RickB

Informative about modern Iran

Revisado: 02-08-24

The story is good, interesting. It's not a gripping nail biter but I learned a lot about different Iranian perspectives on their theocracy.

The narrator is good enough but OMG learn how to pronounce "row" (as in argument) if your are a professional narrator!

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Get your sheltered teen-agers to read this

Revisado: 01-22-24

Describes a world that is full of nuance, inhabited by humans, not angels and demons.

At the beginning Nadia is grateful for the simple small blessings she has as a poor yazidi in a remote village, for example for being able to go to school.

It describes horrible events without being needlessly horrifying.

I wish all the privileged, sheltered teen-agers around me would read this and get some perspective.

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Still relevant

Revisado: 11-18-23

Interesting explanation of many things I see around me, for example why, generally, the left thinks the right has nefarious motives but not vice versa.

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Entertaining, Fascinating and Informative

Revisado: 09-08-23

A former Labor Party president gives us a look behind the scenes at a long history serving his party.

Indigenous Affairs are discussed throughout, however this is not the sole focus, and you can learn a lot about history and also political theory by reading this book.

Mundine delivers simple and practical solutions to Closing the Gap.

He gives his thoughts on "The Voice" years before the referendum.

I was pleased to see he didn't portray himself as a saint, he is honest about chapters in his life which show he is an imperfect human being, like you and me.

The narrator mispronounced many words, seriously man, you had one job.

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On the virtue of doubt

Revisado: 04-14-23

Megan describes the harm she did with the best of intentions and how she learned to minimise the chance of making the same mistakes in the future.

She points out, WBC is not unique, she sees the same human tendency all around her. We can all learn something about ourselves from her example.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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An academic “Jews Don’t Count”

Revisado: 06-28-22

There are other books that deal with this, for example “Jews Don’t Count”. This book is more academic, though accessible.

I appreciated the discussions on subjective intent - can someone be antisemitic without consciously hating Jews? As I see the mainstream, lefty people around me engage in antisemitic tropes I think about this a lot.

Why do the people who accept institutional racism in other cases reject it for antisemitism?

I will warn you, I feel quite hopeless after reading this. Antisemitism is becoming increasingly fashionable again, in the “community of the good”, the “people like us”; bistro antisemitism.

Yet the only antisemitism we are allowed to recognise is the beer hall variety, with a uniform and a funny moustache.

I guess one whiff of hope is what happened to Corbyn after this book was finished, but this seems to be one step forward, two steps back.

I also appreciated the discussion on having your Judaism constructed by your “enemies”, the way a Jewish identity can grow in response to attack, where before it was essentially dormant.

This leads me to consider how the more the antisemitism grows the more it creates a reaction in Jews which includes Zionism - if this is how the world treats Jews then they better look after themselves.

Hopeless, seems we’ll never see the end of it.

Amazing how a minority population, 0.2% of the world, and a minuscule sliver of land can be the focus of so much hate.

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Perfect Starting Point

Revisado: 05-14-21

This format really worked well for me as an absolute beginner who has learned other languages before. Tip: take a look at the accompanying PDF download, it is excellent!

The presenters are engaging and fun. Shira being a native English speaker means she has interesting perspectives on Israel and insight into the Hebrew learning journey.

Another review mentioned it is repetitive - yes! and this was a MAJOR plus for me, the Hebrew words are so foreign, not like when I was learning German, I need to hear them many many times for them to sink in. If you are not an absolute beginner this is not the book for you.

I love how each lesson includes a culture section, a vocab section and especially a grammar section. I know my direct objects, my definite articles, my transitive verbs etc so really appreciated getting down to the details.

The culture section could be interpreted as the instructors blabbering on too much, but again it worked for me. My brain needed a break after each Hebrew lesson. It might depend how you listen to this, in my case I would play it while going for a run, I could not absorb 45mins - 1hr of new Hebrew in one hit, so their conversions helped make it more digestible.

There is definitely a large block in the middle where they break the pattern and do not explicitly do any Hebrew but instead talk about culture at length. However this actually taught me a whole bunch of vocab I already knew without knowing it and blew my mind as pieces clicked into place. For example, we've all heard of Tel Aviv - that means 'Hill of Spring' (hill = tel, spring = aviv). Likewise Rosh Hashana - I had heard of that - means 'Head of the Year' (rosh = head, ha = the, shanah = year). Bam - there's five Hebrew words I just learned "for free".

I have listened to the first 3 of these books now, the subsequent books are more Hebrew dense, I am happy with my progress and plan to listen to these books all over again.

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Moderate / Centrist Thoughts

Revisado: 09-07-20

** Bias Warning **

The facts presented in this book are interpreted through an unapologetically conservative lens, I mean full on religious right, and at times it caused me to nearly stopped reading the book due to concerns about credibility.

** Why Read It **
If you are worried about a left leaning bias in academia how can you be sure to learn about communism without whitewashing? Read this book.

I also enjoyed its scope - it goes right into the 21st Century, here are some things I found interesting:

* If Marx was all about class struggle, why is the left all about race, gender and sexuality today?

* What about socialism? Is that any different to Communism?

* Russian Revolution. Che Guevara. Cuban Missile Crisis. Mao. Great Leap Forward. Pol Pot. Frankfurt School etc

** Note to Conservative Readers - Don't Demonise Atheists **
Being an atheist tells you NOTHING about someone's position on anything except belief in a god or gods. This includes communism, and many atheists are just as aghast at the appalling history of communism as you are. Atheists can be right wing libertarian, left wing progressive or centrist moderates concerned about all extremism. They can even be highly religious - e.g. some branches of Buddhism.

Lumping them all together is like lumping together everyone who doesn't believe in astrology - ridiculous.

What the heck is an "Obscene Atheist Museum" anyway? How would it differ from a museum to "not collecting stamps"? What would be in it? It makes no sense but Paul constantly throws these sorts of comments around, potentially alienating many who are otherwise sympathetic with his concerns about communism.

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Easy to read and content rich polemical on SJWs

Revisado: 07-15-19

I bought this for the title knowing absolutely nothing about the author.
It is easy to read and engaging most of the time.

It contains a lot of information and there are many reasons to read it, for example:

* Aristotle's concepts of rhetoric vs dialectic and how this applies when attempting to communicate with SJWs - "X is not X because Feel Bad" - (it's worth reading for this alone)
* Gamergate and its impact in society and culture beyond the gaming industry
* Ideological authoritarianism in the publishing industry (especially Science Fiction and the Hugo Awards)
* What to do if you find yourself being lynched by the thought police

In reading this I realised the author is quite far to the conservative right. However Milo's afterword sums it up well: "This wasn't a left/right thing at all, it's more about [...] authoritarianism vs libertarianism". Yes, exactly.

For those looking for a deeper dive into these social issues but less polemical and from a more moderate (actually left wing) perspective I strongly recommend "The Coddling of the American Mind".

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Thorough, entertaining and informative

Revisado: 09-08-18

This book is in four parts and each one is quite different to the others. I expect most people will find different parts more interesting depending on where they are coming from. It could have been split into more than one book.

For this reason you should expect to have different reactions and levels of engagement with the different parts.

I think it's too much of a deep dive in many places to rival the more accessible "atheist books" for the casual reader. For anyone with a genuine interest, particularly from a Christian perspective, this book should be highly satisfying. Bear in mind this is explicitly Dan's own story and not a generic discussion of religion and atheism.

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