Milo and the Calf

Category: Books

  • King’s Where Do We Go From Here

    Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or CommunityDr. Martin Luther King Dr. King’s last book and as relevant now as the day he wrote it. It’s easy to forget how radical King was, especially in his final years. Calling not only for Black liberation, but for an end to the Vietnam war, and demanding…

  • Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat By The Door

    The Spook Who Sat By The DoorSam Greenlee I think I first heard about The Spook Who Sat By The Door maybe twenty years ago, but this was the year I finally read this incredible book. The storyline is well known to the reader of leftist literature – Dan Freeman, a black man, joins the…

  • Mischel’s The Marshmallow Test

    The Marshmallow Test: Why Self-Control Is the Engine of SuccessWalter Mischel You probably know the Marshmallow test. Young children are offered a marshmallow. They can eat it right now. But if they wait, they can get two marshmallows. The children were then tracked through to adulthood and by and large, the children who could wait…

  • Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room

    Giovanni’s RoomJames Baldwin When I was in my twenties, this was a favorite book of a number of friends. I don’t know why I never read it. This is Baldwin at the height of his powers writing with a kind of restraint that makes the themes of the novel even more explosive. I’m not literary…

  • Review: Morrison’s Sula

    SulaToni Morrison Morrison’s second novel. Like every one of her works that I have read, it’s a masterpiece. I really have nothing new to say about one of America’s greatest novelists except to say that what stuck me about Sula was how fully formed the characters are, even those whose appearances are brief, and how…

  • Review: Mantel’s Wolf Hall

    Wolf HallHilary Mantel The plan was to wait until all three books came out and then read them one right after the other. As other reviews this year will make clear, that didn’t happen. One down, two to go. This, Mantel’s first book on Cromwell is, you are not surprised to hear, brilliant. The writing…

  • Review: Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

    What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Huruki Murakami Why did it take me so long to read this delightful little book? Perhaps because while I admire Murakami’s fiction, I don’t really like it. This book has a certain oddness to it, it is so straight forward, filled with such short, careful, deliberative,…

  • Review: Barry’s The Great Influenza

    The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History John Barry Started this book right in the heart of it. Mid-April, New York City. Only leaving the apartment late at night to run around an empty Prospect Park. This is an incredible work, both a detail history of the greatest modern pandemic before…

  • Review: Carney’s The Wedge

    The Wedge: Evolution, Consciousness, Stress, and the Key to Human ResilienceScott Carney New book by the author of two really good books What Doesn’t Kill Us about showman and actual real life health guru Wim Hof, and the Enlightenment Trap about the tragic death of mystic lead astray Ian Thorson. This new one, the Wedge,…

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    Review: Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts

    In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s BerlinErik Larson Dad book all the way dealing with that most dad book of dad book times, World War II, specifically Hitler’s rise to power as seen through the eyes of the American diplomat William Dodd and his family. This is an…