the political aspects of the family. Which in their case is a good part about the family. However, I never knew much about Rosemary. I was vaguely aware there was a sister to JFK that was institutionalized. Other than that I knew nothing. Then I was reading an article about this book. Interesting, but what got me considering it was that Rosemary spent most of her life in seclusion in Wisconsin not far from where I worked there. What had me buy it was learning that her father had put her there and told the rest of the family she was dead. It was only after he was incapacitated by a stroke that the other children learned their sister was still alive. So how did a prominent family come to lose and hide one of their own members? A sister of a President? The tale is a sad one.
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
When I was a kid in the mid-70s I had a Guinness Book of World Records. It was a small but think paperback of fine print and few pictures. One of the pictures was of a woman in black walking away seen at a distance. It was made in the early 1900s and was associated with the stingiest woman entry for a Hetty Green. She was said to have a fortune but her son lost his leg after she tried to sneak him in to a free clinic to be found out and refused. That she kept her office cold and ate leftover oatmeal for lunch. It certainly sounded like she deserved the Stingiest Woman In the World Record. Continue reading
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
I always look forward to Bill Bryson’s next book. He’s entertaining and educational. Many of his books I’ve read multiple times and walk away each time having learned something new while laughing. Most consider his best to be A Walk In The Woods (the book not the lame movie). I however favor A Sunburnt Country, about Australia, though The Lightning Bolt Kid was awesome. Actually I can’t name one I don’t consider worth multiple reads. So I snatched up his latest the week it was released. The Road To Dribbling is him revisiting the places of his book Notes From A Small Island. I looked forward to seeing how Bryson fared moving back to Great Britain and visiting places twenty years later. Would he prove what Thomas Wolf did in Look Homeward Angel that you can’t go back, or is England timeless and 20 years didn’t make that much of a difference? Continue reading
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
In Freaky Fridays we’ve had a where did he go, a who is he, and an open secret of spies. Today we have a manuscript that leaves us what it is and why it is. It’s the Voynich Manuscript. A lovely manuscript with exotic drawings whose origin is unknown along with what language it is written in, if any. Continue reading
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
I enjoy tales about characters. It’s because I grew up among story tellers and characters. My mother Sylvia Bright has quite a following on several Facebook groups where she tells the tales of the place I grew up Greeneville, Tennessee. Thus I enjoy books that center on every day interesting people met in travels or while doing business. This book is just one of those. Winton Porter owned a backpacking shop and hostel. It is the only one that actually straddles the Appalachian Trail. So if you desire to walk the trail from one end to the other you will walk through that breezeway.
The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique The required US legal disclaimer: All images are the property of their owners I reproduce them here under the Fair Use Doctrine of the copyright law for commentary and critique
I like organization and being able to find everything. It was easy when we moved often. I have found living in one place more then three years means we tend to collect junk. We’ve been in Wisconsin fifteen years the longest I have ever lived in one place. Ohhh- wheee, have we collected! Our aspiration is to retire to a Winnebago, or move about to series of small places. That means we need to shed 80%+ of our stuff. That is why I picked up The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kona.
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I have to admit I was on the waiting list for this book so long I gave up and got the audiobook. This is a biography of a child born in the Gilded Age to a family as wealthy as the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, or Astors. Her father W. A. Clark was a contemporary of them all. Huguette Clark was the daughter of W.A. and his second wife, Anna Eugenia La Chapelle. She was raised in the Clark mansion in New York City that took up a whole city block. However upon the death of her father she and her mother moved to apartments on 5th Avenue. Once her mother died, Huguette stayed there until she was taken to hospital on a stretcher in 1991 and there she should live for the next twenty years until her death. Along the way she was an interesting character given to childlike indulgences (dolls, dollhouses) and reclusiveness. Her life was filled with the best of the best – master art works on the walls, mansions not visited for decades stood at 48 hour readiness should she want to appear. She owned jewels that would stun Tiffanys, had not just one but two Stradivarius violins and more. Her life saw the Empire State Building go up where the Astor house once stood and the World Trade Center towers come down in 2001. The history seen and owned by her is astounding. Yet I don’t think she was ever happy nor do I think I would have particularly liked her as a person. BUT I do not think she deserved the treatment she got in her old age.
Mary Louise Eklund 