Amidst the myriad compilations of famous and notable people, “100 Extraordinary Stories for Courageous Girls” stands out in that it highlights specifically women of faith. This includes some women who were not necessarily praiseworthy but who nevertheless provide valuable lessons through their actions. One page is dedicated to each of the one hundred women portrayed alphabetically, alongside which is an illustration of them, and this setup is very advantageous for being brief and for possibly reading this in a devotional style, focusing on one woman per day. The women include Biblical characters as well as historical figures and a few contemporary ones. The Biblical women’s stories include the relevant Scriptures, and all of the stories end with a moral message related to the Bible along with a Scripture quotation. Not all of the stories have happy endings; some of the women were martyred for their faith, and although the author mentions that some were tortured, there are no graphic details. When mature words were used, such as “martyr” or “heresy”, a definition was given, and all of the Scripture references were quoted in easy-to-understand language. This is a beautiful collection of the lives of inspirational women of faith, some of whom have otherwise been lost to the annals of history, and a wonderful book for tweens and young teens.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and was under no obligation to post a review.

Okay, first of all, let me say that before this book I knew next to nothing about the Vietnam War. For the past three years, Kathryn J. Atwood has sent me each of her books to review. So, after I received this book in the mail, I dove right in, eager to fill in the gaps.

Reading “Courageous Women of the Vietnam War” has been quite an education for me. Not only did it recount how America was drawn in and why, it went all the way back to the roots of war. Reading the stories of the Vietnamese girls and women, who yearned for nothing more than to be free, touched my heart. They simply wanted to live in a world untouched by war. Then learning how many American women voluntarily went over as nurses and even journalists, was extraordinary. Not only did they set foot in an uncharted territory, they did it knowing that some back home did not support them or their sacrifices. But it was the story of Phan Thi Kim Phuc and her journey to freedom that has stayed with me, and inspired me to do further research. I really highly recommend all of Kathryn’s books, but especially this one, because the Vietnam War is an important part of history and it should never be forgotten. 

Despite being on opposite sides, the instant attraction between Francesca and Lute is strong. They see no way around the circumstances until danger and death make them see the true strength of their love. I really enjoyed this story and recommend it.

 Max is a determined guy. The son of an impoverished, immigrant, single mother living in the war zone that is the South Bronx he manages to survive and prosper getting scholarships to ivy league schools.

 

Before you know it he's pulling down the big bucks working for a private equity firm on Wall Street.

 

When his mother dies, Max experiences one of those "what's life all about" moments and an unlikely conversation with an Indian food cart owner sends him on a spiritual quest to the Himalayas.

 

Right about here, that would be page thirty, I'm about ready to abandon The Yoga of Max's Discontent. Though well-written and fast paced the opening is a cliché and do I really want to read the male version of Elizabeth Gilbert's specious Love, Eat, Pray?

 

However, author Karan Bajaj is Indian so maybe (I hope) his story will become more original once his protagonist reaches more familiar terrain.

 

It does.

 

Max's journey through the sub-continent searching for a guru to teach him the road to enlightenment is enhanced by memorable characters and stunning imagery. His internal journey to see "the unborn, un-aging, un-ailing, sorrowless, and deathless face-to-face" is fascinating.

 

Despite dealing with mystical concepts and practices, this reader never found it didactic though it might not appeal to those looking for romance and high-adventure.

 

As Max's travails increase and transcendence continues to elude him I actually became concerned with how Bajaj would end this novel.

 

Would the author renounce all his remarkable insight, seemingly authentic experience and intensive research to accommodate a Hollywood ending? Would the novel be bookended by clichés?

 

He doesn't. It isn't.

 

The ending is brilliant, appropriate, even inspiring and, I have to say, somewhat courageous on the part of the author.

 

There are books for different times of your life. The Yoga of Max's Discontent resonated for me, now.

 

 

This is a great addition to the mounting evidence that neoliberal economics is not scientific and not rational but only ideological, and that alternative economic approaches are both possible and viable. Indeed, that last term - "viable" - is the most striking quality of this book, because it puts forward very clearly and simply issues that ought to be addressed and credible policy options for doing that.

Murphy's theoretical assault on neoliberal economics is fairly brief and highly readable. There are plenty of other sources for anyone wanting to explore this further but that was not the case until recently. One I recently enjoyed was this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OVAROe3gW4

Indeed, a worldwide movement of economics students has emerged to challenge the dominance of neoliberal ideology in university economics departments:
http://www.isipe.net/open-letter/
"We, over 65 associations of economics students from over 30 different countries, believe it is time to reconsider the way economics is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place over the last couple of decades. This lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and research. It limits our ability to contend with the multidimensional challenges of the 21st century - from financial stability, to food security and climate change. The real world should be brought back into the classroom,..." A Guardian article has quoted one Manchester student protesting that doing an economics degree is like paying for a lobotomy.

Murphy rejects the simplified graphs in which classical and neoliberal economists plot pairs of economic variables like price and demand. Their lack of empirical validity is readily demonstrated. He deploys instead a multi factor tool that I think of as a spider's web diagramme (Google lets me down though so corrections welcome). After a while it becomes a bit tedious working through the detailed account of how this is to be interpreted but on the other hand it becomes so obvious that I found I could speed read a large chunk of the book without, I believe, missing anything. So I suggest that his tool is extremely intuitive and makes its points with surprising clarity.

A book like Pikkety's Capital gets its effect through brilliant analysis of data, while its policy proposals can seem something of a bolt-on that can be set to one side. By that I mean that one can accept the analysis without conceding that his proposals are the right ones. Murphy's book is explicitly written for people willing to accept his criticism of neoliberal economics. He says several times that he is not going to consume his limited space arguing with people incapable of change. However, what is surprisingly exciting is the range of specific policy proposals that are each capable of being implemented, in the UK, by a government of the left. In support of each he offers a very clear justification, something that is too often lacking in modern politics, where the noise and the spin of dishonest politicians and their media acolytes simply confuse without clarifying.

When I first bought this book, a few years back, it seemed hopelessly visionary. The political dominance of neoliberal thinking across the spectrum appeared insuperable. Late in 2015, I have suddenly been energised, as have so many others, with the prospect that the ideas in this book may now be taken up and argued for by a major political party with the real prospect of getting them implemented.

What began as an economic idea has now swept across government as a whole: we have got a class of politicians who think that the only useful function for the power that they hold is to dismantle the state they have been elected to govern while transferring as many of its functions as possible to unelected businesses that have bankrolled their path to power."p3

"No wonder we're in a mess. ... After all, why invest in businesses when something so much more attractive - the outsourced tax income stream of a government as anxious as possible to give it away - is waiting to be claimed... Not only are these [public] services now more costly because a profit margin has been or is being added into their cost structure, it can also be argued that their transfer into the private sector via outsourcing actually weakens the incentive for companies to invest in new technologies which might be useful to meet people's needs." p5