The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is so hard to read...not from the writing, but the events and the people who perpetrated them. I am finding that I can only read a few pages at a time. The book is extremely well researched with footnotes and an extensive bibliography. A great deal of it comes from actual interviews.

The extent of Nazi crimes is far more unimaginable that I could have ever thought and nothing is worse than doctors, who are trained to heal, turning into killers. The book deals with the SS doctors, German doctors, prison/inmate doctors and prison/inmate/Jewish doctors. I is also filled with the elaborate lengths the Nazis went to to cover up what they were doing to the world and to themselves.

As I continue to read this book, I am amazed at the amount of source material Lifton has used. The foundation of the book is interviews with the doctors, a few SS doctors, but mainly prisoners who were doctors. I am on the chapter on Mengele and it is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever read. I have read numerous books on Hitler and the concentration camps, but was left unsatisfied. No author could answer the question, "Why?" Why did seemingly normal people do such atrocious things?

The chapter on Mengele explains how he was able to compartmentalize his mind and do seemingly contradictory things. He would work hard to save a Gypsy from typhoid and then send him to the gas chamber later that week. In understanding the mind of Mengele, I finally began to understand some of these incredible events effected ordinary people. Make no mistake, Mengele was not a normal person. He had to have had a sadistic streak already, but, as the author says, he was “the right person at the right time and at the right place.” He saw himself as “healing” the German race and beyond that, healing mankind through genetic selection. He was an ideologue, as were the leaders of the party. They saw themselves as purging the race of man of the undesirables, which would lead to the “thousand year reich.” He was a demigod in Auschwitz and acted accordingly, but at times, he would be seen as honorable and courageous.

This is the book that I have always been looking for. I feel I have begun to understand the impossible.



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Bloodroot (China Bayles, #10)

Bloodroot by Susan Wittig Albert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this book, Susan Wittig Albert takes China Bayles back to the Old South and immerses her in her childhood. Her mother, Leatha needs help with her Aunt Tullie and there is no one but China who can help.

I got the feeling that the mystery was just a vehicle to carry China back to her roots and untangle the fascinating story of her ancestors. Many of the characters in the book are extremely well drawn and the reader is able to establish a connection, but the crime and its victim are not as fleshed out. Never the less, it is one of her best books.


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Pinnochio

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


We are all so used to the Disney version of Pinocchio that it is startling to read the original version. While there are differences, there is enough similarity to the original for everyone but the purist. Pinnochio has more adventures and meets more people in the original, but he is still the same little disobedient, gullible puppet. We read this as a homeschool book and really enjoyed it.

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The Basics of Genetics

The Basics of Genetics by Betsey Dexter Dyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was an absolutely fascinating book on genetics. The author used color of dogs as her example and I learned just how complex some colors of dogs are, especially white dogs. The most interesting part was how the genes have switches which activate them only under certain conditions...if the color is brown and if the hair length is ? then...

Ms. Dyer also has a way of explaining even the most complex concepts in ways that layman can understand. Not only will this book explain basic genetics to you, but you will never look at dogs the same way again.


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Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate by Robert Stone


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have to say I am a bit ambivalent about this audiobook. I picked it to try to understand about the daily conditions in this area of the world and the book helped in that respect. It is hard to imagine how people go about the daily business of life in an area filled with such conflict and animosity. All sides have their problems and have adapted to the powder keg they live on. On the other hand, the deep cynicism was a little hard to take and at times I felt like I was listening to a dream rather than a connected story. A lot of the characters melted into each other and I often lost track. There didn't seem to be a sane person in the bunch.I also had a problem with some of the hippie like discourses. I didn't like listening to people rambling on, saying things that didn't make any sense and thinking they were being profound. I think I understand what the author was trying to get at, but it was very tiresome. At times I had to go back and listen to a section again because I missed the tiny bit of action which propelled the story because I was so lost in the meandering of some of the character's long discourses.

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The Quiet Game (Penn Cage series, #1)"

The Quiet Game by Greg Iles

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Penn Cage’s wife has died and now his five year old daughter is seeing glimpses of her mother everywhere, including Disney World. Page feels that a trip back home in Natchez, MS will settle both of them. Unfortunately, Penn’s father, a revered and respected doctor is being blackmailed for something from his past and the Judge has a personal agenda. On top of that, things are happening that appear to concern the murder of a black man in 1968 and Penn is drawn into the strange happenings surrounding the original murder.

Penn Cage is a sympathetic hero and his morals and ethics seem to be as above reproach as are those of his father. Unfortunately, even the best of people have things in their background that ma y be open to different opinions. While, I like this character a lot, there are some inconsistencies and lack of integrity that are unsettling. That said, this is a good book with lots of action and a clever plot.





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The Dante Club

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This novel was an interesting twist on a mystery novel. Holmes, Longfellow and other noted giants are trying to solve some gruesome murders that are based on Dante' Inferno. I didn't find that the focus of the story. I was most intriuged by the brilliant, but poor student who was forced to rob recent graves to provide cadavers for the students to autopsy. To me he was the main character and certainly learned a lot about the state of medicine during that time. I found the mystery surrounding this young man's mother to be most interesting.



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Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Bart D. Ehrman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This audiobook was incredibly interesting. The author is a noted Biblical scholar and he refuted many of the claims made in Dan Brown's book resoundingly. For example, that the Emperor Constantine decided the can of Scripture and that he rejected some 80 other Gospels. The canon was established more than 100 years beyond his time and there were only a few other gospels and they had glaring errors or in some cases were almost nonsense. The whole mystique of "the sacred feminine" is just not proven by any of the historical documents in existence. The book was very well arranged and written respectfully refuting the character's statements in the books rather than attacking Brown. As a work of fiction, the Da Vinci Code was a real page turner, but the actual documents that Brown says exist to prove what he wrote simply don't exist.

The only problem I found with Ehrman is that he does not have any room in his historical facts for faith, and especially a personal faith with a real Jesus Christ. His approach is purely historical, which is fine, but there is more to religion than simply choosing to believe a bit of history and staking your life on it. With that said, I would recommend the book to anyone interested in real scholarship presented in a logical, easy to listen to or read text. The author is clear and concise and easy to follow.

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Miss Julia Strikes Back

Miss Julia Strikes Back by Ann B. Ross


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was a lot like a previous book in the series when Miss Julia meets Mr. Pickens. A jewelry ring of thieves has stolen from Miss Julia, Hazel Marie and a number of Julia's friends. With Sam gone to Russia and Mr. Pickens and Heather Marie gone on a cruise, Miss Julia, Lloyd and Etta May have gone to Florida to search out Mr. Pickens' detective friend, Frank Tuttle, to help them. When Tuttle turns out to be an alcoholic and in need of rescue himself, the trio manage him as well as the thieves in a riotous adventure that defies logic, but is still a lot of fun.

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Miss Julia Stands Her Ground

Miss Julia Stands Her Ground by Ann B. Ross


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is entertaining, but a the back flash of Christmas is a little confusing. I was listening using an audiobook and I wasn't sure if it had been recorded wrong. Nevertheless, it was entertaining as are all the books in the series.

When Hazel Marie's dastardly uncle comes back, he wrecks havoc with the household. He is bound and determined to prove that little Lloyd is not Wesley Lloyd's son and not heir to the Springer money. No one can figure what he has up his sleeve, but it causes the usual angst and turmoil. While Miss Julia has the help of Sam, she ends up providing the solution to the problem with the help of Lillian's secret.

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Ramses Volume II: The Eternal Temple

Ramses Volume II: The Eternal Temple by Christian Jacq


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the second book in the series and deals with the young Ramses II as he becomes Pharaoh and his early reign. This volume is about the early building projects which Ramses started and the various intrigues in the court designed to overthrow Ramses in favor of his older brother.

I found the reasoning behind all the buildings and monuments to be fascinating. The thought was that building the temples and tombs was a way of honoring the gods and protecting Egypt. When Ramses was crowned, his nature was bound with the gods and he became their representative on earth. Building various temples would protect Ramses' Kah or eternal soul/spirit and bring prosperity to Egypt.

The last few chapters deal with Moses and his emerging belief in the one God as opposed to Ramses. Moses is shown as the master builder of Ramses temples and ultimately his new Delta city, Pi Ramses. As he builds, he becomes more grounded in his Hebrew faith and the book ends as Moses heads for the desert.

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Everlasting

Everlasting by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I found this book hard to get into. It had all the normal elements of a romance, but they were a little too contrived to hold my attention. The heroine was constantly making incredible and false assumptions and then acting on them in a way that was sure to lead to more confusion and cross purposes. For the first three quarters of the book, almost everything goes wrong between the two main caricatures and in the last fourth, everything goes impossibly right.

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"O Jerusalem (Mary Russell, #5

O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I haven't read anything from this series lately and since I have been recently studying the area, I found it to be very interesting. This book takes place in 1918 in Sherlock Holmes' twilight years when he and his young protege, Mary Russell have to leave England because of their previous case. Mycroft is able to arrange for them to help discover a terrorist plot in Jerusalem, keeping them out of the country for a while.

Holmes and Russell are smuggled into the area and meet up with two Arab operatives. As they cover the surrounding territory, there are all sorts of interesting bits of history which are included. The city of Jerusalem is honoring General Allenby who led the liberation of Palestine from the Turks and is expected to make a brief speech. It is interesting to note that the British have liberated the Palestinians from 400 years of oppressive Turkish rule and Allenby and T. E. Lawrence were the heroes of the hour. The Palestinians are grateful to the British and very much want them to stay and protect them from the Turks. Another interesting fact is that there are both Palestinian Arabs and Jews in the area who are living together fairly peaceably. The book is not especially fast paced, but the bits of Arab, Christian and Jewish culture are fascinating.

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Modern Scholar - Odyssey Of The West III

The Modern Scholar - Odyssey Of The West III (3) The Medieval World by Timothy B. Shutt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I listened to this audiobook thinking it was part III of the earlier series on the Middle Ages and essentially, it covered the same period and added a great deal to my understanding of the Era. Shunt covers the period by examining great books like The Confessions of St. Augustine, The City of God, Beowulf and The Poetic Edda, The Divine Comedy, and others. It included the authors, St. Thomas Aquinas, Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and Dante.

I found this lecture to be fascinating and it was very interesting to put these authors into the Medieval lectures of Thomas Madden which I read previously. Dr. Shutt's enthusiasm for the subject is infectious and made the series even more enjoyable.

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Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thouroughly liked this book. Seabiscuit was the Horatio Alger of racehorses. There was nothing physically to attract notice. He was ungainly and in a way his owner, trainer and jockey were also. He suited the common man during the depression era and when he won it was like all the ordinary people won against all the odds.

The book traces Seabiscuit from his earliest days and is a wonderful rags to riches story. No other horse has won the hearts of so many ordinary people. It is also the story of his owner, his trainer and jockey and how Seabiscuit pulled them up out of obscurity and made them more than they were also. It is a story of obstacles overcome and victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.


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Ramses: The Son of Light

Ramses: The Son of Light by Christian Jacq


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was an excellent story of the great Pharaoh, Ramses II. While it is clearly fiction, most of the action is consistent with what is known about him. It probably presents him as a more sympathetic ruler than he was, but captures his boldness and shrewd management of Egypt.

The action is told from the point of view of Ramses, his older brother who was passed over in favor of him, and his 4 friends from school, including the Biblical Moses. In this case, however, Moses was not raised in the palace as another Prince of Egypt. The book is in multiple volumes, so there is space enough to get to know the characters and to cover a lot of the known actions of the the Pharaoh.

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Miss Julia Paints the Town (Miss Julia, #9)

Miss Julia Paints the Town by Ann B. Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is just plain fun. Miss Julia is the perfect spunky little old lady. She knows what is right for her town and she'll move heaven and earth to get it, too! She isn't afraid of anything...well, except for being "unseemly."

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The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture

The Modern Scholar: The Medieval World, Part II: Society, Economy, and Culture by Thomas Madden


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This lecture was the second in the series and covered the economic and social history of the Middle Ages, filling in and explaining the gaps in Part 1. I found it to be just as interesting as the first series of lectures and again found the roots of a number of present customs as well as cultural conflicts between nations that are still influencing events today.

This series traces the development of the Christian/Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages as there were very few aspects of history which were not intertwined with religion. For some reason, most of the histories I studied in high school and college seem to imply that after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity the church was essentially the same as we know today, with the exception of the Protestant Reformation which came near the end of the Middle Ages. It was very interesting to learn how the cannon evolved and how the church and state developed over the approximately 1,000 years called the Middle Ages. I found this series to be as fascinating as the first.

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Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World'sMost Notorious Nazi

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World'sMost Notorious Nazi by Neal Bascomb


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is the story of the identification and capture of Adolph Eichmann in Argentina. The author first details some of the elements of the capture and then backtracks to help the reader understand the role Eichmann played in brutality of the “Final Solution.” At the end of the war, Eichmann went into hiding and after 2 years, with the help of a division of the Roman Catholic Church, he was spirited out of Germany and given a new identity in Argentina. I had no idea until recently that the Catholic church saw Hitler as a force in protecting Europe from the atheistic communist and, before the true horror of the Nazi crimes were well known, was part of an organized effort to help high ranking Nazi’s escape.

The bulk of the book is about all the minute details that went into the identification of Eichmann and the decision of the Israelis to attempt to capture him. By the time Eichmann was identified, the Germans were attempting to put the war era behind them and they weren’t interested in capturing him and bringing him back to trial, especially since there were a number of high ranking Nazis who were in the present government. (The rest of Europe and the US, also were using Nazis as spies and weren’t interested in trying Eichmann for fear that their names would come out.) The Israelis were not a country when the crimes were committed so they felt that the Argentine government would not turn him over them. The only thing to do was to capture him and spirit him out of the country.

I thought the book was well written and even though the reader knows the outcome, the details are very interesting and create a sense of excitement and suspense. My only objection is that there wasn’t a lot of information about Eichmann himself. It is so hard to understand what makes a person do something so abhorrent and the book would have been better if it had gone into more of his family background.

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A Crime in the Neighborhood: A Novel

A Crime in the Neighborhood: A Novel by Suzanne Berne

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I was disappointed in this book. It seemed more like a slice of life in a time period that seemed to be interesting, but the choices the characters make are unfortunate. I didn't find the characters particularly well developed and at times didn't act in character.

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