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The Tragedy of American Compassion  by Marvin Olasky, Regnery Publishing, 1994.  Summary   The author argues that the poor of the United States have been greatly harmed by the abandonment of the Christian philosophy of human nature, which understands that human beings have free will and can improve their moral character only if charity is conditional on the recipient behaving virtuously. Christian Charity During the 18th and 19th century in America, there was no structural un

Conquests and Cultures: An International History by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 1999.

Modern Times Revised Edition: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties  by Paul Johnson, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1992.  Summary This is a history of the Twentieth Century that is particularly good on Germany and Japan. This is a description of world history from the 1920s to the 1980s.  Moral Relativism The author favors universal moral standards, applicable to all peoples, all places and all times in history. He also favors the Judeo-Christian ethics. He opposes

Migrations And Cultures: A World View by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 1996.  The Ubiquity of Inequality Inequality ha been the norm throughout history and in every continent. Sowell documents that there has never been equality betweeeen different ethnic groups, whether within a single country, or between different countries. Forms of Inequality professions they chose, their level of literacy, their ability to start busineesses, how much land they owned, the skills they had, t

Race and Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 1995.  Clear Thinker Thomas Sowell again champions clarity of thought. He says that the term racism has been misapplied to situations whether the distinction between groups is primarily cultural, rather than genetic. Of course, it is impossible to completely disentangle genetic and cultural influences. Since this book was written, the meaning of the word racist has expanded so much that criticism of Islam has been

Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival  by Dean King, Back Bay Books Reprint, Paperback, 2005.  Early 19th century American sailors had a problem near th4 Canary Islands, where they went off course and landed on the coast of Africa. They had a rough time in the Sahara desert, dealing with the heat, lack of water, and the indigenous people

Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon by Kim Zetter, Crown, 2015. Three stories: Detecting Stuxnet Stuxnet Iran's centrifuges Applications of PLCs: Oil and gas pipelines turbines of power plants sewage pumps robots on car assembly lines steel furnaces trains elevators Players: Symantec NSA Israel I.D.F. Ujite 8200 Iran Siemens programmable logic controllers Kaspersky Lab (Eugene) ISIS IAEA Uranium hexafluoride Microsoft Zero Day Exp

A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa: One Man's Escape from North Korea , Translated by Risa Kobayashi and Martin Brown. , Amazon Crossing, 2017. Origins His mother was Japanese and his father was Korean. His orean name wa Do Chan-sun and his Japanese name was Masaji Ishikawa. He grew up poor in Japan., Family moved to North Korea to escape poverty in 1960. Later crossed the Yalu River to escape North Korea.

The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass , by Myron Magnet, Encounter Books, 2000. Character and Culture Good moral character causes the family to improve economically, not the reverse. Libertairans prefer economic causes; conservatives favor character and culture. The lives of the working poor, especially those with so-called menial jobs, are held in contemp by the progressive elites. These elites deny status and respect for the law-abiding and chur

Call the Midwife: “A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times” by Jennifer Worth, Penguin Books, 2012 Nonnatus House The author worked in the 1950s in London for a community of Roman Catholic nuns at Nonnatus House. She goes into a fair amount of detail describing childbirth and its problems. Topics biracial babies breech delivery complications from illegal abortions eclampsia macerated fetus placenta previa ricketts from Vitamin D deficiency stillbirths syphilis Victorian workho

The Demon Under The Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug by Thomas Hager, Crown, 2007.  Sulfa Drugs This is an excellent history of the rise of synthetic antibiotics. Unlike penicillin, which is a natural product of mold, the sulfa drugs were created from scratch in the laboratory. The German chemists took the lead. They had already developed synthetic dyes. They experimented with using these dyes t

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland  by Christopher R. Browning, Harper Perennial; Revised Edition, 2017.  German Police Battalion This book is an objective and careful analysis of a German police reserve battalion-during World War II. Police Battalion 101 was made up of middle-aged men from Hamburg. Most of them were not Nazis, psychopaths or anti-Semites. Herding Jews This police battalion herded Polish Jews onto trains destined for s

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, Expanded Edition, by Edwin Black, Dialog Press, 2012.  German Subsidiary IBM had a German subsidiary in the years leading up to World War II. At that time, IBM was not an electronic computer company, but rather a manufacturer of mechanical machines for processing Hollerith paper cards. IBM manufactured various types of Hollerith machines: punchers, sorters, proofers, ve

Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School  by Stuart Jeffries, Verso, 2016. 1923 Symposium The idea for the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany (informally called the Frankfurt School) originated in a Symposium in 1923 of Marxist intellectuals in Ilmenao in Thuringia. It was organized by Félix José Weil, whose father, German-Argentine businessman Hermann Weil, provided much of the endowment for the Frankfurt School. Attendees for the symposium inclu

The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response  by Peter Balakian, Harper Collins, 2003.  The Ottoman Empire This book describes the efforts of the Ottoman Empire to ethnically cleanse Turkey of non-Turks and non-Muslims. This mainly applied to the original inhabitants of Anatolia: the Greeks, the Armenians and the Assyrian Christians. Armenians and all other Christians (and Jews) were dhimmis, second-class citizens under Muslim rule. Dhimmis had to pay a ta

Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China  by Rebiya Kadeer and Alexandra Cavelius. Kales Press;, 2009.

Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival  by Ryszard Kapuściński, Back Bay Books Reprint, Paperback, 2005.  The author, a Polish reporter, was born in Pinsk in Belarus in 1930. This work describes he travels through several countries in Africa.

The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa  by Josh Swiller, Holt Paperbacks, 2007.  The author finds himself at cross purposes with an interesting fellow named Boniface. Hilarious!

Homage to Catalonia  by George  Orwell, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (1969)

Never Grow Up  by Jackie Chan with Zhu Mo, Simon & Schuster, 2018.