Book Review: Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (2019). Ronan Farrow.

An extremely well-written, fast-paced true-life autobiographical thriller, in which the multi-talented NBC reporter and New Yorker writer describes what it took to break through the wall of lies and defensive mechanisms that had protected Harvey Weinstein and other wealthy and powerful sexual predators for decades. 

It was Farrow, along with a couple of women journalists at the New York Times, who investigated, wrote, fact-checked and finally published the story of Weinstein's predatory sexual behaviors toward women in Hollywood.  His stories played a critical role in bringing Weinstein to justice, and also helped trigger the #METOO movement that brought other powerful sexual predators in media to light.  

In his book, Farrow details how he was strung along for over a year by his supervisors and higher-level executives at NBC who were bent on undermining and burying his story.  He only gradually learned as the investigation developed of the extent of  Weinstein's ongoing active measures to protect himself, including a well-financed private media and intelligence campaign to track Farrow's progress, and prevent the story from being told. 

Along the way, Farrow also uncovered The National Enquirer's "catch and kill" tactics for protecting rich celebrities (including Donald Trump), and was himself surveilled and subjected to negative media attacks to try to derail and discourage his investigation. 

An inspirational and exciting tale of journalistic heroism, integrity and dogged persistence in tracking down and exposing the crimes of the corrupt rich and powerful men who control many of our media and entertainment businesses.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (2010). Leslie Kean.

The author of this book is the award-winning New York Times journalist who later co-wrote the explosive 2017 story on the U.S. government’s admissions that a major naval carrier task force had experienced repeated encounters with UFOs, and that the government had in fact been actively studying the phenomenon for decades while denying its existence.

In this book, the author includes summaries of major reported UFO sightings from around the world since the 1940s, followed in each case by the detailed written statements of some of the many highly qualified observers, such as government leaders, military and commercial pilots, police and astronauts who witnessed them. 

After reading this compilation of so many extremely specific and detailed eye-witness reports, it is much harder to believe that UFOs (or UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, as they're now sometimes called) aren't a real, physical occurrence. 

Kean makes the case that UFO encounters and sightings are almost certainly far under-reported due to the social and institutional disincentives to event reporting.  She also highlights how the U.S. government’s policy of constantly debunking and ridiculing them (at that time), while almost certainly maintaining a deniable, highly-classified program to continue collecting data, is at odds with the more open approach of many other countries, and does a disservice to the world's ability to study and investigate UFOs/UAPs scientifically. 

Many other countries in the world (including England, France and many NATO countries) do in fact encourage UFO/UAP reporting, and have open programs for sharing information between countries.  Kean's approach to her material, which is dispassionate, seemingly skeptical and does not assume any particular explanation for UFOs/UAPs, is convincing in making the case for more open scientific investigation of these mysterious phenomena.

This book is probably the best place to start in delving into the current state of knowledge about UFOs, and what our government has been doing (and not doing) for most of the past century to collect and study the phenomenon.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Rewiring America Handbook (2020). Saul Griffith.

This valuable work is only available (to my knowledge) as an e-book, in .pdf format.  Despite that minor accessibility limitation, the contents are very useful, well-presented and thought-provoking.  This is also the first major publication (it's really the introductory manifesto) of an organization (Rewiring America, at https://www.rewiringamerica.org ) which in the past several years has become an important advocacy group in the United States for finding practical solutions to the climate crisis.

The author is an Australian-American MIT-trained engineer, who (with a group of collaborators) has done detailed studies on what it will take to try to keep the world (and the United States) at a low-enough carbon level to avoid the worst effects of climate change.  His proposals are based on science- and engineering-based analyses of current conditions and problems.  He and his team of researchers are also well-versed in many of the economic issues and challenges related to climate and environmental policy, another crucial part of the story which he weaves into his prescriptions for averting the worst of the climate crisis.

There are a few key arguments made, mixed in with many sub-topics, graphs and studies:  first, meeting climate objectives will require a World-War II-scale industrial program, to build and deploy the technical infrastructure for power generation and the new grid;  second, we can all contribute significantly as individuals, without lowering our standards of living, by simply replacing or adding any personal infrastructure (cars, furnaces, stoves, solar panels) with new-tech all-electric versions;  third, an all-electric economy is cheaper in the long run, but requires heavy up-front investment, requiring inexpensive financing, which should be made widely available to consumers;  and fourth, building the all-electric economy will create on the order of 25 million good new jobs throughout all of American's zip codes, urban and rural.  

It is a very exciting and uplifting vision, with an abundance of supportive technical and financial detail included -- now all we have to do is figure out how to do it politically.  The .pdf of the book can be downloaded from Rewiring America’s site on the web, where you can now find other more specific and detailed reports and white papers on climate issues.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: Following Fifi (2017). John Crocker, MD.

A very nice first book and memoir by (full disclosure here) my long-time primary care physician, Dr. John Crocker, who as a young man was one of the student researchers working with Jane Goodall in Gombe, Tanzania, studying chimpanzees.

It’s a very personal and thoughtful reflection on how what he experienced and learned there shaped his life, and made him a better doctor and father.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: The War Bride (2002). Amazon Prime.

An energetic young London girl marries a Canadian soldier in 1941 in the midst of the Nazi bombing campaign, and quickly gets pregnant.  As the wife of a Canadian combatant, she is shipped off to his home in poor, rural Alberta in 1943 with their young daughter, but without her husband, who is off fighting the war. 

 

When she arrives at the primitive family home on the plains, she has to learn how to get along with a dour mother-in-law, a crippled sister-in-law, and other unwelcoming and unsophisticated locals she doesn't know. 

 

This is a well-executed "fish out of water" tale, that highlights the plight of World War II British war brides sent off during the war to the "safety" of their new husbands' distant homes and families.  Recommended.

TV Review: Atypical. Netflix Series, Seasons 1-4.

Atypical is a charming and heart-warming family dramedy series about living with a cognitive/behavioral disability.  

At the center of the story is a bright high school senior with high-functioning autism.  He has a younger sister who’s a track star, a neurotic and over-involved mother, and a devoted father who had abandoned the family for a time years ago, when he was first trying to come to terms with his son's diagnosis, thereby causing ongoing trust issues in the marriage.  

Our young protagonist also has a few eccentric friends, and a community of people from school and work with whom he interacts as he tries to figure out how to carve out a positive role in life for himself despite his condition, and all the normal social things he doesn't understand.  

In the process, we see the hardships and stresses his situation creates for the people around him, but also the unexpected rewards the various characters realize from his often too-honest and unfiltered view of the world and their own actions.  Funny yet with a serious message, this was definitely one of the more enjoyable and worthwhile shows we saw in 2021.  Recommended.

Book Review: Death Without Company (2006). Craig Johnson.

This is the second Walt Longmire mystery novel, in which an elderly local woman may have been murdered in the local old-folks home. 

 

With all the same excellent literary qualities, main characters along with some new ones, and a new mix of complicated family histories and relationships, long-hidden crimes and conspiracies, and plenty of the same kind of local color and great dialogue that were present in The Cold Dish (the first Walt Longmire novel), Johnson spins another entertaining and high-quality addition to his series of contemporary Western mystery novels.  

 

I really liked it!  But on the other hand, it's two down, 22 (and counting) to go, with the recent release of the latest installment (number 24) in this series.  I'm going to need to pace myself!  Recommended.

Book Review: Rules of Civility (2011). Amor Towles.

This is Amor Towles's first novel, written as a first-person account of the life of an aspiring young woman from the lower classes, who dives into the social life of the wealthy in late 1930s Manhattan.  

It contains wonderful, evocative descriptions of the people, places and social behavior of the American Yankee aristocratic class (and particularly of the young people) at that time, when the Depression was still recent history and the calamity of World War II was just ahead.  

It also nicely depicts the way in which for so many of us, our twenties are the time when who we ultimately will become in life as adults is shaped and molded by our experiences, the people we meet then, and the historical events around us.  Highly recommended.