Category: Book Review

I am reading a book by Jack Kelley now and his name sounded familiar so I looked through my old book reviews, found this and thought I would add it here.

Benedict Arnold was a hero and General in the American Revolution before he became a traitor late in the war. Why did he do this? Most of us may know little but his treason. This book fills in all those details of what came before the treason and discusses possible reasons why he became a traitor. The full title is God Save Benedict Arnold: The True Story of America’s Most Hated Man.

Jack Kelly (https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jack-Kelly/author/B001HP8MGQ) has written a wonderful book that will educate and thrill us as we learn about this complicated American hero and traitor.

I thank both Netgalley (https://www.netgalley.com) and St. Martin’s Press (https://us.macmillan.com/stmartinspress/) for the chance to read this before publication. I highly recommend God Save Benedict Arnold to anyone with an interest in the American Revolution.

I am a retired scientist and in my retirement I am spending a good bit of time on my family history. So I thought it a least somewhat relevant to combine these 2 interests into my review of “Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces that Threaten Our World”.

Between 1885 and 1895, my great grandparents had 8 children. Two made it to adulthood. Perhaps a bit worse than many families but the death a child was not uncommon then. It is rare now.

Another way to look at progress in this area is the change in average life expectancy. It was around 47 in 1900, 68 in 1950 and 77 in 2000.

Much of the improvement in both examples is due to science. Science is also important in many way but I thought child mortality and life expectancy might be of interest.

For those with an economic interest. The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that recent advances in biology could have a “direct economic impact of up to $4 trillion a year”. (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/the-bio-revolution-innovations-transforming-economies-societies-and-our-lives)

Michael Mann and Peter Hotez are well qualified to write this book. Both are distinguished scientists and both have been targets of those attacking science. These attacks take many forms distortion and fabrication concerning their work and motivations, death threats, and physical confrontations.

Both are also leaders in very important fields – Dr. Mann in the understating of climate change; Dr Hotez is a vaccine scientist concerned with disease prevention and public health. Both are very important field for the future of humanity. Yet there is significant opposition to scientific research in these and other areas.

The authors write about their experiences and that of other scientists. In addition they write extensively about the causes of this anti-science siege. Its causes and potential solutions. The book is important reading for our time.

Making more money does not necessarily increase your happiness.

The book is “The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life” by Morgan Housel. I thank NetGalley for the chance to read an ARC before publication. The book will be published October 07 2025.

This book is not about making money or investing it; there are plenty of personal finance books that talk about that. It is more about how to spend to maximize your happiness and that does differ greatly among people.

It also discusses how non-financial decisions impact happiness. And encourages the reader to try many things to see what works for them. The goal is to help readers learn how to make their money work for them instead of working for money.

Highly recommended.