What Chicago Boyz Readers Are Reading (October and November 2016)

Below is a list of the books, ebooks, music and videos that Chicago Boyz readers viewed and/or ordered in October and November 2016 via Amazon links on this blog. (A cumulative list of Chicago Boyz readers’ Amazon purchases is here.)

Your book and non-book Amazon purchases help to support this blog via the Amazon Associates program. Chicago Boyz earns a percentage on all of your Amazon purchases as long as you get to the Amazon site by clicking on Amazon links on this blog (including the Amazon banner in the blog header, the link above the Amazon banner, and even Amazon links on Chicago Boyz for products other than the ones that you want to buy).

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Books
“Trickle Down Theory” and “Tax Cuts for the Rich”

1984 (Signet Classics)

A Midsummer Night’s Scream

A Season for the Ages: How the 2016 Chicago Cubs Brought a World Series Championship to the North Side

Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities

Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea

Elementary Geometry from an Advanced Standpoint (3rd Edition)

Elephant Man

Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant (Princeton Science Library)

God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human

Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye

Happy Odyssey

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

Ice Is Nice!: All About the North and South Poles (Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library)

Impossible Languages (MIT Press)

In the Beginning…was the Command Line

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2 The Hammer of Thor

Of Mice and Men

PRISONERS OF HOPE (Pen & Sword Paperback)

Pea and Lentil Cookbook: From Everyday to Gourmet

Religion and American Culture

Take Heart, My Child: A Mother’s Dream

The Enlightenment in America

The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist’s Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan

The Magic Circle: Stories and People in Poems

The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It

The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party

Timmy Failure: The Book You’re Not Supposed to Have

Tornadoes

Welcome to the Symphony: A Musical Exploration of the Orchestra Using Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

Wilderness Medical Society Practice Guidelines, 2nd

DVDs
A Little Chaos (DVD)

Gotcha!

The Great Courses: Geometry: An Interactive Journey to Mastery

Digital Music
‘Cross the Green Mountain (From Gods and Generals Soundtrack)

I’m Not There

Kindle eBooks
Alive for Now (The Infected Dead Book 1)

America: A Prophecy

American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

Blue Plague: Hope: Book Seven

Catholic Perspective on Paul

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

Happy Odyssey

In the Beginning…Was the Command Line

Long Road To Abilene: The Western Adventures of Cade McCall

Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command

Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue

People’s Republic

Red River Revenge (Remington Book 1)

Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms

The Chronicles of Luna City

The Clausewitz Roundtable

The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity (The Origins of Catholicism Book 1)

The Deadly Thirst: A WJ Lundy Short

The Eternal City: Rome & the Origins of Catholic Christianity

The Last Town #5: Fleeing the Dead

The Outcast (The Empire’s Corps Book 5)

The Road Back: A Novel

The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End

War Stories: 50 Years in Medicine

Winter Apocalypse: Zombie Crusade V

Items with no orders
In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

THE HELLHOUND OF WALL STREET: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance

4th Generation Warfare Handbook

A History of the Future: A World Made By Hand Novel

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier

A Time For Audacity: How Brexit Has Created The CANZUK Option

A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America’s War on Terror

Accept No Substitude

Adelsverein: The Complete Trilogy

Adelsverein: The Gathering

Adelsverein: The Harvesting

Adelsverein: The Sowing

After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street-and Washington

Alas, Babylon

Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a cultural history)

America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century?Why America?s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come

American Spartan: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant

American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration

Apocalypse in Islam

Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

Bitter Waters: Life And Work In Stalin’s Russia

Canon PowerShot ELPH 100 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with 4X Optical Zoom (Grey) (OLD MODEL)

Code-Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan-And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

Conspiracy Theory in America (Discovering America)

Counting by 7s

Country – Mother Earth

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis

DAEMON

Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance–and Why They Fall

Death’s End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past)

Defying Hitler: A Memoir

Defying Hitler: A Memoir

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Discovering H.P. Lovecraft

Eggs are Expensive, Sperm is Cheap: 50 Politically Incorrect Thoughts for Men

Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present

Engineers of the Southwest Pacific 1941-1945. Vol IV. Amphibian Engineer Operations.

Every Man Dies Alone

Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism

Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant (Princeton Science Library)

Give Us This Day (Swann Family Saga Book 3)

Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography

Ham on Rye: A Novel

Herman the German: Just Lucky I Guess

Hollywood vs. America: The Explosive Bestseller that Shows How-and Why-the Entertainment Industry Has Broken Faith With Its Audience

Homemade SongsCome See About Me

How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed

I Knew Hitler (The Third Reich From Original Sources)

I Knew Hitler: The Lost Testimony by a Survivor from the Night of the Long Knives (The Third Reich from Original Sources)

In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire

In The Here And Now

Japan Through the Looking Glass

Land of the Bottom Line

Last to Die: A Defeated Empire, a Forgotten Mission, and the Last American Killed in World War II

Little Man, What Now

Lone Star Sons

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

Luna City 3.1 (The Chronicles of Luna City)

Many Unhappy Returns: One Man’s Quest To Turn Around The Most Unpopular Organization In America (Leadership for the Common Good)

Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command

Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too

Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too

My Many Sons

Netatmo Weather Station for Smartphone

Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist

Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot

Not For Tourists Guide to Brooklyn 2016

Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45

Patton’s Air Force: Forging a Legendary Air-Ground Team

Pericles (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Proofs Without Words II: More Exercises in Visual Thinking (Classroom Resource Materials) (v. 2)

Purgatory Illustrated by the Lives and Legends of the Saints

RACE WARS: Season Ten: Episodes 55-62: “The Battle”

Rhetoric (Dover Thrift Editions)

Rockets and People Volume I

Romertopf 99302 Classic Cook Book

Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains

Shanghai: The Architecture of China’s Great Urban Center

Sunset & Steel Rails

That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3)

The Afghan Campaign: A Novel

The Age of Longing

The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-First Century

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)

The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto)

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

The Brother’s Karamazov (The Unabridged Garnett Translation)

The Culture of Capitalism

The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System

The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West

The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State

The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why

The Indo-Europeans: In Search of the Homeland

The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War

The Kingdom of Speech

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

The Mass: A Study of Roman Liturgy

The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare Made Easy)

The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America

The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges–and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

The Quivera Trail

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

The Seven Military Classics Of Ancient China (History and Warfare)

The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture

The Sword of Honour Trilogy (Everyman’s Library Classics & Contemporary Classics)

The Three-Body Problem

The true blue;: The life and adventures of Colonel Fred Burnaby, 1842-85

Theirs Was the Kingdom (Swann Family Saga)

Time’s Arrow (Vintage International)

Totalitaria: What If The Enemy Is The State: BREXIT Edition: Look What’s Coming

Trench Warfare: 1850-1950

Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War

War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires

We the Living

When Globalization Fails: The Rise and Fall of Pax Americana

Witness

Wolf Among Wolves

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

X-Day: Japan: Front Line Reporting at the Greatest Invasion and the Dawn of Nuclear Warfare

Xenophon’s Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age

Zao Wou-Ki

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

how nature works: the science of self-organized criticality

14 thoughts on “What Chicago Boyz Readers Are Reading (October and November 2016)”

  1. Just finished James D. Hornfischer’s The Fleet at Flood Time, a great history of WW Ii war in the Pacific from the battle of Saipan until the Japanese surrender. The author deeply researched the subject and is a superb writer. Currently reading Willem Steenkamp’s Mobility Conquers:: The Story of 61 Mechanised Battalion Group 1978-2005. This book is really a weighted tome as it has over 1100 pages printed on heavy stack paper–the kind you use for photos which the book is full of. This book is also of interest as I know several of the people mentioned in the book as well as Willem.

  2. Interesting. I’ll try to remember to use your link. I have discovered that I can buy any damn thing from China on Amazon. I am building up my electronics build capacity to build and toy with drones, their hardware and software. A fascinating area for me. My first one in the build process:

    http://carnagepro.com/fly/Alien6_build1.jpg

    Anyway I need stuff, a lot of bits and pieces. I can buy a roll of solder for $2.95 with free shipping and that’s it. Canada Customs doesn’t add tax or duty, I just get whatever I want for that price. I can just go shopping for a huge range of things that are hard to come by where I live in the sticks. Sometimes they get 2 things in a bag, but often it’s a single item. The only drawback is long shipping time, 15 to 30 days, although I’ve never waited much past 20.

    If you get paid per transaction, rather than by actual value, I may be able to help. ;)

  3. You have an ebay link? I just bought 10 5v buzzers for $1.34 on the bay. Free shipping … $1.34 … straight from China.

    This is how you take over the world. ;)

  4. The eBay link is an idea. Do they pay a commission ? I bought my wife’s Christmas presents on eBay the past two years.

    One was a gold charm bracelet last year that was filled with charms that fit our lives. She loved it. I had a jeweler polish it.

    She loves estate jewelry and eBay has a good selection.

  5. Morgan,

    Regards this —

    >>Just finished James D. Hornfischer’s The Fleet at Flood Time, a
    >>great history of WW Ii war in the Pacific from the battle of Saipan
    >>until the Japanese surrender. The author deeply researched the subject
    >>and is a superb writer

    Not so much.

    My research to date points to both Iwo Jima and Okinawa being a poorly planned and poorly executed blood baths.

    The best thing to be said about them is they were a better choice than invading Formosa.

    Hornfischer’s “The Fleet at Flood Time” is hagiography, pure and simple.

  6. Too each his own. I only read the book because Ralph Peters sent it to me for an X-Mas gift,otherwise I probably would never had read it, or even been aware of it. By the way, my oldest brother was killed on Okinawa as a member of 1st Mar Div.

    Merry Christmas.

  7. I recommend “To War With Whitaker”. I won’t quote the subtitle in case it puts you off but it’s a tale of WWII compiled long after by the wife in the story, from her diaries. Her husband, a young officer, is sent to the Middle East taking with him Whitaker (his Jeeves). She’s determined not to be left behind so she pawns her jewellery to fund the jaunt, and sets off too, in spite of army rules that forbid it. She reckons that she should find work easily because she has shorthand and typing, and speaks French and a little German. What could possibly go wrong? Rather a lot, but encouraged by Whitaker she found that everything would go right in the end.

    It’s an excellent read – she writes very well, is perceptive, and has a good sense of humour. She meets Churchill, Eisenhower, Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and a host of other luminaries. I don’t think I’ve read another book about the war from the perspective of someone who is both the wife of a serving officer, and whose work lets her mix freely with generals, diplomats, and spooks.

  8. both Iwo Jima and Okinawa being a poorly planned and poorly executed blood baths.

    Compared to what ?

    Tarawa and Peleliu make them look like planning masterpieces.

    Okinawa told us what an invasion of the Home Islands would be like and helped Truman make the decision on the atomic bomb. The best part of “Fleet at Flood Tide” was the section on the squadron that dropped The Bomb.

    Tibbets was an amazing guy. I have a signed photo of him. He also led the first B 17 raid into Germany.

    My daughter, who is now 49, when in 6th grade her class held a “war crimes trial ” of Truman and convicted him. Leftist radicalism is not that new.

  9. On Tibbets, I should add that he was the pilot and the co-pilot was Frank Armstrong. who was the model for the Gregory Peck role in “12 o’clock High, ” the movie.

    Armstrong was another who flew in both theaters. He led, as commender not pilot, the first raid into Germany and the last one into Japan, after the atomic bomb had been dropped by Tibbets.

  10. “Iwo Jima and Okinawa, Tarawa and Peleliu”: if I understand correctly, these battles were essentially sieges. If so you must expect the same sort of casualty figures as in the siege fighting of WWI: Verdun, the Somme, and Passchendaele are the natural comparisons, aren’t they?

  11. Mike K.

    The Navy blew its intelligence preparation for battle. None of the small islands around Okinawa were photographed before the fleet arrived. This allowed Japanese radars on those islands to avoid detection via camouflage and watch our combat air patrols to direct Kamikaze attacks.

    The Navy blew both its signals planning and signals security to hell and gone. Repeated Kamikaze warnings were lost to congested frequencies due to too many people on them and long logistical messages on combat frequencies. The latter also gave away the meanings of the aviation brevity codes to the Japanese.

    The Navy wiffed on taking the most important island air field in the campaign – Kikia Jima – which was as important to land based fighters supporting the proposed invasions of Japan as Iwo Jima was for the B-29 campaign.

  12. “if I understand correctly, these battles were essentially sieges.”

    In one sense they were assaults on fortified positions in which the Japanese had constructed elaborate fortifications that resisted naval gunfire and aerial bombing.

    However, a “siege” suggests a prolonged campaign and methodical approach. These were rapid and bloody attacks by infantry.

    Tarawa was complicated by two factors. The tides have not been accurately determined which left the assault force stranded on the reef a considerable distance from shore. Troops had to wade in under constant fire. The actual battle took only 76 hours on an island (Betio) that was only 2 miles by 800 yards. All defenders died.

    Guadalcanal had taken 6 months but was a large island. More like a land campaign. It was also not that well fortified.

    Iwo Jima was similar although it took 5 weeks to destroy the 21,000 defenders who, again, had extensive tunnels and fortifications. My former partner in surgical practice was a young Navy medical officer and landed with the Marines. He and his wife returned for the 50th anniversary of the battle in 1995. They found medical stations in caves that still had skeletons of dead and wounded in carved out bunks.

    Okinawa was a bit more of a siege as the Japanese decided not to contest the landing and, somewhat like Guadalcanal, fought the battle in the interior of the island. Like Iwo Jima and Tarawa and unlike Guadalcanal, Okinawa also had extensive underground fortifications.

    It took 82 days to defeat the forces defending it and the Kamikazi attacks made this considerably different from the other campaigns.

  13. Peleliu was a longer battle and was unnecessary. It was a strategic error that it was invaded at all.

    In the United States, this was a controversial battle because of the island’s questionable strategic value and the high casualty rate, which exceeded that of all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War.[6] The National Museum of the Marine Corps called it “the bitterest battle of the war for the Marines

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