Tag: book
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Eyre’s Death in Mud Lick
Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic Eric Eyre The worst book I read this year. A full of himself reporter takes the destruction wrought on West Virginia by big pharma and attempts to turn it into a hero story about himself. In almost every case…
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Review: Epstein’s Range
Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World David Epstein There is a certain kind of book I cannot resist and that book follows this basic format: Here is an ostensibly counter intuitive idea. Here are a series of chapters wherein the following form to substantiate the idea An anecdote is presented A study or…
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Book Review: Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power
We Were Eight Years In Power: An American Tragedy Ta-Nehisi Coates A collection of Coates journalistic pieces and other writings, most of which first appeared in the Atlantic, and many of which I’d read before. The pieces are organized chronologically, and importantly, tied to each year of the Obama presidency. Coates writes a thoughtful introduction…
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Book Review: Levoy’s Ghettoside
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America Jill Levoy A captivating, depressing, challenging, frustrating, must read book about the state of modern policing in poor communities of color. If you’ve read this one, I’d really like to talk about it. Levoy spent a year covering every murder in Los Angeles for the LA Times.…
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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: Delany’s About Writing
About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews Samuel Delany I am a huge fan of the writer Samuel Delany. A writer at the heart of what I think the best of “new wave” science fiction, Delany has gone on to write memoirs, literary fiction, pornography, comics books and much else in between. Though…
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Review: Braudel’s The Structure of Everyday Life
Ed note: this review was written for a now defunct livejournal sometime in 2007. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, Vol. I: The Structure of Everyday Life (Civilization & Capitalism, 15th-18th Century) Volume I Fernand Braudel The Phoenix Press Reissue (563 pages) The first volume of Braudel’s massive work on the construction of capitalism in the…
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Review: Martin’s Game of Thrones
Ed note: this review was written in 2007 for a now defunct livejournal account, long before GoT was the phenomenon it is now. Funny to re-read such a flippant review of what has become a cultural phenomenon. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) A Song of Fire and Ice…
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Review: Karnazes’s Ultra-Marathon Man
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner Dean Karnazes The book that spawned a thousand of ultra-runners, Dean Karnazes’s chronicle of his life from depressed businessman to Ultra running superstar is the ur-text of the modern ultra endurance memoir trade. When it came out, it was a deeply controversial book in the ultra-running world. Karnezes…
Milo and the Calf 