This month we review four books:

  1. “Sealed Orders” (406 pages, paperback, 2018) (412 pages, paperback, 2017) by Alaric Bond: I read and reviewed the first nine books in this British Naval Fiction series; “His Majesty’s Ship”, “The Jackass Frigate”, “True Colors”, “Cut and Run”, “The Patriot’s Fate” and “The Torrid Zone”, “The Scent of Corruption” and “HMS Prometheus”, “The Blackstrap Station” and “Honour Bound”. I give them high marks. Now that I read the first ten stories in the series, I like it even more. And these last four; ‘Scent’, ‘Prometheus’, “Blackstrap” and “Honour Bound” show a new levels of plot complexity and character development.
  1. “The Plot” (336 pages, paperback, May 2022) by Jean Hanff Korelitz: We were flying to Bakersfield for due diligence on our assisted living deal so I stopped at the airport bookstore and found this. It was hard to choose as all the books in the tiny book section were ‘airport best sellers. This was a serendipitous choice as it is a novel about writing novels. She back-handedly discusses ‘airport authors. But I liked the self-referential ‘novel about writing a novel’. Like the latest “Downton Abbey: A New Era” movie which is a movie about making a movie. I can summarize the plot, SPOILERS AHEAD, as “woman kills her daughter to assume her identity, then woman kills her husband to assume his identity”. After the protagonist meets the woman in Seattle I immediately thought of Russian playwright Anton Checkov’s rule, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off.” The rifle is placed and it goes off. But, not in the way I would have liked. More in the video review; even some TDS.
  1. “Flatland” (96 pages, paperback, 1992) by Edward Abbott:

“This masterpiece of science (and mathematical) fiction is a delightfully unique and highly entertaining satire that has charmed readers for more than 100 years [originally written in 1884]. The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square, a mathematician and resident of the two-dimensional Flatland,”

We took an hour and half “seminar” at Christ Greenfield church given by Prof. Trey Cox. Is this the explanation for spooky voices speaking from the spirit world?

  1. “How the World Became Rich” (240 pages, paperback, May 2022) by Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin: This was another book recommended at Instapundit:

“EVERYTHING IS PROCEEDING AS HAYEK FORETOLD: How the West Accidentally Became Free and Rich — And Why It Might Not Stay That Way.  Joseph Henrich accepts the Manhattan Institute’s $50,000 Hayek Book Prize for 2022 and gives a brief lecture summarizing the book that won the prize, The WEIRDest People in the World.

The lecture, like the book, is a brilliant synthesis of historical analysis and behavioral-science experiments around the world showing how Europeans and Americans became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous — what Henrich calls WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic). His research, showing the influence of institutions like the Catholic Church and medieval market towns, guilds and universities, illuminates the economist F.A. Hayek’s long-neglected theory for the rise of the West, which Hayek attributed not to the Enlightenment but rather to a long and unplanned process of cultural evolution.  (Full disclosure: I was the chair of the Hayek Prize jury that selected the book.)”.