SPHERE OF INFLUENCE By Kyle Mills

I do not have time to write reviews on books on which I am neutral or do not like. I liked this book. Kyle Mills writes a good up-to-date adventure story about a rebel FBI agent who is not an FBI agent at the end of the tale. Mark Beamon who put the truth ahead of his job, and who was drinking and smoking himself into an early grave is a good believable lead character. He reminds me of people I have known in the past. Mark did not appear to fear death too much or anything else. His mind was made for thinking and he was afraid he was loosing his edge at that.

TV stations start getting videotapes from somewhere in the USA. They show a primitive rocket launcher, which is in the hands of terrorists somewhere in the States. The FBI immediately have almost all of the people terrified of where the first rocket will land, in a supermarket, schools, shopping malls in what State? When, is the next frightening question?

Beamon had ... off most of Congress and embarrassed the Washington elite with a too honest investigation and was about to be sacrificed on a tromped up charge. When a new president was elected and he had support again and was given an office in the field--one more dinosaur that would not disappear immediately.

He contacted Laura Vilechi, an old friend in the FBI for information about the rocket launcher and unofficially joined her effort to find it. This took him, Mark to places in the world that he would just as soon have never seen, and people like General Yung in Laos. Yung was a murdering sociopath the king of drug trafficking in his part of the world.

The FBI had in affect fired Mark, and he was working with a powerful mystery man, Christian Volkov whose primary income aside from his many legal businesses was from drugs. He was a citizen of anyplace and everyplace in the world and for the people who wanted him impossible to find. But he found Mark and developed a liking for him.

Mark helped Laura find the rocket launcher with the aid of Christian Volkov and the CIA, and the unwilling aid of the Mob. Mean while he got himself in so deep with Christian Volkov that the FBI tried to find him because he was embarrassing themï¿itï¿s an interesting book. If you like books about the FBI, CIA and drugs in our modern world read it and do yourself a favour.
Roger L. Lee

THIS NOBLE LAND My Vision For American by James A. Michener

Mr. Michner was a true USA Patriot for his whole life and died a true USA patriot. I could not sum up his work for the USA any better than that. James was 90 years old when he wrote this dream as to what he wanted his country the USA to become starting from his death when he wrote this his last book. What this book really is an open letter to Americans with the blueprint of a utopia, which he realized, was not possible with humans and their different inspirations, but he continued to have hope right to his last breath.

The things that he writes about has been achievable and he gave a blueprint to use to achieve his suggestions. Considering the situation we are in now his ideas would have been good if implemented. They should be implemented if our 'elite' permits it. Our elite is now is the small number of people who now belong to the moneyed part of our society. These people have 80 percent of the wealth. We have reached the stage of our society where the money is king and the elite, which have the money, are leading us.

Money used to be used for cover over our heads and food. It is now power and elects our leaders, good or bad. Before that we elected our leaders for their ability as a hunter or provider. Then there was a relative short time when we had a democracy where elected them by votes of who we thought could lead us down the road to freedom and prosperity. Now our leaders talk a good democracy, but their actions are something else.

Michener starts out by explaining our tax system and provides suggestions for replacement after telling us how bad it is. He starts by telling his submitted tax declaration took 48 pages, this was in 1995. American tax declarations really haven't changed much since then. If anything they are more complex now. Read his thoughts on taxes they will be eye opener.

How do we get work for everyone in American? We are not headed in that direction now. Mr. Michener has a few ideas some have been tried in the past by countries in the world with varying degrees of success. Mr. Michener has put a lot of thought into this.

I want to quote Mr. Michener here, "Our government must stop passing income tax laws and other laws whose only purpose is to siphon even more wealth into the hands of those already rich while penalizing those at the lower end of the economic scale."

For any kind of 'trickle down' system to work the elite have to give more to the humans who need it and will spend it on food and clothing to prevent a revolution of those who are not participating in the American bounty. And these are the people who spend and cause our economy to grow.

Mr. Michener addresses the condition of our society and where the blacks fit in. This is really worth reading for all colors. He is dreaming about a classless society.

He addresses large company and their employees, but he was not privy to our 'evil' system which has came to the attention of our government now. Large and small companies were or are stealing from stockholder and employees both equally and sharing in the downward movement of these companies. The government is acting 'very slowly' to correct these problems.

Mr. Michener, who taught in grade school up to post doctorate level in the university, was very interested in this subject. He went to elementary school when the children said a 'pledge of allegiance to the USA' before they started class. We have gone on 'dumbing down' our children in the last few years in spite is Mr. Michener's warning. I cannot write all of his recommendations here. Read his book!

I am running out of space and time, but Mr. Michener's comments on the USA family should be read and digested.

His health care section should be read by everyone in the government that has anything to do with the health laws. He put a lot of thought into how to improve our system, which is getting worse it, could. Most of the western countries have better health systems than ours. Why is this, just the smell of money?

This is getting to long to hold attention so I will close for with the recommendation to read, THIS NOBLE BOOK, MY VISION FOR AMERICA, by Mr. Michener, whose last thought was for the United States of America.

Roger L. Lee

LEADERSHIP By Rudolph W. Giuliani, The Mayor of New York at one time.

Those who have their entire life in politics often become spin artists rather than thinkers.
Rudolph W. Giualiani

I liked his book he has a good plan to live and lead by and was not embarrassed to change his mind when he finds that some of his ideas were not as good as the ones he listened to, recognized, and adopted. But mostly I liked his book because he know ï¿where the buck stopped.ï¿ It stopped with the leader, CEO, governor, president of a corporation or city or state. You can take the criticism and the kudus because that is what you are being well paid and enjoying the perks for.

Giuliani recognized the fighting standards his father gave him when he was very young and they paid back when he implemented them. He learned to communicate with the masses and individual humans. He practiced giving speeches many times and made it pay off. He liked words and would spend a lot of time picking just the right words to express exactly what he wanted to get across.

Everything worth the effort he would have his people make a plan not to just do the job, but to do the job better than it had been done before. Each plan would have a way to measure it for success and to measure it against all other plans. He wanted his people to be enthusiast while doing the job, do the job right and strive to do it better every time. Reports of progress would be made every week.

He made a couple of statements in his book that made me think. When he refused to let the Authority Palestinian President Yasser Arafat attend a party in New York, kicked him out, in 1995, because as Rudy said he would not ï¿stay bribed.ï¿ You could give him more land (Palestinian) and he would say he could not do what he said he would do, and come back for more land or something else.

By kicking, Yasser Arafat out of the party Rudy caused him to ï¿lose faceï¿ and Arafat had to get him back somehow with something he could help do in New York to regain face? For an Arab to ï¿lose faceï¿ is the same as insulting someone who is not Arab. The Arab will feel that he is bound to avenge the ï¿loss of faceï¿ if it takes his death, and he doesnï¿t ever forget that loss of face until that it has been revenged! That may be one area where we should know the Arabs better; maybe itï¿s too late now. No! Itï¿s not too late change Arabs to where they are a little flexible about insults. There are other groups in world that may have to change to. Itï¿s education.

Again, I think of the old bible, which had very inflexible rules. Most of these humans who think of life and death being the only way are still going by the old bible. There are many shades of gray.

Giuliani got an education from being raised in a normal family with normal rules in his time. His thinking, before acting was as a result of the ï¿old fashioned wayï¿ and the fact that he had a brain which he used.

Giuliani liked the organization chart as a tool and used it like living tool as it should be used. He learned it keep it up to date. He had it in his brain all the time. He know the name of people where they fit in the chart and used them for their strengths but knew their weaknessï¿ also. If he saw a weakness in area, he would assign a person with strength in the area of failing, maybe a deputy, to make up for the weakness.

All in all, this is a good book for someone in a position of responsibility to buy and use as a reference. Iï¿ll give the author four stars for an excellent book on management.
Roger L. Lee

LEE, by Douglas Southall Freeman, and James M. McPherson, who wrote the forward.

The one thing that stood out was that Robert E. Lee was an honorable gentleman throughout his life. He lived in the time when that was the thing to do. He not only was a fine military Officer, but a good man. Robert E. Lee was a man with a code of conduct that he imposed on himself and never wavered from it. He fought for the Confederation as the General of the Army when he knew that the south was loosing the war and did not really believe in what the south stood for, but he believed in honor and defending his home, Virginia as he always had.

This book was the result of combining seven volumes and making one book. Editing it must have been a job and it was a job well done. The book is seamless in spite of the fact that is a combination of seven volumes. The war was very well covered. It will make a lot of battle fans happy with its detailed description of every battle.

Lee's destiny was set when his father, 'Light-Horse Harry" Lee who was a brilliant dreamer about riches which, he never seen, had quite a bit of influence on Robert's life. Harry spent some time in debtor's prison. His father's life had a great deal to do with Robert's attitude toward any kind of debt. He believed in living on the money you had.

Robert managed to get into the Academy with the help of his friend's and mother's family. He graduated at the top of his class in West Point. He studied engineering; it was the only thing that emphasized physics and math at that time (1820). What Mr. Lee had during this time, was brains that was driven by his code of life, which allowed him to be a historical figure in the 19th Centenary. I'm afraid that this code of living, honest, truth, ethics, and honor has been downgraded by a lot of people to where it does not have impact in the 21 Centenary. It used to be what American stood for.

Robert E. Lee graduated from the West Point Academy with honors in 1828-29. Lt. Lee received his first orders as a Brevet Second Lieut. for duty with Major Samuel Babcock of the Corps. Of Engineers for duty at Cockspur, Island, in the Savanna River, Georgia.

His brother, Henry Lee disgraced him by losing the family place Stratford for a debt and getting in trouble with the younger sister of his wife. What would not have been worth bringing up now days, the honor of the family meant a lot more then--Henry Lee was never mentioned again by Robert E. Lee.

Finally, in 1846 Lt. Robert E. Lee received his order to report to Brigadier General John E. Wool for service in Mexico. He was chosen to fight in a war, his first. He left the Mexican war when it was over as a brevet of Colonel without the colonel's pay. During the Mexican war he had earned the high opinion of his supervisors and the other American Officers for his superior ability to think and carry out an action. He was now 'Colonel Lee', a title of respect.

A great part of the book explained in detail about the battles when he was the General of the Confederation of Army. This part of the his life is very covered in detail. Later he accepted a position at Washington and Lee University and left that position and the world in 1870.
Roger Lee

Uncommon Justice by Terry Devane

I liked this book although the main character, Meiread O'Clare may use a few references that are out of my ream. But, since Meiread O'Clare is a young Irish lawyer who plays hockey for a hobby anything goes.

Meiread had left a position with a partnership firm where she felt that she was stuck in 'dung'. She accepted a job offer from a guy she met setting on a park bench feeding pigeons. This was her first job in the real world with a real tough woman with a big heart for a secretary and a boss with marriage problems. She was determined to be a good lawyer. Then she was assigned to defend a crazy Irishman who said he was innocent of murder but who did not want to be defended. It gets worse!

For her first case she is defending a cave dweller who lived along the Charles River in a riverbank cave shored with scrap lumber who has been charged with a murder. He is also a well read Irishman, and that is about all that is know about him. He was self named Alpha and did not want to be defended by anyone?

When he was picked up by the police looked like he had not had a bath, haircut or shave for years. He smelled to heavens, but luckily the police had cut off his hair and beard and made him take bath before Meiread met him. His club, 'shillelagh' or walking stick had been used to kill another cave dweller who lived close by. Alpha was an educated Irishman and a likeable one with his crazy sense of humor. Meiread did not know how to take him when she found the jail and her client with help from her boss. She liked him, but he made her mad.

The book keeps the pace going full blast with some believable characters, very good and very evil until the end. This author is strange to read until you get into his book and get synchronized with his characters. Then you will like is style of writing. It's crazy whimsical Irish. This book is better than average. I'll give it three and a half stars for the Irish feeling. If you think this review is messed up, wait until you read the book.

Roger Lee

WILD HORSES by Dick Francis

This is not a new book, but to me it was I just read it. Dick Francis is not a new writer. He has many books to his credit. This one is an excellent effort as was all of his books. Of course he was writing about something he is very good at, horse jump racing. His prime character in this story is a 16-hour a day working director of a movie about steeple jump racing.

Thomas Lyon is the director of 'Unstable Times', who solves two murders and several 26-year-old mysteries while director of the movie. He almost had his life ended when the writer, of 'UNSTABLE TIMES', and other people involved who didn't like what the movie implicated and took it very serious.

This is a good story of the work and people involved in making a movie. Just a good book for the information about the nitty gritty work involved in making a movie and how much work and how dangerous it can be.

SILENT JOE by Jefferson Parker

This is a writer who was a new discovery for me. Jefferson Parker's good, actually for this book he was better than good.

This is the story of an orphan, Joe Trona who grew into a very capable, polite and to the people who knew him a very agreeable, if disfigured figure. His natural father threw acid into his face when he was an infant and his mother left him at the same time. The traumatic experience shaped Joe's life from that point on. He was known as the 'acid baby' for a long time. Will and Mary Ann Trona adopted him when he was five in spite of his dreadfully scared face. Joe started out worshiping his adopted parents.

Later, after schooling, when he was 20 Will got Joe a job as a deputy for the county Police Force. He worked a five-year probation as a guard in the jail before they would let him become what he considered a real police patrolman. Meanwhile he eared a black belt in self-defense along with several medals in handgun use. As soon as he earned his drivers license he became Will's driver, confidant and bodyguard. He was a 24 year old, large in size and in good condition, and looked dangerous. People were careful when said around him.

Will, his adopted father was murdered while Joe was with him. Joe loved his father and felt responsible in spite of killing two of the murders out of the five who were there when Will was killed. He devoted the remainder of his time to finding the people who had contracted for the murder of his father and preformed that murder.

Joe used a lot of the police lore like finding fingerprints that Will had taught him. He was a very fast driver and was curious as to how the killers knew where he was taking Will. He found a small transmitter affixed to the underside of the car that he used to drive Will to some of his assignments. From this small beginning and his photographic memory he slowly put the case together to find his father's murders and the multitude of people that were implicated. Joe is very quiet and concentrated as an investigator. His quest for justice makes an excellent book. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.

...

UP COUNTRY By Nelson Demille

I wasn't going to write a review on this book because it has enough reviews written now-some of them very good, but it does the best job of explaining the Vietnam War that I have ever read. Besides the plot is very good, with Paul Brenner back with us after THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, an excellent book it's own right. In this book he is the same fearless, wiseass with an excellent personal code of honor. Of course he's involved with the army's Criminal Investigation Division, the CIA, Secret Service and the FBI and if that wasn't enough he starts feuding with the a Colonel Mang of the Vietnam Secret Police, and almost ends up in jail or worse, as soon as he gets back to south Vietnam before he starts up country to the north.

He met a very pretty young lady, Susan Weber by design as she was his contact, and she managed to stay with him from one end of Vietnam to the other. This was quite a trip; especially since Paul Brenner's CID mission was a very important 30-year-old murder and he know less about it than the CID or the CIA who monitored Paul for almost the almost the whole trip. This book is worth reading. In one of the reviews it was suggested that he wrote the UP COUNTRY as a catharsis for his tours it Vietnam War, this story could be easily be that. Mr. Nelson Demille writes a first-rate book with some first-class war history.

Roger Lee

A Beautiful Mind By Sylvia Nasar

This book reads better if you recognize the following mathematical genius names; John von Neumann who worked on among other things the A-bombs and H-bombs, John McCarthy who was of the inventors of artificial intelligence, Riemann, a German genius who worked with mathematics on geometric objects and on...O' I almost forgot a name that all of the readers know, Einstein, and his theory of relativity.

The book is the biography of a man, John Nash. Sylvia Nasar spent a lot of time digging up very detailed information for this book. John Nash fits into this company of mathematical geniuses with no trouble. He was born in West Virginia and went on to graduate from the Princeton University where he invented game theory. John was not a likeable person he definitely did not have much, if any, emotional intelligence he mumbled when he spoke, did not look you in the eye, and did not make friends. But he had a beautiful mind for mathematic problems that allowed him to be valuable to the human race. After ups and downs he 45 years later won Nobel Prize in mathematics for his game theory.

John Nash would spend as much as a year on a tough math problem and then, from out of the blue, come up with a solution.

John fathered a boy with a nurse, Eleanor. He refused to pay for the birth of the boy and did not marry Eleanor. Later he married Alicia who nurtured and committed him to a hospital by turns. She had borne him a son in one of his lurid moments before he had a nervous breakdown. She was forced to divorce him later although they were together most of the time.

John was not a nice person to know when he was young before his breakdown at 31 years of age when he was analyzed as schizophrenia. There is a bit of a mystic story that a mathematic genius does his best work by he time he is 30 and as John got closer to that age he worried about his mathematic ability becoming mediocre. Over a period of time John became more schizophrenic until he had a nervous breakdown when he was diagnosed as schizophrenia. This is common enough with very intelligent people who spent most of their time thinking as an occupation. There is a great deal in this book about the disease(?) schizophrenia. Some times it is difficult to recognize the difference whether one is a genius or a schizophrenic. Only the work that they do differs, in one case it is coherent and to a knowledgeable person beautiful, or when studied proves to be completely bad and crazy. It may change from one moment to another.

In the case of John, schizophrenia took him to Europe where he got into all kinds of trouble trying to fine himself. If his brain had not been so valuable to the world he might have disappeared as so many do with his problem.

I know a little about schizophrenic myself--having a sister and an aunt who suffered from the malady.

CHRISTMAS IN PLAINS by Jimmy Carter
LIFE IN PLAINS
This is another of Jimmy Carter's books of God and his values. Jimmy is a good man and writes something that will not electrify you. This is part of his autobiography from Plains, the village or small town in Georgia where he remembered the good things when was a boy and always returned to Plains with his family to spend time with his mother and his wife's mother for Christmas. His father passed on earlier from cancer during this period.

He graduated from Annapolis, spent a long tour in the Navy, elected for two terms as state senator and then to the Governor of Georgia, before being elected President of the USA. He married Rosalynn, a childhood sweetheart, during his time in the Navy and they had three sons. He now has six grandchildren, at the last count.

After that, Jimmy and Rosalynn returned to Georgia. After founding the Atlanta-based Carter Center he is devoting the rest of time writing and doing good for all the world's people.