I finally got around to reading Philip Roth’s The Prague Orgy after it sat on my shelves for decades. Roth generates mixed feelings in some readers and he certain does in me. The Prague Orgy is the epilogue to his trilogy Zuckerman Bound. The story follows Roth’s alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman, on a journey to Communist Prague in 1976. Zuckerman seeks to acquire the unpublished manuscripts of a Yiddish writer but the manuscripts are held by the writer’s ex-wife who hates her former husband and refuses to release them. Zuckerman’s delicate negotiations with the ex-wife are both humorous and tragic.

The Prague Orgy presents a series of journal entries by Zuckerman. Many of the entries show the frustration and demoralization of writers in a Communist society. My major quibble about The Prague Orgy–and much of Roth’s writings for that matter–is Roth’s negative portrayal of women. It’s clear that Roth was a bitter man. What do you think of Philip Roth? GRADE: C

Diane wanted to see Raya and The Last Dragon so we watched it on Disney+. A vaguely Southeast Asian country falls into chaos when the various tribes stop trusting each other and shatter the magic crystal that protects them from the Druun. The Druun look like swirling smoke and their touch turns humans (and dragons) into stone.

Raya is a warrior princess who searches for the Last Dragon (and the last hope of defeating the Druun). Another warrior princess, Namaari, seeks to stop Raya. So there are plenty of cartoon fights.

I had no trouble with the storyline, but the “theme” of this movie is you have to trust others. In my experience, trust needs to be earned. Not in Raya and The Last Dragon. Despite examples where trust is betrayed, the story insists on the characters trusting to Make Everything Better. Other than that quibble, I found Raya and The Last Dragon entertaining. Diane did, too. Are you a fan of Disney animated movies? Any favorites? GRADE: B

Ronald Brownstein makes his argument for 1974 being a pivotal year early in Rock Me On the Water: “In film, 1974 saw the release of Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and the great Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds; the filming of Nashville, Jaws, and Shampoo; and the completion of the first-draft screenplay for a space adventure called Star Wars. In television, the year brought together the transformative comedies All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Mary Tyler Moore (along with the Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett shows) on a CBS Saturday schedule that has been called the greatest night in television history. That year, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt all issued career-redefining albums on Geffen’s label, and Bob Dylan and the Band and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young mounted record-setting concert tours with him.” (p. 3)

Brownstein captures the tenor of the time perfectly. As he moves through 1974 month by month, he alternates his analysis of what was happening in film, music, and television.

My favorite chapter of Rock Me On the Water is “November Breakthrough.” For years Linda Ronstadt struggled to move from small clubs to larger venues. And, Ronstadt wasn’t happy with the quality of her earlier albums (or their paltry sales). Brownstein asserts that the change that turned Ronstadt’s career around was her selection of Peter Asher as producer of her classic Heart Like a Wheel album. Brownstein shows how each song on the album was included to produce a unique effect.

If you’re interested in all the creative energy of the early Seventies, Rock Me On the Water shows how the artists, performers, and decision-makers produced the incredible movies, TV, and music of that era. What were you doing in 1974? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

Prologue: Magic Hour in Los Angeles 1

1 January Hollywood’s Fall and Rise 11

2 February The Republic of Rock and Roll 40

3 March The Greatest Night in Television History 76

4 April Already Gone 100

5 May The Ballad of Tom and Jane 131

6 June From Chinatown to Jerry Brown 165

7 July Hollywood’s Generational Tipping Point 196

8 August The Icarus of Los Angeles 229

9 September Three Roads to Revolution 258

10 October The (White) Boys’ Club 291

11 November Breakthrough 325

12 December Transitions 352

Acknowledgments 391

Notes 397

Index 429

Niall Ferguson sees plenty of problems ahead. Sure the Covid-19 Pandemic killed millions over the globe and continues to raise havoc in Asia and Africa. But Ferguson sees more problems just as dire: climate change, global warming, cyber terrorism, political unrest, health concerns, and racial inequality.

I’m an optimistic guy, but it’s hard to come away from Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe without a sense of foreboding. When you start a book with Chapter One titled “The Meaning of Death” you know you’re in for a rough ride.

How do you feel about the Future? What do you think is the gravest problem that faces us? GRADE: B+

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xvii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Meaning of Death 19

Chapter 2 Cycles and Tragedies 43

Chapter 3 Gray Rhinos, Black Swans, and Dragon Kings 69

Chapter 4 Networld 105

Chapter 5 The Science Delusion 141

Chapter 6 The Psychology of Political Incompetence 175

Chapter 7 From the Boogie Woogie Flu to Ebola in Town 213

Chapter 8 The Fractal Geometry of Disaster 251

Chapter 9 The Plagues 285

Chapter 10 The Economic Consequences of the Plague 319

Chapter 11 The Three-Body Problem 345

Conclusion Future Shocks 379

Acknowledgments 397

Notes 399

Index 457

Katherine St. John’s new novel, The Siren, is being marketed as a “Beach Book.” Fair enough. The plot revolves around a movie production in the Caribbean. When movie star Cole Power hires his ex-wife, Stella Rivers, to act in his son’s film, The Siren, Cole launches a series of events on the isolated island that will unearth long-buried secrets — and unravel years of lies.

The Siren slowly discloses a number of mysteries. Each character has “baggage” that they’re trying to hide. But each day of the movie shoot reveals more clues to past transgressions. The conclusion ends up stormy and full of suspense. I’ve you’re looking for a Summer novel with plenty of puzzles and thrills, give The Siren a try. GRADE: B

Robert E. Howard is best known for his Conan tales, but he also wrote a number of stories to add to the Cthulhu Mythos. This volume collects Howard’s Cthulhu stories and shows the influence of H. P. Lovecraft on his writing. Paul Di Filippo’s informative Foreword puts the stories into the context of publishing at that time.

Howard’s stories are organized by chronology and the collects they first appeared in. If you’re a Robert E. Howard fan, you’ll love The Cthulhu Stories. Causal fans will enjoy these tales, too. Are you a Robert E. Howard fan? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

FORWARD by Paul Di Filippo — vii

THE SHADOW KINGDOM

1. The King Comes Riding — 3
2. Thus Spake the Silent Halls of Valusia –9
3. They That Walk at Night — 16
4. Masks — 30

SKULL FACE

1. The Face in the Mist — 41
2. The Hashish Slave — 43
3. The Master of Doom — 47
4. The Spider and the Fly — 51
5. The Man on the Couch — 57
6. The Dream Girl — 61
7. The Man of the Skull — 64
8. Black Wisdom — 68
9. Kathulos of Egypt — 71
10. The Dark House — 78
11. Four Thirty-four — 86
12. The Stroke of Five — 89
13. The Blind Beggar Who Rode — 94
14. The Black Empire — 96
15. The Mark of Tulwar — 106
16. The Mummy Who Laughed — 111
17. The Dead Man From the Sea — 116
18. The Grip of the Scorpion — 124
19. Dark Fury — 133
20. Ancient Horror — 140
21. The Breaking of the Chains — 150
22. The Children of the Night — 157

THE GODS OF BAL-SAGOTH

1. The Steel in the Storms — 177
2. The Gods From the Abyss — 183
3. The Fall of the Gods — 204
4. Empire — 220

The Black Stone — 222

People of the Dark — 242

WORMS OF THE EARTH

1. Chapter One — 267
2. Chapter Two — 272
3. Chapter Three — 281
4. Chapter Four — 287
5. Chapter Five — 292
6. Chapter Six — 298

The Thing on the Roof — 306

The Haunter of the Ring — 317

THE CHALLENGE FROM BEYOND

1. [C. L. Moore] — 337
2. [A. Merritt] — 340
3. [H. P. Lovecraft] — 343
4. [Robert E. Howard & Frank Belknap Long] — 351
5. [Frank Belknap Long] — 355

The Fire of Asshurbanipal — 358

Dig Me No Grave — 385

About the Author — 401

If You Liked… — 405

Other WordFire Press Titles — 407

I first bought a Moody Blues album in 1967. It was Days of Future Passed, the blend of rock and symphonic music. Over the years, I continued to buy and listen to the Moody Blues.

Echoes is a 2-CD set that presents a variety of Moody Blues music although you’re going to notice many of their “hits” are NOT included. The most recognizable song is “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)” from The Wall. Over the years, the Moody Blues tried a number of musical experiments. Some worked, some didn’t. If you’re a Moody Blues fan, you probably already have Echoes. If you’re a causal fan, Echoes will present a spectrum of Moody Blues music, a cross-section of their oeuvre that you are unlikely to find elsewhere in their discography.  Are you a Moody Blues fan? GRADE: A

Tracklist

In the year 2132, members of the Anthropologist’s Guild land on the planet Henderson’s IV, or L’Lal’lor as it is known to the native population, to study the Culture and to eventually initiate First Contact. Skilled in the nonintrusive study of alien cultures, the Anthropologists discover a society containing no love or laughter. The alien society centers around death—a world of aristocratic and common folk in which grieving is an art and the cornerstone of life.

As Goodreads notes: “But this alien civilization stands on the brink of astonishing change triggered by the discovery of Linni (aka, Gray Wanderer), a young woman from the countryside whose arrival has been foretold for centuries. And for Anthropologist First Class Aaron Spenser, L’Lal’lor is a place of destructive temptations, seducing him with its mysterious, sad beauty, and leading him into an unthinkable criminal act.”

My main quibble about Cards of Grief centers around Jane Yolen’s decision to tell her story in the form of “transcripts” from recordings the Anthropologists make. And Yolen doesn’t provide any surprises, either. GRADE: B-

It’s a Sin is a British television drama miniseries written and created by Russell T Davies (of Doctor Who fame). In the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic, It’s a Sin presents another epidemic. The five-part series is set from 1981 to 1991 in London. It depicts the lives of a group of gay men and their friends who lived during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United Kingdom (soon to spread to the U.S. and everywhere).

 It’s a Sin features a main cast consisting of Olly Alexander as Ritchie Tozer, Omari Douglas as Roscoe Babatunde and Callum Scott Howells as Colin Morris-Jones, who all move to London. Lydia West, Nathaniel Curtis and David Carlyle play the characters of Jill Baxter, Ash Mukherjee and Gregory Finch respectively. Together they form the ensemble which the show focuses on most. Other actors cast were Keeley Hawes, Shaun Dooley, Tracy Ann Oberman, Neil Patrick Harris and Stephen Fry. It premiered in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 on 22 January 2021. After a few weeks, It’s a Sin was viewed in its entirety more than 6.5 million times; making it the most binge-watched show to stream on the platform.

The story of HIV/AIDS in the UK was new to me although it followed the pattern of its spread in the U.S. We could have learned from the HIV/AIDS epidemic in ways that could have helped us when the Coronavirus hit…but we didn’t. GRADE: A

I consider myself a social liberal and a economic conservative. I believe in freedom of expression and democracy. I also believe in balanced budgets, low debts, and a relatively free market system (with monitoring to stop cheating and manipulation). As Edmund Fawcett points out in his excellent book on Liberalism: The Life of an Idea the path to a free and open society that stresses economic equality and equal rights tends to be a bumpy one.

Among the dozens of politicians, philosophers, and economists Fawcett deals with in his story of Liberalism, I was captivated by his approach to Milton Friedman. Friedman is considered to be one of the great economists of the 20th Century (along side John Maynard Keynes). Both Liberals and Conservatives claim Friedman for their side when in reality, Friedman is hard to categorize. Friedman “argued that political freedom required economic freedom. Markets were blind to people’s non-monetary differences. Markets encouraged mutual forbearance and acceptance. The more markets spread within a society the less room there was for intolerance, oppression, and harmful political factionalism” (p. 373).

“Governments, Friedman thought, should limit themselves to enforcing contracts, promoting competition, protecting ‘the irresponsible whether madman or child,’ and ensuring stable money.” Governments got into trouble if they overreached.

I enjoyed Fawcett’s treatments of Keynes, Hayek, Schumpeter, Adam Smith, Marshall, and other notable economists. If you’re looking for a book about where Liberalism when right and where it went wrong, Edmund Fawcett’s book does this brilliantly. Are you a Liberal? GRADE: A

Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition xi

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxiii

Introduction It’s About More Than Liberty 1

PART ONE The Confidence of Youth (1830-1880) 27

1 Historical Setting in the 1830s: Thrown into a World of Ceaseless Change 28

2 Guiding Thoughts from Founding Thinkers: Conflict, Resistance, Progress, and Respect 34

i. Humboldt and Constant: Releasing People’s Capacities and Respecting Their Privacy 34

ii. Guizot: Taming Conflict without Arbitrary Power 44

iii. Tocqueville and Schulze-Delitzsch: The Modern Powers of Mass Democracy and Mass Markets 57

iv. Chadwick and Cobden: Governments and Markets as Engines of Social Progress 65

v. Smiles and Channing: Personal Progress as Self-Reliance or Moral Uplift 74

vi. Spencer: Liberalism Mistaken for Biology 79

vii. J. S. Mill: Holding Liberalism’s Ideas Together 85

3 Liberalism in Practice: Four Exemplary Politicians 98

i. Lincoln: The Many Uses of “Liberty” in the Land of Liberty 98

ii. Laboulaye and Richter: Tests for Liberals in Semiliberal Regimes 106

iii. Gladstone: Liberalism’s Capaciousness and the Politicsof Balance 112

4 The Nineteenth-Century Legacy: Liberalism without Caricature 117

i. Respect, “the Individual,” and the Lessons of Toleration 117

ii. The Achievements That Gave Liberals Confidence 133

PART TWO Liberalism in Maturity and the Struggle with Democracy (1880-1945) 137

5 Historical Setting in the 1880s: The World Liberals Were Making 138

6 The Compromises That Gave Us Liberal Democracy 146

i. Political Democracy: Liberal Resistance to Suffrage Extension 146

ii. Economic Democracy: The “New Liberalism” and Novel Tasks for the State 159

iii. Ethical Democracy: Letting Go Ethically and the Persistence of Intolerance 167

7 The Economic Powers of the Modern State and Modern Market 173

i. Walras, Marshall, and the Business Press: Resisting the State on Behalf of Markets 173

ii. Hobhouse, Naumann, Croly, and Bourgeois: Resisting Markets on Behalf of Society 186

8 Damaged Ideals and Broken Dreams 198

i. Chamberlain and Bassermann: Liberal Imperialism 198

ii. Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson: Liberal Hawks of 1914-1918 214

iii. Alain, Baldwin, and Brandeis: Liberal Dissent and the Warfare State 227

iv. Stresemann: Liberal Democracy in Peril 237

v. Keynes, Fisher, and Hayek (i): Liberal Economists in the Slump 245

vi. Hoover and Roosevelt: Forgotten Liberal and Foremost Liberal 267

9 Thinking about Liberalism in the 1930s-1940s 275

i. Lippmann and Hayek (ii): Liberals as Antitotalitarians 275

ii. Popper: Liberalism as Openness and Experiment 279

PART THREE Second Chance and Success (1945-1989) 285

10 Historical Setting after 1945: Liberal Democracy’s New Start 286

11 New Foundations: Rights, a Democratic Rule of Law, and Welfare 290

i. Drafters of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights: Liberal Democracy Goes Global 290

ii. German Postwar Liberals: The 1949 Basic Law as Liberal Democracy’s Exemplary Charter 302

iii. Beveridge: Liberalism and Welfare 312

12 Liberal Thinking after 1945 316

i. Oakeshott and Berlin: Letting Politics Alone and “Negative” Liberty 317

ii. Hayek (iii): Political Antipolitics 327

iii. Orwell, Camus, and Sartre: Liberals in the Cold War 332

iv. Rawls: Justifying Liberalism 338

v. Nozick, Dworkin, and MacIntyre: Responses to Rawls, Rights, and Community 348

13 The Breadth of Liberal Politics in the 1950s-1980s 355

i. Mendès-France, Brandt, and Johnson: Left Liberalism in the 1950s-1960s 355

ii. Buchanan and Friedman: Liberal Economists Against the State 368

iii. Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, and Kohl: Right Liberalism in the 1970s-1980s 378

PART FOUR After 1989 391

Coda Liberal Dreams in the Twenty-First Century 392

Works Consulted 409

Name Index 433

Subject Index 444