Category: Books
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Review: Coleman’s Walking the Perfect Square
Walking the Perfect Square (Moe Prager Series) Reed Coleman I picked this one up because the star of the series is a New York Jew. My kind of guy. I wasn’t expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. Reed Coleman is a strong writer, much better than most writers of this sort of fiction, and Moe…
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Review: Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart
A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey Through the World of Fighting Sam Sheridan Sam Sheridan had the early adulthood of someone who is building a life in preparation for a memoir. After graduating from high school, he worked as a merchant marine. He left the merchant marines for Harvard and after graduating from Harvard, crewed…
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Review: Stout’s Fer-De-Lance
Fer-de-Lance (Audio Editions) Rex Stout I am no Rex Stout expert. Matter of fact, this is the first of his books I have read. I have, however, read my fair share of mysteries, and this one is a hoot. The plot of is more than a bit fantastical, since it involves darts flying out of…
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Review: Saylor’s Roman Blood
Roman Blood: A Novel of Ancient Rome (Novels of Ancient Rome) Steven Saylor Roman Blood is a fun little mystery set in the last days of the Roman Republic. The book is modeled on the actual killing of Sextus Roscius and Cicero’s defense of his son for the crime. Saylor has taken many a liberty…
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Review: Crimethinc’s Days of War, Nights of Love
Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink For Beginners Crimethinc. Crimethinc. All the rage in 2000, largely forgotten now. Of all the things they did (newspapers, magazines, other books) this was the best. A pretty clear indictment of late capitalism in America and a call to live life fully. Of course, eating out of dumpsters…
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Review: Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zones (T.A.Z.)
TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Autonomedia New Autonomy Series) Hakim Bey Hakim Bey is, probably, patient zero of the lifestyle anarchist school of thought. We can trace back to this New York eccentric much that came later in the 1990s and 2000s, including Crimethinc anrcho-primitivism, think pieces on Burning Man and…
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Review: Dufourmentelle’s Negri on Negri
Negri on Negri: in conversation with Anne Dufourmentelle Antoni Negri and Anne Dufourmentelle Antonio Negri – seventies radical reborn in the early 2000s as darly of the left with his massive theoretical work on the nature of late capitalism and resistance to it (Empire and Multitude). He’s one of the few fashionable Marxists that one…
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Review: Cohen’s Book of Numbers
Book of Numbers: A Novel Joshua Cohen A new addition to the burgeoning genre of MFA writers try their hand at thrillers. A diverting read about a failing young writer (name Joshua Cohen) who is hired to write the biography of a mysterious and eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire (also named Joshua Cohen) whose company may…
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Review: Stephenson’s Seveneves
Seveneves: A Novel Neil Stephenson Neil Stephenson is among my favorite authors, and my number one go-to dude for popular fiction. His writing is clear, his characters well developed, and his research top of the line. He is one of the few authors whose books I buy no questions asked, as soon as they come…
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Review: Hoffman’s Savage Harvest
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art Carl Hoffman A strange and fascinating book that uses the mystery of Michael Rockefeller’s disappearance in New Guinea to trace the author (and our societies) fraught relationship with indigenous peoples. Was Rockerfeller killed? Was he eaten? Did he kind of…
Milo and the Calf 