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THE SECRET WORLD: A HISTORY OF INTELLIGENCE

Christopher Andrew

Summary​

  • This was a surprisingly fast read for a book that spans 760 pages. It covers the history of spies (intelligence) from the Bible to the post-9/11 era. It is a highly recommended reading for spy and history aficionados.

Memorable Parts

  • "The first major figure in world literature to emphasize the importance of good intelligence was God. After the Israelites had escaped from captivity in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, supposedly in about 1300 BC, God told Moses to send spies to reconnoiter 'the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel'."

  • "Both Shin Bet and Mossed take their mottoes from the Hebrew Bible. Shin Bet's comes from Psalm 121: 'He who watches over Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.'"

  • "Jesus avoided providing a pretext, famously replying to the question: 'Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Cesar, or no?'"

  • "For two millennia after the unification of the Empire in 221 BC the Middle Kingdom found it inconceivable that the barbarians beyond its borders had anything of value to offer it. After a British mission to Beijing in 1793 had tried to interest the Chinese court in trade and products of the Western civilization, the Emperor wrote to George III: 'As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess everything.'"

  • "In March 624, Muhammad was informed by his intelligence sources that a caravan of 1,000 camels was making its way to Mecca from Syria, headed by the Quraish leader, Aby Sufyan, and sent over a force of over 300 men to intercept it at the Bard oasis." 

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Highly Recommended

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THE GIFT OF FAILURE: HOW THE BEST PARENTS LEARN TO LET GO SO THEIR CHILDREN CAN SUCCEED

Jessica Lahey

Summary​

  • It is hard to keep up with parenting trends. One day you read a book about doing XYZ and the next day another book about how XYZ is wrong. I've reached a point where I think it is best to absorb as much information as possible and apply what my heart thinks is right. Even though I have read contradictory information, I have found it helpful. 

Memorable Parts

  • "In order to raise healthy, happy kids who can begin to build their own adulthood separate from us, we are going to have to extricate our egos from our children's lives and allow them to feel the pride of their own accomplishments as well as the pain of their own failures."

  • "Decades of studies point to one conclusion that sounds crazy, but it absolutely works: If parents back off the pressure and anxiety over grades and achievement and focus on the bigger picture - a love of learning and independent inquiry - grades will improve and test scores will go up."

  • "For every time I tied his shoes, rather than teach him to do it himself, I reinforced his perception that I believed the task was too hard for him."

  • "Parenting for autonomy. Parenting for independence and a sense of self, born out of real competence. Parenting for resilience in the face of mistakes and failures. Parenting for what is right and good in the final tally, not for what feels right and good in the moment. Parenting for tomorrow, not just for today."

  • "Establish nonnegotiable expectations, such as 'Homework will be completed thoroughly and on time'. As long as your expectation is that homework will be completed thoroughly, and on time, where, when, and how they complete their homework should be up to them."

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Recommended

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MIND MAGIC: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MANIFESTATION AND HOW IT CHANGES EVERYTHING

James R. Doty, MD

Summary​

  • Dr. Doty is the author of one of my favorite books, 'Into the Magic Shop'. I was delighted that he chose this as his second book. Specifically, dealing with and explaining the science behind manifestation. It is no secret that manifestation has a reputation for hocus pocus stuff but who better than a former neurosurgeon to explain the science behind all of it?

Memorable Parts

  • "The universe doesn't give a fuck about you...No, the universe doesn't give a fuck about you because it has no fucks to give. Many of us are taught to spend our lives hoping for something outside of ourselves to fix our problems and make us whole...The fuck you must give must be your own."

  • "Our minds and bodies organize around preparations to prevent a similar trauma from happening in the future, and in the process, our consciousness becomes caught in reacting to a frightening and unreliable external world rather than envisioning the changes we can make."

  • "Even in the midst of my family life, my mind was elsewhere: tugged back to painful or idealized memories of the past or leaning into the future toward my next surgery, my next financial milestone, the shining moment to come when I could finally have enough to be OK. In the process, I forgot to enjoy what I had and to connect with the people I wanted to build that life with."

  • "A person can't possess more than they can love, and I had not opened my heart any wiser than when I first wrote my list. My mansion, my island, my cars, even my family could not fit in the narrow space inside me, and now they were moving on, possibly to be found by those who could truly hold them."

  • "'Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

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Highly Recommended

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MANIAC

Benjamín Labatut

Resumen​

  • Una excelente recomendacion de mi amigo Ignacio V de Chile; país donde el autor del libro ha vivido desde su catorce años. Me recordó muchísimo a un libro favorito mio llamado 'Noticias del Imperio'. Afortunadamente para mí, el libro trata de un tema que me apasiona. Estoy siendo intencionalmente ambiguo porque quiero que lo lean sin saber de que trata (como lo hice yo).

Partes Memorables

  • "Paul odiaba a los tipos como John von Neumann, ese prodigio húngaro que se valia de <<espantosas armas matemáticas para crear aparatos teóricos incomprensiblemente complejos>>."

  • "David Hilbert, sumo pontífice de las matemáticas del sigo XX, fue uno de los jueces en su examne de doctorado, y quedó tan sorprendido por el intelecto de ese joven húngaro de veintidos años que solo tuvo una pregunta <<¿Sería tang gentil de decirme quién es su sastre?>>."

  • "En este mundo solo hay dos tipos de personas: Jancsi von Neumman y el resto de nosotros."

  • "Kurt Godel era considerado un dios. Cerca del final de su vida, Albert Einstein confesó que su propio trabajo ya no le importaba mucho, pero continuaba yendo al Instituto de Estudios Avanzados solo para tener el privilegio de caminar hasta su oficina con el lógico austriaco a su lado."

  • "Nosotros, los marcianos, jugamos un rol desproporcionado en el programa nuclear estadounidense. Así nos llamaban tras el chiste que hizo Fermi cuando le preguntaron si los extraterrestres eran reales: <<Claro que lo son, y ya viven entre nosotros. Solo que se llaman húngaros.>>"

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Altamente Recomendado

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BAD THERAPY: WHY THE KIDS AREN'T GROWING UP

Abigail Shrier

Summary​

  • This is a superb counterbalance to the gentle parenting movement that has been going around for decades. The author can be, in my opinion, too dismissive of certain childhood traumas and experts on the subjects. Regardless, this was a breath of fresh air for me since I like to read parenting books but many come with the message that you are one screw-up away from messing up your child for life!

Memorable Parts

  • "Cognitive behavioral therapists have effectively treated children's anxiety by treating the anxiety in their parents. But we can transmit calm, too. We can be brave for them because that is what every life, if it is well-lived, requires: that we face the things that frighten us, that we try and try again - whether we feel up to it each time or not."

  • "If you are a teenager today, you hang out with friends far less in-person - up to an hour less per day - than the previous generation. Your parents observe every aspect of your life unfolding on social media. Your parents, plugged in always to WhatsApp, know about every kid caught vaping on the school overnight, hours after it occurs."

  • "She learned from other parents that on the day that her son would be called to report for army duty, one of the first questions he would be asked is: 'How did you get here?' If the answer is 'My mom drove me,' elite units would toss his application."

  • "Stop acting as if your child will die if she doesn't get her snack; that she'll fall apart if she's made to sit next to an obnoxious child in class. If she's not in the same reading group as her friends, don't call the teacher and insist that the groups be reorganized because your daughter can't possibly discuss Wonder seated next to anyone but Kennedy."

  • "It struck me that so many of the parents I met who had turned their kids' lives over to psychiatry, didn't seem to enjoy their kids anymore. We lost this somewhere along the way: the sense that these kids we raise, they're ours. We are not the subordinates of the psychologist, pediatrician, or the teacher. Parenting is not a skill. It's a relationship - or it was. Before the experts professionalized it."

  • "It is not an accident that Churchill's and Lincoln's deep moral insights were preceded by periods of depression, Andrews told me. 'The function of the depressed mood is to employ this Type 2 thinking to try and help you analyze and hopefully solve your problems."

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Highly Recommended

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THE PARENTS WE MEAN TO BE: HOW WELL-INTENTIONED ADULTS UNDERMINE CHILDREN'S MORAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Richard Weissbourd

Summary​

  • The book has a strong first half but I found the second half to be a bit weak. In summary, we need to discuss and make sure that our children are aware that they form part of social groups (school, sports, neighborhood, etc). The author argues that the strong focus on individualism has undermined moral development. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Violence prevention programs that explain to children the harmful consequences of violence don't help because children know violence is wrong - what they can't control is the shame and destructive impulses that fuel violence."

  • "I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated. The most dangerous men on earth are those afraid that they are wimps."

  • "Perhaps the most common and damaging kind of shame for a child, though, is when parents are threatened by their children's feelings and weaknesses.  A bad example is Jim's mom recoiling from him mentioning that he might have low self-esteem." 

  • "When parents are unwilling to withstand their children's anger in the service of promoting a valued moral quality in their child, they fail to communicate that there are higher values than being well-liked and that their children are capable of withstanding their disapproval."

  • "The self becomes strong and more mature less by being praised than by being known. That means that it's important that our interactions with our children generally reflect our knowledge of them."

  • "It should be a big red flag when our self-esteem plummets when a child does poorly on a big test or is rejected by an elite school."

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Average

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TUNNEL 29: THE TRUE STORY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY ESCAPE BENEATH THE BERLIN WALL

Helena Merriman

Summary​

  • I have an (unhealthy) fascination with the Stasi. I can´t wrap my head around how people were able to live in East Berlin with that type of pressure and surveillance. 'As long as there are walls, people will try to escape.' 

Memorable Parts

  • "But Stalin is playing dirty. He wants his soldiers to reach Berlin first, before the British and the Americans, so they can strip the city of whatever is left. Money. Machinery. Uranium - for Russia's first atomic bomb."

  • "Six days a week, children are in the care of its party-appointed teachers, right from kindergarten where two-year-olds are taught the principles of socialism through communal potty breaks." 

  • "The Stasi were also pioneering more sophisticated tactics, such as zersetzung - 'decomposition'. This was the subtle art of applying continuous pressure to people so they would feel as though their lives were falling apart."

  • "But to keep these perks, and stand a chance for promotion, he must reach a target: recruit twenty-five new informants every year. For it is these informants that set the Stasi apart from every other secret police force in history. At one point there was one informant from every sixty-three people."

  • "Thousands of jars, all numbered, containing torn pieces of cloth. These pieces of cloth had been placed in suspect's armpits during long, sweaty interrogations, then put in sealed jars as smell samples, ready to give a sniffer dog should they need to find the suspect again."

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Recommended

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PERMACRISIS: A PLAN TO FIX A FRACTURED WORLD

Gordon Brown, Mohamed A. El-Erian & Michael Spence

Summary​

  • It feels like the state of the world has been declining since Trump's presidency. The pandemic, conflict with China, War in Ukraine, Israel vs. Palestine; the list keeps growing. This book helps us make sense of the state of the world (how we got here) and a plan to move forward. 

Memorable Parts

  • "On the Elbe River in Czech Republic, a 'hunger stone' used hundreds of years ago to make low water levels usually preceding a famine revealed a message long-hidden underwater: 'If you see me, then weep.'"

  • "Boeing tasked a cockpit computer to provide control inputs in certain circumstances to help mimic the flying style of earlier 737s. The problem was, neither regulators nor pilots were fully aware the system existed. And when it activated on Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the pilots were catastrophically overpowered."

  • "In 1945, out of the rubble of the war, entirely new institutions from the UN to the IMF and World Bank were created to rebuild, alongside the Marshall Plan, to root out poverty, hunger, desperation, and chaos. Close to eighty years on, faced with multiple crises that also threaten death and destruction, there is no modern Marshall and no plan."

  • "'Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?' Sherman asked. 'Yes, lick 'em tomorrow though,' Grant replied."

  • "Consider this: as of 2021, more than $100 billion, or 57% of all debt held by the world's poorest countries, is owed to China."

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Recommended

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WHEN A PARENT IS DEPRESSED: HOW TO PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FROM THE EFFECTS OF DEPRESSION IN THE FAMILY

William R. Beardslee, M.D.

Summary​

  • It is great to read positive books about parenting but, I think, once in a while you need to read about parenting when things aren't so great. It's a tough book to read.

Memorable Parts

  • "Many parents likewise believe they have harmed their kids by being withdrawn or angry, or because they are overwhelmed at times when trying to care for them. Parents are often ashamed of having the illness and live alone with their fears."

  • "Good relationships with others, the capacity to get tasks accomplished, and self-understanding characterized these young people... While our objective may be to prevent depression, our method is to promote resilience."

  • "Anger and irritability are frequently part of the experience of depression in families, an aspect that is hard to deal with because it is so difficult for spouses and children to understand."

  • "'Depression also teaches you a lot about what's important in life. In the last year I was with my husband, we gave a party for five hundred and fifty people. The next year, when we were separated, not one of those people spoke to me. I'm told people don't know what to say in these situations."

  • "For many alcoholics, an underlying depression has preceded the drinking and the drinking represents a misguided attempt to try to relieve the pain. This pattern is so common that a third of those with depression develop alcoholism."

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Average

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POSITIVITY: DISCOVER THE UPWARD SPIRAL THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Barbara L. Fredrickson, PhD

Summary​

  • The big insight of the author/researcher is that the magic ratio of positivity to negativity is 3:1. Kudos to her for developing a mathematical model for something like positivity. The rest of the book fell short of this data-driven approach. 

Memorable Parts

  • "The prescription that I suggest you try out is more reasonable: aim for a positivity ratio of at least 3 to 1. This means that for every heartwrenching negative emotional experience you endure, you experience at least three heartfelt positive emotional experiences that uplift you. This is the ratio that I've found to be the tipping point, predicting whether people languish or flourish."

  • "I've introduced you to ten forms of positivity: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love."

  • "Suppose right now you wanted to make your left shin sting in pain. Could you rouse the intended experience of pain simply by thinking about this limb? By this same logic, you can't simply will yourself to feel a positive emotion. You must locate one of several quite specific levers to turn on your positivity."

  • "And, sure enough, the very month my husband and I decided to let go of the numbers and rediscover our love for each other, we conceived."

  • "Some people - either genetically or intuitively - seem to understand the gifts of positivity better than the rest of us. We call those people resilient, They are the ones who smile in the face of adversity, reframe bad events as opportunities, and adopt a wait-and-see attitude about future threats."

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Average

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BROKEN DREAMS: ANOTHER YEAR INSIDE BOXING

Thomas Hauser

Summary​

  • Another book in the boxing series is by boxing's Hall of Fame writer Thomas Hauser. This book focuses on the year 2020 and, as we all know now, the year that the covid-19 pandemic started. Scary to remember what we all went thru.

Memorable Parts

  • "Fighters are associated with certain phrases...Joe Louis: 'He can run but he can't hide'...Mike Tyson: 'They all have a plan until they get hit'...Wilder sums up nicely when he says of each opponent, 'He has to perfect for twelve rounds. I have to be perfect for two seconds.'"

  • "'I'm masturbating seven times a day to keep my testosterone pumping. Pump it, pump it, pump it, pump it up! Don'tcha know! I gotta to keep active and the testosterone flowing for the fight.'"

  • "'Every six months, we ask ourselves, 'Would you right now beat you from six months ago?' And I can answer one hundred percent honestly that, since the beginning of the first day that he came in the gym, that answer has been yes.'"

  • "'Arturo Gatti earned his reputation in the ring, where his capacity for enduring punishment had become mythological. He was a man who could endure absurd suffering. How easy then is it to assume this toughness extended beyond his body, that Gatti was psychologically rugged too?'"

  • "The hand evolved as a grip, not a club. The smallest bones in the body are in your hand, and many of these bones are fragile. The key to a good handwrap is to protect the hand so the fighter can form a fist without straining and things are just the right tension so everything is held in place without interfering with the circulation in the hand.'"

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Recommended

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3 SHADES OF BLUE: MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE AND THE LOST EMPIRE OF COOL

James Kaplan

Summary​

  • I have memories of listening to jazz from my father. I always thought it was a bunch of noise and very difficult to follow. It wasn't until I saw Ken Burn's documentary (Jazz) that I understood the depth, breadth, and controversy behind what people label as 'jazz'. This book made me appreciate the Jazz Titans even more. 

Memorable Parts

  • "A century ago, jazz was feared and reviled by respectable society because it was Black music. Because it threatened to expose innocent young white people to all that white society imagined and feated about Blackness, sexual abandon being at the top of that list."

  • "'I used to win awards in my high school. Then one day I said, 'No, that shit sounds too bad. I can't even feel this.' I said, 'What the fuck am I playing 'Flight of the Bumblebee' for?'"

  • "Charlie Parker does heroin. 'Bird' plays like a god on heroin. Young musicians could draw the obvious, but spurious, conclusion. And to the sorrows of many, many did."

  • "...and Clarence told him to go home and put on a tie... so Miles went outside and took a shoelace out of his shoe and tied it up under his shirt and said: 'How do you like this, boss?' and went on the bandstand and played."

  • "On returning to New York, he confessed all to Ellaine. For twelve years they had shared everything, including needles (and pain), subsisting on saltines and milk with Hershey's chocolate syrup (him) and Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream (her)."

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Recommended

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THE SECOND MOUTAIN: THE QUEST FOR A MORAL LIFE

David Brooks

Summary​

  • Book of the Year candidate and even Top 5 Best Books of all time. Like all great books, it appeared to me at the perfect time in my life. I will look back and remember that this was the moment I made great changes in my life. 

Memorable Parts

  • "People climbing that first mountain spend a lot of time thinking about reputation management. They are always keeping score. How do I measure up? Where do I rank? As the psychologist James Hollis puts it, at that stage we have a tendency to think, I am what the world says I am."

  • "I came across a phenomenon that has haunted me ever since. In eighteenth-century America, Colonial and Native American societies sat, unhappily, side by side. As time went by, the settlers from Europe began defecting to live with the natives. No natives defected to live with the colonials. This bothered the Europeans. They had, they assumed, the superior civilization, and yet people were voting with their feet to live in the other way."

  • "If you say yes to everything you end up leading what Kierkegaard lamented as an aesthetic style of life. The person leading the aesthetic life is leading his life as if it were a piece of art, judging it by aesthetic criteria - is it interesting or dull, pretty or ugly, pleasurable or painful?"

  • "'Your pain is deep and it won't just go away. As long as your wounded part remains foreign to your adult self, your pain will injure you as well as others.'"

  • "That's the paradox of privilege. When we are well-off we chase the temporary pleasures that actually draw us apart. We use our wealth to buy big houses with big yards that separate us and make us lonely. But in crisis, we are compelled to hold closely to one another in ways that actually meet our deepest needs."

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Highly Recommended

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DYING EVERY DAY: SENECA AT THE COURT OF NERO

James Romm

Summary​

  • On one side you have one of the worst Roman princeps since Caligula. On the other, you have one of the richest men in the world, being held virtually captive by the former. A great history book that gives us more 'flavor' to the enigmatic Stoic figure that is Seneca and his most famous works.

Memorable Parts

  • "How does one prepare a preteen for the task of ruling the world? That question confronted imperial Rome at the midpoint of the first century A.D., as the reigning emperor, Claudius, grew increasingly infirm."

  • "'You were always more intelligent than your brothers...They are all about ambition and are now preparing themselves for the Forum and for political office. In those pursuits, the things one hopes for are also the things one must fear."

  • "But he nonetheless spared Agrippina and her sisters, as well as Germanicus' last surviving son, Gaius - known to us by his nickname, Caligula - whom in the end he adopted."

  • "Caligula's experiment in absolute power had proved that there was, finally, a check. The Praetorians had imposed it. And in the hours that followed the murder, they also seized a central role in the question of succession."

  • "The principate was not a monarchy - Rome has rejected that institution five centuries earlier and still officially reviled it - and so had no guidelines for succession."

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Average

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RAISING RAFFI: THE FIRST FIVE YEARS

Keith Gessen

Summary​

  • I have a hard time finding parenting books that focus on fathers; many of them have a religious angle. So I jumped on reading this one once I saw that it had decent ratings on Amazon and the story is about a father and son. I guess I am not the only one who screws up ;)

Memorable Parts

  • "I think now that there is no tragedy like the tragedy of parenthood. There is no other thing you do in life only so that the other person you do it for can leave you. When they leave, that is a success; when they do something  because they want to do it and not because you want them to do it, then you have done your job."

  • "She said that kid's minds develop so fast that there is no use in hurrying them - what is difficult at age four will become easy at age five, and what is difficult at five will be easier at six. The skill to nurture is CURIOSITY."

  • "The worst part of it was that Raffi by now was not oblivious to the fact that I was constantly mad at him. The things he'd say about it were really sad. 'Dada,' he said once, 'superheroes never get mad.'"

  • "The poor father wanted his son to toughen up and not complain. The rich father wanted his son to learn to take whatever he wanted. And I, too, by blowing my top too often, by not controlling my emotions, was teaching Raffi aggression, though not in any systematic or deliberate way."

  • "When your baby is born, you think you are a certain kind of person and are going to be a certain kind of parent. It's all fantasy. You don't know anything about yourself until your baby gets older. You don't know anything about yourself until the day that adorable little boy looks you in the eye and punches you in the nose."​

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Recommended

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EXERCISE OF POWER: AMERICAN FAILURES, SUCCESSES, AND A NEW PATH FORWARD IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD

Robert M. Gates

Summary​

  • A timely read given that Trump won his second term just a couple of days ago. The book is an impressive account of the United States' successes and failures in every major conflict and event. The book spans the Balkans, Somalia, Iran, and Syria. A refresher on how the US got to the place it is at. 

Memorable Parts

  • "In Iraq, the US intervened and occupied, and the result was a costly disaster. In Lybia, the US intervened and did not occupy, and the result was a costly disaster. In Syria, the US neither intervened nor occupied, and the result was a costly disaster."

  • "After the attacks on September 11, Putin never let Bush forget his warning."

  • "In the days before the Gulf War began, Bush did something no other recent American president has done: he asked that a directive be prepared for his signature specifying our war aims."

  • "When Western countries recognized Kosovo's independence, they were violating the post-Cold War principle that borders in Europe could only be changed by mutual agreement. Less than seven months after NATO peacekeepers entered Kosovo, Boris Yeltsin resigned. The following March, Vladimir Putin was elected  Russia's new president."

  • "With nearly 3 million people and a budget of more than half a trillion dollars, Defense is a bloated leviathan that is saddled with escalating health care and retirement costs."​

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Highly Recommended

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THE GOOD MARRIAGE: HOW & WHY LOVE LASTS

Judith S. Wallerstein & Sandra Blakeslee

Summary​

  • The book is divided into two parts. First, the author describes the different types of marriages (romantic, rescue, traditional, etc.). Second, the nine different tasks the authors noticed the couples performing in these 'good' marriages. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Many couples seem to think that just as they can't slow down the human aging process, they can't do anything to alter the aging process of marriage. They let the relationship take its 'natural course' by happenstance until it threatens to break down, and by then it may be too late. Sure, marriage is a gamble, but it's possible to stack the deck in your favor."​

  • "Self-esteem is not a single idea; rather it is like a tripod whose legs are feeling loved, feeling virtuous, and feeling competent. Each part of the tripod is challenged every day of our lives."

  • "Of course, we can and do relax with a hot shower, a martini, or a TV show. But people want and need more from their marriage. They need a person they trust who reassures them, saying, 'You did the best you could,' or 'You couldn't help it, so why blame yourself?'."

  • "For everyone, happiness in marriage meant feeling respected and cherished. Without exception, these couples mentioned the importance of liking and respecting each other and the pleasure and comfort they took in each other's company. 

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Highly Recommended

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LOVE AND ANGER: THE PARENTAL DILEMMA

Nancy Samalin & Catherine Whitney

Summary​

  • Being a parent is truly indescribable. You can not put into words the joy and love you feel. Parenting comes with all the other emotions: fear, anger, etc. I read these books to understand how to control these emotions better. 

Memorable Parts

  • "How can we express our natural feelings of anger without hurting our children or attacking their self-esteem? And, at the same time, how can we teach our children to express their own feelings of anger in ways that are helpful, not hurtful?"

  • "In supermarkets, you will say things to your children that you wouldn't say to your worst enemy. To anyone who has never experienced a howling sit-down strike by a two- or three-year-old in a crowded supermarket, I say you've never known real humiliation. You understand how Gandhi won India..."

  • "People often confuse feeling and doing. Sometimes when we give ourselves permission to feel out anger, it can serve as a release."

  • "Your child is entitled to want a toy and you are entitled to say no. Many of us were brought up to feel that we were greedy or selfish if we wanted things. Your child is not bad, greedy, or ungrateful because she wants something in the store. Your job as a parent is to say no to the endless desires."

  • "As hard as it is to do this with your own children - and I'm the first to plead guilty to losing my temper - it helps to recall how we respond when an adult spills liquid on the rug. We say, 'Don't worry  here, let me help.' But with our children, we behave differently."

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Recommended

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FLOURISH: A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING - AND HOW TO ACHIEVE THEM

Martin E.P. Seligman

Summary​

  • I am a big fan of Seligman. This book did not disappoint. I think it takes courage to revisit your best-selling book (and idea) and adapt it based on new research and his views. I also enjoyed that he was 'edgier' in this one. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Within eight and a half years, half the men had died of a second heart attack, and we opened the sealed envelope. Could we predict who would have a second heart attack? Not blood pressure,  not cholesterol, not even the extent of the damage from the first attack. Only optimism predicted the second heart attack."

  • "The healthy option to negative thinking is not positive thinking but critical thinking. We do not teach mindless positive thinking. We teach the thinking skills that distinguish between irrational worst-case scenarios that paralyze action and the more likely scenarios."

  • "More than fifty years ago, over five thousand residents from Framingham, Massachusetts were surveyed. The data allowed the researchers to do a sociogram. The closer someone lived to someone lonely, the lonelier the second individual felt." 

  • "WWI was a chemical war, WWII was a physics and math war, WWIII was a computer war, and WWIV (which we have entered into already) would be a human war."

  • "When a teacher asks a four-year-old to stand still for as long as he can, one minute is the average. In contrast, in the context of a make-believe game in which the child is the guard at a factory, he can stand still for four minutes. 

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Recommended

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PROTECT YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES

Thomas Hauser

Summary​

  • Boxing Hall of Fame writer Thomas Hauser publishes a yearly (or bi-yearly) book about boxing. It is a collection of stories, articles, and fight analyses. I rated this one average because it still contained much material about covid (hence, no fights). 

Memorable Parts

  • "Anywhere I go, restaurants, clubs, wherever; they don't charge me. Of course, when I was broke and needed it, no one gave me anything for free."

  • "And there are fighters like Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, Evander Holyfield and Rocky Marciano. You could have shot those guys ten times with a gun and they still wouldn't have quit."

  • "If you put a gun to my head, I'd pick Golovkin. If you put a gun to some other part of my body, I'd pick Canelo. That's how close it is."

  • "Ward and Gatti will be remembered as mortal men who, mostly through courage and sheer will, accomplished things before our very eyes that should not have been possible. They pushed themselves beyond those physical limits that the rest of us have come to accept. And they did it three times."

  • "If Cassius Clay hadn't come along, Liston would have had more time at the top. Sonny Liston was the baddest man on the planet. Compared to Liston, Mike Tyson was a choirboy."

​​​​

Average

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BOMB SHELTER: LOVE, TIME AND OTHER EXPLOSIVES

Mary Laura Philpott

Summary​

  • It is moving. It made me cry in a couple of parts. But I did not find any cohesion. Single parts are deep but the whole is not. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Everybody has something, and most things aren't so bad. All that's true, but there's more to it. You don't get to choose what your thing is, whether you get just one thing or more, or how your thing will respond to your efforts to manage it."​​​

  • "I think we do that in our minds as well. We create worlds. As soon as you decide to project your misery onto someone else, you start to build a grudge world. Every time you visit it, you lay another brick. I think some people build grudges up in such detail that their grudge worlds become too big and too real."

  • "Sometimes I don't know how any of us go on. Sometimes I fear there's no way our species will survive our own self-destructive choices."

  • "Your phone sounded a Caribbean drumbeat from your purse, alerting you to yet more new texts this morning from work, none of them urgent. None of them had been urgent for the past two days; still, they had been buzzing your phone day and night just to make sure you were aware that they were aware you weren't there."

  • "Sometimes time moves quickly and sometimes it moves slowly, but it always moves forward. This is not your life forever."

​

Skip

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HOW CHILDREN FAIL

John Holt

Summary​

  • Dramatic and bold title; the book focuses specifically on young children and schools. The book was first published in 1964 and then had an update in 1984. It is very interesting to read a book that is 60 years old and you notice that nothing really changes with kids, schools and their struggles. 

Memorable Parts

  • "'If we taught children to speak, they'd never learn.'" - William Hull

  • "The really able thinkers in our class turn out to be, without exception, children who don't feel so strongly the need to please grownups. Some of them are good students, some not so good; but good or not, they don't work to please us, but to please themselves."

  • "A teacher in class is like a man in the woods at night with a powerful flashlight in hand. Wherever he turns his light, the creatures on whom it shines are aware of it, and do not behave as they do in the dark."

  • "If we look at children only to see whether they are doing what we want or don't want them to do, we are likely to miss all the things about them that are the most interesting and important."

  • "We ought also to learn, beginning early, that we don't always succeed. A good batting average in baseball is .300; a good batting average in life is a great deal lower than that. Life holds many more defeats than victories for all of us. Shouldn't we get used to this early?"​

​

Average

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SAME AS EVER: A GUIDE TO WHAT NEVER CHANGES

Morgan Housel

Summary​

  • It might be unfair on my part that I rated the book as Average because I have 'The Psychology of Money' as a reference point. That book (from the same author) was a great read. This book was a collection of cool quotes and thoughts but without cohesion."

Memorable Parts

  • "As financial advisor Carl Richards says, 'Risk is what's left over after you think you've thought of everything.'" 

  • "Nassim Taleb says, 'Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.' That gets to the heart of it."

  • "Montesquieu wrote 275 years ago, 'If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.'"

  • "Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn't driven by greed; it's driven by envy."

  • "Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure, incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous if no amount is enough."

​

Average

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AFTER THE TEARS: HELPING ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS HEAL THEIR CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Jane Middelton-Moz

Summary​

  • I promise my parents were NOT alcoholics! Hahaha. I guess I like reading 'worse case scenarios' of parenting. I do find many more lessons in these books than in the 'happy-go-lucky' ones.

Memorable Parts

  • "Common characteristics of alcoholic families: hypervigilance and hypersensitivity, doubting own perceptions, fear of normal conflict and family members developing survival roles and coping mechanisms: caretaker, adjuster, pleaser and scapegoat."

  • "The dynamics often causes children of alcoholics to feel shameful and anxious rather than confident and secure. These children learn to adapt to life rather than learning how to live. Without connection, they feel like imposters, often hiding their insecurity, fear, and lack if self-worth behind a mask of confidence."

  • "One of the fathers was at the stage of alcohol intoxication we often refer to as 'star time'; he was loud and happy,  sometimes showing off, narcissistic and grandiose. This man was obviously playing to the crowd."

  • "While other children are learning to play, to trust, to self-soothe, and to make decisions, children in addicted families are learning to survive. The end result is a child who often feels thirty years old at five and five years old at thirty."​

  • "If the child remains flooded emotionally in that helpless state, he or she cannot function. The child's ego creates a barrier of defense mechanisms to protect itself. The same defense mechanism has the opposite effect in adulthood. The energy needed to keep feelings suppressed is much like the energy it would take to hold a large exercise ball under water."

​

Recommended

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THE DAILY DAD: 366 MEDITATIONS ON PARENTING, LOVE, AND RAISING GREAT KIDS

Ryand Holiday

Summary​

  • I believe this is my fourth year of reading these 'one page a day' type of book. I love them and this one did not disappoint.

Memorable Parts

  • "My kid woke up sick this morning? Good, we'll spend the day at home together. The take-out order got cancelled? Good, we'll have breakfast for dinner..."

  • "'First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.' - Epictetus

  • "Procreating is biological. Parenting is psychological. It's a decision. A conscious choice. A commitment to actually change who you are and what your priorities should be for the benefit and betterment of your children. Commitment to sacrifice and service and the real work of making hard decisions, of loving, not just having."

  • "'A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house.' - Paul Graham

  • "'One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love.'" - Sophocles

​​

Highly Recommended

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REBEL YELL: THE VIOLENCE, PASSION AND REDEMPTION OF STONEWALL JACKSON

S.C. Gwyne

Summary​

  • I read Gwyne's fantastic book about the Comanches and wanted to read more books written by this author. Even though I don't have a particular interest in the Civil War I am glad I decided to buy this book. It was an entertaining biography of a remarkable individual and key player of the war. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Ulysses S. Grant, the most famous of these war-induced transformations, was a washout from the army and a failure in business. Jackson's rise to fame, power, and legend was every bit as deep and transfiguring as that of the two Union generals. But it happened much faster, and his ascent much steeper."

  • "He was such a literalist when it came to duty that he had once, while in the army, worn heavy winter underwear into summer because he had received no specific order to change it."

  • "'Sacrifices! Have I not made them? What is my life here but a daily sacrifice? War has no charms for me; I've seen too many of its horrors...The hope of being serviceable as a soldier has brought me here."

  • "'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,' Douglas commented. Times change, and we change with them."

  • "In war, you lived outdoors like a wild animal. You lived in blistering heat, drenching rains, and knifelike cold. The majority of men who died did not even have the honor of dying in a fight. Two out of three were carried away by diseases."

​​​

Highly Recommended

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ONCE MORE WE SAW STARS

Jayson Greene

Summary​

  • I prefer not to rate this book out of respect to the author. It is about the tragic loss of his daughter and how he and his wife mourned and carried on after that unfathomable sadness. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Our close friends Danny and Elizabeth show up, Elizabeth bearing a pendulous bag of sandwiches, in that helpless way you do when you can't show up empty-handed but have nothing to give."

  • "Another promotes the importance of vigorous exercise, found to aid in fighting depression. I stare at them until they've seared into my brain. They are my first set of instructions on how to breathe on this new planet."

  • "We are in the realm of the unholy, the bodily sacrament, and nothing surprises me."

  • "Someone from the funeral home told us on the phone that if we wished to say good-bye to her body before it was incinerated, we could do so. Joe is deeply disturbed bu this and makes no attempt to hide it. Her body was compromised, he tells us."

  • "Children who lose parents are orphans; bereaved spouses are widows. But what do you call parents who lose children? It seems telling to me there is no word in our language for our situation. It is unspeakable, and by extension, we are not supposed to exist."

​​​

.

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SIBLINGS WITHOUT RIVALRY: HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILDREN LIVE TOGETHER SO YOU CAN LIVE TOO

Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

Summary​

  • It's been two months since the inevitable fights between my oldest kids started. The book gave me peace (that fighting is 'normal'), guidance on approaching it, and decent examples and role-play. I do want to point out that some of the advice given felt unrealistic (i.e. Brady Bunch stuff). 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Suddenly it came to me that just thinking of David another way was only part of the answer. The rest of the answer lay in demanding that he behave differently and holding him accountable for behaving differently. That's what he needed from grown-ups in his life."

  • "I mistakenly created the image of my oldest being a bully and my youngest as sweet and gentle. I was in a session with Dr. Ginott and heard him say something about treating children, not as they are, but as we hoped they would become. That revolutionized my thinking. It freed me to look at my boys with new eyes. What did I hope them to become?"

  • "Don't give your attention to the aggressor."

  • "I can tell you from experience that it's no picnic for the child who's been given the privileged role either. It's a lot of pressure. My parents always praised me for being the 'responsible one'. To this day, my siblings play helpless and I'm stuck with all the family problems."

  • "Parents aren't the only ones who put their kids in roles. Kids put themselves in roles, too! A kid will play the 'good boy' because it brings him love and approval. Or the 'bad boy' because it's a way of getting attention, even negative attention."

​​​

Recommended

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YOUR THREE-YEAR-OLD: FRIEND OR ENEMY

Louise Bates Ames

Summary​

  • I love reading parenting books from the 70s and 80s - before the gentle parenting movement started. In a way, it helps me reflect that I am more involved with my kids than most parents were back then. I rated the book as 'skip' because I could not find at least 5 insights I thought were worth sharing below. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "And absolutely refuse to let yourself get mixed up in the preschooler's favorite game of 'I don't love you'. Just refuse to become emotionally tyrannized by his expressions of affection or disaffection."

  • "If your boy or girl has good potential, and if you provide a reasonably rich environment and give him your personal love and attention, his mind will take care of itself."

  • "What you can and should do is see to it that he has as rich and rewarding an environment as possible. The most important thing in that environment will be you, his parents. And what you can do to help him the most is talk to him, play with him, read to him, listen to him, answer his questions."

​​​

Skip

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HOW TO RAISE A BOY: THE POWER OF CONNECTION TO BUILD GOOD MEN

Michael C. Reichert

Summary​

  • For some reason, it is very hard to find a book about raising boys without it having a religious undertone. I found this book valuable but it mainly reminded me of things we all know. I enjoyed the different stories the author included and it was definitively a plus that the author is a counselor for boys and a father himself.

Memorable Parts 

  • "In responding to what I perceived to be a critical threat to my son's future on our street, I was also responding to something deep within me. How much was I motivated by my own fear that my son might be driven from the playground, from boyhood's pleasures, and exiled to a smaller life?"

  • "Old-school masculine ideas that trying harder is the answer to everything ignore scientific insights about how grit develops and how motivation is deeply interwoven with a boy's emotional state. The problem with trying to fit a boy into a predetermined identity is the message he receives about the person he actually is: that he is not good enough."

  • "Or as esteemed child development researcher L. Alan Sroufe argues, ' to date, no study  has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships, or behavior problems.'"

  • "Even if we humans could precisely shape our children's behavior to suit our own goals and ideals, it would be counterproductive to do it. We can't know beforehand what unprecedented challenges the children of the future will face. Shaping them into our current ideals might actually keep them from adapting to changes in the future."

  • "Being alone is a primitive fear, counter to the most basic human instincts. Secure attachment is a precondition for independence. simply listening is the most basic way to foster attachment."

​​​

Average

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DETERMINED: A SCIENCE OF LIFE WITHOUT FREE WILL

Robert M. Sapolsky

Summary​

  • The author's premise is short, sweet, and scary: there is no such thing as free will. This statement is not new to me, I have listened and read from another 'advocate', Sam Harris. You might most likely not convert to their camp after reading the book (neither did I) but it will make you question how we make decisions. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "In the 1950s, after a variety of tests, the doctor gives you a diagnosis - schizophrenia. What caused this disease? You did. You caused this disease because of your terrible mothering. It was called 'schizophrenogenic' mothering, and it had become the dominant explanation for the disease, rooted in Freudian thinking."

  • "The question now becomes how readily you come to associate Mexicans with rapists while undergoing Trumpian conditioning - how resistant or vulnerable are you to forming that automatic stereotype in your mind?"

  • "The amygdala becomes less likely to store away a conditioned fear response as a stable memory if, in the previous hours, the individual has taken an SSRI antidepressant like Prozac. In contrast, if the organism has been exposed to high levels of stress hormones in the previous month, it becomes easier to generate a conditioned fear response."

  • "If the world is deterministic on the level that matters, isn't everything thus already determined? The answer is that we don't change our minds. Our minds, which are the end product of all the biological moments that came before, are changed by the circumstances around us."

  • "The name of the company? Atheist Shoes. The owner did an experiment where half the shipments to America were sent without the company's label, half did. The former were delivered promptly; the latter were frequently delayed or lost."

​​​

Highly Recommended

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THE WIDE WIDE SEA: IMPERIAL AMBITION, FIRST CONTACT AND THE FATEFUL FINAL VOYAGE OF CAPTAIN JAMES COOK

Hampton Sides

Summary​

  • I'm not fond of the ocean or boats. But, for some reason, I thoroughly enjoy books about oceanic navigation and adventure. I good friend recommended this book to me and I had previously read another book from the same author. This was a fun read =)

Memorable Parts 

  • "The number of cockroaches that infested the ship at this time is incredible; the damage they did us was very considerable. The roaches, crawling over every surface of the ship at night, had devoured books, maps, and even some of Anderson's stuffed birds."

  • "On Tongatapu and its nearby atolls, he took to flogging Natives far past the daily limit of twelve lashes per man allowed by navy rules, in one instance, he had a Native whipped a sadistic seventy two times."

  • "And thus what a delightful unwanted gift Cook had bequeathed to the unsuspecting citizens of Mooea, within a few short hours of his arrival: Rattus rattus, also known as the black rat."

  • "Like so many hardened mariners who'd traveled around the world, he'd become a creature of shipborne life. He'd been practically everywhere but belonged nowhere. At times he seemed lost, uncertain how to behave, hoping to graft things he'd absorbed in England onto the island life he once knew, but not quite sure how to do it."

  • "Commerce, of course, was the main impetus behind the quest. a northwest passage would render obsolete the dangerous journey around the bottom of Africa or South America, cutting the long trip in half, they said, reducing a one-year voyage to China down to six months."

​​​

Highly Recommended

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SCARCITY BRAIN: FIX YOUR CRAVING MINDSET & REWIRE YOUR HABITS TO THRIVE WITH ENOUGHT

Michael Easter

Summary​

  • Candidate for Top Book of 2025. I was getting tired of reading books about our brains and pretty much everything is explained by evolution (and they always used the same examples). Even though the author of this book definitively leans on the evolution explanation, I found the book refreshing and insightful. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "All your traveling and learning, you're not going to find what you're seeking anywhere on earth. You need to break free of time and space and find something larger. That search has been going on since the beginning of man."

  • "Benedict put it this way: just as pride comes before the fall, so does excess."

  • "The finding: The first group, the bombing news bingers, were more likely to develop PTSD and other mental issues. That's worth restating: people who binge-watched bombing news on TV from the comfort of home had more psychological trauma than people who were actually bombed."​​

  • "The experience led me to a rule to guide my future purchases. I landed on 'gear, not stuff.' Stuff is a possession for the sake of it. Stuff adds to a collection of items we already have. Gear serves a clear purpose."

  • "Zerra's bit of TV fame led her to befriend a group of mega rich who wanted adventure. Everything would be prearranged and planned and scheduled. I described it as an expensive Happy Meal experience. It was a carbon copy of what every other rich person got."

​

Highly Recommended

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FAIR PLAY: A GAME-CHANGING SOLUTION FOR WHEN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TO DO (AND MORE LIFE TO LIVE)

Eve Rodsky

Summary​

  • The author must have been really pissed off at her husband (lol!) because she wrote a whole book about how to fix the work imbalance in her household. All jokes aside, I do think every couple should read this book. Our significant others do more work than is visible and should be in the open.

Memorable Parts 

  • "The never-ending mental to-do list you keep for all your family tasks. Mental 'overload' creates stress, fatigue, and often forgetfulness. Where did I put the damn car keys?"

  • "Meanwhile, her husband turns off the TV and announces to no one in particular, 'I'm going to bed.' And without doing anything else, he does."

  • "I stopped cooking because I wanted to feel as unencumbered as a man walking through the door of his home with the expectation that something (everything) had been done for him. I wanted to be free of cutting coupons, rolling dough and worrying about dinner."

  • "'We expect women to work like they don't have children and raise children as if they don't work.' - Amy Westervelt

  • "Having to remind your partner to do something doesn't take that something off your list. It adds to it. And what's more, reminding is often unfairly characterized as nagging."

​​

Average

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YOUR FIVE-YEAR-OLD: SUNNY AND SERENE

Louise Bates Ames

Summary​

  • This is the second book I've read in the series. I do think it's helpful to read parenting books written decades ago (this on is from 1979). It puts things in perspective and gets rid of all the 'noise' you constantly hear now - from social media, school, etc.. I rated it skip because it could have been a blog post. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Five-and-a-half is characteristically hesitant, dawdling, indecisive, or, at the opposite extreme, overdemanding and explosive. Behavior is all too often characterized by the opposite extreme. Emotionally the child of this age may seem to be in an almost constant state of tension."

  • "We'd like to offer an important word of advice for all parents, regardless of the age of their child. Do not take too seriously what anybody tells you (and that includes us) about how your child will behave. Stages of equilibrium are followed by stages of disequilibrium."

  • "Children are so desirous of attention that if they cannot get it by doing 'good' things, which get them praise and rewards, they will manage to get it by doing 'bad' things. To many children, punishment is a better payoff than no attention at all."

  • "You may be already coming into that more difficult period of Five-and-a-half to Six, when the child regresses to babyhood."

  • "The almost predictably healthy Five-year-old not suddenly has many colds, headaches, earaches, stomachaches."

​​

Skip

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SMART BUT SCATTERED: THE REVOLUTIONARY 'EXECUTIVE SKILLS' APPROACH TO HELPING KIDS REACH THEIR POTENTIAL

Peg Dawson & Richard Guare

Summary​

  • The title can be misleading. This book is not about ADHD but about Executive Skills (also called Life Skills). These skills are divided into two groups: Thinking (cognition) and Doing (behavior). The individual skills are things such as working memory, time management, response inhibition, etc...

Memorable Parts 

  • "Response inhibition is the capacity to think before you act- this ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows your child the time to evaluate a situation and how his or her behavior might impact it."​

  • "At birth, a child's brain weighs 13 ounces. By the late teenage years brain weight has increased to nearly 3 pounds."

  • "We've found that if goal-directed persistence is a relative strength, we can encourage the child to use that skill to override his weaknesses in task initiation and sustained attention."

  • "If your son's or daughter's executive skill weaknesses drive you crazy, there is a good chance that it's because you're strong in those executive skills.  In our work, we've found that problems seem more severe when children have parents with a very different pattern of strengths and weaknesses."

  • "Remember, first and foremost, executive skills are the skills we use to execute tasks. The more we understand about a given situation - cause and effect, why something is important - the more we can use that information either to design our own process or motivate ourselves to use the process laid out for us by someone else."

​

Average

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HOW TODDLERS THRIVE: WHAT PARENTS CAN DO TODAY FOR CHILDREN AGES 2-5 TO PLANT THE SEEDS OF LIFELONG SUCCESS

Tovah P. Klein

Summary​

  • One of the best parenting books I have read. There are tons of resources about parenting babies and teens but few (good ones) about toddlers. I am glad I read this book. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Many parents think their role is to make children happy. Your child knows how to be happy. Your most critical role as a parent is to help your child through the negative feelings, disappointments, and life's hurdles. It is easy for children to accept being happy. It is much harder to accept that they have bad feelings, too ('If I have bad thoughts, am I a bad kid? 'Do Daddy and Mommy still love me If I get mad at them?')."

  • "Like it or not, humans were not built in a linear fashion. Instead of a linear progression, where one piece gets set into place followed by the next, like building blocks, the way we develop is much more in a pattern of two steps forwards and one (or even three) steps  back."

  • "Stop praising your child. Praise defeats. Let them have and enjoy their own success. The message to the toddler is: I am happy for you when you do it this way, my way. So you had better do it my way."

  • "Think of transitions as a goodbye, a leaving behind of something - whether that is your pajamas when getting dressed or a favorite activity when it is dinnertime. Transitions are change and require adaptation. Adaptation requires managing emotions."

  • "If we cannot accept our own anger, bad thoughts, or negative feelings, then it is much harder to accept that our children experience these same thoughts and feelings, too."

​​

Highly Recommended

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PATTON

Alan Axelrod

Summary​

  • Short and to the point. Great length of book if you don't want to read that 500+ biography. The book has sufficient detail to make you more knowledgeable of Patton without making it a purely academic exercise. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "Although American history is in very large part a saga of war and warlike violence, Americans have never been entirely comfortable with their warrriors, and their historical reluctance to maintain large standing armies reflect a national revulsion against fostering anything resembling a warrior class, the very class to which Patton believed he belonged."

  • "On the eve of American entry into World War II, in the largest, most ambitious war games the U.S. Army had ever staged, Pattong was universally acknowledged to have outgeneraled all of his colleagues."

  • "Throughout his life, but especially in middle age, he suffered from profound depression and episodes others described as hysteria (he called in 'biliousness'); and yet he inspired the men of his Seventh and then his Thirdy Army to a level of absolute self-confidence and consistent victory."

  • He withheld all praise but noted and reported the slightest infraction. However, it affected the first-year cadets, for him, the result was a valuable lesson in the difference between a demanding commander and a martinet. Later, as a mature commander, he would learn to blend praise with criticism."

  • "Patton's automobile trip to San Miguelito was, in fact, the very first time a United States Army unit had been transported into battle by motorized vehicles."

​​​

Recommended

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ADVICE NOT GIVEN: A GUIDE TO GETTING OVER YOURSELF

Mark Epstein

Summary​

  • Another 'home-run' by one of my favorite mindfulness authors. I think his background of both Buddhism and Psychiatry gives us a unique way of thinking about our meditation practice. When I feel stuck in my practice, I read his books. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "What is left when we are no longer identified with the personality we know? This is something the Zen tradition - indeed, all Buddhist traditions - is constantly seeking to convey."

  • "Clinging takes many forms, and the desire for inner peace can sometimes be just as neurotic as other, more obvious addictions. The wish to lose oneself, however well intentioned, masks a mindset dominated by self-judgement and self-depreciation. It is often just another way of trying to find a safe place to hide."

  • "When one-pointed attention is strong, the nervous system kicks into relaxed mode. Hear rate slows, metabolic rate declines, digestion picks up and brain activity associated with worry and agitation goes into neutral."

  • "Pride, it is often said, is the last fetter to enlightement. If one believes the ancient Buddhist psychologists, many other difficult emotions - anger, jealousy, and envy among them - are easier to work with than pride."

  • "On days when I arrive and no one else is there, I will usually put things in order before doing anything else. If my wife is at home, I am much more liable to do nothing. Why is it easier for me to do these simple household tasks without resentment when I am alone? It is  pride."

​​​

Highly Recommended

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INSIDE DELTA FORCE: THE STORY OF AMERICA'S ELITE COUNTERTERRORIST UNIT

Eric L. Haney

Summary​

  • A couple of months ago, my wife asked me, 'Is Delta Force the most elite military unit?' Fortunately, an ex-coworker served in the US Military and one time in a taxi, he explained every elite unit in the military. I was fascinated with his explanation, and my wife's question triggered me to read this book. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "What hit me hardest on entering the hijacked plane was the overwhelming stench. One hundred people crammed into a small space for three days produce an almost unbearable smell. It hits like a blo to the face; it's something we have to physically fight our way through when doors open."

  • "But some people would be annoyed by the 'no berets' part. Berets were badges of honor then, limited to elite troops who had earned them."

  • The only ones I really wondered about were several variations of 'is your stool black and tarry?' That would be an indication of blood in the digestive system, which could mean ulcers or indicate someone with a drinking problem."

  • Despite the name, this is not a Special Forces unit. It neither belongs to nor reports to the Special Forces Command. This is a new organization whose sole purpose is to perform counterterrorist and other special operations as directed by the National Command Authority (the president and his security advisers)."

  • "Only a tough body coupled with a tough mind bought a winning ticket to Selection. One without the other could not and would not succeed."

​​​

Recommended

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THE GREAT WHEN: A LONG LONDON NOVEL

Alan Moore

Summary​

  • A novel that only an author like Alan Moore can pull off. Moore is also the author of another great series (Jerusalem) that I rated highly on this page. The plot is fairly complex that I won't even attempt to explain it here in just a few sentences. 

Memorable Parts 

  • "This is above real, sur-real, what the word meant before André Brenton fiddled with it. This, he thinks, is the true fire that melts the clocks. This is the memory that persists."

  • "He hoofed it all the way to Elephant and Castle - a corruption of Infanta de Castile, if he remembered right - then got the bus down Kennington Park Road and into Brixton."

  • "Was the antique carnival of Jack the Ripper, then, somehow related to the other London?"

  • "'Did you say, Jack Spot? What, the Jack Spot? Dennis, are you having me on?"

  • "They drank and talked for hours about everything except the dreadful things they'd done, which was more difficult for Ada who'd done very few things that weren't dreadful."

​​​

Highly Recommended

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COMFORT IN DARKNESS: THE INVISIBLE POWER OF JIU JITSU

Rickson Gracie

Summary​

  • A very decent follow-up to his successful book Breathe: A Life in Flow. This book definitely repeats most of the stories from the aforementioned one, but has the lens of his reflection due to his Parkinson's Disease diagnosis.

Memorable Parts 

  • "Now I am not just a Jiu Jitsu professor. I am a sick person battling an incurable disease and must walk my talk of acceptance and finding comfort in darkness. We are all going to die one day, but being unhappy, uninspired, and having no love in my heart is a fate worse than death."​​

  • "The policeman recognized him by a tattoo that read 'Rickson Graide, world's greatest dad.'"

  • "Every day before randori (sparring), Kimura did five hundred push-ups, bunny-hopped for a kilometer, then did sets of sit-ups, squats, and headstands."

  • "Conflict is an inevitable part of our lives. It is important to remember that every conflict has its own rules, and they can change in the blink of an eye."

  • "Anxiety is more a general feeling of dread. This is not a new phenomenon. I am sure the Chinese felt anxious when they saw clouds of dust in the distance and knew that Mongols were approaching. The Mongols realized and tied tree branches to the tails of their horses to create more dust and thus more anxiety."

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Average

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