Bob H > Recent Status Updates

Keynes finished his role in the British delegation at the 1919 Paris peace talks -- a major role -- disillusioned, not the least with market economies and austerity. He also had survived a bout with the flu pandemic there and at a relatively young age was developing his economic philosophy.

Keynes finished his role in the British delegation at the 1919 Paris peace talks -- a major role -- disillusioned, not the least with market economies and austerity. He also had survived a bout with the flu pandemic there and at a relatively young age was developing his economic philosophy.

It's interesting reading so far. There's an extended, if wide-ranging, preface that places Keynes in context; the preface centers on a 1922 conference in Genoa, after he had become famous, and when to his friends' surprise he was madly in love with a woman, whom he would marry. The first chapters are something of a biography of his adult life and associations at Cambridge and with the Bloomsbury set, pre-war.

Sensitively written account of her geriatrics career and a critique of geriatrics, US medicine generally and of how our society deals with aging. Written in a way that laypeople can understand, and empathize.

They've done considerable research from archaeological digs of work camps along the RR route, as well as from ship manifests and business records regarding the Chinese community, the immigrants, and their provisioning the railroad workers. The story of the harsh conditions working at Donner Summit is gripping.

This is the first railroad history that tells of the roughly 20,000 Chinese workers who built the Central Pacific RR. The author is a Stanford history professor who presided over the project to research these workers, using English and Chinese-language materials, both in the US and in China. It is a groundbreaking book and looks to be important -- and enthralling.

An interview from Library of America for this new expanded edition.

https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/14...

It requires some patience at first, a lot of exposition, and it helps if you have a nodding acquaintance with Jewish tradition and southern Russian geography. It appears to be a mix of alt-history, mysticism -- and a possible transgender story element.

Five mistresses of a stately English home over three tumultuous centuries -- and I mean "mistresses" both in terms of their building and enhancing Cliveden, and in their liaisons -- one of the few ways women could exert power. Book makes "Downton Abbey" look like "Keeping Up Appearances."

This appears to be a prequel to the #1, 2 and 3 Francis Bacon mysteries, which take him from wartime London to postwar Tangiers.

A nonfiction book about generations of families living on either side of what had been the 1949-1967 ceasefire line in Jerusalem, and then re-named Assael Street. It's a microcosm and reads, oddly enough, like a James Michener saga with its focus on the families there.

Good and well-plotted historical novel of winemaking in Bordeaux ca. 1898.