Posts by Sam Cromartie
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Nonfiction biographies can at times be tedious to read, but not this account of the life of Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson brings his character to life with details that can only be obtained through extensive familiarity with a subject. The fact that Jobs cooperated with Isaacson in this endeavor and encouraged him to reveal all…
Read MoreThe Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
The Forgotten Man: a New History of the Great Depression published in 2007 is filled with lessons pertinent to the management of today’s depressed economy. The author, Amity Shlaes, discusses the policies that led to the collapse of the world economies in 1929 and the effects of the responses of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.…
Read MoreThe Expats
The Expats is a first novel for Chris Pavone. Kate Moore sees a chance to redirect her life when her husband Dexter announces that he has received a job offer in computer security from a bank in Europe. It pays so well that she can retire from her job and be a full time mom…
Read MoreThe Hunger Games
I enjoyed Suzanne Collin’s novel, The Hunger Games, and I watched the movie yesterday. The premise is a young woman’s struggle to survive against impossible odds, and at the same time, to preserve her humanity. A different truth struck me. The future world that she painted reflected too closely Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet…
Read MoreThe Affair
I just finished reading The Affair. It is Lee Child’s sixteenth book casting Jack Reacher. Jack is the man that most teenage boys wish they could be—big, strong, smart, confident, and fearless with war scars and more success in bed than Stuart Wood’s Stone Barrington. In the first fifteen novels, he has washed out of the…
Read MoreLondon Cromartie family
I recently received an email from Edward Cromartie of New Jersey whose lineage extends back to London. He has an interesting web page on the Cromarty family. http://www.edwardcromarty.com/LINEAGE.htm
Read MoreViral Hemorrhagic Fever
Viral hemorrhagic fever is a title given to a spectrum of diseases caused by viruses that affect the vascular bed. Fever, myalgia, and prostration occur early; and petechial hemorrhages, hypotension, and conjunctivitis are common findings. Bleeding from mucous membranes, shock, and death may follow. Yellow fever killed ten percent of the population of Philadelphia during…
Read MoreElizabeth Cromartie
Elizabeth Cromartie, daughter of William Cromartie and Ruhamah Doane, was born October 5, 1769 in Bladen County, North Carolina. In 1790 she married James Shaw, who was born in 1769 in Scotland on the Isle of Arran. He was the son of William Shaw and Mary McCurdie, who were born on the Isle of Arran…
Read MoreSmallpox
Smallpox was a highly contagious, often fatal, disease caused by the variola virus. Over five hundred million people died from it during the twentieth century. Due to efforts of the World Health Organization, the disease was eradicated with no cases documented since 1977. The only known stocks of the organisms are at the CDC in…
Read MoreSir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty
I recently attended the Urquhart Clan event in Scotland celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty who was born in 1611 in Cromarty. After attending King’s College of the University of Aberdeen, he toured Europe until 1636. Charles I knighted him after he joined a Royalist uprising. In…
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