Agent Palmer

There is much more to Gene Kranz than Ed Harris’s portrayal of the Flight Director in the movie Apollo 13. As one of the early members of Flight Control, Kranz was there for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo before moving up into more of a management role.

His book “Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond” is not only a vivid first-hand account of history as it happened, but the perspective is unique to mission control…

To me, and to many, Bob Dylan is a mythical figure. I understand that he’s as human as you or I, but there’s something different about him.

He was told that he was the voice of a generation and he didn’t even want it, which made people more convinced he was. And as an artist, he reinvented himself over and over and over, in fact he’s reinvented himself more times than most people find themselves.

“Hi, howya doin? I’m Arlo Guthrie and you’ve probably listened to or heard about a thing called Alice’s Restaurant.“

That is the beginning of the narrative that is spoken at the start of the movie, Alice’s Restaurant, and also used as the trailer for the film as an explanation of what the movie is and how it is based on Arlo Guthrie’s song of the same name.

From the early coders of the most primitive computers to today’s venture capital wet dreams, Clive Thompson’s book “Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World” peels back the layers on just who is behind the keyboard of the code that is impacting our lives.

How coders work, why they think the way they do, what it is they actually do, and even their reflections on what they’ve done.

There is something remarkable about reading Battle of Britain by Len Deighton. First, it is hardly the first book about the Battle of Britain I’ve read, second, all the others, even if they were more broadly World War II based, were all written by him, and third, I still learned something new.

I’m not sure if he uncovered more information during his research for this book or was just more able to tell the story, but this book is not only direct in its retelling of history but it’s also a work of art.