Donna Herrick > Recent Status Updates

I don't know what to think about this, so please share your thoughts if you have read Wendell Berry, even if not this book.
This book is an homage to agrarian culture. And it is a condemnation of industrialization. His thesis is that industry is a paradigm that views everything as a resource for the individual to become wealthy - the earth, people, animals, the air and the water. Our catastrophes are the result

I usually do not provide progress reports on books, but this is such an important book that I had to crow about it immediately. Bittman tells us the truth about our European culture and how it has led us to out current state of global warming and vast inequality with simple, brutal, well researched honesty.

Representing the voices of all of those whose existence has shaped and formed the world in which we live provides an essential means of protection against the fascist myth. - Jason Stanley

I really recommend working through a daily meditation book with a study buddy. The ability to share ideas and memories builds a rich understanding and bond.

It feels good to remember Mr Obama's campaign.

Barack Obama is a very good story teller. I find though that my hands get tired holding such a heavy book.

Captivating writing, but I still don't recognize a plot. Lots of mysteries.

I am loving Safina's comparison of Sperm Whales with humans. It is revealing.

A tough read, I manage to do at most 50 pages per day, but well worth the read

In our times it is heartening to read of a racist who is a progressive, a jingoist who helped labor. It is all too easy to completely dismiss someone because we find one part of their behavior reprehensible

In High School I saw mentioned the names of Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Upton Sinclair, and of course I read "The Jungle", but a book about these progressive journalists ? Fantastic!

I really love the weaving in quotations of historical characters like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joseph Goebbels, and Helen Keller into this fictional narrative.

A quote from the book: "The outer catalyst for this inner figure may be the personal father, but the damage to the inner world is done by the psyche's Yahweh-like rage."

I am loving reading about Russia under the Tsar, contrasting a peasant with an aristocrat in the time at the brink of the Revolution.

Two of the characters are children of Vienna who experience the Anschluss of Austria and Nazi Germany. The story swirls around the children, Eichmann working to eliminate Jews, and women working to give sanctuary to jewish children from Germany/Austria in England.

So far this is as much an exploration of the psychology of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin as it is about the history that shapes our world. Currently I am reading about a worship service that took place aboard ship at the meeting of Churchill and FDR in 1941. It stated that FDR was religious but not pious. This got me to thinking about Jonathan Haidt's book, "The Righteous Mind".