In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and family interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.

Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.

Important subplot: Trump says he officially classifies all conversations he ever had with Bolton about anything. Therefore, if Bolton reveals any conversation at all, that he is a criminal, and will hopefully be prosecuted.

This is what dictators do. They play with the law. Trump, as dictator, could just declare Bolton to be a traitor and have him arrested and sent to Gitmo (maybe Trump doesn’t know he has that power?) but he plays around with it like this, makes the point more clear: Anyone who interferes with Trump’s power is in trouble.

And that, dear fellow voter, includes you.

Details here.

An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins.

In An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, peppered with sketches of his colorful ancestors, charming parents, and the peculiarities of colonial life right after World War II. At boarding school, despite a near-religious encounter with an Elvis record, he began his career as a skeptic by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel. Despite some inspired teaching throughout primary and secondary school, it was only when he got to Oxford that his intellectual curiosity took full flight.

Here, for the first time, is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist, and the story of how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.

I wrote this novel, really, a novella, a few years ago as part of a publicity and fundraising stunt several bloggers were doing all at once. Some bloggers shaved their beards or got Mohawks while live streaming, others did other things (nobody can really remember) and I live blogged the construction of a novel by putting out one chapter an hour until I was done.

The final product was rough, especially the beginning and the end. And the middle. As you might expect.

But a heavy revision resulted in what I think is a pretty good story. Those of you who saw the previously Kindle-published version are familiar, but it is further updated since then, not a lot, but with some helpful improvements.

The story started out as a take-off on the Heart of Darkness by Conrad. Other than certain personality shades shared between Archer Mallow (of Sungudogo) and Conrad’s protagonist, Captain Marlow, the similarities are no longer there. It is the story about a search for an as yet unverified form of ape, by a primatologist and a logistical expert familiar (more or less) with the region.

The setting is a part of Africa I am very familiar with. Many of the scenes in the novel are based on things that I’ve experienced, seen, or heard about in my work there. There really is a restaurant that has everything yet nothing, the park guards really are issued one bullet at a time, the volcanoes really do eat small planes. Also accurate are the geography and geology of the area, except where the story veers off into science fiction. And yes, this is science fiction.

Feel free to put a review on Amazon if you like it!

“He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf … if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.”*

Reilly has been with Trump on the fairway, the green, and in the weeds, and has seen first-hand how the president plays–and it’s not pretty. Based on his personal experiences, and interviews with dozens of golf pros, amateurs, developers, partners, opponents, and even caddies who have first-hand experience with Trump on the course, Reilly takes a deep and often hilarious look at how Trump shamelessly cheats at golf, lies about it, sues over it, bullies with it, and profits off it.

From Trump’s ridiculous claim to have won eighteen club championships, to his devious cheating tricks, to his tainted reputation as a golf course tycoon, Commander in Cheat tells you everything you need to know about the man.

The point has recently been made that three southern candidates came with a very small margin of beating their unbeatable Republican opponents in the last election. One of them was white, two black, and the only real difference among them candidate-wise is that everyone is falling all over themselves to elevate the white guy to the status of High Candidate, while the two African American candidates have, at best, been suggested for a subservient role.

That got me thinking, “has Stacey Abrams written a book by any chance” and yes, she has! Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by Stacey Abrams.

Leadership is hard. Convincing others?and yourself?that you are capable of taking charge and achieving more requires insight and courage. Lead from the Outside is the handbook for outsiders, written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, the working class, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make change. Stacey uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Stacey has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change.

And here is a short video on the book:

Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law

Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature.
The book is divided into four sections: Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment and Punishment. He shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system, but he also shows how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives.
Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career–the successes as well as the failures–to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action (and in some cases, not taking action, which can be just as essential when trying to achieve a just result).
Much of what Bharara discusses is inspiring–it gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can truly lead us on a path toward truth and justice. Some of what he writes about will be controversial and cause much discussion. Ultimately, it is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system–and in our society.

By the way, for those who enjoyed this movie and/or book, Preet Bharara is the real life person of one of the key characters in it.

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump by Andrew McCabe

On March 16, 2018, just twenty-six hours before his scheduled retirement from the organization he had served with distinction for more than two decades, Andrew G. McCabe was fired from his position as deputy director of the FBI. President Donald Trump celebrated on Twitter: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy.”

Important, revealing, and powerfully argued, The Threat tells the true story of what the FBI is, how it works, and why it will endure as an institution of integrity that protects America.

It is a cool book in that it comes very nicely packaged like an iPhone, and it is a six sided blocky thing with a pixelated cover and 300 pages. This is the go to reference for everything you need to know, and probably, can know, about each of the Minecraft block, up through version 1.8,which isn’t even out yet. The blocks are grouped by fundamental type (natural, ores and minerals, plants, and liquids and gasses). Important information like the blast resistance, transparency, and so on are included. The book even covers blocks found only in the Netherlands. Not the ones in Europe. The one in the other dimension.

The book is published by Egmont, which is a children’s book publisher, but it is also a full on Mojang product.

The Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi model 3 is a small computer. At its core, it is similar to the computer inside a modern smart phone. It has a Quad Core 1.2 GHx Boradcam 64 bit CPU, 1GB of non-upgradable RAM, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth, and HDMI output. It has a special connector for a camera, a special connector for a small touchscreen display, a micro SD port which serves as the operating system’s “hard drive” including storage of your data. You plug it into a 2.5 amp Micro USB cabled power brick.

The Raspberry Pi also has 4 USB 2 ports.

It costs $35. All you need to do is to add a power brick, an SD card, an HDMI monitor of some sort, maybe a case, a keyboard, a mouse, and perhaps a few other accessories, and pretty soon you nave a reasonably powerful $35 computer for a mere $200!

Or, you can leave off much of that stuff, hook it temporarily to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (optional, I suppose) and set it up for SSH, then turn it back into a headless (and keyboardless, mouseless) server, communicating with it via wireless from your desktop or laptop.

Then, you take the thing and build stuff with it. Think of the Raspberry Pi, potentially, as a controller you might use for any device that requires controlling, but a very very smart one. Not yet mentioned is one of the key features of the Raspberry Pi: The GPIO header. This is the General Purpose Input Output array of 40 pins that are controlled by the computer, for both output and input, and power supply, to any of a very large range of sensors, actuators, and other devices.

I’ll stop right here and mention the Raspberry Pi Sense HAT. A “hat” or “shield” is a circuit board designed to stick right on top of another circuit board (in this case, the Rapsberry Pi) to give it a bunch of added functionality all at once. Often, a hat or shield has pass through pins for all or most of the GPIO pins, so you still have the same device you had before, but with a bunch of stuff added. The standard sense hat for this device has environmental sensors such as temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, and orientation. But I digress.

Anyway, a robot requires a “brain” that may or may not be hooked up via, say, Bluetooth, to a hand held remote of some sort, and also, to the motors that control the wheels (or anything else on the motor that moves), lights, sensors, all that. The most efficient way to build a robot probably uses a more basic controller than a Raspberry Pi, and indeed, most robots use a controller that is built with the specifications of an Arduino Uno, which costs typically less than $20 (and cheap Chinese knockoffs much cheaper, but they don’t all work quite like they are supposed to).

The difference between a dedicated basic controller and a fancier full on computer like a Raspberry Pi is like the difference between teaching your pet to do a trick and teaching your child to do a trick. The latter has way more overhead, but you can do fancier tricks and you can also teach the child to bring you a beer. On the other hand, the pet will just do the trick, while your kid will probably, eventually, give you lip and you’ll have to be nice to it or it will stop working right.

A Veritable Robot Army

Today, there is a veritable robot army out there, of robot kits you can build that are based on Raspberry Pi. I myself have built a version of SunFounder Smart Video Car and it is a great robot. The Adeept PiCar-A Wireless is very cool looking, and is a bit cheaper. Do not, however, that most, probably all, ready to build Raspberry Pi based robot kits do NOT come with the actual Raspberry Pi.

The Basic Robot

It might be helpful to know what the basic robot typically consists of.

Robots have two drive wheels, each powered by a separate tightly programmed specialized motor. There is a third wheel or some other roundy object to keep the robot balanced (usually) so the vehicle turns by moving the two drive wheels at different speeds. This works great on small robot scales. Robots typically have lights or sound making devices that are fun for the kids to program. Most robots have this sensor out front that looks like a set of eyes, but it is really a distance sensor, so you can program the robot to almost but not quite run into things, stopping at the last second. Many robots have a separate sensor facing down, out front, that allows the robot to follow lines or edges, if the lines or edges are just right and the programming is well done, and the sensor is set at just the right height (and thus, when they are installed, they should always be adjustable for height!).

And, of course, a basic robot has some kind of controlling device, such as a bit of software on a smart phone, a simple remote control, or, in the case of the robot you build with the book I’m about to tell you about, a Wii remote.

Learning Robotics with a Raspberry Pi

Learn Robotics with Raspberry Pi: Build and Code Your Own Moving, Sensing, Thinking Robots is written by The Raspberry Pi Guy, aka Matt Timmons-Brown. Matt is an old teenager (probably still, maybe he’s 20) and runs a Youtube Channel called “The Raspberry Pi Guy.”

In this book, the reader is given an introduction to the Raspberry Pi, and some basic electronics. Then, you start building the robot, adding more and more capabilities, until you have the basic robot described above, but then going to the next level so it will have the power of vision and a modest bit of artificial intelligence. The book includes five helpful appendixes revealing additional powers of the Raspberry Pi, and basic information about things like resistors and how to solder.

One of the coolest things is using the Wii remote to control the robot. If you don’t have a Wii, you can get a remote on line, new, like this one from Nintendo or much cheaper used, at your local Goodwill, or on eBay.

Most of the chapters require that you get or have some sort of equipment or parts to put this thing together. The total cost, though, is not much and everything is readily available. You just have to plan it out a little, checking a chapter ahead for what you might need. And then, go step by step and you will learn a lot about robots, electronics, and the Raspberry Pi. I strongly recommend this experience.

Linux and beyond

When you are done building this, and you want to have some fun with the Raspberry Pi itself, then it may be time for you to play around with Mathematica, Minecraft, Python or other programming, or just use LibreOffice and the other software you can run to write your next novel, run a printer server, build an entertainment center, or who knows what else?

The Pi is a real computer that runs the very powerful and versitile Linux operating system (though it can run other OSs as well). If you haven’t messed around with Linux, now is your chance! And, the software mentioned above, Minecraft, and Wolfram’s Mathematica, comes free and in special more or less kid friendly form, on the Pi.

In any event, if you really want to play around with the Pi, you may want to get a kit that lets you access more of its functions, such as the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Ultimate Starter Kit – 32 GB Edition or the CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 Kit with Clear Case and 2.5A Power Supply, depending on what parts you want.

See also: A Beginner’s Guide to Circuits and How to learn Python programming