Book Review -- "The Thank You Economy" by Gary Vaynerchuk

The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk is a book about marketing and how a company can succeed in business by caring for its customers, using social media.

I found that the book was not very engaging from the word go, and it spoke in motherhood statements with historical examples that may or may not translate into helpful strategies.

The focus to me is retail, because that is what the author knows, yet I suppose that the argument could be made that it applies to everything that requires a human being to purchase something.

However, the book is a so-so read, and a colleague of mine rated it the same way. It spoke in generalities (despite saying in the liner notes that it didn't) and didn't have a central plan that broke through the layer of abstraction that the book is. It didn't give helpful hints on the practicalities implementing what it recommended.

I would pass on this book for two reasons. First it is not very engaging and secondly it doesn't translate past the abstract into the practical.

Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Books that are significant to me sometimes arrive at my doorstep in different ways. The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil, which whetted my appetite for Artificial Intelligence was given to me by my daughters for Christmas. Total Recall by Gordon Bell has the basis of my current business venture in Nassau. It was given to me by the Lovely One for Christmas last year. My latest read came to me in a different way as well.

Just before I had returned to Nassau, I took a walk with my friends Danny and Danielle in the emerging spring countryside in the hills of Quebec. Lying on the side of the road, was a discarded book, thrown out of a car window. I picked it up. I riffled through it, and it looked readable. Since I had a plane ride coming up, I figured that I would read the book on the plane.

The book was originally published in 2003. It is by one of my favourite authors, Bill Bryson. The title is A Short History of Nearly Everything. In very readable terms, it is a narrative of humankind's science journey from the Big Bang to where we are today. It gives the history of Darwin, Einstein and other science luminaries in a highly readable form. The book is actually a page turner, and I enjoyed it extremely.

A Short History of Nearly Everything integrates the stories of discoveries in chemical, physics, biology and cosmology. It is like the Discovery Channel in book form. Each chapter is fascinating and it illuminates and explains science like I have never read before. Yet it never gets technical and is highly readable.

If you ever seen this book in a library or on a bookshelf, pick it up. It is an enjoyable read, and you won't regret it.

Cosmological Cabbage Book Review -- Traffic

One of the books that I got for Christmas, is a book called "Traffic Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us). The book is written by Tom Vanderbilt, and it was on the New York Times Bestseller List.

I immediately jumped into the book because the first chapter was on late mergers. When you have two lanes of traffic merging into one, and drivers are warned about it in advance, two behaviours are observed. Some drivers immediately get into lane that continues, and other drivers drive all the way up to the merge point and merge at the last minute into traffic.

Many a time, these late mergers are seen as queue jumpers and butting in line. However Vanderbilt contends that it is the most efficient way of merging and cites scientific studies to prove it. I discovered that late merging worked for me when I had a daily commute on a four lane highway in Canada several years ago. It was good to discover that my own conclusions were validated by the book.

However after the first chapter, the book became a real slog to read. I have not yet finished it. It becomes rather pedantic and starts citing all sorts of esoteric and arcane traffic studies and behaviours, but it does not put them into readable prose. It is a tough read.

I will update this report when I finish the book, but right now, it looks like that day is far off.

Book Review -- Blood And Fire -- The Murder of Sir Harry Oakes

One of the biggest stories emanating out of the Bahamas ever, was the 1943 murder of Canadian mining millionaire, Sir Harry Oakes -- the richest man in the British Empire. The murder mystery managed to knock off World War Two off the pages of the newspaper. Sir Harry made all of his money by discovering the largest gold mine ever in Canadian history. To this day, officially the murder is unsolved. But Nassau being the tight community that it is, everyone knows who did it.

The author is John Marquis. He was for years the managing editor of the Tribune newspaper here in Nassau, and he has just recently retired. I have always admired Mr. Marquis, because he called a spade a spade. He revealed the corruption, the hypocrisy, the criminality of the political ruling class and the peccadilloes of the people in power who hoodwink the working classes every day in the Bahamas. Those people tried to get his working permit revoked and tried to get him out of the country, because he dared to put the truth in print.

I have always wanted to read this book, but at $39.95 (US dollars) it really wasn't worth it. However, recently a local book store was selling it at $19.95 and I relented and bought it.

Essentially everyone in the Bahamas knows that Sir Harry Oakes was murdered by his "friend", Harry H.G. Christie who went on to found the biggest most prestigious real estate company in the Bahamas that exists to this day. HG Christie eventually got a knighthood in spite of being an unmasked murderer.

What the author details in this book and adds to the knowledge of, is the complicity and the criminality in the cover up involving Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor and the abdicated King of England. The Duke gave up the English throne in December of 1936 for American divorcee Wallace Simpson. The Duke was sent to France with his new re-treaded wife, but they were an embarrassment to the British because they were frigging Nazis. To get them out of the way, the Duke was appointed Governor of the Bahamas for the duration of the war.

Oakes was murdered by HG Christie in association with a Walter Foskett who was Oakes' Florida lawyer. Oakes had just discovered that Foskett was embezzling and double dealing with Christie. Oakes was going to set them straight. Marquis the author contends that Oakes also had a stash of gold destined for one of his Mexican banks, and that gold disappeared after Sir Harry was murdered. HG Christie also got very rich after the demise of Oakes. When the Oakes will was probated, there was only $12 million dollars, while when he was alive, it was estimated that his worth was $200 million. There is speculation that Sir Harry converted a lot of his cash to gold, and it disappeared after his murder.

The book contends that the Duke of Windsor was of the belief that the Germans would win the war, and he started to illegally move his money into Oakes' bank in Mexico. This would be a felony as it contravened the war time restrictions of moving currency outside of Britain and her allies.

The Duke was also a friend of HG Christie -- who was also illegally moving money into Oakes' bank as well as screwing Oakes in property deals, all the while maintaining a facade of friendship. Just before his murder, Oakes became aware of Foskett's criminality, but no one knows if he knew that Christie was double dealing against him. This would certainly come out if Oakes straightened out Foskett. If Christie was unmasked as the murderer, the Duke's criminality and currency transactions were to be exposed. Hence the Duke was involved in the cover up of the murder of Sir Harry Oakes. The Duke went to great lengths to pin the murder on de Marigny, the hated son-in-law of Sir Harry. They even ordered the rope for his hanging.

The frame-up involving the Duke of Windsor never worked out, because the detectives that were hired by the Duke to frame de Marigny were caught out in court faking fingerprint evidence.

The book also contends that there was a string of mysterious deaths of people investigating the murder after the fact.

Even after all of these years in Nassau, the truth is elusive. The author contends that skewing and subversion of truth seems to be a hallmark of the Bahamas to this day.

Book Review Hemingway In Africa, The Last Safari

This is another edition of the Cosmological Cabbage Book Review. It is "Hemingway in Africa, The Last Safari", by Christopher Ondaatje.

It is the most vapid, narcissistic waste of printer's ink that I have ever come across. It had been marked down from $35 (Canadian) to $7 and even at that, it was a waste of money.

I learned nothing new. The author attempts to "understand" Hemingway's Africa by retracing his safaris.

I am a great Hemingway fan, and I learned nothing new in this book. This book in no way contributed to the body of knowledge of Hemingway. It was a commercial venture that failed. Even the writing is of journeyman quality.

I read it to the last page hoping for something redeeming, and I was sorely disappointed.