Category: Books
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Review: Tanner’s Babbling Corpse
Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave And The Commodification Of Ghosts Grafton Tanner An odd little book on the rise of vaporwave and what it means for our current culture that some of the most subversive music being made in the 2010s was, basically, the hold music for 1980s corporate America. I knew basically nothing about Vaporwave until…
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Caro’s The Power Broker
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New YorkRobert Caro I mean, how do you write a review of a work of genius? Who cares what I think about perhaps the greatest work of nonfiction in the last fifty years? If you care about New York, or governance, or how to avoid turning…
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Review: Ord’s The Precipice
The Precipice: Existential Risks and the Future of HumanityTony Ord An odd and fascinating little book written by one of the leading forces in effective altruism, the Precipice is an attempt to catalogue and rate true existential crises facing humanity. We’re not taking about inconveniences, here, we’re talking ending human life kind of stuff. We’re…
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Larson’s Splendid and the Vile
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the BlitzErik Larson Dad lit. Read right when the pandemic was at its worst in NYC – the park completely empty on my late night runs, the sirens, constant. It was interesting to read a book on the Blitz and Churchill at…
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Review: Nutt’s Drink
Drink? The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health David Nutt Checked this out after it received glowing praise from Tyler Cowen and it was well worth it. Drink is an investigation into our relationship with alcohol and it’s historical importance, especially focused on England. But the main thrust of the book is a detailed investigation…
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Review: Venkataraman’s The Optimists Telescope
The Optimists Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless AgeBina Venkataraman People are very bad at long term planning. There are good reasons for this. For most of our existence it was always a better idea to eat that food, eat that mushroom, have sex with that person, right now cause tomorrow was really, seriously, not…
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Review: Kristof and WuDunn’s Tightrope
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn Maybe you knew that Nicolas Kristof grew up on semi-rural Oregon, and that the vast majority of those he went to high school with are now either dead or in jail, but I didn’t. This book, where Kristof and Wu Dunn use the stories of…
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Review: Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons
Fathers and Sons Ivan Tugenev The novel that really introduced the concept of nihilism to the world. In many ways, this is a classic story. Father sends son away to school, son comes back, changed, with new ideas that feel dangerous to the father. They grow apart. But with time, and love, there is a…
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Robert Moses, Swimming
“Almost every day, sometimes twice a day, no matter how busy he was, Moses would swim. He preferred the ocean; he left time for a swim whenever he was over on Jones Beach; as soon as the causeway was completed, even before it was open to the public, he drove across it to swim in…
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Review: Tavenner’s Prepared
Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life Diane Tavenner A guidebook for a new model of education by one of the founders of Summit Public schools. I picked this up because I have young kids whose education I fuss over and it was on Gates end of the year list of best books. Lots…
Milo and the Calf 