Book review

On Feburary 8, 2008 I talked about the book I had just finished reading along with the book I just started reading. I just finished "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Moat Famous Scientist"


Yes it took me well over a month to read it. I am a very slow reader. Which isn't a surprise because of my LDs.

It turned out to a really great book I am going to have to look deeper on some of the topics like Hoover being on friendly terms with Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler.

Einstein has always been a hero of mine since I was 11 or 12 years old. Reading more about him lately makes me view him as a greater man then I thought he was.

It seems that because of different reasons Einstein's political views have been lost to history. Only when Time Magazine named him "Person of the Century" did a lot of his political believes came out. Even that article just breezed over his political views.

Did Hoover and McCarthy win in the long run because biographers are nervous to prove that Einstein was part of a number or radical organizations that if alive Einstein would told people he was part of without a problem. Einstein felt that largest problem in the United States was racism. If biographers and media could right more about Einstein's eloquent anti-racism writing and searches without fear, would US citizens have a different view of racism since the worlds greatest scientist said these things.

Once I am done reading "Buried By the Times" (I might have to write about this book when I am done also. New York Times owned by German Jews and worked to get their family out of Germany during WWII, but didn't cover the Shoah in their paper.) I am going to have to go on to read "Einstein on Race and Racism" it looks like it could be a good book and cover some of the questions I have. There is a whole list of his writtings and speaches on racism in the back of "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Moat Famous Scientist" I am not going bother to type them up here. Anyone who is interested now knows they are there and can go look at them themselves.

I know I should do goodreads.com, I haven't been able to get into it at all. I think it has to do with the fact when you come here and read my blog, you know about my reading and writing issues, at goodreads.com when I review a book I feel that I do not do the book justice.

Page 123 meme plus musings

I am stealing this meme from Trees and flowers and birds. I have a vaige memory of doing something like this, but hey if I did it is a new book so might as well do it again.

The Rules

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more (no cheating!)

Find page 123

Find the first five sentences

Post the next three sentences

The book is "The Einstein File: J. Edgar Hoover's Secret War Against the World's Most Famous Scientist." I just got this book in the mail a couple days ago that is why I know I didn't do this book before. :-)

"Each time Hoover's agents drew up a summary of Einstein's "Red front" affiliations, they included more groups. For several years during the early 1950s, his "subversive" list grew at the rate of nearly one new "front group" per month. It wasn't that Einstein joined so many organizations during those waning years of his life, but McCarthy-Hooverism expanded its power, the Subversive Activites Control Board (SACB) and HUAC, the authorities on "subversive" groups, kept enlarging their lists."

So far I have really enjoyed the book. I went on to this one after reading
Einstein: A Biography by Jürgen Neffe and Shelley Frisch. Which was a great book and having have read a handful of Einstein bios in high school it left me with more questions about him and Hoover, so I had to get this book I am reading now.

A little note here. Horse Girl's teacher is making noices about holding Horse Girl back next year and I have already decided I am not going to allow it for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that when I was her age I was like her. I could sort of maybe read depending on your defintion of reading. It didn't really click until I was 8 or 9 years old. (Horse Girl turns 8 this month.) So for me fast forward 30 years and here I am reading Einstein bios with no problem. I don't read fast, but I read and comprehend which is the most important part. So I really believe Horse Girl will figure things out and be fine just because of my history. That doesn't mean that Fly Guy and I are just sitting back and waiting, we work with her and her teachers work with her and she works hard at every thing she does. I know in my heart that she will be fine with time. I think sometimes it is harder for people who haven't been there, done that and bought several t-shirts, get too tied up with the here and now and don't look down the line.

There isn't a better bio to read then a good Einstein bio when you want to feel like a dyslexic can do anything. ;-) Dyslexics just see the world a different way. Which is why I don't like being told I "suffer" from dyslexia....I don't suffer I see things different then other people, which has bad parts to it and it has good parts. Einsein is one of those people who took the good parts and ran with them. Hmmmm.....a peace loving, socialist, dyslexic who becomes the world's most famous scientist, no wonder he is one of a handful of people who I would view as "my hero."