Beau Wise, the author, is the only United States service member to be considered a sole survivor and pulled off the battlefield when his two brothers died while serving out of country. His brother, Jeremy, was a United States Navy SEAL veteran and CIA contractor. He was tragically killed in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber. His brother, Ben, was a United States Army Green Beret sniper. He was killed while serving on an assignment he volunteered for by Taliban forces. Beau, the surviving brother, did an amazing job relating his brothers' lives and personalities through this book, as well as talking about what their losses meant to him.

This book hurt my feelings so much. If a book hurts your feelings, you know it has to be good. I hate that the author was given a reason to write such a book, but I appreciate the sharing of the story. It was a nice way to honor the lives and sacrifices of his brothers, as well as share his personal experiences. I highly recommend reading this book if you are interested in the post-9/11 activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 It took me forever to finish this book. I had it in my car to read while my daughters were in dance class, so I didn't sit and read it all at once like I normally do. I bought this book simply because it was about horse racing, which is a sport I fell in love with in sixth grade. I had no idea what the subject of the book was...as it turned out, it was about the horse I fell in love with the first year I started watching horse racing!

Charismatic was such a long shot in the 1999 Kentucky Derby, I just felt like I had to pull for him. This book covered his birth up through the end of his life. I learned a lot about him, which I very much enjoyed. Charismatic was foaled on March 13, 1996. His dam was Bali Babe. His sire was Summer Squall, winner of the 1990 Preakness. He was sold for $200,000 to Bob and Beverly Lewis, and trained by legendary trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. Charismatic was strikingly unimpressive during his training and two year old season, even being entered into claiming races. He hit his stride in his three year old season, winning the Lexington Stakes in 1999. He went on to race in all three Triple Crown races, ridden by Chris Antley. He won the 1999 Kentucky Derby and the 1999 Preakness Stakes. He came in third in the 1999 Belmont Stakes, where he was pulled up just after crossing the wire. As it turned out, he had broken two bones in his leg. He had surgery and recovered to stand stud. He was voted United States Champion 3 Year Old Colt in 1999, and American Horse of the Year in 1999. He was retired to Old Friends farm in 2017, dying soon after arriving from a pelvic fracture. The research the author put into learning about the horse and his training was very impressive to me.

I have some favorite jockeys, and others whose name I recognize, and Chris Antley was not one of them. I actually thought that a completely different jockey was riding Charismatic in the Triple Crown races, and I have no idea how I missed this information. Antley was born in Florida, and moved to South Carolina where he grew up. He quit school at age sixteen, moving to Baltimore to ride professionally at Pimlico. In 1985, he was the United States Champion Jockey, with 469 wins. He was eighteen years old. In 1987, he won nine races on nine different horses in a single day, making his way into the Guinness Book of Records. In 1989, he won a minimum of one race per day for sixty four straight days. Unfortunately, he struggled with substance abuse and weight issues. He spent a lot of time in rehab facilities, losing his license or being suspended for his actions. He alienated himself from a lot of his fellow jockeys because of his treatment of them on and off the track. He came back in 1999 to ride Charismatic in the Triple Crown races. He jumped off the horse after pulling him up in the Belmont and held his leg and tried to calm the horse until help arrived. I absolutely wailed when I watched this happen on tv, and I cannot imagine how he must have felt. This image is burned into the hearts and minds of so many, it was even voted the Moment Of The Year in 1999 by the NTRA. He was found dead in his home in December 2000, having suffered traumatic injuries that are speculated to have been from a fall due to a multiple drug overdose. What a tragic end to a brilliant career and life. Antley was posthumously inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2015.

I would strongly recommend this book to any fan of horse racing. It certainly shows the glory and the prestige that comes with having a winning horse, as well as the dark side. There are injuries, bad blood, bad money deals, losses, drug and weight problems. I am glad that I was able to learn more about Chris Antley, and it was nice to read about the horse that I was pulling for way back in sixth grade. What a nice surprise this book was for me! 

 I, like many others, watched both seasons of Tiger King on Netflix. I certainly believe that Joe wrote this book himself. I also read it with his voice shouting in my head the entire time. I did not really learn anything from this book that wasn't covered in the Netflix series, though it did have a little more detail about his earlier life than was covered in the series. This was not one of the best memoirs I have ever read, and I do not think I would suggest anyone pay retail price for this. Mostly, it just read as a companion to the series, though with a lot of negative statements about the workers at the facility. 

 This has been the first memoir from an EMT or Paramedic that I have ever read. I grew up in a family of public servants. My grandparents were in the fire department, my mother is a nurse, and my cousin is a police officer. I have a couple of friends who are nurses and police officers. I know they get some crazy calls and find themselves in crazy situations sometimes. I thought this book would be interesting to read from a different perspective. It really was! I learned about how to become a paramedic, as well as the different jobs one does on an ambulance. I also learned about burnout and how that can affect job performance. There were plenty of interesting experiences and anecdotes in this book. I finished this book in a day, because it was just a quick read full of action. It certainly made me appreciate ambulance crews more. 

 I never knew anything about this event. I never knew that pirates were a problem for Thomas Jefferson. I learned so much from this book that it blew my mind. I enjoyed the writing style and I like the other work of Brian Kilmeade that I have read so far. 

 This book of artwork is beautiful. I loved all of the images and the stories about them. This was a really well put together book. 

 This is the true story of a poorly built and poorly attended campfire, that ultimately wound up burning over 9,000 acres. It cost over $4 million dollars to fight this fire, with over a thousand firefighters involved in the effort. Four firefighters wound up losing their lives in this fire. There was an investigation that uncovered numerous safety violations and severe lapses in communication. The investigation and criminal charges for this unnecessary loss of life just made me so angry. You are supposed to be well trained, taking care of your team members and yourself, and doing your jobs properly. It seemed like there was a lack of attention and some complacency during this particular event that was very disheartening to me. Growing up in a fire family, books like this really hit me on a personal level. I hope that lessons are learned from these events and applied to fire fighting today. 

 This book is a photojournalism account of people who are receiving treatment for eating disorders. This book can be very triggering/graphic for people who are dealing with this issue. I would strongly suggest considering that before picking up this book (or watching the documentary on HBO). People find themselves struggling with eating disorders for a variety of reasons, and it is all tragic. This is about more than eating healthy foods. It is about healthy eating habits and a healthy relationship with food. I think the photographs in this book are very stark and haunting, but the message is important. Compassion is something we need more of, and that goes hand in hand with understanding, which we also need more of.

I have a serious issue with places like this, no matter if they are treatment facilities for addiction/mental illness or one of those facilities for problematic kids. They advertise these amazing state of the art facilities, with all of these amenities like they are five star hotel resorts in the Bahamas. It's a lie, unless it is a celebrity treatment center. There are more and more stories coming out about people who went to places like this and what they went through there, and I cannot imagine that a lot of this "treatment" is actually beneficial. The fact that it costs so much is a whole other issue. These places put me in mind of privately owned for profit prisons- the services are needed, but who is lining pockets with the costs?

At any rate, I think that the book is an important contribution to the understanding of eating disorders and the human body. Listening to the reasons and events that caused people to begin using unhealthy habits and coping tools can help them and others in the future. When we take time to learn about things we do not know about, it makes us better equipped to handle situations that we may confront in the future. For that reason alone, I appreciated this book. 

 I have been around neo Nazis and probably members of the KKK, but I didn't really know very much about the history of it. We learned that it came up around the time of the American Civil War and some of the activities that members got up to. Of course, the hoods and cross burning that were iconic and a banner for the group are well known. I learned a lot from this book, and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Southern history, the Civil Rights movement, and domestic terrorism. I didn't realize how many things were connected to the KKK and how deep the roots ran until I read this book. 

 This book is the personal memoir of Bev Sellers, a Xat'sull Chief and activist. (Xat'sull First Nations were formerly known as Soda Creek Indian Band.) Bev was sent to St. Joseph's Residential School in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Residential Schools in Canada were supported by Christian Churches and the Department of Indian Affairs. The entire purpose of schools like this were to get Native children away from the cultural norms and family kinships, break those bonds, and force them to adopt the mainstream (read white European) manner of language, religion, and dress. (Read cultural genocide.) Of COURSE the records are "incomplete" so the number of children who actually died at these schools and their causes of death will never be fully known, however the multiple accounts of sadistic abuse recounted by former students (read survivors) support the high estimation (in the thousands) of student deaths. Residential schools are horrible places of sadness and torment, and I cannot imagine being snatched away from my family, sexually/mentally/physically/emotionally abused, called a number instead of my name, and forced to deny all of my heritage. It's horrible and just...vile.

Book Feelings: I bought this book, because it had good reviews and I always appreciate personal accounts of various historical events. I think personal accounts are tremendously important to the historical record, and I tend to pick up books like this regularly. Bev Sellers mentioned in her book that she was advised to not write about her personal experiences or those experiences of her family, and I am so glad that she did not listen to that advice. The trauma that the Native community faced as a whole needs to be known and talked about, and I hope that more people pick up this book and others like it to supplement the articles that are currently in the news from the uncovering of mass graves at places like this. As an elementary school student, we were briefly taught about residential schools, and they were presented in a way that made the schools seem like such blessings...they were given clothes, food, and education. That is not hardly at all the truth. We need to be teaching actual history in schools, and not white washed nonsense that helps perpetuate the racial stereotypes that Native people have been forced to deal with since Europeans decided to show up. This book was well written, and I really enjoyed learning about Native familial connections and how life was when the author was not in a residential school. I strongly suggest reading this book and many more like it.

Personal Feelings: Native American genocide is absolutely a thing that happened, still happens, and it is disgusting to me that people are either oblivious to these facts or flat out deny them. I should not be shocked, because there are those that deny the Holocaust as well. These schools implemented weaponized Christianity, eradicating familial kinships and identities throughout generations. This is cultural genocide. People being denied access to their religious practices, language, manner of dress, etc is by definition the eradication of an identity. It's gross. Christianity has been weaponized for centuries, and is still being weaponized today against a whole host of people. I personally believe that people have the right to believe what they want, but nobody has the right to force someone else to conform to their personal beliefs. I would also like to make the personal note here that, as an extraordinarily white person, I did not ask for my ancestors hundreds of years ago to move to this land and participate in the theft and ethnic cleansing that has been perpetrated against the Native communities in the entire North American continent. Just because I did not ASK to be here, does not mean that I am NOT here, and thus bear some of the burden and responsibility for the past. People are always quick to say I didn't force anyone off their land, I didn't own slaves, I didn't blah blah blah, and that is true. These things were done long before we were born, but that doesn't mean we cannot LEARN about the atrocities committed against people, attempt to understand and empathize with the loss of freedoms and lives, and be a great ally to people now. Buying books like this, supporting Native art and businesses, opening your mind to other beliefs and cultures, and speaking out against things that were so blatantly wrong are just a few ways that we can help to heal past wounds, as well as learn something new and grow as people. Just because YOU didn't do something, shouldn't mean that you turn your nose up to the facts.