Books I Read

  Darkness at Noon (Time Reading Program) by Arthur Koestler | Goodreads A Review The introduction and forward presents this book as the response to the trials, exiles and executions of the Leaders of the Communist Revolution, Stalin’s purges and trials of 1936-1938. In the West it was unknown how men like Trotsky and other historic figures could confess to the charges of betraying the party, the nation and the masses through espionage and plots of assassination and then accept their sentence. Darkness at Noon is a fictionalized portrayal of the process of coercion and terror along with cold logic and reasoned argument that brought these men came to publicly confess the fictionalized crimes they’d been accused of.   The biography of Msgr. Koestler seems to match some of the story. Born a Czech, he was a communist activist then Zionist then communist again after the rise of Hitler. He was persecuted by various authoritarian governments at various stages and had to escape to Eng...

  The Crime of Galileo by Giorgio de Santillana | Goodreads A Review Msg. Santillana was a science history professor at MIT and is mentioned as an example of how the science community takes seriously the need for the study of where the science comes from in addition to what the science says and does. The subject of the book is the minutia of the trial that found Galileo guilty of some kind of heresy that landed him under house arrest for some extended period. It is the story of how Galileo, using the telescope, observed the motion of celestial bodies, discovering the moons of Jupiter and having proof that existing Church doctrine was incorrect regarding the Ptolemaic vs the Copernican theories of the solar system. The author relates that the Catholic Church wasn’t persecuting Galileo for his studies or it’s conclusions, but that Galileo was a carnival pitchman demanding that his scientific doctrine of the mechanics of the universe displace the existing curriculum of the Church Sanc...

  Lions, Harts, Leaping Does and Other Stories by J.F. Powers | Goodreads A Review 5/24/2025     So I finally found a pointless short story book. Small vignettes of life inside the Catholic church during the war years. I stumble across these little gems and eat them up. You wander into a scene, catching the conversation in the middle, stand and listen for a while then move to the next room. In thinking about it, I suppose it’s the way poetry is supposed to leave you. Everything is contained in 15 or 20 pages. Not a clear beginning, not a clear end. You're left wondering what you were supposed to gain. Perhaps it's just a cool breeze.   Several stories into the book and it's very pleasant. It is the life within the Catholic Church. I was not raised Catholic so all the stories of the priests, nuns and a Catholic school education are stories. The stories take place in and around Chicago in the vague range between the late 30’s and early 50’s. It was when our s...