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| Michael J. Fox |
It's been a while since I've posted, and in that time I've read more books by authors whose names start with "F." One that was surprisingly well written and interesting was the autobiography of Michael J. Fox,
Lucky Man, covering his early years up until his diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. He has a new volume out that covers his life from that point up to the present,
The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. I've been a fan of Fox's for many years (since the TV series
Family Ties), but I really came to appreciate him as a person after reading his honest accounting of his life, both before and after Parkinson's. He talks frankly about his struggle to accept his fate and his less-than-sensible methods of coping with it (such as abusing cocaine), as well as crediting the people in his life who helped him to get through it and get to the place where he is now. I recommend it highly.
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| Thomas Friedman |
Another "F" book I read was the very interesting (and somewhat scary) explanation of globalization by the distinguished columnist, Thomas Friedman, entitled
The Lexus and the Olive Tree. It certainly was informative and reached its goal of helping me to understand globalism and how we cannot stop it, even if we wanted to. He talks about what is good and what is bad about the phenomenon, and offers some remedies (to anyone who is in control of these things) for correcting the bad (such as the effects of job loss due to companies going global). The book was first written in 1999 and then revised in 2000, so a lot has happened since then that he warned of or predicted in the book. That was the scary part. He even predicted that Osama Bin Laden (whom he called a super-powerful individual) would cause trouble because he had enough money and power to do whatever he wanted. He didn't need the power of a country to attack another country. Now we find that there are many such super-powerful individuals causing trouble around the world. It's another kind of globalization--the globalization of terror.
Another disaster Friedman predicted was that the bad effects of globalization would eventually start causing trouble if they were not addressed. Too bad we didn't listen to that warning--the disaster that is Trump is the result of that failure, unfortunately.
So I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand globalization. I think once you read it, whether you are for or against the phenomenon, you'll see that it can't be stopped, but must be managed in order for us and the world to survive and continue to progress.
I also read the
Best American Short Stories, 1990 collection, edited by Richard Ford, but no longer have the book and can't remember the stories, unfortunately. I think I liked them, though. But Barnes and Noble has a brief description of each in their web page for the volume (click on above link).
There are three more books written by "F" authors that I haven't as yet read but plan to in the future:
A Great and Noble Scheme, by John Mack Faragher;
Dido's Daughters, by Margaret Ferguson; and
Writing Creative Nonfiction, by Carolyn Forche.
Meanwhile, I've decided to switch to the "M" books in my collection. There are quite a number of them, so I'll be on this letter for a while. First up: William Least Heat Moon's
PrairyErth, which I've just finished and will be reviewing in the next post.
See you there!
