Could've been a good book, but as presented it's demoralizing, derivative and poorly presented
590357
First off, let me say that the Four Steps he presents here actually have been helpful to me. With that said, I didn't like his presentation of the content at all.

The program itself is helpful but doesn't seem all that unique - it seems like he read Rational Recovery material, reworked it as the "four steps", and superimposed some pictures of PET scans. I like the way he's formalized the program, but he really should be paying royalties to Jack Trimpey for violating his copyrights.

In terms of other compulsive disorders (substance abuse, eating disorders, etc.), he sort of makes this application at the end but this wasn't nearly detailed enough. I would've liked to have seen a lot more on this. (Again, the resemblance to Rational Recovery's striking here, read some of that for their application).

His treatment of my primary remaining form of OCD - hoarding - was extremely poor. It's clear what to do with the acquiring compulsions but the discussion of what to do with the hoarding itself is pretty ambiguous beyond "yeah, apply the Four Steps to it." Yeah, how?

The vast majority of this book is anecdotes of various patients. It's a little light on the actual content. You could probably read the first 2 - 3 pages of each chapter and the summary at the end and get all the important details from this book (and I mean that in all seriousness, it probably would be possible). He might make a point like "it's a bad idea for patients' families to enable their OCD rather than their recovery" and then give 10 pages of examples of patients whose families who did that to hammer home the point. The examples don't necessarily add all that much to the original point and you're kind of left wondering why he chose that story (or why you bothered reading it). Truthfully, I got so frustrated with his constant repetition of points that I skipped about half of the chapter on families and OCD - he just wasn't saying anything beyond "OCD can run in families" and "don't be codependent."

In terms of Schwartz's presentation, even though his program's useful, I found it deeply discouraging. He basically says that it's not possible to recover from OCD - ever. You'll always be struggling. Maybe not as much as you are now, but you'll always have it. Yeah. To hammer that point home, every single person he uses to illustrate how "wonderful" his program is is still active in their OCD. That's right - unless I missed it, he didn't give a single example of a person who was completely free of obsessions and I'm pretty sure all of them were still active in doing compulsions too. Maybe only 10% as many compulsions as they were doing before, which I'll grant is an improvement, but still doing compulsions nonetheless.

When I was in AA, we'd have speakers who hadn't drank or used in 10, 15, or 20 years or more and weren't obsessing on it. None of us would've been impressed by "well, I used to get drunk every night, but now I only get drunk once a week..." Anyone who tried to present an alcohol treatment program where that was the expected result would be rightly ridiculed. I go to the same type of speakers for eating disorder recovery by the way - people who are fully recovered, free of both the behaviors and the obsession. Similar idea there - it's not "well, I used to binge and purge every day, now I just do it once a week..." type results.

As I said, the results he describes are definitely improvements, but personally I don't want to settle for his "drunk once a week" version of recovery. My therapist has been giving me much better results than his "miraculous" program and I certainly plan to keep working on his program. I also plan to look for books that are better than this one.
237850
This could have been a good book.  Mark Levin wants us to pay attention to some big problems.  He is right to ask how we make government more responsive and protective of our rights and needs. He is right to ask how we enhance the best things about America while avoiding damage to the basic fabric of society.

Unfortunately, Levin gets the history wrong, using a distorted account of Americas past as a stalking horse for his own program of pro-aristocratic French and Austrian political philosophies.  In Levins upside-down funhouse mirror, figures like Jefferson and Madison are twisted into ersatz Bastiats and Hayeks.

Among the books many errors of fact and interpretation, three in particular stand out. First, although the book is built around claims that the founders had some shared and transcendent conception of natural law, he seems completely uninformed about the scholarship on natural law or its critics. He papers over, especially, the deep disagreements the founders and their successors had about what the concept of natural law actually meant.  How often did some people of the founding generation use natural law as an excuse for naked power plays like enslavement, and how often did their critics use their own flavor of natural law to debate them back? Given these fundamental arguments, who would Mr. Levin set up as the Pope or Solomon of Natural Law? He doesnt say, and his own clumsy handling of the concept would suggest his own ineligibility for the job.  Second, in criticizing the Progressives interest in experimentation and revision, he seems unaware how similar this notion of government adaptation, amendment,  and social evolution was central to the thinking of Jefferson and the members of the Constitutional Convention, in particular.  Even a few cursory hours reading the letters between Jefferson and Madison or Jefferson and Adams would have prevented Levin from making some of the more serious errors of interpretation he includes in this book. Nor does the give the Progressives any credit for wanting to turn this process over to the public through mechanisms like direct election, referendum, initiative, and recall, and their push for non-profit and cooperative rather than governmental solutions to public problems.  Third, Levin fails to resolve one of the central problems that concerned both the political leaders of the founding era and the progressives  what do we as a society do about economic monopoly? Levins absolutist belief in the supremacy of property over persons was explicitly rejected by thinkers such as Madison. The consequences of monopoly  so evident in the degradations and corruptions and de-democratizations of the Gilded Age, would be the logical outcome of a world governed as Levin wants.  Unlike either the founders or the Progressives, Levin appears to have no problem with extreme concentrations of economic power in the hands of a few, as long as those few are private individuals or families who not answerable in any way to the public interest. Levin is an avowed apostle of the French libertarian aristocrat Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Bastiat, a man whose hatred for representative republics of the American sort was explicit, loud, and uncompromising. Bastiat and Levin have only contempt for the genius of public interest expressed through self government in a constitutional republic of the sort that Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams all celebrated as Americas great achievement.  In Levins ideal, only the propertied few should have the natural law to govern.

In short, Levin gives a cartoonish straw man version of Americanism, contorting the history unrecognizably in the service of a set of values that the founders themselves often rejected.  If you want to know what the founding generations values were, read Pauline Maiers book on Ratification, Jack Rakoves book on the Revolutionaries, Timothy Breens book American Insurgents, or Alan Taylors book *American Revolutions* instead.
2450098
Plots drawn from the news with no character development, full of misspellings and wrong words, and badly in need of an editor and copyeditor. (Characters are introduced ex machina, and then introduced and described 30 pages later, as if the book were written out-of-order or cut up then reassembled.)

Even by the standard of balkanization fiction, the characters in this book act amorally and immorally too often, with the main character driven by revenge, but his two sidekicks driven by, at best, sadism and hatred instead of ideology and a desire to improve the world their children will inherit. The author makes no case for any of the axioms underlying his worldbuilding (such as it is), making the book a poor propagandistic tool which is nearly certain to backfire when not preaching to its own choir. This thing makes 'Hasten the Day' look like a masterpiece of European literature in comparison.

Covington is the king of this type of fiction; I'm not sure what the tankie equivalent is (maybe the ouevre of the Frankfurt School writers?): he builds a world, tells a story, develops characters, drives a plot, writes a manual of revolution, and a treatise on political science and human differences all at once. Dropping to Moore from Covington is like dropping to any recent Hugo winner from Heinlein or Stephenson.

This book isn't even sufficiently 'fictionized' and reads like a halfway dramatized recounting of news clippings from 2014-2016 from a rather fringe alt-right perspective, with more dangling threads than a tapestry from the battle of Tours and more red herrings and random discurses (one of which, on the fictional 'Herrenvolk', ends up being the highlight of the work) than a sardine cannery.

Half a star added for some interesting ideas and facts included (in a ham-fisted way) in a few of the monologues throughout the slim work, especially those on ethnic cohesion. They're not the best ideas or the best defenses of mediocre ideas, and, when taken as a whole, are inconsistent and muddled, so they're not going to be reaching anyone who doesn't already know them (or close cousins) already.

The ending is better than the rest of the book and not nearly as clichd or hackneyed as one would guess: a Chekov's gun one has nearly forgotten about finally fires.

I finish by reflecting on the state of education, today: a day when people get their facts from fiction and then bitch about fake news.

I only write reviews this long about books that are really good, really bad, or really made me think. This one didn't cause me to do much thinking, but, perhaps surprisingly, was not as painful to read as my review might intimate - as if it were 144 pages of longueurs alone. It's not that bad (like 'The Slow Regard of Silent Things'), but it's a waste of time, even by the standards of radical political fiction, especially in a world where 'Freedom's Sons' has been written.
3018573
I was very much looking forward to recieving this title from Amazon.com after reading the first few pages online. And, admittedly, I did like the first few chapters; however, the tone and style of presentation changed very quickly, and became almost smug and self-aggrandizing. The authors seemed far too pleased with themselves, and, by approximately the halfway point I felt as if I were reading some kind of bizzare Conservationist Manifesto. I like to think - as a self-appointed conservationist and vegan - that I try to mind Mother Nature and all living creatures, but after I finished reading this repetitive, pedantic bore, I lost the will to care. Maybe I am being too harsh, but this book seemed to peak in the first chapter; then, it became exasperatingly preachy and redundant. Others liked the book, and that's fine; But I was disappointed.
4587513
The theory of this book is great - take a big budget movie, written off as a flop by its own company, and dissect why the company producing it was just as much to blame. However, problems abound with this book;

1. The author comes across as making Burroughs into some sort of literary God, and everything else was just a copy. Maybe Lucas drew heavily on him for Star Wars, but not to the plagiaristic extent posited here.

2. The author, even though he mentions in the beginning his fandom, obviously viewed the project through rose colored glasses. In addition, way too much time is spent on his own involvement in trying to help, turning this from a critical look at Hollywood production into something more fanciful where he's the underdog hero

3. Way too many typos, inconsistent sentence structure, etc
219084
I suspect most people bought this book just because it is about Dischord and the DC scene, and we like the idea of a cool looking book format about the scene.  But this book is, overall, a letdown.

Like the author himself, this book is a bit of a bore that seems to glorify certain things without driving a sense of vitality at all.  The details can be cool but often times are tedious and painful to read.  Let's face it-- no one from outside the scene would find this book tolerable at all.

I am not going to debate what bands were/weren't included.  I just found the book to be long and, ultimately, slightly a downer.  Disappointing.  Steal it from a friend then give it back-- you'll see.
2373846
Something about a book really has to stand out, for good or ill, to make me actually write a review about it. The catalyst, for this novel, is the fact that the concept is great - a really interesting story - but the execution is miserable. I started to put the book down several times, out of irritation, but ending up actually finishing it just for the sake of the story.

The problem is that it really is poorly written:

-- Awful, jarring switches between character and perspective - errors of style and flow that are taught in freshman composition.
-- A hero who is really a jerk, but every horrible decision and character flaw is forgiven because the poor, angsty man has just suffered SO MUCH...sob. He treats everyone around him like crap - but feels completely justified in his own distrust and anger at others.
-- The human villains are cartoonishly evil - making unsubtle threats that make no sense for someone with their supposed power and influence and position to make. And the attempts to humanize them are laughable, as well.

Again, the story isn't bad! I'd love to know how the it ends...just not enough to sit through another book (or, rather, three more books) of the author's atrocious writing!
2663360
I've never written a review here before, but I was moved by just how bad this book was to write one now.

While 'Discover Your Inner Economist' does contain some interesting material, it doesn't come close to delivering on its promises.

This book has a number of serious flaws--not in the writing style, which was good.  The biggest is that it is NOT about your Inner Economist.  It just isn't.  Several times, I thought the author was finally heading in that direction and then he didn't.  Mostly the book seems to be an in cohesive collection of his opinions on diverse topics, like eating out and why you shouldn't bribe your kids to do household chores.

Also, he needs an editor, badly. The chapters wander off topic.  One discussion ends and another begins with little transition or apparent reason.  If you pulled almost any chapter out of this book, gave it to a friend to read and asked what the overall book might be about, there would be a different set of answers for each chapter.  And, none of those would involve an Inner Economist.

There are two specific things that really bother me about the book.  In one chapter he talks about signaling and how a great deal of our time and effort is spent signaling our status to others. Later in the book, I really started to wonder if he wrote the book to signal to me (the reader): He writes that he has been to over 100 countries; he eats in the most expensive/fanciest restaurants, etc.

The second is this. The author included a section on books and authors, carefully explaining why not all books are written for the benefit of the reader.  He cited cookbooks written by famous chefs, as an example. After reading the book, I concluded that this is exactly the same situation.
1508179
There are several good ideas in this book that warrant a revisit or a redescription but unfortunately, pearls of thought are often diffused by the litter of anger, snide comments about this and that, and the author's habitual prose of discontinuing the argument with side remarks and personal rambling. While I have no problem with Taleb's prose--and it was cute just before the fifth bracket containing these rambling; and by the way, please use the double dash--they become especially burdensome when you have to read through multiple pages like that in a 329 pages book excluding the bibliography wondering where you were the last you read sensibly. These continuous streams of side remarks and rambling certainly make the reader feels like an unwilling audience chained in following Taleb's own wanderlust through nothingland. But Taleb did warn the reader somewhere in the beginning that this was his own private novel--a device for synthesizing his thoughts. I guess this caveat should have been part of the title--think "The Black Swan: One Man Search for Understanding"--or this tome sent to the fiction section.

If I have only but one content criticism reserved for this book--and it is not Taleb's wayward reading of Popper's Poverty of Historicism, which he concisely but mistakenly summarized as Popper's thesis that prediction for the social world is impossible because we are unable to predict technological innovation (gosh!)--then it is his major claim on the fallaciously severe, knowledge-impeding concept known as the narrative fallacy.

Unless I am mistaken, Taleb seemed to have made one self-contradicting claim here. For only through conjecturing--the act of constructing a series of explanations of some phenomenon that may resemble a narrative--can less robust conjectures be refuted and new knowledge constructed. But if like Taleb, one argues that narratives are fallacious for aiding knowledge growth, then there remains no other way for us to reconstruct some explanation of the past, and by doing so, nothing to be refuted and therefore no knowledge gained.

Unless of course, Taleb understood this point outright and mangled the book in a way such that no major argument, even less a narrative, could be gleaned from it after many frustrating but precious hours of a reader's time.

I give one star for the attempt at tackling an interesting topic that in the hands of a more committed, and yes, more grave thinker with better command for the jewels of thought littered across human history, would have been a mind-warping work; and I also give one star for the excellent and extensive bibliography that has been underserved as a pretty vase for this book.

For such an interesting topic with major repercussions for the existence of human beings in the coming ages of grave uncertainties, who would want to take such an entertaining but unthoughtful approach? For this Taleb should learn something about representation from the book jacket artist, whose designs I give one star as well in both editions of this book.
2179796
I was very excited to read this book, in part because it was based on actual people and events, and also because I'm a fan of Michael Connelly, whose glowing endorsement appears on the book cover.

All the elements for a good book are here - interesting characters and cases, etc. - but unfortunately, this is one of the most poorly-written books I've ever read. The dialogue is agonizingly stilted and cliched. The narrative is borderline incoherent, jumping all over and constantly repeating itself. The writing is amateurish, but could have been tolerable if someone had done a decent job of editing the manuscript.

Not since The Celestine Prophecy have I been so disappointed and amazed at how well-received a terrible book can be.

And to Michael Connelly and the others who helped duped me into dropping $20 on this, I hope you were biased by a personal friendship with the author; if it was because you got paid or (even worse) really think this is as good as you pitched it, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
3165091
This could have been a truly excellent book, given its setting (the early days of the Iranian Revolution) and its author (an intelligent and independent Iranian woman); instead, it is meandering, repetitive, coy, and self-indulgent - one hopes the author isn't quite so woolly-minded when delivering lectures to her literature classes at Johns Hopkins.
The observations she makes about the sympathy the character Lolita engenders in a reader are so commonplace as to be rather embarrassing.  Many of Nafisi's own attempts at description of the cast of characters in her own life depend on hackneyed physiognomy and well-worn cliche'.  If I had to hear about one more cup of coffee or pastry, I'd have committed a cliche' of my own.
When one reads her in the context of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, Flaubert, and the authors of the other books she and her clandestine group discuss, her prose suffers markedly by comparison.
To her credit, Nafisi has gone through a horrifying moment in world history & displayed considerable courage, but the most courageous thing she might have done after having finished writing this book would have been to get a good editor to reorganize it, trim the fat, thus giving it some philosophical heft.
Reading great works of literature may be a necessary, but is not a sufficient condition for writing about them.  Living through history is likewise not a sufficient condition for writing compelling autobiography.
2682409
I'm all about time travel and this book took a shot at demonstrating some of the lesser mentioned aspects of it, and for that it earns the third star. Second star is earned because if this were a poorly done SciFi movie that got riffed on by Mst3k, it would probably be a repeat viewing of mine. Believe it or not, that is a positive comment. Some movies featured on Mst3k are unsaveable even with talented comedians poking at it.

So why overall the poor rating? Well, if you read the cover of this book, you have an understanding that a character perfects a time-travel theory that can send something back in time, but only a split-second. The characters of this book don't get caught up to what you know until one third of the way into the book. The "unknown consequences" mentioned on the cover gets revealed two-thirds of the way, a little too soon, which results in a 4th act syndrome.

The critics quotes would lead you to believe the author is on-par with Michael Crighton, of Jurassic Park fame. While Crighton does often seem to pause his stories to explain interesting facts and theories that play into the plot, this is where the similarities end.

Have you ever seen plot holes in a story and thought "Man, why didn't they fix or address that? It's illogical!" Well Split Second works tirelessly to explain every character's logic, often by having the characters explain their logic to other characters and then have those characters praise and admire the other character's logical choices, which basically amounts to the author patting himself on the back so much that it borders flagellation. And the ending flips this somewhat and has a character yell at someone for being stupid and not seeing the logic, which is kind of yelling at us for not knowing something we weren't told.

In conclusion, this book works so hard to justify every character's choices as logical that each character comes off seeming the same, like flavored water. A little more emotion and motivation sprinkled in and this could have been much better.

But if the author does end up reading this, here's to him:

Hey, good on you for writing, and keep it up! We all have to start somewhere.
But here's some things to try next time:
 Many people often make choices based on emotions alone, so some of your characters should too.

 People in mourning or stressful situations don't often make quips, and if they do it's not usually well received.

 "People don't growl their words as often as you may think" - he growled

 Plots move better with causation rather than just sequentially. Much of this story could be described as "and then, this happens" instead of "because of that, this happens". Which results in there being a 4th act to reset the energy and direction for your characters at the end.

It's only 3 bucks, so give it a shot!
1901962
I wish I could say I really liked this book, but I can't.  My biggest issue is that the book really is two separate books in-artfully crammed into one.

Book 1 is a story about surviving a breakdown of society.  Book 2 is about survival and how to plan and tactics used for survival.  The problem is that the survival manual keeps intruding on the story at annoyingly regular intervals, and at length.  It just kills the flow of the story.

Another issue I had was the cause of the "The Crunch."  An economic meltdown resulting in complete shutdown of society?  I don't buy it.  We've seen too many economic meltdowns in history.  While the currency may become little better than toilet paper, people still don't descend into savagery and flee the cities like rats off a sinking ship.

For a much more plausible scenario leading up to a Crunch, read "One Second After" and the aftermath of an EMP pulse.

If you put aside the poor initial premise, and gloss over the survival manual parts of the book, the story is actually a pretty good one.
1769445
I bought this book, being interested in the topic, and enjoying previous books on similar topics--such as The Benedict Option and Strangers in a Strange Land.  Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in the book.  While the topic is very timely and the chapter titles are compelling, the presentation is poor.  Rather than being a well argued and well researched book that gives concrete guidelines for solutions, this is basically a "stream of consciousness" polemic on the downfall of the culture.  While Anthony Esolen is obviously bright (and a college professor), this diatribe leaves one feeling down about society (especially as a religious believer), but with few concrete ideas on how to live productively amidst the "ashes."  Any ideas that are given are so polyanna and out of touch (let's all go back in time type reflections), that they obviously weren't given deep thought or provide as realistic solutions in our modern world.  Also, even though I share the writers religious convictions, his use of language like "sodomites"  and "whores" was quite jarring and unnecessary.  In my opinion, if you are going to spend your money and time on a book---get The Benedict Option, Resurrecting a Christian Society or Strangers in a Strange Land.  Much better books, more well argued and all leave you with hope.
1955405
"Equality (Two Democracies: Revolution Book 3)," authored by Mr. Alasdair Shaw, has an interesting storyline, that has some merit, some points of interest, draws a reader in. Unfortunately, the author fails repeatedly to execute. Instead, he preens, condescends, and is apparently more concerned with showing how smart, how clever he is, rather than delivering a worthwhile product.

The pomposity and pretentious nature of the writing, ruins what otherwise would have been an above average, solid book. The MC, "Johnson," commander, "Legate" of the free forces, is turned into manic depressive, who is barely capable of coming out of her cabin. The "genius" tech giant, "Harry," is a low testosterone, emotionally stunted, insecure, self obsessed, nervous Nellie. Perhaps the most engaging character throughout the series, the sentient AI "Indie," is drawn by the author, as a foppish reject from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Mr. Shaw, in order to show how much he knows, has dipped not only into Latin to name different ranks, but has added Homeric Greek, and even some Scandinavian mythology terms. Whole sections of the narrative are spent on the training range, going through simulations by characters. This is apparently a "default setting," for the author, due to his personal history on training ranges, as evidenced by his own "bio." Another parallel plot line appears awkwardly, forcibly interjected into the story narrative, crudely stapled to the main story, in order to rudely create a conclusion to the book.

This reviewer enjoyed the preceding books of the series and looked forward to the story's continuation. "Equality," proved to be a bitter disappointment, difficult to read fully, and does not bode well for any future follow-on.

"Equality (Two Democracies: Revolution Book 3)," is not recommended (prior books in the series are with caveats). The book was fully read via Kindle Unlimited.
3254794
I bought this book based on the sample.  It has a great start, well written, with the hero having to take command in the midst of battle.  Unfortunately, the book goes downhill rather quickly.  Although this self-published author has a good grasp of the subject and an eye for detail, he does not handle dialogue and character development well, with the result that every single character comes across as wooden.  In addition, these characters are (with the single exception of a never seen cowardly first lieutenant in the beginning) too good to be true and so are just not believable. But what sinks the story (pardon the pun) is the constant repetition--first the reader is told over and over and over about the shortage of crew members, then repeatedly told that the captain is going to ask for volunteers instead of pressing men into service, and after the men are gotten there is unending mention that the men are inexperienced.  The author also needs to learn about "show, don't tell."

But despite the book's faults, there is obviously hope for this author--the beginning of the book illustrates that he has talent that just has to be refined.
3423998
The immensely important concept presented here, that man should mimic nature by reusing and recycling all the by-products of agriculture, industry, and human consumption, is sound. Unfortunately the book is poorly written and weakly organized. Text is repetitive, rambling, full of minor factual errors. With massive editing and pruning, this would be a good book.