Yamaguchi, then an engineer . . . was in Hiroshima on a business trip on 6 August 1945 when an American B-29 bomber. . . dropped an atomic bomb on the city, killing 80,000 people instantly. . . The badly burned Yamaguchi . . . spent the night in an air raid shelter before returning home to Nagasaki, 180 miles away, two days later. He was in Nagasaki on 9 August when a nuclear bomb devastated [that] city, killing an estimated 70,000 people.

Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A Tribute Band, by Steven Kurutz.

Most pleasurable book I’ve read in a long time. Well-written, amusing and sad, the author takes us on tour with various tribute bands – bands that mimic the appearance and music of more famous rock bands -- a phenomenon that took off with the imitation-Beatles Broadway show, Beatlemania. (He particularly takes us along with Sticky Fingers, a Rolling Stones tribute band). We learn often of might-have-beens, sincere musicians seeking greatness in their own right who, unable to do so, settled for the second-best option: the adulation of looking and sounding like a rock music legend. The author spends less time with, though hints at, many well-adjusted successful tribute bands who are simply in it for the fun and money, and apparently quite happy about where they are, like the all-female tribute band Lez Zeppelin. Despite some emphasis on the more interesting dark side, he happily doesn’t dwell on Deeper Cultural Meanings too much, nor trash the phenomenon. Ultimately the answer given to why these bands exist is provided by their members: it’s a lot of fun and beats just holding a regular job someplace for a few dollars an hour. The book’s a journey, not a destination, and well worth the ride.

A History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann

Couldn’t quite get through all of it but it is a mostly pleasant tour for the nerdy among us, which takes us through the history of mathematics' and mankind’s quest for that famous irrational number which defines and describes the ins and outs of the circle, via the relationships among radius/diameter and circumference and area. The author’s unapologetic politics sprinkle the text with intermittent sermons against the science-retardant aspects of Communism and Christianity. It gets a bit Ayn Randishly over the top stupid at times, but the anti-totalitarian and anti-imperial ("What have the Romans ever done for math?") perspectives give the book a unifying theme that adds readability. Surprise eureka extra factoid: Archimedes WAS the military-industrial complex of his day.

Sowell's alleged crimes place him among a rare breed of serial killers: those who literally work close to home. . . .. "The fact that they would dirty their own nest, as it were, is peculiar to me and suggests a level of mental illness or sickness," said Berrill, director of the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science.