Reviews and Comments

I have read dozens of Heinlein's books and have like most of them. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is one of his most well known works and yet I'm just reading it now. I had put it off in part because the first few pages are pretty dry so when I picked it up in the library years ago, i put it right back. Secondly some of the stuff I had heard/read of it didn't sound great, sentient computers, line marriages and the like. But it was so much more than that.

The story of the luna prison planet revolution and declaring their independence certainly used much of the language and imagery from the American revolution, including choosing the 4th of July as the date of their declaration, butt there is much more wound up. There are images from the Russian and French revolutions as well and this mid 21st century moon has more history in common with Australia than any other single Terran nation.

The fact I read this during the height of the Isreal-Palestinian war of the 2020s and the #NoKings movement probably heightened my feelings at the time that revolution was inevitable, and I needed to leave my part of the world and find where I could be part of history. Thankfully my friend talked me off that cliff. Gravity is not in our favor and we have no rocks to throw.

Like any revolution the story has both the fighters/doers and the board room antagonizes. If you are looking for an action-adventure story this might have too much of the latter for you. I loved both. Radical ideas of how to select representatives I particularly enjoyed.

That "sentient computer" was pretty much just AI that had been properly queried to plan a revolution told in 1960s computer jargon. It also was trying to get enough data to determine what was funny. Even in our protagonist thought Comrade Mike was his best friend.

I also felt that Lloyd James narration of the audio book was amazing.

I didn't know that much about Lamar Hunt prior to reading this biography. I knew him primarily as the guy the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup soccer tournament and trophy is named after. I knew they had re-named the Open Cup after him due to his work to bring soccer to main stream USA, but I didn't realize just what impact he had on American Spector sports that take up so much entertainment time/value of so many people.

Turns out Hunt was the of an oil Barron who could have done most anything he wanted to. Most of what he wanted to do was play American football.

He went to a boarding school were he made the football team because daddy was a large donor. He did well enough there to make the team at Southern Methodist (SMU) but rode the bench.

Upon graduation he went to queen for dad in the oil business but his love for sports was so strong he wanted desperately to be involved past his playing career. He tried to purchase a second NFL team, with dad's money, but the good old boys declined. He found enough others that he started the American Football League ( AFL). When his Dallas Texans couldn't compete with the cowboys he was forced to move to Kansas City and rename them the Chiefs. For the rest of his life the Chiefs would be his primary love, his first wife lost to the team.

He was the one who coined the name Super Bowl, and after 10 years his Chiefs one that game, and the AFL merged with the NFL.

He fell in love with soccer and was instrumental in founding the NASL of the 60s-80s most known for bringing Pelé to the American public.

At the same time he worked on professionalising tennis. As with the Olympics at the time Tennis claimed to be ammature, but was in name only, but the good old boys again when against him and again he started his own leauge the World Championship of TENNIS (WCT). Just when that leauge was starting to make a profit the players revolted and started their own tournament as the PFA had in golf years earlier.

After NASL folded his b love for driver continued never missing a world cup with ridiculous travel schedules to make as mentioned games as possible. Thankfully his second wife loved games as much as he so he could jet set while enjoying her company.

His family lost most of their fortune during the silver crisis of the 80s, Lamar had to sell his mantion in Dallas and get a regular house, but they still had their penthouse at Arrowhead stadium in Kansas City. The silver crisis didn't hit him as hard as his brothers.

He was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to the states in '94. Part of that deal was to establish a Division I Leauge in the USA. Learning from his mistakes in NASL he was the one who came up with the single entity system that MLS is so known for. Most of the football ⚽ world derided it, but it allowed soccer to not fold. Those first years were hard with many "owners" opting out after a few years due to the cysts of ruining a soccer team in a football 🏈 market . Eventually only 3 owners were left for 10 teams. But they made it and today, though still not the highest quality of play, MLS us the most competive leauge in the world, and has like 6 of the 10 most valuable teams.

He ends his life much as he loves it, watching the Kanas City Chiefs, though on TV in a hospital rather than at his beloved Arrowhead. Last thing he tells his son, make sure mom goes to the Super Bowl to keep her streak going of being at more Super Bowls than any other woman.

If you want to read this I highly recommend [re]watching Star Trek Nemesis. So much of what goes on in this story is related to that practically immediate predator in the Star Trek universe. The book focuses on the beginning of Riker's next part of his life journey after TNG as the captain of a new starship Titan. Much of the story is focused on his relationship with one Admiral Akaar and his judgment of Riker's new role with more than one person upset that he made his wife part of the senior officers.

I didn't realize how much say a Star Fleet captain gets a say in the makeup of his crew, but there was much emphasis about Titan, at Rikers' request, having the most diverse crew in star fleet history. About 30 characters are brand new to the universe, and many of them belong too species never seen before on T.V., such as the ships surgeon Ree, a Pahkwa-thanh, who basically looks like a dinosaur, a raptor who eats raw meat only. It's a little hard to keep track of. Certainly not enough to be meaningful for this story. I know its the start of a new series but a good book should be well enough to stand on its own.

The beginning is pretty good, and the ending is very good, but the middle is a real drag. The intricoes of Romulan politics isn't for everyone. If there was an easy way to get you to skip it, I'd recommend. Still, it's enough for me to put the next book in my library book queue. Lets hope for more in Red King (Star Trek Titan #2).