Back in 1983, Signet Books published the first volume in “Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction” series that produced 10 volumes and ended in 1990. These theme-based anthologies featured a variety of authors and story lengths. And each volume included a breezy “Introduction” by Isaac Asimov which explained the importance of each individual topic in the grander scheme of the Science Fiction genre. I had a handful of the volumes in this series, but not all of them. Now I have the remaining volumes on order (and you may be seeing some of them in future FFBs). If you’re looking for a well edited anthology with quality stories, Intergalactic Empires would be an excellent choice. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
“Introduction: Empires” (Isaac Asimov)
“Cycles”
“Chalice of Death” (Robert Silverberg)
“Orphan of the Void” (Lloyd Biggle, Jr.)
“Down to the Worlds of Men” (Alexei Panshin)
“Governance”
“Ministry of Disturbance” (H. Beam Piper)
“Blind Alley” (Isaac Asimov)
“A Planet Named Shayol” (Cordwainer Smith)
“Concerns”
“Diabologic” (Eric Frank Russell)
“Fighting Philosopher” (E. B. Cole )
“Honorable Enemies” (Poul Anderson)

ISAAC ASIMOV’S WONDERFUL WORLD OF SCIENCE FICTION SERIES
Intergalactic Empires (1983)
The Science Fictional Olympics (1984)
Supermen (1984)
Comets (1986)
Tin Stars (1986)
Neanderthals (1987)
Space Shuttles (1987)
Monsters (1988)
Robots (1989)
Invasions (1990)

I’m sure the Sherlockians reading this post know the story of how Arthur Conan Doyle changed the name of his famous character from “Sherrinford Holmes” to “Sherlock Holmes.” And you probably know how Sherlock’s companion morphed from “Ormond Sacker” to “John Watson.” Michael Sims presents a lively biographical tale of how Doyle invented Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Sim shows how Doyle modeled his detective on his favorite professor, Joseph Bell. Bell taught his students the power of observation when dealing with patients. Doyle added Bell’s methods to Sherlock’s. In addition, Michael Sims convincingly shows that Doyle’s admiration of the detective tales of Edgar Allan Poe had an enormous impact on his writing. Arthur and Sherlock enlightens as it entertains. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Overture: Remembering 1
Part 1: Dr Bell and Mr Doyle
A SuperMan 7
Your Powers of Deduction 12
Art in the Blood 20
Seven Weary Steps 25
Athens of the North 30
No Man of Flesh and Blood 35
Ode to Opium 40
Drinking Poison 45
Intemperance 51
Dr. Conan Doyle, Surgeon 58
A Wealth of Youth and Pluck 63
The Circular Tour 69
The Unseen World 74
Part 2: Prophets and Police
The Method of Zadig 83
The Footmarks of Poe 87
How Do You Know That? 95
Games of Chess Played with Live Pieces 99
Part 3: Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson
Dr Sacker and Mr Hope 111
Bohemians in Baker Street 119
A Little Too Scientific 125
The Book of Life 133
A Basilisk in the Desert 137
A Born Novelist 144
The Preternatural Sagacity of a Scientific Detective 151
Truth as Death 158
Watsons Brothers Watch 166
Dread of Madhouses 174
Adventures in the Strand 179
Deerstalker 184
To My Old Teacher 191
Acknowledgments 199
Notes 201
Bibliography and Further Reading 223
Index 235

I posted a review of Elsa Hart’s first mystery, Jade Dragon Mountain, here. Steve Oerkfitz commented that Elsa Hart had a sequel published, The White Mirror, so I ordered it, too. Like Jade Dragon Mountain, The White Mirror features travelling librarian, Li Du. His caravan is slowed by bad weather and it detours to a hidden valley. There, Li Du discovers a dead monk at an old wooden bridge. Someone has painted a white mirror on his body. While the caravan is stalled due to the worsening weather, Li Du investigates the monk’s death. Li Du concludes the monk was murdered…but why? Once again, Elsa Hart brings 18th Century China to life. If you’re a fan of Robert Van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries, you’ll enjoy Li Du solving his puzzles. GRADE: B+

I have to thank Bill Crider for alerting me to this fabulous bargain: 40TH ANNIVERSARY REVISITED [3-Blu-ray Set] for merely $5.00! An amazing bargain! Now, AMAZON has raised the price back to $14,99 (still not a bad price). Some people consider Woodstock to be the best rock & roll documentary ever. Look at the list of performers: Joan Baez, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker & The Grease Band, Country Joe McDonald & Country Joe & The Fish, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Santana, John Sebastian, Sha Na Na, Sly & The Family Stone, Ten Years After, and The Who.

And how about the songs: “Long Time Gone”, “Going Up the Country”, “Wooden Ships”, “Handsome Johnny”, “Freedom”, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”, “A Change Is Gonna Come”, “Joe Hill”, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, “See Me, Feel Me”, “Summertime Blues”, “At the Hop”, “With a Little Help from My Friends”, “Crowd Rain Chant”, “Rock and Soul Music”, “Coming Into Los Angeles”, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, “I’m Going Home”, “Saturday Afternoon”, “Won’t You Try”, “Uncle Sam’s Blues”, “Younger Generation”, “The Fish Cheer/Feel-Like-I’m-Fixing-to-Die-Rag”, “Soul Sacrifice”, “Dance to the Music”, “I Want to Take You Higher”, “Work Me, Lord”, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”, “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Purple Haze”, “Woodstock Improvisation”, “Villanova Junction”, “Woodstock”, and “Find the Cost of Freedom.”

This classic documentary looks great in Blu-ray, too! What group or performer at Woodstock is a favorite of yours? GRADE: A

“Leon Trotsky, one of the more competent practitioners of the art of war, is reputed to have commented that ‘you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.'” So begins James Lacey and Williamson Murray clear, concise, and entertaining Moment of Battle. With uncertain times, I felt like reading a history of great battles would fit the era we’re living in. Steve Bannon, the Svengali to the truculent, irascible Donald Trump, has predicted a war in the Middle East. Bannon has also said that a war in the South China Sea is “inevitable.”

Given that kind of mind-set in the White House, war seems like a high probability event. James Lacy and Williamson Murray take a chronological approach, starting with the famous battle between the Athenians and the Persians at Marathon in 400 B.C. I enjoyed the attention to detail and the authors’s wit and cleverness in the analysis of these battles. And, I learned a lot. Who knew that Benedict Arnold was a military genius who turned traitor because his superiors wouldn’t acknowledge his battlefield accomplishments (they took the credit). And when I read about Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, I had tears in my eyes. Very moving.

Military history could be a very dry subject, but Lacey and Murray bring it alive in Moment of Battle. Highly recommended! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
MARATHON Athens Saves Westerm Civilization (490 B.C.)
GAUGAMELA Alexander Creates a New World (311 B.C.)
ZAMA An Empire in the balance (202 B.C)
ADRIANOPLE The End of Roman Supremacy (AD 378)
YARMUK The Islamic Conquest Begins (636)
HASTINGS The Remaking of Europe (1066)
THE SPANISH ARMADA Miracle at sea (1588)
BREITENFELD The Creation of Modern War (1631)
ANNUS MIRABILUS This Rise of British Supremacy (1750)
SARATOGA The Victory of the Amateurs (1777)
TRAFALGAR Napoleons Plans Thwarted (1805)
VICKSURG Breaking the Confederacy (1863)
THE MARNE The End of Old Europe (1914)
THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN The Nazis Stopped (1940)
MIDWAY Imperial Japan Stopped (1942)
KURSK The End of the Drang Nach Osten (1943)
NORMANDY The Death Knell for Nazi Germany (1944)
DIEN BIEN PHU Imperialism Defeated (1954)
OBJECTIVE PEACH The Drive for Baghdad (2003)
Acknowledgements
NOTES
INDEX

The New England Patriots are 3-point favorites, but I’m rooting for the Atlanta Falcons! Who do you want to win the Super Bowl?

David Sax loves vinyl records. He loves clocks with hands. He’s convinced that analog is superior to digital. Sadly, we live in a digital world. My Casio watch is digital. Diane’s iPhone is digital, our Canon camera is digital. David Sax makes the argument we should be leery of our digital culture. He’s convinced analog is more authentic and more real. I have to agree with David Sax on real books. I much prefer a printed book to an ebook (although I read both). What do you think? Do you prefer digital or analog? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Part 1: The Revenge of Analog Things
Chapter 1: The Revenge of Vinyl
Chapter 2: The Revenge of Paper
Chapter 3: The Revenge of Film
Chapter 4: The Revenge of Board Games

Part 2: The Revenge of Analog Ideas
Chapter 5: The Revenge of Print
Chapter 6: The Revenge of Retail
Chapter 7: The Revenge of Work
Chapter 8: The Revenge of School
Chapter 9: The Revenge of Analog, in Digital
Epilogue: The Revenge of Summer

At 904 pages, Batman in The Brave & The Bold: The Bronze Age Omnibus Volume 1 is a handful. But I loved reading these classic comic book adventures when I was a kid so it was worth the $46 (that’s the AMAZON price, retail price is $126!). If you’re a fan of Batman comics, you probably have this coffee table-sized book on order. There are hours of entailment between these covers. This volume also includes an informative foreword by Robert Greenberger which gives a nice contextual history of these adventures. This wonderful collection starts with issue #74 and runs straight through to issue #109 (Batman and The Demon). Batman teams up with Wonder Woman, Flash, Deadman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and the Teen Titans. And some of the best Bronze Age talent are here: Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, Bob Haney, Dick Giordano and Dennis O’Neil, The quality is high and it’s well worth the money. GRADE: A

How many girl friends did Jerry Seinfeld have on Seinfeld? According to Moira Weigel, Jerry Seinfeld had 66 girl friends in the 9-year run of Seinfeld. The characters on Friends had nearly that number. Dating was the focus of a lot of TV programs. But, once the Internet took hold, dating changed. Around 2000 Tom Wolfe published Hooking Up to document the changes in dating patterns. Today, we have apps like Tinder to facilitate social connections. But, as Moira Weigel points out in her history of dating, today’s hooking up and hanging out seems particularly joyless. Dating is part of the market economy for the “best looking” and “sexiest” companion. I’m glad I’m not part of this scene. GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction: Dates
Tricks
Likes
Outs
School
Steadies
Freedom
Niches
Protocol
Plans
Help
Afterword: Love.

Sarah Bakewell’s breezy history of existentialism starts with Jean Paul Sartre’s growing interest in the idea in the 1930s. Sartre’s lover, Simone de Beauvoir (author of the powerful The Second Sex), energizes Bakewell’s story with her affairs and her bravery during the German Occupation of Paris during WWII. Albert Camus shows up to disrupt mainstream existentialist thinking. Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology gives the existentialists fuel for their ideas. But it’s the brilliant Martin Heidegger, author of the classic Being & Time, who lights up many of the pages in At the Existentialist Cafe. Heidegger embraces the Nazi movement in the 1930s and then finds himself an outcast in the 1940s. Hannah Arendt, Heidegger’s student and then lover, tried to defend Heidegger’s motives in dabbling in anti-Semitism and becoming a Nazi sympathizer but few bought her arguments. Other key figures in the existentialist movement, Kark Jaspers and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, feud with Sartre and Heidegger. After the 1960s, existentialism slowly faded. The major figures started to die and their movement died with them. Sarah Bakewell’s book showed up on many Year’s Best Books lists in 2016. It deserves all the acclaim it has received. If you’re interested in 20th Century philosophy, At the Existentialist Cafe captures the spirit of those times. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1 Sir, What a Horror, Existentialism! 1
2 To the Things Themselves 35
3 The Magician from Messkirch 50
4 The They, The Call 74
5 To Crunch Flowering Almonds 98
6 I Don’t Want to Eat My Manuscripts 122
7 Occupation, Liberation 137
8 Devastation 175
9 Life Studies 208
10 The Dancing Philosopher 228
11 Croises comme ca 242
12 The Eyes of the Least Favoured 271
13 Having Once Tasted Phenomenology 299
14 The Imponderable Bloom 317
Cast of Characters 329
Acknowledgements 337
Notes 339
Select Bibliography 403
List of Illustrations 423
Index 425