Category: Books
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Review: Cronin’s The Passage
The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy) Justin Cronin The Passage is a seven hundred page vampire novel written by a novelist who graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop. That makes it a pretty rare bird. It is also a book I enjoyed tremendously. I imagine there is very little middle ground…
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Review: Goodrich-Clarke’s Black Sun
Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke An overview of Nazi inspired right wing lunatics of the post World War II era, covering the heavy hitters and some lesser known individuals. It is a very well researched account of world for which it is difficult to get information, but…
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Amazon: Tops in Racist Fiction (?)
Do you remember a few months back when Amazon pulled a Kindle book called The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct? If not, refresh your memory here. That was not the only time Amazon played content cop with the titles it sells: it’s also yanked incest and rape fiction, although…
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Remaindered: Books that don’t belong
Another in an occasional series about books that disorient, perplex, or cause us to question our decision-making abilities. Today, we look at poorly produced literature for police on what to do when battling satanists. Ritualistic Crime Scene Investigation, by Dawn Perlmutter. The Institute for the Research of Symbolic & Ritual Violence, LLC (Pennsylvania, 2007). The…
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I’m a reader
My lovely wife (for full disclosure she is an editor on this site) gave me a Kindle for my birthday last August. I thought long and hard about getting one and finally I decided to get one for a few reasons. 1. It is difficult to read a large hardcover book while rocking an infant to…
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Before Bob Avakian was a punchline
Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che, by Max Elbaum. Verso: London, 2006. Today, when the U.S. left consists of little more than Barbara Ehrenreich, a couple of blogs, and an anarchist burrito stand or two, it’s hard to imagine a time when the left was so vast and powerful…
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Remaindered: Books that don’t belong
Another installment in an occasional series about books in our libraries that embarrass, confuse or upset us. Today: the particular humor of our friends the police. Cop Jokes, Lou Savelli and Stuart Moss (Looseleaf Law Publication, Flushing NY, 2007). Lots of vocational groups have their own oral folklore, and jokes are a big part of…
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Review: Drazin’s Maimonides
Maimonides: Reason Above All Israel Drazin This is an odd little volume on the great Jewish thinker, the Rambam. Perhaps its worth a read for someone like me — a novice Jewish scholar. There is a lot of good introductory material here, but the book is kind of all over the place. Chapters focus on…
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Review: The Secret Temple: Masons, Mysteries and the Founding of America
The Secret Temple: Masons, Mysteries and the Founding of America by Peter Levenda (Continuum Books, 2009) A good introductory text to a subject is hard to find and with the subject of Freemasonry it is even more difficult. Freemasons take oaths to never divulge the secrets of the Society and (perhaps as a result of…
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Review: Maimonides: Reason Above All
Maimonides: Reason Above All by Israel Drazin This is an odd little volume on the great Jewish thinker, the Rambam. This book is worth a read for someone like me who is a novice Jewish scholar. There is a lot of good introductory material here, but the book is kind of all over the place.…
Milo and the Calf 