Experimental Blog #32

Comments on 2 books

"The Private Lives of Birds" - A Scientist Reveals the Intricacies of Avian Social Life by Bridget Stutchbury

Reading a book like this is probably the only way that very amateur bird watchers can appreciate the work and science of professional ornithologists. This particular author seems especially capable of describing everything about birds with detailed and precise Darwinian concepts of evolutionary biology.


"Spoken from the Heart" by Laura Bush

Laura Bush writes that all 4 of her grandparents came to West Texas in the last decades of the 19th century from Arkansas. And that both of her parents, Harold Welch and Jessie Hawkins, were born there too.
Laura Bush also writes about a very interesting childhood history that took place in West Texas, through college graduation, and her first jobs.
However, she does not write in so much detail of her early adult years, until she meets George Bush again, in 1977 at 30 years of age. She does say that she "lost faith" for a very long time as a result of a tragic accident{which she completely describes}.
Laura already knew something about George; they had attended the same junior high school at the same time, and they were soon married. These events take up almost the first 100 pages; and about 65 pages and 24 years later, Laura Bush has become America's First Lady.
The rest of the book, over 250 pages, is a very detailed account of her many activities as wife, mother, and First Lady, and, of course, the events of her husband's presidency.
She seems quite conscious of and defensive about the great deal of criticism that was directed at her husband, and often her too. However, she is very thorough and factual in the extreme; so much so that her writing seems at times like a "catalogue", that is, persuasive, but not so interesting. Nonetheless, it seems that Laura Bush makes, and proves, her arguments that no President and First Lady could have done more than they did in the American White House.