A BOOK BLESSING -For Reading
M ay we be blessed to trace the steps of ages past, in an effort to understand and learn from the smoke and haze, beginning simply as powder in a bowl, working up to fire in the sky, then pointing back down toward neighbor nigh. May we uncover the decisions and results of those history chose before us. May we tread light with red caution grip tape, on the ground stood so still, now so ashed in wounds so deep scarred, in the echoes and lines of the booms and the tatters and the clicks. May we hold onto to the powdery gift science taught us, and release the threats we try carry, so deaf and defeated, dry and competed in the unearthly weaponry womb named doom.
WHATS IN THE BINDING? -Book In Summary
WHATS IN THE BINDING? -Book In Summary
W ell, the table is set with all the best players: philosophy, science, biography, story telling, religion, gasping fact, riveting history, and all. Recorded is their conversation with great wit and scope and tangle over one thing: Gunpowder. But that one thing is hundreds of layers deep. Where it began? How? Why? East or in the West? Who used it after that, then who used it after that? What made the way that person use it come up with another way of using it for something different by someone else? How about mining. Why 200 years after the gun? How about Samuel Colt. How about the first time bomb. How about Benjamin Franklins opinion? How about terrorists in the 1600's? How about giving it to the French once again for aiding in the Revolutionary War. Not to mention Paul Revere rides again. And now an intermission for a war or perhaps a ground breaking scientific insight, or prolific moral dilemma. Ah yes DaVinci and Galileo too, astronomy, physics, one more question for you, "Could you pass the saltpeter?"
PAGE LEAFING -Thoughts & Impressions
T here is quite an engine under the coverly binded frame of this book. So much so, I allowed an additional week to complete the reading. What fine writing and eloquently knit together content.
I n fact if books were given some kind of material or objective form, this one would certainly spark in a way that delighted the eye, like a dancing firework up in the sky, linger almost gone, then booming, crackle in the sky. But yes, Mr. Jack Kelly brought a full house to this book, I can not imagine the length of scope, effort and knowledge that went into putting such a stream of thought together on the subject of gunpowder.
A lmost quite numerous times each reading in sitting, I would catch myself not reading any longer and just gazing off in the distance, pondering and pondering. Amazed at such a history and such a weaving together and such a gap in knowledge that seems to be present in culture. Quite the powdery basket.
A bsolutely a more toned down read, rather sad and tense history on many pages, but in a way that leaves you with a greater sense of good fear, the kinds that helps you have more respect and understanding for life and technology.
H onestly I think the book quotes below will speak well for themselves.
TAKE FIVE -Book Samples
"...In contrast, the principal aim of Chinese practitioners was to create an elixir of immortality. Their interest was drawn by materials with paradoxical properties- gold, the element that never tarnished; mercury, the liquid metal; sulfur, the stone that burned."
"While swords, arrows, and battle axes had injured men grievously, the trauma inflicted by gunpowder was of a new variety."
"The delicate mechanism of the inner ear could not withstand the repeated concussion of cannon fire. Deafness was an all too common consequence of the gunner's trade."
"The Powder Treason, one of the biggest news stories of Shakespeare's lifetime, became an early prototype of modern terrorism."
"A soldier, it was said, had to fire seven times the weight of an enemy in lead in order to kill him."
PAIRS WELL WITH -Resources
R estoration and the new horizons awakening to help repair some of the wounds we have caused.
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