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551-600

551 - 600
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THE VORY: RUSSIA'S SUPER MAFIA

Mark Galeotti

Summary​

  • Will reading about narcos help you understand everything you need to know about Mexico? Obviously no but it does help you understand a little it's culture, politics and government. That is the reason why I wanted to read this book about the vory v zakone and Russia. 

Memorable Parts

  • "One can hardly be surprised when skirmishes against Ukranian forces are started for no reason beyond providing an excuse to burn off, say, 10,000 rounds of ammunitation while claiming to have used twice as much. Moscow replaces 20,000 that appear in the Donbas, the excess can neatly be dumped onto the black market for profit."

  • "The local Chechen security forces are known as Kadyrovsty, 'Kadyrovites', for the personal oath they swear to him."

  • "You don't mess with Chechens. If you challenge them, even if they know they will lose, they will fight, and they'll summon their brothers and their cousins and their uncles and keep fighting. Even if they are going to lose, they'll fight just to bring you down, too."

  • "The tattoos were the mark of a vor, the Russian word for 'thief', but a general term for a member of the Soviet underworld, the so-called 'thieves' world or vorovskoi mir, and life in the Gulag labour camp system."

  • "Legend has it that Tsar Nicholas I todl his son, 'I believe you and I are the only people in Russia who don't steal.'"

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Recommended

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LOST AT SCHOOL: WHY OUR KIDS WITH BEHAVIORAL CHALLENGES ARE FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS AND HOW WE CAN HELP THEM?

Ross W. Greene

Summary​

  • What we usually forget is that most of the times than children misbehave (or not do what we tell them to do) is not because they want to be 'bad'. Rather, it is because they do not have the skills to do what we expect. 

Memorable Parts

  • "The premise of this book is that kids with behavioral challenges lack important thinking skills, an idea supported by research in the neurosciences over the past thirty years."

  • "And while this may be hard to believe, most challenging kids already want to behave the right way. they don't need us to continue giving them stickers, depriving them of recess, or suspending them from school; they're alread motivated. They need something else from us."

  • "The philosophy that serves as the foundation of this book is the title of this chapter: 'kids de well if they can.'"

  • "The 'kids do well if they can' philosophy carries the assumption that if a kid could do well he would do well. Doing well is always preferable to not doing well, but only if a kid has the skills to do well in the first place."

  • "We've witnessed a disturbing trend in recent years: the almost automatic inclination to use medication to treat kids who have difficulty regulation their emotions. Pills Don't Teach Skills."

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Highly Recommended

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HIGH FUNCTIONING: OVERCOME YOUR HIDDEN DEPRESSION AND RECLAIM YOUR JOY

Dr. Judith Joseph

Summary​

  • I did not find this book interesting at all. The advice given is very basic and common sense. I felt that not only each chapter but paragraphs withing a chapter were not cohesive. 

Memorable Parts

  • "The pressure that he feels has caused him to pick angry fights with his wife and drink more than he knows he should. But he doesn't think he's depressed. He thinks he just needs to manage his anger better. He brings his wife flowers and gifts because he loves her and because he secretly doesn't thin he's worthy of her affection."

  • "But instead of acknowleding trauma, we run from it. We keep pushing ourselves toward the next accomplishment, the next win, the next promotion, the next big event."

  • "Someone with High-Functioning Depression reacts to these situations by thinking, 'I have to do better' or 'I can never his rock bottomg ever again.'"

  • "Not only was I overextended, but I signed by grade-school daughter up for so many activties (ballet, swimming, soccer) that she was overextended as well."

  • "They're surprised to learn from me that their anger could be a manifestation of their unidentified anxiety. The're in that dark room swinging at the air and hitting their direct reports and co-workers with angry comments because they're worried about Q4 earnings."

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THE WAR: HAGLER-HEARNS AND THREE ROUNDS FOR THE AGES

Don Stradley

Summary​

  • I do not want to ruin the book by talking about the fight (for those how have not seen it). Great book to get even more from a legendary fight. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Each year a classroom at Stony Brook University watches Hagler-Hearns on a large screen. The class: Journalism 336 Sports Reporting. The instructor, Wallace Mathews, uses the fight as an excercise in deadline writing. Three decades and a half later, the fight still leaves viewers awestruck."

  • "Hagler's reasons for turning professional were strictly financial. He already had children to support. 'I can't eat trophies.'"

  • "To fight Hagler was more like deatg by a thousand cuts. Nevertheless, we have rarely had such a hard-working, disciplined champion, or perhaps any who fought with such disdain for opponents. His surliness was accompanied by a kind of wizardy, swtiching smoothly from left-handed to right-handed and back..."

  • "I April of 1983 Hagler went to Plymout Probate Court in Massachusetts to have his name legally changed to 'Marvelous Marvin Hagler.'"

  • "It was a bit like an old Hollywood movie studie, with a leading man (Leonard), a suave, aristocratic type (Alexis Arguello), a brooding gunslinger (Hearns), some matinee idols (Mancini, Sean O'Grady) and plenty of eccentric types."

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Recommended

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LA LUCHA TEMPLA EL ESPÍRITU: IDEOLOGIA Y RESISTENCIA EN MONTERREY

Aldo Salazar

Summary​

  • Un libro que nos hace cuestionar y reflexionar sobre los mitos, valores e historias que nos contamos en Monterrey. Asumimos que las narraciones y valores se crean orgánicamente pero, siempre hay grupos e intenciones detrás de ellas. Algo asi como: la historia la escribe los que ganan. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Además de la masacre de 1903, a manos del gobierno del estado, en 1936 tuvo lugar otra matanza en la Plaza Zaragoza, y más delante hubo una tercera en 1976. La del 29 de julio de 1936 fue especial, ya que no fue la policia ni el ejército quien disparó, sino los guaruras de los empresarios."

  • "El municipio de Pesquería (antes Pesquería Chica), por ejemplo, se llama así no porque la pesca de mojarra haya sido buena en el rio, sino porque eera un punto de captura de los esclavos indígenas. Lo mismo la Villa de Garcia, antes Pesquería Grande."

  • "¿De qué otra forma se explica el total desconocimiento de la esclavitud africana en el territorio? Luis de Carvajal, fundador del Nuevo Reino de León, era un esclavista experimentado en la trata transatlántica cuando llegó a tierras novohispanas."

  • "La historia que estamos acostumbrados a escuchar comienza en 1596, cuando Diego de Montemayor redacta el acta de fundacio´n definitiva o, a veces, en 1577, cuando Luis de Carvajal funda el Nuevo Reino de León."

  • "Con datos del Registro Público de Derechos de Agua de la Conagua, el Frente Nuevo León denunció que quince fábricas consumen 43 veces más agua que toda la población de seis millones de personas. Únicamente Ternium consume más de catorce veces el agua de toda la ciudadanía."

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Recomendad

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THE SCHOOL OF LIFE: AN EMOTIONAL EDUCATION

Alain de Botton

Summary​

  • A $10 find at my local bookstore. I will write exactly what appears in the back cover of the book: 'this is a book about everything you were never taight at school.' Divided in 5 parts: self, others, relationships, work and culture. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little arond their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage."

  • "Symptoms of our self-ignorance abound. We are irritable or sad, guilty or furious, without any reliable sense of the origins of our discord. We destroy a relationship that might have been workabel under a compulsion we cannot accoutn for."

  • "The always jokey and slightly manic way of being that we evolved so as to keep our depressed, listless mother engaged becomes our second nature."

  • "These works, which hung in private homes and in municipal buildings around the Dutch Republic, had an explicitly therapeutic purpose: they were delivering a moral to their viewers, who lived in a nation critically dependent on maritime trade, about the confidence in seafaring and life more broadly [Warships in a Heavy Storm]."

  • "A good internal voice is rather like (and just as important as) a genuinely decent judge; someone who can separate good from bad but who will always be merciful, fair, accurate in understanding what's going on and interested in helping us deal with our problems."

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Recomended

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THE SOUL OF DISCIPLINE: THE SIMPLICITY PARENTING APPROACH TO WARM., FIRM AND CALM GUIDANCE - FROM TODDLERS TO TEENS.

Kim John Payne, M.Ed.

Summary​

  • This is the second book I have read from the author (Simplicity Pareting was the first). The book provides a good framework on how we should change our pareting style as our kids get older.

Memorable Parts

  • "The Governor oversees the early years - helping a child feeel safe, control impulses, and learn to follow direction by showing him who is in charge."

  • "Just about every parenting expert expounds on how we must stay calm in the face of bad behavior. Good advice, but how? Because unless we have a foothold on the 'how', the cycle of self-blame will lead us right back to taking it personally."

  • "When we tell our kids, 'In our family we don't speak to each other like that; we just don't,' it helps settle them. First, we're orienting them. And second, we're creating a family-values pillar arond which they can orbit."

  • "At this tender age, children need to hear us think out loud ourselves while at the same time signaling to them that we will help them do what is needed and accepted in the family."

  • "Birth to 8: I will decide. 9 - 13: I will listed and decide. Ages 14 - 19: We will decide."

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Recomended

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COVERING HOME: LESSONS ON THE ART OF FATHERING FROM THE GAME OF BASEBALL

Jack Petrash

Summary​

  • You'd be surprised how few books about fathering are out there that do not have a religious undertone. Regardless of your affinity to baseball, this book has great advice and analogies for all fathers. 

Memorable Parts

  • "If that is the reason you opened this book, take heart. You probably meet the most important requirement for being a good father: willingness to change."

  • "It is only a recent development that fathers are not active around the home. For the great expanse of human history, men worked at home. Our children long for us to do things in their presence."

  • "I gave him the look. I couldn't see my face, but I knew that it was the very same look my dad used to give me. It was mine now. Not because I wanted it, but just because so often what we see as children we become, like it or not."

  • "By standing firmly for what we believe, we give young people something to push against. The more we clarify our beliefs through conversation and discussion, the more our children can develop theirs by resisting ours."

  • "We must come to see that what we call misbehavior on the part of our children is often connected to our own shortcomings. When we encounter our child's most intractable behavior, there is a good chance it has come from us.

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Highly Recomended

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AMERICAN PREDATOR: THE HUNT FOR THE MOST METICULOUS SERIAL KILLER OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Maureen Callahan

Summary​

  • Spoiler alert ahead...The book starts pretty much with this apprehension. The rest of the book is about the police and prosecutors´ interviews with the killer. I thought that structured made the book lose all of its suspense.

Memorable Parts

  • "Psychopathic sadists such as Keyes have pushed their emotions down so deep only extreme acts evoke any feeling whatsoever. It's why their crimes, horrific even in the beginning, must escalate."

  • "There was no precedent for a serial killer with this MO: no victim type, no fixed location for hunting, caches burried all over the United States."

  • "'You don't have to buy real hair to get real hair,' Keyes said. He laughed."

  • "Keyes carried a backpack of supplies, some brought from home, some, like the portable camping stove and zip ties, newly purchased at Lowe's. He'd unearthed supplies earlier that afternoon from a cache he'd burried in Vermont two years before. He had more burried all over the country."

  • "Keep your voice low and steady, they told him. Don't be afraid of silence. Let it hang. Don't rush in to talk. Silence makes people uncomfortable, and yuou want this subject takling as much as possible."

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CHILDHOOD'S END

Arthur C. Clarke

Summary​

  • I remember as a child watching a Discovery marathon called 'Phenomathon' that was hosted by Arthur C. Clarke from Sri Lanka. What a great weekend! I wanted to read one of his novels and found this one bland. 

Memorable Parts

  • "'I didn't know what to do, and I could hear the wave coming closer. Then the voice said, 'Close your eyes, Jeffrey, and put your hand in front of your face.'"

  • "A society consists of human beings whose behavior as individuals is unpredictable. But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws begin to appear - as was discovered long ago by life insurance companies."

  • "Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels?"

  • "He was going into a realm of nightmare creatures, preying upon each other in a darkness undisturbed since the world began."

  • "The Last Man! Jan found it very hard to think of himself as that."

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THE YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON: THE PATH TO POWER

Robert A. Caro

Summary​

  • My second large biography by Caro and he absolutely delivers. You wouldn't guess that a 750+ page biography about a US president would not be entertaining but you are mistaken. The more I read these types of books, the more I understand that 'success' is earned. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Knowing Lyndon Banes Johnson - understanding the character of the thirty-sixth President of the United States - is essential to understanding the history of the United States in the twentieth century."

  • "'Sam Johnson,' he would said, 'is too smart to work, and not smart enough to make a living without working.'"

  • "Cotton, as William Humphrey has written, 'is a man-killing crop.'" 

  • "To listen to him tak is to hear a man who is fully aware that that during his sixteenth year, he surrendered - for life - his own personality to a stronger personality. To listen to him takl is to hear a man who is fully aware that he has been used as a tool."

  • "'I'd sit on the fence and wish to God that somebody would ride by'. Terrible as were the toil and poverty, the loneliness was worse. Poverty, he was to say, only 'tries men's souls'; it is loneliness that 'breaks the heart. Loneliness consumes people.'"

  • "Years later, when someone mentioned that Rayburn's father had not left him much of an inheritance, Rayburn quickly corrected him - his father, he said, 'gave me my untarnished name.' In Austin, there was first heard a saying that men would be repeating for fifty years: 'No one can buy Sam Rayburn.'"

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Highly Recommended

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NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION: A LANGUAGE OF LIFE

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Summary​

  • The title of the book might off-putting. 'I am not violent when I communicate with people. Why should I read this?.' I think the author might have exaggerated with the 'violent' aspect. The book is very valuable for all types of relationships and personalities. 

Memorable Parts

  • "'Aggression is built into the ego system, which totally focuses on 'I, me, and mine'. Society pays lip service to saints and their vow to serve God instead of themselves, but there's a huge gap between the values we espouse and the way we actually live."

  • "The four components of NVC: observation, feelings, needs and requests."

  • "We all pay dearly when people respond to our values and needs not out of a desire to give from the heart, but out of fear, guilt, and shame. They, too, pay emotionally, for they are likely to feel resentment and decreased self-esteem when they respond to us out of fear,  guilt, or shame."

  • "It would be in the interest of kings, czars, nobles, and so forth that the masses be educated in a way that renders them slavelike in mentality. The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purspose: the more people are trained in moralistic judgements, the more they are trained to look to outside authorities."

  • "When we combine observation with evaluation, we decrease the likelihood that others will hear our intended message."

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Highly Recommended

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AS A MAN THINKETH

James Allen

Summary​

  • The book was written by Allen (born in 1864). The book is short but with a very clear messaage: we are and become what we think.

Memorable Parts

  • "In this direction, as in no other, is the law absolute that, 'He that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened;' for only by patience, practice, and ceaseless importunity can a man enter the Door of the Temple of Knowledge."

  • "Man's mind is likened to a garden...If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind."

  • "Nor does a pure-minded man fall suddenly into crime by stress of any mere external force; the criminal thought had long been secretly fostered in the heart, and the hour of opportunity revealed its gathered power. Circumstances does not make the man; it reveals him to himself."

  • "Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance."

  • "His condition is also his own, and not another man's. His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains."

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Average

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THE GOOD ENOUGH PARENT

The School of Life

Summary​

  • My second book from The School of Life series. Nothing in this book will be new information BUT that does not mean it is not worthwhile to read. Perhaps when we are struggling the most is when we need to remind ourselves of the basics of pareting. Too much random information is out there.

Memorable Parts

  • "But equal damage can be done by parents who lend a child an eerie impression that they play too great a role in their emotional lives and are the subject of excessive admiration and interest, leaving the child with a guilty sense that they might be being disloyal to the parent if they eventually built a secure relationshi with someone else."

  • "The implication is that grounds for confidence are primarily derived from being clever, talented, beautiful and deserving. Yet by equating confidence with wondrousnesss, the child is being burdened with a forbidding picture of what success looks like."

  • "Our lives would be nothing if we had not learnt the art of discipline, but nor are these lives worth enduring if we do not sometimes place our own pleasures at the center of our plans."

  • "He isn't 'antisocial', but it does find a small circle of familiar people especially soothing. This capacity for imaginative, kindly explanations will go on to mould the workings of the child's own conscience; it will learn the art of self-forgiveness."

  • "Strangely, and rather inconveniently, it seems no human being can really grow up entirely well balanced unless it has been loved very deeply by someone for a number of years in its early life."

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Recommended

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THE HAPPINESS FILES: INSIGHTS ON WORK AND LIFE

Arthur C. Brooks

Summary​

  • A classic airport purchase, lol. This book is a 'curated collection from The Atlantic's 'How To Build a Life' column. They are 3-4 pages max each so not a lot of substance there. Most of them you can find for free online with a simple search. 

Memorable Parts

  • "I came to a realization about my son: I didn't actually care very much about his grades. What I wanted was for him to grow up to become a responsible, ethical, faithfull, well-adjusted man. From that day forward, I stopped talking about his grades and started talking about values. It was a relief for both of us."

  • "Nelson Mandela once said, 'I learned that courage was not the abscence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.'"

  • "Neuroscientists have determined that people can by sight decide consistently in as little as 39 milliseconds whether someone is a threat or not. Close behind in speed, at 100 milliseconds, comes a consistent estimation of trustworthiness."

  • "One survey of 76 companies found that productivity was 71 percent higher when meetings were reduced by 40 percent."

  • "The man is 'employed on the building of a house' but 'may be quite ignorant of its general design.' 

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ON MANAGING YOURSELF

Various Authors

Summary​

  • Most of the articles will serve as a precursor to reading the author's  full book. However, even as a intro, there are definitively actionable insights to be found. Also, I kind of like finding book from the early 2000s that still hold up. 

Memorable Parts

  • "Allocation chouices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half hour of time, they'll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments (i.e. career) instead of family, relationshiphs, health, etc."

  • "The lesson I learned from this is that it's easier to hold your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give up 'just this once', you'll regret where you end up."

  • "The explanation is that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listening or reading. They learn by writing. Because schools do not allow them to learn this way, they get poor grades."

  • "The ambassador is reported to have said, 'I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave.'"

  • "Let us analyze what just happened. Before the two of them met, on whose back was the 'monkey'? The subordinate's. After they parted, on whose back was it? The manager's."

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Recommended

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8 KEYS TO PARENTING CHILDREN WITH ADHD

Cindy Goldrich

Summary​

  • With the rise of tablet, smartphones, Netflix with algorithms, etc... kids are obviously struggling to pay attention for long periods of time. Books like these provide parents and teachers with actionable strategies.

Memorable Parts

  • "Among a wealth of wisdom herein, Goldrich's overarching mantra is 'parent the child you have.'"

  • "As a result of lower levels of dopamine, there is understimulation in the reward and motivation centers in the brain. The prefrontal cortex is thinner and matures more slowly. This does not imply any deficit in intelligence or ability to succeed."

  • "To be diagnosed with ADHD, at least 6 of 0 inattentive and/or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms listed in the DSM-5 must be evident in two or more settings and must be present prior to age 12. These symptoms must be present for at least 6 months."

  • "Be the change you want to see in your child: Be CALM. Instead of focusing first on shaping and changing your child's behavior, you will need to focus instead on shaping and changing your own behavior."

  • "'I was a success because you believed in me.' - Ulysses S. Grat in a letter to Abraham Lincoln

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Recommended

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