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[There is an amusing moment in this serious subject: Booth is writing a letter and he suddenly asks his companion what year it is. "1864 or 1865?" His companion is beside himself: "You don't know what year it is?!" In truth, I think we've all had these sort of moments on occasion-be us Emperors, criminals masterminds, or ordinary nobodies. It's amusing, none the less.]

[People who quote Orwell should first read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language." Much of it is rather questionable, especially in regard to academic language-but the frightening commonality of resorting to opaque language as a misdirection for ruthlessness (what Orwell refers to as policies people are unwilling to defend on their own terms) can't help make one think of one's own attempted at justications.]

".. the bad doctor’s name was changed when Bob Justman cautioned Roddenberry that some viewers might snicker at a name that brought to mind some form of backend protection. Asgard became Adams." [Tee-hee]

'Bobby [Kennedy in apartheid South Africa]: “But suppose God is black. What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?”'

[Some of Voltaire's wit is seems positively modern]

'"Sire, how many plays do you have in France?" said Candide to the abbé, who replied: "Five or six thousand."

"That's a lot," replied Candide. "How many of them are good?"

"Fifteen or sixteen," said the other.

"That's a lot," said Martin.'

"Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”

[This is really fantastic so far. I’ve picked up a few tricks and tips that had the opportunity to use already. Most self-health books kind of get an ambivalent response from me but this kind of hits the mark perfectly (at least so far).

“CHAPTER XVIII.

WHICH GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED.”

[Ha!]

“Why” asked Foch, who dropped in one day [to partake in the dancing], “do the British have such sad faces and such cheerful bottoms?” [Many wonderful anecdotes. The same page has the Chinese legation invite the press to a lengthy dinner, but despite chatting “as dawn was breaking, the Chinese had still not explained the reason for the dinner.”]

“The first English biography of Salazar was not published until November 2009, a year after the first autobiography of Cheeta, the chimpanzee companion of Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan. Cheeta’s book was more widely reviewed and sold more copies.”

[David McCullough’s has a smooth, and easy writing style that somehow reminds calls to mind David McCullough the documentary narrator.]

‘These,’ he said slowly, ‘are indeed my Hills. Thus should a man abide, perched above the world, separated from delights, considering vast matters.’ [KIM has many memorable phrases, deserving a place in a book of quotations, but I’m finding the novel as a whole a bit of a slog.]

[Clementine] prevented him from wearing his unbecoming air commodore’s uniform for a Paris visit in May 1947: ‘To me, the air-force uniform except when worn by Air-Crews is rather bogus...I am proud of my plain Civilian Pig.’ [“Pig,” initially “Pug,” was Clementine’s pet name for Winston.]

The volte-face enabled Chamberlain to make his only recorded witticism against Churchill. He said it reminded him of ‘the story of the pious parrot which was bought to teach good language to the parrot which swore, but ended up by itself learning to swear. [In 2004, The Daily Mirror claimed that you can still visit Churchill’s parrot, but sadly the story isn’t true.]

[Lloyd George wrote mockingly to Churchill of his obsession with his new job as First Lord of the Admiralty: “You think we all live in the sea, and all of your thoughts are devoted to sea life, fishes, and other aquatic creatures. You forget that most of us live on land.”]

[Have you ever enjoyed a book but felt kind of guilty about it?]

‘[de Gaulle] had to be rude to the British to prove to French eyes that he was not a British puppet,’ Churchill observed. ‘He certainly carried out his policy with perseverance.’

[“]...my mother became blind from ceaseless weeping.[“]

[[Unlike many, I don’t have a problem with what DS9 did to the Mirror Universe, but the stories over-explain and justify things. “Glass Empires” has good reviews, but I think it makes Mirror-Spock look oddly like an idiot with his crazy “it works because it’s in the script” plan. The first story here wasn’t worth the 99 cents I paid, but the next one by the always dependable Peter David made up for it.]

[2/2 ...more of an issue reflecting society. While it is true that something close to segregation basically existed in society, and the laws and customs encouraged it, Anson used his position to encourage it. The author isn’t totally wrong about retroactively applying standards, but that’s more because it’s silly to condemn past peoples for not adopting philosophies that did not yet exist.]

[1/2 This is a good bio, but I have to take issue with s’thing. Cap Anson is not “retroactively pilloried” for his “refusal to play against...a black player” (this is an error, he did play black teams), but for establishing the color line (see Fleetwood Walker). Baseball historians debate precisely how much blame he deserve (Lawrence Hogan’s excellent book on the Negro Leagues tends view it as more...]

[Amusingly, it was once possible for a coach to barrel into the catcher to assist the runner, as long as both stood in foul territory. In 1914, there was an case in which Brooklyn coach Miller Huggins asked to look at the ball, only to allow the tossed ball to roll past him-thus allowing a run to score. A rule was inserted to prevent similar incidents.]

[If I stopped reading books, the first couple of chapters might have inspired me to stop. It had curious journalistic style that struck me as off. The ascribed unsourced quotes and emotions seem very questionable for a historical work. In fairness, this is fairly standard for memoirs. The book does get better, and the book is a fun read. References, though.]

He held an empty smeared glass in his hand. It looked as if somebody had been keeping goldfish in it.

Still, [Galveston] responded better then Vanport, Oregon, a city constructed to house workers for the World War II effort. It was briefly Oregon’s second largest city, with 50,000 people, until a broken dam wiped out all its homes in 1948. The citizens never bothered to rebuild it, which is probably why you never heard of Vanport, Oregon.

[There is a great quote by former Phillies GM Ed Wade on Curt Schilling, “Schilling is a horse every fifth day and a horse’s ass the other four.” The author, he (like myself) agrees with these sentiments, do not see this as reason for denying him his place in the Hall (nor do I).]

[Frightening:] The man most Americans wanted to see as President was auto magnate Henry Ford, who attracted almost twice the support of the second-place Harding [in a poll in 1923]. Ford’s party affiliation was never clear. Nor was he ever a serious candidate. [Imagine if they had our primary system?]

[When I saw Lord of the Rings, inwardly I accepted it was a really good movie, but I still couldn’t help but wish I was watching something else. I’m getting a similar feeling here. I’m just too dumb to get into into this fantasy-type stuff.]

“It was” remembered Bruce Herchensohn, “as though God had touched John Ford at the beginning of his life and said, ‘How would you like to be a very unique man-like no one else. However, you may scare some people.’ [...]”

“I have this theory,” said Roddy McDowell, “that certain combinations -Ford and Zanuck, Capra and Cohn, Wyler and Goldwyn-abrased each other in a very creative manner, like Michelangelo and Pope Julius. They were constantly criticizing each other, and there was conflict, but the end results were astonishing,”