Book #93 of 2025: Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service edited by Michael Lewis This 2025 title — a collection of previously-published Washington Post articles — is an attempt to put a face to the American federal government and the ranks of civil servants who work on complicated problems for immeasurable benefit …
Tag Archives: essays
Book Review: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
Book #128 of 2023: Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer This 2023 title is an expansion of author Claire Dederer’s viral 2017 article, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” She’s no closer to coming up with a definitive prescriptive answer to that question of how one should treat Woody Allen …
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Book Review: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum
Book #145 of 2019: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum In this 2019 collection of essays, most previously published elsewhere, culture critic Emily Nussbaum explores many facets of television as a medium and how it has grown as an avenue for artistic expression over the past few …
Book Review: Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Book #246 of 2018: Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay Roxane Gay is a talented writer, but I must confess that I don’t find this 2014 essay collection as engaging as her later work Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body. There’s little thematic cohesion across the pieces in this volume, most of which were independently published …
Book Review: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae
Book #141 of 2018: The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae This essay collection is funny, but pretty short and a little disjointed. I’m not familiar with author Issa Rae’s other creative projects, but the book feels kind of like she’s thrown in everything that crossed her mind. While I would have appreciated …
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Book Review: One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
Book #127 of 2018: One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul A hilarious and heartfelt collection of essays from Canadian author Scaachi Koul, focusing on her life as the millennial daughter of Indian immigrants. It’s a short book that finds humor in heavy subjects, from online harassment …
Book Review: We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Book #99 of 2018: We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates A powerful collection of essays on race and racism in America, reflecting the author’s evolving understanding of these issues over the eight years of the Obama presidency. Half of these entries are drawn, roughly one per year, from articles …
Book Review: The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman
Book #25 of 2018: The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman This is a collection of essays, speeches, and other writings from author Neil Gaiman, pulled from across the span of his career. They contain some interesting reflections on his own works, literature in general, and writers like Douglas Adams and …
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Book Review: Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou
Book #147 of 2016: Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou A short but powerful essay collection, pivoting back and forth between Angelou’s personal memoirs and her observations / advice for how to live a decent life to the fullest. Although framed as though addressed to her child, it is of course a great read …
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Book Review: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
Book #146 of 2016: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling More heartwarming and less offensive than her previous book. I couldn’t always relate to the situations Mindy describes from her life – like how hard it is to balance dating a White House staffer with being a world-famous television star – but this was a …
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