Book Reviews

Not so much books that I like, but books that I have recently read. On my last deployment I read my friends books on post modern thinking which I found interesting even though I may have missed some of it because it was my first book in 5 years. I never read much until I got in trouble, but after I did I had no excuse not to so I have read a few books in the last half year. I have found that I like reading books about reality even if it is spoken from a broken mind. The book selection was rather meager at the navy exchange so I only bought books that were on clearance so I could get more without spending alot. While in restriction I started reading Jackie Robinsons biography, but they took it from me because I had more than 3 books and I never got it back (organized crime.) Reading is not so common in our society now because we all have reasons to convince ourselves of our need of instant gratification. For this reason many bad books never get published and books have to have something extra in them to get people to read. The books that I did finish while I was there are:

•  Julius Ceasar by William Shakespear - A play tragedy that everyone has read or seen (never use always every or never)...
• The War on Pain by Scott Fishma, M.D. - I liked this book because it spoke of how easy it is to diagnose a symptom and ignore problems. It also showed the reality of the placebo effect and how the mind and body are not seperable. I saw that the fundamental basis of any recovery from a severe problem was the existance of hope.
• American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing - This book is a biography on his life. What I thought was most memorable about the book is how it showed the effects on the mind when the imputs are viewed through a filter. I also remeber about halfway down page 374 when it spoke of the great loss of humanity that Tim felt when he was in his cell. He remembered back when he worked as a zookeeper and watched the same animal in the same cage get fed the same portion of the same food at the same time of day by the same zoo worker. It was the repition that made the feeling of the loss of humanity so great and reminded me of my existance or lack of on the submarine.
• Me and Ted against the World by Reese Schonfeld - In this book Reese talked about his past existance in news and how he chased his dream. He got to watch his dream grow from nothing to a network larger than life (CNN) by pushing all the right buttons and fighting extremely hard. He then got to watch his dream fall apart as its corporate ties caused it to loose its impartiality and purity. This book taught me an extreme lesson about considering the source of information. Everything in the world is there to justify its own existance until it no longer wants to, then it ends.

• St. Johns Wort Natures Blues Buster by Hyla Cass, M.D. - I read this while I was awaiting transfer. I was still feeling at least a little inadequate to say the least. The book talks about the mind body relationship, the importance of nutrition, and the basics to some drug interactions. The book also talks about how outside the United States the use of natural herbs to cure the body is more common than the synthetic drugs we use here. If there is no pattent on a drug then the markup cannot be as great. A lack of economic incentive makes herbal suplements the but of jokes by people who believe whatever they are told. One of the councilers told me that there was alot of crap to some of the herbal suplements. In at least one of my this story does not sound real nights I ended up in the hospital. I paid a bill in full. I then got recharged again for the same bill and my mother forwarded it to insurace. Her insurance company had the bill reduced from $749 to something below $500 because there were some bogus charges on there. Even with the large recent technological boom heathcare is still the second largest industry behind real estate. People are bleeding the system. A lack of reform in this area erodes our economy.
• Nobrow by John Seabrook - This book is cool. It is about how we all blend into an infusion of mass media and information blazing past us. We all try to define ourselves by doing, buying, seeing, or experiencing things that give us identity in a society where everything is blending together. It talks about how a few people have managed great sucess in this environment and how some things have been forced to changes as the walls between social classes fall and make defining role by apearance that much harder. Here is a great exerpt from page 168. "As usual this part of SoHo is shoulder to shoulder with pedestrians in hot pursuit of status in Nobrow. When you do away with the old High-Low hierarchy, people become more obsessed than ever with status. The action seems like it's more out on the streets than in the gallaries. Standing in the Sonnabend Gallery, at a group show, I turn and for a moment my eyes stop in an interesting rectangle of space. Then in the next moment I realize it is an open window and I am looking out onto West Broadway. A lot of these people aren't actually affluent: They have no savings, their credit carss are maxed out, and they're carrying thousands of dollars in debt at 18 percent interest. But their lack of means does not ease tthem off the pursuit of status--indeed, it spurs them on." This leads me to ask the question of why debt is necissary. Even with the economic expansion beyond the edge of reality throughout the 1990s we still found ways to not pay down our national debt. Money is not a resource, but a means to barrter or trade. A few years ago I heard an alarming fact, that the interest on our national debt acounted for more federal spending than national defense did, and we think we need to police the world. A huge debt like that which is mostly owned by the richest few allows for a nice establishment of perminant division of social classes. Many would discredit this, but why in a slugish economy with low inflation did the cost of going to public college go up about 10% on the year? Not everyone is suffering, this is simply a consolidation of wealth.
• Common Sense by Thomas Paine - This is really more of a pamphlet than a book. Most people were afraid to say what they thought, so he did it for them. This was used to spur on the drive toward Independence by showing the grave injustices that made continued dependance not possible.
• Prohibition Thirteen Years that Changed America by Edward Behr - This book in detail covers the begining movements of temperance through the existance and repeal of prohibition, which only occured for economic stimulation. It does a great job of showing the existance of corruption throughout the government and how a few close minded people can make life horrific for many people. It reminds me of going underway. At the end of the book it speaks of how over half of our prison population is incarcerated for drug offenses, paralleling the issue of illegal drugs to alcohol in the 1820's. I really like the last sentence of this book. I think it is funny to go into a bar bathroom and read the words say no to drugs in the urinal when alcohol is an extremely destructive one which is exceedingly harmful when comparded to weed, but easier to tax and control. Unlike weed, alcohol was my gateway drug
• Stupid White Men by Michael Moore - This is more less a gripe book. To me many of the points are very valid. I see this as my own filtering, reading things that justify my beliefs. I was not a draft doger. I was not a deserter from the reserves. I did not get arrested for charges I do not want to talk about while I was a deserter. I am not the almost elected president residing on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from a rigged election. I have never commited a felony unlike... I am far worse than the boss of my former boss. I did drugs and told people. I was given every max punishment and should never be hired by any corporation again, in fact I should be in jail for general purpose now, just to help the police state movement. All I did meant nothing. I served my country other than honorably. If that is the case than I will continue to do so as I freely speak my mind until they pass a law to arrest me for it. That is kinda what I got from his book. We all bitch and nobody does anything about it. STAND UP. I will vote everytime for the rest of my life or until this country folds from its self grown arrogance ignorance and greed.