One of the hazards of reading a nonfiction book, especially one about a well-known subject, is that you know what happens in the end. Every time I got to a section about the Confederates, I was just thinking, “Oh, sweetie, this is not going to turn out well for your side.” Be that as it may, there were plenty of things I didn’t know going into this, especially as I can by no means be called a history buff. I knew that Lincoln was President, […]
The Book Kicks the Movie’s Ass (or the winner of the Hillenbrand/Jolie death match is . . . )
I fell in love with Louis Zamperini when I saw a Sunday Morning piece on him back when Laura Hillenbrand’s book first came out. Not surprisingly, I found the best part of Angelina Jolie’s film adaptation was the end scene—showing a clip of the real “Louie” running through the streets of Tokyo with the Olympic Torch—a feat amazing both because of his age (80-something) and because of what he had gone through at the hands of the Japanese. I found the movie frustrating because I […]
Is This A Kissing Book?
This book is the memoir Cary Elwes wrote about filming The Princess Bride. I raced through this book in something like four days of actual reading. This is a feather-light float down memory lane. This book is also not meant for people who have worked in Hollywood, or who know anything at all about the movie-making process. Elwes is very kind to hold everyone’s hand through concepts like “Development Hell” and I found all of this a little boring. The book comes alive, however, when […]
John Snow Knows How to Save the World
London, 1849, you are a doctor and the dreaded disease, Cholera, is literally hitting the city the like the Bubonic plague. Your neighbor was fighting fit on Monday, and Wednesday morning you watched him go out on the corpse cart. The epidemic will go on to take over 50,000 lives before petering out a few months later. But based on its track record, you know it will be back. What do you do? If you’re John Snow, anesthesiologist and part-time medical investigator, you march through […]
The More Things Change …
Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1994, this history of the Roosevelts and the home front from 1939 until FDR’s death in 1945 is a meticulously researched and engaging look at both the inner workings of the White House and the changing landscape of the US economy and society during World War II. Both the Roosevelts and the American public showed themselves to be extraordinarily brilliant and sometimes terribly flawed at a critical moment in world history. Goodwin did extensive research on her […]
Lady, you’re Cheryl Tunt on Archer and Kitty on Arrested Development
Having seen a number of other Cannonballers already reviewing this one, I got curious, and it made for a nice break in between all the fiction I normally read. As a fan of romantic comedies, in many of which she has played a supporting character, not to mention my love of Arrested Development and Archer, I know exactly what I know Judy Greer from. I did have to look up her complete filmography on Wikipedia, though (not IMDB, no matter how many times they get shout-outs in Greer’s […]
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