Reviews and Comments

I'm almost a quarter of the way through and our protagonist hasn't even been born yet. It's a slog. Some of the longest sentences I have ever read. They are elongated by semicolons, ellipses, and dashes. The narrator keeps interrupting his story to mention his discussions with his wife about this part of the story. So far I don't feel it adds to the book at all. I'm hoping it gets better after our main character shows up.

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 mainstream USA, but I didn't realize just what impact he had on American spectator sports that take up so much entertainment time/value of so many people.

Turns out Hunt was the son 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 where 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 work 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 Dallas's 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 league the World Championship of TENNIS (WCT). Just when that league was starting to make a profit the players revolted and started their own tournament as the PGA had in golf years earlier.

After NASL folded his love for soccer continued never missing a world cup with ridiculous travel schedules to make as many 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 mansion 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 League 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 costs of running 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 is the most competitive D-1 league 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).

I think this is one of those books that is going to take me a while to see if I actually liked it or not, depending on how well I remember its lessons, and how useful it is to implement them. It took me two months to get through a 223-page book, not a good sign in and of itself.

There feels like a lot good here, emphasizing not punishment, but boundaries with consequences. We don't need to yell at our kids, we don't need to make them feel bad. Kids are responsible for their own fun. Kids are NOT responsible for their parents' feelings, etc. Parents are responsible for setting boundaries and sticking to them. It is better not to have a boundary at all than to have a wishy-washy one that sometimes has consequences and sometimes doesn't.

At times I felt it was a bit too harsh. For example, I think assumptions that entitlement is always bad sets one up for a life to be made a doormat. Claims that someone feels they have earned what their boss has, or being "envious of the upper class" is someone being a classist themselves. Why do they only call it class warfare when we fight back? I also didn't like their referral too frequently to "real life" as if the life of young people is somehow fake. They also seem to make some harsh assumptions that childhood always ends the day they turn 18. While many lessons are universal there was no reference to homeschooling and seemed to assume your kids go to public school.

I was pretty disappointed with this audiobook, though I probably should not be surprised by that. Usually, I prefer audiobooks that are read by the author, but Chris Bailey's voice is very grating. It's hard to take what he says seriously about how much he has to get done, when all he has to get done is write about productivity. The guy is a recent college graduate and has never had an actual job like the one's he describes. I'd like to see how productive any of these "life hacks" are once he's a few years older and managing a house full of kids.

While the book had some attempts at redeeming qualities, the little action items he adds to the end of each chapter is nice to actually get motivated to do it, however I'm not going to be able to review that whilst I'm driving. I did pick up a copy of the dead tree too in hopes of being able opt reference it, and that worked better.

The one strategy he had that worked for me was writing down ON PAPER the three things I wanted to get done today before I start my work shift.

Trying to finish this one up. I really don't think it works too well as an audio book.

In Gumption Nick Offerman exposes that it was the writers on Parks & Rec. that made him funny. For a comedic actor he had very few jokes, I will tell them now so you don't have to read this book: 1.) I'm not saying he's not a free mason 2.) Oh look it is a black guy. 3.) Oh look it is a lady.

And some of those he says more than once.

In addition for a guy who goes on about how we need to see the best in both sides, that all of the politicians are all the same, for some reason he thinks Obama is different, he then goes on to spout Democrat talking points for the rest of the book: the second amendment is for hunting (much life your right to keep and bare a fishing pole); unless tax payers foot the bill for killing babies we are inhuman monsters; America is the greatest country in the world; and perhaps the most out of touch parents should buy their kids a house when they graduate high school.

Not worth reading.

I'm only on disc 2 but so far I'm pretty disappointed. He's an atheist jerk. Offerman is pretty adamant that angels are mythical creatures like faires and Pegasus, that those who evangalize (he says try to convince people to join their religion) are breaking the spirit, though not the law, of the first amendment, and that Jesus hangs his head (when doing what he commissioned us to do as his last action in Matthew). Also he seems to be of the option the 2nd amendment is for protecting the right of hunting, like the right to keep and bare a fishing pole.

This book was pretty good, but one thing it is not is juvenile fiction: sex, murder, adultery, orgy, I don't want to expose my young adult to any of that. Thankfully it wasn't too graphic, though the description of the Tsar's son's hemophilia was more than enough to make me quesey and put the book down more than once.

The first part is told like a fairy tale. I'm usually not too big on symbolism, to the point I argued with my hush school English teacher that it didn't exist. Regardless it's quite clear the bear is the Russian people and Vlad and Leo are Trotsky and Lenin.

I almost thought that part was actually more interesting than the actual historical fiction part with English author Arthur Ransom and his Russian mistress. I was surprised that Ransom returned to England to be with his daughter for a time as in the fairy tale we are told of the foreigner with the briefcase having Russian air in his lungs for the rest of his life.

I still don't understand why he wanted to leave his wife Ivy, and I couldn't imagine my wife making my life so miserable that I would be willing to live thousands of miles from my daughter.

All in all it was a nice quick read before bed a few nights and I would be willing to pick up a couple of the real Ransom's books.

I was disappointed in how little of the actual October revolution there was in almost 300 pages.