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Book Review: Six Frigates

Wow ... Six Frigates by Ian W. Toll was a marathon read.  And not like a sitting for 26 hours straight never wanting to put the book down.  More of the ... took somewhere near 26 week sto read... Don't get me wrong.  I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I learned A LOT from the 482 pages of riveting Navy history. It was just a long read.  And it read a bit like a text book much of the time. Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became Read more [...]

Undecided War

Currently reading "Six Frigates" by Ian W. Toll. Found this passage and believe it is worth repeating. Recalling the [War of 1812] debates, [James Madison] admitted that "it has become impossible to avoid or even delay war," even though "we were not prepared for it." It has been necessary to take the fateful plunge because "it was certain that effective preparations would not take place, whilst the question of war was undecided." You never quite know how the foe will fight until the fists Read more [...]

E-Libraries

What are libraries doing in this age of electronic and i-everything?  It looks like they are keeping up! While I do not know the behind the scenes legalities that the libraries are working with the publishers, I really do like the results.  Libraries have lists of books that can be 'checked out' onto your Kindle/iPhone/iPad/Mac/PC/etc...  You check them out for a certain amount of time and then they are automatically returned. It is as simple as that.  So here's some links to help you get Read more [...]

Decent Men

Here's another excerpt from Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (amazon): From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two--the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man.  Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society.  No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.  In this sense, no group is of "pure race"--and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards. The Read more [...]

Book Review: Faith Of My Fathers

Continuing on my military/Navy booklist, I just finished reading John McCain's "Faith Of My Fathers."  It took me a little while to get into the book as when I first started reading it.  I was in the process of moving and getting married.  But now that things have gotten back to more of a routine, the pages of the book flew by. For those that don't know, John McCain, yes the Republican presidential nominee of 2008 comes from a high and mighty lineage of top brass in the Navy.  Both his father Read more [...]