I don’t really do “worst” books, because even when I may disagree with a book or may not like a book, *someone* out there is going to love it for *exactly* the reasons I didn’t like – or even outright hated – it.
So the “worst” books here are instead that just-over-10% of the books I read in 2024 that also released in 2024 that I rated as anything less than 5*.
Here they are for your perusal, sorted by release date.
Hollywood Hustle by Jon Lindstrom (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Still, for those who simply want an almost “Expendables” type action/ thriller with a cast of “seasoned” Hollywood dwellers trying to resolve a kidnapping of a family member of one of their own on their own… this really is quite a strong tale in that particular vein, and as long as you approach it as just that type of Hollywood action movie and check your brains at the door, you’ll find a quite strong and enjoyable tale.
Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling by Nijay K. Gupta (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Fascinating History Marred By Prooftexting And Dearth Of Bibliography. This was an utterly fascinating look at the first few hundred years of the Christian Church as it related to its world’s dominant government – and religion. I genuinely learned quite a bit from reading this book, and Gupta kept the overall tone scholarly enough to be sufficiently serious without going into pretentiousness. Indeed, the *only* problems I had here, that are automatic star deductions when I encounter them, are the rampant prooftexting – the practice of citing Bible verses out of context in order to “prove” a particular point – and the dearth of a bibliography, clocking in at just 12% or so of the overall text when 20-30% is more normal in my experience across hundreds of nonfiction titles over the last several years. Even with being more willing to at least *slightly* lower that given more recent experiences, 12% is still simply too low.
For Love of Country: Common Sense 2.0 by Norman W. Holden (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Reads Like General Francis Hummel or Frank Castle Monologue Yet Also Contains Points Far Right/ GOP Won’t Like. This is designed to be a new version of the pamphlet Common Sense by Thomas Paine that was so influential in Revolutionary America and which clocks in at around 70 pages, depending on exact modern edition. Yet Holden repeatedly claims that he is actively not seeking to incite violence – perhaps in an attempt to stave off any legal claims – even as the book maintains a revolutionary fervor throughout its short 91 pages. While admittedly this is written from a solidly right-side-of-the-aisle perspective, there are in fact several points throughout where Holden goes “off script” for that side and genuinely advocates what are at minimum more centrist positions. Ultimately, this is an intriguing treatise that will at minimum help its opponents better understand the actual mentality of the “other side”, and the only objective fault here is the absolute lack of any actual bibliography.
The Breakup Vacation by Anna Gracia (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Finally, the fact that a *fiction* book got 3* from me, given my “subtractive method” of rating where every single book starts out at 5* and I must have specific, describable, and preferably objective-ish reasons for deducting stars, should tell you just how problematic I personally think this book is. I think I’ve given less than a handful of fiction books 3* or less across those aforementioned 1200+ reviews, and yet this book managed to get on that particular list.
If you want a book for a tropical getaway, there are better books out there. If you want a book for a tropical getaway *and agree with the comments these characters make* – which is entirely your right – then yes, this book may be for you. But despite being genuinely funny at times, and despite my own completionist nature when it comes to book series, if I give Ms. Gracia’s books another try it will mostly be down to trying to give *everyone* a second chance at all times. And honestly, I’m not sure at this time that I would do that here.
Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation by Leslie T. Chang (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Fascinating Examination Of Modern Egyptian Work And Culture. As an American who has only briefly left the US, and never left the Caribbean region when leaving the US, it was fascinating to read such a detailed account of modern Egyptian work and culture as seen through the eyes of an American who lived there for a few years and who actively examined what she saw while there. From a sheer cultural studies perspective, this work was interesting indeed. As an examination of women’s place in society in Egypt, it was also fascinating in several different aspects – while there is *some* similarity to *some* minority groups in the US, this was largely a very different concept than how America operates, both in actuality and in vision. Even the work culture of the males shown within is so *vastly* different than American business and work culture, and Chang shows how this is largely the result of Socialist / Nationalist policies from generations ago that became so deeply embedded within the culture at large that no effort to reign them back in has been very successful.
I Will Tell No War Stories: What Our Fathers Left Unsaid about World War II by Howard Mansfield (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Father. Grandfather. Farmer. Engineer. Clerk. WWII Badass. Wait. What? While this book focuses more on the air war over Britain and Europe, it does in fact get to the heart of what so many of us born in the post WWII era have only been learning over the last 20-30 yrs or so: Our fathers (in the case of Boomers/ maybe Gen Xers) or grandfathers (for Millennials and Zoomers) that we knew as just that (+ whatever occupation they may have had as we knew them) had experiences during WWII that most of the rest of us can never imagine. For Mansfield’s dad and his dad’s fellow Airmen, Mansfield does a fairly thorough job of combining the personal and the global, of showing both where his dad was and when and also what was going on in the overall war effort – at least as it related to the air war over Europe and what the fliers encountered up there.
Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos by Lisa Kaltenegger (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Overall truly a fascinating book, and Kaltengger’s own experiments sound quite fun and interesting to boot. The only flaw I noticed here was such a small bibliography, which is where the star deduction comes into play. Still, this is ultimately a solidly written depiction of a truly fascinating part of interplanetary science. Very much recommended.
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Rare Blend Of Science And Mysticism Marred By Racism And Misandry. Quite honestly, I read the Audible version of this book, where Schlanger’s wonder of her topic comes through in her breathy, reverent reading of her text – and kudos to her, as not many authors can pull off reading their own text for the Audible version. (Though yes, this *is* far more common in nonfiction.) But *because* I read the Audible, I actually had to borrow this book from the Jacksonville Public Library, where I live, to check the length of its bibliography – which does in fact clock in at a relatively healthy 25%. So despite the extraordinary claims made throughout this text, at least it is reasonably well documented.
Vanishing Act: The Enduring Mystery Behind the Legendary Doolittle Raid over Tokyo by Dan Hampton (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
How Jimmy Doolittle’s Raid Connected Directly To The Atomic Bomb. On the weekend of the anniversary of the Doolittle Raid (as it has come to be known) and with conversations sparking again about whether the dropping of the bomb was necessary or not, I had an opportunity to read this book – which admittedly won’t release until the day after Memorial Day here in the US. (For everyone else, this book’s release date is the last Tuesday of May 2024.)
American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again by Yuval Levin (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Levin, instead, has a suggestion: the revival of Madisonian thoughts regarding *republican* ideals- somewhat (but not completely) analogous to some modern foci on pluralism, but with the added focus of making pluralism work within a functioning government. After all, it was this very tension between these two competing camps that originally allowed the nation to come together under “e pluribus unum”… and Levin has some thoughts on how that can work again.
Husbands & Lovers by Beatriz Williams (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Story Tries Hard But *Just* Misses + Story/ Cover Mismatch. This is one of those reviews where the review and rating may not seem to align, because for the vast majority of this book, I thought it was pretty damn good. It does a LOT – even more than similar Soraya M. Lane books usually do – and *for the most part*, it does those things quite well. We’ve got a romance tale in the 2000s era New England that alternates between 2022 (current) and 2008 (the halcyon summer where the couple first fell in love). We’ve got a historical fiction tale that alternates between the 1952 Great Cairo Fire/ Black Saturday period and early WWII period. Either one of those tales could be an entire book in and of itself, and yet we’ve also got a 23 And Me type DNA mystery that links the two (and which admittedly is a spoiler mentioning, sorry). I’ve read many entire books that would use any one of those three elements to tell an entire tale, and yet we get all three tales in one book here. And *for the most part*, it all works.
Beyond Policing: Building Abolitionist Futures by Phillip V. McHarris (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Ultimately, it is this very utopian failure to fully consider his own thoughts and their ramifications that I believe is an objective enough reason to deduct the star here. As noted above, the documentation is reasonably solid enough and McHarris cites some of the very same texts I would (and do) on this topic. Some of the general ideas for moving away from police and of the need to at least consider how it could actually be done are reasonably well thought out, at least in initial conception of end goal and *rough* parameters. But McHarris is clearly blinded by his own ideology in just how doomed to failure so many of his implementations truly are, and for that reason I simply can’t award all five stars.
Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 by Robert W. Merry (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Truly an excellent primer on the decade, with 18% of the text being bilbiography and thus a solid set of documentation/ further reading, this book even includes several examples of what made that particular decade so turbulent throughout the nation – including both the caning of a sitting Congressman *inside Capitol Hill* and the resultant comment from a Congressman – also quoted in James A. Morone’s 2020 book Republic Of Wrath – that if a Congressman didn’t have two pistols on his person *on Capitol Hill*, it was because he had a pistol and a knife.
Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters by Miranda Zapor Cruz (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Comprehensive Look At Different Ways Different Christian Communities Have Viewed Politics Over The Millenia. This book is truly one of the most comprehensive looks at the subject that I’ve yet run across, and for that alone is to be commended. It is also immensely readable, which is always a nice bonus in an academic-oriented book.
No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States by Erwin Chemerinsky (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Basically, however you feel about the Citizens United ruling, recent SCOTUS decisions, packing the Court, the Electoral College, and the well-debunked “Russian Collusion” conspiracy theory from the 2016 Presidential Election is largely how you’re going to feel about this book. It honestly reads as little more than hyper-leftist dreams about everything that has gone “wrong” with America for the last decade or two. Thus, some of you are going to sing this book’s praises from the highest places you can as loudly as you can. And some of you are going to want to take a window to those places just so you can be assured that you will be able to defenestrate this book from those places.
Big Brother and the Grim Reaper: Political Life After Death by Benjamin Ginsburg (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Comprehensive. Dense. Short. Slightly Lacking Bibliography. This is an utterly fascinating look at the history and current issues involving political (and thus legal) life after death, in all kinds of different ways. Some ways you have probably heard of (Wills, Advanced Directives, etc). Other ways may be new to you, including the idea of posthumous reproduction. Everything is covered in a sort of “primer” manner – we get a broad overview, a few specific examples, a decent discussion of the overall subfield… and then we’re moving… and we’re moving. Which is to be somewhat expected given the overall brevity of the book and just how many different posthumous topics Ginsberg manages to discuss at all.
Distorting Democracy: The Forgotten History of the Electoral College—and Why it Matters Today by Carolyn Renee Dupont (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Distorting The Discussion. For a book about the history of the Electoral College that opens up admitting that the author thinks the Electoral College is foolhardy at best… the actual history here is quite good, and absolutely stuff virtually no one learns about even with a major in American History in college. (Perhaps Masters’ or PhD students specifically studying the EC or at least the Constitutional Convention that created it would know at least some of this?) So absolutely read this book for Parts I and II, where Dupont shows that the fights that we have today about the Electoral College have been there basically since its creation and have reignited every few decades since.
The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy by Jessica Pishko (⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Thus, Pishko proceeds to concoct her imagined history, complete with narrative-defining boogeymen, the “Constitutional Sheriff’s And Peace Officer’s Association” or CSPOA, as it is so frequently noted on seemingly every other page throughout the narrative. Pishko “cites” well-debunked “facts” such as Donald Trump calling the Nazis at the Charlottesville, VA “Unite The Right” rally “very fine people” (actual fact: He openly decried the violence of this group specifically, noting that *other* people *not associated with them* were the “very fine people” that happened to be at the rally as well), or the repeated-three-times-throughout-the-narrative-that-I-caught bald-faced LIE that “the leading cause of death of children is gun violence”. Even when looking at the CDC data *that Pishko herself cites*, the only way to get to this is to include people that are not legally children – indeed, some of the 18 and 19yos included in these numbers are actively serving the US military in war zones! Pishko also claims that “AR-15 SBRs are the weapon of choice of mass shooters” despite the number of homicides via rifle – any form of rifle, not just so-called “assault weapons” – proving that to be untrue for many years now. She claims that she observed a man walking around at one rally with an “automatic” rifle. While this is *possible*, it is also *extremely* rare – and without inspecting the gun in question (which Pishko does not detail that she did, if she did it at all), there is no way of knowing from a distance that the rifle at hand was fully automatic.
It Starts with One: The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park by Jason Lipshutz (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Solid Look At Linkin Park Pre 2024. Lipshutz does a truly excellent job of detailing the life and times of Linkin Park as a band, from most of their days in California toiling as Zero (giving rise to the 2024 effort “From Zero”… 😉 ) and Chester’s days in Phoenix pre-LP signing in various bands to their formation as one group to their initial success and detailing every record they ever made, before yes, coming to Chester’s suicide and its aftermath. This particular section is handled with the care it deserves, yet is also easily the dustiest rooms you’ll experience reading this book. Ending with discussions as recently as 2023 noting that the band didn’t know what the future held and releasing just weeks after the announcement of Emily Armstrong as the new lead singer of the band, this book truly does encompass pretty much every aspect of the “Chester Bennington” era of the band.
Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World by Sara C. Bronin (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Overall, read this book. Seriously. You’re going to learn a lot, no matter your own political leanings or how you feel about the sanctity of private property. But “if you feel as I feel” (to quote the always amazing V for Vendetta), know there will be many points you will want to defenestrate this book forthwith and from the highest available window. But unless you’ve had the experience of myself or Ms. Bronin or the admittedly *numerous* people like us who *have* actively dealt with zoning boards at some direct level before… you really are going to learn some things here. Clearly, even *I* learned a few things here myself, even *with* a few years of directly relevant experience.
Proximity Politics: How Distance Shapes Public Opinion and Political Behaviors by Jeronimo Cortino (⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
And that is ultimately how anyone is going to find this book. If you like academic treatises with a strong leftward bent, you’re going to enjoy what Cortina has put together here, obvious though it may be. Hey, there’s numbers now! 😉 If you find yourself not drawn to that type of book… spare Cortina the much more vicious take down that even *I* was tempted to write and just ignore this book. Your cardiologist will hate you for it, but your family will love you ever more for allowing them a few more days with you from not having a heart attack over this book. 😀
Your Jesus Is Too American: Calling the Church to Reclaim Kingdom Values over the American Dream by Steve Bezner (⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
And I’m not joking when I say no matter your thoughts on Christianity here. Bezner goads the conservatives with his talk of their lily white – or coal black – churches and the need for churches to be more multicultural. Bezner goads the liberals with his insistence that sex is only for straight married couples – and goads everyone with his insistence that more needs to be done to support single adults, no matter their sexual choices. He even manages to goad the Anarchists by *actively citing 1 Samuel* – the very passage where YAHWEH decrees that obedience to an earthly king as a rejection of Himself! – and arguing that earthly kings are necessary, but that a “prophet” is needed to stand outside their court and hold them to account.
Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion by Allie Stuckey (⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Ultimately this is a right wing US political book calling itself a book about Christian thought… without ever actually (or, specifically, *accurately*) citing Christ’s examples in literally anything at all she discusses.
I picked up this book because it was being so utterly destroyed in my circles on Twitter – and now I have to admit that those friends and other luminaries were far more correct than I’d have liked about this book. I wanted to be able to defend this text – as I said in the title, I firmly believe that a case for the general premise *can* be made and even *should* be made. I simply wish Stuckey had given even a wet Dollar General paper towel’s worth of effort in crafting such an argument, rather than… whatever this is… that we ultimately got.
Selling Out the Spectrum: How Science Lost the Trust of Autistic People, and How It Can Win It Back by Liam O’Dell (⭐⭐⭐⭐)
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Solid Enough Primer On The Topic Marred By Dearth Of Bibliography. This is one of those books where, as others have noted, O’Dell clearly has his own perspectives and they clearly come through, and yet he also does a reasonably balanced job of showing both sides to any given issue – while clearly favoring whichever side he does. For those perhaps unfamiliar with the Actually Autistic/ Autistic Adult community and the reasons it clashes so often with researchers of all forms and levels, this is a solid compendium of the issues at hand and an introduction to just how complicated some of them can be.
The Genesi Cure by Tristen Willis
From my review on Hardcover.app:
Ultimately the star deduction was 90% about the epilogue though, and while I fully cop to this being a touch of a spoiler, it is an important deal breaker for many people, so I want those types to be aware of this up front – rather than defenestrating this text from the highest available window and leaving a one star review. Specifically, completely out of the blue with *zero* indication *anywhere* else that this was even *remotely* in the cards, we find ourselves a time after the final fight… and suddenly our lead suddenly has a baby, which becomes the entire focus of the epilogue. This was not only unnecessary, but also tarnishes the story told to this point moreso than the aforementioned pacing issues ever did, to the level that it leaves quite a bad “aftertaste” on the story.