DS

A member of the "Greatest Generation", a graduate of West Point, a talented fighter pilot, a principled commander and one very lucky guy. Robin Olds had an interesting life. He got to do exactly what he wanted to do, fly fighter planes. He did it very well, was lucky, and survived to tell the story. He married a Hollywood star, tragic mistake, although it lasted longer than most such marriages. A good life.

The last third of the book takes place during the Vietnam War He fought bravely and did a good job of fighting the Vietcong and protecting his pilots. He ultimately ended up as frustrated with the Executive Branch and the Diplomatic Service as the rest of us.

Afghanistan was lost early on due to a lack of clear objectives and cloudy rules of engagement. Lack of coordination between the Army and the Marine Corps (really? is that STILL happening?) didn't help either. It also doesn't help that we keep trying to postage stamp democracy onto countries and cultures that are not ready... Whatever. Let's hope history will acknowledge at our motives were pure (about the nation building) and that we've learned some lessons about inter service support (as opposed to ass covering).

If you are interested in SEAL teams, or the raid in Abbottabad, this is the first book you should read, and maybe the only one you'll need to read.

The first half is about other SEAL operations focusing on the rescue of the Captain taken hostage by Somali pirates.

The second half is all about bin Laden in Abbottabad and this version, in my opinion, rings truest. The narrator is terrific and that helps too.

A West Point graduate becomes a Rhodes Scholar becomes an Army Ranger becomes an Infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan. Interesting look at life at West Point (spoiler alert: not the usual college experience) and the Rhodes Scholar experience (spoiler alert: reading history at Oxford is more fun than West Point).

God knows we need more really smart, highly educated people in the upper ranks of the military but I have the feeling that those people will not become Head of the Joint Chiefs anytime soon, alas.

I highly recommend this "thinking man's" look at the Army, modern warfare and casualties.

This is a recap of drone attacks focusing on the drone attack that killed the US citizen in Yemen, who was a fervent Muslim but no more fervent, and less proactive, than a Tea Party evangelical Christian who bombs abortion clinics.

Without due process, he was declared a terrorist. even though there is no proof that he ever killed anyone and his big crime was a cheer-leading blog. Our drones have killed more children than terrorists and the whole sordid JSOP program will probably join Japanese internment camps, segregation and Indian tribe relocation on the list of things we shouldn't have done.

If Churchill was right and 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself' then we are certainly in trouble because we are dis-proportionally afraid relative to the threat. We should be more afraid of cars and handguns than terrorists.

A sometimes interesting exploration of privacy, or the lack thereof, in the digital age and possible solutions to the problems created and acknowledgment of some benefits received.
Basically, my take away is that the future will either be intuitively convenient or "1984" redux. But we still have a lot of control over what we chose to share with the world and we should think carefully before we share.

I've owned many different breeds of large dogs, and I thought I knew about training them, but this book was an eye opener on the abilities of dogs and how they're trained to go to war. Great read and I learned a lot.

Daniker makes a good case for ET's having visited us.... don't know what I think.... read it and decide for yourself.

Now I understand why my grandfather was so traumatized by his service in WWI. The politicians, diplomats and generals were all so incredibly incompetent, ego driven and short sighted. This is a slow and steady recounting of how Europe got into the WWI, how the war was waged, how it ended and how all of it made WWII inevitable.

An interesting history of the American dairy farmer in Wisconsin. The evolution from hardscrabble farmer with a few dozen cows, to the large scale farm with a few dozen farmhands and machines, to the modern day, college educated farmer with a business model from one extreme to the other. The one over riding theme is the love of the land and the animals.

The novice mutual fund investor will certainly benefit from listening to this book. Knowledge is power is a basic truth that will never go out of style.