Book #73 of 2023: It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism by Bernie Sanders This new release is the third book I’ve read from Senator Bernie Sanders, following 2016’s Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In and 2018’s Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance. If that first title laid out the …
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Book #58 of 2023: I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever by Barbara Rae-Venter Author Barbara Rae-Venter is a retired patent lawyer who in recent years has found a new career in the burgeoning field of genetic genealogical research, and specifically its …
Book #43 of 2023: What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Oprah Winfrey A difficult but insightful read, with lots of detailed discussion about early childhood traumas, including the specific situations of kids who witnessed or experienced sexual abuse and graphic violence. As a parent …
Book #19 of 2023: Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke An interesting little popular science book, but not nearly as funny as I was expecting it to be from the title. This is a cultural history of the human backside, focusing specifically on our conceptions of the female form and how they’ve generally been racialized …
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Book #17 of 2023: A Jewish Bestiary: Fabulous Creatures from Hebraic Legend & Lore by Mark Podwal An interesting read, but not quite what I was expecting and definitely not as in-depth or exhaustive as it seems like it could have been. This modern title presents encyclopedic entries for 35 different animals described in the …
Book #14 of 2023: Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff This 2022 publication is a clear and exceedingly thorough account of the various misdeeds, investigations, and cover-ups that dogged the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Historian and journalist Garrett M. Graff has conducted no fresh interviews — which would not necessarily be possible …
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Book #180 of 2022: Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix A whirlwind tour of decades of English-language horror publishing, spanning from Rosemary’s Baby in 1967 through the middle-grade era of R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike in the mid-90s, and quite a lot in between. While …
Book #173 of 2022: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy by Ann Rule I sometimes have difficulty rating pieces of nonfiction, but my general principle is to weigh a work against the best possible version of itself, by asking what the author is trying to accomplish and how …
Book #150 of 2022: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy A powerful and soul-baring memoir that completely earns its provocative title. I’m not familiar with Jennette McCurdy as an actress — her Nickelodeon hit iCarly launched when I was already a sophomore in college — but as a writer, she is immensely talented …
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Book #127 of 2022: The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M. Graff A mosaic firsthand account of how Americans in their own words experienced the unfolding tragedies of September 11th, 2001, drawing on author Garrett M. Graff’s interviews with hundreds of subjects as well as several thousand pre-existing …
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