The American actor John Barrymore took a somewhat more practical view, noting that "love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock."

He writes: If there is no human tinkering with a river's flow, then there will be a riffle-pool sequence for every stretch of river that is five times its width. So if you walk one-hundred yards along a river that is ten feet wide, you should expect to spot two riffle-pool combinations.

--My thoughts: This seems a tad bit judgemental, does it not? Breslin writes:

All my life, I have judged everybody by whether or not he uses "between you and I." It is the one most revealing mistake in the English language. If the person says, "between you and I," then I know he is uneducated, no matter what kind of paper is framed on his wall, and I also know that he is essentially a fool.

If you're like me and wanted to read this because you were interested in learning about the intelligence failures that lead to 9/11, but didn't want to read an overly detailed book about the entire history of Al Qaeda first (which is what Wright does in this book), then I recommend skipping this book and reading John Duffy's "The Watchdogs Didn't Bark" instead.

Ignore the "truther" lunatics and read this book instead, which is based in reality. It chronicles the intelligence failures that lead up to 9/11, specifically the CIA's failure to share intelligence with other agencies due to bureaucratic infighting, oversized egos, and an attempt to "flip" members of Al Qaeda, despite knowing that several of the hijackers were living here for more than a year prior to 9/11 and plotting an attack using airplanes.

I read this because I was interested in learning more about the politics behind transplantation--who does and does not get transplants and why. Unfortunately, the book doesn't touch upon this until more than halfway through, and then only briefly.

The use of the census to throw people into concentration camps. Why, that would never happen here!

This has been on my TBR for a couple of years now. But now that we actually have concentration camps along the southern border of the former United States, reading this took on a sense of urgency. By the way, I recently heard the author of this book say on NPR that the so-called "detention facilities" that we now have in this country are indeed concentration camps.

Breslin was describing former NY governor Hugh Carey here, but it reminds me of Trump:

Once every many years, nay, once every many decades, one will come along like this, a dream character in dancing pumps, splashing champagne all over his head, a mind made of sky, doing so many things at once that you simply don't know where to begin when telling them.

Whoa whoa whoa. Stop right there. The clergy deal in childish fairy tales. Surgery is SCIENCE. Why would a doctor need to consult clergy? If you ever see your doctor praying or consulting clergy, get a different doctor, IMMEDIATELY!

Great line.

It's always harder to operate on bigger, obese patients. The vessels are deeper and surrounded by fat, making the operation take place in a deep hole. It has always amazed me that people outside of surgery are surprised by this; I suppose they want to believe that all surgeries are the same and predictable.

This was from the turn of the twentieth century up until WWII. Not surprisingly, Hitler kind of put a damper on that whole eugenics thing.

When Robert Moses built Jones Beach, he had the Parkway overpasses built so low that a bus from Harlem loses its roof if it tries to take people to the beach.

Outstanding! I've only read two of Tropper's novels so far--this one and The Book of Joe--but I loved both of them. I can't wait to read the rest of his books!