I found this documentary, like others I've seen on the subject of bees, to be very affirmative, informative and cautionary. Yes, the honeybee is definitely a very helpful friend in making our lives here on earth more tolerable. Besides being a fascinating presentation on all the man-made dangers facing the honeybee, this film leaves us with a distinct point of view and warning: it is our heavy reliance on factory farming and monoculture (one crop intensive agriculture) that poses the greatest threat to this collectively important domestic insect and the ultimate survival of our food chain. Here are some of the important facts discussed in this, at times light-hearted, testimonial to what bees do for us as cross-pollinators of crops, producers of honey and wax, and a symbol of all that is fragile in the natural realm:
1. Swarming is a natural way in which hives and colonies are extended;
2. Millions of bees die annually from colony collapse;
3. The sweetness in honey can last for centuries;
4. The honey bee is responsible for maintaining up to 40% of the food chain;
5. Over 30 million bees are imported to the southeastern US every year to keep the orchards blossoming;
6. Australia is one of the world's largest exporters of bees;
7. Pesticides are a major toxic threat to the survival of the bee habitat.
8. Antibiotics used to treat bee populations can find their way into humans through the consumption of honey;
9. It takes about 80-100 bee stings to kill a person;
10. Bees are one of a few species of insects where its males (drones) are programmed to devote themselves to propagating the line of the virgin Queen in the hive or nest.

Talk about a man with a self-centered vision and the determination to make it happen! Lyndon Baines Johnson is one of those political characters whose ambition for political power in post-war America knew no limits. Pulling himself up, as he claimed, by the bootstraps from the humblest of beginnings to become America's thirty-fifth president is a story worth reading, especially when the author is the sharp-minded, analytical biographer, Robert Caro. His research allows him to address the critical question of how Johnson, a relatively obscure Texas congressman from Hill country, back in the forties, was able to make it all the way to the White House, with such enormous odds stacked against him. In this volume, Caro looks at the evolving world of this consummate politician as he took on a run for the presidency, the Kennedys, his southern base, historical change, and his own mortality and sense of destiny and came out a winner. What distills from this in-depth examination is a man who became skilled at manipulating, bullying, holding grudges, and adapting to circumstances beyond his immediate control. When compared with his arch-nemeses, the Kennedy brothers, in their pursuit of power, LBJ looks no better or worse. All three of these men were good apprentices in the trade of Machiavellian politics that encouraged its adherents to always use disarming tactics and strategies that would gain them short- and long-term advantage. Johnson, like Kennedy, knew how to charm and eat crow as the need arose. In effect, they needed each other to cement their place in history. As vice-president, Johnson reluctantly chose to become JFK's doormat in order to keep alive the notion that he could very well succeed him and create his own cherished legacy. Like in the other two earlier volumes, this one is loaded with anecdotal evidence that goes behind the scenes at conventions, private meetings, and cabinet sessions to get at the truth.

"Now at last the slowly gathered, long pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five million of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept." - Winston Churchill, "Their Finest Hour"

If you want to really read an authoritative study on how the daily grind of war affected the political leadership of a nation, Churchill's "The Second World War" series is as good a place as any to start, especially with the second volume, "Their Finest Hour". Here, Churchill, as Britain's new appointed Prime Minister, took over the reins of leadership at the outset of a very difficult time in the country's history when war threatened to destroy its very existence. His assessment of how the nation contended with the myriad of Herculean tasks, necessary to keep Hitler and the Nazis hordes at bay, makes for a fascinating read because they are seen mainly through his eyes and those of his colleagues in government. This war memoir contains a trove of letters, directives, memos, maps, charts, and recollections that tell a complex story of a man dedicated to saving a nation by exercising enormous courage, diligence, and resolve against incredible odds. It is evident from how he rallied the British people to fight back that Churchill was definitely the man for the hour. If Churchill's copious correspondence is anything to go by, he was relentless in his plans to design, devise and direct a national effort to thwart the enemy, even if the odds looked hopeless. Even though he let his generals conduct the war effort, he was always there to offer advice, make inquiries, and impose the will of the War Cabinet if things weren't going well. One feature alone commends this book: Churchill's command of the situation at hand with respect to his grasp of the problem and his ability to involve others in coming up with solutions.

The author makes a very convincing argument that it was the inept leadership of the United Nations and the reluctance of the US to put soldiers in the field that directly led to the Srebrenica massacre in the summer of 1995. As one of the worst cases of modern genocide, this slaughter of over 8000 Muslims has many faces. It is Rohde's thesis that this tragedy happened because of a number of interconnected decisions made inside and outside Bosnia that reflected a consciously callous betrayal of the right of an ethnic group to defend itself against hostile action. This study handles this whole sorry event as to its origin, its principals, and its terrible outcome. While the UN Security Council failed, because of some internal dissent, to secure the critical air strikes to protect the Muslim enclave from the Bosnian Serbs and their Serbian brethren, most of the blame lies with the cold-blooded efforts of two leaders to commit genocide: Karadzic, President of the Bosnian-Serb republic and Mladic, his general. Though there is a history of intense hatred between Slavic and Muslim forces in this region, the summer of 1995 definitely gave the Bosnian-Serbs the opening they were looking for to overrun a vastly outnumbered, underarmed and poorly defended Muslim city. A lot of this narrative involves the valiant efforts of a small brigade of Dutch marines who were saddled with the impossible task of keeping the enemy out of this so-called safe zone. Rohde does a capable job, with the use of reliable civilian witnesses, in showing how the massacre likely took place under cover during a UN withdrawal. For Rohde, this whole fiasco could have been avoided if the UN had ordered NATO aerial attacks on Bosnian-Serbian positions around Srebrenica. What he doesn't do is provide some possible reasons as to why the West, intentionally or otherwise, dropped the ball when it came to preventing a humanitarian disaster.

As one who has watched all five seasons of this monstrously raucous made-for-TV series and read three of the novels that follow the dark and troubled existence of a modern cape-crusading vigilante, I know which one I prefer. The hour-long movie version is long enough to capture the critical essence of the plot and the suspense that goes with it. Everything happens swiftly and made to order. While the book is loaded with psychological detail and plenty of little rabbit holes to investigate, the more Dexter is seen as a complex person who is the composite of various roles such as blood-spatter analyst, brother, father and husband, working on numerous fronts from the very visible world to his private world where he goes prowling for the bad guys of which society desperately needs rid. While his killing routine might be ritualistically banal, it does show clear signs of being swift, deliberate and final. However, the lengthier novel format, such as found in this particular story, goes to great lengths to entertain us with a variety of devious subplots that eventually come together as one gigantic tidal wave of understanding. All you need to know, as you take on this novel is that Dexter is the one who is being stalked by murderous men within the ranks of the Miami PD, whose only goal is to take him down before he eliminates them. The majority of this novel is taken up with Dexter finding out who his tormentors are and devising a way to silence them. While there is a story here, the action tends to crawl in places with too much domestic moil and toil, what with snotty, annoying kids and a too-often chiding and all-too often screeching wife. While all this secondary action does win Dexter some sympathy for the plight he finds himself in, it does tend to get in the way of the story having an ideal buildup to dramatic conclusion.

This film looks at the true-life account of a policewoman from Nebraska who signed up with the UN to do a stint of helping to monitor the war crimes of the Bosnian Serbs against Muslims in the early nineties. She took on the great paying job for six months with the hope that it would give her a chance to get her life back in order after a messy divorce and loss of custodial rights to her child. During her stint of service, she was constantly told by her superiors that she was there only to observe and report any suspicious actions. The problem here was that this woman had a conscience that needed answering to as a higher authority. When she saw the brutalities of war involving criminal actions of her own UN bosses and fellow workers, in concert with the Serbs, she decided to go public. Her story is one of incredible courage in staying the course to get justice for the women who were rounded up as sex slaves around the Balkans to work in local brothels. While many attempts were made to silence her by either threatening her life or ruining her career back home, she persisted in taking her story to the highest levels of government. This is a great flick to watch because of its ability to realistically present a human-interest story in a very dramatic and suspenseful way. Our hero is certainly up against some very evil forces intent, at all costs, in protecting their human trafficking business, even if it means flouting the rule of law.

The most attractive feature of any Philip Kerr novel, especially the Bernie Gunther series, is its ability to create a sense of clear and present danger that accompanies a mystery that begs to be solved. All those who are anywhere near the action in his novels should rightfully fear for his or her life. Anyone who is bold enough to shrug off that fear and face the challenge of getting at the truth, regardless of its inconvenience, will be rewarded with knowing that evil is conquerable and that justice can prevail even if it is beset by human failure. The setting for this particular gem is wartime Berlin and Prague and the main players are a pack of wolfish SS types who are bent on destroying both the Czech culture and the Jewish people. Offsetting this gallery of rogues is an equally determined and vicious Czech underground prepared to do anything to defeat the evil purposes of their Nazi foes. The hostility between these two camps is very strongly felt in this strange tale of Kafkaesque intrigue and horror involving a string of murders that follows a trail directly to SS headquartes in Prague. In the midst of this war zone are two figures contending for what is left of the moral high ground: a prominent German SS general, named Heydrich who, as protector of Bohemia, wants to find out who killed one of his trusted adjutants, and a very professionally dedicated gumshoe named Gunther who has been called in to lead the investigation. As Gunther's investigation unfolds, involving various interconnected incidents, the reader discovers another story emerging. The evil Heydrich has created this little sideshow by murdering his adjutant and getting a very competent detective to conduct a lengthy probe while he deals with the bigger problem: a group of Czech terrorists, through a London connection, has infiltrated his Prague operations and pose a threat to his life. While Gunther confidently goes about exposing Heydrich and his henchmen for the rotters they are, Heydrich is desperately trying to find the informants before the movement assassinates him. Gunther is one of those good Germans who knows how to get at the heart of the matter without compromising his ethics. He hates Nazis, liars, and hypocrites but hanging out with them may be necessary if mysteries are to be solved. Don't assume that truth is automatically transparent anywhere in this bizarre story with its many twists and turns. Check out the website on the post-war execution of one of Heydrich's nasty minions. The Czech people definitely get the last word on this terrible chapter in their history.

Here is another spectacular European film based on an actual war story coming out of the Jewish ghettos of war-torn Poland. This particular grim tale brings together the most unlikely of people - a group of Jews looking for refuge from the Nazis and an anti-Semitic Polish underground leader named Socha whose only ambition is to stay alive by exploiting the misery of others. The film shows that anti-semitism was not restricted to the Nazis but involved many Polish people as well. Throughout the production, there is a very visceral tension between these two parties as they negotiate the price of survival. For fourteen months the Jews are lodged in the sewers of Lvov while Socha and his wife extort from them all their earthly possessions. During this terrible time, a miracle starts to happen in Socha's life. He becomes transformed as the Jews' Moses. In the dreary, oppressive darkness of the sewers Socha turns from being a thief of their possessions to being a humanitarian who saves them from death. The viewer is led to believe that this man has been won over by the courage and determination of these helpless refugees to survive their seemingly hopeless plight.

Author-journalist David Brooks of the NY Times has written a fictional anecdotal description of a young couple's lives as they come together, grow into marriage and pursue very different careers. Both Harold and Erica, while highly intelligent and motivated in their own right, are portrayed as characters who are greatly influenced by a unique set of complex cross-currents of social influences working on their respective lives. Their emerging sensibilities result in them becoming what Brooks calls 'social animals'. Backing up each phase of this fascinating narrative is credible evidence from recent academic studies showing us that human beings are not innately social but seek the critical skills required to adapt to its challenging demands: cooperation, compromise, self-discipline, practice, sacrifice, organization, listening, et cetera. In the end, it is not the people with the high IQs that usually achieve the American dream but those who, over time, allow society to help shape their core set of values. We may be born as rugged individuals who naturally seek our own sense of purpose, but along the way we come under some very strong social forces in the form of institutions, persons, and groups that can ultimately determine how we work, love, recreate, interact, and critique. What Brooks has done here is give us an excellent insight into how character is moulded as opposed to genius being assumed. I recommend this book for the case it makes for seeing people as being as much a product of their social environment as their native intelligence.

The Norwegian crime writer has produced in "Headhunters" an intriguing Nordic psychological thriller where the main characters, Roger Brown and Clas Greve, go toe-to-toe and, eventually, head-to-head in a deadly battle to control each other's lives. We have, in these two testosterone-loaded males enough nastiness to not only want to ultimately win a deadly game but that will threaten the lives of others in close proximity. From the outset, the circumstances that bring them together in this grim comedy of misplaced ambitions appear both maddeningly random and ironically appropriate. Brown is someone who is a corporate headhunter whose wife owns an art gallery that isn't doing well. Because Brown has become so engrossed in becoming financially secure, their marriage has started to fail. To save it, Brown hits on an idea to steal some valuable artwork from one of his clients whom he is interviewing for a top job in his company. While Brown confidently believes he has got his man square in his sights, what he doesn't know is that Clas has his own agenda that will invariably clash with his desire to save his marriage. As the plot deepens, the reader is hit with a flurry of surprises as to how these two very larger-than-life individuals attempt to outsmart and overwhelm each other. Nesbo is a master of creating cat-and-mouse scenarios where it is sometimes hard to know which person really has the upper hand: the predator or the prey? A job interview quickly segues into an art heist that leads to a discovery that who you are trying to steal a painting from in order to help your wife is actually having an affair with her. Be prepared for many more of these crazy twists and turns as Roger Brown, the professional headhunter, becomes the hunted. Like many of Nesbo's novels, this one is fast-paced, brutal, brilliantly ironic and very thought-provoking as to what constitutes reality: what we see or don't see on the face of things?