Title: “Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies: The Real West”

Authors: David Fisher and Bill O’Reilly

Rank: 25

Blurb: “Frontier America was a place where instinct mattered more than education, and courage was necessary for survival. It was a place where luck made a difference and legends were made.”

Review: “If you are going to pretend you’re an expert and write a book about something, at least have enough knowledge about the subject to get the photos right.”

Customers Also Bought: Something by Mike Lee, who continues to amaze us with his ability to live with himself.

Footnote: History is written by the winners, which is why we don’t call it “Occupied America”.

Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “The Road to Character”

Author: David Brooks

Rank: 1

Blurb: “Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character… Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint.”

Review: “Any time you extrapolate from specific examples to the general, you’re on dangerous ground.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Thin Green Line: The Money Secrets of the Super Wealthy”

Footnote: Ike’s road to character had a chauffeur.

The Road to Character [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America’s Founding Document”

Author: Mike Lee

Rank: 64

Blurb: “The still-unfolding story of America’s Constitution is a history of heroes and villains — the flawed visionaries who inspired and crafted liberty’s safeguards, and the shortsighted opportunists who defied them.”

Review: “I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves both the U.S. and truth.”

Customers Also Bought: “Life After Death: The Evidence” by Dinesh D’Souza

Footnote: Looking in the mirror every morning and seeing Mike Lee must be a real bummer.

Our Lost Constitution [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Amish Confidential”

Authors: “Lebanon” Levi Stoltzfus and Ellis Henican

Rank: 58

Blurb: “‘Lebanon’ Levi Stoltzfus, star of the hit Discovery Channel reality show Amish Mafia, delivers a sizzling tell-all about Amish life today. From the forbidden joyrides to the senseless shunnings to the colorful family feuds, he shares his frank insider’s view of this fascinating and secretive society.”

Review: “The author points out that their failure to vaccinate their children for polio resulted in 11 cases of polio among the Amish in 1978. Not surprisingly, the tourist trade fell drastically after that.”

Customers Also Bought: “Surviving When Modern Medicine Fails: A definitive guide to essential oils that could save your life during a crisis”

Footnote: We wish all American religious extremists would follow the Amish example by keeping to themselves and not bothering the rest of us.

Amish Confidential [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom”

Author: Don Miguel Ruiz

Rank: 48

Blurb: “Rooted in traditional Toltec wisdom beliefs, four agreements in life are essential steps on the path to personal freedom. As beliefs are transformed through maintaining these agreements, shamanic teacher and healer don Miguel Ruiz asserts lives will ‘become filled with grace, peace, and unconditional love.'”

You Get Enlightenment! And You Get Enlightenment!: “Ruiz’s explanations of Toltec-based cosmography got a major boost recently when publishing pooh-bah Oprah Winfrey mentioned his work on her TV show.”

Read more »

Title: “Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives”

Author: Jim B. Tucker

Rank: 33

Blurb: “Readers will meet a boy who describes a previous life on a small island. When Tucker takes him to that island, he finds that some details eerily match the boy’s statements and some do not.”

Review: “First, I’d like to take skeptics head-on: you may scoff at the subject matter but you probably have no real knowledge of it. You — we — are part of a primitive civilization and know next to nothing of the nature of existence. For hundreds of thousands of years man looked at birds in flight and dreamed of flying. There are people alive TODAY who were born before man could even figure THAT out, the relatively simple dynamics of flight. So, don’t be so dismissive of what you don’t understand and assume you ‘know’ what’s possible and impossible. As Plato advised, ‘a wise man knows he knows nothing.'”

Customers Also Bought: “Kennedy’s Last Stand: Eisenhower, UFOs, MJ-12 & JFK’s Assassination”

Footnote: If the people alive today are only 6 percent of the people who ever lived, who gets the open reincarnation slots, and what does everybody else do while they’re queued up?

Return to Life [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security”

Authors: Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller and Paul Solman

Rank: 1

Blurb: “You’ve paid all your working life for these benefits. Now, get what’s yours.”

Review: “I would rather consult with someone instead of reading this.”

Customers Also Bought: “Being Mortal”

Footnote: While a current House of Cards subplot covers a Democratic Preznident scheming to screw over Americans for political gain — which, granted, is not inconceivable, if you consider Bubba’s welfare “reform” — the predominant narrative of Social Security eventually going “broke” relies on (a) the presumption that anybody will be left in fifty years after global warming fries our crops and swallows our coasts, and (b) pretending that the problem isn’t easily solvable by, y’know, fairly taxing insanely wealthy people. Sooner or later this New Gilded Age shall pass, and Americans will come to their senses.

Get What’s Yours [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]