On the off chance you've never seen them, I'd like to point you to the best book reviews/outlines on the whole internet - that would be here: http://sivers.org/book/
An excerpt from Derek's review of "Seeking Wisdom" -
Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does.
It took Noah 20 years to build an ark. And people said he was being silly because the skies were beautiful. And of course, the whole time, he looked stupid - until it started raining. You can spend a long time building an ark while everybody else is out there enjoying the sun.
I particularly like that one. You can look stupid building for a long time before things work out...
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. After "Titan" about Rockefeller's life, Chernow became my favorite biographer.
Washington: A Life is another masterpiece by him.
It's always good to go through the histories of founders of great nations, and this is no different. Of particular note is that Chernow is as thorough as ever, going through Washington's business dealings and carefully noting his dress, horseback riding style, and the routes he took when campaigning both militarily or touring as a political leader.
The book drags sometimes - Chernow's hyper-thorough, which is fantastic except when you want the pace to pick up - but some of the details are really fantastic. I got some great ideas on dress, presentation, ethics, communication, building intelligence networks, recruiting, endurance, and diplomacy from the book. Also, the ending of the book is probably the most interesting - seeing how Washington and Hamilton modeled the Federalist platform loosely on British Imperialism was amazingly insightful. The points about state debt, finance, and taxation were fascinating.
Enjoyed this one quite a lot and feeling much more intelligent about early American affairs.
Tomorrow for poem club, I will post about Rape Joke by Patricia Lockwood:
The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.
The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.
The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.
Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”
