Books on my Night Table

Book and Watch On My Night Table

October 14, 2020 by Robert J. Avrech 4 Comments

The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

“The inaugural book in the Kingsbridge series, The Pillars of the Earth, has sold over 27 million copies worldwide. So, Ken Follett knows what he’s doing, but no one would blame him for blinking twice at the prospect of penning the prequel. The Evening and the Morning proves he has nerves of steel. Set at the tail end of the Dark Ages when England was being pinched by the Vikings and the Welsh, it mines the growing pains of a budding legal system, one that wouldn’t only benefit the ruling class and corrupt clergymen. It’s also a star-crossed love story involving a humble boatbuilder and Norman noblewoman, two heroes whose journey provides the emotional center of an otherwise brutal, and yet beautiful, tale. Fans of Follett will certainly relish this very worthy addition to a beloved oeuvre, but it will also attract new admirers like yours truly, who initially balked at the 928 page count and then was disappointed that The Evening and the Morning didn’t stretch on to the afternoon.” —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review

Book On My Night Table

August 26, 2020 by Robert J. Avrech 2 Comments

“This was supposed to be a very different book. Five years ago, Jessica Simpson was approached to write a motivational guide to living your best life. She walked away from the offer, and nobody understood why. The truth is that she didn’t want to lie.

“Jessica couldn’t be authentic with her readers if she wasn’t fully honest with herself first.

Book(s) On My Night Table

July 22, 2020 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

Rush: Revolution, Madness, And Benjamin Rush, The Visionary Doctor Who Became A Founding Father
By Stephen Fried

“By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general.

And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. As the new republic coalesced, he became a visionary writer and reformer; a medical pioneer whose insights and reforms revolutionized the treatment of mental illness; an opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender; an adviser to, and often the physician of, America’s first leaders; and “the American Hippocrates.”

Rush reveals his singular life and towering legacy, installing him in the pantheon of our wisest and boldest Founding Fathers.”

The watch is a stainless steel Cartier Pasha

Book(s) On My Night Table

July 1, 2020 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier

Our friend, Abigail Shrier, was scheduled to be the featured speaker at the 2020 Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture. Unfortunately, the Chinese-Wuhan Virus forced us to cancel the annual event. But as soon as we can reschedule, Abigail is standing by as our speaker.

Abigail writes Op-Ed pieces for the Wall Street Journal which are notable for their ability to cut through the vapor of lies and misinformation that passes for elite culture and drill down to foundational truths.

For the past year or so Abigail has been writing and researching her book about the transgender movement, sweeping like prairie fire, through the world of adolescent girls. This new social gospel is spread through social media and preached by radical leftist activists in the public school systems, men and women who seek to erase biology, male and female, and destroy the nuclear family.

I urge everyone to read Abigail’s book. And if you have children in the public school system in California, be warned, your children are being indoctrinated by fanatic radicals cleverly using the smoke screen of anti-bullying programs for their destructive secular religion.

From the publisher:

Until just a few years ago, gender dysphoria—severe discomfort in one’s biological sex—was vanishingly rare. It was typically found in less than .01 percent of the population, emerged in early childhood, and afflicted males almost exclusively.

But today whole groups of female friends in colleges, high schools, and even middle schools across the country are coming out as “transgender.” These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.”

Unsuspecting parents are awakening to find their daughters in thrall to hip trans YouTube stars and “gender-affirming” educators and therapists who push life-changing interventions on young girls—including medically unnecessary double mastectomies and puberty blockers that can cause permanent infertility.

Abigail Shrier, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, has dug deep into the trans epidemic, talking to the girls, their agonized parents, and the counselors and doctors who enable gender transitions, as well as to “detransitioners”—young women who bitterly regret what they have done to themselves.

Coming out as transgender immediately boosts these girls’ social status, Shrier finds, but once they take the first steps of transition, it is not easy to walk back. She offers urgently needed advice about how parents can protect their daughters.

A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.

Order here.

The watch is a Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso, designed in 1931, an Art Deco masterpiece.

Books On My Night Table

May 20, 2020 by Robert J. Avrech 2 Comments

Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

From Amazon:

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.