Read this book...

I bought this for my wife a few months back. We had seen Diane Sawyer's 20/20 interview, and I was intrigued. Being in grad school, I simply did not have time to read it, but my wife loved it. She quotes from it frequently.

With the end of the semester, I found time to read it. It took about 5 hours to read all 206 pages.

Every human being should read this book. Pausch, dying of pancreatic cancer (he died a little while back), offered a "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, where he had taught. The insights are powerful, practical, and penetrating.

If you are literate, read it. If you are illiterate, go to Youtube and watch the video. But, as always, the book is better than the movie.

Some of the book may seem trite, but the advice is good. We need to hear these things every once in a while. My wife has read some religious motivational books--and I have read a couple--and this has no where near the sap that oozes from them.

Here is the Youtube video:

A Valuable Book

The most valuable book that I read this past semester had nothing to do with the subject I am studying, which is history. It is a slender volume entitled The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White (of Charlotte's Web fame). This is a book that should be mandatory reading for anyone taking any class that has anything to do with writing. Pastors, teachers, business people, and anyone else would do well to peruse the hundred or so pages of this book to ensure that their writing is crisp and clear. If you are concerned about a bunch of dry rules of English, let me assure you that there is plenty of humor in this book. At times, I found myself chuckling or laughing.

Faith and Family in the Storm

I have been immersed in reading about the Holocaust over the last week (see previous posts). I finished Bartov's Mirrors of Destruction today. I am also looking into anti-Semitism for my research project for my class. With some time, due to spring break, I picked up a book that has been on my shelf for a decade or so. Blood and Honor is the autobiography of Reinhold Kerstan.

Kerstan was born in 1931 in East Prussia--which is now part of Poland, but was German at the time. He was less than two when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor.

His father was a Baptist minister, and the family wound up at a church in the middle of Hitler's Berlin. Brought up in the Christian faith, he was saw the biblical heroes (Abraham, Moses, David, the Apostles, etc.) as his heroes. They were all Jews, as were some of his friends and the family doctor. He could not reconcile that with the virulent anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, especially the horrifying event of Kristallnacht.

The father is drafted into military service and sent to the front. His older brother Seigfried is sent away to school. Young "Reini" is sent to Czechoslovakia to a Hitler Youth school.

His world of faith in Christ collides with his faith in the Fatherland. Turmoil ensues internally and with his fellow students who wind up "crucifying" him. His faith sustains him through his months at school and in the bewildering aftermath of the war. He is eventually reunited with his family.

It gives me pause to think how would my faith hold up under similar circumstances. Not just the horrors of the war, but in the poverty stricken aftermath.

LibraryThing.com

I ran across this cool website today. It is LibraryThing.com. Think MySpace for book worms. It allows the user to list books that are in one's library. You can list 200 for free, but have to pay to list more. You can interact with others who have similar reading interests. They have a powerful search engine when listing books. Check it out.

A Book for the Baseball Fan

I just finished Fay Vincent's book The Only Game in Town. It is a charming book about a seemingly simpler time. It covers the periods of the 1930s and 1940s in baseball. Baseball was the American sport. In the middle of this period there was the massive upheaval brought on by World War II.

Vincent interviewed dozens of baseball players from that era, all of whom are getting "long in the tooth." He wanted to preserve their memories before they all passed away. This is certainly a worthy goal.

Ten players made the cut for the book. Some that are Hall of Famers, and others that I had not heard of. They are: Elden Auker, Bob Feller, Tommy Henrich, "Buck" O'Neil, Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky, Warren Spahn, Larry Doby, Ralph Kiner and Monte Irvin. Auker is the only one I never heard of. Feller and Spahn are two of the greatest pitchers of all time, not just that era. Larry Doby was the first African-American in the American League. Vincent described him as the Buzz Aldrin of the color barrier. Jackie Robinson gets all the notoriety (and deservedly so) for breaking the color barrier, much like Neil Armstrong got the credit for being the first man on the moon.

One thing that is often glossed over in the history of baseball is the racism that reined in baseball in the 30s and 40s. Elden Auker played for the Detroit Tigers when Hank Greenberg was with them. Greenberg was one of the few Jewish baseball players of that time, and certainly the most famous. Greenberg dealt with harsh antisemitism. Once he burst into the White Sox locker room and threatened the "SOB" that hurled a racial slur at him.

The chapters from Buck O'Neil (why isn't he in the Hall of Fame?), Larry Doby and Monte Irvin deal with baseball from the African-American perspective. The ugly racism that existed that time can be seen. Even after baseball integrated, thanks in large part to Branch Rickey, the players endured fierce racism from other players and fans.

Buck O'Neil never got the chance to play with in Major League Baseball. O'Neil said, "Waste no tears for me. I didn't come along too early--I was right on time." Gracious words from a man who was banned simply because of his darker pigment.

Another thing that impressed me is the fact that most of these players lost up to three years in their baseball careers serving their country in World War II. In much the same fashion as Pat Tillman, they suspended their careers playing a game to participate in something larger than themselves.

If you are a baseball fan, you will enjoy this book. If you are interested in American history during this period, you will enjoy this book. I am a baseball fan and a student of American history.

There is one thing that I do not like about this book. It is part of an oral history project. Vincent taped interviews with the players. The book seems to be a verbatim account of what was said. This can be a bit annoying at times. The grammar is sometimes awful. The players change thoughts midstream. It would have been nice to have it "cleaned" up a little.