The Dog I loved by Susan Wilson

The Dog I loved by

Susan Wilson is a new novel that will be released on Nov 12th.

It is a strong story this one, where many disgraces occurred to various protagonists of this book and where new starts the main thematic.

Dogyow is an abandoned area of the East Coast at the moment. If in the past pretty populated, now it's a place where difficult women live there for finding, experimenting and live a new life.

In the past Dogtown had another name. It was later called Dogtown because of the women who continued to live there during the Revolution of 1812: they were mostly widows and who made them company were just their dogs, considering that their husbands passed away because killed. There is to mention that they were also considered pretty strange, witches.

Rosie Collins was the daughter of a good family and theoretically she had to have a brilliant future in every sense, but once she was accused of having murdered someone and she went to jail for a lot of years.

Meghan is another disgraceful lady, because she is in a wheelchair, she lived every kind of devastation you can imagine. Her family a disgraceful one plenty of problems.

Rosie, once out of jail, and she was innocent and incarcerated for a crime not committed by her, will receive from an unknown benefactor a job in the Dogtown's community. It will be a new beginning. She will be helped by Meghan, difficult character, strong past populated by wars, bad injuries and as said before limited movements; Rosie is extremely exigent, and at first won't be simple for Meghan to following her; at the same time for the first time in her existence Rosie thinks that she can returns to be alive. Sure Rosie wants to set free also her past, trying to search for her family at some point. A family who had completely abandoned her when found guilty; no one searched for her during the years.

I found moving this moment, touching. It's like if an uninterrupted light would return to be brilliant, alive in the existence of Rosie and her relatives.

Rosie is constantly followed by Shadow her therapy-dog.

A journal will bring other suspence and will help to understand the past.

The book is narrated in first person when Rosie tell her story; third person for Meghan.

The cover is beautiful. 

Highly recommended.

I thank StMartin's Press for the physical advanced reader copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Journalism in the Age of Virtual Reality How Experiential Media are Transforming the News by John V.Pavlik

Journalism in the Age of Virtual Reality How Experiential Media are

Transforming the News by John V.Pavlik is a new book published by Columbia University Press.

Experiential media: we can call it the experience made by users when they will watch, listen and at the same time appreciate with great impact an I-Doc or something else created for a complete, fluid interaction of the user with the material posted online or seen somewhere else.

This book focuses the attention on new medias and what it means and will mean virtual reality, drones, new and more technological smartphones for the common journalistic work, and the highest, more under many ways beautiful impact on masses. 

You musn't think that this one is a novelty.

No: nothing new after all in the horizon. What I want to say is that journalism has known a lot of revolutions.

Let's just imagine what happened the entrance in scene of photography for newsmagazines, magazine and its commixtion with a written piece close to it.

Photography  co-reported with the piece written by the reporter every news. Amuder, a wedding, a funeral, a session at the town hall council. Everything.

With the decades cameras became always more sophisticated and were in grade of giving new answers to pieces, creating by themselves real journalistic impact. 

At the moment, there are so many devices in grade of presenting us reality and what it is going on often happen in real-time thanks to smartphones of common users. 

In general common people tend to post on the various social medias. People of course sometimes can't produce a great product, but smartphone and their power is constantly increasing and it means that we will always more sophisticated, clear imagines, pictures obstained also by a private citizen. 

Connected devices will be fifty billion at the end of this year. Journalism, thanks to these new and powerful instruments will change again, living a new, and fresh existence.

This, will involve all sectors of journalism, starting with sport, thanks to sensors added in various devices in grade of capturing the most, but experiential stories, as also told by the author are not just incredibly interesting but they were unthinkable till at recent decades.

Problems are many of course: cyberattacks is one of them. Most companies have been attacked; plus there is a world populated by fake news, or news of bad quality; protecting this experiential news from manipulation will be crucial. 

Being in fact multisensorial news, the impact on people will be more intense at different levels than not common news .

These news if manipulated can lead at shocks and other strong feelings folk, masses. That's why the thematic must be taken seriously.

For sure journalists at the moment (and in the future) have powerful tools for reporting news with high impact. 

These instruments include high-resolution, immersive audio, video material; all five senses of people will be involved.

Journalism will become more individualist thanks to the voice of a single person speaking in a multiple version for giving a resonant news.

It will be possible, as also it was done in the past to trying to tell under many different perspective the same news for an higher impact.

In an experiment at the Pennsylvania State University researchers noticed that the participants at the project  weremulti-sensorially touched, experienced great and strong emotions and felt a lot of participation and empathy.

What other instruments of power will have or have in his hand the journalist?

The I-Docs, the so-called "interactives" is one of the best form of a new emergent form of journalism; visual frame, panoramic image, and a video as a center of the story.You can google The New York Times and the I-Doc Snow Fall for having an idea. The I-Docs are beautiful because they mix medias and all these medias create an unicum, impressive work.

Thanks to this book you will learn the importance of I-Docs and new medias and why it is so crucial jumping in this train as soon as possible.

Pavlik doesn't neglect any new voice; a chapter is dedicated to drone media as well.

Journalism won't never die, also in the most traditional shape to my point of view, but reality will be seen, read, discovered, amplified, let me use this verb, in all its complexity also thanks to new medias and it's important to discovering what it is waiting for the category and what it still exists and just is waiting for us.

Beautiful, this book is for everyone, great fruibility, written with passion, love, clarity, high competence, devotion for the topic.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

1913 Un'altra Storia by Florian Illies

What a beautiful book 1913 Un'altra Storia by Florian

Illies. I was thinking, while I was reading it, why there is a lot of attraction for this period. Maybe because there has been a big concentration of creatives; painting, writing, dancers, politicians, theorists, world was rapidly changing, but at the same time there was still memory of the past.

You'll have the sensation of "swimming" in the 1913; you will meet many characters, talented people, and you will live their existence, creative and private. In some cases it couldn't be different.

We will see Puccini busy with his new lover, his wife, a divorce, then the idea that he didn't also want this new girl, but...We will assist at the devastation experienced by Enrico Caruso, big opera singer. His wife disappeared with their chauffeur. He thinks that maybe he can finds a different consolation but it's another mess.

Matisse doesn't want to paint as Picasso and other painters are doing. He thinks that donating shape to the world is the best thing to do.

We will meet a serial-killer as well: he killed a lot of family members. Considered a very good person no one thought that that close departures could be connected with him. They were.

Marcel Proust is busy with his Reserche. He sends the manuscript at various publishing houses and the chief of one of these ones answered him back complaining that maybe that book was not of his interest. Later Proust found someone interested in publishing his big work, although what it followed were corrections on...corrections.

Proust was a genial and perfectionist. At the same time he will fall in love for his chauffeur, a straight man. Proust will try to convince him that homosexuality is the best thing; he will also present him an airplane, because the chauffeur loved airplanes, but the man run away while Proust is indebited. Proust paid a private investigator for trying to see where his beloved object of love ended; the poor man died with the airplane bought by Proust. Look what a destiny.

Stalin spent several time in Capri with other friends. Gorkij in particular lived there for more than six years and at the beginning we see him tribulated because of his wife and his lover and because in Russia there was a big desire: to see the Romanov defeated once and for all.

Karen Blixen is promised to someone in Africa. The future author of Out of Africa is thrilled of leaving Denmark for the sun. During the trip she will fall in love for another man, who later will be his witness during the wedding, and the first night of wedding her husband will share with her syphilis because his intense sexual activity with promiscuous girls.

The dad of Blixen hanged up himself when he heard the news that he had syphilis. He didn't want to cause a big scandal at his family.

Karen Blixen returned in Denmark for being cured,but this illness followed her for the rest of her existence.

Djagilev was a name of ballett in Paris at the beginning of 1900s. His lover was Nizinskij with which he organized a show considered by Le Figaro a bit cryptic and eccentric. The newsmagazine asked at readers some help for trying to put a new light in that show that they had seen that days and was misunderstood. 

The couple sounded incredibly good, but then the young man fell in love, horror! for a woman. Djagilev thought that Nizinskij needed to be destroyed and so he found another lover known later as Leonide Massine. 

In the while the happy couple had a daughter.

In Monte Carlo a couple died for mysterious reasons.

People who survived at the sinking of the Titanic are re-borning in sport and through documentaries.

Much more than this, in a book that will tell you the life of many creatives in a crucial year for the world.

It can be a very good book for students as well. They will fall in love for history passing through characters that they meet studying.

The author is funny and sunny in the explanation of the various existences and I hope to read the rest of his books dedicated at 1913.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Children's Book of Jeeves & Wooster words and pictures by Gautam Rao

The Children's Book of Jeeves & Wooster words and pictures by Gautam Rao is a wonderful way for starting to discovering the most beloved and funny, hilarious l characters invented by the pen of Wodehouse.

Jeeves and Bertie are the first ones but we found also aunt Dahlia and many other ones.

Colored, this book is recommended to all that parents, aunts, relatives in love for Wodehouse, with the desire of transmitting at a new generation of readers a genuine love for this writer and his universe.

I thank Gautam Rao for this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Don't Put Your Horse in a Bathtub!! Written and Illustrated by Lucy Ann Carroll

Don't Put Your Horse in

a Bathtub!! Written and Illustrated by Lucy Ann Carroll is a fantastic, truly funny children's book about the weirdest laws still existing in the various States of the USA.

Some example? In Indiana it's illegal to keep moustaches; in California it's illegal to kill whales staying in the car. If you make false promises in Louisiana it's possible to go to jail for a year.

In Kentycky it's illegal to dye a baby duckling; in Massachussets Gorillas can't sit in the back of the car while in Alabama it's possible to drive the wrong direction down a one way street if there is a lantern attached to the front of the car.

Written with great humor and wonderfully illustrated I know that your children but also adult ones will have a lot of fun in discovering the most hilarious laws sometimes paradoxical still existing in the USA.

I thank the author and Library Thing for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Amish Front Porch by Wanda Brunstetter, Jean and Richelle Brunstetter

Amish Front Porch is a

new book published by Barbour. The pens who wrote this book composed by 18 short tales the ones of Wanda Brunstetter, impossible not falling in love for her numerous, compassionate and interesting Amish novels, Jean and Richelle Brunstetter.

These short tales inspire little and big life-lessons at the same time. I read two short tales: the first one about a lady with some problems with a neighbor tired of seeing around her cats. I was profoundly surprised by the answer of her husband Amos when she referred him that the lady was back another time that day. Amos suggested  of praying for her because she had to be such an unhappy person for being in that way. The end of the tale is moving and also the nasty neighbor will understand that, after all, no man's island and people need help sometimes or just company of the other ones.

The second tale I read involves quilts and an Amish lady talented in this activity and her business: she loves to selling beautiful quilts and sometimes she also prefers that activity at family. A sacrifice she does because she is good at it and because she can earn money. Her husband will let her understand that all that pride is consuming her.

A book for refreshing your spirit and your body.

Highrly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Barbour for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Vice, Crime, Poverty How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld by Dominique Kalifa

Poverty has always existed but, in particular in the XIX century, the moment of the birth of industrialization, the arrival of wagons of people also from closest countrysides in search of a best life, created new social conditions.

People of letters described, wrote, published books, pamphlets, diaries, journals, about the meaning of being poor or the meaning of living in certain areas and in certain ways; places, that ones not too recommended of big cities as Paris, New York, London.

In this new book published by Columbia University Press Vice, Crime,

Poverty How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld by Dominique Kalifa thanks to literature, from Victor Hugo to Dickens, from Jack London to diaries written by people who worked in slums, or witnesses interested to discovering the fatiscent conditions in which poor people lived, we have a clear idea of that kind of life: it is traced with precision.

Was it an imagination the underworld built by the so-called western civilization? No, of course. It was a society that later would have created Jack the Ripper in 1888; the Victorian Age, with its contraditions, with people left behind, with the excluded ones from the society.

People who lived in slums, in the poorest part of a big city, it could be Paris, it could be London or also other ones, there is not at all a great difference because poverty is poverty, were not "good people" in the real sense of the word. 

They could be criminals, but also prostitutes, vandals, beggars, they could be people mentally sick, and at that time without any kind of possibility for being cured for their problems. All these people lived in fatiscent conditions where death, but also persistent smell of escrements were part of their daily life. 

It's from the past, anyway, remarks the author that  people tried to define what it meant goodness and badness; good realities and cities nests of sin. Kalifa takes in examination for example a city like Babylon considered a horrible one because everything permitted.

For trying to better the conditions of all these poor people,also thanks to literary works in grade of making some pressure on the institutions at various levels, sometimes politicians loved to spend some time with poor people, visiting their workplaces, their houses, trying to have an idea of their poverty; sometimes they sent someone for understanding what it was going on for, later, trying to be helpful. Works by Victor Hugo, are illuminating. We musn't forget Charles Dickens, where in A Christmas Carol portrays a realistic picture of Scrooge's employer and his family, they didn't have the possibility of curing their beloved son or eating properly. 

Beautiful book, rich of literature, anecdots, story. 

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

La Lettera di Gertrud by Bjorn Larsson

La Lettera di Gertrud

by Bjorn Larsson kept me busy for several days. Published by Iperborea, this book is pshycologically complex, but wonderful I want to add immediately. And I am still here still unsatisfied of my work.

It's a book about discoveries. Discovery of origins; maybe for a genetist like Martin Brenner this unexpected news is more devastating than for other people. Who knows if this one can be an answer at this complicated story.

Sometimes discovering the origin for a person is a relief, for understanding better the past, for living with peace the present and the future, accepting what it was; past behaviors, discriminations of family members or neighbors can be understood rationally. 

I don't think that a secret, revealed, is a quiet process for the person involved and for his/her soul  but surely it set free the person from a past of secrets - they kill entire existences and families - and lies - they're horrible - Not only, but there is a sensation of freedom and possibility of choices.

Said this, the story lived by the protagonist of this book, Martin Brenner is completely different.

There is a revelation but this shocking discovery will cause interior and exterior difficulties. Why? Because Martin doesn't accept his new reality.

Martin at the beginning of the story is portrayed as a successful and happy man. He is in his early 50s, he has a wife that he simply adores, Cristina, and a daughter, Sara. 

He is the successful director of a center where people asks for analysis for understanding if they are the real parents of their children or for discovering if they will become sick of certain illness.

His life is perfect. 

When his mother,  Maria, dies, Martin doesn't feel real sadness. They didn't have a good connection and all their existence was characterized by something not-said. The distance created by her mother built a sort of wall: he has always understood that his mother had erected that wall; he hadn't never understood the reason and of course he didn't live well his relationship with maybe the most important person of our existence.

This "feeling," not feeling anything strong for the departure of his mother departure puzzles him, because Maria is his mother.

One day Martin is reached by an attorney, old friend of his mother. This man has in possession a letter for him; from his mother. 

Her real name was Gertrud and she was a Jewish. Martin is a jewish.

Martin doesn't jump from the chair for the joy and happiness of this news: jewish are prestigious people. No: it happens the opposite and this opposite will bring him to his ruin.

It starts for Martin a complicated season for understanding who realistically he is. He doesn't want to be classified as a jewish, being an atheist, and he doesn't want to live his existence as a Jewish. He wants to continue to eat ham, and he wants to continue to live his life as he did before to discovering this story. But: is it possible?

New medias won't help him either. Also during a protest, one of his gesture is misunderstood by everyone, jewish and protestants and attacked. 

That days, Martin thinking that it is better to keep the secret (this secret will ruin his family as you will read later) starts to read wagons of books about people who discovered later in their life that they were jewish. 

You will read that some people were absolutely furious with their parents, other ones, simply tried to understand, releasing later books about the topic.

A Jewish is considered Jewish if the mother is Jewish; Martin, simply, can't accept it. He doesn't want to change his status. No one can let him changes this idea. 

Martin knows that Jewish people don't have particular signs in their DNA for saying: that one is a Jewish for his/her DNA.  Same is for other ethnic groups, after all.

It's this "unwanting inclusion" in  a group, in an ethnic group, that Martin doesn't want. Martin wants to stay free. 

Simon, a Jewish man working in his laboratory is his best friend, but not because he is jewish, but because they have always been friends, and Martin refuses the idea of searching for friendship because a person is part of an ethnic group. And this one is an intelligent treat of Martin.

Nothing give consolation to Martin. His researches are incredibles. I understood the history of Jewish people, discovering that I had a great ignorance on the topic reading this book.

A story, the one of Jewish people plenty of misunderstanding, a story, the one of this group, that has known an escalation of violence with the arrival of Jesus in the scene.

Jesus was a Jewish, but he was  a revolutionary man and created a new religion. This new religion started to be known, and Jewish after the birth of Catholicism were always more discriminated.

In my mind I thought that Jewish people loved to live without intromissions because part of their character, while it was the opposite. Discriminations  Crusades, then the Holocaust, have been created also by catholics like all the possible distortions regarding Jewish people.

When a damage is so profound, of course a group will protect itself from external aggressions, in many different ways.

What it is shocking in the story by Larsson is this fear: this fear of being Jewish. 

When Martin will reveal that he is a Jewish it will happen this world and the other and no one, jewish, protestants, will see in him a person with a good integrity, but just someone who doesn't want to accept the reality. Jewish will be offended by his behavior, nazists will try their best for damaging him and his family. Martin will remain at the end of this story completely isolated, protected by no one, left by his wife, hated also by his beloved daughterisolated by Jewish people at every level and his desire, of being simply Martin won't be taken in consideration. He is a lost soul.

Martin's feelings after all are the one of a shocked person grown up into a big lie: that he was a Christian. He thought that he was a Christian for more than 50 years; this revelation changed, completely changed the perspective of his existence. Not only: in this book being Jewish is seeing negatively; I read of a massacre in a sinagogue, acts of vandalisms perpetrated at Martin's daughter, because the daughter of a Jewish; Martin lived nightmares, but reality can also be pretty different.

There is in fact to add that borning Jewish is a priviledge. Jewish, as admits Larsson in the book are not born for being God's Believer, but for increasing their knowledge, for studying, for bettering through books their culture without forgetting the other ones. Jewish people are erudite, fascinating, creative; the most important discoveries were made by Jewish; personally in our extended family we had a jewish member once and when things changed it was as a bright, and lucky star disappeared to the horizon. He hasn't never been forgotten.

It's horrible to classify people for their creeds, for their God, for their status, for their existence, for their sexual orientation. Once I remember that, during a confession, when I confessed to my priest Don Marino that I didn't know anymore who was God, Don Marino intelligently let me understand something: "That being born here we call Him God; if we would have been born in India, God would have been Buddha, if in Asia, Allah and so on." To me it meant opening my mind in many other directions, where possible. God is God, and there are no differences. 

Martin to my point of view paid a lot because he didn't tell the truth: he started private crusades, he tried to define his territory, losing his territory, and his loving family, because he wanted to overprotect them because of this news; his friends, his workplace, his house. He had the terror of the repercussion of being a Jewish, when his chief was a Jewish, his friend a Jewish and they lived peacefully.

Martin created by himself this discrimination in big part thanks to his not-acceptance and no one was in grade of helping him because he refused every sorta of dialogue. There are Jewish completely atheists and they live well. 

A big role was played by Maria/Gertrud: realistically this woman set free his son Martin? To my point of view no, but caused a lot of mess in his existence with this revelation, a symptom, clearly that maybe she didn't know him too well. 

This book is extraordinary; it is erudite, you will learn a lot about DNA, RNA,  new methods for understanding our genetical past, but also, as said before the entire story of the birth of Jewish, and their history, plenty of fascination and sufferance; it is a book that describes pretty well the society where we live in; talk shows, fury, chaos; a society lost in words, without any conclusion and any kind of solution at the problems that there are in the world and close to us.

Highly recommended.

I thank Iperborea for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The New Censorship Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom by Joel Simon

The New Censorship Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom

by Joel Simon is a book written by the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists and published by Columbia University Press.

His long career as foreign correspondent in sensitive places of Earth, and his analysis of reporters in risking everyday of dying (most of them were killed) for reporting truth permits to the author, a real fighter of rights of journalists  to seeing if exists real freedom of expression in all countries, analyzing various realities and his personal history. You will see that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Very often journalists are under attack, or they are killed or they are treated very bad because they report what they see, what they are experiencing; a reporter remains a voice too dangerous for any government at every level.

But the main question is: what does a place without the free press mean? 

If censorship is a characteristic of a dictatorship, free press is direct sign of democracy of a democracy. We will also see that keeping internet a safe and free place where people can express their emotions, feelings, spreading news without to be blocking will also mean for free press that is marching always more close with this new way of communicating, the possibility of a real expression at various levels.

The book is clear, so it is for all readers and for all that people interested in discovering the difficult world of medias and freedom. 

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

  

The Butterfly Lion by Michael Morpurgo

It was an age that I wanted to read a book by Michael Morpurgo

but for a reason or another I hadn't never found a copy. I found a children's book written by him at the second-hand bookshop of Umbertide. The title, The Butterfly Lion. I finished this children's book in 2 hours or so.

The story is absolutely fascinating.

Written on 1996, this one is the story of a friendship between a kid and a white lion, a rarity, but sometimes it happens. 

Modern times: a boy decides of going away from the horrible school where his parents put him.

Walking in the countryside he meets a big house with an old lady. She asks him if he wants to come on in, offering him a lot of scones and various cup of teas. They start to talk and the story is this one. 

Bertie lived in Africa, we are at the beginning of the 1900s and once he discovered a mother lion with his little one, completely white. Once returned home he tells the story to his parents but no one believe him. Then, the tragedy: the white little lion becomes orphan because his dad killed the mother. Bertie, meeting again the little lion asks to his father if he can keep him home. All the family accept. That little lion is nice, he is not violent and he grows up  peacefully, till the day that the parents of Bertie decide of selling it to the owner of a french circus. They could not keep a lion forever. They become big animals.

For Bertie is a real shock, but the promise is great: once he would have found him again and they would have been reunited.

From Africa, Bertie affords in the UK for studying. He wouldn't want to study too distantly but after all he will be more close to his white lion. 

He grows up with close to him another friend, who later would have become his wife; at first, played together, then when in the teen-age age they not understood that they loved each other; they were separated by war, and only later their reunion and the discovery of the white lion.

The end if wonderful; I do strongly believe in these magical meetings.

It's a children's book written incredibly well, with great love, passion and I adored it.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Perché comincio dalla Fine by Ginevra Lamberti

I lost a lot of people during these past years. With this spirit I asked to reading Perché comincio dalla Fine

by Ginevra Lamberti published by Marsilio.

This one is a real dark and lucid analysis of the situation paradoxically lived by living ones: finding answers for the other world thanks to a miriad of opportunities that the market of the sector offers. Ginevra's tale starts from old memories, remembrances of a lost time, and her real situation: the one of a girl without a place in the cemetery when she will pass away; honestly a house not searched spasmodically by anyone I guess.

This book is great because it takes in consideration all the voices of a sector that, if you don't know that, it's in expansion and try to offer all the time the best for the dead one.

The writer doesn't leave alone all the creatives who treated death in various measure and moments of their existence.

Beauty, strong, absolutely very well written.

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Le livre de Decisions De Bourdieu au Swot, 50 modeles a appliquer pour mieux reflechir by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler translated by Amelie de Maupeou and adapted in french by Mathieu Jehanno

Le Livre de Decisions De Bourdieu au Swot, 50 modeles a appliquer pour mieux reflechir by Mikael Krogerus

and Roman Tschappeler translated by Amelie de Maupeou and adapted in french by Mathieu Jehanno is a great self-help book that wants, through many pshychologicals and not only models to trying to suggest to you the best way for taking decisions. Big decisions, but also little decisions.

We know all that most of us are procrastinators, that sometimes we don't launch ourselves in new adventures and decisions and that sometimes we are like trapped in a sort of multiples, different decisions that create confusion in our minds; because our interests, because our hobbies, we can't focus with attention on the important things of the existence.

Eisenhower, loved to saying that "les choses urgentes sont rarement importantes, et les choses importantes sont rarement urgentes", the urgent choices are rarely important, and the important choices are rarely urgents.

Men focus mainly on two kind of choices: urgent and importants.

Seeing and analyzing various methods and helped also by important tools in grade to clarify in your mind (this book contains pages where you will write down your priorities) choosing should become more simple and your mind more vivid and motivated.

Following the method of Warren Buffett you can write down a list of priorities that need to be done today trying to see how it works, starting from the first one. 

SWOT analyzes not just projects but also their Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. 

Obviously when a person is close to a dilemma it's also important, remark the authors to trying to understand what is your most important quality. Knowing yourself is a great method for going on well in life, taking the best choices for you.

The example in the book the one of a marathon. A person not too much trained can't think of running a marathon.It's too long. Maybe it would be better to thinking of running for 30 minutes everyday. 

It's important to control our thughts. 

The Talmud says: 

Surveille tes pensées, car elles deviennent tes mots.

Surveille tes mots, car ils deviennent tes actions.

Surveille tes actions, car elles deviennent tes habitudes.

Surveille tes habitudes, car elles deviennent ton caractère.

Surveille ton caractère, car il devient ton destin.

When our choices are important and our expectations big there is the big risk that they won't work and so Barry Schwarts recommends to focus on a choice. When you go to a restaurant, tries to focus on a certain dish. It would be better and so on. 

Profusion when ideas not too clears, add the authors create a lot of confusion.

This book is pretty long, I received a long extract, but for every voice of the existence, from cars to trips and much much more you will receive tips, suggestions and how to take the best decision.

Surely a great book for chronicle unsecure people!

I thank Editions Leduc for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Antidemocracy in America Truth, Power, and the Republic at Risk edited by Eric Klinenberg, Caitlin Zaloom and Sharon Marcus

I start to be a fan of Public Books. The second book I just finished to read is Antidemocracy in America

Truth, Power, and the Republic at Risk edited by Eric Klinenberg, Caitlin Zaloom and Sharon Marcus and published by Columbia University Press it is a great account of what it is going on these years in the USA.

Where to start? It's a beautiful book, and what I read created me a great sufferance. 

President Trump is the son of these times; populistic times. Citizens can't find answer in the establishment and the so-called "elite" and so they vote for a populist candidate. Because of wrong choices made in the past by other politicians. 

Trump wouldn't never been elected if times would have been different, more happy, cheerful and plenty of good answers. 

Three wives,so a divorced man, when in the past candidates couldn't run anymore for the Presidency if they had cheated their wife also once, strong opinions regarding women, sex and power, Trump received anyway wagons of votes also from women. 

Being business man, he acts as a business man also in office; and he has a a great ego. 

President Trump is a weird creature, in grade of capturing the votes of suprematists, white ones, people anti-semitic and racists.

Not only: his policy of anti-immigration has caused a lot of chaos and sufferance, let's think at all that children divided maybe forever by their families, or the ban established against some countries considered nests of terrorists.

His position regarding foreign policy remains embarassing, like also what he is creating everyday in the domesticity of his country.

Knowledge and education for Trump are not important and his opinion of public schools remain poor as remarked; Trump doesn't think that environment, climate change are priorities. He doesn't mind of scientists, he doesn't appreciate who, in various fields of knowledge try in a way or in another to bettering this world.

His lies, admit contributors in this book are many: media are constantly telling lies, everything is wrong; the truth just the one he tells to his electorate.

Twitter became with the time the most crucial instrument of communication of the President, more important than his briefings with reporters. 

The ObamaCare, a first temptative of a different health system, more human has been deleted. 

Teaching, remarks in a chapter a contributor is becoming always more difficult in the age of Trumpism, because it's difficult to explain rationally what it is going on at various levels.

The country wanted by President Trump is extremely divided; people voted him in search of answers, because too unsecure of their future. This one is the certainty but who knows if all these people found answers or their personal situation is the same one of three years ago. 

In the USA there is a heavy air. Old phantoms that people thought buried forever as anti-semitism, are re-starting to take some shape. You will read a vivid analysis of the situation starting from the 1930s.

Racism is incresead, thanks to the messages spread by the President and the anxiety regarding the wall he wants to build. 

The USA remains a country of immigrations. Realistically the only real citizens of the USA and entire America were the Native Americans ones. Killed and dilaniated by the arrival of Europeans.

A beautiful book this one divided in three sections: Part I. The crisis: where we are. Part II. The Collapse: How We Got Here. Part III. The Solutions: What We Can Do.

Written with extreme clarity, Antidemocracy in America is for everyone, for understanding the moment, but also the past; and for trying to see a different future where people will be more united.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Shannon Eizenda New Executive Director of the Gubbio Project

Shannon Eizenda is the new

Executive Director of the Gubbio Project. Founded by Fr. Louie Vitale on 2004, the charity assist the homeless located in the area of Tenderloin, a place pretty poor of the city of San Francisco.

Eizenda has experience leading collaborative teams as director of academic programs of a progressive multi-religious, justice centered seminary; she has experience working with street-folks because she worked in a health center focusing in particular on mental problems. Third, she is an experienced fundraiser. Douglas Pierce from the Board Chair of the Gubbio admits that he is thrilled at the chance of working with her.

At the same time Shannon introducing herself to the community of the Gubbio Project remarks that "The Gubbio exists as a hope in a time of crisis - Hope in another way for us to be together." Eizenda adds that "We are living in unprecedent times pf dramatic inequity and injustice."

The final words are for donors and supporters: "There is much to be done as we work towards a more loving and inclusive world and we cannot do it without you."

To Shannon Eizenda, all the staff and guests of the Gubbio Project a big hug from Gubbio.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Questione di Chimica by Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim

Questione di Chimica

by Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim is an electrifying new book published by Marsilio. Have you ever seen The Big Bang Theory? Right: the approach of this young chemist is this one: absolutely wonderful and unique in the genre! This book can be read pretty quickly but at the same time will leave you more conscious of the world where we live in and what happen in our daily life. While I was reading it I thought at the big difference that there is when someone is prepared in the topic, and others are not. You can't never appreciate a topic like physics of chemistry if, at school you don't meet a "divulgative brain." Mai Thi is all this; starting from his daily life, her companion, her best friend Christine, analyzes in detail what happen in a day or more seen and read with the brain of a chemist.

Reading this book it was clear to me that this past summer I left my smartphone in areas of the house too much warm sometimes for example. Many years ago my private english teacher of the high school, I met her at the supermarket sounded pretty scared: "Oh no, not this one and neither the other one. I can't buy these toothpastes. Why, I replied? No sure you, I have some favorite brands and in general without too much thinking I put them in the basket.

"They contain a mortal substance. It causes cancer," she answered me back.

I was deadly scared at the idea. I clean my teeth, 5 times per day. Bloody hell, I thought I will die pretty soon. In this book I found a good explanation and I am reassured that I shouldn't die for any mortal illness caused by toothpaste.

Substantially Mai Thi's family 8s largely composed by chemists and Mai Thi  started to appreciating chemistry since she was little and her dad started to explaining her the world seen and read with his eyes. It's a creative world, where there are little little particles that can be seen just in lab.

Once completed her studies and a master at the Harvard University located in Cambridge, Massachusetts Mai Thi decided of opening a YouTube channel for speaking something about The Secret Life of Scientists. She thinks that it's important to let know to everyone how beauty chemistry is. According to her there are too many false myths that must be corrected regarding this job and people working in the field.

I always say that we live in a world populated by chemistry, physics, math and geometry.

With the eyes of a chemist, Mai Thi will guide you in a fascinating trip, with experiments that you can repeat at home, speaking about what happen everyday in our existence, and our interactions with the most common tools, substances of our daily life.

In a divulgative way Mai Thi teach to all of us chemistry, entering in details in the various segments she analyzes in the chapter taken in consideration, so she will introduce us atoms and the world surrounding them; or what happen in our mouth when we eat and at our teeth in particular; but she will also explain us what happen chemically to food and ingredients like coffee, chocolate, telling us what makes the difference in the various fats and why some of them are more nocive than other ones. Not only; water, smartphone, name a daily activity. It's here!

I would suggest this book to everyone but in particular at students and teachers as well. 

I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book composed by a lot of particles as my body, my keyboard and the entire world surrounding me.

Anna Maria Polidori