Personal Musings

Links to some of my personal thoughts and writings.

Book Review – The Black Military Experience in the American West

  This is one of those wonderful books that I have only as a consequence of my friendship with Jim and his wife who run the Alla Book Store in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is really quite a treasure as it was printed in a limited edition of only 100 copies. There are several […]

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Book Review – My Grandfather’s Son, Clarence Thomas

    There is no better introduction to this book than the words on the dustcover: “My first trip to Washington had been to protest the Vietnam War. But now I was part of the decision-making apparatus of the Federal Government – the tiniest possible part, to be sure. But a part all the same. […]

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Book Review – Memoirs of a Slave Trader, Theodore Canot

I have not a clue where I found this book but it’s just the kind of book I love to read –  real life by a real person with all the real details, unpalatable as that might be, associated with life. No ugly detail left out….and this one has a lot of ugly details.   That book […]

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Book Review – The Alaskan Eskimos, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24

    There is a bit of background to this book that is needed to place it properly into perspective: In the works of Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, there is a quotation from the first volumn that has had great meaning to me: “sila ersinarsinivdlugo – Be Not Afraid of the Universe” When […]

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Book Review – The Coming of Rome – John Wacher

This was a relatively short volumn, less than 200 pages but jammed full of details related to the state of England before the invasion by the Romans (first by Julius Caesar) and then the impacts of that invasion before the Romans finally evacuated the island 300+ years later. I had a bit of difficulty following […]

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Book Review – Sexuality & Marriage in Colonial Latin America

  Well, if I needed another book to provide additional evidence of the terrible treatment of women over the centuries, this fit the bill. BTW – Colonial Latin America covers the time period well after the “conquest” and stops well before the liberation movements in the 1800’s….so about 200 years or so. A couple of […]

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Book Review – The Book of Job, The Anchor Bible

  The most thought provoking book of the Bible. First off, The Anchor Bible itself requires a bit of an introduction: This is from the Wikipedia: The Anchor Bible Commentary Series, created under the guidance of William Foxwell Albright (1891–1971), comprises a translation and exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Intertestamental […]

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Book Review – When Books Went To Ear, Molly Guptill Manning

This was a gift from my daughter as a Christmas present. Did not make any notes as I read it. A quite interesting book that tells a story related to World War 2 that I was completely unaware of. Tells how the librarians and book publishers and the keepers of morale combined to get millions […]

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Book Review – Gisli Sursson’s Sage & The Saga of the People of Eyri, Anonymous

This is one of those old stories from the past whose author is unknown and likely is a composite of a large variety of stories told for decades before being written down. I like these enormously. From the back page: “Based on oral tales that originated in historical events in tenth-century Iceland, these two sagas […]

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Book Review – Alger Hiss – Why He Chose Treason, Christina Shelton

  I have been fascinated by the Alger Hiss case since I was a teenager. Reading Whittaker Chambers’ book “Witness” was one of the formative events of my early life and has stood out as a key event in modern history for me ever since. As this book shows quite well, it is a wonderful […]

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