#BookReview: Mass Supervision by Vincent Schiraldi

‘Rise Of The Warrior Cop’ – For Probation And Parole. A decade ago this summer, one of the best books on policing I’ve ever encountered was released. A year before Michael Brown’s murder and the American people becoming aware of a group called “Black Lives Matter”. That book traced the history of policing from its earliest roots in the British legal system through its then most modern incarnations in the US legal system, and offered a few modest proposals on how to correct its worst current abuses.

This book does largely the same thing, but with the concepts of probation and parole, rather than policing itself. At 30% documentation, it is reasonably well documented, and the author claims to have worked in several relevant areas and appears to currently be an activist within this space. He is also clearly a New York Liberal Elite… and this flavors his overall discussion quite heavily. Still, that is a more “your mileage may vary” level, and like with the more libertarian bent of Rise of the Warrior Cop… you need to read this book anyway, no matter your politics, if you truly want to be informed of the scope of the actual problem here. Yes, the “solutions” tend to essentially be “take money from prisons/ courts and give it to these other areas” or even simply “give more money to these other areas”, as one would expect from a New York Liberal Elite, but there are also quite a few realistic and useful approaches, such as Schiraldi’s discussion of having his offices switch from in person check-ins to computerized check-ins that both saved money and allowed a greater opportunity for those under his supervision to comply with the relevant controls.

Overall a mostly solid overview of this particular area, though it does gloss over several other realities better discussed in other works, and it does in fact focus on the “black men are disproportionately affected” statistics based lie that belies the reality that more white people are supervised under these programs as an actual whole. But there again – New York Liberal Elite. So this is expected. Read this book. Learn some things (assuming you weren’t already familiar with this space – and even there, there is likely *something* here for you to learn). And go and do.

Very much recommended.

PS: Because I know some reader of this review is at some point going to want a list of other recommendations for other books within this space, here is a list of others I’ve read in and around this space over the years, in alphabetical order by title:

Free by Lauren Kessler.
In Their Names by Lenore Anderson.
Just Dope by Alison Margolin.
Pleading Out by Dan Canon.
Punishment Without Trial by Carissa Byrne Hessick.
Rise Of The Warrior Cop by Radley Balko.
The Plea Of Innocence by Tm Bakken.
The Shadow Docket by Stephen Vladeck.
Torn Apart by Dorothy Roberts.
When Innocence Is Not Enough by Thomas Dybdahl.
When We Walk By by Kevin Adler and Donald Burns.
Why The Innocent Plead Guilty And The Guilty Go Free by Jed S. Rakoff.

This review of Mass Supervision by Vincent Schiraldi was originally written on August 27, 2023.

#BookReview: The New Nomads by Felix Marquardt

Strong Claims Need Strong Evidence, But I Read The Audible. This is another book that has a lot of strong claims that thus requires an extensive bibliography to back up to make truly solid – but I read the Audible version of this book, where such bibliographies are not available due to the nature of the format. Beyond that issue though, the book is an interesting use of mostly case studies, and yes, largely cherry picked, successful, ones showing how nomadism (pre-COVID forced so-called “digital nomadism”, which the author decries in later chapters) can be good for individuals and cultures – while acknowledging that, at least for those who believe in human-caused climate change, the harm done to the environment may well outweigh the benefit to individuals and cultures. Indeed, cries of “elitism” in some reviews ring hollow here, as while Marquardt does in fact come from an elitist position, he openly acknowledges that he could in fact be completely wrong about all of this, that the entire idea presented here is largely based on his own observations through his own rather unique upbringing and adult life that he has then pieced together an effort at a modicum of journalism to explain. Overall, an interesting tale that can add to the overall conversation. Recommended.

This review of The New Nomads by Felix Marquardt was originally written on July 18, 2023.

#BookReview: In The Blood by Charles Barber

Visionary. Outsider. Hero. One of the great lines from the movie The Imitation Game (whose trailer I was just watching as I tried to find this quote, and where I found the title of this review) that has always stuck with me is “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” Obviously, in the context of The Imitation Game, it is about the legendary “Father of Computer Science” (and suspected Autistic) Alan Turing.

Barber, in *this* text, makes it clear that it could very equally be said of a man who may well go down in history as at least as important as Turing himself – Frank Hursey. Hursey was a South Carolina native living in Connecticut who discovered a remarkable property of a fairly common substance – and then set it aside like Mordin in Mass Effect 2 looking at some gadget he was no longer interested in. Until Bart Gullong came into his life and recognized the significance of what Hursey had found – and together, the inventor and the salesman/ marketer would go on to change the course of world history.

Barber, through a seemingly episodic format where he provides brief biographical sketches of each of the key players in the unfolding drama while keeping the narrative squarely focused on Hursey, Gullong, and their products, tells a story at least as motivational as anything has ever been told about Turing’s own life. A story of a almost literal garage inventor who finds and develops a substance that has literal world changing powers.

A substance that can make battlefield – or anywhere else – traumas far more survivable, by finally solving a problem humanity had never before solved in its known history – how to stop mass bleeding.

This is the story of how Hursey and Gullong found, developed, and marketed the substance to the US military – and then later found mass market appeal in nearly every segment of the economy that might find a desire to stop a potential bleed out.

Including, per Barber, Taylor Swift having it near her at all times in the case of an attack at one of her concerts.

The only reason for the star deduction here is the slightly lower than my expected average of 20-30% on the bibliography, clocking in here at 16% instead. And as I’ve noted in other reviews of late, given that so many more recent texts are clocking in closer to this 15% point, I may well need to revise my expected bibliography size down a touch.

The tale opens with the story of the Battle of Mogadishu and the subsequent movie form of it, Black Hawk Down. Don’t be surprised to see a movie form of this book itself at some point. Very much recommended.

This review of In The Blood by Charles Barber was originally written on April 27, 2023.

#BookReview: Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

Comprehensive Look At The World Of Waste. I’ve seen bits and pieces of some of this in some books, such as Plastic Free by Rebecca Prince-Ruiz, Unraveled by Maxine Bedat, Worn Out by Alyssa Hardy, Pipe Dreams by Chelsea Wald, and Sewer by Jessica Leigh Hester, just to name a few. And I’ve even lived a version of some of it, having worked at a US nuclear waste disposal facility a couple of times over a period of a couple of years. But this is the first book I’ve ever found that really covers all aspects of waste from nearly every possible angle. About the only glaring omission, perhaps, is space junk – the orbital debris that causes headaches for new and existing satellites and the International Space Station and could one day cause a *major* problem terrestrially via knocking all satellites out of usability (an issue known as the Kessler Effect, and used quite well in the late Matthew Mather’s Cyber Storm trilogy of fiction).

But what Franklin-Wallis *does* cover, he truly does cover in remarkable depth and clarity, using a combination of direct interviews and scholarly research to give both a human face to each particular issue and ground it in its full severity. This books is truly quite eye opening in several different respects, and will likely greatly add to the overall discussion of the topic… assuming enough people read it. Which is, in part, where this review comes in. Go read the book already. 🙂

The documentation is *maybe* *slightly* low at about 21% of the overall text, but this is actually within the lower bound of “normal” in my experience, and thus not worthy of a star deduction nor even true criticism, I’m simply noting it because I try to make a similar note in most non-fiction reviews.

Overall truly an excellent book full of both reality and hope, and very much recommended.

This review of Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis was originally written on April 8, 2023.

#BookReview: Cobalt Red by Siddarth Kara

Shocking. In the West, we’re somewhat aware of the horrible conditions African diamond miners face. We’ve at least heard of this, including the trivia fact of the deepest mine in the world being a diamond mine somewhere on the continent there. And despite diamonds’ wide spread use (well beyond the bling so many associate with them, by some stats that is actually one of the more *rare* uses for them, apparently). many don’t really think of this too much.

But our cellphones? Our tablets? Our state of the art electric vehicles? Our “commitment to zero carbon by [insert year]” climate activism? Our ESG corporate policies?

All of these are impacted by the travails Kara uncovers in this biting expose of the Congolese Cobalt mining operations and specifically just how horrid and unsafe the conditions therein are, including the rampant and untracked use of child labor. Here, Kara takes us on an undercover journey from one of the of the region to the other, while protecting his sources as much as possible. It is an alarming look, one that the heads and other decision makers in many of the world’s largest corporations and manufacturers need to read and examine the issues it raises in further detail based on this reporting. Even if Elon Musk (Tesla), Akio Toyoda (Toyota), Mary Barra (GM), and Oliver Blume (Volkswagen) won’t look into this, perhaps global banking, as part of its own ESG and Zero Carbon initiatives, could look into it from their end and begin to influence the car manufacturers from that side.

In a book full of unimaginable pain and sorrow, a few tales stick out. One of them in particular is that of a man who was injured in the mine, and thus his teenage son was forced to work in the mine for the family’s subsistence. Just a week before this father could go back to work, word came from the mine of a collapse. His son died in that collapse and the body remains buried within the mine. Prepare yourself, reader. As illuminating as this text is, stories at least that bad pepper this text like sand on a beach.

The only reason for the single star deduction? Possibly due to the text being primarily Kara’s own investigations, the bibliography here is quite scant indeed, clocking in at barely 8% of the overall text when 20-30% is much more common in my experience with other nonfiction advance reader copies.

Overall this is absolutely a book that needs to be read as widely as possible, and one that needs as much attention brought to its issues as possible. Very much recommended.

This review of Cobalt Red by Siddarth Kara was originally written on December 6, 2022.

#BookReview: Bourbon by Fred Minnick

Seemingly Great History, At Least In Audible Form. Yes, I read the Audible of this – mostly on my commute to and from work over the month of October 2022, though I finished it after work on Halloween day itself. So I can’t speak to all the pictures and such that some complained about in the text version of this tale. And I also can’t speak to how well documented it is – the Audible version doesn’t exactly have footnotes. 🙂

With the above caveats though, I found the actual history presented here to be interesting and informative, though as others noted, perhaps a bit tedious in some spots (“bonded” is used long before it is clear exactly what this term means) and perhaps with some hand waving in other spots (the Whiskey Rebellion, and even Prohibition outside of its particular application to whiskey generally and bourbon specifically). It even manages to cover some of the more modern issues in the liquor business, at least through the mid-2010s when the book was originally published, including the GenX / Millenial shift away from whiskey and dark liquors to more vodkas and lighter liquors.

Thus, overall this truly is a strong history that anyone remotely interested in the subject (and not already well-versed in its history) will likely find informative and interesting. Very much recommended.

This review of Bourbon by Fred Minnick was originally written on November 2, 2022.

#BookReview: In Their Names by Lenore Anderson

Timely Conversation Needs Even Better Documentation. The timing of this book, releasing just a week before Election Day in the United States, could perhaps be *slightly* better – a month earlier would have allowed it and its ideas to be discussed more during the final days of the campaign. And to be clear, this book does in fact present a mostly compelling argument and certainly a wrinkle on the American justice system that needs to be more openly examined and more critically debated by those who can actually change things – the various elected officials and bureaucrats who create and implement the very rules in question. The only truly noticeable objective-ish problem with the text here is that while the documentation provided is on the low-ish side of average in my experience (23%, compared to 20-33% being average), there is a *lot* of hand-waving, undocumented claims, that could have used much better documentation. These claims may in fact be accurate – but they needed sources rather than just claims, and for those more ardently opposed to the proposals here, the added documentation to these claims could be crucial in defense of Anderson’s points and proposals. Thus, the one star deduction here. Still, this book truly does add yet another necessary wrinkle into an already truly complicated discussion, and for that reason it is very much recommended.

This review of In Their Names by Lenore Anderson was originally written on October 2, 2022.

#BookReview: The Battle For Your Brain by Nita A Farahany

Well Documented Examination And Discussion. This book is, quite simply, one of the best documented books I’ve ever come across – 48% of the text of the ARC I read months before publication was documentation. Within the narrative itself, Farahany does a great job of using the principles espoused in John Stuart Mill’s 1859 book On Liberty as a recurring touch point on the need for liberty of the mind and brain – the last bastion of true privacy left in this increasingly interconnected world of multiple overlapping surveillance systems. Farahany does an excellent job of showing both the biological and the social side of what is happening when, and the various implications it can have for everything from criminal prosecution to employment, and many other topics as well. Written from a decidedly libertarian, pro-freedom perspective, this is absolutely a book that everyone will need to read and contemplate. Very much recommended.

This review of The Battle For Your Brain by Nita A. Farahany was originally written on October 1, 2022.

#BookReview: Nation Of Victims by Vivek Ramaswamy

Stacey Abrams == Donald Trump. And The Way Back Is To Ignore Both. Ok, so the title here was a bit intentionally inflammatory – but Ramaswamy *does* essentially make this very point late in the book, pointing to how both Abrams and Trump see themselves as victims of election fraud rather than candidates who lost elections because more voters legitimately sided with their opponents. But to get there, and to get from there to how we can truly come back, Ramaswamy dives through American history, legal theory, and even his Hindu religion to show how both progressives and conservatives have largely adopted a victimhood mentality. Interestingly, he never once cites Ayn Rand’s examinations of this same idea in Atlas Shrugged. Overall an interesting book worthy of consideration, and with a fairly normal bibliography at about 21% of the overall text here. Very much recommended.

This review of Nation of Victims by Vivek Ramaswamy was originally written on July 17, 2022.

#BookReview: Tech Panic by Robby Soave

Solid Examination Of The Issues. I’ve read some of the author’s work over the last year in particular on his primary employer’s website (Reason.com), and that is actually how I found out about this book. So I knew roughly what to expect here, and that is pretty well what I got: a fairly solid look at the issues surrounding tech, elections, privacy, free speech, and other related issues from a moderate libertarian (small “L”, to be clear, since these things matter in circles that will likely be most open to reading this book) perspective that is mostly well-reasoned from that particular mindset. As more of an avowed Anarchist (and former Libertarian Party official and candidate, though I myself was more moderate in that era) and software development professional, eh, Soave allows government a bit too much intervention into tech companies than I’m personally comfortable with. Even here, however, most who are more aligned with the left/ right divide in the US are going to be hit fairly equally and largely find various arguments here that they will (and sometimes do) champion and others that they will (and often do) despise. Which in the age of hyperpartisanship and barely-there “reasoning”, is generally a sign of someone who *has* actually seriously and critically thought about the issues he is speaking of. An excellent work that really should be read by anyone trying to urge government action regarding technology companies, and thus one that quite a few should consider as we begin the march into the mid-term elections of 2022 in just a few more months. Very much recommended.

PS: The reason for the star deduction? Light bibliography, at least potentially corrected in a non-Advance Reader Copy version of the book. The ARC, however, had a bibliography that clocked in at just 9% of the text, vs a “more normal” range of 25-33% in my experience across almost 650 books since Jan 1, 2019 alone.

This review of Tech Panic by Robby Soave was originally written on September 14, 2021.