For fans of speculative fiction, the early 21st century has been both a triumph and a challenge: a triumph because our beloved genre has gained popularity and respect, and a challenge because sorting through the ever-increasing surfeit of new works can be paralyzing. It helps immensely when an enterprising author takes the time to identify […]
From the works of John Steinbeck to David Simon and George Packer, narrative nonfiction has played a significant role in shaping my ideas about America. Now I can add Dave Eggers to that list. I’d never heard of Zeitoun until a friend recommended it, but her description of a man undertaking a quixotic canoe journey in […]
If humans want to survive and flourish in the Anthropocene, we will need to overcome the habits of thought that have wrought destruction on our collective psyche and the natural world. One of our most misguided and longstanding myths is the notion that humanity’s mental faculties should be considered qualitatively different from those of nonhuman […]
Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read; I don’t quite know what to make of it. This is my first Jackson novel, and it’s clear that she is a talented writer. I did not, however, find myself satisfied by this particular story. We Have […]
Geography is one of the glaring weak points in American education. I’m college-educated, but know relatively little about world geography, and even less about how it shapes national economies and political strategies. A portion of my ignorance can be attributed to personal preferences and limitations, but it’s a good bet that my geopolitical blind spots […]
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera compares human lives to musical compositions. He writes of two lovers whose “musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them” (89). Kundera contents himself with cataloging a “short dictionary” of words the two lovers […]
With legalization gaining steam across the nation, it seems we are about to close the chapter on cannabis prohibition in the long, sordid history of America’s “War on Drugs.” The question is no longer “Will we have full legalization?” but “How soon?” There will no doubt continue to be heated debates about cannabis’s place in […]
This is one of the strangest and most disappointing books I’ve ever read. Reaching back to 12th-century Britain, The Pillars of the Earth vividly describes the architecture, landscapes, and challenges faced by denizens of the Middle Ages. Sadly, this potentially great project is brought low by Ken Follett’s shockingly poor writing. Follett combines the deep […]
There was a time when I thought Michael V. Hayden and his ilk were scum, but, as Hayden himself acknowledges: “You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance” (238). Once I let Hayden into my head, he gave my liberal, civilian ass a serious reality check. Despite its nonlinear format and a bevy of […]
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book that taught me so much. Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organizations is, in some ways, exactly what it claims to be––a guide for creating organizations with internal dynamics that radically diverge from prevailing models. But it’s also a highly repetitive text with a lot of fuzzy […]