I wish that, also. I find reading this book to be quite comforting...

The "Bugs Bunny" generation - I kinda like that appellation! Yeah - had to scrabble for everything, large family and had to help put food on the table early (11yo delivering papers). But it sure helped with reality. Tried to pass that along to my Son and it seems as if it took. My library also has Churchill - not so much on Hemingway. May have to check him out at some point.

Finish that second half !

The narrator of my CD series is Scott Brick. He is quite good, IMO. There is at least one other version with a different narrator.

I had a boss who had an entire cabinet in his office full of Ayn Rand books, mostly AS, which he gave away to anyone who would take them. This was long after I had been introduced to objectivism by someone who was literally not even in the same universe with AR intellectually. I also got out fast.

My boss was much like your "true bastard," as he was one himself, though our relationship was different. I wouldn't say he was a James or a Francisco (my very favorite character, even above John Galt), but just a Galt-wannabe.

As an aside, I was absolutely astonished, knowing him as I did, and his family, and his reputation, to read his obituary. I am not sure where they hired the writer but it was definitely someone with a strong background in fiction writing. If someone had left the name off the obituary, I would not have known who they were talking about.

Just before one year old my son got four vaccines in one doctor visit, including the MMR (which is the one most often referenced). Within 12 hours he was in bad shape, and never recovered. I have videos and pics of him as a baby, of course. Like me, he was big and strong...on track to be a football player. At 8 months he was 100+ percentile in weight and height. By about two years old he was 15 percentile in weight, drooled uncontrollably, had long lost any sort of eye contact, had gut yeast overgrowth up into his mouth (his digesting track never recovered), stemmed, hit himself, toe walked, flapped his hands and was almost totally nonverbal....all the classic symptoms. I determined that vaccines were the problem after extensive biological testing and we went after that. His recovery was unprecedented. A film crew in Iceland who was starting to work on a documentary on how different countries were tackling autism heard about our success and came over and filmed him and interviewed me for the documentary - "The Sunshine Boy". The filmmakers took some of my footage from before and after the onset of autism for the documentary. They also filmed him in his recovery to show the improvement.

I am 100% sure that vaccines play a role in autism, AFL, possibly diabetes (especially childhood), asthma, dementia, and certainly Alzheimer's (with the newer mRNA). They paralyzed my dad at 70 years old. He was a vaccine addict, taking every one he could get access to. This was about ten years ago. I warned him, "Dad, you're going to get hurt." Eventually, the antibodies from all the vaccine adjuvant built up in his body and his antibodies started attacking his muscular neurons. He was totally paralyzed, on a feeding tube in an ICU. The doctor (having trained at an institution financed by Big Pharma), said, "He's had a stroke, we just can't find it. He'll be dead within a week." I had my dad's wife hand him a note from me saying, "My dad has a very rare disorder you call myasthenia gravis. His antibodies are elevated." My dad told me the story. As he laid there with a feeding tube in his throat his doctor came in with seven other doctors and said, "Your son had this note routed to me. We're going to put something in your IV to temporarily knock down your antibodies and see if he's right." I was right. One doctor said, "Do that again. I've never seen that before." My dad was unparalyzed and able to speak for a few minutes, but they knew he had something that could be treated. Bought him five more years.

At 20 years old my son recently went out for the PGA players test when it was here in town and shot the lowest round in the event. He almost never practices. Just raw talent. Hits the ball into 400 yard par 4 holes off the tee sometimes. Something to see. Has had a few girlfriends. Drives. He's a very sweet young man. I helped a lot of families for about 15 years. Then covid happened and I never got back into it. I rarely talk about it publicly. Only here and with a few close friends. I've gone pretty Galt on the matter...In mulling this and related things over I've recently had the thought, "Vaccines, fine. Forced vaccination, bad." If you're being coerced to take a pharma product all you have to do is look at history. And if vaccines are safe and effective why are people who get fully vaccinated so afraid? If they are effective, why worry? It's a very convoluted and emotional thing for a lot of people. It's our new religion.

He seems conflicted....(read it a few weeks ago)