Useless People

What Is Going On With The World?

Richer Fruits

Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud? by Donal Anthony Foley

Paperback:  Medjugorje Revisited: 30 Years of Visions or Religious Fraud? (2011) investigates the alleged visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Medjugorje, looking at their origins, and their impact on the Catholic Church.  It is an expanded, revised and updated version of Understanding Medjugorje, which was published in 2006.

Since then, there have been important new developments, including the formation of an International Commission to investigate the alleged visions.  Millions of people have visited Medjugorje, even though it has received no official Church approval. 

Medjugorje Revisited focuses on the transcripts of the original tapes of the visionaries made in June 1981, and the credibility of the visions and the visionaries, demonstrating the serious problems involved in accepting Medjugorje as genuine.  It also examines the role of theologians, and the Hercegovina Franciscans, in promoting Medjugorje, and its tangled historical and religious background, as well as its links with the Charismatic Renewal.

In sum, it examines all the relevant evidence about Medjugorje, and concludes that, despite some "good fruits," it bears all the hallmarks of a vast religious fraud.

About the author:  Donal Foley is an English writer-researcher whose work has appeared in a number of Catholic magazines, including the Homiletic and Pastoral Review.  Mr Foley is the Secretary of the World Apostolate of Fatima in Great Britain, and holds degrees in humanities and theology.  He is the author of the book Marian Apparitions, the Bible, and the Modern World.

Beyond Murder: The Inside Account of the Gainesville Student Murders (True Crime) by John Philpin and John Donnelly

Paperback:  Beyond Murder (1994) is the inside story of the serial sex slayer responsible for the Gainesville student murders of 1990.  Respected psychological profiler John Philpin and veteran journalist John Donnelly detail the five murders and their aftermath in a gripping narrative.

Gainesville, Florida, was bursting with high spirits and expectations.  The University of Florida was starting its school year, and students were swarming into town.  Then, in seventy-two savage hours, school days turned into a nightmare of mass terror.

Five corpses - four beautiful girls and one handsome young man - were found bloodily butchered.  Even worse, the girls, had been unspeakably violated and mutilated, and left in positions to display the depraved damage to the fullest.

All the dedicated police force knew was that a serial killer was on the loose - and that their first suspects all proved innocent.

This is the riveting true account of the killings, the victims, an ace chief of detectives who did not let his own battle with cancer stop his manhunt, and above all, Danny Rolling, the man indicted for murder, who drifted through the worlds of both country music and ruthless crime until his demons of anger and desire erupted in an orgy of death.

Complete with exclusive revelations from Danny Rolling's own lips, Beyond Murder is an unforgettable journey through the twisted maze of a serial murderer's mind and a shattering exposé of the horror one sex killer can wreak.

About the authors:  John Philpin has been the forensic consultant to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department in their re-investigation of the Stephanie Crowe homicide.  He was also one of the first independent criminal profilers in the US and is a retired psychologist with an international reputation as an expert on violent behavior.  He has appeared on "Unsolved Mysteries," "Northwest Afternoon," "Inside Edition," the "Jim Bohannon Show," "America's Most Wanted," CBC's "As It Happens," and "20/20 Downtown" and has served as a guest commentator on Court TV's "Prime Time Justice."  His published works include Beyond Murder, a true crime book about the Gainesville student murders, and Stalemate, a true story of child abduction and murder in the San Francisco Bay area.  He has also written five novels. The recipient of numerous awards recognizing his contributions to murder investigations, Philpin holds degrees in English, clinical psychology, and forensic psychology.

John Donnelly is the author of "A Twist of Faith: An American Christian's Quest to Help Orphans in Africa" (Beacon Press, 2012).  For more than thirty years, John Donnelly has reported in regions far from the United States, starting with the civil wars of Central America, delving into the political violence in Haiti, drawing out tales of conflict and peace in the Middle East and Asia, and then landing in Africa, where he feels most at home.  In Africa, where he travelled as a staff reporter for the Boston Globe and later as a Kaiser Family Foundation fellow, he became intrigued by the steady stream of Americans with big hearts and big ambitions whose adventures are told in this book.

Glorious Sunday

Fátima In Lucia's Own Words: Sister Lucia's Memories

Paperback:  Sister Lúcia  is the last surviving Fátima visionary, the other two being her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto.

In these "reminiscences", Sister Lucia shared moving insights into the lives of her cousins, who are now Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta Marto, their increasing love and sacrifices for God and neighbour, her own family experiences before and after the apparitions, the deaths of her beloved father and cousins, the Three Secrets, the Miracle of the Sun, the Angel of Peace and how the Little Shepherds corresponded heroically to the requests of Our Lady, and in them they point out to everyone, and in a special way to the children, a sure way to reach holiness.

Fátima In Lúcia's Own Words (2017, 21st edition) - the first of two volumes - is translated from the Portuguese by the Dominican Nuns of Perpetual Rosary of the Monastery Pius XII, Fátima, Portugal.

About the author:  Lúcia de Jesus Rosa dos Santos, (Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum or OCD)(1907-2005), also known as Lúcia of Fátima and by her religious name Sister Maria Lúcia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart, was a Portuguese Catholic Carmelite nun and one of the three children, including her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who claimed to witness Marian apparitions in Fátima in 1917.  On 13 February 2017, Sister Lúcia was accorded the title Servant of God, as the first major step toward her canonization.

By Hook Or By Crook

The Morning Wind

Definition: Wabi-Sabi

Kate Gavino, Writer And Illustrator in New York

How It Went From Inclusion To Division

Corrupted Mind

Alone Time: Four Cities, Four Seasons and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom

Hardback:  The average adult spends about a third of his or her waking time alone.  Yet research suggests we aren't very good at using, never mind enjoying, alone time.  Rising tot he challenge, travel writer Stephanie Rosenbloom explores the joys and benefits of being alone in four mouth-watering journeys to the cities of Paris, Istanbul, Florence and New York, showing that being alone isn't something to endure - it's something to relish.

Travelling with friends and family is usually thought of as a privilege.  In theory, anyway. In practice, it is more often about debating which sights to see, panicking over diminishing phone batteries and bickering over what to eat.  Not much joy in that.

But alone you can do as you please. You can wander markets, relish silence, go to a park.  Go to Paris.  Why not?

In Alone Time (2018), New York Times travel columnist Stephanie Rosenbloom travels alone in four seasons to four remarkable cities - Paris, Istanbul, Florence and New York - exploring the sensory experience of solitude.  Along the way she illuminates the psychological arguments for alone time, revealing that whether you recognize it or not, it is good to be alone now and then.

This is a book about the pleasures and benefits of savouring the moment, examining things closely, using all your senses to take in your surroundings, whether travelling to faraway places or walking the streets of your own city.

Through on-the-ground observations and anecdotes, and drawing on the thinking of artists, writers and innovators who have cherished solitude, Alone Time lays bare the magic of going solo.

About the author:  Stephanie Rosenbloom is the staff columnist for the Travel section of the New York Times, where she has been a reporter for various desks (including Styles, Business and Real Estate) for more than a decade.

Political Crap

Trump's Family Separation Policy

The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist: A True Story Of Injustice In The American South by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

Hardback:  Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit. - Seneca

After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men:  Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008.

Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist chronicles how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system - a relic of the Jim Crow era - failed to deliver justice for its citizens and recounts the horrifying story of the two men who built successful careers on the back of this system.

For nearly two decades, medical examiner Dr Steven Hayne performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. Michael West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades.  Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison.  But then some of those convictions began to fall apart.

Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, and raise sobering questions about our criminal justice system's ability to address them.

The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist (2018) - with a foreword by John Grisham - is a shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives.

About the authors:  Radley Balko is an opinion journalist for the Washington Post and an investigative reporter.  He currently writes and edits The Watch, a reported opinion blog that covers civil liberties and the criminal justice system.  He is the author of the 2013 acclaimed book Rise of the Warrior Cop:  The Militarization of America's Police Forces, which has won widespread acclaim, including from the Economist, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly, and was named one of the best investigative journalism books of the year by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.  Since 2006, Balko has written dozens of pieces on Steven Hayne, Michael West and Mississippi's forensics disaster.  His January 2013 investigation, "Solving Kathy Mabry's Murder:  Brutal 15-Year-Old Crime Highlights Decades-Long Mississippi Scandal," was one of the most widely read Huffington Post articles of 2013.  In 2015, Balko was awarded the Innocence Project's Journalism Award, in part for his coverage in Mississippi.

Tucker Carrington is the director of the George C Cochran Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law.  He has spent his career as a criminal defense lawyer, much of it as a public defender in Washington DC.

What Kind Of Reader Are You?

Retribution (Michael Sander and Lene Jensen Series) by Steffen Jacobsen

Paperback:  On a warm Autumn afternoon, Denmark's largest amusement park, Tivoli Gardens, is devastated by a terrorist attack that leaves more than 1200 dead.  No one claims responsibility for the attack, and seven months later, the nation is still reeling and the police have no leads.

Superintendent Lene Jensen has been assigned to the frustrating case from the beginning.  When she receives a desperate phone call from a Muslim woman who later turns up dead, she sees a connection to the Tivoli bombing. 

Lene's initial investigation suggests that the woman was unknowingly part of a secret research project conducted by the government, and as she digs deeper, she is met with increasing resistance from her superiors.  Together with private detective Michael Sander, she tries to get to the bottom of the complicated case, only to realize that someone knows a lot more than they are letting on.

With the threat of another attack looming, Sander and Jensen must race against the clock to save lives and restore peace of mind to the people of the idyllic country.

Retribution (2015) is the second book in the Michael Sander and Lene Jensen police series set in Copenhagen.  It is translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund.

About the author:  Steffen Jacobsen is an orthopaedic surgeon and consultant in his native Denmark.  Retribution is his third novel.  He was inspired to write fiction by Roberto Saviano's non-fiction book, Gomorrah, about the Camorra and by his travels around Italy.

Rating:  5/5

How Much Land Does A Man Need? by Leo Tolstoy

Paperback:  Written by Leo Tolstoy in 1836 (How Much Land Does A Man Need?) and 1835 (What Men Live By) respectively, this is the engaging story of a greedy peasant named Pakhom.

Although Pakhom enjoys health and family happiness, he feels dissatisfied when he learns of the grand fortunes of his relatives.

He decides to go on a quest for more land, only to find that with each new acquisition new problems develop.

How Much Land Does A Man Need? gives a delightful insight into old Russian values many of which, you will not be surprised to hear, are paralleled today.  James Joyce considered it to be the world's greatest story.

How Much Land Does A Man Need? is translated from the Russian by Ronald Wilks.

About the author:  Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays.  His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction.  Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists.  Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist.  His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Acid Bath Murders: The Trials and Liquidations of John George Haigh by Gordon Lowe

Paperback:  When you meet a man who talks like that, you should run for your life. - Fifth victim's brother

John George Haigh committed five perfect murders - by dissolving his wealthy victims in sulphuric acid.

Then he tipped away the resultant soup to avoid detection on a ‘no body, no murder’ principle and used his victims’ property to fund his luxury lifestyle of silk ties and flashy cars.

Murder number six was less than perfect.

When a guest in Haigh’s hotel disappeared, the police found half-dissolved body parts carelessly thrown into the yard outside his secluded workshop.  But was the urbane Mr Haigh, the man brought up by strict Plymouth Brethren parents in Yorkshire and dressed like a city stockbroker, really the monster he said he was?  Did he really kill six innocent people just so he could drink their blood?

Using unpublished archive papers, including recently released letters Haigh wrote from prison while awaiting execution, author Gordon Lowe sheds light on whether Haigh’s claims were a cynical ploy for a ticket into Broadmoor Hospital, or if he was a psychopathic vampire with a penchant for disposing of his victims in acid, in The Acid Bath Murders:  The Trials and Liquidations of John George Haigh (2015).

About the author:  Gordon Lowe, born and bred in Bath, taught law in London for ten years, including a year in America.  Returning to the West Country, he set up his own law practice near Bath before retiring in September 2010 to write full time.  He is the author of Escape From Broadmoor (2013), which tells of the story of John Straffen’s murderous escape from the famous hospital for the criminally insane.  His latest book, The Black Panther, was published in November 2016 and tells the story of Donald Neilson, best known for the kidnap and murder of Lesley Whittle in 1975 and the fraught police investigation that followed.  Gordon is happy to take on speaking engagements about his books. 

More can be found on www.gordonloweauthor.co.uk

Why The Dutch Are Different by Ben Coates

Paperback:  The first book to offer an in-depth look at hidden Holland and the fascinating people that live there, Why the Dutch are Different:  A Journey Into The Hidden Heart Of The Netherlands (2015) is an entertaining book about a country unlike any other.

Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he had met some months earlier.  He stayed for dinner.  Actually, he stayed for good.

In the first book to consider the hidden heart and history of the Netherlands from a modern perspective, the author explores the length and breadth of his adopted homeland and discovers why one of the world's smallest countries is also so significant and so fascinating.

It is a self-made country, the Dutch national character shaped by the ongoing battle to keep the water out from the love of dairy and beer to the attitude to nature and the famous tolerance.

Ben Coates investigates what makes the Dutch the Dutch, why the Netherlands is much more than Holland and why the colour orange is so important.

Along the way he reveals why they are the world's tallest people and have the best carnival outside Brazil.  He learns why Amsterdam's brothels are going out of business, who really killed Anne Frank, and how the Dutch manage to be richer than almost everyone else despite working far less.  He also discovers a country which is changing fast, with the Dutch now questioning many of the liberal policies which made their nation famous.

A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.

About the author:  Ben Coates was born in Britain in 1982, lives in Rotterdam with his Dutch wife, and now works for an international charity.  During his career he has been a political advisor, corporate speechwriter, lobbyist and aid worker.  He has written articles for numerous publications including the Guardian, Financial Times and Huffington Post.  Check him out at ben-coates.com

Diversity

All The Money In The World by John Pearson

Paperback:  Money is the last thing that shall never be subdued.  While there is flesh there is money - or the want of money;  but money is always on the brain, so long as there is a brain in reasonable order. - Samuel Butler - the Notebooks

Inspired by the fortunes and misfortunes of the Getty family, whose most extraordinary and troubled episode - the kidnap and ransom of grandson Paul Getty - is now a major motion picture, directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay written by David Scarpa and starring Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg.

When sixteen-year-old Paul Getty was kidnapped, the news exploded worldwide.

But his grandfather, J Paul Getty, the richest living American, refused to pay the ransom, oblivious to his sufferings.  And as the days dragged painfully on, it was Paul's distraught but determined mother Gail who was left to negotiate with his captors.

In this full biography of the Getty family, John Pearson traces the creation of their phenomenal wealth and the ways in which it has touched and tainted the lives of various generations.

Packed with colourful characters, bitter feuds and unexpected turns, it is a riveting insight into the lives of the super-rich.

All The Money In The World:  The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J Paul Getty (2017) was previously published as Painfully Rich (1995).

About the author:  John Pearson is the bestselling author of several novels and biographies including The Profession of Violence (Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and released as the major motion picture Legend) and the only authorised biography of Ian Fleming, as well as Gone to Timbuctoo (Author's Club Award for best first novel of the year), The Life of James Bond, The Kindness of Dr Avicenna, Stags and Serpents:  The History of the Dukes of Devonshire and The Selling of the Royal Family (a collective biography of the British royal family).  He lives in Sussex.

George Sand (1804-1876)

Frédéric Chopin's Lover

Again And Again

Philip Roth (1933-2018), American Novelist

In Plain Sight: The Kaufman County Prosecution Murders (True Crime) by Kathryn Casey

Paperback:  JUDGE.  JURY.  EXECUTIONER. 

On a cold January morning, the killer executed Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse in broad daylight.  Eight shots fired a block from the Kaufman County Courthouse. 

Two months later, a massacre.  The day before Easter, the couple slept.  Bunnies, eggs, a flower centerpiece gracing the table.  Death rang their doorbell and filled the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of an assault weapon discharging round after round into their bodies.

Eric Williams and his wife, Kim, celebrated the murders with grilled steaks.  Their crimes covered front pages around the world, many saying the killer placed a target square on the back of law enforcement.  Williams planned to exact revenge on all those who had wronged him, one at a time. 

Throughout the spring of 2013, Williams sowed terror through a small Texas town, and a quest for vengeance turned to deadly obsession. 

His intention?  

To keep killing, until someone found a way to stop him.

In Plain Sight (2018) is Kathryn Casey's fourteenth book.

About the author:  A novelist and an award-winning journalist, Kathryn Casey is the creator of the Sarah Armstrong mystery series and the author of eight highly acclaimed true crime books.  Her first novel, Singularity, was one of Booklist’s best crime novel debuts of 2009, and Library Journal chose the third, The Killing Storm, as one of the best books of 2010.  In both books, Casey’s protagonist is a Texas Ranger/profiler headquartered in Company A. 

Her previous true crime book, Deliver Us, investigates the I-45/Texas Killing Field murders.  Kathryn Casey has appeared on Oprah, Oprah Winfrey's Oxygen Network, Court TV, Biography, Nancy Grace, E! Network, TruTv, Investigation Discovery, The Travel Channel and A&E.  She has written for Rolling Stone, TV Guide, Reader’s Digest, Texas Monthly, MORE, Ladies’ Home Journal, and many other publications.  Ann Rule calls Casey “one of the best in the true crime genre.”  Casey is based in Houston, Texas, where she lives with her husband and their dog, Nelson.

For more information:  www.kathryncasey.com

Definition: Epeolatry

Definition: Holophrasis