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A makeover in a state that relied a lot on government services and high taxes to fund these services run by the state. A shift away from this tax funded government run model of services to getting private initiative involved, letting private investors take risks and try out new ideas in education, public services. Sweden has also moved away from reliance on laptops and ipads, on electronic screens for early and middle school education, preferring an older style of binders and writing on paper. Having realized that the electronic screen had not delivered on reading comprehension the way books and reading hard cover books did, and realizing that writing skills come from taking a pen and writing on real paper, rewriting and rewriting. Realizing that education does not require fancy tools, basically good teachers, good books and a basic drive to learn, a curiosity of mind and dedication to putting in the work required. This is something that is also part of Lyrarc's Movement of Global Literacy with Sweden at the forefront in trying out new ideas, and dropping failed ones. ...

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BBC says "tech's seedy side exposed" by Musk- Altman trial 2026. Let's face it there is a seedy side, and a much less benevolent side to Tech than it likes to show. The overspending on AI is a sign of misplaced priorities when so much of US infrastructure is dilapidated, much of it from before 1945, that badly needs to be rebuilt. Much of the promise of hardware from Tech that would change education is a failure so much so that Sweden is shifting on a nationwide effort in its schools to a program - "from screens to binders" that gives children binders with notebooks to write in and books to read, removing screens altogether, and for good reasons of the educators of Sweden. Tech in its grandiose style pretends it is about the technological revolution when it is simply the companies Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, three of which are from the last 15 years. The technological revolution and the scientific revolution date back to Copernicus and Newton and the hundreds, thousands of scientists and pioneers of the industrial revolution of the last 250 years, and the men of vision and wisdom that gave us the British and American Constitution, the principles of self-government of civilized societies. ...

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Reading a physical book is better than seeing some on on You Tube reading a book- this becomes a problem with You Tube targeting schools and school children with its Chromebooks in American schools. You Tube has become prevalent in American classroom and its marketing works closely with parents and teachers. Problems are that children can end up spending too much time watching You Tube, neglecting reading and home work. Watching a person read on You Tube gives verylittle of the benefits from reading a book oneself. The practice of reading is an important skill and can be developed only by reading and reading a physical book. Attention spans become shorter when watching You Tubes and more You Tubes. Sweden has studied the problem of using screens with teachers, education experts and curriculum experts and is now moving all its classrooms from screens to binders that include exercize books for children to write in. Writing is similar only when takes up a pen and paper can one write and write more till one gets better at it. Sweden should be closely followed and the US should start using a similar approach to fight the lack of reading comprehension skills in American schoolchildren as part of the Movement for Global Literacy of lyrarc.com. ...

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Changes for US and Asia, EU, to ponder on are happening in Swedish schools. It is back to books in Sweden as digital learning has not worked well so far and reading has suffered in some ways dismally. At younger ages books are better for reading and comprehension than screens. "We're trying, actually, to get rid of screens as much as possible," says the Education Minister. The government uses a slogan "från skärm till pärm,  in Swedish this translates to "from screen to binder". Later in 2026 a ban on mobiles in schools even for educational use goes into effect. Digital acts as a distraction and lessens concentration say teachers. Sweden scores on PISA tests have gone down since 2012. A new curriculum based on books goes into effect in 2028 and 157 million euros will be used for new books in schools. "Reading real books and writing on real paper, and counting with real numbers on real paper, is much better if you want kids to get the knowledge they need," say Swedish education experts consulted for the changes. This is a sea change other nations need to consider doing. ...

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World War II with Tom Hanks review- good for new generation of young people who have not seen Saving Private Ryan or documentaries made in ,the 70's. There are too many talking heads and not like in the 70's when survivors could give live accounts of what they saw, as they are dead by now. There is good new video footage.  Yet the war is of epic proportions on so many fronts, 20 episodes barely touch the major events of WWII, not to mention the events in Asia and Japan, the events in North Africa and Italy. Each of these areas has separate books in the work of Rick Atkinson who worked on it for a decade. Atkinson is interviewed by Rubinstein on C-SPAN showing that there is new interest in what happened in World War II. For the Asian side of the story the story does not start in 1939, the Japanese invasion and occupation of China is shown from the days after 1914 through the story of Gen. Joe Stilwell who is the American who for half a century to 1945 was America's main representative in China, and Franklin Roosevelt's and America's commanding general in China in the fight against the Imperial Japanese Army. The empathy of Stilwell for the Chinese people and his willingness to risk his life to help is simply amazing- and is something to take away from this book by Barbara Tuchman. There is a lot that America can be proud of in creating a rising tide in Asia that has lifted all boats. ...

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Automakers taking a charge for bets on EV's encouraged by Biden- Stellantis $26 billion follows Ford $19.5 billion, GM $6 billion.  Stellantis Chief Executive Antonio Filosa says about the write-downs- It “largely reflects the cost of overestimating the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires.” The Biden administration took climate change seriously but failed to get Congressional support for the EV charging stations needed and infrastructure needed across the US to keep pace with automakers shift to EV's. Stellantis took the change as an opportunity to develop many new EV models under CEO Carlos Tavares. Also overlooked by the Biden administration is the cost of cars which increased by about 20-30% during the 2022-2024 period. The lack of charging infrastructure, lack of battery technology advances for powerful batteries, and the costs involved pushing up prices of all automobiles, acted as severe bottlenecks when the Republicans fought the election on cost of living action. Biden era incentives were removed and gas prices were brought down by DJT extending the life of gas powered vehicles and making them the average man's choice. Of the $26 billion 65% is for canceled vehicle platforms for EV's for Dodge Ram and Jeep Wrangler. Another $8 billion is for cash payments to suppliers for canceled orders.   ...

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Good social ties and connections are important for healthy living. This is the theme of most of the books on aging well.

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Fred Brooks, IBM executive who led the development team for the IBM System/360 mainframe, is the author of Design of Design and of an earlier book Mythical Man-Month that sold 500,000 copies. His unique insights into completing large development projects have helped many tech companies. Brook's law from Mythical Man-Month is that it is futile to simply add engineers to projects in the hope of getting things done faster, as there are a lot of other factors to consider. This is stated by programmers as: "Adding manpower to a project only makes it later." The original design team has to bring newcomers up to speed, and the added distraction is one of the many factors that slow down the project. Brooks offers many new insights in the book Design for Design. One is that constraints are friends which help shrink the designer's search space. Another is that Design is a lot more about art as it is about science. Simply improving the process does not get you great design, it gets you from bad to average....

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Beverly Cleary grew up in Portland, Oregon in the 1930's and 40's . At the time she met children at libraries who kept asking her what about books about "kids like us." Most of the books in the Pacific Northwest were simply books about British children at that time. Clearly took up the task of writing books about real life children in America.

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Sandra Boynton is unique in children's books because of her avoidance of what she calls the "cutesy tedium and arrogant condescension" of children's books and children's music. She is simple but can adapt difficult words or ideas to sound simple. She has also avoided television because she says TV outlets merely want the rights and a children's product that makes it to a hit that will then turn up on hit toys, you know the commercial kind, and backpacks, then lunchboxes!

She lives in the foothills of the Berkshires mountains with the farm to table food, outdoor activities and fall foliage, and is married to Jamie McEwan, Olympic medal winning canoeist.

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Suggested books for retirement to help understand better how to lead the life you want to live in your 60's and beyond are shown here.  The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, by Marc Freedman 65 Things to Do When You Retire, edited by Mark Evan Chimsky (a collection of 65 essays by achievers in their 60's with unusual and fulfilling activities during retirement) Second-Act Careers, by Nancy Collamer The Encore Career Handbook, by Marci Alboher Don't Retire, Rewire, by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners (these do just what they say with examples) Transition to retirement can be arduous- and here is where these books come into draw on the experience of hundreds of people between 50 and eighty years to shape a healthy and rewarding life in retirement. The Couple's Retirement Puzzle, by Roberta K. Taylor Retirement for Two, by Maryanne Vandervelde       ...

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About 19% or one in five do not have access to books at home in Britain, new research shows. A recent report shows 51% of parents find books just too expensive. The National Literacy Trust Report shows 64% of parents say the amount of money they have to spend on books has decreased. The findings are alarming as 1 in 13 children do not read at all, and only half of the children read daily.  This has serious repercussions on children's futures- in school, in college and in the job market. Reading habits develop with access to books at home and at libraries. Owning books encourages children to develop reading habits. The very basis of the fair societies and democracy of the UK, US and Europe is the access to books and reading for all parts of society and people at all income levels. Without this democracy cannot be sustained as the population is less and less literate and unable to preserve and protect its freedoms or misled by political leaders. The current threats to freedom Mr Biden has pointed out at Independence Hall in Philadelphia arise from this neglect that opened up with the neglect of manufacturing communities in the US and Europe which gradually eroded incomes and access to the goods and services that were opened up through the improvements of the last half of the 20th century. And improvements then lost in the "free markets" period of the last three decades that shifted manufacturing and jobs overseas, and reduced incomes of ordinary people.  ...

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Obama Affordable Care Act ACA and its downfall are covered by two experienced authors over 2 book written over 2 decades. The authors are James Morone and David Blumenthal followed the healthcare issue over 25-30 years through the Clinton, Edward Kennedy and Obama efforts and wrote two books. The first was "The Heart of Power" on the healthcare situation from FDR to 2008. The last titled "Whiplash" in 2026, for which the authors are interviewed in Harvard Medicine magazine. C-SPAN has a book program on this book at a Washington DC bookstore. From the discussion on C-SPAN between Senator Michael Blumenthal, borther of one of the authors, James Morone and David Blumenthal physician, couple of conclusions are seen that may be new to readers. Q. What was the one single factor that doomed the Affordable Care Act? A. The deep antipathy towards the Obama administration influenced the response to the Obama handling of healthcare. The likelihood of Republicans accepting healthcare from a black person was simply not there say the book's authors in the discussion and Q&A on C-SPAN. Yet there were other reasons for the ACA failing. Obama had not gauged the mood of the nation well. UK Labour's Starmer won by a big majority in 2024 yet that does not reflect the mood of the British nation just 2 years later- by election year 2012 Obama's campaign was faltering and had to be rescued with Hispanic votes and a weak candidate in Utah's Mitt Romney. Obama lacked maturity and came in the way Bush came in when the list of candidates were mediocre in the US, similar to the period in the UK with David Cameron and Boris Johnson. To take on the health care issue required someone with the experience and caliber of LBJ, which Obama clearly lacked, coming from the minority community was not going to help in credibility. Obama's presidency was thus premature and to gain experience he would have done better in a key cabinet position such as at Department of State where an intellectual could have influenced world opinion in favor of emerging countries, a doable and necessary. Obama's lack of experience showed when he told Republicans two words in the first months in 2008- "We Won," perceiving arrogance it would set Republicans against him. The years 2008-2016 cost the US dearly in that the US needed a withdrawal from all of the Middle East which would require a strong president  with deep roots of support in all parts of the country including the south, to avoid recriminations. In the end by continuing the wars Obama weakened the US and let China move ahead. Q. Did Obama consider Medicare for All? A. Obama told Congressmen of his party according to Morone- if you can get 60 votes in the Senate for Medicare for All we can try.  Q. Would it take a major upheaval for Medicare for All to be accepted now that the health system is failing all Americans in 2026? A. It will take a world war or a economic depression- some major disaster for Medicare for All to be accepted in the US, say the authors. A pandemic happened in 1918 and again in 2019 the results were not positive, as the authors believe it unleashed the war on science after the vaccination for and against camps, leading to the culture wars in America seen today. Q  Obama's analytical mind thought he learned from the Clinton efforts in healthcare that failed. But he did not see things from the heart. There is good reason to think that the lessons learned of moving fast, letting Congress write the legislation, settling for what can be done not what needs to be done, were exactly the wrong lessons to be learned as opposed to writing off the Clinton experience entirely as Clinton's, and starting from scratch without preconceptions. In the end Obama if he was older, had more experience, and listened to the mood of the country would have realized that healthcare was for another day, and got right down to the most difficult challenge, to end the wars in the Middle East. Even small steps in the right direction would still have earned appreciation him today. Instead Bush and Obama, the most inexperienced of presidents will be remembered for wars they continued that weakened America.       ...

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"Horizontal sehlves first used for placing books"- this first happened at the Merton Library at Oxford in the 1370's. The Library was set up for loaning books predating the printing era in the Middle Ages. Books were kept in a chest before this. Dr. Julia Walworth, the Libraian of the Merton Library talks to the BBC's Christian Kriticos. The library will celebrate the 750th anniversary of its existence.Dining clubs at princeton immitate Merton Library. It is one of the oldest still functioning libraries in Europe and the oldest in the English speaking world.

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Brooks century gets England into semis of the T20 World Cup cricket 2026.

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The unravleing of Borders bookstores chain in the US, after Borders management failed to anticipate and build on the new trend to electronic books and made a series of mistakes. Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early Feb. 2011. Its online strategies simply failed to come up with answers to the cultural trend to online shopping for books and buying e-book readers. A serious bad decision from which Borders never recovered was to transfer its internet operations to Amazon Inc. in 2001. Amazon quickly built up customer relationships with millions of customers. Other decisions followed which put Borders in an untenable position. Borders increased its debt from $159 million in 2001, to $554 million for the fiscal year ended Feb 2, 2008, using the money for overseas expansion and share buybacks, which did little to address the looming internet problem. By contrast Barnes and Noble took the opposite strategy of paying down all of its $667 million in debt. Borders has modest beginnings starting in 1971, when Tom and Louis Borders, started a small used bookstore. By the 1990's bookstores with tens of thousands of books in one location were changing the bookselling landscape, as smaller bookstores were closing. Borders was able to ride this wave. When the next wave hit in 2010 with the internet, Borders was unable to respond and went into permanent decline. A costly trip through bankruptcy court means Borders will have to close one third of its 674 Borders and Waldenbooks stores, and cut a large part of the 19,500 staff. This will mean customers shifting to Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Mike Shazin, CEO of Idea Logical Co, a New York consulting firm, says he expects 50% of bricks and mortar bookstores to go away in 5 years, and 90% to go away in 10 years. ...

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What will the E-Book do to bookstoreslike Barnes & Noble? This is a question that investors like Burkle, who owns 20% of Barnes & Noble, and Mr. Riggio who owns 31%, are facing. Apple's IPad is expected to sell 5.5 million units in 2010, Amazon's Kindle 3 million, and Barnes and Noble's Nook 1 million units. Barnes & Noble invested early on in a handheld device called the Rocket eBook reader with its investment in NuvoMedia in 1998. But pulled out of the eBook business in 2003. The problem at the time was the lack of enough titles to arouse reader interest and the high prices-$20 per eBook vs $25 for a hardbook. This move proved costly when Amazon launched its Kindle in 2007. Amazon now has 70-80% of the eBook buisness, with Sony, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble competing for the remaining share. Riggio bought the first store for Barnes & Noble on New York's Fifth Avenue in 1971. He promoted superstores with huge selections (over 100,000 titles) and built up a chain of 719 stores in ensuing decades. Now he faces a new reality in the arithmetic of eBooks which could remake this business. Apple set a new method for pricing eBooks that affects booksellers. Publishers and Apple set up a model that gives the publisher 70% of the eBook digital price. EBook sellers act as agents in this approach, and they get 30%. Best sellers sell for $9.99 but other books can be $12.99 or $14.99. Now the digital bookseller gets 30% of $12.99. And as it hasn't paid anything its more advantageous and profitable. This works for publishers and digital booksellers but Barnes and Noble was used to getting much more than $3.90 when it sold a $25 hardcover book. If eBook sales climb to become a quarter or more of total book sales by 2012 then it will lead to a decline in sales revenues for Barnes & Noble. With eBooks costing half of the hardcover prices in brick and mortar retailers the trend is irreversible. To address this trend Barnes & Noble has hired a digital expert Mr Lynch as CEO, and the strategy is to combine the retail presence and customer physical contact in brick-and-mortar stores with eBook retailing, to come up with an answer to this tidal wave of change in book retailing. ...

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Reading of childrens books to expand horizons and adults role in building a love of reading in children at a young age.

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Where do you place a winner of the Democratic primary in Maine, Graham Plattner, an oyster farmer who dropped out of college at George Washington University, served briefly in the Middle East wars of Bush and Obama, and had PTSD. Is he working class, middle working class or is he from a downwardly mobile professional class considering he has parents who are well educated and father a prominent lawyer in Maine? Plattner easily defeated a 3 term governor of Maine with his average working class demeanor and language. He is for universal health care, (Medicare for All) universal child care, affordable housing, affordable college. Politics in the US has been moving away from the simple divisions before 1950 created by the Industrial Revolution- the workers in factories and the owners of capital allied with the professional middle class. The few owners of capital mostly college educated allied with people from the non college educated workers in factories who are conservative in their values and beliefs and on the other side the college educated professional middle class now downwardly mobile because of the many recessions and high unemployment from frequent financial crises, with college costing $80,000 a year putting them in deep debt. There is today in the WSJ a story of a professional worker who at $194,000 a year salary is not able to payoff $15000 debt which owners of capital have set at 26% interest and is in downward spiral. Some of this comes from large college and other debt. There is says WSJ Analysis $1.25 trillion in credit card debt alone with highest delinquency rates in decades in 2026. Cost of living has only made things worse and some of this happened as Biden poured money into the economy to help people hurt by the pandemic, yet with some short run consequences with demand strong businesses including hotels, restaurants and grocery stores, auto dealers, jacking up their prices by over 20% in 1 year and Biden failing to respond, getting overwhelmed by open borders migrants under Mayorkas and Harris (also hit by a sudden Venezuelan migrant influx). This is the America one has today- a confusing mix. This in reality means Democrats may take issue with Democrats, Republicans take issue with Republicans, and Democrats join with Republicans on issue by issue basis. It might actually be rational than irrational. On cultural issues if the country has gone over its head and moved too fast on some issues that are not for the general public good, people of different backgrounds can come together to get the best path. On economic issues things are never so straightforward, there are unpredictable consequences and the rules of economics are really not so straightforward either.  Providing relief can mean the government shouldering the burden as during the pandemic which it should, yet with caution as businesses can use the excess demand to raise prices and one is back to square one with everybody worse off as happened with Biden. Migrant flows and fears of insecurity in public spaces can lead to a severe public "discomfort that can waylay the best intentions of a Harris or Biden, leading to public "backlash." In fact the title of a recent book is "Whiplash." Current books include Floridan Marco Rubio's "Decade's of Decadence- How our Spoiled Elites Blew America's Inheritance of Liberty, Security and Prosperity." Rubio means it. Its authentic because as Rubio says repeatedly, his parents could make a living in the 1960's working in a factory with decent wages, low cost of living and low cost of college, the arithmetic between salaries and what you needed for decent home in suburbs and sending children to good public schools, then to college, all adding up. The result is that Rubio could go to college and serve in the Florida legislature. Rubio says in 2026, after the elites under Bush and Obama and faulty economic theory shipped all of our factories to China, that the story of his parents and his education would simply be impossible. This is what he told people in India on his first visit last week. His parents were Cuban immigrants, yet he identifies with Spain and with western civilization, a devout Roman Catholic. Rubio is a Republican, and is in large contrast with Alejandro Mayorkas, also from Cuba, and Biden's Head of Homeland Security. This is the mix of people and representatives in Congress,  business people, small business owners, professionals, that we have today in 2026 in the US. Plattner and Rubio, one a Democrat and one a Republican- both have something in common. Plattner also has general disdain for "the corporate interests, the billionaires, the Washington DC elites, and the establishment politicians."  The winds are blowing in the direction of getting things right- remembering that Eisenhower continued the work of the Kennedy and LBJ administrations (Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System for instance, and LBJ gave America Social Security and Medicare). Before that Franklin Roosevelt a Democrat built on the work of his uncle Republican Theodore Roosevelt (TR gave America the idea of good governance and built the US Navy, FDR fought the Depression and stabilized a faltering economy after mistakes made by Republican Herbert Hoover could have happened even if Hoover was a Democrat. FDR was himself from a wealthy New York family and when he first met fellow New Yorker Frances Perkins before his struggle with polio, a haughty New York gentleman. That was before Frances Perkins as FDR's Labor Secretary joined forces with Roosevelt to give New York a modernized administration governance structure by 1940 that was applied to all 51 states after 1950. It allied labor with capital with fairness for all, and was the first such modern structure of this size the world had ever seen, which was the fundamental strength of the United States of America. It was imitated in Asia, first in the Shanghai region then China, and first in the Ahmedabad region and now India. The US is faced with the challenge of recreating and rebuilding this today, as first China, then India remind America of its roots which they have followed in their own style and culture.  First good governance, then good institutional structures, alligning labor and capital with fairness for all, strong affordable + accessible educational and healthcare systems, and investments of capital and labor for infrastructure + industrial development. ...

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The slow hunch, serendipity, error, inventive borrowing and the collison between order and chaos. Nancy Koehn looks at two new books on innovation.