What are y'all reading now?

[William]

Currently...

http://www.simonsays.com/assets/isbn/0743565290/C_0743565290.jpg

Six Frigates
The Epic History of the Founding of the
U. S. Navy
http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall06/005847.htm

Waiting in the wings:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB208/safe_for_democracy_drop2.jpg

Safe Democracy:
The Secret Wars of the CIA

http://www.ivanrdee.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=^DB/IRD/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=1566635748

[znfdl]

I just finished Graham Obree's book, The Flying Sctosman and a history of suergery. Currently reading a spy thriller.

Obree's book is a good light read and gives insight to the demons that he fought due to his pshcyological instabilities.

[cs124]

The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery.

I'm really struggling to reconcile the author's view of how much damage my relatively frugal lifestyle does to the planet.

[Mud]

Mom lives with us and has a lot of mystery books and subscribed to more. I read too many Patterson's, Tannenbaum's, etc etc etc etc. These books make Dirty Harry movies look tame.

These books combined with the "Blind Swordsman" movies on Saturday morning have dampened any taste for anything more than Harry Potter for which I am signed up to receive when it comes out.

.

[Blastinbob]

.

[Blastinbob]

My condition only allows me to read forum posts.

[Russell]

The Making of a Chef - Michael Ruhlman

[nm87710]

May issue of Playboy - I swear I only buy it for the great artiticles :D

[gt6267a]

a friend just game me, The pleasure of finding things out: The best short works of Richard Feynman. I have not started but he recommended the book so highly and everything he has recommended has been great, so i will post it.

my other current read is peter the great by massie. old school fun.

[93legendti]

These 3 are on my night stand:

The Great Escape - Kati Marton
Exodus - Leon Uris
By Blood and Fire- Thurston Clarke

[Dave B]

May issue of Playboy - I swear I only buy it for the great artiticles :D


The one on Steve Nash rocked! He is so much cooler then people think....oh wait you were joking!



I am reading Harry potter #6, so that I will be refreshed for #7 in July.

I am also reading Hatchet, Maniac Magee, and 5th grade research papers!

[oldguy00]

Anything by Michael Crichton. Anyone read his newer book "Next"??
If you've never read his book "Travels", I highly recommend it.

[William]

Anything by Michael Crichton. Anyone read his newer book "Next"??
If you've never read his book "Travels", I highly recommend it.

My wife and I both like to read MC books. Though, we both feel the same in that the endings for a number of his works seem a little weak. Kind of like he does a great amount of research for his novels, does a great job of constructing the beginning and the body, then suddenly realizes: "Oh yeah, I better end this".





William

[rsl]

I just finished Yann Martel's "Life of Pi." I'm also reading "Children of Sisyphus" by Orlando Patterson and "The sociological tradition" by Roger Nisbet.

[spiderman]

mike yaconelli's - messy spirituality
walt whitmans's - leaves of grass

[AMH]

Well, I was going to make my first post an answer to the question of how the "newbies" decided to take up cycling but this might be a good opportunity to get opinions from more erudite readers.

I am currently reading "Gideon's Spies" the secret history of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas with a Reginald Hill novel and the new Einstein bio on the table. I have been surprised by some of the revelations (presuming a level of accuaracy exists) regarding Israel and the Mossad's approach to relations with the US.

While I followed the Pollard fiasco at the time, I was unaware that Mossad shared this intelligence with the Russians allowing them to roll up some of our spy networks. (I was also unaware they recorded Clinton's phone calls to Lewinsky) Disappointed to learn they had the truck under surveillance that hit the Marine barracks in Lebanon but didn't warn us to "teach us a lesson." There are other explosive type revelations such as the alleged execution of media magnate Robert Maxwell.

[JohnS]

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman---an oldie but a goodie about the start of WWI. There aren't too many good female military historians, but she's one.

[bozman]

Current: American Gospel - Jon Meacham
Up next: The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina - Frank Rich

[JohnS]

I am currently reading "Gideon's Spies" the secret history of the Mossad by Gordon Thomas with a Reginald Hill novel and the new Einstein bio on the table. I have been surprised by some of the revelations (presuming a level of accuaracy exists) regarding Israel and the Mossad's approach to relations with the US.

While I followed the Pollard fiasco at the time, I was unaware that Mossad shared this intelligence with the Russians allowing them to roll up some of our spy networks. (I was also unaware they recorded Clinton's phone calls to Lewinsky) Disappointed to learn they had the truck under surveillance that hit the Marine barracks in Lebanon but didn't warn us to "teach us a lesson." There are other explosive type revelations such as the alleged execution of media magnate Robert Maxwell.
While I wasn't aware of all of this, it doesn't surprise me in the least. Remember, Israel is a sovereign nation whose goals are not always the same as ours. It is not the 51st state. Pre-1967, their main military suppliers were the UK and France. When they decided not to sell Israel any more military hardware, the Israelis were stuck. They decided then that they would always have alternate sources. That's why they kept open backchannel communications with South Africe and Iran, among others. With our turmoils and waffling now on the Mideast issues, I wouldn't be surprised if they are still spying on us, especially with the large influx of stubborn ex-Russian Jews that have emigrated.

[ClutchCargo]

Current: Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

Up Next: The March, by E.L. Doctorow

[davids]

Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy:

All the Pretty Horses

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0679744398.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The Crossing

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/07/ec/dfd29833e7a09387d9511110.L.jpg

Cities of the Plain

http://www.booksamillion.com/bam/covers/0/67/974/719/0679747192.jpg

...I'd say I'm about halfway through now.

[TMB]

I just finished re-reading a book called "Too Secret, Too Long" a non-fiction account of the MI5 and MI6 spy scandals, especially focussing on Philby, Burgess, McLean, Blunt and the mysterious "fifth man".

Now reading ( just pulled it off the shelf for a re-read) "Kelly". A biography of a fellow named Sean Kelly who rode a bike from time to time. Written probably 15 years ago by David Walsh.

[t. swartz]

Capone: The Life and World...(Kobler); next up: Boyd: The Fighter Pilot...(Coram), then The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility (Moore), followed by RFK: A Candid Biography (Heymann). In between: any/all 'net sites regarding Majestic 12, Disclosure Project, Zero Point Energy, Element 115.

[72gmc]

My most recent reads were "The Price of Power"--Seymour Hersh's account of Kissinger in the Nixon White House--and a book of Truman Capote's short stories.

Lately I'm leafing through New Yorkers and National G's and trying to decide on my next book.

[Ozz]

Anything by Michael Crichton. Anyone read his newer book "Next"??
If you've never read his book "Travels", I highly recommend it.
I like Crichton also...I read "Next" a couple months ago....received for Xmas. It's good / interesting / different. Should make a good movie.

I found "State of Fear" very interesting.....

Most nights I am limited to Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry....

[Marron]

The Nightmare Years (Shirer)
Flashman and the Redskins (MacDonald Fraser)
Native Seattle (Thrush)

[gdw]

Just finished Flashman and the Redskins, George MacDonald Fraser, and started Evan S. Connell's, Son of the Morning Star : Custer and the Little Big Horn.

[Lincoln]

Three Cups of Tea.

So far, I highly recommend it.

[goonster]

Current:

http://www.fixins.com/blogtest/uploaded_images/adidasVSpuma_thebook-754036.JPG

Mildly interesting.

Next:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/2/2c/200px-Cormac_McCarthy_NoCountryForOldMen.jpg

Cormac McCarthy is Teh Man.

[BoulderGeek]

"The Nasty Bits," Anthony Bourdain

"French Revolutions," Tim Moore

Lonely Planet Guide to France

Newsweek, Playboy, Outside

[jeffg]

Saving the World - Julia Alvarez

Das Recht der Gesellschaft - Niklas Luhmann

[aLexis]

The Omnivore's Dilemma

[Marron]

I'm suprised no one mentioned Cormac McCarthy's new one. Grim, grim, grim but good, good, good.

[rounder]

The Omnivore's Dilemma

read that...i thought it was a lot like y. berra's book...when you come to the fork in the road...take it

[39cross]

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. A fascinating story of how Islamic terrorism came into being, and of course the progression of events leading to 9/11. Great stuff. I wonder if the Prez ever heard of this book? Or is he too busy reading biographies of Geo. Washington (or as he refers to him, "1").

[t. swartz]

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. A fascinating story of how Islamic terrorism came into being, and of course the progression of events leading to 9/11. Great stuff. I wonder if the Prez ever heard of this book? Or is he too busy reading biographies of Geo. Washington (or as he refers to him, "1").
naw-he's too busy doing damage control for karl rove, gonzo, richard c., etc.

[vaxn8r]

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

True story about the building of one of the Chicago Columbia Exposition in 1892 and the famous names behind the scenes foretelling their later works. Burnam, the chief architect of the fair also invented the technology which enabled sky scrapers, especially in Chicago which is a city built on sand and mud! It's amazing to ponder what came of that exposition: the Ferris wheel (the US response to the Eiffel tower from the Paris exposition in 1888), AC electric power on a mass scale, massive water purification systems (until then most cities pulled water directly out of the the same river they dumped their sewage), air conditioning (sort of), Shredded wheat, Cracker Jack, Juicy Fruit. The original Ferris wheel was 264 feet tall with 36 cars that carried 60 of people each. 2 -1000 hp engines powered it. No one thought it could withstand the forces let alone the first big windstorm. It did.

At the same time it tells the story of Herman Mudgett aka HH Holmes, one of the US' most deadly serial killers, who lured mostly women into his death trap hotel, with rooms that were literally gas chambers and an incinerator in the basement to clean up the mess. He killed dozens, if not more, no one knows. But he did it in conjunction with the huge draw that was one of the greatest world expositions.

[Erik.Lazdins]

Three Cups of Tea.

So far, I highly recommend it.

I picked the book up Saturday and have about 10 pages left. A very inspiring and moving book.

[BURCH]

"The Dangerous Book for Boys"

You will learn a bunch of stuff that you have wondered about at one point in your life. More of a reference or coffee table book, but worth a look.

[davids]

"Coming Into the Country" by John McPhee

http://www.johnmcphee.com/images/Coming-PB.jpg

I'm starting a two-year program surveying the history of Jewish though, beginning in October. I think my reading is going to be a bit monomaniacal for a while...

http://www.qrz.com/uploads/post-7-71517-Monty_Python_Spanish_Inquisition.jpg

[tab123]

Finished in the last few weeks:

An English Murder by Cyril Hare (classic country house mystery by a wonderful, not-so-well known writer from the 40s/50s)

I Claudius by Robert Graves (outstanding historical fiction; a real page turner)

A Spy by Nature by Charles Cumming (a real disappointment; what a lousy incompetent anti-hero)

Right now:

The Annotated Pride and Prejudice (I'm a nerd)

Up next:

Black Bodies and Quantum Cats (a guide to physics)

Bleak House (nothing like 19th Century literature during the fall)

Perhaps re-reading Patrick O'Brian

[jthurow]

I just finished "The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring (http://www.richardpreston.net/books/wt.html)," which I really enjoyed. If you're afraid of heights, you might not like it. If you look close at the image, you can see a couple of people climbing the redwood.

I have a friend that loves Cormac McCarthy suggested I read "Blood Meridian." I muddled my way through that thing waiting for something to happen... and it never did. I think the most succinct way to put it would be that I enjoyed the writing but not the story. It was so dark that I haven't gotten the courage up to try another one.

http://www.richardpreston.net/books/art/wt_jacketLg.jpg

jimi

[Tom]

Central Asia theme right now, for obvious reasons...

Recently finished: "Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus" Robert D. Kaplan. Pretty good.

Right now, "The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia" Peter Hopkirk. Very interesting.

JohnS: Have you read "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia", Rebecca West? Truly a remarkable account and perspective on a lot of things, especially the start of the first world war.

[Richard]

Finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy -- Everything by him is somewhat dark. This is true to form. His books are somewhat relentless and he seems to have very limited faith in humanity. His heroes are flawed and often times the characters with the most defined and consistent codes are the harbingers of the worst acts. This book, relentless in its post apocolyptic vision did provide some sense of relief, albeit brief, in its ending.

Finishing "Absurdistan" by Gary Shteyngart -- A farcical look at post Soviet Russia and its satellites, that captures some the folly and silliness of Americas contracting for its defense services.

[Neves]

I'm not a huge book reader, but i really enjoy Jack Whyte. In addition to that I'm a audible.com slut. Curse the friend who turn me on to this site. I have pretty much given up music at work for books.

[Richard]

If you like audo books, listen to Frank McCourt -- Angela's Ashes, Tis, or Teacher Man. He reads them and adding his inflection and accent to these books is fantastic.

[William]

Just started...

http://www.kingstone.com.tw/english/images/Product/006/0061133914.jpg

[Dekonick]

There is a wocket in my pocket

Hungry monsters

and for me - finishing another Aubrey novel - The Ionian Mission....

but more Suess than anything else of late...

[Neves]

Thanks Richard

I added Teachers Man to my list. It's going to be a while, right now I'm knee deep in the Dune series.

[BarryG]

If'n you like crime drama and you're a bit of an Eirophile to boot, Ken Bruen (http://kenbruen.com) is THE man.

[Kevan]

by Khaled Hosseini, then you'll have to try his "A Thousand Splendid Suns".

My father just returned to me, read, my present to him, "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Now it's my turn.

[Sandy]

by Khaled Hosseini, then you'll have to try his "A Thousand Splendid Suns".

My father just returned to me, read, my present to him, "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Now it's my turn.


You read? Since when?? :rolleyes: :)


Your Buddy

[JohnS]

You read? Since when?? :rolleyes: :)


Your Buddy
Come on Sandy, don't act like you don't know. Everyone knows that his favorite characters are **** and Jane... :p

[Elmer]

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/41u+w0dSocL.jpg

[Tom Kellogg]

Bill Strickland
Difficult to read at times, but a father who rides will connect wiith this one.

[72gmc]

Currently in a book funk. Re-reading my Pogo comics anthology by default.

My next book may be Gods and Generals. Wild Trees also looks good; I like reading Preston despite the subjects he chooses.

Audio books: get Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Great Glass Elevator, both read by Eric Idle. Very fun to listen to with your kids.

[Fixed]

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Physics-David-Cassidy/dp/0387987568
http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Cosmos-Transformed-Understanding-Discoveries/dp/0393327000/ref=sr_1_5/103-2350897-2574203?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188241022&sr=8-5
fun stuff bro imho

[znfdl]

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

[davids]

William reminded me - I got this for my birthday:

http://www.kimfowley.com/images/books/pleasekillme.jpg

...so that's next on my list.

I've heard great things about "A Thousand Splendid Suns", and really enjoyed "The Kite Runner", so maybe I'll try squeezing that in, too.

[taz-t]

Paris, Paris Journey into the City of Light - David Downie

[Fat Robert]

ted kooser -- delights and shadows
galway kinnell -- new selected poems
jane kenyon -- otherwise
charles simic -- walking the black cat

that and, you know, the usual -- hustler, oui, club....

[Kevan]

Come on Sandy, don't act like you don't know. Everyone knows that his favorite characters are **** and Jane... :p

Not that it's any of your business you two, but they're picture books if you need to know. BIG picture books. And sometimes I use my crayons on them too. So there!

[michael white]

ted kooser -- delights and shadows
galway kinnell -- new selected poems
jane kenyon -- otherwise
charles simic -- walking the black cat

that and, you know, the usual -- hustler, oui, club....


Hey Robert:
if you like poetry, as you obviously do, please consider the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Re-entry-Poems-Vassar-Miller-Poetry/dp/1574412116/ref=sr_1_1/103-0731992-0921406?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188246275&sr=1-1

best,
mw

[bfd]

Bill Walsh - Finding the Winning Edge. Although he was one of the greatest football coaches ever, its not just about football. Great info on developing an organization and dealing with highly competitive adversaries.

The only downside is since his passing, copies of the book have gone through the roof. My copy is just a poor library version, sigh....

[jerk]

"over 50" in the men's room at work, a bottle of head and shoulders shampoo in my bathroom at home, a bicisport from january 2001 in the garage, the 1986 edition of the great soviet encyclopedia letter "s" in my living room, the latest new yorker in my bed room and "transforming the heurmeneutic context" when i'm in the computer/dining room thing.

jerk

[jerk]

ted kooser -- delights and shadows
galway kinnell -- new selected poems
jane kenyon -- otherwise
charles simic -- walking the black cat

that and, you know, the usual -- hustler, oui, club....


except for the usual you've really got some fruckign bad taste.

jerk

[Michael Maddox]

An abstract algebra textbook, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens, High-Performance Cycling by Asker E. Jeukendrup, and the USCF Level 3 Coaching Handbook.

[Michael Maddox]

except for the usual you've really got some fruckign bad taste.

jerk

Even so, pr0n's better on teh Intarwebs.

[PacNW2Ford]

blink - Malcolm Gladwell
Deep Survival - Laurence Gonzales
Lessons Learned on Bishop Street - Wesley T. Park
2007 Independent Fabrication Product Catalog

The first three are thought provoking, the fourth is a love story

[Fat Robert]

except for the usual you've really got some fruckign bad taste.

jerk

i'm on the fence about kooser

the rest i'll take over the cats who do more with language head-games than emotional insight. we've been through the whole emotion is a construct argument before, and I'm on the foolishly old school side.

i dig my APR each month, but a bunch of them are just very talented headfruckers imho, yo.

alan dugan is like, you know, the ferreti of american poetry. bad *** old man.

[Hardlyrob]

As usual, I've got three or four things going at once that have nothing at all to do with each other:

Just finished The Zen of Fish - all about sushi, and sushi restaurants - a really good read.

Currently:

The Regan Diaries
Queen Isabella - about Isabella and Edward II in 14th century England - wild times...no really, she's raising an army in France to depose the king
The Black Swan

Cheers!

R

[Marron]

Value Sweep (interesting book on real options and valuation), the Penguin's lives bios of Joseph Smith and Dante (yes simultaneously!) and just finished A Thousand Splendid Sons.

[michael white]

we've been through the whole emotion is a construct argument before, and I'm on the foolishly old school side.

alan dugan is like, you know, the ferreti of american poetry. bad *** old man.

yeah, Poems Seven was a truly memorable event. So much of the other stuff just washes thru my head. Old school for me too.

[dleroy]

Readers who have cited McCarthy might also want to look at the novels of Jim Harrison. His latest, Returning to Earth: A Novel, is now out in paper. Although I haven't read it yet I've liked everthing else by him I have read.

Recently my reading has included:

Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
The Complete Poetry (Cesar Vallejo)
The Word That Causes Death's Defeat (Anna Akhmatova)

[hoss]

Started reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Currently on book three: Children of Dune.

[Tailwinds]

The Literary Cyclist

Trail Guide to the Body

American Transcendentalism

[bozman]

Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel - Joe Hill
Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of WWII's Greatest Rescue Mission - Hampton Sides

[Skrawny]

Nasty Bits (http://www.amazon.com/Nasty-Bits-Collected-Varietal-Usable/dp/1596913606/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2932231-0680947?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188408526&sr=8-1) by Anthony Bordain. He wrote Kitchen Confidential. Any who like his show "No Reservations" would like this. It is a collection of short essays by Bordain, so it doesn't require much commitment.

-s

PS-my browser is having issues and I cannot read this whole thread, so if someone else has recommended this, I'm sorry.

[zeroking17]

I'm currently reading The Illustrated Guide to Edible Wild Plants and Goldfrank's Toxicologic Emergencies.

[Bobbo]

Ten Points - Bill Strickland
Difficult to read at times, but a father who rides will connect wiith this one.


Agreed. As will any amateur racer struggling to reach the next level (and aren't we all?)

Best description of what the essence of racing a bike is I have ever read. Highly recommended. The personal stuff is horrifically fascinating; a triumph of the human spirit.

[Dave B]

I am reading IEP's...Parent notes....."Mr. Bradley you rock!" notes....and answers to standardized test question prep work.

On a personal front if/when I make it through the week my eyes are focused on a 2 year old and her books on the Back Yardigans or Dora.


God I hate Dora, she is so bosy!

[William]

http://www.wle.com/media/BUP151.jpg

I’m currently reading “The Secret History of The Sword” by Christoph Ambrger.

“My sword arm veers to the right during the first moulinet, leaving the left side of my head open and setting the stage for an even less-covered low quarte. My mistake is punished immediately: Within a second, two horizontal quartes hammer into my left temple, a bit more than an inch apart. Oddly detached, I feel the double tap of the blade...Something cold runs down my face. I can taste blood. My own blood...”
The web site: http://www.swordhistory.com/

A great read and look into European/western blade and empty hand combat. Most of which was long forgotten after the advent of firearms.


What is everybody reading right now?



William

[keno]

The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making - Scott Plous
Protect and Defend - Vince Flynn
Terrorist - John Updike
Horse Heaven - Jane Smiley
John Adams - David McCullough

Typically, I have five to 10 working.

keno

[ti_boi]

The Buttress of Windsor.

[Ray]

Typically, I have five to 10 working.

You sound like a pretty heavy reader. Have you tried any of the e-books, like Sony's or Kindle?

If so, any impressions?

-Ray

[Fixed]

The Audacity of Hope: by Obama
Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrig
The 9 Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Jeffrey Toobin




cheers

[davids]

For a class I'm taking:

"Early Judaism - Religious Worlds of the First Judaic Millenium", Martin S. Jaffee
and a variety of articles about, and from, Mishnah, Midrash and Talmud.
For pleasure:

"Constantine's Sword - The Church and the Jews" - James Carroll
Last novel:

"The Yiddish Policemen's Union" - Michael Chabon
...as you can see, I've got a sort of theme going on. ;)

[don'TreadOnMe]

"The Rider" by Tim Krabbe

[jemoryl]

I'm finding it hard to find fiction that stands up to the bizarro reality that we are currently experiencing, so mostly non-fiction:

Fall of the House of Bush, Craig Unger (very good)
Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Eric Weitz (okay, writing somewhat pedestrian)
Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang

[jmewkill]

Island of the Lost
China Study
An Italian Education
1491
Biscuit Visits the Big City - the only one I read out aloud

[jthurow]

Currently... "Devil in the White City (http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/devilinthewhitecity/home.html)" by Eric Larson. Very engrossing..

Previously... "The Road (http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/cormacmccarthy/)" by Cormac McCarthy. Not quite as terrifying as "No Country for Old Men" but still pretty terrifying... Both great books. I looked forward to turning the pages of both to see what would happen next. But I didn't have anything close to that feeling with The other McCarthy book I've read "Blood Meridian."

Up next is "From Lance to Landis (http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345503589)"... If I can stomach it.

I seem to be enjoying the Random House books lately...

jimi

[MarleyMon]

Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird - Bruce Barcott.
Really great read (first 50 pages, anyway) about a dam in Belize that threatens to destroy the habitat of the last 200 Scarlet Macaws in the country. 30 years ago I managed a branch of a local chain of liquor stores. The owner had a collection of Macaws and parrots that were the store's symbol. I got to spend time w/ Goldy, a Blue & Gold Macaw. What a treat, she was such a beauty, and quite a talker.

Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash by Elizabeth Royte
She wrote the review of the Last Flight of the Scarley Macaw, so I got her book while I waited for that. She follows the trash stream from her Boerum Hill, Brooklyn home to the landfills of Staten Island, NJ and Penns. Wow, its quite a story. As Kermit said - "It ain't easy being Green".

After watching "Deadwood" on DVD I got a book called The Hearsts: An American Dynasty by Judith Robinson. It uses a lot of primary source family letters to tell the story of George (played by Gerald McRainey in the show), wife Phoebe and son William Randolph Hearst. This kind of history will be impossible to write about our times w/o the written correspondence that these folks exchanged.

I also recently read The Drama of the Gifted Child, the book swoop had recommended acouple times. Psychology book about early childhood roots of emotional disturbance in adults.

All from our fabulous new public library.

[FATBOY]

I am about to start House of Meetings by Martin Amis. His books London Fields and The Information busted me out of a book slump a few years back so I am looking forward to this one.

I seem to re-read random chapters of Catch-22 and The Gread Shark Hunt when the sleeping thing is not working.

[chrisroph]

The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, a deeper than normal look at climate change from a scientist's perspective.

The Rider by Tim Krabbe, a fantastic look inside the mind of a Dutch amateur cyclist throughout a difficult mountainous road race. It says more about our sport than any other cycling book i've ever read.

"When Geldermans told me that Anquetil always moved his water bottle to his back pocket during climbs, so his bike would be lighter, i began paying attention. I noticed that in all the old pictures of Anquetil climbing, his bidon is always in its holder. That's straining at gnats. Geldermans' story strikes to the soul of the rider, and is therefore true.

Those pictures are inaccurate."

[93legendti]

Last 2 nights: "The Little Engine That Could", and "Harold and His Purple Crayon".

This morning: "The Battle for Jerusalem, June 5-7, 1967".

[jimp1234]

Re-reading "John Adams" to accompany the HBO serires. The big coffee table book "Paris-Roubaix Journey thru Hell". And kindof a fun discovery the "Travis McGee" detective novels by John D. MacDonald, got 7 or 8 left.

-Jim

[taz-t]

"Hayduke Lives!" - Edward Abbey.

Had to fly to Seattle to find a copy. (Elliott Bay Book Company - thanks Julia!)

Hard to find anything in Atlanta if it hasn't been featured on Oprah's book club.

- taz

[RThompson]

Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne.

[William]

"Hayduke Lives!" - Edward Abbey.

Had to fly to Seattle to find a copy. (Elliott Bay Book Company - thanks Julia!)

Hard to find anything in Atlanta if it hasn't been featured on Oprah's book club.

- taz

FYI....

Powells Books in Portland Oregon. Biggest and best bookstore on the planet...atmo. :)

http://www.powells.com/

http://www.powells.com/s3?kw=&title=&author=edward+abbey&publisher=&section=&class=0&binding=0&sort=by_relevance&location=0&received_date=0&perpage=25





William

[Bruce K]

I just finished "Wicked" much darker and more political than the Braodway musical which we thoroughly enjoyed.

BK

[julia]

"Hayduke Lives!" - Edward Abbey.

Had to fly to Seattle to find a copy. (Elliott Bay Book Company - thanks Julia!)

Hard to find anything in Atlanta if it hasn't been featured on Oprah's book club.

- taz

Cool, taz-t! Glad you found it. One of my favorite places in this city for - oh, um, geez I guess it's 18 years now. Yikes.

I loved Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire". Bought my copy at the Park Service Ranger center at the entrance to Dinosaur National Park in Utah and started reading it while I was there, in the landscape he's writing about. Pungent stuff, old Abbey. He wants you to ride your bike, walk, or better, crawl through the desert (!) in order to appreciate the subtleties. And torch billboards while you're at it.

[rsl]

I'm reading:

"Human Rights in Theory and Practice" and "What is the What"

[Ray]

Pungent stuff, old Abbey. He wants you to ride your bike, walk, or better, crawl through the desert (!) in order to appreciate the subtleties. And torch billboards while you're at it.
I spent a spring break in college camping and hiking in the San Juans. Ended up getting the flu and was more or less stuck in a tent on Lopez Island until I had a ride back from the ferry in Anacortes at the end of the week. I only had one book - the Monkey Wrench Gang. Read it about five times, with nothing else to do and too sick to leave the tent. Once I got back to school and felt better, I got a couple of friends together (one of them something of an explosives expert) and committed the only act of eco-terrorism I've ever pulled together. Blew up a billboard near beautiful Mud Bay, just outside of Olympia. Made the papers and we never got caught. I'm hoping the statute of limitations have run out - this was more than 30 years ago. Just cost 'em a few dollars, the thing was back up within a couple of weeks.

I decided Glen Canyon Dam was a little out of my league.

-Ray

[julia]

I spent a spring break in college camping and hiking in the San Juans. Ended up getting the flu and was more or less stuck in a tent on Lopez Island until I had a ride back from the ferry in Anacortes at the end of the week. I only had one book - the Monkey Wrench Gang. Read it about five times, with nothing else to do and too sick to leave the tent. Once I got back to school and felt better, I got a couple of friends together (one of them something of an explosives expert) and committed the only act of eco-terrorism I've ever pulled together. Blew up a billboard near beautiful Mud Bay, just outside of Olympia. Made the papers and we never got caught. I'm hoping the statute of limitations have run out - this was more than 30 years ago. Just cost 'em a few dollars, the thing was back up within a couple of weeks.

I decided Glen Canyon Dam was a little out of my league.

-Ray

Dang, Ray, you radical! Bet it was fun too. . .

[Louis]

Actually, I think DB Cooper blew up that billboard...

[72gmc]

1. "The Confusion" by Neal Stephenson. My geekier friends can now include me in their Jack Shaftoe references.

2. Some book on sibling rivalry my wife has mandated. Clearly I'm taking it to heart.

3. "The Nightingale's Song" by Robert Timberg. Recommended here, and it's a very good read unless you are Oliver North.

[Ray]

Dang, Ray, you radical! Bet it was fun too. . .
Nah, scared the ***** outa me. That's what let me know I wasn't cut out for a life of crime. Or activism. (Kinda like breaking even on Microsoft let me know I wasn't cut out for the stock market). We got everything set up, lit the fuse, drove about a mile away, hadn't heard anything. Stopped the car and got out. Waited, waited, just about to give up and go back. Then BOOOOM! We were idiots, all dressed in black so nobody would see us in the dark. But if a cop had stopped us, we looked just a wee bit more than a tad suspicious.

Straight and narrow pretty much ever since.

-Ray

[Louis]

Straight and narrow pretty much ever since.

... until they waterboard you to get the names of your co-conspirators. Then you'll 'fess up to all sorts of things. Need to crack that ELF cell.

[Ray]

... until they waterboard you to get the names of your co-conspirators. Then you'll 'fess up to all sorts of things. Need to crack that ELF cell.
The beauty part is I don't even REMEMBER their names. I remember one of the guys and can even pull up his first name. But I couldn't even tell you who the third guy was, let alone his name. They can torture me all they want - I'll never tell. Because I can't. I'll just claim we arrived and left under a hail of sniper fire - yeah, they'll believe that.

-Ray

[Elefantino]

My current required Liberal reading. It's a fascinating read.

[shinomaster]

Suzuki Goro is the Dario Pegoretti of shino potters.

[rounder]

Eric Clapton's autobigraphy. I don't read many books but the next ones will be On Walden Pond and On the Road.

[KeithS]

I am looking for suggestions for a new book now.

Read my first Steve Berry - The Venetian Betrayel
A friend gave me a couple of his older works, The Amber Room and The Templar Legacy, got read on spring break on the beach (between rides) on Marco island.
World Without End by Ken Follett - Sequel to but not as good as Pillars of the Earth but still a good read.
David Baldacci's latest - Stone Cold

Still on local (St. Paul) author jag:
Gary Keillors - Pontoon - not his best, but as an adherent to the cult of Lake Wobegon - still fun.
Latest John Sanford - Dark of the Moon - not as gory as the Prey series, he writes good cops and bad guy shoot 'em ups.
And if you like John Sanford, check out William Kent Krueger. Another on the same genre just a little less gory. His latest Thunder Bay, very good read.
Vince Flynn - Protect and Defend - he just gets better

Speaking of trashy spy novels, no new Lee Child until June 3rd. Jack Reacher is one tough SOB.

[shinomaster]

If you like the Bourne films the books are so much better. Way better. Read the Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum imho.

[WadePatton]

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted, T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II.
--highly recommended--

The 80/10/10 Diet, Dr. Douglas N. Graham.
--raw veganism with performance in mind. :banana:

FTR, I just ate some venison...not as much as I used too. :D

[Lazy Bill]

Still on local (St. Paul) author jag:
Gary Keillors - Pontoon - not his best, but as an adherent to the cult of Lake Wobegon - still fun.

I found the climax hilarious - I laughed out loud for 20 pages.

[merckx]

"The Myth of Sisyphus", an essay by Albert Camus. I've read it about, oh, a hnndred times, but it digs a little deeper after each revolution.

[Bruce K]

I just finished Bobke II now it's on to the biography of Major Taylor.

BK

[djg]

Just finished Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart.

[97CSI]

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States". Suggested reading for all. James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" is next.

[DarrenCT]

new york times.

anyone else?

[catulle]

It's useless, I know. I'm just punishing meself, atmomo.

[Grant McLean]

just got this from a friend.

-g

[false_Aest]

I'm battling through Proust--Swann's Way. But I keep falling asleep during the first 7 pages.

[Bruce K]

That's the one.

I'll race you to see who finishes first.

Kind of an appropriate challenge don't you think?

BK

[Zimmy]

this

[Russell]

nm

[jthurow]

just got this from a friend.

-gGrant, I'd love to hear a book report?

jimi

[shinomaster]

just got this from a friend.

-g

How is it? I saw that at my lbs (local book shop.) The Boston Globe did a magazine special in their Sunday paper a few few years back. I saved it.

[14max]

*

[DukeHorn]

Six Frigates was a great read.

I'm currently reading The Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Club Dumas and Fencing Master).

[Bruce K]

I'm now about 1/4 through Major.

It reads very smoothly and it is obvious the author did huge amounts of research to put this tory together as factually and with as much relavent detail as possible.

It is also clear that the author has a real feel for the country during that era and the bicycle's part in it.

More later.

BK

[Acotts]

nm

I just finished A Man Without a Country...boy was Kurt a grouch in the end.

I am currently reading the Autobiography of Malcom X. I kinda just picked it up and it is a fantastic book. I cant say I agree with all his politics...but Brother Minister was certainly an amazing dude. It is a fantstic story and offers a lot of insight into the Harlem-Boston Negro culture back in the 50's.

That dude was tough.

-A

[shoe]

nothing now but last read was last of the blue water hunters..about spearfishing off the coast of california..pulls you in and carries ya through..that is if you find that sort of thing of any interest...dave

[TimD]

The Serotta board, obviously :)

[Fixed]

robert millar book it's very scottish
cheers

[don'TreadOnMe]

Need for the Bike
Paul Fournel

[William]

http://blog.kir.com/archives/Face%20of%20Battle2.jpg

The Face of Battle is a 1976 non-fiction book on military history by the English military historian John Keegan. It deals with the structure of warfare in three time periods - medieval Europe, the Napoleonic Era and World War I - by analyzing three battles - Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. All three of these battles involved British soldiers.
The work was groundbreaking in that it does not examine the battles from only the generals' perspectives nor simply accumulate quotes from ordinary soldiers. Instead, it focuses on the practical mechanics of battle from the soldiers perspective and critically examines popular myths about warfare. For instance, Keegan disputes the effectiveness of cavalry charges in even the Middle Ages. At Agincourt, the lightly armored archers dug stakes into the ground to impede horses, while heavy infantry who stood their ground had little to fear from cavalry.
Focusing on the mechanics of battle, Keegan discusses troop spacing, the effectiveness of weapons and formations, and other measures of tactical importance. He also examines on the experience of the individual soldier of the time.

[Russell]

Don't read at night....

[Frank Draper]

The Soul's Code by James Hillman. If you are into Jungian Psychology and/or spirituality.

[AgilisMerlin]

http://www.jonathanstrange.com/copy.asp?s=6&id=6

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell | The Ladies of Grace Adieu






Praise for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years. It's funny, moving, scary, otherworldly, practical and magical, a journey through light and shadow — a delight to read, both for the elegant and precise use of words, which Ms Clarke deploys as wisely and dangerously as Wellington once deployed his troops, and for the vast sweep of the story, as tangled and twisting as old London streets or dark English woods. It is a huge book, filled with people it is a delight to meet, and incidents and places one wishes to revisit, which is, from beginning to end, a perfect pleasure. Closing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell after 800 pages my only regret was that it wasn't twice the length.' NEIL GAIMAN




‘I found it absolutely compelling. The narrative drive is irresistible and I could not stop reading until I had finished it. The narrator's tone is beautifully judged. It's full of wonderfully deadpan humour and its reticence leaves the reader to make up his or her mind about the characters. I loved all the invented scholarship and was fascinated by the mixture of historical realism and utterly fantastic events. I almost began to believe that there really was a tradition of "English magic" that I had not heard about. The author captures the period and its literary conventions with complete conviction. And a large part of the fun is seeing how an early nineteenth century novel copes with the impact of magic. It's an astonishing achievement. I can't think of anything that is remotely like it.’ CHARLES PALLISER

http://www.bloomsbury.com/media/USpbkjacket_w165.jpg

[William]

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=9780809001583

Changes in the Land offers an original and persuasive interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance. With the tools of both historian and ecologist, Cronon constructs an interdisciplinary analysis of how the land and the people influenced one another, and how that complex web of relationships shaped New England's communities.

Changes in the Land offers a unique view on early American history during the time when the first settlers were arriving. Although it reads more like a textbook, it contains an enormous amount of facts based mainly on cultural conflict that occurred between the settlers and natives and "virgin" land.

This book was required reading for one of my courses back in college. I enjoyed it then and I just recently pulled it back out of my library to give it another look. I find it especially interesting sine I'm living in New England this time around...but much of its concepts apply to every part of our country where settlers changed the land.




William

[William]

http://www.tonychor.com/archive/walter.jpg


A classic read. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss four bucks goodbye!






William

[97CSI]

Glen Zediker, "The Competitive AR15, The Mouse That Roared". Good book for the DCM & high power shooter. Zediker is an entertaining writer, so his technical jargon doesn't get too dry. Some of his contributors are a bit dated, going back to 1997. But, the basics remain unchanged. Perhaps this will help me pick up the 29 points I need to move into 1st place in the 100yd DCM competition at our local match.

[BBB]

Just started "In Europe Travels through the twentieth century" by Geert Mak.

[Volant]

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

[CNY rider]

I just finished reading "Three Cups of Tea" which was recommended by several on this thread many months ago.

Enjoyed it and never would have picked it up without your reviews.

[97CSI]

Tim Wiener's "Legacy of Ashes". A history of the CIA. Well written and scary. Think we should hire the Brits and Israelis to run our intelligence business for us. We can't seem to get it out of the political arena. Ergo (and I don't mean Campy), we end up in messes like 9/11 and Iraq.

[goldyjackson]

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/imageDB.cgi?isbn=9780809001583

Changes in the Land offers an original and persuasive interpretation of the changing circumstances in New England's plant and animal communities that occurred with the shift from Indian to European dominance. With the tools of both historian and ecologist, Cronon constructs an interdisciplinary analysis of how the land and the people influenced one another, and how that complex web of relationships shaped New England's communities.

Changes in the Land offers a unique view on early American history during the time when the first settlers were arriving. Although it reads more like a textbook, it contains an enormous amount of facts based mainly on cultural conflict that occurred between the settlers and natives and "virgin" land.

This book was required reading for one of my courses back in college. I enjoyed it then and I just recently pulled it back out of my library to give it another look. I find it especially interesting sine I'm living in New England this time around...but much of its concepts apply to every part of our country where settlers changed the land.




William

This is the required summer reading for the US history course I teach to 11th graders. Small world...

Good book, too. Extremely timely today. You might like "a brief history of progress" by Richard Wright

[xjoex]

I'm a nerd, I am reading Asimov's Robots and Empire.

-Joe

[TimD]

The July issue of "Motor Sport", the world's greatest magazine :)

[KeithS]

"Nothing to Lose" by Lee Child. Latest Jack Reacher novel. Trashy spy novel genre, that Reacher is one tough SOB.

The other one just released is by a local (Minnesota) author named Leif Enger. It is his second novel, "So Brave, Young, and Handsome". His freshman work was "Peace Like a River". I recomend it highly. I first became familiar with Enger as a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio.

Latest Sanford novel was a real page turner too. "Phantom Prey" yet another Davenport novel.

[Zimmy]

.

[rsl]

I'm too tired to look up pictures online but I'm currently reading:

"House of Sand and Fog" and "Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier"

Both very good!

[Erik.Lazdins]

Currently into reading

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Been wanting to read this for a year, finally made the leap.

Very good so far

[BURCH]

Fly fishing thru a midlife crisis.

only 30 pages in, but very well done so far and I am no where near a midlife crisis.

[tv_vt]

no country for old men - less gruesome than seeing the movie
the rider - tim krabbe - great book on a bike race!
clapton autobiography - what a screwed-up guy! (but lots of screwing, my)
we might as well win - BD gift from the missus (she's a peach!)

[Volant]

The Road

[false_Aest]

The Fountainhead.

[Kevan]

Travels with Charley

[L84dinr]

Big Bend Country; Kenneth B. Ragsdale. good book and a good author.

Great Roundup; Lewis Nordyke. So so book.

Black Cowboys of Texas. Good book.

Fixin' to start reading The Mustangs; Frank Dobie. A good author. Can't remember if i have read this before, but Dobie's work is good even the second time around.

[bluekudu]

These two wonderful reads...

[tab123]

Carry On, Jeeves - the first in the Jeeves/Wooster series by P.G. Wodehouse.

[BURCH]

These two wonderful reads...


Ha, my wife had to read the Nat Gas one for work. It was a slow read for her. That book sat around our house for a year while she read it.

[Oirad]

Finished re-reading recently and/or reading:

Milan Kundera, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being";

D.T. Suzuki's "Introduction to Zen Buddhishm",

Miguel de Cervantes, "Don Quixote"

Lao Tzu, "Tao Teh Ching"

BikeSnobNYC (of course)

-- Oirad

[William]

http://www.motorbooks.com/Store/UserDirs/motorbooks.com/coverimages/144141.jpg

Fun, light reading, esp the story about the kid in Oregon who rides around on his bike checking old barns and garages for old cars.




William


It's every car lovers fantasy: the perfectly preserved classic automobile discovered under a blanket in some great-grannys garage. And as Tom Cotter showed us in The Cobra in the Barn, it's a fantasy that can come true. Cotters' adventures in automotive archaeology continue in The Hemi in the Barn, with more than forty new stories of amazing finds and automotive resurrections. Avid collectors big and small recall the thrills of the hunt, the tips and hunches followed, clues pursued, the heart-stopping payoff. There's the forgotten Duesenberg--the only unrestored one around--that Jay Leno found in a Burbank garage. There's another 1931 model Dusenberg Leno found in a parking garage in New York City that was parked in 1933 and was never moved. There's a Plymouth Superbird found buried in a hedge out of sight in Alabama. There's the rescue of the first 1955 Corvette ever built. There's the find of legendary race builder Smokey Yunick's Boss 302 Trans-Am car. And there's the story of the original Cobra Daytona Coupe built by Peter Brock and sold to Phil Spectre--a story that somehow involves a chauffeur's daughter setting herself and her rabbits on fire. As entertaining as these tales are--and some are truly corkers--they're also full of tantalizing hints and suggestions for readers setting off on their own adventures in automotive archaeology.

[rockdude]

These are the best. They are at the top of my list. I love Cormac, his books are so great.

Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy:

All the Pretty Horses

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0679744398.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The Crossing

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/07/ec/dfd29833e7a09387d9511110.L.jpg

Cities of the Plain

http://www.booksamillion.com/bam/covers/0/67/974/719/0679747192.jpg

...I'd say I'm about halfway through now.

[Joellogicman]

Just finished re-reading Cornelius Ryan's 'A Bridge To Far.'

Starting John Lee's 'A Greek Army on the March.'

I also subscribe to The Architectual Record, Stereophile, and Outside, follow a few of the bike blogs, and read the NYTimes on line.

[toaster]

Healing Light of the Tao by Mantek Chia.

[Zimmy]

this

[xjoex]

I am finishing up Nightfall
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/65/Nightfall_cover.jpg/200px-Nightfall_cover.jpg

[BarryG]

Most riveting 1000 page novel, ever

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31WEK49WZAL._SS500_.jpg

[gregclimbs]

good read - makes me wanna rip out the hottub and get a garden:

http://www.michaelpollan.com/InDefenseFood_cover_med.jpg

g

[William]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/2566673527_eea898c4e3_m.jpg

Courtesy of a fellow forum member....and coincidentally the current owner of the Skunkbird. :cool:




William

[jhcakilmer]

I miss leisure reading......someday.... :(

This is what I'm reading (among several others)......"da bomb" pathology review for national boards.......not so much for relaxing next to a warm fire.

I'll be much happier, once June arrives!!

[mikki]

While I've been a couch potato

"How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim" Attorney Joseph Matthews

[beungood]

have a woodchuck problem..

[William]

have a woodchuck problem..

Beungood at work.....

http://blog.pennlive.com/corkyblake/2008/02/large_Caddyshack_Karl_Spackler.jpg


....cinderella story.....






William ;)

[beungood]

ooooh Mrs Robinson.....It's in the hole! :p

[beungood]

finishing

[beungood]

looking forward to starting this one

[Ray]

good read - makes me wanna rip out the hottub and get a garden:

http://www.michaelpollan.com/InDefenseFood_cover_med.jpg

g
Just finished that one too - overwhelmingly interesting and informative. God, we eat like *****. We've gotten really good at eating for energy (but most of us don't burn enough of it and the results are obvious) but nutritionally, this is a frickin' wasteland. I don't have anywhere to put a garden (unless I could convince my condo board to make some BIG changes - not likely) and I'm probably too old and set in my ways to change over to growing more than a token amount of my own food. But it sure makes me more aware and picky about what I'm buying.

-Ray

[William]

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/46/82/87aef0cdd7a0aae564cb7110._AA240_.L.jpg


http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/maritime/seaofglory-story5.html


in 1838, the United States government launched its first exploring and surveying expedition to the Pacific. But the voyage that was intended to tame the dangers of the largest ocean in the world soon found itself at the mercy of a tempestuous commander—a man so driven by torments and doubts that some literary critics have claimed he was the model for Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. This, I decided, would be the subject of my next book.
The U.S. Exploring Expedition, or "Ex. Ex." for short, was one of the most ambitious undertakings of its time: six sailing vessels and 346 men, including a team of nine scientists and artists, all under the command of the young, brash Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. By any measure, the achievements of the Expedition would be extraordinary. After four years at sea, after losing two ships and twenty-eight officers and men, the Expedition logged 87,000 miles, surveyed 280 Pacific islands, and created 180 charts—some of which were still being used as late as World War II. The Expedition also mapped 800 miles of coastline in the Pacific Northwest, providing the first detailed American charts of what would become the states of Washington and Oregon. The Expedition's scientists collected more than 4,000 zoological specimens, including 2,000 new species, and thousands of ethnographic artifacts that would become the basis of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. They also found evidence confirming Charles Darwin's theory of the formation of coral atolls. But the Expedition's crowning triumph was the exploration of a new southern continent. Battling icebergs and gale force winds in their fragile wooden ships, the Expedition's officers and men surveyed a 1,500-mile section of Antarctic coast that still bears their commander's name: Wilkes Land.
What had happened, I wondered, to cause an expedition that had accomplished so much to sink so quickly into oblivion? ……

[William]

Currently reading the Twilight series......I can admit that. :D I just started Breaking Dawn.

So far I'm enjoying the series. Mrs William really liked it so I thought I should see what it's all about. And, growing up in Washington and spending many a day going through Aberdeen, Port Angles, Forks, and the rest of the Olympic Peninsula I can get into the vivid descriptions of the area.

What you'all reading right now?



William

[572cv]

On health care issues-

"Better" by Atul Gawande

On what Presidents get to know that you don't, sometimes-

"Downfall" by Richard Frank.

Both are fabulous reads involving careful research, clear analysis, fine writing.

[snah]

Last of the series by Stieg Larson, first was The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, then The Girl Who Played with Fire, now The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Great crime series from an author that died before it went to press.

[sevencyclist]

My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. He is a great guy who took over the course that I taught for years. His insight into the profession of medicine is refreshing.

[c77barlage]

I recently finished "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer and highly reccomend it; an exciting easy read. I'm now reading "Undauted Courage" by Steve Ambrose which is also enjoyable.

[bcm119]

really cool account of the gold rush era via one man's diary and letters home to his family-
http://www.barbsbooks.com/images/BT-3406.jpg

[William]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41rZLuuM-2L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

http://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/books/the-last-stand

I just started The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick. So far it’s a very interesting read. I have previously read Sea Of Glory by the same author and found it a very exciting and illuminating book so I’m expecting the same with this one.

I’ll go ahead and post the first chapter with appropriate links.


William

Chapter One:
http://www.nathanielphilbrick.com/books/the-last-stand/first-chapter


At the Flood

High up in his floating tower, Captain Grant Marsh guided the riverboat Far West toward Fort Lincoln, the home of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the U.S. Army’s Seventh Cavalry. This was Marsh’s first trip up the Missouri since the ice and snow had closed the river the previous fall, and like any good pilot he was carefully studying how the waterway had changed.

Every year, the Missouri—at almost three thousand miles the longest river in the United States—reinvented itself. Swollen by spring rain and snowmelt, the Missouri wriggled and squirmed like an overloaded fire hose, blasting away tons of bottomland and, with it, grove after grove of cottonwood trees. By May, the river was studded with partially sunken cottonwoods, their sodden root-balls planted firmly in the mud, their water-laved trunks angled downriver like spears.

Nothing could punch a hole in the bottom of a wooden steamboat like the submerged tip of a cottonwood tree. Whereas the average life span of a seagoing vessel was twenty years, a Missouri riverboat was lucky to last five.

Rivers were the arteries, veins, and capillaries of the northern plains, the lifelines upon which all living things depended. Rivers determined the annual migration route of the buffalo herds, and it was the buffalo that governed the seasonal movements of the Indians. For the U.S. military, rivers were the point of entry into some of the country’s most inaccessible areas. In May of 1876, before railroads extended across Montana, rivers provided Custer’s Seventh Cavalry with provisions and equipment via Grant Marsh and the Far West.

The boiling, tree-laden rivers of spring were full of hazards, but the most difficult challenge to negotiating the Missouri came in the summer and fall, when the water level dropped. A maddening network of sandbars emerged from the shallows, transforming the river into a series of slack-water lakes. If a boat was to make its way past these naturally occurring dams of silt and mud, it must not only possess minimal draft but also be able to crawl across the river bottom. By the late 1860s, what came to be known as the Missouri riverboat had been perfected: an amphibious watercraft that ranks with the Bowie knife, barbed wire, and the Colt revolver as one of the quintessential innovations of the American West.

Grant Marsh’s Far West was fairly typical. Built in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by an owner who believed that names with seven letters were lucky, she was 190 feet long with three decks, a cupola-like pilothouse, and two towering smokestacks. Unloaded, the Far West drew only twenty inches; when carrying two hundred tons of freight, she sank down just ten additional inches for a total draft of two and a half feet. She was also extremely powerful. Sheltered between her first and second decks were three boilers, which consumed as many as thirty cords of wood a day, along with two engines linked to a single, thirty-foot-wide stern wheel. When driven against a stiff current, every inch of the Far West trembled and shook as the percussive exhaust of the high-pressure engines boomed like cannon fi re and the smokestacks, known as “iron chimneys,” poured out twin trails of soot and ash.

It was the tangle of ropes and wooden poles on the bow that truly distinguished the Missouri riverboat from her less adaptable counterparts on the Mississippi. When the Far West grounded on a bar, two spars the size of telegraph poles were swung out ahead of the bow and driven down into the mud. Block-and-tackle systems attached to the tops of the spars were then led to a pair of steam-powered capstans. As the capstans winched the bow into the air on the crutchlike spars, the stern wheel drove the boat up and over the bar. Instead of a watercraft, a Missouri riverboat looked so much like a giant, smoke-belching insect as it lurched over the mud on two spindly legs that this technique of going where no riverboat had ever gone before became known as “grasshoppering.” It might take hours, sometimes days, to make it over a particularly nasty stretch of river bottom, but grasshoppering meant that a riverboat was now something more than a means of transportation. It was an invasive species of empire.

In the beginning, furs lured the boats up the Missouri; by the 1860s, it was gold that drew them as far north and west as Fort Benton, twenty three hundred miles above the mouth of the Missouri and almost in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. In 1866, Grant Marsh, soon to become known as “the king of the pilots,” left Fort Benton with $1.25 million worth of gold, said to be the most valuable cargo ever sent down the Missouri.

By that spring day in 1876, Marsh was no longer shipping gold out of the mountains of the West, but he was still working at the precious metal’s behest. Two years before, George Custer had led an expedition into the fabled Black Hills, an oval-shaped territory about the size of Connecticut in the southwest corner of modern South Dakota. Part Garden of Eden, part El Dorado, the Black Hills were a verdant and mountainous land of streams and lakes contained within a forbidding four-thousand-foot-high ridge of ancient rock covered in ponderosa pine. When seen from a distance, these steep, tree-shaded battlements appeared as dark as night, hence the hills’ name. Mysterious and remote (they were separated from the nearest American settlement by a hundred miles of desolate badlands), the Black Hills were sacred to the Sioux and-until Custer’s expedition-almost unknown to the whites, save for rumors of gold.

In 1873, a financial panic gripped the country. With the national debt over $2 billion, the Grant administration was in desperate need of a way to replenish a cash-starved economy. And as had been proven in California back in 1849 and more recently in the Rockies, there was no quicker way to invigorate the country’s financial system than to discover gold. Despite the fact that it required them to trespass on what was legally Sioux land, General Philip Sheridan, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, which extended all the way west to the Rockies, ordered Custer and the Seventh Cavalry to escort an exploring expedition from Fort Lincoln, just down the Missouri River from Bismarck, in modern North Dakota, to the Black Hills.

The supposed aim of the Black Hills Expedition of 1874 was to find a suitable site for a fort. However, the makeup of the column suggested that another, far more exciting goal was being considered. Included in Custer’s thousand-man expedition were President Grant’s eldest son, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Dent Grant; three newspaper reporters; a photographer; and two experienced gold miners.

Much to Custer’s surprise, the Indians proved few and far between once the regiment entered the Black Hills. On August 2, after several delightful weeks among the flower-laden mountains and valleys, the expedition discovered gold “right from the grass roots.” Over the next hundred years, more gold would be extracted from a single mine in the Black Hills (an estimated $1 billion) than from any other mine in the continental United States.

In the beginning, the government made only nominal efforts to prevent miners from intruding on the Black Hills. But by the summer of 1875 there were so many U.S. citizens in the region that the Grant administration decided it must purchase the hills from the Sioux. When the Sioux refused to sell, the administration felt it had no choice but to instigate a war. Once again, George Custer was called upon to lend his air of gallantry and panache to the dirty work of American imperialism.

The Sioux were told that they must report to a reservation by the end of January 1876 or be considered at war with the United States. When Sitting Bull and his people did not respond to the summons, it then became the army’s responsibility to bring in the “hostiles,” as the Indians who refused to submit to government demands were called in official correspondence. What was to have been a winter campaign sputtered and died in March without much result. General Sheridan then made preparations for a three-pronged spring campaign. The plan was for Custer’s Seventh Cavalry to march west from Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Territory as troops led by Colonel John Gibbon marched east from Fort Ellis in the Montana Territory and troops under General George Crook marched north from Fort Fetterman in the Wyoming Territory. Each of these converging groups of soldiers was referred to as a column-as in Custer’s Dakota Column-and with luck at least one of the columns would find the Indians.

But as Custer prepared to lead his regiment against the Sioux in the spring of 1876, he was suddenly ordered to Washington, D.C. A Democrat-controlled congressional committee wanted him to testify about corruption within the War Department of Grant’s Republican administration. Even though he had a campaign to prepare for, Custer decided he had best head east.

As it turned out, most of his testimony was based on hearsay and speculation. This did not prevent him from eagerly implicating Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, who had already resigned to escape impeachment, and President Grant’s brother Orville. The president was outraged, and despite the impending campaign, he blocked Custer’s return to his regiment. Grant finally relented, but not without insisting that Custer’s superior, Brigadier General Alfred Terry, stationed at department headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, be named leader of the campaign to capture Sitting Bull, and in early May the two officers boarded the train for Bismarck.

As Grant Marsh steamed up the Missouri toward Fort Lincoln, he wasn’t particularly concerned about whether Custer or Terry was leading the regiment. No matter who was in charge, Marsh and his riverboat were still being paid $360 a day to provide the Seventh Cavalry with forage and ammunition and whatever transportation assistance they might require. But for George Custer, who considered the regiment his, the presence of General Terry made all the difference in the world.

On May 10, 1876, as Terry and Custer traveled together by train from St. Paul to Bismarck, President Ulysses S. Grant opened the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like just about everything else associated with the final year of Grant’s two-term administration, the ceremony did not go well.

There were more than 186,000 people at the exhibition that day. The fairgrounds, surrounded by three miles of fence, contained two hundred buildings, including the two largest structures in the world: the twenty-one-acre Main Building, housing exhibits related to mining, metallurgy, manufacturing, and science, and Machinery Hall, containing the exhibition’s centerpiece, the giant Corliss Steam Engine. Products displayed for the first time at the exhibition included Hires root beer, Heinz ketchup, the Remington typographic machine (later dubbed the typewriter), and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone.

By 11:45 a.m., when it came time for President Grant to make his remarks in front of Memorial Hall, there were approximately four thousand notables assembled on the grandstands behind him. Included in that illustrious group were the generals William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. Over the course of the last couple of days, Grant had been badgering these two old friends about George Armstrong Custer.

Eleven years before, at the conclusion of the Civil War, it had been Custer who had spoiled what should have been Grant’s finest hour. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers and spectators had gathered on a beautiful spring day for the Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac in Washington, D.C. The cavalry led the procession through the city, and as the troopers marched down Pennsylvania Avenue toward Grant and the other dignitaries gathered in front of the White House, Custer’s horse suddenly bolted from the ranks. It was later said that a bouquet of flowers thrown to Custer from an admiring young lady had startled his horse, but Grant must have had his doubts as he watched Custer gallop to the head of the parade. The only cadet at West Point to match his own record in riding and jumping a horse had been Custer, and there he was, alone in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, ostentatiously struggling to subdue his bucking steed. Whether intentionally or not, Custer had managed to make himself the center of attention.

Now, more than a decade later, in the final year of his second term as president, Grant watched in baffled rage as his administration collapsed around him amid charges of corruption and incompetence. At this dark and dismal hour, it was annoying in the extreme to have one of his own—an army officer (and Custer at that!)—contribute to the onslaught. Testifying against the secretary of war was bad enough, but to pull his brother Orville into the morass was unforgivable, and Grant had resolved to make the blond-haired prima donna pay.

Cont....

[William]

He’d ordered Sheridan to detain Custer, then on his way back to Fort Lincoln, in Chicago. When word of Custer’s arrest became public, the press had erupted in outrage, branding Grant the “modern Caesar.” “Are officers . . . to be dragged from railroad trains and ignominiously ordered to stand aside,” the New York Herald howled, “until the whims of the Chief magistrate . . . are satisfied?” Grant had relented, but not without putting Custer under the command of Terry, who was as modest and serene as Custer was pompous and frenetic. Indeed, Terry, a courtly former lawyer from New Haven, Connecticut, and the only non–West Point general in the post–Civil War army, was so excruciatingly nice that it would more than likely drive Custer to distraction. At least that was the hope.

At almost precisely noon on May 10, 1876, at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Grant stepped up to the podium in front of Memorial Hall and began to read from several legal-sized sheets of paper. The acoustics outside this modern-day coliseum were atrocious, and no one beyond the second row could hear a word he said. When he finished his ten-minute speech, the few isolated cheers only underscored what the writer William Dean Howells later described in the pages of the Atlantic as “the silent indifference” of the crowd’s reception.

It was astonishing how far Grant had plummeted. After winning the war for Lincoln, he seemed on the brink of even greater accomplishments as president of the United States. With input from the Quakers, he’d adopted what he described as “an Indian policy founded on peace and Christianity rather than force of arms.” He even appointed his friend Ely Parker, a full-blooded Seneca, as commissioner of Indian affairs. But as it turned out, Parker lasted only a few years before a toxic mixture of greed and politics poisoned every one of Grant’s best intentions.

It was more than a little ironic. Despite all he’d hoped to do for the Indians, his administration now found itself in the midst of a squalid little war against the embattled Sioux and Cheyenne of the northern plains. In the end, he had been powerless to stop the American push for more. Not that he had tried very hard or refused to let his own administration participate in the pillage, but it must have been sad and infuriating to see America’s celebration of its centennial come down to this: the rude, derisive silence of several thousand people withholding their applause.

On May 10, 1876, the same day that President Grant spoke in Philadelphia, Custer and General Terry arrived at Bismarck. From there they took the ferry across the Missouri River to Fort Lincoln: a ramshackle collection of wooden buildings surrounding a muddy parade ground with the wide brown ditch of the river fl owing beside it.

There was room at Fort Lincoln for only a portion of the regiment, so a small city of tents had sprung up beside it. In addition to the twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry, there were several companies of infantry housed in nearby Fort McKeen. Sixty-five Arikara Indian scouts, who lived with their families at Fort Lincoln in a hamlet of log huts, were also participating in the campaign, along with 114 teamsters and their large canvas-topped wagons, each pulled by six mules and containing between three thousand and five thousand pounds of forage. General Terry, who had gained fame near the close of the Civil War by leading an impeccably organized assault on the supposedly impregnable Confederate stronghold at Fort Fisher, estimated that the column’s sixteen hundred horses and mules required a staggering twelve thousand pounds of grain a day. By his calculations, they might need every one of these wagons before reaching the Yellowstone River, where they would be replenished by the Far West.

There were hopes, however, that this might be a short campaign. One hundred and fifty miles to the west, approximately halfway between Fort Lincoln and their rendezvous point on the Yellowstone, was the Little Missouri River. According to a recent scouting report, Sitting Bull was encamped somewhere along this river with fifteen hundred lodges and three thousand warriors. A force that size would have outnumbered the Seventh Cavalry’s approximately 750 officers and enlisted men by about four to one. But Custer did not appear concerned. As he’d bragged to a group of businessmen in New York City that spring, the Seventh Cavalry “could whip and defeat all the Indians on the plains.”

By most accounts, Custer was bubbling with even more than the usual enthusiasm when he arrived at Fort Lincoln with his niece and nephew from Monroe, Michigan, and with two canaries for his wife, Libbie. One soldier described him as “happy as a boy with a new red sled.” General Grant had done his best to ruin him, but thanks to the intercession of what he called “Custer luck,” he was back at Fort Lincoln and on the cusp of yet another one of his spectacular comebacks. The presence of General Terry was certainly a bother, but he had surmounted worse obstacles in the past.

In the nine years since Custer chased his first buffalo across the plains of Kansas, his career had zigged and zagged like the Missouri River. His first summer in the West in 1867 had been filled with frustration. The Cheyenne had made a mockery of his attempts to pursue them. When his men began to desert wholesale for the goldfields to the west, Custer overreacted and ordered some of them shot. But it was the long absence from his wife that finally undid him. At least at night, Libbie had spent much of the Civil War by her husband’s side, but this wasn’t possible when chasing Indians across the plains. At one point, Custer abandoned his regiment and dashed to Libbie, covering more than 150 miles on horseback in just sixty hours. From Libbie’s standpoint, it was all wonderfully romantic and resulted in what she later remembered as “one long perfect day,” but it almost ruined Custer’s career. He was courtmartialed and sentenced to a year’s unpaid leave.

Outwardly, Custer remained unrepentant, claiming he’d been made a scapegoat for the failings of his superiors. Still, for a former major general who was now, under the diminished circumstances of the peacetime army, a mere lieutenant colonel (although, for courtesy’s sake, he was still addressed as General Custer), this was a potentially disastrous development. Then, as happened time and again throughout his career, came the intervention of the miraculous bolt from the blue called Custer luck. On September 24, 1868, while killing time back home in Monroe, Michigan, Custer received a telegram from his old mentor, General Philip Sheridan.

Sheridan wanted to try a new strategy against the Cheyenne. Instead of chasing them around the plains in summer, why not strike them in winter, when they were confined to their tepees? Even after the legendary scout Jim Bridger attempted to convince him that it was madness to send a regiment of cavalry into temperatures of forty below zero and howling snow, Sheridan remained convinced it would work—especially if the operation was led by Custer, one of the most indefatigable and courageous officers he’d ever known. “Generals Sherman, Sully, and myself, and nearly all the officers of your regiment, have asked for you . . . ,” Sheridan’s telegram read. “Can you come at once?”

On November 27, 1868, after battling bitter cold and blinding, snow reflected sun, Custer and the Seventh Cavalry decimated an Indian village beside the Wa****a River. They then came close to being wiped out by a much larger village farther down the river, which they hadn’t detected prior to the attack, but Custer succeeded in extracting most of his men and fifty or so Cheyenne hostages before scurrying back to safety.

Both Custer and Sheridan heralded the Battle of the Wa****a as a great victory, claiming that Custer had killed more than a hundred warriors and almost eight hundred ponies, and destroyed large quantities of food and clothing. But as a local Indian agent pointed out, the leader of the village had been Black Kettle, a noted “peace chief” who had moved his people away from the larger village so as not to be associated with the depredations of the village’s warriors. Instead of striking a blow against the hostiles, Custer had unwittingly killed one of the few Cheyenne leaders who were for peace.

Custer dismissed such charges by claiming that it had been the hostile warriors’ trail that had led him to Black Kettle’s village. In addition, his officers had found plenty of evidence while burning the tepees that Black Kettle’s warriors had participated in the recent attacks on the Kansas frontier. More troubling, as far as Custer was concerned, was the publication of an anonymous letter in a St. Louis newspaper that accused him of abandoning one of the regiment’s most popular officers, Major Joel Elliott, to an unspeakable death at the hands of the Cheyenne. It was true that the naked and brutally mutilated bodies of Elliott and his men were found several weeks later, but Custer maintained that he had no way of knowing in the midst of the battle what had happened to the missing men.

When Custer learned of the letter’s publication, he immediately called a meeting of his officers. Slapping his boot tops with his rawhide riding whip, he threatened to “cowhide” whoever had written the letter. At that point, one of his senior commanders, Frederick Benteen, made a great show of inspecting his pistol and then, after returning the weapon to its holster, stepped forward and admitted to being the author. Up until then, Benteen had proven to be a capable and reliable officer, and Custer appeared to be caught completely by surprise. He stammered out, “Colonel Benteen, I’ll see you again, sir!” and dismissed the meeting. Thus began one of the most fascinating, diabolically twisted antagonisms ever to haunt the hate-torn West.

Custer responded to his detractors, both within and without the regiment, by turning himself into a peacemaker. Instead of torching Indian villages, he pursued a nervy, verging on suicidal, policy of diplomacy. With several of his Cheyenne hostages providing interpretive help (including the beautiful Cheyenne woman Monahsetah), he managed to find the supposedly unfindable hostile leaders, meet with them, and eventually convince them to come into the agencies. There were several times when tensions rose to the point that his own officers pleaded with him to attack instead of negotiate, but Custer was intent on proving that he wasn’t the heartless Indian killer that some had made him out to be. Custer’s efforts were crowned by the dramatic release of two white women hostages, both of whom had suffered, in the parlance of the plains, “a fate worse than death” during their captivity. By the end of the year, peace had come to the plains of Kansas, concluding one of the most remarkable and, if such a thing is possible when it comes to Custer, little-known periods in his career.

Custer was confident that a promotion was immediately forthcoming. From the field he wrote to Libbie back at regimental headquarters, “[I]f everything works favorably, Custer luck is going to surpass all former experience.” But the promotion never came.

During the next two years Custer settled into his new role as a celebrity of the West. He and Libbie hosted a series of recreational buffalo hunts, entertaining a dazzling assortment of politicians, businesspeople, entertainers, and even, on one notable occasion, the grand duke of Russia. But all was not well. As a lieutenant colonel, Custer did not technically command the Seventh Cavalry; that was reserved to a full colonel, who during the Battle of the Wa****a had been conveniently assigned to detached service, making Custer the senior officer. In 1869, however, a new colonel, the ruggedly handsome Samuel Sturgis, became commander, and Custer was left, he complained to Sheridan, with nothing to do. In a photograph of a Seventh Cavalry picnic, Sturgis and several other officers and their wives look pleasantly toward the camera while Custer lies on the grass with his face buried in a newspaper.

In the early 1870s, the twelve companies of the Seventh Cavalry were recalled from the West and scattered throughout the Reconstruction South, where they assisted federal marshals in combating the rise of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, as the noted warrior Sitting Bull emerged as leader of the Sioux in the northern plains, Custer spent several humdrum years stationed in Kentucky. The “aimlessness” of these days, Libbie wrote, “seemed insupportable to my husband.” Finally, in the winter of 1873, he received word that the Seventh was to be brought back together for duty in the Dakota Territory; best of all, Sheridan had arranged it so Colonel Sturgis was to remain on detached service in St. Louis. Custer was so elated by the news that he took up a chair and smashed it to pieces.

The Northern Pacific Railway had plans to continue west from its current terminus at Bismarck, into the Montana Territory. In anticipation of possible Native resistance, the Seventh Cavalry was to escort the surveying expedition, led by General David Stanley, as it made its way west along the north bank of the Yellowstone River. Almost immediately, Custer reverted to the erratic, petulant behavior of his early days in Kansas. “He is making himself utterly detested,” one of his officers claimed, “by his selfish, capricious, arbitrary and unjust conduct.” Custer floundered when presented with too many choices and not enough stimulation. To no one’s surprise, he soon ran afoul of General Stanley.

Custer, a teetotaler, blamed their differences on Stanley’s drinking, but much of their squabbling had to do with Custer’s need to go his own way. Eventually, however, the two officers reached an understanding. Stanley gave Custer the independence he required, and in two skirmishes with the Sioux, he proved that he was still a brave and skillful cavalry officer. By the time the Seventh arrived at the newly constructed Fort Lincoln in September, newspaper accounts of what came to be known as the Yellowstone campaign had already circulated throughout the country, and Custer was once again a hero.

The following year, Custer’s expedition to the Black Hills only added to his fame. But by May 1876, with his ill-advised testimony in Washington threatening to turn even General Sheridan against him, he was in desperate need of yet another miraculous stroke of Custer luck.

Upon his arrival at Fort Lincoln on May 10, Custer immediately decided to divide the Seventh into two wings: one led by his second-in- command, Major Marcus Reno, the other by the regiment’s senior captain, forty two- year-old Frederick Benteen, the same officer who had, eight years before, dared to criticize his conduct at the Wa****a.

It was an unusual move. Benteen had made no secret of his continued contempt for Custer, and an appointment to wing commander was the last thing he had expected. The next day, Custer called him to his tent, where Custer was attending to regimental business with his wife, Libbie, by his side. It quickly became clear, at least to Benteen, what his commander was up to.

Custer explained that while he was in Washington, D.C., he’d run into one of the most powerful newspapermen in the country, Lawrence Gobright, cofounder of the Associated Press. During the Civil War Gobright had worked directly with the Lincoln administration in controlling the fl ow of war news to the American people. This was just the kind of man any ambitious military officer needed to have on his side.

Much to Custer’s surprise, Gobright had proven to be “wonderfully interested” in Frederick Benteen. It turned out that the two were cousins. “Yes,” Benteen replied, “we’ve been very dear friends always.” Suddenly Benteen understood the reason behind his elevation to wing commander. “Custer perhaps feared,” he wrote, “that I might possibly bring influence to bear at some time.” After almost a decade, Custer, who enjoyed being the perennial darling of the press, now had a reason to cultivate the friendship of his nemesis.

[William]

Benteen had blue eyes, a round cherubic face, and a thatch of boyishly cropped hair that had, over the course of his tenure with the Seventh Cavalry, turned almost preternaturally white. Unlike Custer, who spoke with such nervous rapidity that it was sometimes hard to understand what he was saying, Benteen had an easy, southern volubility about him. Lurking beneath his chubby-cheeked cordiality was a brooding, utterly cynical intelligence. His icy blue eyes saw at a glance a person’s darkest insecurities and inevitably found him or her wanting. Custer was, by no means, the only commander he had belittled and despised. Virtually every officer he served under in the years ahead-from Colonel Samuel Sturgis to General Crook-was judged unworthy by Benteen. “I’ve always known that I had the happy facility of making enemies of any one I ever knew,” he admitted late in life, “but what then? . . . I couldn’t go otherwise-’twould be against the grain of myself.”

Even before this conversation about Lawrence Gobright, Custer had made overtures to Benteen. “I always surmised . . . ,” Benteen wrote, “that he wanted me badly as a friend.” Benteen dismissed these gestures as part of a calculated attempt by Custer to elevate his own standing, both within the regiment and, ultimately, with the American public, and he would have none of it. Custer’s co-conspirator in this constant quest for acclaim was Libbie, whom Benteen regarded as “about as coldblooded a woman as I ever knew, in which respect the pair were admirably mated.”

Benteen relished the fact that Custer and Libbie had been put on notice that there were “wheels within wheels,” and that he, the reviled white-haired underling, was the ultimate insider when it came to the workings of the press. He had used the papers once before to set Custer straight, and as was now clearer than ever, he could do it again.

On May 16, 1876, with the regiment due to leave Fort Lincoln the next day, Custer requested that General Terry meet him at the two-story house he shared with Libbie and their servants. Of all the rooms in this newly built Victorian home, Custer’s favorite was his study. During the winters he often spent almost the entire day holed up in the little room, poring over Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy or a biography of Napoleon. To make sure he remained undisturbed, he placed a printed card on the door that read, “this is my busy day.”

During the Yellowstone campaign, Custer had learned the art of taxidermy, and the walls of his study contained the heads of a buffalo, an antelope, a black-tailed deer, and the grizzly bear he’d bagged in the Black Hills. At dusk Custer and Libbie, who had long since resigned themselves to their childlessness, liked to lounge within this crowded self-made world, with only the glowing embers of the fire to illuminate the unblinking glass eyes of the animals Custer had killed and stuffed. Libbie later admitted that the study was a somewhat bizarre place for a husband and wife to linger lovingly in each other’s presence. “I used to think that a man on the brink of mania, thrust suddenly into such a place in the dim flickering light, would be hurried to his doom by fright,” she wrote. “We loved the place dearly.”

On the opposite side of the hall was the much larger living room, with a piano and harp. On Tuesday, May 16, Custer called out for Libbie, and asked her to come into the living room, where she found her husband and General Terry.

Once Libbie had taken her seat, Custer shut the door and turned to his commanding officer. “General Terry,” he said, “a man usually means what he says when he brings his wife to listen to his statements. I want to say that reports are circulating that I do not want to go out to the campaign under you. But I want you to know that I do want to go and serve under you, not only that I value you as a soldier, but as a friend and a man.”

What Custer declined to mention was that eight days earlier, while still in St. Paul, he had bragged to another army officer that once the regiment headed west from Fort Lincoln, he planned “to swing clear of Terry,” just as he’d done with Stanley back in 1873. It was a foolish and appallingly ungrateful thing to say, especially since Terry had drafted the telegram that enabled Custer to rejoin his regiment. Even worse, the officer to whom Custer was speaking was one of Terry’s close friends.

Custer did not drink; he didn’t have to. His emotional effusions unhinged his judgment in ways that went far beyond alcohol’s ability to interfere with clear thinking. Soon after making his claims about breaking free of Terry, Custer must have realized how stupid he’d been. It turned out that Terry did not hear about Custer’s boast until later that fall, but Custer didn’t know that. Before they departed from Fort Lincoln, he knew he must assure General Terry that his loyalty was unwavering.

Terry was known for his congenial manner, but he was no fool. Ever since the Seventh Cavalry had come under his jurisdiction back in 1873, Custer had refused to go through proper channels. While testifying before Congress that spring he’d claimed that his regiment had received a shipment of grain from the War Department that had undoubtedly been stolen from the Indian agencies. Custer, of course, had neglected to check with Terry before making the claim, and as Terry knew from the start, there was nothing improper about the grain. Custer had subsequently recanted in writing what had been one of the centerpieces of his testimony in Washington.

He might attempt to cast himself as the noble truthsayer victimized by an implacable tyrant, but as was now obvious to Terry, no one had done more to undermine Custer’s career than Custer himself. He was an impulsive blabbermouth, but he was also the most experienced Indian fighter in the Dakota Territory, and Terry, fifty years old and very content with his office job in St. Paul, needed him. It remained to be seen whether Custer’s endearingly earnest declaration of fealty was for real.

On the morning of May 17, a thick gray mist blanketed Fort Lincoln. It had been raining for several days, and the water-soaked parade ground had been chopped and churned into a slippery alkaline gumbo. When the Seventh Cavalry assembled for its final circuit of the garrison in the foggy early-dawn twilight, it was about as dour and depressing a scene as could be imagined.

All spring the wives of the officers and enlisted men had been haunted by a strange, seemingly unaccountable sense of doom. A month earlier, when the wife of Lieutenant Francis Gibson learned that her husband had been offered a transfer from Benteen’s company to one under Custer’s immediate command, she had felt a “weird something” grip her soul. Even though she knew it was the best thing for both her husband’s career and her own living situation, she insisted that her husband refuse the transfer.

Another officer’s wife, Annie Yates, dreamed that Custer had been shot in the head by an Indian. When she told Custer of her dream, he responded, “I cannot die before my time comes, and . . . if by a bullet in the head—Why not?”

Even Libbie, who had married Custer at the height of the Civil War, when a deadly battle was an almost daily occurrence, could not maintain her usual composure during those last days before the regiment’s departure. Custer’s striker (the military equivalent of a servant), John Burkman, had been in the kitchen of the general’s residence when he overheard Custer attempting to comfort his weeping wife. “I can’t help it,” she cried out. “I just can’t help it. I wish Grant hadn’t let you go.”

On the day of their departure, both Terry and Custer were determined to lay to rest these fears with a rousing display of the Seventh’s unparalleled military might. As the regiment splashed triumphantly into the garrison, the band, conducted by five-foot two-inch Felix Vinatieri, a graduate of the Naples Conservatory of Music, struck up “Garry Owen,” a rousing Irish tune made popular in the Civil War and the regiment’s particular song.

Unfortunately, the music did little to ease the fears of the soldiers’ families. Custer and Libbie were at the head of the column, and as they passed the quarters of the Arikara scouts, they could see the wives crouched on the ground, their heads bowed in sorrow. Next, they passed the residences of the enlisted men’s families, known as Laundress Row. It was here, recalled Libbie, that

my heart entirely failed me. . . . Mothers, with streaming eyes, held
their little ones out at arm’s length for one last look at the departing
father. The toddlers among the children, unnoticed by their elders,
had made a mimic column of their own. With their handkerchiefs
tied to sticks in lieu of flags, and beating old tin pans for drums, they
strode lustily back and forth in imitation of the advancing soldiers.
They were fortunately too young to realize why the mothers wailed
out their farewells.

By the time they reached the officers’ quarters, the band had moved on to “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” The wives, who had been standing bravely at their doors to wave good-bye, immediately melted in despair and retreated inside their homes. It was not the glorious departure Terry and Custer had been hoping for. But for Libbie, the most eerie and unnerving part of the regiment’s leave-taking was yet to come.

Custer had made arrangements for both Libbie and his younger sister, Maggie, who was married to Lieutenant James Calhoun, to accompany the regiment to the first campsite on the Heart River, about fifteen miles away, and then return to Fort Lincoln the following day. Soon after leaving the garrison, as they mounted a steep hillside that led to a wide rolling plain to the west, Libbie looked back on the column of twelve hundred men, spread out for almost two miles, and saw an astonishing sight.

By that time, the sun had risen far enough above the Missouri River to the east that its rays had begun to dispel the thick mist in the valley below. As white tendrils of dissipating fog rose up into the warm blue sky above, a mirage appeared. A reflection of about half the line of cavalry became visible in the brightening, mist-swirled air above them, making it seem as if the troopers of the Seventh Cavalry were marching both on the earth and in the sky. From a scientific point of view, the phenomenon, known as a superior image, is easily accounted for: Light rays from the warm upper air had caromed off the colder air in the valley below to create a duplicate image above the heads of the troopers. But for Libbie, whose fears for her husband and his regiment had been building all spring, “the future of the heroic band seemed to be revealed.”

They camped beside the beautiful cottonwood-lined Heart River, in a fl at, grassy area surrounded by rounded, sheltering hills. Before the tents were set up, the soldiers combed the area for rattlesnakes, some of which proved to be as thick as a child’s arm. Custer had several members of his family accompanying him on the expedition. In addition to his younger brother Tom, recently promoted to captain, there was his brother-in-law, Lieutenant James Calhoun, and Custer’s twenty-eight year- old brother, Boston, who was entered into the regimental rolls as a civilian guide. Accompanying Custer for the first time and serving as a herder was his eighteen-year-old nephew, Harry Reed. Reed and his uncle shared the same nickname of “Autie,” which dated back to Custer’s first attempts to pronounce his middle name of Armstrong.

At some point Libbie and Custer retired to their tent, where Custer’s striker had placed some boards across two sawhorses and topped them
with a mattress. From the first, Custer and Libbie had enjoyed a passionate physical relationship. When the two were courting during the Civil War, Libbie kept a diary in which she recorded their first extended kiss. “I never was kissed so much before,” she wrote. “I thought he would eat me. My forehead and my eyelids and cheeks and lips bear testimony— and his star scratched my face.”

After their marriage, she began to learn that her new husband had his quirks. Despite being a wild-eyed warrior, he seemed to be always washing his hands. He also brushed his teeth after every meal, and even carried his toothbrush with him into battle. He had a sensitive stomach; she later recalled how “the heartiest appetite would desert him if an allusion to anything unpleasant . . . was made at table.” Although he and his brothers liked to roughhouse and play practical jokes with one another, and Libbie’s and Custer’s letters are full of ardor and romance, Custer was also a man of long, seemingly impenetrable silences. Once, after the two had sat side by side for close to an hour, Libbie attempted to nudge him into conversation by claiming, “I know just what you have been thinking.” But instead of revealing his thoughts, Custer merely chuckled and lapsed once again into silence.

Custer had a winning, if unrealistic, belief in his own perfectability. Just as he had once stopped swearing and drinking alcohol, he would put
an end to his gambling, he assured her, but the poker and horse racing debts continued to pile up, and they were always broke. And then there was the issue of women.

From the start, Libbie had known there were others. Even during their courtship, Custer had also been trading letters with an acquaintance of hers from Monroe. If Frederick Benteen is to be believed, Custer had frequent sex with his African American cook, Eliza, during the Civil War, with the Cheyenne captive Monahsetah during and after the Wa****a campaign, with at least one officer’s wife, and with a host of prostitutes. There is a suspicious letter written by Custer to the young and beautiful sculptress Vinnie Ream, who is known to have had passionate affairs with General Sherman and Franz Liszt, among others. In the fall of 1870, Libbie and Custer reached some sort of crisis, and in a fragment of a letter Custer expresses his hope that “however erratic, wild, or unseemly my conduct with others may have been,” he had not lost forever Libbie’s love.

The two seem to have put this incident behind them, perhaps in part because Libbie could give just as well as she received. Benteen claimed that Custer’s wild ride to Libbie back in 1867 had been prompted by an anonymous letter warning that one of his officers, the charming, well educated, and alcoholic Lieutenant Thomas Weir, was paying too much attention to his wife. Custer later complained about Libbie’s correspondence with two of the regiment’s more handsome officers: the strapping Canadian Lieutenant William Cooke and the dark and moody Irishman Captain Myles Keogh.

In the end, it was their mutual belief in destiny—specifically Custer’s—that saved their marriage. Soon after the Wa****a campaign, Custer had melodramatically written Libbie, “In years long numbered with the past when I was verging upon manhood, my every thought was ambitious—not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great. I desired to link my name with acts and men and in such a manner as to be a mark of honor, not only to the present but to future generations.” Libbie could not have agreed more. As she told the future wife of one of Custer’s officers, “[W]e army women feel that we are especially privileged, because we are making history.”

[William]

The move to the Dakota Territory seems to have reinvigorated their marriage. During the Yellowstone campaign in 1873, Libbie spent the summer in Michigan awaiting the completion of Fort Lincoln. Her time at home gave her a glimpse into the life she might have led (“so monotonous, so commonplace”) had she married someone besides Custer and raised a family. “I am perfectly overwhelmed with gratitude,” she wrote. “Autie, your career is something wonderful. Swept along as I am on the current of your eventful life . . . [e]verything seems to fit into every other event like the blocks in a child’s puzzle. Does it not seem so strange to you?”

Even more exciting, his long, well-written letters about his adventures along the Yellowstone showed her where their future lay. “My ambition for you in the world of letters almost takes my heart out of my body,” she wrote. “I get so excited about it. . . . [T]he public shall not lose sight of you. . . . [D]o not fail to keep notes of everything that happened.” The following year Custer published My Life on the Plains to great acclaim (although Benteen later called it My Lie on the Plains), and he was even then, in the spring of 1876, preparing a memoir of the Civil War. That winter he’d been contacted by the country’s leading speakers bureau, the Redpath Agency, and plans were already in place for him to begin a lucrative speaking tour when he returned from the West in the fall.

The only problem with this plan was that Custer had so far proved to be a dismal public speaker. Despite his natural charisma on the battlefield, he twisted and turned before an assembled audience, speaking in rapid-fire bursts that were almost impossible to understand. Fortunately, Custer’s best male friend was the noted Shakespearean actor Lawrence Barrett, and Barrett had agreed to help Custer prepare for the tour.

Indeed, as Libbie was well aware, her true rival for Autie’s love (at least the kind of love she cared about) was not a woman, but Barrett, whom Custer had first met in St. Louis almost a decade ago. “They joyed in each other as women do,” she wrote, “and I tried not to look when they met or parted, while they gazed with tears into each other’s eyes and held hands like exuberant girls.” The prior winter, when Libbie and Custer had been in New York City, Barrett had been starring as Cassius in a lavish production of Julius Caesar, a politically themed play that had special relevance during the last days of the Grant administration. By the end of their stay in New York, Custer had seen his friend perform in the play at least forty times.

Despite the play’s title, Julius Caesar is really about the relationship between Cassius and his friend Marcus Brutus, and if Barrett’s edgy personality was perfectly suited to Cassius, Custer must have seen much of himself in Brutus. After assassinating the increasingly power-hungry emperor for the future good of Rome, Cassius and Brutus learn that Caesar loyalist Marc Antony is rallying his soldiers against them. Cassius, whose motivations from the start have been less than pure, is for letting Marc Antony attack fi rst, but Brutus, ever the forthright idealist, will have none of it. They must act and act quickly.

There is a tide in the affairs of men [Brutus insists]
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the Current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.

Forty times Custer watched Brutus deliver that speech. Forty times he watched as Brutus and Cassius led their forces into war. Forty times he watched them struggle with the realization that all was lost and that they must fall on their own swords, but not before Brutus, whom Marc Antony later dubs “the noblest Roman of them all,” predicts, “I shall have glory by this losing day.”

On May 27, nine days after saying good-bye to their husbands, Libbie Custer and a group of officers’ wives made their way down to the Fort Lincoln landing on the Missouri River. The steamboat Far West had arrived that morning, and her captain, Grant Marsh, was supervising his thirty-man crew in the transfer of tons of forage, ammunition, and other supplies onto the boat’s lower deck. By the end of the day, the Far West would be headed up the Missouri for her eventual rendezvous with the Seventh Cavalry on the Yellowstone.

When a riverboat came to the fort, it was customary for the master to host the officers’ wives in the boat’s dining room, and Marsh made sure that Libbie and her entourage were provided with “as dainty a luncheon as the larder of the boat would afford.” As the women took their seats at the table in the narrow, nicely outfitted dining room, Libbie requested that Captain Marsh come and join them. This was a duty Marsh had hoped to avoid. He’d chosen the Far West because it was the most spartan of his boats. She had plenty of room for freight but minimal accommodations for passengers. As he later told his biographer, he “did not wish to be burdened with many passengers for whose safety and comfort he would be responsible.” Since Mrs. Custer had a reputation for following her husband wherever he went, Marsh had a pretty good idea why she wanted him to join her for lunch.

He soon found himself sitting between Libbie and the wife of Lieutenant Algernon Smith. The two of them were, he noticed, “at particular pains to treat him cordially.” And just as he’d suspected, once the meal had come to an end, they requested that he talk to them privately.

When Libbie and Custer had parted on the morning of May 18, it had been a heart-wrenching scene. Custer’s striker, John Burkman, remembered “how she clung to Custer at the last, her arms tight around his neck and how she cried.” From the hill overlooking the campsite along the Heart River, Burkman and Custer watched her ride back to Fort Lincoln. “She looked so little and so young,” Burkman remembered, “and she was leaning way over with her head bent and we knew she was crying. We watched till she was just a speck way off on the plains.”

Libbie’s only consolation since her husband’s departure was the hope that Marsh would take both her and her good friend Nettie Smith on the Far West. She soon discovered that the riverboat’s captain had other ideas.

Grant Marsh was not one to be trifled with. Over the course of his long life, he earned the respect of such luminaries as Mark Twain, General Ulysses S. Grant, and Sitting Bull. Late in life, he picked up a scruffy young writer named John Neihardt, who was working on a book about the Missouri River. When Neihardt, who was destined to write the classic Black Elk Speaks, met Marsh in 1908, the seventy-four-year-old river pilot impressed him as “a born commander.” “It struck me,” Neihardt wrote, “that I should like to have [his face] cast in bronze to look at whenever a vacillating mood might seize me.”

That afternoon in 1876, Marsh explained that he anticipated the voyage to the Yellowstone to be “both dangerous and uncomfortable,” and
then showed Mrs. Custer and Mrs. Smith the crude nature of the Far West’s accommodations. But Libbie and Nettie still wanted to go. Marsh was reduced to what he called “a feeble subterfuge.” Perhaps when the more comfortable steamboat Josephine stopped at Fort Lincoln, her master would take the ladies to their husbands. Until then, they’d have to wait.

Deeply disappointed, Libbie and Nettie Smith returned to their homes in the garrison. “It is infinitely worse to be left behind,” Libbie wrote, “a prey to all the horrors of imagining what may be happening to the one you love. You slowly eat your heart out with anxiety and to endure such suspense is simply the hardest of all trials that come to the soldier’s wife.”

By the next morning, Marsh and the Far West were headed up the Missouri for the Yellowstone, the magnificent east-fl owing river that cut directly across the territory occupied by Sitting Bull’s band of Indians. Geographically speaking, the Yellowstone was one of the least known rivers in the United States. Terry and Custer’s map of the region dated back to before the Civil War and was full of inaccuracies. What current information the army possessed had been gathered just a year before by an exploring expedition also transported by Grant Marsh.

During that expedition in 1875, Marsh took careful note of the Yellowstone’s many north-fl owing tributaries, including the Powder, Tongue, Rosebud, and Bighorn rivers. Marsh even ventured twelve miles up the Bighorn, where the channel became so clogged with mud that it was generally assumed he could go no farther. But as Marsh would prove almost exactly a month after leaving Fort Lincoln to rendezvous with Custer, it was in fact possible, given proper motivation, to take a steamboat another thirty miles to the Bighorn’s confluence with a river called the Little Bighorn.

[130R]

I just started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ain Rand.

Has anyone here read the book? I hear the book is really good but the beginning 1/4 of the book is boring

[rwsaunders]

Just finished The Private Patient by PD James....on the hunt for a good cycling book.

[JMerring]

I just started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ain Rand.

Has anyone here read the book? I hear the book is really good but the beginning 1/4 of the book is boring

i have. i enjoyed it. if you found the beginning 1/4 boring, chances are it'll only get worse for you from there.

i'm currently reading hans fallada's 'every man dies alone.' sobering read.

[William]

Just finished The Private Patient by PD James....on the hunt for a good cycling book.


http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/2/9780007265312.jpg

[cmg]

Children of Men, PD James. in hopes of deciphering in the film. book and film are vastly different.

[pbbob]

does god hate women? by benson and stangroom
pride and prejudice and zombies.

[johnnymossville]

Just finished that one too - overwhelmingly interesting and informative. God, we eat like *****. We've gotten really good at eating for energy (but most of us don't burn enough of it and the results are obvious) but nutritionally, this is a frickin' wasteland. I don't have anywhere to put a garden (unless I could convince my condo board to make some BIG changes - not likely) and I'm probably too old and set in my ways to change over to growing more than a token amount of my own food. But it sure makes me more aware and picky about what I'm buying.

-Ray

Great book Ray. I can't wait for the day I can afford to move back to the country and have my own garden. Luckily, my Dad still gardens and gives me coolers full everytime I go home. :) He always says this year is his last, but then ends up making his garden bigger the next year. It's about a full acre now, and that's not counting the sweetcorn patch.

[fiamme red]

Just finished The Private Patient by PD James....on the hunt for a good cycling book.Fact or fiction? ;)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WiC3qHSQL.jpg

[97CSI]

"Under the Banner of God - A Story of Violent Faith..........", Jon Krakauer. A scary group of folks with very unAmerican values.

"13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown", Johnson & Kwak. A story about a totally out-of-control group of people. Unfortunately, they have a big impact on your (and my) life.

I recently finished "Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer and highly reccomend it; an exciting easy read. I'm now reading "Undauted Courage" by Steve Ambrose which is also enjoyable.Both are excellent reads. Especially like the way Ambrose writes. Easy and interesting.

I just started reading Atlas Shrugged by Ain Rand.

Has anyone here read the book? I hear the book is really good but the beginning 1/4 of the book is boringWell..............its a slog and total BS. So repetitive that it could easily be cut down to 20% of its size. Amazing that some folks still hold it up as a model for any society.

[learlove]

"Cleared Hot" about a Marine Pilot In Viet Nam. Guy flew a tour in helos 65-66 then returned in 69-70 flying OV-10 Broncos.

[dimsy]

just finished this really nice read.
it's short and sweet. great quotables.

need for the bike - paul fornel

http://www.thewashingmachinepost.net/fournel/need_for_the_bike.jpg

[Clydesdale]

Generation Me - an overview of the current generation of sub 30ish folks and their tendency toward rampant self esteem and self centeredness. The short version is that when everyone gets medals, wins, graduates every grade and is treated like they're the center of the universe and their happiness is the most important thing in the world... surprise - they think it's true. A really interesting read if you ever find yourself dealing with young people and feel like you/they are from a different planet.

[William]

Just finished....
http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/journalstar.com/content/tncms/assets/editorial/d/cf/65e/dcf65e12-4e64-11df-a455-001cc4c002e0.preview-300.jpg


And just picked up.....
http://images.entertainmentfactoryoutlet.com.au/9781599219080.jpg

[drewski]

Lost Cyclist by David V. Herlihy about Frank Lenz who attempted to ride around the world and mysteriously disappeared. Clever fellow and
incredibly strong. He was riding a single speed bicycle
that weighed 110 pounds fully loaded.

The descriptions of the riding around the world on early versions
of pneumatic tires and what was called the "safety bicycle" in the 1890's are
really interesting. Gives you an appreciation for what we ride today and
how much easier we have it. On the up side he did not have to compete
with as many motor cars just carriages and horses.

Lots of poetry by Rumi

The Pickaxe
Tear down this house.
A hundred thousand new houses can be built
from the transparent yellow carnelian
buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolition,
and then the digging beneath the foundation.


With that value in hand all the new construction
will be done without effort. And anyway, sooner or later,
the house will fall on its own.


The jewel treasure will be uncovered,
but it will not be yours then.
The buried wealth is your pay
for doing the demolition,
the pick and shovel work.


If you wait and just let it happen,
you will bite your hand and say,
I did not do as I knew I should have.

[echelon_john]

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku

http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Impossible-Scientific-Exploration-Teleportation/dp/0385520697


Husker Du: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock by Andrew Earles

Reading in anticipation of the Bob Mould autobiography coming this summer

http://www.amazon.com/Husker-Du-Noise-Pop-Pioneers-Launched/dp/0760335044/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294240183&sr=1-1-fkmr0

[Ray]

Most recently read an incredible book by Susan Casey about huge waves, from a surfing, shipping, and meteorological perspective - interesting and frightening and entertaining as hell.

Also read the book that 127 Hours was based on about the guy who got his arm pinned in a Utah slot canyon and had to amputate it to escape with his life. Fascinating book and a real character study, but I gotta say, that guy never should have lived long enough to find himself in that situation with all of the stupid risks he took long before that relatively mild risk that went bad.

And read Keith Richards' memoirs which is pretty much a must for anyone who loved the Stones over the years. That guy really was the heart of the band and it comes through in his writing.

I recommend any and all of them...

-Ray

[Steve in SLO]

I just started (and finished) another Louis L'Amour book last night. I didn't have anything unread on the bookshelf so I started after everybody went to bed. Comforting reads for me since my granddad always had a bunch lying around.

[dogdriver]

Most recently read an incredible book by Susan Casey about huge waves, from a surfing, shipping, and meteorological perspective - interesting and frightening and entertaining as hell.


-Ray

Just read this one also-- it goes well with an independent documentary from a couple years ago called "Riding Giants". Part of it has a history of big wave surfing and the surrounding culture, including some fantastically irreverent interviews with Greg Noll. The high point of the flick is video of Laird's epic (yes, I use the "E" word) ride in Tahiti. I have a DVD copy I'll send around if anyone wants to see it.

Chris

[akelman]

I have a DVD copy I'll send around if anyone wants to see it.

I'd LOVE to see it.

[dogdriver]

I'd LOVE to see it.


PM me your address. Maybe we can start an "around the world" thing...

[Ray]

Just read this one also-- it goes well with an independent documentary from a couple years ago called "Riding Giants". Part of it has a history of big wave surfing and the surrounding culture, including some fantastically irreverent interviews with Greg Noll. The high point of the flick is video of Laird's epic (yes, I use the "E" word) ride in Tahiti. I have a DVD copy I'll send around if anyone wants to see it.

Chris
Yeah, I saw that one a while back and then bought it from iTunes after reading the book. Some great old cultural artifacts in that, not to mention the insane surfing.

[climbgdh]

Most recently read an incredible book by Susan Casey about huge waves, from a surfing, shipping, and meteorological perspective - interesting and frightening and entertaining as hell.

-Ray

+1 on the Susan Casey book!! It's a great read!!

[merlincustom1]

+1 Cormac McCarthy. From The Road:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its beginning. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. ??

[Jeff N.]

Keith Richard's autobiography, "Life". Simply outstanding. Take whatever you've ever heard about his drug use and multiply it by about 12. Jeff N.

[Fixed]

rumpole and the primrose path
cheers imho

[johnnymossville]

Crescent Dawn - Clive Cussler.

I'm a sucker for a good sunken treasure story. I also like the way he incorporates a bit of current events in the books. this one touches on islamic extremism.

[Fixed]

bro everybody has read the... ( ...the girl....l ) ....books
i feel for Stieg Larsson i heard the cat went to the publisher and got a check
so excited he ran up 7 floors to his apartment
had h bomb attack and died all before he saw his success
bummer imho
cheers

[William]

Crescent Dawn - Clive Cussler.

I'm a sucker for a good sunken treasure story. I also like the way he incorporates a bit of current events in the books. this one touches on islamic extremism.


I remember reading a Clive Cussler book about bringing up the Titanic when I was a kid. Cool read as i remember it.



William

[tele]

Crescent Dawn - Clive Cussler.

I'm a sucker for a good sunken treasure story. I also like the way he incorporates a bit of current events in the books. this one touches on islamic extremism.
got a copy of Lost Empire for the holidays, going to start it tonight.

I like his books, nice easy enjoyable read.

[Pandergosk]

Just finishing Bill Bryson's "A Short History to Nearly Everything". Interesting stuff.

[97CSI]

The recent thread on math made me pick this up at the library today:
'The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics' by James Kakalios. A non-math treat that focuses on the scientists rather than the science.

Also, 'Atlantic', by Simon Winchester, who also wrote 'Krakatoa'.

Next up is 'The American Rifle' by Townsend Whelen, an iconic American figure from ~100 years ago.

[konstantkarma]

Personal memoirs of U.S. Grant, vol. I and II. His perspective on the country from the early 1800s through the Civil War and his presidency is fascinating. Free download via IBooks or The Gutenburg Project.

[Ray]

bro everybody has read the... ( ...the girl....l ) ....books
i feel for Stieg Larsson i heard the cat went to the publisher and got a check
so excited he ran up 7 floors to his apartment
had h bomb attack and died all before he saw his success
bummer imho
cheers
I haven't read those, but my wife, daughters, mother-in-law, damn near everyone else in the family has read all three and loved them. Doesn't sound like my type of book, but it sounds like they might be good enough to transcend the genre. I think all 3 are on my Kindle account from my wife having them, so I should download 'em and check 'em out.

-Ray

[trophyoftexas]

....new Mark Twain Autobio and "Colonel Roosevelt", third in the bio series. Also reading my way through most all of Jim Harrison's stuff, not a fiction reader normally but wanted to read several of his older works to judge for myself...basically, not impressed.

[Pbraun]

I haven't read those, but my wife, daughters, mother-in-law, damn near everyone else in the family has read all three and loved them. Doesn't sound like my type of book, but it sounds like they might be good enough to transcend the genre. I think all 3 are on my Kindle account from my wife having them, so I should download 'em and check 'em out.

-Ray

I just read the first of "The Girl..." books and was thoroughly unimpressed. It's a bizarre story featuring unrealistic characters. There's mystery to it, so you're interested to find out who done it, but it's not particularly well written (even if you ascribe typos and grammar problems to the translator, not the author) or memorable.

I also just read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I found it while looking for a book for one of my kids. It's very worthwhile, both interesting and well written. Currently reading In Search of Memory by Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel. It's quite good, so far.

Oh,and as for cycling books, the book on Anquetil (Sex Lies and Handlebar Tape) is very interesting. What an impressive and bizarre fellow. His family life really was unbelievable. Two other excellent books that I got from Amazon UK were the book by Jean Bobet about his brother -- Tomorrow We Ride -- very well written adn interesting, especially for old timers like me and The Full Cycle by Vin Denson. The three books interrelate and give a good picture for UK and continental racing scenes in tne 50s and 60s.

[miguel]

i just finished reading Ian Fleming's James Bond novel "thunderball"

it was good, comparatively, to the rest of the series. top 3 or 4, i guess. most of the bond novels after Dr. No are pretty good.

[onekgguy]

Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953)

Matt Taibbi takes the complexities of Wall Street, commodity trading, the mortgage industry, the Federal Reserve and in particular Alan Greenspan and more and shows how each played a role in the near destruction of our economy.

I can't recommend this book enough.

Kevin g

[Fixed]

i just finished reading Ian Fleming's James Bond novel "thunderball"

it was good, comparatively, to the rest of the series. top 3 or 4, i guess. most of the bond novels after Dr. No are pretty good.
i have read every j.b. book by all the writers .

[pmac]

rumpole and the primrose path
cheers imho

Have you read 'Dunster'? Not in the Rumpole mode but imho his best.

[97CSI]

Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953)

Matt Taibbi takes the complexities of Wall Street, commodity trading, the mortgage industry, the Federal Reserve and in particular Alan Greenspan and more and shows how each played a role in the near destruction of our economy.

I can't recommend this book enough.

Kevin gDefinitely a good read. Alan Greenspan and supply-side economics. The elder Bush certainly got that right when he called it voodoo economics. The chickens............... they are coming home to roost.

[Fixed]

Have you read 'Dunster'? Not in the Rumpole mode but imho his best.
not yet but it is on the list thanks cheers
http://www.amazon.com/Dunster-John-Mortimer/dp/0140157115

[Black Dog]

Reading this and can not put it down. I have been staying up late every night for the past several days to read this.

More Money Than Brains:
Why Schools Suck, College is Crap, and Idiots Think They're Right by Laura Penny


Here is a synopsis:

On both sides of the border, education is rapidly giving way to job training, and learning how to think for yourself and for the sake of dipping into the vast ocean of human knowledge is going distinctly out of fashion.

It gets worse, says Laura Penny, university lecturer and scathingly funny writer. Paradoxically, in the two nations that have among the best universities, libraries, and research institutions in the world, intellectuals are largely distrusted and yelping ignoramuses now clog the arenas of public discourse.

[Ray]

Matt Taibbi's Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (http://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953)

Matt Taibbi takes the complexities of Wall Street, commodity trading, the mortgage industry, the Federal Reserve and in particular Alan Greenspan and more and shows how each played a role in the near destruction of our economy.

I can't recommend this book enough.

Kevin g
Or if you want a writer with a slightly (OK, a lot more than slightly) less political bent than Taibbi, Michael Lewis' book on the sub-prime crisis as told through the stories of a handful of the hedgers who saw it coming is at once entertaining as hell, interesting as hell, and frightening as hell. Come to think of it, i think that's how I just described that book about waves by Susan Casey also. Maybe the two topics have something in common. Or maybe that's what it takes to write compellingly about complex topics. Or maybe that's all my addled brain can handle?

In any case, someone who can actually explain more or less how the mortgage crisis happens and make it laugh-out-loud funny in places has got some serious writing chops.

-Ray

[tuxbailey]

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

Anathem - Neal Stephenson

[97CSI]

Reading this and can not put it down. I have been staying up late every night for the past several days to read this.

More Money Than Brains:
Why Schools Suck, College is Crap, and Idiots Think They're Right by Laura Penny

Here is a synopsis:

On both sides of the border, education is rapidly giving way to job training, and learning how to think for yourself and for the sake of dipping into the vast ocean of human knowledge is going distinctly out of fashion.

It gets worse, says Laura Penny, university lecturer and scathingly funny writer. Paradoxically, in the two nations that have among the best universities, libraries, and research institutions in the world, intellectuals are largely distrusted and yelping ignoramuses now clog the arenas of public discourse.Did not realize there are that many good universities in Mexico. ;) Added to the 'to read' list.

EDIT: Called the local library and they are ordering for me. We have an excellent county library system, so support them whenever possible.

[onekgguy]

Or if you want a writer with a slightly (OK, a lot more than slightly) less political bent than Taibbi, Michael Lewis' book on the sub-prime crisis as told through the stories of a handful of the hedgers who saw it coming is at once entertaining as hell, interesting as hell, and frightening as hell. Come to think of it, i think that's how I just described that book about waves by Susan Casey also. Maybe the two topics have something in common. Or maybe that's what it takes to write compellingly about complex topics. Or maybe that's all my addled brain can handle?

In any case, someone who can actually explain more or less how the mortgage crisis happens and make it laugh-out-loud funny in places has got some serious writing chops.

-Ray

Sounds like I've got another title to add to my Kindle. Thanks!

Kevin g

[Bud_E]

In the last few months I've read
Lewis - The Big Short
Krakauer - Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
(I like these 2 writers)

Connelly - Harry Bosch series ( good trashy escape novels taking place in L.A.)

Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
(a non-scientific history of science - I really enjoyed it )

...and thanks to this thread, yesterday I downloaded McCarthy "The Road" and I'm already halfway through it. Great book - very little has really happened so far but his writing is so amazing I just keep turning the pages. I plan on reading the Border trilogy.

Oh yeah. I read Franzen - Freedom . It was okay - not my kind of book.

[zray67]

I finished "The Road" a few months ago. Wonderful book. Still stays with me.
I don't have a TV so I use reading for enjoyment, knowledge, etc. Currently, I'm reading a Jack Reacher novel "Persuader". And when I'm not overly lazy I'm reading Robert Pirsig's "Lila" or Doris Goodwin's "Team of Rivals".
But back to "The Road". It really had one or two very chilling scenes and presented some deeply disturbing questions for me to ponder. I highly recommend the book.

Let me add another book to the list. I'm always reading or rereading Stephen Mitchell's translation of "The Book of Job". Fantastic translation and his introduction is superb. A must read! Of course, that is my less than humble opinion and friends quite frequently ignore my enthusiasms.

[Ray]

Oh yeah. I read Franzen - Freedom . It was okay - not my kind of book.
I've never been able to get into Franzen, despite all of the raves. I saw an older one on the Kindle store for cheap that had incredible reviews. Downloaded the sample and realized I'd started it several years ago, a few time, and never got into it. And I got Freedom as a gift several weeks ago. Its on the top of the Kindle list, I've started it after each book I've finished, and within 25-30 pages I find myself finding something else to read. I don't know what it is about that guy, but i don't seem to bond with his writing style or something.

-Ray

[Bud_E]

I've never been able to get into Franzen, despite all of the raves. I saw an older one on the Kindle store for cheap that had incredible reviews. Downloaded the sample and realized I'd started it several years ago, a few time, and never got into it. And I got Freedom as a gift several weeks ago. Its on the top of the Kindle list, I've started it after each book I've finished, and within 25-30 pages I find myself finding something else to read. I don't know what it is about that guy, but i don't seem to bond with his writing style or something.

-Ray

My wife and daughters are huge fans of his and read The Corrections and then Freedom - both soon after they were released. I was talked into going to see him give a talk in downtown L.A. which wasn't bad. He's a very smart guy. Based on that I read Freedom but I found the characters uninteresting and self-absorbed. I think he's a writer who appeals to women more than men.

[onekgguy]

Definitely a good read. Alan Greenspan and supply-side economics. The elder Bush certainly got that right when he called it voodoo economics. The chickens............... they are coming home to roost.

Yeah, he sure does a number on Greenspan...but deservedly so in my opinion.

Kevin g

[rounder]

I am not a big book reader but read the beatnik book On the Road by Jack Kerouac (sp?) recently. Not sure that it ages well but always wanted to read the book. I thought it was pretty depressing, the book described these guys who hung out and traveled around getting married, and meeting new girls, and listening to jazz. It was not nearly as much fun as going on most bike rides. After Dobie Gillis and Grateful Dead, thought it would be more fun.

Downloaded Keith Richards' book to the kindle recently and will read that. Best book i have read during the past few years was Clapton's Guitar. The book was not really about Clapton and was amazingly good.

[Fixed]

I am not a big book reader but read the beatnik book On the Road by Jack Kerouac (sp?) recently. Not sure that it ages well but always wanted to read the book. I thought it was pretty depressing, the book described these guys who hung out and traveled around getting married, and meeting new girls, and listening to jazz. It was not nearly as much fun as going on most bike rides. After Dobie Gillis and Grateful Dead, thought it would be more fun.


it is a classic now my i.b. h.s. student son is reading it now
cheers imho

[BillG]

the book by Jean Bobet about his brother -- Tomorrow We Ride -- very well written and interesting.

Well-written and inspiring book. Really terrific.

[pmac]

None of these are particularly new, but I've read or more accurately reread them all recently.

The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Actually three books, Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. Vaguely reminiscent of John Barth's The Sotweed Factor, although I don't know if anyone else would agree with that. A remarkable tale that is both a grand adventure and a semi-fictional account of the origins of the calculus. Including some science history is the icing on the cake for me, but I doubt this would make it any less entertaining to someone with no interest in that area at all.

Three books on the absurdity of academics and academic politics:

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis.
Straight Man, by Richard Russo.
Moo, by Jane Smiley.

Each one is utterly hilarious.

Finally, although I could go on at length, Rose by Martin Cruz Smith. Not one of the Arkady series, but my favorite of his.

[csm]

on my kindle....

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road

&

Traveling Music : The Soundtrack to My Life and Times

both by Neil Peart.

[Fixed]

crime and punishment by dostoevsky
my son said i should read it
cheers