Book Review: The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack
John Pollack prefaces his exploration of puns with his experience at the world pun championship. This was the most intense part of his book, The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics. The...Book Review: Down Girl by Kate Manne
Kate Manne is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Cornell University. Why am I leading with that in this review? Because knowing that informs everything about her book Down Girl: The Logic Of Misogyny. She’s a brilliant academic thinker and researcher. First and...Book Review: Folded Wisdom by Joanna Guest
Joanna Guest compiles and discusses the myriad notes she and her brother received from their dad, Bob. He created a note—with both writing and art—every day during most of their school years. Bob is an artist, a philosophic thinker, but most of all, he’s a dad. And...Book Review: The Bonjour Effect by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Freelance journalists Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau moved with their daughters to Paris for a year to write this book. As native Quebecers they were already fluent in French, and in fact had already lived in Paris some years earlier. And yet, they found that the...Book Review: We Love Anderson Cooper by R.L. Maizes
R.L. Maizes tells stories of discovery, haunting, and the everyday rhythms of life. Her writing is by turns eloquent, poignant, and groaningly funny. And her characters are as unique as you’ll find in contemporary short stories.Maizes’ tales feature teenagers, grown...Book Review: Unmentionable by Therese Oneill
Apparently, I get easily depressed these days. I thought Therese Oneill’s book, Unmentionable, was funny. Until it was just overwhelmingly sad and depressing. Sometimes history can be like that, though. And this book focuses on various parts of women’s lives in the...Book Review: Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (pronounced “boot-edge-edge”) is just five days younger than our youngest son. If that doesn’t make me feel old, I don’t know what would. But I think he makes up for lack of years in genuine smarts and concrete executive experience. (Mayors and...Book Review: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Richard Rothstein makes complex government-sanctioned segregation eminently clear in The Color of Law. Although he’s a researcher and academic, his writing is easy to read. It’s the content—the actions he describes—that made me angry enough to throw things. But I’m...Book Review: Forensics by Val McDermid
Val McDermid covers exactly what’s in the subtitle for this book, and much more. The full title is Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime. Expect plenty about each sub-topic.In Forensics, she explains many (if not all) of the common ways...Book Review: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens covers a lot of ground in its 400+ pages, and author Yuval Noah Harari makes it readable. The title’s subheading, “A Brief History of Humankind,” is telling but incomplete. There’s much more than just history here. At the same time, Harari makes clear in the...Book Review: The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn
Author Jeff Guinn divides The Road to Jonestown into three parts. The final third of the book deals with the Jonestown endgame, which felt most familiar to me. It’s the remaining two-thirds that was new and most interesting. If you’ve ever wondered how a demagogue...Book Review: The Electric Woman by Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine runs away to join a circus sideshow after graduate school. It’s dream fulfillment, and a chance to escape the reality of her dramatically ill mother. While many daughters would refuse to leave their mother’s side, Fontaine has a more complicated...Book Review: Becoming by Michelle Obama
It isn’t easy to be the 9 zillioneth reviewer of Becoming by Michelle Obama. But here I am, wondering how I’ll make this an original and meaningful review.Let’s get the basics out of the way. I loved this book, and am especially glad I listened to the audiobook. While...Book Review: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Inspired by The Beauty Myth and by its author Naomi Wolf, I went to the gym this morning with a new set of eyes. And no makeup, my hair pulled back in a poof of raggedy curls on my head. Oh wait, that’s how I always go to the gym or the pool for my workouts. But the...Book Review: We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement by Andi Zeisler
fIn We Were Feminists Once, Andi Zeisler deconstructs recent incarnations of feminism, especially as it connects to pop culture and advertising. She mixes acerbic wit and interviews with both fellow journalists and researchers. But the crux of her work is her specific...Currently reading
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