Each photo includes a brief caption (printed too small and in a hard-to-read gray - but really, the only flaw in an otherwise perfect book, and including such gems as "highland guides entertained by the fact they were about to shoot their arrows within centimetres of my head as a joke") and map showing where it was taken. And while the text is minimal, the visuals are stunning enough to send me to Google to look up the differencce between Huli wigmen and Asaro mudmen, as well as Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia.*
As this was printed in Australia, I have no idea how it ended up in a used book store in Virginia, (indeed, this wasn't even listed on Goodreads, so had to add it myself) - but good news for my Down Unda friends who may be able to find it locally. (You can also see more of Kirkland's work at www.kirklandphotos.com.)
* So Melanesia is basically PNG, Fiji and Vanuatu; Polynesia is the more easterly islands of Hawaii, Samoa, Easter Island and (oddly, at least to me) New Zealand; and Micronesia contains the scattered smaller islands of Palau, Nauru and the Marshalls (hence the "micro")....more
Some decades ago I watched a series on PBS or NOVA or somewhere about the most common shapes in nature, and it was fascinating - just how often a few Some decades ago I watched a series on PBS or NOVA or somewhere about the most common shapes in nature, and it was fascinating - just how often a few basic shapes (I think they discussed six?) occur over and over again in the natural world whether in geography, weather, animals, plants or even outer space. Things like meanders (e.g., snakes, rivers, brain coral); hexagons (beehives, snowflakes, those basalt columns in Iceland and Ireland); branches (antlers, basket stars, circulatory and root systems); rays (dandelions, sea urchins, pine trees, mineral crystals), and the omnipresent spirals (seashells, galaxies, coiled snakes, ram horns, spiderwebs, anything Fibonacci) and circles/spheres (pretty much everything). So totally way cool stuff, but I was never able to find that show again.
But now this book comes close, if not quite as awe-inspiring as I remember that series being. Text is brief but informative, and the photos are just wonderful, although being a 1992 book the layout/production quality is a bit dated. Still, for someone who loves both nature and design (and who can love one without the other?), this was another delightful $3 find at our local monster used bookstore.
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* Thus book is also a great example of why it's so fun to own books/have a home library - I could just go over and get my Snake book to look at and enjoy the patterns again! :)...more
Informative if unavoidably depressing introduction to Tibet for young readers, covering its geography, culture, wildlife, religion, and all-too-messy Informative if unavoidably depressing introduction to Tibet for young readers, covering its geography, culture, wildlife, religion, and all-too-messy recent history. I've noted in other similar reviews (history/science/travel/etc. for younger readers) that I'm never quite sure who the intended audience is for such books; certainly can't picture many children checking this out at the library. But for adults looking for a brief yet surprisingly comprehensive intro, it's not at all a bad resource.
So yeah, nice introduction to the totality of this remarkable country; full of pictures of red pandas, snow leopards and adorable pikas; prayer wheels and the Potala; sweeping grasslands and snow-covered mountains and the world's bluest flower. It also includes a few simple maps that showed Tibet in a different light even for an "old hand" like me - one showing the 6th Century Tibetan Empire stretching from Xian to Uzbekistan to the Bay of Bengal; another showing the Russian and British empires that met nowhere near Tibet, and so calling into question why this harmless kingdom played such a key role in the Great Game.
But then, inevitably, "modern" history intrudes. One of every six Tibetans killed - either directly or indirectly - under Chinese occupation by 1970; all but 8 of 2,700 monasteries destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (other sources put it at 11 out of 6,200, basically depending on the definition of "monastery"); inarguable "great leaps forward" in infrastructure - but mainly for the purpose of moving settlers and soldiers into Tibet (both as an occupying force, and a menacing presence on Tibet's borders with India, Nepal and Bhutan), and then taking natural resources - minerals, timber, even redirected water sources - out...
Like all such "younger" books, it occasionally drifts into detail that even parents might struggle with, ("many Tibetans have the EPA-1 gene, which helps them use less oxygen more efficiently…and was inherited from the Denisovans, an extinct people who lived in Asia some 40,000 years ago.") But overall it does an excellent job presenting some complex and often-disturbing material to what I assume must be a curious middle-grade readership somewhere.
NOTE: Our library has nearly 40 similar books in the oddly-named "Enchantment of the World" series, covering such interesting locations as Zimbabwe, Haiti, Cambodia, Libya, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Nepal, Madagascar, Iraq, Albania, Afghanistan, the Czech Republic and…Wales? I'm sure I'll be checking out more than a few of these in the months to come!...more
This is the Feb. 1926 issue which includes the sole article - "The Road to Wang Ye Fu" - that came out of the 1925 Geographic-sponsored "Central ChinaThis is the Feb. 1926 issue which includes the sole article - "The Road to Wang Ye Fu" - that came out of the 1925 Geographic-sponsored "Central China Expedition," which was led by Frederick Wulsin and makes up such a large part of the book Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia 1921-1925.
The article is an interesting companion to Vanished Kingdoms, and includes a number of photos not in that book. However, the magazine's greater interest (to me at least) was the over-50 pages of Roaring Twenties advertisements for such products and companies as "Colgate's Ribbon Dental Cream," "National Lead Company," "American Sheet and Tin Plate Company," "Williams Oil-O-Matic Heating," "Pettijohn's Whole Wheat Cereal," "Burroughs Adding Machine Company," and such then-major car manufacturers as Marmon, Willys-Knight and Stutz. (Amazingly, there's also an ad for "The Davey Tree Expert Company," which are the same guys I use to take care of my two front-yard trees today! Who'd have thought they'd be the ones to still be around a century later??)
Fascinating and fun - will have to get some more of these, as this (and I imagine most others) are available online for just a few bucks....more
Found a new copy of this on eBay for a full $20 less than the same thing on Amazon - so good reminder that it's still worth checking eBay before hittiFound a new copy of this on eBay for a full $20 less than the same thing on Amazon - so good reminder that it's still worth checking eBay before hitting that "buy" button elsewhere!...more
Interesting/odd sampler of a book, including "selections" from three early travel writings on Tibet - Isabella Bird's Among the Tibetans, Francis YounInteresting/odd sampler of a book, including "selections" from three early travel writings on Tibet - Isabella Bird's Among the Tibetans, Francis Younghusband's India and Tibet, and Powell Millington's To Lhassa at Last. (Younghusband I know well; Bird I learned a bit about recently from Kari Herbert's We are Explorers: Extraordinary Women Who Discovered the World; and Millington…um, who?)
AMONG THE TIBETANS: Includes the first three (of five) chapters from the original, and both this book and Bird herself are revelations. Bird could easily be an even more formidable ancestor of the already-indefatigable Dervla Murphy, crossing glacial mountain passes, nearly drowning along with her horse while fording frigid rivers, keeping an eye on her murderous bodyguard...all the while keeping what must have been endless daily journals so that she could eventually go home and write such prose as this:
The evenings in the Dras valley were exquisite. As soon as the sun went behind the higher mountains, peak above peak, red and snow-slashed, flamed against a lemon sky, the strong wind moderated into a pure stiff breeze, bringing up to camp the thunder of the Dras, and the musical tinkle of streams sparkling in absolute purity. There was no more need for boiling and filtering. Icy water could be drunk in safety from every crystal torrent.
There's also a fair amount of nice old-timey writing; "ceiled" as a verb, "plenishings" as a noun - and who doesn't enjoy a well-used "sacerdotal"? Plus, just the amount of sheer naturalist DETAIL:
There are no trees, and deep crimson roses along torrent beds are the only shrubs. But for a brief fortnight in June, which chanced to occur during my journey, the valleys and lower slope present a wonderful aspect of beauty and joyousness. Rose and pale pink primulas fringe the margin of the snow, the dainty Pedicularis tubiflora covers moist spots with its mantle of gold; great yellow and white, and small purple and white anemones, pink and white dianthus, a very large myosotis, bringing the intense blue of heaven down to earth, purple orchids by the water, borage staining whole tracts deep blue, martagon lilies, pale green lilies veined and spotted with brown, yellow, orange, and purple vetches, painter's brush, dwarf dandelions, white clover, filling the air with fragrance, pink and cream asters, chrysanthemums, lychnis, irises, gentian, artemisia, and a hundred others, form the undergrowth of millions of tall Umbelliferae and Compositae, many of them peach-scented and mostly yellow.
Who knows this much to begin with, much less can remember it to write about later??
For much of the story, Bell travels in the company a pair of Moravian missionaries and the only two Europeans living in Ladakh, the delightfully-named Mr. Redslob and Dr. Karl Marx, (who I have to believe were part of some Tibetan witness protection program). Their subsequent crossing the Zoji La is some of the most harrowing travel writing I've read - and yet now that the winding narrow trail over the pass has been widened and paved, I have to believe it's even more deadly today, considering the heavy daily truck traffic, regular landslides, and sheer, unprotected drops. ("Guard rails? We don't need no stinkin' guard rails!")
Anyway - just delightful.
INDIA AND TIBET: The middle half of this book includes the middle third of Younghusband's original - got that? In any case, I skipped this entire section, having read the whole book some years back (and am probably due for a re-read, but not in excerpted form). So moving on…
TO LHASSA AT LAST: Bit of a wild card, in that there is NOTHING about Millington online other than his having written this book and one other called On the Track of the Àbor about a 1911 punitive expedition in India's Northeast Frontier, which is even more obscure. But with his lighter, self-deprecating, G-rated Flashman-esque tone, this slim book (almost all of which appears here) serves as a nice dessert after the heavier reading that preceded it. Covering the same Expedition to (aka, Invasion of) Tibet that Younghusband led and wrote about in the previous section, this is less a description of Tibet than a detailed look at the early-20th Century British army on the move in Central Asia, heavy on logistics but with interesting diversions on the different types of beards favored by the various ranks; the care and increasingly difficult feeding of the various mule, yak and "cooli" trains; the interactions with the surprisingly affable locals; and many more that are as fascinating as they are weird.
Again, I could find no indication of who or what Millington was, even in his own brief preface - although my guess would be…some sort of supply officer? He certainly wasn't "a commander of men," and the only combat he saw was from a very safe distance in the rear. As such, his telling is a surprisingly bloodless affair, where warfare is a bit of "Boy's Own" adventure, short on detail but long on generalization - "most of the fights in Tibet involved not only street-fighting but house-fighting, and this species of fun generally began immediately after a steep climb of several hundred feet."
Overall, a pleasant read if you are so inclined, and can find this somewhere online (it appears to come and go). However...you CAN find all three books available for free download at Project Gutenberg, which if you haven't discovered already, you really need to take a look. Amazing - and totally free - resource. (Also, the place where I was able to cut and paste the above quotes from Bird's book - you didn't think I actually typed those out myself, did you?)...more
I swear, with all the crap saved from my childhood, I should be spending my time posting on eBay instead of Goodreads!
Case in point: back in "simpler I swear, with all the crap saved from my childhood, I should be spending my time posting on eBay instead of Goodreads!
Case in point: back in "simpler times" (i.e, the late-'50s), the high point of any given week was shopping for breakfast cereal, because all the good ones had free toys inside - especially, for some reason, Nabisco's Rice and Wheat Honeys. We'd get a new box, dump it all out in a big bowl to find the prize, and then…I dunno, I guess we'd eventually eat the cereal. But that's not important.
Well, like most kids that age, I was obsessed with dinosaurs - but equally so with the saber-tooth tigers, woolly mammoths and other monstrous mammals (the term "megafauna" hadn't been coined yet) which followed them. So it was a pretty big deal when in 1957 (or so says the internet), Nabisco tossed this set of "pre-historic beasts" into the mix:
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…and damn if I didn't recently find half of 'em in this big ol' box of dinosaurs that sat undisturbed in my mom's basement for a good half century, and which my new grandson is now starting to enjoy.
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So (and with apologies), all a long way of saying that I've been fascinated with these creatures and the famous "La Brea tar pits" for a LONG time. I finally had the good fortune to visit this world famous site in the middle of freakin' downtown Los Angeles - the only actively excavated "urban" Ice Age fossil site found anywhere in the world - and the equally impressive Page Museum some twenty years ago, and truly hope to visit again someday. But in the meantime, this book was a great way to learn some of the actual science behind the still-jaw-dropping "wow" factor of those bizarre, enormous skeletons.
The book covers the creation of the asphalt deposits; their human discovery and excavation/exploitation; some of the more famous paleontologists connected to La Brea (including Chester Stock and the eponymous George C. Page…although now I think about it, I'm pretty sure I'm using that wrong - it should be the museum that is eponymous, right?)…as well as - and most importantly - the critters themselves. Sabertoothed cats and American lions; zebra-like equids and enormous bison; short-faced bears twice the size of a grizzly; camels and dire wolves; mammoths and mastodons and those truly weird giant sloths…whole thing made me feel like a kid again!
There's much to learn here: paleopathology, the difference between fossilization and petrification…and as always I was just fascinated by the ridiculous amount of information smart folk can glean just by staring at a bunch of old bones: "Studies of the bones in the throat that anchor the tongue indicate that this species could roar like a lion…its robust front limbs indicate that it sought out prey that greatly exceeded its own weight, but its skeletal structure suggests that it did not chase its prey extensively…this animal was an active predator that relied on stealth and ambush rather than speed, using surprise and a short rapid pursuit followed by a violent impact and a lethal bite."
So yay - science is cool! Now go use it to fix the damn planet....more
Hey, it's year-end obscure book review time again!
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Upstate New York's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is a "living museum" that owns and regularly fliesHey, it's year-end obscure book review time again!
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Upstate New York's Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome is a "living museum" that owns and regularly flies probably the world's best collection of working vintage aircraft, from the earliest days (a 1909 Bleriot XI - the "the oldest flying aircraft in the United States, and the second oldest in the world") through the First World War and into the pre-WWII "Golden Age," (can learn more at www.oldrhinebeck.org). You want to see a Fokker Dr.I not only dogfight a SPAD VII* on a regular basis but then "crash" on a grass landing strip? Well, this is the place!
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This book is more memoir than true history, and even more just listening to an old guy tell stories than actual memoir - and in this case that's a good thing, as it nicely reflects the seat-of-the-pants, "unpolished" approach that Cole Palen took to building and running his truly unique "living museum." This book does a great - if largely anecdotal - job telling the story of the Aerodrome's first twenty years; although sadly, aside from it's "Museum Collection & Air Show Guide" (which is really just a brochure that itself hasn't been redone in nearly a decade), no one's updated this story to include the following near-half-century between this book's 1977 publication and today.
That said, very little has apparently changed in that time. I first visited with my dad in the early '70s, and then most recently again this past October with my own son and grandson, and pretty much everything was just as I remembered. Author E. Gordon Bainbridge (and more on him below) says "the hanger areas were always littered with wings piled in one corner and engines stacked in another," which is just how it looks today; the airshows themselves are exactly the same corny affairs I remember from previous trips (and the crowd sits on the same lumber-on-concrete-block bleachers); and the "non-living" museum displays located in the hangers across the dirt road from the airfield are just as charmingly amateurish as they were 50 years ago, (see below photo). What has changed is the cost of the whole venture, since when Palen started collecting he was able to buy a semi-intact aircraft for anywhere from $50-$200.
But back to the book - a fascinating read for anyone (like me) who's had a lifelong fascination with WWI-era aircraft, although it certainly helped to keep Google handy to look up all the different planes mentioned: Deperdussin, Kinner Bird, Albree Pursuit monoplane (of which the aerodrome owned one of only three ever produced), Siemens Schuckert, Hillman Minx, etc.** - and indeed, many of the Google Images that show up are actually photos from the Rhinebeck collection. There's also a fair amount of old-tech talk that I had to look up as well; things like "the wings had intense dihedral," or "it was the only parasol in the collection." Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), this book is long out of print; I finally found this copy for about $35 on Amazon, but usually it's only available for $100+ from various old book dealers. So - charming, but you have to really want to read it to justify the cost and trouble of getting a copy.
* The "Dr." actually stands for "Dreidecker," which is German for "triplane;" while SPAD is always capitalized because even though I always thought it was an American plane (due to its close connection with Eddie Rickenbacker) it's actually French and therefore an abbreviation of "Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés." But you knew that.
** Ha - that last one was a trick; "Hillman Minx" was not a plane, but was in fact a British old car from the 1940s. ___________________________________
PERSONAL CONNECTION (and what would a "Philip review of a book no one's ever heard of" be without my usual irrelevant 'personal connection’?): However, in my case, I really DID want to read this book. I grew up just 15 miles from Rhinebeck, and so over the years must have visited at least…gosh, gotta be nearly a dozen times. Being "local," it turns out a number of my high school teachers became involved with the Aerodrome as well, either getting their pilot's license there and then going on to fly in the airshows, or just working on restorations or as ground crew for the weekly shows (held every year from June-Oct). Author E. Gordon Bainbridge - who in the book comes across very much as "Dr. Watson" to Palen's "Holmes" (at least as far as documenting their adventures), and was such an integral part of the Aerodrome that he has his own full-sized display case in one of the hanger museum areas:
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- was "by day" my high school Art and Mechanical Drawing teacher, (the book's editor was also my French teacher, and Dick King - another airshow pilot - was…I’m thinking my shop teacher?). In fact, "Mr. B" had such an impact on my whole "what do I want to be when I grow up?" journey that I leveraged my nascent interest in technical drawing to spend the next 20+ years as a graphic designer (since I wasn't smart enough to actually become an engineer)....more
To call this one "for diehards only" is totally an understatement; this one is just for the truly obsessed. Absolutely unauthoritative and with picturTo call this one "for diehards only" is totally an understatement; this one is just for the truly obsessed. Absolutely unauthoritative and with pictures that look like 8th generation photocopies, this book is unique only in that the 1949 original was one of the very first monographs in any language to treat the collecting of Chinese banknotes as "a thing." (Well, maybe also unique for the blurb on the back, which - with what I assume is a straight face - says "Introduction is in English, text is in Japanese and the paper money is mostly in Chinese. All you have to do is be able to read all three languages." Oh, so that's all!)
Have mentioned elsewhere that my grandfather used to actually be an engraver of Chinese (among other) banknotes - if interested, can read more on that in my review of China's Warlords here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.... But in this case, he actually engraved the vignette (little picture of the pavilion in the center) used in the middle note shown on the book cover:
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But otherwise, absolutely no reason for anyone anywhere to ever read this little book. Unless the Japanese text is, like, really awesome....more
Wally Herbert deserves way more recognition than he apparently has - not only as an explorer in his own right, but*** THIS BOOK GETS ALL THE STARS ***
Wally Herbert deserves way more recognition than he apparently has - not only as an explorer in his own right, but also as an award-winning artist and unparalleled chronicler of the polar realms.
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Textually, this is less autobiography (Herbert has written that elsewhere) than an informal and generally chronological retelling of Sir Wally's various adventures; but because there have been just so many of them at both poles, he uses his personal experiences as linking devices to the stories - and Herbert's paintings - of Scott, Nansen, Shackleton, Amundsen, Peary, et al; as well as fascinating diversions on bears, dogs, shamans and other polar topics of interest and beauty.
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As such, this is much more coffee table art book than memoir, beautifully showcasing over 70 of his paintings, drawings and maps (masterpieces in their own right), often in full-page-plus format that makes this a fascinating and breathtaking reading/viewing experience.
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For those unfamiliar with Herbert, among his numerous other exploits was his leading in 1969 the first - and so far only - surface crossing of the entire Arctic Ocean "the long way," i.e., taking the longest ice route from Alaska to Spitsbergen; along the way becoming the first man "fully recognized" for walking to the North Pole (coincidentally on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's disputed expedition, which is now widely believed to have not in fact reached the pole).
And for those non-artist readers, it's critical to understand that not only was Herbert completely self-taught, but that he worked in two of the most difficult media out there: watercolor, and an old mapping technique called "pencil and scalpel." Watercolor, because unlike oil painting there is no room for error and no opportunity to overpaint, since all white areas of a painting (which when depicting snow and ice are a LOT) are the bare paper showing through, with only the darker shapes and shadows actually painted. And then "pencil and scalpel," as it involves spraying a special white paper with gray printer's ink and then overdrawing with pencil for the darker tones; while for the lighter/whiter areas, the ink is scraped off with a surgeon's scalpel, resulting in such near-photographic results as these (as well as the self portrait on the book's cover):
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On top of which: while Herbert paints in "full color," the polar worlds are by definition so monochromatic that nearly all of his paintings use less than the full palette, consisting mainly of an infinite number of warm and cool grays with just subtle touches of blue and yellow:
Last in the series, which goes out on a high - if still rambling note:
"In Manhattan, I built offices, which is basically building jobs. So in a lot oLast in the series, which goes out on a high - if still rambling note:
"In Manhattan, I built offices, which is basically building jobs. So in a lot of ways, I was building the Economy a long time ago. In a lot of ways, I think I've been president all along. You could say that. And maybe always will be. A lot of my friends tell me that…"
This time around, Trump Ninja is haunted by the ghost of his father, then reassembles his old crew - a homeless Steve Bannon, Mitch McConnell (found tossing a knife and running dogfights in an underground basement), and Sean Hannity ("He's like the Joker. Same big smile. Same crazy eyes. Same trail of flaming wreckage.") - in one last attempt to take down the evil SNOWFLAKE and establish the Super Patriot Autonomous Zone. This culminates in one last brawl with the Supreme Court (and I still smile at the image of RBG and her nunchucks) and somehow ties together all the earlier books - zombies, aliens, Elvis, "Mike" - before ending in one totally deranged rally speech that I could totally see the real Trump making.
"YOU'RE WELCOME."
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(Actual NFTs that Donald Trump sold to his supporters for $99 each.)
Surprisingly interesting and informative young person's bio of the great Chuck Yeager - I now understand way more about what the sound barrier is and Surprisingly interesting and informative young person's bio of the great Chuck Yeager - I now understand way more about what the sound barrier is and why it was so hard to break. Need to rewatch "The Right Stuff" again now - well done, Alan!...more
One of the best of the series: Trump goes to Paris for climate talks (…which I don't think he ever did?), and gets in a fight with Greta Thunberg - "hOne of the best of the series: Trump goes to Paris for climate talks (…which I don't think he ever did?), and gets in a fight with Greta Thunberg - "how is a young kid like that the president of Finland?" - before railing against wind power ("Wind comes from across the ocean, right? So what happens when the Chinese decide to stop selling us their wind? We'll have to watch TV in the dark, that's what!"), and speaking up for melting ice caps ("Deeper oceans means more free water for everyone!"). His ultimate solution? Nuclear windmills powered by clean coal, and hotel ice machines in every (American) home - "everyone tells me I have good plans - probably the best ever!"
Oh, and he also wears his special stealth suit with secret pockets for cheeseburgers and ketchup, so he won't have to eat "those pathetic, tiny French meals cooked by the tire guy [Michelin]."
Sadly, all of these are things I can easily imagine him actually saying or doing :(...more
"Maybe the best ever…," "I’m a very smart guy…,” “a lot of people don’t know this…," "some very bad people who treat me very poorly, but that's fine…""Maybe the best ever…," "I’m a very smart guy…,” “a lot of people don’t know this…," "some very bad people who treat me very poorly, but that's fine…"
It is so easy to write realistic Donald Trump dialogue - it's like one of those refrigerator magnet word games, but with a seriously limited vocabulary.
This one wasn't the best in the series, but still funny as an increasingly deranged POTUS stumbles through either the sewers or subway tunnels of New York City trying to take down the Fake News Media. Should really be just 3 stars, but am adding one on general principle for the whole series, as well as the fact that I listened to this one last week while driving through West Virginia for three days, past endless "TRUMP 2024" signs and (amazingly) not a few "TRUMP/PENCE" signs, that I have to imagine have been there since 2016…
[image] "Greetings from Unger, West Virginia!"...more
We have a family tradition of giving our kids "motivational" middle names; and so my sons are W. Andrews and (much to his chagrin) M. Younghusband. OnWe have a family tradition of giving our kids "motivational" middle names; and so my sons are W. Andrews and (much to his chagrin) M. Younghusband. One of those sons - an aerospace engineer - has now named his new son I. Yeager; and it is for him that we are starting to build an early motivational bookshelf, including the obvious Chuck Yeager Goes Supersonic: An Action-Packed, True Flying Adventure, but also now this delightful book on Irish hero Tom Crean.
The book ends with Crean's retirement and opening of his "South Pole Inn," which we were luck enough to visit pre-COVID - so here are a few pictures that the book leaves out:
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I'm also slightly disappointed that the book didn't include somewhere the famous "Crean and puppies" photo from the Endurance, so here's that as well:
These books are both hilarious and horrifying, in that - despite all attempts to purge this toxic buffoon - the waking nightmare that is Donald Trump These books are both hilarious and horrifying, in that - despite all attempts to purge this toxic buffoon - the waking nightmare that is Donald Trump still remains relevant.
In this episode, Trump Ninja (TN) takes on the Hollywood liberal elite by deciding to make his own action blockbuster. Scenes of him standing astride two tanks with "my hands on my hips and my hair looking very normal and my chest rippling in the breeze" are laugh-out-loud funny - yet isn't that clueless egomania exactly what the real Trump exhibited when he released his ridiculous NFTs a full three years after this book came out?
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TN's malapropisms are as clever as ever - he refers to the Supreme Court as SCROTUM - and his listing here of his various "film credits" gets funnier as they get more obscure, ranging from "it's me, Donald Trump - from Home Alone 2!" down to "it's me…from Across the Sea of Time!" to "…from Days of Our Lives!" and "…the Pizza Hut commercial!"
PLEASE read or listen to these books - they certainly deserve to be better known, and are all available free on Hoopla :)...more
"An Honor Only Few Will Receive" - not the best in the series, but probably the most relevant at this point as it deals with Hunter, Ukraine, the pres"An Honor Only Few Will Receive" - not the best in the series, but probably the most relevant at this point as it deals with Hunter, Ukraine, the presidential gold mini-copter, and Trump eating documents like nobody's business!
These books are GOLD, and should be read by, well, everyone - especially as we look forward to an insane 2024 election cycle. Best of all, they're al are available FOR FREE on Hoopla....more
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