Reviews and Comments

So...I'm gradually working through the Dune books, and this was the first one that really felt like a slog. All of the books require a certain amount of faith, that this prophecy you've never heard of until now will somehow become important later, or that these six characters referenced in this conversation will make an appearance later, or whatever, but this was the first one where it just felt like chapters and chapters went by in which I had little sense of what anyone's actual aims or motivations were. Leto II refers to the "Golden Path" throughout the book as his primary driving motivation, but exactly what that was remained unclear until the closing pages. The book retains the incredible scope and mythology of the previous installments, but that scope feels like it's starting to weigh the whole enterprise down.

This was a fairly light, breezy read that suddenly starts to hit hard in the last few essays. The end of this collection feels like an almost entirely different work, and I sorta wished that more of the rest of the book had that same tone. All that aside, the last quarter of the book or so is fantastic.

This book whoops a llama's ass. I've become quietly obsessed with library/production music over the last ten years, and have found myself frustrated at how little has been written about it. This book solves that problem--it is the definitive work on this subject. I would have been happy with a book even half this well-researched; I'm over the moon at what we got instead.

Fantastic, and a great "sequel" of sorts to "Legacy of Ashes," Weiner's history of the CIA. A solid history that punctures a lot of the myths about the FBI, but which also highlights successes where warranted. I can't imagine a fairer reading of the history of the FBI than this one.

As with the other books in Perlstein's "conservative trilogy," (The Gathering Storm and Nixonland), this is masterful political/historical writing. Of the three books, this one shined the least brightly for me, for reasons I can't explain. Maybe the political entropy that enveloped the States in the 70s makes for a harder slog or something; I'm not sure. I just felt like there was less narrative thrust in this one than in the other two. Still required reading, but a bit tougher of a go.