Books

Book Watch On My Night Table

September 1, 2021 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

Reading “The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70 – 1492” by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein while wearing the Hamilton 6274 Dual Time Traveler.

“In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.”

Book Watch On My Night Table

August 25, 2021 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

Reading Military Mavericks: Extraordinary Men in Battle by David Rooney while wearing the Ball Engineer III, which has the best lume in the known universe.

“What makes a maverick? Is it simply an unorthodox mind? Or is it more than that – a flagrant disregard for convention? Is there a place for the maverick in a disciplined military hierarchy? If so, is the military maverick more likely to win, or lose, a battle?

Book Watch On My Night Table

August 18, 2021 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

Reading Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey while wearing the Hamilton Ventura, AKA the Elvis watch.

“The renowned biographer’s definitive portrait of a literary titan.

“Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth’s personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene.

Book Watch On My Night Table

August 4, 2021 by Robert J. Avrech 1 Comment

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang

“The New York Times bestselling account of one of history’s most brutal — and forgotten — massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China’s capital city on the eve of World War II.

“In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese.

“Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang’s classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.”

While reading the late Iris Chang’s harrowing account of Japanese barbarism during World War II, I wore the Hong Kong manufactured Perpetual SC – 103. One of the best buys in the watch world.

Book Watch On My Night Table

July 21, 2021 by Robert J. Avrech Leave a Comment

“This is a grim, tough, powerful, and beautiful book, the memoir of a genuine heroine, whose struggle against the calamities that beset her — beginning with the wounds inflicted by a remote coldhearted father and a pathetically helpless mother and ending with the anguish of a wrecked marriage, the mother’s suicide, and the author’s own fatal illness — was waged with enormous intelligence and fortitude, and even with flair. At the heart of the book — and depicted with pitiless candor — is the tortuous bond of love between mother and daughter. That at the end of her brief life, Janet Hobhouse could transform her suffering into a confession so precise and evocative and singularly unselfpitying, so strangely full of verve, strikes me as a considerable moral as well as literary achievement.”
— Philip Roth (who had an affair with Hobhouse and appears as a character in the book.)

The Ophion 786 Velos is one of the most beautiful and reliable watches in my collection. It is also, by the insane standards of high horology, reasonably priced.