Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur Think back to the morning of November 9th, going to work and thinking “How exactly did this happen? How could we not have seen this coming?” Now imagine you’re journalist Katy Tur, on the campaign trail for 500 days, and on election night wondering the same thing. It wasn’t until it was too late that she realized what was going to happen. By then it was...
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson I’ll never quite understand all the shit that gets flung at Neil deGrasse Tyson (NDT). Sure, he can come across as arrogant at times, but often we try to shoot the messenger. I think part of the problem here is that we like living in our fantasy worlds and cherish mystery and wonderment when in fact there is a clear scientific explanation for many of them. It’s healthy to have...
Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It by Leon Trotsky It’s strange to think that fascism is getting so much attention these days. In our current political climate things are getting so divisive that it’s much too common to label people as either fascists on the right or I-don’t-know-whats on the left. But for a word that gets thrown around so much, maybe we should know precisely what it means before we fling it around so carelessly. Leon...
The Prospects of Industrial Civilization by Bertrand Russell My first impression when researching this book is finding out that even admitted Bertrand Russell “fans” don’t hold this book in very high esteem. Although better and more thorough analyses of this book exist, I still have to argue that there’s a lot to learn in the Prospects of Industrial Civilization. I do agree with critics that this probably should have been a longer book as Russell spends too little time on...
Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist by Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins is someone who has been impressing me ever since I started reading him more than 10 years ago. It’s surprising the kind of shade that gets thrown his way, because if you read his books, they are quite enlightening and he comes across like a perfectly sane (albeit a bit arrogant) man. Dawkins’ books vary between his major theses, autobiography, and short essay collection. This...
Total Chaos: The Story of the Stooges by Iggy Pop (Editor), Jon Savage (Editor), Jeff Gold (Editor), Johan Kugelburg (Contributor) The Stooges are a great example that you can’t keep a good thing down, for better or worse. At least not in this day and age. For whatever reason, the Stooges were revived more than 10 years ago, with as original of a lineup as possible and Mike Watt on bass. Aware that he was not and would not ever...
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks Has there ever been a better time to read bell hooks? Sure, it’s never been a bad time to read bell hooks, but you get what I mean. Even though some of her books were written decades ago, bell hooks is someone who has remained relevant even today. Ain’t I a Woman is definitely one of those books. In Ain’t I a Woman, hooks essentially discusses the struggles of...
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong Back in college, like any student, there were a plethora of classes I was forced to take that I didn’t really want to. One of those classes was microbiology. I was a bio major, but I thought microbiology meant looking at microscopes at more multicellular things. I was wrong. I also wasn’t a very good student, if that’s still not clear. It was a...
The Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal Record by N.N. Sukhanov by Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov, Joel Carmichael It’s incredible to believe that it’s been 100 years since the Russian Revolution: the Ten Days that Shook the World as Jack Reid called them. It begun one of the greatest social experiments in humanity and now, 100 years later, having “failed,” it’s still subject to in depth analysis, what it accomplished, where it fell short, and what we can learn from it. Probably...
A Load of Hooey by Bob Odenkirk Let me start this review, just like Bob Odenkirk starts his reviews in this book, by saying that I am a huge Bob Odenkirk fan. So of course someone like me is going to be absolutely ecstatic at the idea of Bob Odenkirk writing a book. Even more so one that it;s being put out by the fine folks at McSweeney’s. And lo and behold, I was quite pleased with the content of...