Captain's Wife by Abby Jane Morrell

Book Review - Five Stars 

Captain's Wife by Abby Jane Morrell

A remarkable memoir of sailing before the age of steam vessels, 1829-1831.

Excellently written, extremely informative and filled with thoughtful insightful philosophy. I loved the author’s remarkable observations and her extraordinary ability to paint pictures with her words. A worthwhile read.

Excerpts:

How wondrous are laws of nature, that the tree and plant should drink up the poisonous part of the air in the night, and breathe it out a balmy restorative in the morning!

The East India Company, whatever politicians may say about “monopoly” and “exclusive privileges”, has done more to make safe the navigation of eastern waters than all the world besides. Governments are not generally disposed to do much for the general interest, and our own has hardly made a chart for the navigator. I was mortified that in every country we visited, we sailed by charts of other nations, even leaving New York by an English chart. Nor had we any books on board written by our countrymen, giving particulars of these areas, although I understand one or two volumes have lately been issued upon this subject, but I have not seen them, and we had nothing of the kind when we sailed. It was to English books only we had recourse!

This was the era of naivety as to the earth's seemingly endless bounty:

The whale fisheries in all parts of the world, although they furnish no small part of man’s food yet there is no diminution of the stock. These great fish are no doubt diminished, but it is not in the power of man to destroy their race which, according to the best accounts, produce ten thousand, and even a million yearly, while millions of the cod are caught annually off the northern shores of America, without a diminution having ever been perceptible.

Our great mathematician, Dr. Bowditch (although considered greater in Europe than in America), performed many long voyages from the United States to India, and always having with him good officers, had leisure to go through those long and difficult calculations which have since laid the foundation of his fame. Every person at sea is constantly reminded of him, as his Navigator is on every officer’s table.

As eternity is beyond time, so are these subjects beyond those that lie in our pathway through life.

Theodore Roosevelt Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

 

Theodore Roosevelt Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was an outstanding, self motivated, determined, resolute, genuinely honest, unbiased, fair minded and an All-American icon.

Theodore grew up in New York City, then the shyster capital of the world entrenched in Tammany Hall political cronyism, and corruption where he quickly learned the lesson of what not to do in government. I loved this story of his learning experiences as he worked his way up from local government to state and federal step by step, building experience and gaining priceless knowledge using personal profiling from the bottom up to the presidency.

Excerpts:

He also gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went into a scientific career, I must definitely abandon all thought of the enjoyment that could accompany a money-making career, and must find my pleasures elsewhere.

My experience in the Police Department taught me that not a few of the worst tenement-houses were owned by wealthy individuals, who hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade the courts that it was “unconstitutional” to insist on the betterment of conditions. These business men and lawyers were very adroit in using a word with fine and noble associations to cloak their opposition to vitally necessary movements for industrial fair play and decency. They made it evident that they valued the Constitution, not as a help to righteousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became more set than ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers, judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the Constitution a fetish for the prevention of the work of social reform, for the prevention of work in the interest of those men, women, and children on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ freely every governmental agency.

Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.

My Life and Work by Henry Ford

Book Review - Five Stars

My Life and Work by Henry Ford

Henry Ford was a self-made man, philosophical thinker of exceptional intellect with self-motivated determination who strived for and achieved perfection. He considering his workers, and at the same time his perspective buyers. A true American icon.

I loved the book and the inspiring resoluteness of character...Henry Ford was a one of a kind phenomenon. A great must read book.

Excerpts:

“Russia will have to go to work,” but that does not describe the case. The fact is that poor Russia is at work, but her work counts for nothing. It is not free work. In the United States a workman works eight hours a day; in Russia, he works twelve to fourteen. In the United States, if a workman wishes to lay off a day or a week, and is able to afford it, there is nothing to prevent him. In Russia, under Sovietism, the workman goes to work whether he wants to or not. The freedom of the citizen has disappeared in the discipline of a prison-like monotony in which all are treated alike. That is slavery. Freedom is the right to work a decent length of time and to get a decent living for doing so; to be able to arrange the little personal details of one’s own life.

When a man is master of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he has won his degree, he has entered the realm of wisdom.

Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word “democracy,” and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least.