Life in America, By: Mike Proko - Book Review

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Most of the time, strong opinions about politics and religion aren't received well. People are easily turned off by other people who give their opinions and turn a deaf ear to those who try to convince them to believe what they believe. However, Michael L. Proko's collected columns titled "Life in America: Musings, Stories and Opinions about life in the U.S. of A" is both uplifting and entertaining.

In each of his columns, Proko meticulously dissects issues both about the USA and human life. He brings to light issues that we face daily and speaks about them encouragingly. He addresses topics such as human relationships, family, imagination, money, politics, God, children, striving to act like children as adults, making a difference in people's lives, showing kindness, and forgiveness. He shares experiences such as pool-hopping as an adolescent that gives the reader a sense of authenticity and a glimpse into the type of person Proko is, and the life-lessons he learned.

One of Proko's primary words of advice is to not give up and make the changes necessary to improve character. This Proko can attest to in a very special and specific way. At the prime of his life, he suffered two strokes and was told his life would never be the same again. He was told to expect permanent paralysis and for a while, gave in to this new way of life; feeling useless and defeated. However, he soon decided to make a critical change, which was to work hard to improve himself physically and emotionally. Through endless hours of physical therapy and working out, he was able to overcome his physical limitations and prove to himself and those around him that if you work hard enough to change your life for the better, it is possible to jump over hurdles that seem impossible to overcome. He uses this life experience to encourage his readers to make the changes necessary to better their lives, and to never give up. As a reader, hearing this advice from someone who lost all hope and then worked hard to gain his life back, written with gentleness and without shoving it in the reader's face, I gladly took this advice.

The most enjoyable aspect of Proko's book is his memories of being raised under the guidance and love of his grandparents interwoven throughout the work. He refers to simple life lessons taught to him when he was young; giving the same advice to his readers because he believes he is who he is because of their influence in his life. "They taught us how to swim, how to behave like ladies and gentlemen, how to look at life. but most importantly, how to keep your sense of humor when life comes at you. They, too, had made their fair share of mistakes but they had a goal and they just kept on striving to that end. Simple folks. Simple lessons." This passage sums up his tone of voice throughout the piece. Again, he emphasizes the importance of not giving up. He mentions his grandparents and their influence on his life throughout the book, which gives the reader further evidence the advice he gives is based on experience and wisdom.

This is a refreshing read for anyone who is tired of negativity and prideful political opinions about America and its people. Without stuffing it down the reader's throat, Proko delivers his advice and opinions carefully and with humor, ending almost every column with, "At least, that's the way I see it." Whether or not the reader agrees with what he discusses in each column, that line is a reminder these are merely his opinions based on his life experiences. Life in America is surprisingly cheerful and encouraging, even when it comes to America and its politics.

Reviewed by: Tamar Mekredijian, Pacific Book Review

http://www.pacificbookreview.com/

The Imperial Cruise By James Bradley

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World War II holds a certain interest for me. I have to wonder if it is because I would be speaking a completely different language and my country would be a little red blip on the world map if events had turned out otherwise. Anyway whatever the reason I do read the occasional book on that era. This book is about the previous 100 years and the reasons why Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on that fateful morning of December 7th, 1941. Now after saying that you won't necessarily like the answers that this book holds.

Bradley is also the author of Flags of Our Fathers - the book about his father's role in raising the flag at Iwo Jima and how no one knew about his level of his involvement until after he had died. The humility of that generation coined the Greatest by Tom Brokaw is exemplified by his behaviour in the Pacific. Bradley probably was intrigued by the attack of the Japanese as that changed his family's history dramatically. He researches the presidencies of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt and also the involvement of Taft and his work with Roosevelt out in Asia specifically with this subject in mind.

Just about everything I knew about Teddy Roosevelt was a fallacy. As a heads-up, this book was incredibly hard to read with respect to the way that many people were treated. Roosevelt wanted the world to view him in a certain way and never was photographed in some situations and always in others. He was the original media and public relations junkie. He often would have one conversation with a world leader but then relay a completely different notion to the American press.

In the summer of 1905 Roosevelt sent then Secretary of War William Howard Taft and his oldest daughter, Alice on a diplomatic mission across the Pacific. Alice was hugely popular as she lived a relatively wild life and the press and people of the US loved her. Alice was to keep the reporters and photographers busy while Taft met secretly with several leaders. Civilizing the Asian people was the idea of the trip for Roosevelt. These meetings would set up the groundwork for America's Pacific engagement but would come back to bite the people of the US less than 40 years later.

Bradley never gives his opinion throughout the book which is admirable. He just writes how history went down and who met with whom and why America was so interested in Asia and the Pacific. Personally I found the chapter on the opium wars very interesting with Queen Victoria being the most notorious 'dealer' along with some pretty heavy hitting names from American history. Worth your time especially if you are at all interested in world politics.

You can find more of my book and movie reviews at: http://ukchica.com/

How I Killed Pluto by Mike Brown Book Review

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If you are older than 15, you probably learned at school that the solar system includes 9 planets. This was not always the case. In ancient times there were only seven. Seven is a good number. It is a meaningful number as there are seven days in a week. Earth was the center of the world and did not count while the Sun and the Moon did. During and after the Copernican revolution the number changed quite often. Earth become a planet but the sun and moon were deleted from the list. Then came William Herschel and discovered Uranus, then came Adams, Leverrier and Galle predicting and finding Neptune. Meanwhile more large objects were found in what's now called "The Asteroids' belt" (Ceres, Palas, Juno, Vesta) and for some time they were also counted as planets and finally Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930 making a nice (but meaningless) number of 9 Planets. Then come Mike Brown and on his pursuit to find the tenth planet actually killed the ninth.

Mike Brown's story is detailed in his book "How I killed Pluto and why it had it coming". Well Pluto is not to blame for anything. It is just there, but Mike managed to write a story which is a great mix of: history, biography, science, philosophy and even a thriller. A thriller you might ask? Yes, chapter nine is written as a thriller and describes how private observational data was exposed on the Internet and might have been used by other researchers to get first credit for Mike's discovery (I can't resist to compare this case to James Watson and Francis Crick who used Rosalind Franklin's data without her knowing about it to get the breakthrough they needed in their DNA research). In this chapter you will also read Mike's philosophical thoughts about science, why and when some observations must be kept secret, and why others must not.

The story reaches its climax when the International Astronomical Union (IAU), in 2006, decided what is a planet (and thus deciding if Mike discovered new planets or the opposite, reduced the number of planets by removing Pluto), and although Mike had much more to gain as a planet discoverer, he strongly felt that Pluto should not be a planet. If you need someone to blame for Pluto's fate, Mike is a good choice, and occasionally he gets a number of complaints on this issue. However, even though Pluto is not a planet, it is still important, as the rest of the distant objects out there, since their existence requires new theories about the creation of the solar system itself and Mike relates to this subject throughout the book.

As you read, you will enjoy the story, as it goes from Mike's early childhood to that of his daughter, Lilah. You do not have to be an astronomer to enjoy the book (although it helps). However, as an amateur astronomer I liked the fact that Mike is also an observer. Mike isn't just a researcher, looking through telescopes (and the biggest ones - Keck and Hubble) and at thousands of pictures of the sky to find new planets (sorry, not planets but "dwarf planets"!). Throughout the book Mike shows us what it is to observe, he describes how much he loves to watch the moon and the planets. The book ends with Mike describing the conjunction of Venus Jupiter and the moon. It happens from time to time and I remember hosting a star party to share this experience with people from my community. Also, Mike gives a good explanation about naming the new objects he finds, and although the meaning of Haumea, Makemake, Eris and Sedna is known and written in many places, the reasoning behind giving these names is detailed in the book.

Read more astronomical articles at The Venus Transit site.

Book Review of "The Age of American Unreason" by Susan Jacoby

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The Age of American Unreason. [Soft cover]

by Susan Jacoby

384 pages, $26.00

ISBN-13: 978-1616877170

Nonfiction

Review by Steven King, MBA, MEd

Susan Jacoby starts with good intentions since her desire is to survey why America is branded as anti-intellectual. A cursory investigation of many segments of our culture indicates that a quest for reason is far from the minds of most people. America's ranking concerning education in the world would seem to indicate that introspective reasoning was truly a thing of the past.

Jacoby's mission is admirable even if her thesis is not.

When a secular atheist attempts to write a book about the unreasonableness of anything, it begs the question almost immediately: What is the source of reason? People ascribing to various faith beliefs will answer that question very differently than she did. Should one purporting to write from a totally secular stance be given greater latitude than one who would attempt the same premise but from religious grounds?

Instead of agreeing to disagree, which always seems to be a stretch for anyone purporting to be secular, Jacoby wastes no time earmarking religious fundamentalism as one of the main causes of anti-rationalism in America. In just the first 20 or so pages, she indicates that those who believe in a coming Messiah only have beliefs that are "...dangerous fallacies." Yet, in the same paragraph, she contends for the Constitutional rights that allow the religiously misguided to have their particular faith - a kind of intellectual snobbery, since in Jacoby's opinion, atheism is the only intelligent stance on faith.

The rest of the book weaves a strange amalgamation of blame. Jacoby gleefully wanders through a minefield to determine what is to blame for America's lack of reason. The reader will get the impression that she is pro-communism, pro-evolution, anti-technology, but pro-reading. Where she can, she'll conflate, a word she's particularly fond of, her current topic with an anti-religious sentiment.

The book is not completely without merit. Her chapter about infotainment hits the proverbial nail on the head about "why" America lacks reason. Collectively, we desire instant gratification without the cerebral task of working to understand something. Perhaps if our culture encouraged reading with the same enthusiasm it does of the latest technological release more rational thought would break forth.

Jacoby would have produced a masterpiece if she had not used her book to bash religiosity. Individuals do, and will continue to have, religious difference. A more poignant thesis might have been to have focused on "how" to encourage Americans to read.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood - Book Review

Award-winning author James Glieck, who wrote "Chaos" and "Genius," has the depressingly encouraging answer to this waterfall of information that overtakes us by the hours as gigaflops and teraflops literally pour fourth from the disk farms of the world and onto the Internet burying us ever more deeply in even more information - the Genie is out of the bottle and it won't go away.

Was it ever thus or did information just magically appear one day and need some sort of handling, rearranging, reinterpreting or reinventing? The answer is simple: information has been with us since the beginning, at first passed from shaman to son, who learned not only the "tribe's" story, but any new experiences that were picked up along the way that were bound to the story for the next generation. This went on for thousands of years and it was easy because things seldom strayed from the "truths" known. With the invention of illumination, the West was able to store its information as it was written - never changing as the keeper of information was happy with it remaining as it was. The invention of moveable type - actually a product of Chinese innovation 4,000 years ago - followed quickly surrounded us with more information and opinion. There was not more "keeper of the flame," as it were.

That invention alone let the Genie out of the bottle, never to return, although the flood of information turned from a trickle into a torrent nearly overnight (in historical terms) as the printing press churned out information that was once restricted to an elite. Soon, as they saying goes, the "elite was us" as information became more and more a director of our lives.

Soon information for its own sake was the norm as the information of the ages was worked on by the new masters to define everything from apples falling on our head (magnetism) to the ending of the "flat earth" theory to the ending of the earth-centric view of things. While Glieck doesn't specifically mention studies the contributions of Galileo, Copernicus, Humanism and others, they are there tacitly in the background as we run into the age of the machine and the literal deluge of information that it brought.

Yet, while never mentioning the "scribes" or tinkerers of the information age, directly, he does mention the greats who were successful in beginning to organize some of this information such as Charles Babbage, the inventor of the first "computer," a large textile machine that changed manufacturing with punched brass cards that told the machine how to reconfigure itself.

There's the Lady Ada Byron, by some accounts the first computer programmer, for whom Ada is named and its spreads rapidly from there as our historical narrative turns to the thinkers of the Information Age, Turing, Hawking and others as the Information Age begins to cascade toward the first real computer ENIAC by RCA in 1948 (where coveys of white-smocked technicians raced up and down aisles that housed rack-after-rack of heat-sensitive triode tubes to replace tubes that constantly failed so that computations could continue - at the time, the world's estimate for computers was eight or 10 maximum).

Now, a new meaning could be ascribed the old saw: "Apres moi le deluge" as the floodgates of the information age open, constantly surrounding us with information and changing information and new additions to information to the Internet and Web and the world of "Social Computing" with its "Facebook," nameless "Tweeting," Instant Messaging, Texting and more and more.

At one time it literally took eons for information to change to now when eons worth of information changes in seconds, constantly surrounding us with a reality that has changed the way we think and act. We are as much prisoners of this onrush of information as its participants and creators. Glieck's seminal work points this out.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books

Book Review of "The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America" by Dr Drew Pinsky

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The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America [Hardcover]

by Dr. Drew Pinsky and S. Mark Young

288 pages, $26.99

ISBN-13: 978-1616794309

Nonfiction

Andy Warhol certainly earned more than his "15 minutes of fame" as a filmmaker who helped pioneer and popularize pop art. Warhol venerated Hollywood by saying, "I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic." Certainly all would agree that it takes a special caliber of person to rise to stardom in today's media frenzied world. It might take someone who is pretty much in love with himself.

A few decades later life confirms that everyone is in love with celebrity - especially celebrities. In fact, celebrities demonstrate extremely strong narcissistic personality traits - which can be classified as a type of personality disorder known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). It is probably safe to assume that a strong desire for celebrity lurks within each of us. Is that a problem? Does the reality of various celebrity scandals which run rampant over the news wire set up increasing levels of narcissistic tendencies in those who are lured by such behavior?

Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board certified psychiatrist who has a lot of experience speaking with celebrities on VH1's Celebrity Rehab thinks so. He works with Mark Young to produce a detailed analysis to illustrate how celebrity narcissism is actually luring America into a vicious trap.

Since technology has given anyone with a video camera the ability to have instant fame through venues such as YouTube, being obsessed with celebrity can lead to dangerous mimicry of the worst celebrity behavior. Celebrities seem larger than life and can be especially unsympathetic to anyone hurt by their strange behavior. Copying celebrity behavior can lead to problems for everyone in society.

Who is most prone to ape such behavior? Teenagers...since they have the greatest exposure to and encouragement to acquire technological goodies. When teenagers see body-image obsession, sexual acting-out, drug use, and diva behavior they can be programmed to inadvertently impersonate bad celebrity behavior.

Pinsky's examination skillfully delves into a few well-known celebrity lifestyles to illustrate how vapidly this disorder is manifested. Rather than providing the negative aspects of this personality disorder exclusively, the author ends with expert instruction to illustrate how parents can raise their children to prevent narcissistic tendencies.

As a special bonus, the author includes the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) so the reader can see how narcissistic he truly is...

If you enjoy the intersection of science and celebrity - this book is for you!

Review by Steven King, MBA, MEd

Tuesdays With Morrie - My Thoughts

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I just finished reading the book Tuesdays with Morrie and it is as inspiring as what people have said about it. I have read Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith as well, two years ago. And they are very inspiring, why? Because, for one, it's non-fiction which means it's true-to-life, obviously and it brings out more emotions to the readers because you feel like you have met the same people and you have been with the author in his journey and you have experienced it first hand though you are just sitting in your room reading. But that's what I like about it.

Okay, for those who do not know the story, here is the gist. In college, Morrie Schwartz was Mitch's psychology professor. But to him, he was more of a mentor and as the story progressed, they became almost like relatives. Often, Mitch calls him "coach" as Morrie had come to like it and so, he is called "player". After he graduates from college, he started to seek out a job. Many times he failed until the death of his uncle drove him to go back to school. Eventually, he got a master's degree in journalism and became a sports writer. He went from New York to Florida and finally landed on Detroit where he worked for the Detroit Free Press.

From there, his life started to turn around for the better. He quit renting and bought a house and a car. He married afterwards. All his life, he was chasing after his accomplishments which seemed to give him satisfaction and worth in his life. He thought he could control things when he was successful and so he tried. Up until one night when he hears his professor's name on the TV. Who is Morrie Schwartz? And it hit him.

That was the start of his turning a new leaf. His professor from then on showed him new perspectives and gave him advice on how to live life. By that time, Morrie was already terminally ill and has no more than a few years or even less to live. After realizing that his death was imminent, he started to live. He called everyone he knew, he started to share to people his story--he was simply making his life worth something not only to him but to others. His condition became known to many people and he started receiving letters from people all over.

Mitch got the opportunity to know his professor up-close. He was able to learn many things from him regarding relationships, life, death, marriage, values. He became like a child to Morrie. And the book became his 'final thesis' with his professor. Time came when Morrie was bed-ridden. Lifting his hand was already a heavy load for him to do. Through it all, Mitch was beside him, to help him. Usually they met on Tuesdays and every Tuesday, they would have a great time just talking to each other.

Morrie died peacefully as he always wanted. Nobody was there when he gasped his last breath but it was what he wished for--to have nobody hold on to the memory of knowing that you were there beside him, knowing that you were not able to do anything. He did not want anybody to feel pity for him or to feel guilty, he did not want anybody else to suffer. He just lived life as normally as possible even with the illness. And Mitch still felt the same way toward his professor when he was in college, and when he was almost going to die. Nothing changed except that he became even more cheerful that he got the chance to spend time with all the people before he died.

It is a really great story. For me, to be so engrossed in a book that I would not put it down says something about the book and the author. I read it in one sitting and every page of the book has something that can inspire you. You can feel the literature coming to life and you feel every bit as the author feels. And I believe, Mitch feels deeply for his professor. And I came to like him as well, and I realized more about my life than I have sitting in front of the computer. I have learned so much from this book and I bet everyone who has read it has been consumed and motivated by it.