Oppose Any Foe : the rise of America's Special Operations Forces by Mark Moyar. looks good

An object of beauty : a novel bySteve Martin.,comment is wonderful,but not mine,its by Andrew Butterfield

A small but typical example: a key character in the book is a European collector of paintings, and when he first appears he has oily hair and an open silk shirt, exposing gold chains and a hairy chest (like the characters in Martin’s “Wild and Crazy Guys” skits). Later he is seen wearing an Armani suit. I have met hundreds of collectors in New York and elsewhere, and not one ever went about with an open shirt and gold chains or wore a suit that said Armani. Not one. The men tend to wear custom-made clothing, and in a range of styles of business attire. Other than the quality of the fabric and the stitching, which you have to look to see, rarely does it proclaim its high sartorial quality. It is not ostentatious, and it is not a recognizable brand. But with unintended irony, everything in Martin's book is a brand, a mass-produced badge of belonging to the elite.

Exhibitionism : art in an era of intolerance by Lynne Munson. very good

Munson, a cultural critic and researcher at the American Enterprise Institute and a former official at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), takes the "culture wars" of the 1990s and their origins as her topics. Though not dissecting the Battle at Tilted Arc, the Siege of Piss Christ, Mapplethorpe's Last Stand, the Finley Offensive, and the Great Dung War, Munson uses these and other examples from the decade to demonstrate that postmodern thought is the real intolerance at work in the arts. It is postmodernism, a cousin of deconstructionism, she argues, that turned art away from a search for truth or a range of aesthetics and into a study of power. Munson's solid scholarship is supported by her insider's knowledge of NEH funding patterns (appendixes track grants from broad support for the arts to more focused support for video and performance artists who often led the effort to critique society). Munson builds her case carefully and offers a fresh viewpoint absent from the media snippets. Her book makes a significant contribution to the always heated and never resolved discussion of "offensive" art. Recommended for general and topical collections. David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Antifragile : things that gain from disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. just put on reserve at NYPL “nonsissy.”

Booklist Reviews 2012 November #2

Judging by his anecdotes, Taleb interacts with the economic masters of the universe as he jets from New York to London or attends business-politics confabs in Davos, Switzerland. Anything but awed by them, Taleb regards them as charlatans, not as credible experts. Such skepticism toward elites, which imbued Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), continues in this work, which grapples with a concept Taleb coins as "antifragile." Not readily reducible to a definition (Taleb takes the whole book to develop the idea), suffice to say here that antifragile's oppositesâ€"economic, political, or medical systems that are vulnerable to sudden collapseâ€"tend to be managed by highly educated people who think they know how systems work. But they don't, avers Taleb. Their confidence in control is illusory; their actions harm rather than help. In contrast, Taleb views decentralized systemsâ€"the entrepreneurial business rather than the bureaucratized corporation, the local rather than the central governmentâ€"as more adaptable to systemic stresses. Emphatic in his style and convictions, Taleb grabs readers given to musing how the world works. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.                            LJ Reviews 2013 January #1

Taleb's (risk engineering, New York Univ.; Black Swans) unorthodox thinking and luminescent style manifest themselves in a fusillade of neologisms, creative phraseology, and quirky illustrations. In his previous work, the author outlined the impact of rare, unpredictable events and foretold the impending financial crisis. Here he uses the concept of "antifragility" to show how we can protect ourselves from inevitable personal and societal calamities. The global financial crisis of 2008 is the watershed event of the narrative. Yet Taleb adroitly weaves in strands of psychology, child development, medicine, biology, civics, philosophy, education, military strategy, and the classics to explain how antifragility can make people and systems stronger in the same way that bones need stress to grow denser. VERDICT Taleb's tome is by turns entertaining, thought-provoking, silly, brilliant, and irreverent, yet his logic remains cogent and his message clear throughout. His wit and substance have already found him a worldwide audience; this book is likely to create him an even more robust fan base.â€"Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater, Libs.

[Page 97]. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.                                                                                                   

LJ Reviews Newsletter

Taleb's (risk engineering, New York Univ.; Black Swans) unorthodox thinking and luminescent style manifest themselves in a fusillade of neologisms, creative phraseology, and quirky illustrations. In his previous work, the author outlined the impact of rare, unpredictable events and foretold the impending financial crisis. Here he uses the concept of "antifragility" to show how we can protect ourselves from inevitable personal and societal calamities. The global financial crisis of 2008 is the watershed event of the narrative. Yet Taleb adroitly weaves in strands of psychology, child development, medicine, biology, civics, philosophy, education, military strategy, and the classics to explain how antifragility can make people and systems stronger in the same way that bones need stress to grow denser. VERDICT Taleb's tome is by turns entertaining, thought-provoking, silly, brilliant, and irreverent, yet his logic remains cogent and his message clear throughout. His wit and substance have already found him a worldwide audience; this book is likely to create him an even more robust fan bas e. â€"Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater, Libs. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.                     PW Reviews 2012 October #3

In this overstuffed, idiosyncratic theory of everything we don't know, financial adviser and epistemologist Taleb amplifies his megaselling The Black Swan with further musings on the upside of unpredictable upheavals. Ranging haphazardly across probability theory, classical philosophy, government, medicine, and other topics, he contrasts large, complex, "fragile" systems that try to minimize risk but collapse under unforeseen volatility with small, untethered, "antifragile" systems structured to reap advantages from disorder. Taleb's accessible, stimulating exposition of these ideas yields cogent insights, particularly in financeâ€"his specialty. (He essentially inflates a hedging strategy into a philosophy of life.) Often, however, his far-flung polymathic digressions on everything from weight-lifting regimens to the Fukushima meltdown or the unnaturalness of toothpaste feel tossed-off and unconvincing, given his dilettantish contempt for expert "knowledge-shknowledge." Taleb's vigorous, blustery prose drips with Nietzschean scorn for academics, bankers, and bourgeois "sissies" who crave comfort and moderation: "If you take risks and face your fate with dignity," he intones, "insults by half-men (small men, those who don't risk)" are no more rankling than "barks by non-human animals." More worldview than rigorous argument, Taleb's ramblings may strike readers with knowledge-shknowledge as ill-considered; still, he presents a richâ€"and often tellingâ€"critique of modern civilization's obsession with security. Illus. Agent: John Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Nov. 27)

[Page ]. Copyright 2012 PWxyz LLC

A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming,is very good

Paris in the Present Tense by Mark Helprin looking foward to this...

Pearl : a new verse translation by Simon Armitage. I might give this a try...

LJ Reviews 2016 February #2

Armitage (poetry, Univ. of Sheffield, UK), well-known for his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, turns his skill to Pearl, another poem published in the same manuscript and possibly composed by the same anonymous author. Pearl tells the poignant tale of a man's grief over the loss of a young girl; he falls into a dream and is guided toward acceptance of death and hope for divine redemption. As the original Middle English text may be difficult for contemporary readers to grasp, Armitage's expert translation speaks to a modern audience with as little disturbance to the rhythm and structure of the original as possible. Divided into 20 sections, the 1,212-line poem in this edition has facing original text and is supplemented by helpful footnotes. VERDICT Armitage successfully and exquisitely translates this classic poem, providing readers with a clear and complete version that honors the original. Recommended for readers of poetry and literature, particularly scholars of medieval English literature.â€"Jennifer Harris, Southern New Hampshire Univ. Lib., Manchester

Ash shooting the full auto AK105 with the dead air silencers PBS-1 Wolverine