Yogadad Unmoored

Preston, Douglas. Tyrannosaur Canyon. Tom Doherty Associates, 365 p. Part science fiction, mostly thriller, Preston takes several pages out of Michael Crichton's book in crafting this story of dinosaurs, meteorites, and alien life. New Mexico veterinarian Tom Broadbent finds a dying man in the desert. The man had been shot and was barely clinging to life. Just before he dies, the man gives Broadbent a notebook and begs him to take it to his daughter. Broadbent gives his word and pledges not to tell the police about the notebook. So begins this fast-moving story. Soon Broadbent is plunged into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with a hired killer as he tries to solve the mystery of the notebook and the murdered man's identity. He manages to engage the help of monk at a remote desert monastery. Wyman Ford recently arrived at the monastery after a tumultuous career in the CIA. He can't resist the mysterious notebook and soon is deeply involved in the hunt for the notebook...

Weigley, Russell F. A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865. Indiana University Press, 2000, index, notes, bibliography, 612 p. Martinez, J. Michael. Life and Death in Civil War Prisons: The Parallel Torments of Corporal John Wesley Minnich, C.S.A. and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss, U.S.A. Rutledge Hill Press, 2004, index, notes, bibliography, 268 p. After Thailand, I spent some time immersing myself in the US Civil War. I have more than one book in my library that has been gracing the shelves for many months or years waiting to be cracked. Weigley's book is one of those. I don't remember exactly when I got it but I do know if came from the History Book Club and came highly recommended. After finally getting around to reading it, I agree. So much has been written about the Civil War it's hard to think about anything else that could be said. Approaching Weigley's book with that in mind, I thought he did a good job putting the war into a context of the t...