Why we're #1

The Hook's September 30 cover story, Why They Kill, is a truly important article. The fact that the author, J. Anderson Thomson Jr., lives in our own "backyard," helps to explain why Charlottesville is rated #1 in the country. It's not just the scenery; it's the people. (However, it certainly is not the Confederate flags or cultish "fish" car emblems or the idiot drivers who, when they aren't aiming for each other, are aiming at people on bicycles or...)

Anyway, for Hook readers who want to take the information in Dr. Thomson's article one very important step further, may I suggest the book, Eternal Treblinka, by Charles Patterson, available through Lantern Books or Amazon.com.

As Franz Kafka said, "I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So it can make us happy? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all... A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."

Stephen Aust
Earlysville

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