Eric

The cat-and-mouse game between Kevin Mitnick and the Feds

Well, there's only one character in the book -- Mitnick. All others are mere ornaments.

This book is heavy on technical wonk. You have to really be into hacking to fully understand this book and share the author's excitement, as well as mind-numbing technical explanations.

His first imprisonment in solitary confinement in the Federal Correctional Center in Los Angeles was grim. While there, his out-foxing of his captors to make contraband phone calls with hands were shackled behind his back was impressive.

The central thesis of the book is that Mitnick never harmed anyone or profited from his antics. That's not quite true. Innocent people got billed and paid for his bootleg phone calls.

I was surprised at how much of his hacking (he calls it "human engineering") was low-tech and non-electronic. He primarily phoned people at corporations, impersonated another employee, and conned them into disclosing confidential phone numbers and passwords.

By the end of the book I was rooting for the Feds. We can't have guys like this running around and running amok penetrating our confidential information and thieving identities. The next hacker might not be so benign.

Mitnick now claims to be on the Good Guys' side, consulting with corporations and government (no doubt for handsome fees).

I found this book a very informative and educational narrative and history of Google, about which I knew little. I remember the old days of "Webcrawler" and "Excite" as primitive search-engines, and how Google emerged as the best and dominant player. The expansion of the company after that into translation, mapping, images, advertising, telephony, operating systems and Internet browsers was fascinating. Having listened to the very long book "Jobs" last year, elevating as a visionary and Captain of Industry a micro-manager who obsessed on the inside cases of his gadgets, and demeaned and humiliated his troops, and in some cases cheated them out of equity, the culture at Google couldn't be more different. It's collaborative, people are encouraged to innovate and march to their own drummer, and new thinking takes place continuously by very bright people. The author, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is slanted in favor of Google, but I learned a lot about the company and really enjoyed the book.

The dilemma Google faced when it decided to enter the Chinese market. Burdened by the company's slogan "Do Not Be Evil," it was confronted by government demands to censor its search results. As the price of doing business in China, and competing with Baidu, it capitulated. Google was excoriated for this in the press and in the halls of Congress. Later, after the Chinese government hacked into Google's email system, found communications among dissidents and arrested them, Google said "enough" and pulled out.

"Don't Be Evil"

The book lags a bit at the very end.

If Scientology comes calling, run the other way

Good narration

This is a revealing insight into the "Sea Org", the shock-troops/Gestapo of the so-called Church of Scientology. Jenna Miscavige, the niece of current potentate David Miscavige (successor to L. Ron Hubbard), recounts her mostly parentless upbringing in the Sea Org, including signing up for a billion-year term of service at age 8. It's a harrowing tale of forced servitude, child abuse, lack of schooling, mind-control and coercion, culminating in her escape from the cult in her early 20's. I learned much I didn't know from this book.

I almost never read a book twice

The Brad Thor novels, like Black List

I love crime, terrorism and intrigue, and am planning a trip to Yemen, so this book gave me a lot of insight into the place -- even though (disappointingly) the author has never been there. Loosely follows from the real-life story of Anwar al-Awlaqi and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. The first-person protaganist hero is a prolific wise-guy. The book depicts the CIA in a very scary and frightening light.

Learning new things about a President I knew nothing about

Charles Guiteau, the deranged assassin

The nominating convention

This is a president about which I knew nothing, other than a vague recollection that he had been assassinated. He was a war hero who was enormously popular and might have accomplished great things, but was killed very shortly after taking office. Half the book is devoted to Garfield, the other half to the assassin and his twisted path. I'm a lawyer, and one of the interesting questions treated by the author is whether Guiteau was legally insane or not. You'll see what the jury said. Two unexpected major characters are Alexander Graham Bell and Charles Lister, who discovered germs and bacteria but couldn't convince the medical world of the day. The state of medical technology in the 1880s was abysmal. That is what killed Garfield; he survived the shooting itself.

No

The climax with Inspector Fumeiro

Anne Hathaway and Joaquin Phoenix

This is a melodramatic, dark, overwritten Les Miserables-style Spanish potboiler set in 1930s-1950s Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. I was hoping for more context on those events. The book is fraught and twice as long as it needs to be. If you can stick with it, the tale is interesting and the characters highly unusual. There comes a point in these audiobooks when after you've invested 10-15 hours listening to something, you're stuck just wanting to find out how it's going to end.

High

Lance Armstrong

Yes

I had always been a supporter and fan of our national hero Lance Armstrong, who supposedly never failed a drug test. This book will lay that to rest, and get you real acquainted with the man. NOT a nice guy. A real jerk, actually. This book is an amazing window inside the world of top-elite international cycling. Its timing was unfortunate: it came out just a month or two before USADA Anti-Doping Agency stripped Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France titles and banned him from the sport for life (incl. his new sport, triathaloning), supported by 11,000 pages of documents, receipts for EPO and testosterone, and testimony of 11 of his teammates. He has been abandoned by all his corporate sponsors, including Nike. Hamilton,the author, tells how he himself got "popped" after winning the Gold Medal in the Olympics. The hack doctor he was using mixed up his blood with someone else's in a transfusion. The cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game he and his wife played with blood testers to escape detection when he was "glowing" will amaze you. Mr. Armstrong remains defiant and proclaiming his innocence, but now has a $30 or $40 million legal problem: that's how much the U.S. Government (Postal Service) and his corporate sponsors are coming after him for for fraud.

High on the list

There's really only one character, the protagonist, Jung-wa (spelling?)/Commander Ga

There's really only one character, the protagonist, Jung-wa (spelling?)/Commander Ga

The Orphan Master's Son's Revenge

This book, with fastidious complex details about current life in North Korea, Korean culture, food, clothing, rituals, politics, etc., is written by a Caucasian Anglo. I've traveled as a tourist to the DPRK, and how he managed to capture and research such details (for example, the Air Koryo Ilyushin-62) is beyond me.

Yes. As a jury trial lawyer myself, I can attest that the book is authentic and faithful to the rules of procedure and evidence. Great tale of murder, with a shocking turn of events at the end.

The hit movie about Double Jeopardy a few years ago

The lawyer, of course

Shorten it 50 percent

This book, which I thought was a thriller, is a long florid impressionistic description of Italy, Italian geography, culture, cuisine, and art, along with butterflies and gunsmithing. The identity and activities of the protagonist are kept secret for the first third of the book. Very slow to come to its climax. Frustrating listen.

no

no way I'd read it