The Associate by Phillip Margolin

Good, fast-paced roller coaster ride

Originally published in 2002.

If the first two opening scenes don't grab you than you had better check your pulse and see if you're still alive!

Phillip Margolin

Others have reviewed The Associate and correctly stated that it is not a pure legal thriller. True enough. There are legal parts to this story, but the case is not resolved through fancy legal footwork. Rather, the thriller becomes a mystery too and we race along with our heroes to see if they can save everyone and expose the villains.

Is it great literature? Hardly. But, it's a lot of fun and I tore through it like a starving man at a buffet.
 
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Associate by Phillip Margolin.
 
Reviewed on February 1, 2005

When the Tripods Came by John Christopher

Solid Prequel.

Published in 1988.

When the Tripods Came is a prequel to the YA sci-fi trilogy known as the Tripods Trilogy. In the original trilogy, an alien master race rules the earth around the year 2100. The aliens are never seen and travel the world in giant tripods with prehensile legs (I often think of the Tripods when I see water towers in small towns). The aliens use mind control techniques to control the human population which lives in a low tech feudal type society. Every year young people are brought to the Tripods to be "capped" - a process that involves having a metallic cap attached to the skull that facilitates the control of humanity.

John Christopher
(1922-2012)

The original series was published in 1967 and 1968. The prequel was published in 1988. The prequel tells how humanity first encountered the Tripods when the Tripods landed on earth and seemed bent on destruction. The Tripods were quickly defeated militarily so the aliens pulled back and began using cartoon shows and pop music as a cover to deliver mind controlling messages. Soon enough, there are fights among those that have been mesmerized and everyone else. The mesmerized people attempt to cap everyone and the stage is set for the world that exists in the Tripod Trilogy, including the placid villages of those that are capped and the remote locations of those that continue to resist.

Comic Book Guy

The author, John Christopher (a pseudonym for Christopher Samuel Youd) says in the preface that he wanted to clarify how the world came to be as it was when the Tripod Trilogy began because so many sci-fi fans (I imagine them as British versions of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons) were critical of the technology that is described in the book and if this would have been enough to have overcome modern human technology. They were not considering that the level of technology in human history is rapidly advancing and even accelerating, so Christopher felt he had to justify it in some way.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found here: When the Tripods Came.

Reviewed October 22, 2010.

Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker

Published in 2010.

Painted Ladies is Robert B. Parker's latest offering in the long-running Spenser series. Parker died in January 2010 and this book was already in the pipeline waiting to be published (he has one more coming out called Sixkill). According to my count, this is number 37 in the Spenser series.

Painted Ladies is a solid novel. It is nowhere near as good as the best of the series (in my opinion, that would be Looking for Rachel Wallace and the ones created at about the same time in the late 1970s and early 1980s) but it is not an embarrassment like Potshot, either.

The plot revolves around the theft of a piece of art called Lady with a Finch. Someone has called with an offer to return the painting for a ransom and Spenser is hired to protect Ashton Prince, the art expert who will deliver the ransom to the kidnappers during the exchange. Spenser ultimately fails as a bodyguard as the painting is booby-trapped with a bomb and Ashton Prince is vaporized right in front of Spenser as he waits in their car on page 13.

The bulk of the book is about Spenser and his decision to find out who killed Prince and why. No one from Prince's side of things is particularly interested in his offer to investigate, although, for a change, the police are. All of Spenser's police friends  (Quirk, Belson, Healy, etc.) are in this, but Hawk is not (he is purported to be in Central Asia working for the government).

Robert B. Parker

The story itself unfolds the way most Spenser novels do - Spenser starts pulling at loose threads in the investigation until he angers someone and they lash out at him and then he figures he's onto something and has a new course of investigation.

It is an enjoyable book - Spenser is slowing down a bit but the investigation is still interesting. There's at least one more book coming out - hopefully it's as solid as this one. While not as great as his best, it is solid and nothing to be ashamed of.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found here: Painted Ladies by Robert B. Parker.

Reviewed on October 22, 2010.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (audiobook) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Better than the first book.

Published by HarperAudio in 2009.

Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes.

Read by: Stephen J. Dubner, one of the authors

Unabridged.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance is the sequel to the wildly popular book by the same authors, Freakonomics the movie and a newspaper column. One author is the economics talent - the man with all of the questions who knows where to find the answers. The other is the writing talent (who is learning a good bits of economics along the way, no doubt) who takes these interesting topics and puts them on paper in an interesting way.



The goal of these books and the newspaper column is to get people to look at the world in a different way - an economic way of thinking. I find these works to be fascinating, eye-opening and always entertaining, even if I don't always agree with their conclusions (sometimes I think they are asking the wrong questions or have not gathered in enough information).

Their main premise is that people generally respond rationally to incentives, sometimes you just have to figure out what the incentives are. Ironically, if not for me responding to the incentive of nearly free classes offered by the Indiana Council for Economics Education I would not have had the pleasure of having my mind blown by professor Mohammad Kaviani, who introduced me to the thoughts behind books like Freakonomics before the book was even published by teaching me and other teachers how to incorporate economics into every school discipline. I was so inspired that I went back to school and added economics to my teaching license.


Levitt and Dubner

Levitt and Dubner explore any number of items, including:

-Why horse manure nearly destroyed the great cities of the world and the car saved us from being buried in it.

-How prostitutes set their prices and why it would be a good idea for prostitutes to have a pimp

-How to figure out who is the best doctor in the E.R.  Like figuring out who is the best teacher, it is not as easy as it would seem - the very best doctors tend to get the sickest patients or they may avoid the sickest patients in order to get the accolades and compensation (if it is offered). Turns out, the best doctor tends to come from a top medical school, went to a top hospital for her residency, has more than 10 years of experience and is a woman. Peer rankings have no basis in reality.

-The relationship between terrorism and banking and why terrorists should buy life insurance.

-Why homo economicus is still a good symbol for people - a person that responds to incentives and is not, by nature, horribly altruistic.

-Car seats? Certainly they are better than letting the kids run wild through the car but are they better than seat belts?

-There is an extended discussion on global warming, including a potential cheap fix. The discussion should have been a little longer and looked into the incentives of people like Al Gore - why would he be against even discussing the cheap fix? He has remarkable incentives to keep his climate change panic machine running - fixing it puts him out of a job and cuts him off from the seat of power he has created for himself.


-and, last but not least, there is an entertaining story about teaching capuchin monkeys about money. As a result, we get monkey bank robbery and monkey prostitution. Amazing.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Superfreakonomics.

Reviewed on October 22, 2010.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (audiobook) by Mary Roach

Enjoyable - offbeat, funny, informative, thought-provoking

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2010.
Read by Sandra Burr.
Duration: 10 hours, 27 minutes.
Unabridged.

The point of Mary Roach's Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void is not the technical challenges of sending an object to Mars. We have demonstrated that we can send a probe to Mars, operate it and do a bit of exploring.

No, this is about sending a human to Mars, a much more difficult proposition. Mary Roach deals with the following (and more) in her Packing for Mars:

-We eat, drink, and create bodily waste. How do we store enough food to make the trip to Mars?

-How do we deal with expelling bodily waste in a zero gravity environment (no toilets - everything would just float out!)

-What do we do with the waste? Can you recycle it back into food? Who would want to eat that?

-Can people actually live together in cramped quarters for months at a time with no break and not kill one another?

-What will zero gravity do to the human body during this trip?

-Can people actually have sex in a zero gravity environment? What if a pregnancy results - what will the fetus be like if it is developed in zero gravity?

-Zero gravity tends to create lots of nausea. How do we deal with it?

Mars, the red planet

-Can you propel yourself in space with flatulation? (sure, not a serious question, but now you want to know, don't you?)

-Personal hygiene in space. How stinky will that capsule be?

-What about dust that comes from sloughed off skin and hair? It is just going to accumulate all over the capsule.

-Can you bail out of a space capsule or shuttle if it has a bad take off or landing?

In this book you learn that the biggest challenge is, in Roach's words, "gravity and life without it." The 2nd issue, and it is a big one too, is size. The vehicle to Mars will be, by necessity, small. This means little storage, little elbow room and no place to go if nausea or escaping bodily waste become issues (her inclusion of the transcript of a space capsule conversation about free-floating "turds" is hilarious and serves to highlight that this has already been an issue that NASA has dealt with in the past).

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Packing for Mars.

Reviewed on October 21, 2010.

Drive Thru History: East Meets West DVD

I love this series

Published in 2006 by Coldwater Media

I teach history in a public school so using this Drive Thru History: East Meets West in my classroom is not a viable option due to the contemporary religious references. However, if you are in a Christian school or homeschool with a Christian emphasis I can enthusiastically recommend this series.

East Meets West has two 30 minute plus programs about Turkey and Asia Minor. Turkey is literally where the Middle East meets the West.

In episode 1, Dave Stotts takes us to Cappadocia, a unique area with an underground city and roots in the Old Testament and in the post-Biblical era as a scene of anti-Christian persecution by both the Romans and the Muslims.

Episode 2 is the stronger of the two. It covers the Emperor Constantine, the controversy that caused the creation of the Nicene Creed, the fall of Constantinople and the wonderful Hagia Sofia church turned to mosque now museum.

Episode 3 is a "best of" for the first 4 volumes with a blooper reel.

Okay - bottom line. The history is good. The presentation is light and effective. The graphics are great. It's funny. Highly recommended.

I rate this DVD set 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Drive Thru History: East Meets West DVD.

Reviewed on July 21, 2009.

Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization by W. Hodding Carter

An entertaining read

Published in 2006 by Atria.

W. Hodding Carter covers plumbing from the Ancient Indians, Greeks and Romans to modern day Japanese bidet toilet in Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization, a meandering romp through sewers, both past and present.

Carter's light-hearted writing style makes it a fun read. He meanders all over the world of bathrooms, pipes and open-pit sewers but the trip is a fun one. There are a lot of detours, but it's fun and informative.

W. Hodding Carter

That being said, there are a couple of stumbles. On page 30 he claims the Hellenistic Age is named for Helen of Troy, which is ridiculous. Chapter 8 "Blame It On the Christians" is an equally ridiculous attempt to blame all of the Western world's issues with defecation and urination (mostly cutesy names like poo-poo and the desire to defecate alone) on Christianity. He quotes Francis of Assisi to make his case that Christianity made using the bathroom and being physically clean a "dirty" thing (page 144) but also quotes him to say that Christians should be clean (page 145).

But, those slip-ups do not diminish the book as a whole. He more than proves his point that plumbing and plumbers have made the modern world possible. Very entertaining.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization.

Reviewed on July 21, 2009.