Reviews and Comments

I actually didn't know who Kay Tur was but the title seemed interesting. I was not diapointed. Interesting background to Trump's campaign from a journalist's point of view and how she became a part of it and Trump's hate/love relationship with her.

Unabomber then you will read this one. The author's motivation is to write a book from the police point of view to put the story straight after the popular semi fictional recent Netflix account of the story.

I was hoping to hear about some juicy inside informantion but I don't think there was anything new that I haven't read in other accounts.

Also Ted Kazinsky's participation in government psychological studies while at University wasn't mentioned.

The author enthusiastically read the audiobook but it wasn't enough to make it special.

A good account but, given the police couldn't solve the case, the story wasn't so compelling. It was for this reason Netflix jazzed it up.

While on the run John McAffee spoke to Mark Eglington over Skype with the intention of writing his biography. This is the resulting book. Possibly, we get to know more in this version as unfortunately it was finished and published after his death and presumably John McAffee would have had the chance to vet it had he lived. It seems though that this was the story than he wanted to tell and it seems legitimate.

The story is the story of a man of great but unknown wealth, who's name was a recognised brand and how he outwitted the taxman and various governments and led a free life as long as he could. So what do you do if you have enormous wealth? Live on a guarded beach-side compound in a country which has an incredibly low cost of living with a harem that you selected from the local girlie bar.

It's an amazing story, and who knows how much of it is true, but if you have already heard of John McAffee most of it it is already the stuff of legend. Worth a read but expect to more questions than answers when you finish it.

I mistakenly thought that I had read this book but in fact I discovered that it wasn't this one.

This is great book. Probably the definitive history of the Sex Pistols written in as a day by day account of the events with lots of details provided by the original participants. The story of group of friends and acquaintances centred around a clothes shop in London who became within a few years the most famous people in the Western World. As kid in the 1970s it wasn't apparent that they all new each other. We knew them as the The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, Boy George, Adam & The Ants but they were all connected. Groups in the North of England copied and were inspired by them. It's an amazing story and a well written book. I will definitely listen to this again.

A good balanced history and background to the assassinations of the Kennedys. The book is sympathetic to them and draws only the conclusions that the evidence warrants.

I would definitely recommend this a as book to understand Kennedy's presidency and why he was such a polarising figure. I could listen to it again. Recommended.

Brothers encompasses the Kennedy brothers and their trusted aids.

Well I have to credit the algorithm again for suggesting this to me. I listened to the audiobook and it was a well worth a listen though, as always, I wonder how much is true and how much is the author's slant on things.

I wonder why I never thought of reading about Dulles before because his name pops up all over the place and if the CIA was into some funny business then he was definitely aware of it, if not the instigator of it.

So as such, the story Allen Dulles is the meta conspiracy theory of the 20th century.

A few of the things stuck out to me. All conspiracies seem to have a Bay of Pigs connection. Howard E. Hunt pops up everywhere and could be the common thread. The chaos at the end of WW2 and the hurried rehabilitation and adoption of former Nazi's into the fight against communism. Whoever sponsored Bobby Kennedy's assassination probably also sponsored JFK's assassination as Bobby did not believe the official story and was going to investigate it if he became president. Both assassins were really weird characters. Such unlikely backgrounds.

Lot's of interesting stuff. I'll probably listen again sometime.

What an incredible story.

This book should be read by anyone thinking of running a club. In fact anyone getting into a business with their friends and people who have come into money and are looking for a good investment that involves jobs for their friends.

Joy Division/New Order decided to make a nightclub in Manchester like the ones they had experienced in New York. It became the most well known and trendy music venue in the area but became a money pit into which all their record revenues went down the drain.

The ineptitude of the management and lack of basic business acumen is legendary.

Peter Hook, as well as being a notable musician is a great writer and is a great reader of his own work. The book is the answer to the question, "So what went on with the Hacienda?" the resulting audio book is a two hour answer.

This is a 25 and a half hour audiobook on the Watergate Scandal.

I watched "All the President's Men" a few days before coming to Japan and then read the book soon after that and also Colson's book shortly afterwards.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Netflix "The Martha Mitchell Effect" which had some new sides to the story and somehow I came to this book. A few pages in I decided to rewatch "All the President's Men" as a refresher.

This book is a retrospective which takes into account of all the information that has been made public since the events including biographies, autobiographies, freedom of information requests etc and attempts to make a unified timeline.

"All the President's Men" ends abruptly when the story had become so big that it is was no longer only the obsession of two journalists. This books adds all the currently known details of the background to the story.

Creating a unified timeline is impossible as some sources misremember some details and dates so the author carefully explains the anomalies.

One of the interesting parts is how the legal process against the participants slowly chipped away at the less involved people, exposing their crimes and then leveraging them against those above who committed bigger crimes. Nobody wants to go to jail to protect someone else or increase their sentence by perjuring themselves. The final conclusion could have put the President Nixon in jail had his newly appointed Vice President, who had replaced him as President, not pardoned him.

The Watergate scandal is a bit like Lord of the Rings. There are so many names and subplots that you can't understand everything the first time through so each time you go over the story it makes more sense and you understand it more deeply.

Recommended. Probably the definitive Watergate book.

This is the definitive groupie autobiography. If you're interested in the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or anything else about the 1960s this is a great book. The audiobook is read by the author and I think this is the best way to experience this free flowing often random thoughts and musings on life, love and celebrities in the 60s by the author. There are lots of crazy stories as you would expect and once I got into it I enjoyed that personality of the author.

Straight off, I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. I had been waiting to read it for some time as I had seen that it was about to be published. The publication date seemed to have gotten a little bit delayed so I checked regularly to see if it was available. The audiobook wasn't out when In started so I read it over several months. I did read a lot of the book earlier in the year but I dropped off and took a break until I made a final push this week to finish it.

I think everyone knows a little about Malcolm McLaren and as his biographer notes he is always described initially as the manager of the Sex Pistols but in terms of his career, and life, that period was only a short amount of time and he did many things after that.

Of course the section on the rise of the Sex Pistols was very interesting and gave a good ground to what went on but what people who were outside of his network probably didn't know or realise was how much his shop and clothing business was related to the Sex Pistols and to the punk movement in general. His relationship with Vivian Westwood, they're parting and their parallel careers was new to me. It almost seems that once he had gotten out of at college his whole life and ambition were a series of art projects. Maybe that is what it is to be an artist. He also seem to have a great talent for persuading people to give him money to do something that he wanted to do.

There are so many episodes in this book that I will have to come back to later and I made extensive notes highlighting many paragraphs, names and most of all words used in this book. It's extremely eruditely written. I learned many new words from reading it which, I think, is a rarity for me.

I feel that I know Malcolm McLaren a little better from reading the book and as a result of all the new information I would quite often stop reading and watch YouTube to catch up with his interviews, appearances and the music that he had made and then go back to reading.

I would say that at the moment this rates as one of my favourite books. Especially as it covers the punk era and what's it led up to it that was such a whirlwind of filth and fury during my formative years. I may even listen to the audiobook when it is available.