When Einstein Visited Japan

“On the exquisiteness of the Japanese woman, this flower-like creature—I have also remained reticent; for here the common mortal must cede the word to the poet.”

Read more here...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/albert-einstein-visited-japan-180968737/

Comforting Myths

"By the standards of the European industrial world, we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe."

Read full article here...

 https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/comforting-myths/

From Memory to Myth: The Adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor

The daring exploits and beguiling charm of the 20th century’s greatest travel writer...

https://www.weeklystandard.com/dominic-green/from-memory-to-myth-the-adventures-of-patrick-leigh-fermor

The Serial Killer as Marketing Genius

 An ode to a bygone era and one man's hunt for one of America's most elusive serial killers.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-serial-killer-as-a-marketing-genius

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

See more photos here.

RIP, definitely admired his unpopular views...

Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died Thursday at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He was 62.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.
He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion.
He also professed to have no regrets for a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking. “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me,”

A young Christopher Hitchens circa 1968, picketing at a non-union factory in his native England.

READ MORE HERE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/arts/christopher-hitchens-is-dead-at-62-obituary.html?pagewanted=all

ALSO WORTH CHECKING OUT...

Christopher Hitchens on The Daily Show: Sparring with Jon Stewart Over the Years...

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/Christopher-Hitchens-on-iThe-Daily-Showi-Sparring-with-Jon-Stewart-Over-the-Years

How and Why to Write

Margaret Atwood, Cambridge 1963.

Advice about writing that is actually helpful from some of this century's greatest authors...

 Excerpt: 
 
 James Baldwin
I don't know if I feel close to them, now. After a time you find, however, that your characters are lost to you, making it quite impossible for you to judge them. When you've finished a novel it means, "The train stops here, you have to get off here." You never get the book you wanted, you settle for the book you get. I've always felt that when a book ended there was something I didn't see, and usually when I remark the discovery it's too late to do anything about it.
It happens when you are right here at the table. The publication date is something else again. It's out of your hands, then. What happens here is that you realize that if you try to redo something, you may wreck everything else. But, if a book has brought you from one place to another, so that you see something you didn't see before, you've arrived at another point. This then is one's consolation, and you know that you must now proceed elsewhere.

Read more here:
http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/11/4/in-which-we-get-down-to-the-actual-writing.html

Steal This Book

"Steal This Book" is a legendary survival guide for those living on the fringes of society.  From creating fake ID's to "first aid for streetfighters" this book covers many topics. 

Read more of this book here... 
http://www.tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html#2.12.11

Also here's a PDF version of another controversial book entitled The Anarchist's Cookbook, both are very interesting reads, enjoy!

The Next 100 Years by George Friedman

"Conventional analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination. It imagines passing clouds to be permanent and is blind to powerful, long term shifts taking place in full view of the world." - George Friedman

Fascinating insight into the future of America, Mexico, Japan, Turkey, China and Brazil. If you're interested in the shape of things to come...this is a must watch....
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIwZsbBXpNQ&feature=channel

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmzRSUSoShI&NR=1

Read more:

In his book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future -- offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the 21st century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.

The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era—with changes in store, including:

• The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude—replaced by a second full-blown Cold War with Russia.
• China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
• A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Far East, but armies will be much smaller and wars less deadly.
• Technology will focus on space—both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
• The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.

Read more...
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/08/power-china-world-japan-poland

6,557 Miles To Nowhere

Another exceptional article by Chuck Klosterman...

Death is part of life. Generally, it’s the shortest part of life, usually occurring near the end. However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars; sometimes rock stars don’t start living until they die. I want to understand why that is. I want to find out why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing. I want to find out why plane crashes and drug overdoses and shotgun suicides turn longhaired guitar players into messianic prophets. I want to walk the blood-soaked streets of rock’n’roll and chat with the survivors as they writhe in the gutter. This is my quest. Now, to do this, I will need a rental car...

Read more at:

http://www.spin.com/articles/6557-miles-nowhere

Ingrid Betancourt Details Kidnapping In New Book

A remarkable story of perseverance in the face of hell.
Ingrid Betancourt, a dual French-Colombian national, was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in February 2002 while campaigning for president and was held captive for six years. She is now the author of "Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle"
Excerpt:

"And so, she says, the book "is not chronological, it is emotional." But certain dates are seared in her brain. Like the day when she discovered, from reading a scrap of newspaper wrapped around a cabbage, that her beloved father, Gabriel Betancourt, had died, a year after her capture. Before she left on the trip that led to her capture, she had asked him – he was ill – to hold on, if anything happened to her.
And of course there was the pain of separation from her mother, Yolanda, who called into a radio station nearly every day to broadcast messages to her, and from her two children, Lorenzo and Melanie, who were 13 and 16 when she was abducted."
Read more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/ingrid-betancourt-details_n_735673.html