"In the early portions of the saga, we meet Joe Carter as a young misfit child, the world's only mutant telepath. He learns to conceal his powers, grows up something of a recluse and attends Hoxworth University, where he meets Professor Jonathan Billings, who unriddles his secret. Together they decide to build a fully sentient supercomputer named Bossy (after the putatively bovine appearance of its casing), which Joe suspects will help create a race of telepaths to keep him company . . . "

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

They'd Rather Be Right is a good old-fashioned science fiction book. I was fortunate to pick up a copy for six dollars, as it seems most sellers wanted me to spend seven times as much.

The story is about a couple of scientists who invite a machine that can answer anyone's questions and much more. Joe Carter is a telepath who smooths the way for the two scientists to finish their computer that has been given the name of Bossy.

Very little technical details are revealed about the machine, other than that it uses tubes rather than chips, so the novel has aged fairly well. In the 21st Century, the story may now seem old, but sixty years ago, this type of writing was quite advanced.

Not as exciting and action filled as today's SciFi but a good example of the type of science fiction I grew up on.

One where a 1950s child was not going to learn more about sexual intercourse than he would reading a hidden under the bed Playboy magazine.

Begun: 07/16/2008 Finished: 07/17/2008 Purchased: July 2008
Where: barnesandnoble.com
amazon.com Net Rank: 1,687,326
Pages: Hardcover: 181pp
Cover price: ?
Purchase price: $6.00 (used)
Genre: Science Fiction

"A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer -- the first and most famous of his books -- was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.Completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today, The True Believer is a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

How could a book, published in the year Mr. Mark Wonderful was born, have any  relevance in the following century?

Because, for all the social, moral and legal permutations American society is tumbling through, as human beings we really aren't that different from our parents and grandparents. The same 'things' make us tic. The same things appeal to us and motivate us.

Written in 1951, Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements is a classic that will stand the test of time. And, speaking of tests, this 177-paged paperback is written in much-like textbook style, and being it was penned 60 years ago, it assumed a much higher literacy than today's average 21st Century reader. I suggest not picking up and reading this book without a good dictionary nearby.

And although the large-font text covers only 168 pages, you will find yourself, as I did, putting the book down to let your brain recover, not from the sometimes difficult words, but from the concise views of the creation of mass movements Mr. Hoffer has codified in his book.

I find it so odd, that already in 1951, Eric Hoffer wrote, "For although ours is a godless age . . ."

I soaked the pages of The True Believer with the ink from my three hi-lighting felt pens, a writing instrument that wasn't even available when the book went to press.

The one thing that firmly rooted in my mind is that HATE binds together every single mass movement.

For those of you who wonder how one man can turn the tide of history, this is one book you need to read.

I've listed a very few of author Hoffer's observations on mass movements. In the middle of the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign, one can realize how correct his statements continue to be.

"For the hopeful can draw strength from the most ridiculous sources of power--a slogan, a word, a button."

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.  When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

"Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.  Of what avail is freedom to chose if the self be ineffectual?"

"Almost all our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it."

"Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom."

"What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so."

"All active mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world."

"A full-blown mass movement is a ruthless affair, and its management is in the hands of ruthless fanatics who use words only to give an appearance of spontaneity to a consent obtained by coercion."

reviewed: July 4, 2008

Begun: 05/30/2008   Finished: 06/06/2008 Purchased: May 2008
Where: barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank: 29,623
Pages: Trade paperback, Trade: 177pp
Cover price: $12.95
Purchase price: $2.00 (used)
Genre: Social Psychology

"An epic account of how the revolution hit Hollywood, told through the stories of the five films nominated for the 1967 Academy Awards

The year is 1963. The studios are churning out westerns, war movies, prudish sex comedies and overblown historical epics, but audiences whose interests have been piqued by an influx of innovative films from abroad are hungering for something more, something new. At Esquire, two young writers hatch a plan to create a movie treatment that they hope will attract the director François Truffaut: the story of the gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mike Nichols, an improvisatory comedian turned neophyte theater director, gets his hands on an obscure first novel called The Graduate and wonders if he's ready to make the jump to Hollywood..."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Epic account indeed. This 426 paged book, followed by 34-pages of end-notes covers everything there is to know about the Five Movies in the title: Doctor Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

As my readers know, I'm not fond of superscripted end notes, however, Author Harris's end notes are only reference notes and can be mostly ignored. But as I went through them I couldn't help but be amazed at the Herculian effort it must have taken to compile this wonderful book. And, I'm very grateful Mark Harris went to this effort.

Anyone, who in the late 1960s was in their teens or older, will remember all five movies and simply delight in what Mr. Harris has written in his never-boring four-hundred plus pages. I was surprised at how I always looked forward to reading Pictures at a Revolution and hoped it wouldn't end.

The five movies were considered a 'Revolution' for many reasons, one of which was the beginning of the end of censorship, and has since 'blessed' us, in the 21st Century, with non-stop intercourse scenes where you can easily count the female actress's pubic hairs (even if it is almost always a body double). That part of the 'Revolution' I could have done without. (I ask, would an American Beauty's ankles-banging-the-headboard-scene added anything to Casa Blanca?)

And then again, the testosterone-fired devil in me was disappointed to learn that the semi-perky breasts I salivated at in 'The Graduate', were a stand-in's, not Anne Bancroft's. However, I was a teenager back then and always in heat, in the night.

One of the other parts of the 'revolution', was having a good-looking, morally strong Black man, in a leading or supporting role. I've never treated anyone other than I would like to be treated, and was disgusted to find out that in the South, movie theaters would actually cut out portions of films which showed 'unacceptable' acts of Blacks, usually centered around when they were with White women.

And no, you won't believe the flack Sidney Poitier took for being a good-looking, morally strong Black man. Well, 'they' should be happy now with Blade's bad-guy/good-guy, Black moviestar Wesley Snipes, in real life, is now headed for prison for dodging taxes on millions of dollars.

Oddly enough, as I write this I'm listening to NPR's program, From the Top, featuring up and coming young musicians, and the kid on now was saying was that as an African-American, he wanted to inspire other African-American kids to pick up and learn string instruments. The only thing holding Blacks back from anything these days is their own desire. Times have certainly changed.

The reader finds out, through in-depth interviews and the myriad investigative techniques employed by Mr. Harris, virtually everything, to know about the actresses, actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographer, etc., employed in these five movies. From Hepburn to Hoffman, from Dunnaway to Pollard, from Mike Nichols to Howard Penn, from Burnett Guffey to Robert Surtees. And it's okay that you may not be familiar with some of these names. You will be thoroughly briefed on them after reading the book.

Simply a great, great book that anyone who has anything to do with movies, including simply watching them, will thoroughly enjoy. I promise.

Typos:
(Remember, I read an advance-proof copy)

Page 224 "...and he would say 'Nigger!' just to get his eyes popping out.  ANd  it ..."
Page 362 "...talking to the press about The Tiger and  he  Pussycat..."
Page 382 "...where Lynda Bird Johnson, the president's  twenty-third  -year old daughter..."
Page 410 "The two Hollywoods seemed to be fighting  eachother  to a draw..." Begun: 04/28/2008   Finished: 05/15/2008 Purchased: March 2008
Where: barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank: 5,441
Pages: Trade paperback, 473pp
Cover price: "Advance Uncorrected Proof--Not for Sale"
Purchase price: $12.95 (used)
Genre: Movies

"The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation is on the rise. Should such an assault occur, there is a strong likelihood that the trail of devastation will lead back to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the mastermind behind a vast clandestine enterprise that has sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Khan's loose-knit organization was and still may be a nuclear Wal-Mart, selling weapons blueprints, parts, and the expertise to assemble the works into a do-it-yourself bomb kit. Amazingly, American authorities could have halted his operation, but they chose instead to watch and wait. Khan proved that the international safeguards the world relied on no longer worked."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

The Nuclear Jihadist, by left-leaning authors Douglas Frantz (senior writer at Portfolio magazine-which is wildly waving the Obama banner for President) and Catherine Collins, does a finely detailed job of covering the nuclear career Pakastani engineer, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

A.Q. Khan, after stealing the thousands-paged blueprints for atom bomb construction from the always security-conscious Dutch, that is, when they're not applying Thompson's Water Seal to their wooden shoes, went on to build the first Muslim A-Bomb for Pakistan.

Once he developed an A-bomb (then, like Rodney Dangerfield's character in the movie Caddyshack) he shouldered the destitute and backward Muslim nation of Pakistan (that could not manufacture a sewing needle) through the leaden doors of The Atomic Country Club. (I wonder what their H.O.A. fees are like.)

A.Q.Khan also helped Libya, North Korea, Iran, and we now know Syria to begin their incredibly expensive journeys on the road of atomic bombhood. As the book detailed, in the 1970s Libya first provided, in cash, the $200 million in seed money, to the government of Pakistan to begin their own atom bomb project.

Authors Frantz and Collins generally blame the U.S. government, rightly so, in its failures to stop the one-man-band of nuclear proliferation orchestrated by A.Q.Kahn. However, when finding fault with Democrat administrations, after placing the blame, what usually followed was an entirely 'reasonable' explanation for why the White House did as they did.

While in too many instances, they judge Republican administrations as just plain wrong, stupid, greedy, partisan or all four. The confirmation that these two are left-wingers is the inclusion of a link to the always useless and so very uplifting 'Doomsday Clock' started by a bunch of dreaming scientists, each one of who would've crapped in his pants simply lighting the Lucky Strike cigarette of the tyrant Joe Stalin, (insert your favorite tyrant here), much less telling him to give up his plans of world domination or else.

Again and again, the authors explain and detail how the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was blindsided, infiltrated, bought off and powerless, but yet, they being One-World-Hold-My-Hand-and-Sing-the-Coca-Cola-Song adherents, insist that the IAEA does a better job than any of the Free World's Democracies in choking off further nuclear proliferation.

They found an interesting way to handle the footnotes I dread so much, by simply, for each chapter, writing a paragraph or two of further explanation, and sticking them in the back pages.

This is an excellent book to learn how world politics, and how United States politics, work in the world. The awful compromises (unlike in speeches made as one is campaigning for president) that always must be made by the men in the White House.

Speaking of making things, this work also a great primer to learn what goes into making simple, World War II-like, atom bombs and why it takes far more than billions of petro-euros to construct one.

For the uninitiated, there are two types of atomic bombs, one made from extremely distilled uranium 235, (which can be done in secret, in underground labs the size of football fields, packed with interconnected centrifuges spinning at 1,440 mph) and one made of plutonium snatched from the waste of 'civilian' atomic power plants.

The plutonium bomb requires a large above-ground facility to refine the used plutonium. A facility visually virtually identical to the one the Israeli's bombed in Syria the other month.

The book also demonstrates how greed primarily fuels the nuclear bomb game, with one example being that the Swiss decided against using their stolen-by-the-Nazi's-from-the-Jews wealth on building their own nuclear bomb, but that they would instead profit by marketing and manufacturing intricate equipment, very expensive equipment, that would be used in the manufacture of an atom bomb, but could also be used to say, manufacture flash bulbs or 33 rpm vinyl disks or HD DVDs.

The Swiss weren't too proud to profit from the Nazi extermination of six million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally retarded, why would they be too proud to profit off the deaths of tens of millions of Muslims, Catholics, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists?

This book also provides an unbiased history of the struggles between India and Pakistan, which I term the 'cesspool' and the 'porta-potty', and explains the mindsets of the people in power in Pakistan. Scary.

A very fine book that never dragged and was filled with kilotons of information you probably have not read or heard elsewhere. I'm glad I spent thirteen days reading it, and I highly recommend it.

Begun: 05/17/2008   Finished: 05/30/2008 Purchased: February 2008
Where: barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank: 18,604
Pages: Hardback, 413pp
Cover price: $25.00
Purchase price: $12.50 (new)
Genre: Current Events

This is the repair manual we should have been handed at birth
When you ask people about their most cherished values in life, "happiness" is always at the top of the list. However, unhappiness does not seem to be the exceptional order to be happy, we first have to battle ourselves.

Happiness is an obligation--to yourself and to others
Not only do we have a right to be happy, we have an obligation to be happy. Our happiness has an effect on the lives of everyone around us--it provides them with a positive environment in which to thrive and to be happy themselves."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Happiness is a serious problem, and as author and radio show host, Dennis Prager, explains in this concise book, most of our unhappiness is due to our skewed idea of what happiness is and where it comes from.

With titles such as: Unhappiness is Easy--Happiness Takes Work, Life is Tragic, Equating Happiness with Success, Everything Has a Price--Know What It Is, and Find and Make Friends, attached to short chapters, the book can read, chapter by chapter, in fifteen minute segments.

So many of the chapters, being so shocking or eye-opening they require a half hour (or half-day) of recovery before picking up the book to read further. Why else do you imagine it took me nineteen days to read a book that was the length of two chapters of any John Hersey work?

Author Dennis Prager's ten years of research and speaking on the subject of happiness has allowed him to pick out and target thirty-one different impediments to our own happiness.

Although not a biblically based book, Mr.Prager, like Mr.Wonderful, cannot understand how anyone can be happy without believing in some sort of a creator who made us for a purpose, for without a purpose, what is the purpose?

"They can argue religion is a fraud, but they cannot argue it doesn't bring people happiness."

Over the decades, carrying the burden of what I now know to be a dreadful childhood, in search of my own happiness, I've probably read seventy-five books along the lines of author Prager's, and I believe that within 172 pages he has covered virtually all of the points anyone searching for an end to sadness and depression would, or could or might ask.

In addition to the thirty hurdles to happiness covered prior, Chapter 31, answered why I could be a quite religious person and still need to visit psychotherapists.

Rhetorically he asks, "Can't God heal our hurts through prayer and supplication?" His answer makes so much sense; as he tells us that just like when we are injured physically we see a medical doctor, likewise, when we are damaged emotionally, we need to see a emotional doctor to heal.

At the end of this final chapter however, he admits that "Most therapists aren't very good". Maybe his next book will be about how to locate a 'good therapist' eh?

reviewed: May 6th, 2008

Begun: 04/09/2008   Finished: 04/28/2008 Purchased: April 2008
Where: barnesandnoble.com

USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank: 16,301
Pages: Trade paperback, 179pp
Cover price: $14.95
Purchase price: $4.61 (new)

"Why Mexico Went To War With The United States.

The war that was fought between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 was a major event in the history of both countries: it cost Mexico half of its national territory, opened western North America to U. S. expansion, and brought to the surface a host of tensions that led to devastating civil wars in both countries. Among generations of Latin Americans, it helped to cement the image of the United States as an arrogant, aggressive, and imperialist nation, poisoning relations between a young America and its southern neighbors..."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Some of you are probably thinking that a book covering parts of the U.S. history classes you fell asleep during in school could not be very interesting.

A Glorious Defeat won't put you to sleep because author Timothy J. Henderson has pared this book down to the quick, leaving nary a paragraph that isn't interesting or containing not known before tidbits. (Like who knew Antonio López de Santa Anna, aka: Santa Anna, was president of Mexico eleven times?) And neither does it contain much personal speculation, over a century and one-half later, 'explaining' the situations Mexico, France, Spain, England and the United States found themselves in during the 19th Century.

If you are imagining this is a book recounting the bullet by bullet battles of the two year long Mexican-American war of 1846, you would be wrong.

Anyone residing in the states bordering Mexico, especially those of us faced with the day to day reality of living, laboring, driving, shopping, eating and going to the movies alongside non-English speaking Hispanic individuals here illegally, will find this book goes a long way to understanding the severe challenges that continue to plague the non-White, non-Spanish and non-wealthy Mexican citizens inside Mexico.

This book deftly steps through the many political, social and governmental changes both the U.S. and Mexico and the world were experiencing during the middle of the 19th Century.

I learned a great deal about the Republic of Texas, its beginning as a northern territory of Mexico, its being known as a haven for escaped criminals, its annexation by the United States, and as a launching ground of 20th and 21st Century U.S. Presidents--although only Eisenhower and L.B.J. were actually born in the The Lone Star State.

I learned my own state of Arizona was eventually birthed out of the territory that Mexico ceded to the America after the war, and after receiving a $15,000,000 payment (approximately $359 million in today's dollars) from the United States treasury.

I learned that 19th Century Mexico had massive challenges with racism, economic freedom and even gathering its citizens together together to fight a war. And I do not believe much has changed in the following two centuries.

Although the author does an excellent job of portraying the U.S. as an evil, rapacious, land-hungry nation, he can't help but paint Mexico in the 1850s, as a horrible place to live and not so much as a country, but as groups of people trapped between the United States to the north and Central America to the south.

Begun: 04/19/2008   Finished: 04/27/2008 Purchased: March 2008
Where: History Book Club

B&N Net Rank: 114,882
Pages: Hardback, 240pp
Cover price: $25.00
Purchase price: $1.00 (new bookclub edition)