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RIPPLES of BATTLE: HOW WARS of the PAST STILL DETERMINE HOW WE FIGHT, HOW WE LIVE, and HOW WE THINK by Victor Davis Hanson

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Excellent and Quite Enjoyable. Originally published in 2003 by Doubleday We all understand that wars can profoundly change the world. History is full of wars that brought giant transformations, such as Alexander's conquest of Persia (and just about everything else he saw) and the spread of Hellenistic culture, the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico and Peru and the Cold War stand off that shaped the world after World War II. If you have ever heard the phrase "In a post-9/11 world..." that tells you that the world has been changed by the War on Terror.  The simple idea behind Ripples of Battle is that it's not just wars but oftentimes single battles that change things. And, sometimes, it's not the battle that everyone knows, but a lesser-known battle that causes the most change. He uses the familiar image of a rock tossed into a lake with the outgoing ripples from the point of impact being the change. And, he does a pretty thorough job of showing that these rip

STEELHEART (The Reckoners Book #1) by Brandon Sanderson

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                Excellent. Published in September of 2013 by Delacorte Press Imagine a world in which some people, seemingly random people, were given the powers of a comic book superhero. They are called Epics. Some have extraordinary powers, such as the ability to fly or the ability to control electricity or to heal people. Some have minor powers. But, these powers tend to warp the personalities of the Epics - the more they use them the more the Epics are disconnected from the world of regular people - the more they look at regular people as things to be controlled, used and eventually discarded. Brandon Sanderson. Photo by Ceridwen. 18 year old David lives in what used to be Chicago. It is now called Newcago and is ruled by an Epic called Steelheart. He has the power to turn anything into steel and he has turned Chicago into a steel-covered wasteland. Plus, he can fly among other powers. In the DC Comic world he would have powers equal to those of Superman. He has a troik

THE PROFESSIONAL FREELANCER (kindle e-book) by Rory Scherer

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Published in 2014. The un-named protagonist of the short (114 pages) e-book  The Professional Freelancer  has worked in a variety of entry-level jobs (fast-food, telemarketing, door-to-door selling, painting houses, lifeguard and more) and has not had any success at any of them (fires, accidents and government raids have all ended his employment).  Now, the computer genius friend or the un-named protagonist has used his connections to get the un-named protagonist a job at a software firm. But, three weeks into this job, he loses it thanks to yet another government raid. The government is looking for something and the un-named protagonist has no idea what it is (but...he does have a USB flash drive with some strange code that he has brought home and left in his car - the car that won't start and has been left to sit in the driveway for a while, now). So, the un-named protagonist goes out, gets dumped by his girlfriend, loses his apartment due to a failure to pay his rent (and tw

THE CAMEL CLUB (audiobook) (abridged) by David Baldacci

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Published by Time Warner AudioBooks in 2005. Read by James Naughton Abridged Duration: 5 hours, 39 minutes Four outcasts form  The Camel Club, a team that keeps an eye on the government so that it can discover the "truth".   The club is led by Oliver Stone - not the director but a former CIA assassin who has taken the movie director's name. Stone literally stakes out the White House and watches who comes and goes. Reuben Rhodes is a former soldier and DIA member who works in a warehouse. Caleb Shaw works for the Library of Congress and often dresses like he was in the 19th century. The last member is Milton Farb, a computer genius with obsessive compulsive disorder. The White House These four witness a murder of a government agent on Theodore Roosevelt Island, D.C. area national park. When it looks like the murder is going to be treated as a suicide, the club swings into action with the support of a friendly Secret Service agent and discovers a conspiracy t

THE BIG TRIP UP YONDER by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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Originally published in 1954 by the magazine Galaxy Science Fiction , Kurt Vonnegut's short story  The Big Trip Up Yonder is set in the year 2185 in a time in which old age has been defeated. The main character is Gramps Ford, a man that was 70 when anti-gerasone, the cure to aging was created. He has been 70 years old for 102 years. He is grumpy, vindictive and generally unpleasant - much like you would expect for a man that has has been 70 years old for 102 years. Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007 Galaxy Science Fiction was designed to be thoughtful science fiction rather than laser guns and explosions driven science fiction and Vonnegut's style fits the bill perfectly. He looks at what would happen in a world with no death. It becomes crowded - so crowded that privacy is a rarity and people are forced to live cheek-by-jowl with their families in hallways, living rooms and the like. If you have ever seen a movie or a TV show in which greedy family members are waiting around t

THE THIRD RULE of TEN (Tenzing Norbu #4) by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

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This series returns to its winning ways. Published in 2014 by Hay House Visions Former Buddhist monk and ex-LAPD officer Tenzing "Ten" Norbu returns in the what could be entry #3, #3.5 or #4 following the prequel The Broken Rules of Ten. Ten continues his search for the perfect girl but his professional life has taken off in a big way thanks to the celebrity connections he made in The Second Rule of Ten . Mac Gannon, an aging action hero star who is an ultra-Catholic with a propensity to cheat on his wife and drink too much and the spout racist venom (clearly inspired by Mel Gibson) hires Ten to find a missing illegal alien housekeeper. That's tricky enough with the hazy documentation comes with being an illegal alien, but Ten has to keep it as quiet as possible since Mac is really hiring Ten so that Bets McMurtry, California's answer to Sarah Palin, does not get tied to her (even though she desperately wants her friend found, she is always aware of the poli