Book Review- Notes from a TiltaWhirl

It’s exciting, fun, sometimes scary, and even nauseating at times.  That’s life as seen through the view of a tilt-a-whirl.  And unfortunately, that’s how I felt when I finished reading N.D. Wilson’s Notes from a Tilt-a-Whirl. The book review describes it as “a visual, poetic exploration of the narrative nature of the world and the personality of the Poet behind it all.”  For me, it felt like an attempt to produce a “stream of consciousness” book similar to Don Miller, Rob Bell, et al.

Certainly the book challenges the way we see faith and God.  It has nuggets of wisdom throughout.  The main challenge lies in getting through the rest.  The consciousness stream conceals those nuggets and makes it frustratingly random. I know its there; it’s just hard to find.  In the end, its a first attempt from a writer who has plenty of room to grow.

I’ll Make You An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Business tips from a mobster?  Seems strange at first glance, I know.

However, it turns out that multi-billion dollar mob operations (including both legal and illegal activities) are run with similar business ideas and models as all the other ones.

In I’ll Make You An Offer You Can Refuse, former mobster Michael Franzese presents an honest account of what he believes are good business tips from his past ventures.  If you’ve never read a business book before, then you’ll get some good ideas from it.  His discussions of Solomon and Machiavelli are dead on and his stories about past experiences with the mob are entertaining.

However, if you read business idea books on a regular basis, then you’ll probably not learn anything new from this one.  His tips are very basic such as to learn when to not talk during meetings or to find you a close team that you trust to run things when you can’t.  Good ideas but nothing brilliantly new.

In the end, don’t feel like you missed much if you never read this one.  On a side note, the free e-book and audio book that comes with it is a great idea from the publishers.

The American Patriot’s Almanac

For this post, we’re taking a look at Dr. William Bennett and John Cribb’s The American Patriot’s Almanac: Daily Readings on America.

This book focuses on daily readings centered around different people and events from American history.  Dr. Bennett weaves an exceptional story of America’s history from the dramatic story of the Jamestown flood through the American Revolution and Civil War all the way to present day.  In addition to the daily readings, you’ll also see complete versions of The Declaration of Independence, The United States Constitution, The Gettysburg Address, and several more important historical documents.

For myself, this proved to be a valuable classroom resource for middle school students.  I used it to start the class each day with a student reading that day’s entry.  After the reading, we as a class would discuss what we other information we knew about that day’s person or event as well as what information we’d like to research to find out more.  Students genuinely looked forward to this part of the class each day.  I’d highly recommend every social studies teacher, especially those with American history classes, buy a few of these books for the classroom!

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