What a nice demonstration of how broken Amazon is… The “broken” part is how the price is automatically adjusted across the whole store, not that one seller forgot a decimal dot / comma.
That same book, new, can be bought from two, apparently not related, sellers – one in the UK, one in the US. Both want over 1000 GBP for the book. Yet the same book can be had for 10 EUR outside of Amazon…
RobertL18C wrote:
Over £1k used
Haha, bit steep, not sure if it is like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Success-Classic-Prosperity-Happiness/dp/1101983345
Or this one
https://www.amazon.com/Only-rich-book-most-expensive/dp/1523673826
I’m gonna get this one. Should be similar to cabin crew (this is a joke).
Just finished Raymond Boulanger Pilote Mercenaire mentioned by RobertL18C. A captivating kind of documentary about very recent events. Double the fun to read because of the juicy idiomatic Canadian French.
“Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser. Basically a history of nuclear weapons as well as a very compelling account of how a dropped wrench nearly blew up Arkansas. An amazing read!!
https://www.waterstones.com/book/command-and-control/eric-schlosser//9780141037912
I have just finished Secret Barrister.
It is a very good book. However, one cannot help the feeling that one could have written the same book, substituting “barrister” with “GP”, “estate agent”, and various other professions.
The basic lesson seems to be that in life you have to take control and not expect “the system” to consistently do the right thing. Obviously if you end up in hospital with a broken leg then you have to totally trust the doctors to put it back together correctly (though I know of a colleague who had a compound fracture from skiing “fixed” locally, with just a little gap so it didn’t heal up 
) because you know sod-all about it, but in general the system is set up to handle vast numbers of people who are clueless / disinterested / don’t have resources, and it fails many of them, because the people working in the system are imperfect too. It will probably fail you too unless you stay on the ball. In practice this means getting good tips on a lawyer and practicing the extraction of the cheque book from your pocket until it becomes a subconscious reflex
Command and Control is next. Boyz will be boyz Thanks, @wsmempson.
@Peter, that sounds like an accurate portrait of the ‘system’, any system. The flip side is that with little effort you can find niches that will produce a much better result, missed by the majority of people and available because of their adherence to the mainstream.
I have two volumes coming from Aircraft Spruce today, John Swick’s history of the Stinson 108. Doesn’t everybody buy their books at Aircraft Spruce? I decided I need something interesting to read on weekday evenings, continuous Corona-TV is ridiculous, the internet has its limits and reruns of 1990s sit coms only take you so far.
I see Richard Bach mentioned. Another of his books that I like is Nothing By Chance, a story of Barnstorming in the early 1970s, to see if it could still be done. It’s just a period piece, nothing serious but they did actually do it. There’s a Luscombe involved as the support vehicle and part of the reason I like it is that I know the teenage parachutist, Stu McPherson. He still has a Luscombe, C180 etc. A theme of the book and movie is that with faith in the universe, a solution for little problems will be there when you need it. I prefer to see that as faith in free people and the open market.
I am halfway through Ignition which is an account of rocket fuel development during the 20th century, up to around the late 1960s. The paperback is quite cheap.
The author is the most dedicated boffin – chemistry, in this case – you will have ever come across. He writes with a level of self assurance which works only if the writer is so truly briiliant that the truth is self evident
What is fascinating is how deeply chemistry was understood and how long ago. Despite that, a lot of the work is empirical; a case of mixing in a bit of this or a bit of that and seeing whether it explodes, or just burns.
Also really interesting is how incredibly hazardous most of the fuels are. The section on hypergolics (two-part fuels which ignite when mixed, so no ignition system is needed) is especially fascinating and probably all of those fuels would finish you off with a single sniff.
This will be next.
Peter wrote:
I am halfway through Ignition which is an account of rocket fuel development during the 20th century, up to around the late 1960s. The paperback is quite cheap.
not a book but you might like this one then
Thanks for that – looks good.
Indeed; you can see some of that stuff at Peenemunde
Reading that book about rocket fuels fills in a lot of the gaps, making one realise a bit about how much work went into making that stuff work.
