Reviews and Comments

This one took a while. It attempted to answer and raise a lot of questions about the interrelationship, development, and writing of central texts of the three great Abrahamic faiths. For those of you with a bent towards nonfiction, history, and religion (of the “religious studies” variety), I think it would be well worth your time. It was very good. While it was very speculative in parts, I found those parts to be more probable than not.

A broad rather than deep work of contemporary American history, but extraordinarily good at connecting the dots on the political, social, media, and economic forces that have shaped the country during my adult years. It was gifted at showing how these cultural trends produced ever-widening divisions in our society, concluding with Trumpism. All the important newspaper articles I read at every coffee house since high school, sewn together with a sense of progression and history. Would especially recommend it to younger people.

I've read several of Gladwell's books now and have enjoyed each of them, including this one, which I received for Christmas. In customary fashion, Gladwell teases out unexpected (and likely valid) conclusions from data and studies not followed by the general populous. While I have enjoyed his other books more for this quality, the focus of this book is itself difficult but necessary to grasp -- what mistakes observers repeatedly make in analyzing the speech, conduct, and habits of strangers (and how we are primed to make such mistakes). It's a worthwhile subject handled in an illustrative and deliberate manner. Worth one's time.

One day at one of my college reunion, I went into the library to see what was new, if anything. I selected a book from a nearby stack and started reading it. The stack was on "law," which I thought curious, as my college had no law school. It turns out that the book was written by a lawyer and really concerned internal and external limitations and obstructions to informed decision-making (in law and otherwise). I read it greedily for an hour, picked up, and then went off to the college radio station. Anyhow, the subject of the book gnawed on me for a number of years, and I finally bought it. It's a very credible treatment of the subject and easily read. It's a good read.

Detailed and panoramic, this informal history of the AMERICAN language will teach you more about the language you really use every day than most scholarly books on American English. It is very well researched, but lively. I would not encourage it as a quick-read, but it is a must-read. While it is now over 20 years old, and contains a dated reference or observation or two, it is still very relevant in its main points. It's closing thoughts on immigration are prescient.

Took it heart. Five grams a day.

Great primer. Loved it in my youth.

Uncompromising in its narrative elegance and historical relevance, Fussell impresses again as a master writer, historian, memoirist, and social commentator.

The Greatest Generation may fade away, but Mauldin's illustrations will never die. The kind of work that will slip effortlessly into museums as the centuries progress.

Urbane and very witty. Part travelogue, part social commentary, part self-reflection. Rakoff's careful eye picks apart cultural and minor social trends with a shrimp fork. Clearly the funniest thing I have read in years.

A lighthearted but convincing indictment of the Soviet system and economy. Without being too resolute or ideological about it, Willis' observations make it seem inevitable that the "trade spirit" in man inevitably finds its best expression in market capitalism. An entertaining read (even if a bit dusty at this point).