Lethal Weapons by Geoffrey C. Harrison and Thomas F. Scott

Lethal Weapons is another wonderful scholastic book written by Geoffrey C. Harrison and Thomas F. Scott and published by Norwood House Press.

I am so sorry that this one is their latest book because I am a passionate of the History of the USA and I loved to read all these books so badly.

From Church and State, passing through New Americans and The Fight for Freedom these authors have given a big coverage to the most important events and problematic of the USA.

Being italian I am a learner and I appreciated this Historic Shower so badly.

In this book there will be a primary important question to debate students and teachers together in a loyal confrontation: is it OK, correct, civil in a country like the USA the right to build an arsenal at home with great simplicity for everyone? Also for people with some psychological problematic?
Is it fair to buy every kind of guns with simplicity or a regulations should be necessary? And how strong is American Constitution regarding self-defense?

I didn't know at all the story of guns and American regulations and I found it interesting.

In recent years an alarming escalation of people protagonists of terrible murders in particular in their ex-schools or churches and in general in public places left in complete consternation, in a mute, shocked pain familiars of victims and public opinion.

From 17th Century Catholic King James II tried all his best to take guns away from Protestants but without any success.
In the Bill of Rights the right to bear, possess, use arms is a priority like also in the second  Emendment of the Constitution: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Of course that ones were the old times. No one of the Founding Fathers knew what would have happened to the USA in a remote future and that's why exist the Supreme Court able to give a final word and able also to change the Constitution.

In 1800s every State regulated the possibility of bearing arms for privates.

The discussion of bearing arms is not recent history. As you will read in the book it's old.

In 1920 during the years of Prohibition arms bought by mail.

The Gun Control Act in 1968 arrived after three terrible departures.
It was the year Robert Kennedy and Rev.Martin Luther King were killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated at Dallas on Nov 22 1963. The US citizens had lost their idols in a big, certain spiral of hate, a spiral of guns as well. These three men were fighting for bettering the world and were assassinated.

Th Gun Control Act was strong. No one could sell a gun at a person if convicted of a felony, a fugitive from justice, a known drug addicted, someone who had been found by a court to be mentally impaired, an illegal immigrant, someone who had been dishonorably discharged from the military, anyone under a restraining order, anyone who had been convicted for domestic violence.

In 1981 another fact: Ronald Reagan survived an assassination but one of his men Mr. Brady remained paralyzed. The wife of Brady became a fighter of the American gun control movement.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act law signed by Clinton in 1993.

President Obama fought with all himself for trying to stop these absurd massive murders trying to change something in the gun legislation.

I highly suggest this book to everyone. Common readers, of course teachers and students and I guess that the debates will be pretty stimulating.


I thank NetGalley and Norwood House Press for this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

101 Things you Should do Before Going to Heaven by David Bordon and Tom Winters

I can't believe it's possible.
It's a dream that becomes true: I can review 101 Things you Should do Before Going to Heaven. Published by FaithWords, Hachette Group, written by David Bordon and Tom Winters at first in 2006 and as an eBook in 2008, the book has been re-published this past 2016.

I lived a sort of Odyssey with this book in digital format.
I downloaded it through NetGalley but for some reasons the file didn't work.
I tried to contact the publishing house, and NetGalley.
They sorted out the problem. When I could download the file unfortunately a big snow kept me away from my daily routine and from reading. I have dial-up so when I download eBooks I must go somewhere else.

The file in the while expired. Later I joined FaithWords. It's a book bloggers program and I re-discovered this book. I asked a copy and a beautiful hardcover book is close to me while I am writing this review. I read it all last night.

So: we all know that we live for a certain time but our life won't be endless. One day, let's hope the more possible distant moment, we will die.

In this while God sent Us here because we are necessary in this precise moment to the world and also at the same time because of course we must live a plenty life.

We all know how absorbing, and sad, let me also add this word can be life. It appears at first a life plenty of good things but then in synthesis, what will remain if we don't cultivate ourselves, our friends, people who care the most for us?

This book will suggest you 101 things to do before well yes, going to Heaven where we will meet God.

What exactly?

I can tell you that my dad before he went to Heaven planted a lot of trees. He was a tree-lovers and he loved fruits. So he planted a lot of fruits trees, apple trees in particular. He loved good wine, and he loved to make homemade wine. He also loved to be social and he loved to be surrounded by many friends. He planted seeds of friendship and seeds of wisdom.

Of course options are myriads in this book, - we are all different - from baking real bread, great connection with God, passing through to a road trip all alone to do once in a while for re-discover old roads and our self. In the USA it's famous and typical the Route 66 but I guess there are plenty of choices. I remember the movie Elizabethtown and the protagonist Drew. He launched himself thanks also to the tips and the scrapbook donated him by his girlfriend in a trip in the nowhere after the death of his dad for re-discovering his self in solitude, and a State, the Kentucky one that he didn't know very well living in California.

Contact with nature is important so if you can visit the Yosemite Park   for seeing sequoias once in your life-time it would be wonderful.
And before going to Heaven why not visiting one of the seven Wonders of this world?
We should stop to act our age, we should start to cultivate interests, re-start to studying for better ourselves, reading classics, listening to music, meditate, bless and pray for an enemy, enjoy a dawn, celebrate little things, dancing in the rain :-) help other people, remember our life-story also writing it down, rediscover an old friendship. I can tell you that sometimes it is true: we leave people behind, also people who have been very nice and close to us because of life and sometimes it's too late for recuperate because that person can be dead. It happened to me and then you ask to yourself a lot of questions.
Sometimes try to send some note to your friends but without to add any signature. To someone you love for let her/him know that you are thinking of him/her.
Spend sometime to a cemetery for a hi! to all the people who lived before us and made their own History little or big that it was. Dead people appreciate it a lot.
After my dad's departure it's difficult that I avoid a day without to visit the little cemetery of our countryside. A little Spoon River, where there are most of our neighbors and friends, each of them with  characteristics and passions and human treats unique in their genre.
It's not a scaring place a cemetery but a place of peace.
Once, when a neighbor killed herself I was devastated and I was sick really sick for what happened for more than a year and half. I remember dad said me: "Anna, cemeteries can't be scaring but relaxing places. They tell the story of our past, and our local history. I love to visit them. Try to enjoy the past of our people. Try to enjoy our past people."

Let's try also to speak well of other people, to plant some herbs for eating better, to plant also some new seeds of friendship cultivating also friends we have so that this garden of friendship will become always more populated, diversified, colored and beautiful.

If you will die tomorrow, or today how your dear ones will remember you?
In my case there would be a lot of pieces I posted online. My blog of Johnny Depp, my book blog alfemminile, Twitter, Facebook, my real life. My news printed in our regional newsmagazine. I am a reporter.

I don't know if people would be devastated if I would die.
Anyway, let's try to leave something in this world of very positive so that people will remember us forever.
A man never dies if remembered by people.
Mainly, what we should all do is to try to be happy, re-discovering our inner child and trying to do also silly things, because it's in this dimension, the dimension of our real self that  God love us the most.
He sent us in fact at first on this Earth with a pure soul.

So:Enjoy the Trip, enjoy the Road, enjoy what you and your soul will learn in this Life.

And always, always: May God Bless US All.

I thank NetGalley, Hachette and FaithWords for this book!


Anna Maria Polidori

Teddy and Me Confessions of a Service Human by Michael Savage (and Teddy)

Teddy and Me Confessions of  a Service Human the latest book by Michael Savage. It will be released by Center Street Hachette Book Group this February 7th. In this book the entertainer will focus his attention on his relationship with Teddy, his beloved little dog.

You mustn't wait a book like the one written by John Grogan: it's not another Marley&Me but reflections of the story of the reporter and his canine friend with many private human facts and with a lot of doggy anecdotes.
The book is a photographic very colored celebration  of Michael Savage's life with his beloved Teddy with a lot of pictures of their daily life. Teddy is very trendy: surely he has the most aggressive, strong hair cut of the Planet.
Mr.Savage loves to treat him in the best possible way and their life as also explain the author, symbiotic.

Teddy is the dog of the reporter from a long time and in the book Savage will tell to the readers also the experiences he shared with other past family dogs adding that he has always been surrounded by dogs,  male dogs. He has had just a female dog and the story of this Collie is very beauty and moving.

I loved to read of his experience with his unlucky brother and the reason why he became who he is right now. I didn't know Mr Savage and his personal story being italian but I could see reading this book that there was real sufferance in the life of this man.

I also loved the anecdotes he shared of his family when during his childhood when he lived in the Bronx, NYC smiling guests arrived uninvited at his house for a chat with his parents. In our corner of the world it still happens all the time and it's a symptom of freedom according to my point of view.

Many wonderful and tender pictures of the reporter with his beloved pet.

I would have avoided to add in the book the pictures of his previous book Government Zero and policy. This one a book dedicated to a dog and his owner. Policy and polemics should be kept away.

I suggest this book to everyone but in particular of course to all dog lovers of this Planet. You will find it cute.

I thank Hachette for the review copy they sent me of this book.



Anna Maria Polidori

Thanks Hachette Book Group for this package plenty of beautiful books!

Time ago I joined Faith Words for reviewing their books.

 http://www.faithwords.com/bloggers.html

Hachette is very generous. They send real copies of books to the reviewers. 
I decided to start with these sixth ones.
 


Hachette asked me to read for first is: No Limits by John C.Maxwell because it will be published very soon. This month.








Then I choose to read also Obama's Legacy by Michael Days in which we will see all the goals accomplished by President Obama in many fields.


 
 I picked up two books by Michael Savage: Government Zero and Teddy and Me. In the first case the book is about Islamic terrorism.

The second one more relaxing will let us see a different face of Mr Savage: the one of a pet's owner of a dog called: Teddy in a beautiful celebrating book.

I fell in love for the cover of this omnibus edition: Finding Father Christmas and Engaging Father Christmas by Robin Jones Gunn. Sometimes it's great to relax our mind with a sunny reading.

The book I wanted the most -there is a story behind and I will tell you all- and I still can't believe possible I received and I am  reading right now it  is 101 Things to do Before Going to Heaven!

My dad was dead from a few days I think when 101 Things to Do Before going to Heaven listed on NetGalley. Beautiful relaxing cover, I thought: I want to read it. It must be precious.


I requested it, I was approved, and then one day I went to a bar and downloaded the file - because here we still have dial-up - returned home and ops, discovered that it didn't work.
I wrote to NetGalley. Problem was sorted out. I could have downloaded again the eBook, but nothing to do.
This time problem was snow. A heavy snow storm cut out most of us from the world for some while.
It was also very cold and the last thing you wanted to do was reading.

When I tried again to download the file, just for one day, the file expired.

 I re-wrote to the publishing house, tried to search for the authors. Then I joined Faith Words and here I am with my real copy of  this book!



 Many thanks again Hachette. Books very appreciated and all beautiful!

And thanks also to Simone, Chicco and Irene! 



Anna Maria Polidori

Church and State by Geoffrey C. Harrison and Thomas F. Scott

In Church and State  by Geoffrey C. Harrison and Thomas F. Scott published by Norwood House Press, a scholastic book very well done for sure, it is treated the relationship between Church and State in the USA for a healthy debate between students.

It is a story old something like 400 years this one of religion and its relationship with State.

At first as also explained in the book, people emigrated to the USA for trying to escape the oppression they found in their own places, also a religious oppression, although as we have seen some traditions like the one of killing potential witches imported also in the most modern and apparently opened USA.

Surely most of these people, Calvinist, protestants, but also Irish catholic were very religious.

It was after the Declaration of Independence that was established it was better to keep separated Church and State.

At the same time during 1700 Thomas Paine a religious writer started to express his opinion. Paine thought that large religions too interested in gaining power and money while religion had to be primarily a relationship established by an individual with God.

There is to say that when Constitution and Bill of Rights created there was a great debate regarding religion.

The word God mentioned just once.

The creators of the Declaration of Independence were Deists.
They believed in God but they didn't give Him all the powers a religion wants to give Him.
They also didn't believe at the miracles told in the Bible.

Deists believed in the laws of nature for explain the existence of God.
Deism was a movement started in Europe and successful in particular in the upper classes of the Old and New Continent.

Anyway the founding fathers talked of religion. Some groups mainly christian would have wanted to re-create the European atmosphere.

At the same time there was a big problem: the arrival of pirates.

The USA joined the Treaty of Tripoli where it was recognized that the US was not a Christian land and whoever wanted to join, accepted.

A problem was given at the USA by Mormons a religion accepted polygamy.

In 1900 the discovery of entertainment for Americans, and it meant at first censorship.

The Supreme Court at some point declared that no law created that favors one religion over another.

There was also a discussion for keeping out religion from public schools.

In 1971 it was permitted to continue to teach religious ideas but without any kind of educational purpose.

In 2008 when Barack Obama was elected it was a religious story at first.
He grew up in a home with another religion, the muslin one and invited to be opened to all religions. Obama became Christian when adult.

Obama accused also to be a Muslin because he  stayed in Indonesia one of the largest Muslin's country.

Other people didn't like how he lived the Christian religion.

Catholic people never reached the presidency of the USA apart for the case of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

A nation under God is what the USA is.

I would want to remark the beauty that there is in every speech of American President. In general, not important if Democrat or Republican, he will always add at the end but also during the speech May God Bless America, May God Bless US, and this is according to my point of view very important.

In the American dollars there is written: "In God We Trust."

There is an Entity recognized superior at the most powerful man of the world, and it says a lot.

The new steps to reach: gay marriage, the stem cell research and the possibility of dying as people wants to die.



I thank NetGalley and Norwood House Press


Anna Maria Polidori

Packed Lunch hacks to squeeze more nutrients into your day by Becky Alexander; Michelle Lake

I read Packed Lunch hacks to squeeze more nutrients into your day by Becky Alexander; Michelle Lake published by Nourish this past Feb 14th while I was waiting for the arrival of a friend also very interested and intrigued about this book because it's indispensable to bring good food from home to work but the question is: what and how much? And let's also add something else: sometimes we lack in fantasy, we are repetitive.

If these problems are also your problems don't worry because the sunny authors of this book will explain you what and how you should eat for breakfast, lunch and the various part of the day, what to avoid because we could fall in sleeping mood in case and what to eat preferably. What it gives good energy and what it gives bad energy. Starting of course from good ingredients.

Fantasy talking of recipes in this cook book  great and you feel a yummy! sensation while you will read it.

I love all the breakfast recipes because I am a fruit lovers and also the various soups, salads and chicken recipes.

With this cookbook no more boring lunch at work from home, no more lack of fantasy, but only joy, appreciation and the certainty of a great moment everyday to dedicate at food.

Highly recommended for sure!

I thank NetGalley and Nourish for this book.



Anna Maria Polidori

Navigating Life with Epilepsy by David C Spencer

Navigating Life with Epilepsy by David C Spencer and published last Jan First by Oxford University Press is one of the most complete, informative book I read on the topic and it is absolutely a gem.

It offers what you desire to know about an illness able to discriminate patients per centuries.

Epilepsy is very diversified and there are a myriad of different typologies of this illness.

Some of them can be cured simply with medications although medicines can bring with them of course their own collateral effects more psychological than physicals, being in most cases real drugs.

There are certain kind of epilepsy that must be treated pretty differently...

The book will define the illness, the symptoms of the patients and much more.

Mr Spencer won't avoid to inform the reader of the latest treatments, starting from the illness that can affect children and passing through the adult age, examining all the aspects of this illness including relationships, work.

It's one of the best reading if you are interested to discover much more about this illness.


Highly recommended.


Anna Maria Polidori