Category: Books
-
Review: Bett’s Felon
Felon: Poems Reginald Dwayne Butts I work at a criminal justice non profit and day in day out I try to make the criminal justice system in New York City a little smaller, a little fairer, a little more humane. That work can often be technical, and too often, we put distance between ourselves and…
-
Review: Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn
Motherless Brooklyn Jonathan Lethem I bought Motherless Brooklyn right when it came out and then immediately leant it to a friend who soon after became a hopeless junkie. I never saw the book again. But this year, without a book at the New Haven train station, I picked it up again, and blazed through it…
-
Review: Sontag’s Reborn
Reborn:Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963 Susan Sontag The first in the collected journals of Susan Sontag edited by her son. I’ve long been fascinated by Sontag, the person, even if much of her work hasn’t resonated with me. Her endless curiosity, her almost obsessive need to read more, see more, hear more, is an inspiration to…
-
Review: Holiday’s Stillness Is The Key
Stillness Is The Key Ryan Holiday Ryan Holiday is loved by tech bro culture, and largely responsible for the resurgence of interest in Stoicism by a certain type of middle age white dude (one of whom is me). His books follow a formula – take basic life advice and illustrate it with life lessons from…
-
Review: Keita’s Brief Evidence of Heaven
Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the Life of Anna Douglas M. Nazadi Keita This is a book of poetry written in the voice of Anna Douglass, the wife of Frederick Douglas. Its an interesting idea, Anna was Douglas’s life from the time he was a fugitive slave until her death when Douglass was the…
-
Review: Olsson’s The Weil Conjectures
The Weil Conjectures: On Math and the Pursuit of the Unknown Karen Olsson An odd but enjoyable little book about math and the deeply odd and brilliant Weil siblings (Simone, the writer mystic and activist and Andre Weil the mathematician). Simone Weil was a troubled, brilliant, writer deeply affected by the suffering of others who…
-
Review: Douglas’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass The first of Fredrick Douglass’s autobiographies and as of now, the only one I’ve read.* When this was published Douglass was still a relatively unknown escaped slave, just beginning to break through on the abolitionist speaking circuit. Two things are striking about this little book –…
-
Review Tolentino’s Trick Mirror
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion Jia Tolentino When it feels like everyone in your world is reading the same book and that book is a collection of essays by a staff writer for the New Yorker it can be easy to buck the trend and say nope. Reader, I suggest you don’t do that…
-
Review: Futterman’s To The Edge
Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed Matthew Futterman A history of modern American distance running told from the perspective of Bob Larsen, one of the most influential coaches in the sport and (most famously) the coach and mentor of the most decorated American marathoner…
-
Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head
The World Beyond Your Head:On Becoming An Individual In An Age of Distraction Matthew B. Crawford This book by Crawford of “Shop class is Soul Craft” fame is another in a long line of recent books on the power of attention and craft in a age of twitter and youtube. There’s an important point here…
Milo and the Calf 