nonfiction – BookAnon.com

March 2, 2026

#BookReview: Body Electric by Manoush Zomorodi

Clarion Call For Post-COVID Society To Move More. In this text – based on a 2023 podcast and experiment Zomorodi helped orchestrate – the central point could not be more clear: Virtually all of us, particularly among white collar workers, in this post-COVID age need to move more. A lot more. To the tune of 5 minutes every 30 minutes. Nothing overly stressful, a casual stroll or its equivalent is actually the recommendation. No or at least minimal sweat, just movement to get our body operating more efficiently than it does when we sit for hours on end.

This is actually a book that is hitting pretty damn hard personally, as I am now actively fighting health issues in my legs (and I’m actively getting various scans to identify exactly what is going on and where, but so far it seems limited to my legs) that this text actually directly addresses, such as lymphedema (which is specifically mentioned) and possible (in my case) chronic veinous insufficiency. This, from a man who a few yrs pre-COVID (within the absolute value from COVID that we now are after COVID) was walk/ running (13 min mile or so at my best) 1100 miles per year / 5K race every month and even did a pair of half marathons (PR: 3:09:12). And then COVID hit and I eventually got my dream job, fully remote and doing interesting work while getting to mentor colleagues newer to the field.

But now I sit. All. The. Time. And my legs in particular have begun to noticeably have ill effects. DDPYoga, particularly its programs starting you flat on your back on your bed and progressing to sitting in a chair and then (where I am now) using a chair for stability as you begin to stand through the workout, has helped in my case… but Zomorodi’s advice here may actually be even more beneficial to even more people than DDP has been. (Sorry, DDP – you’re awesome and I really can’t thank you enough for this program, but I stand behind my last statement.)

In conjunction with Rowan Jacobsen’s In Defense of Sunlight, releasing about six weeks after this book and which I read just a day or so before reading this book, what many of us need to do to begin both getting healthier and generally feeling better could not be more clear… or more basic. Get up. Get out. Move around more. Not enough to burn (either your skin or sweating), but enough to just *be*. According to the actual research using thousands of people Zomorodi describes in this text that she helped facilitate, it really is that simple and will provide a fair amount of quality of life benefits that will at minimum help your focus and emotional stability if nothing else.

Ultimately, and I can’t believe *I* am saying this, consult your physician for any problems you’re actually feeling. If you don’t have one, find one – even with my general anti-doc stance (and I have my reasons), quite simply (and this is the very thing that got me to finally go to them), they have instrumentation and thus information that you cannot possibly obtain on your own/ at home, including the scans I’ve already done and am doing over the next couple of weeks. But talk to them about Zomorodi’s ideas here in this text. Talk to them about Jacobsen’s ideas in his text. Ask them about DDPYoga if you think it may help you.

Even as Zomorodi is discussing something she actively participated in and helped facilitate via her podcast, this book is still pretty well documented at 22% of the text of even the Advance Review Copy I read, with a forward from the doc whose research she had found and decided to help with. Which is perfectly in line with my usual expectations of 20-30% documentation.

Move more. 5 minutes every 30 minutes is ideal, according to Zomorodi, but even 5 minutes every hour or even 2 hours will provide at least some benefit. Just a casual stroll, in an office hallway, around your apartment, whatever space you may have. Just move. Frequently.

Very much recommended.

This review of Body Electric by Manoush Zomorodi was originally written on March 2, 2026.

March 1, 2026

#BookReview: What If Jesus Is Right by Douglas Groothuis and Lindsey Medenwaldt

Routine Conservative Christian Apologetics. Two things up front: the single star deduction is for prootexting, which is far too common in books such as this and is an automatic star deduction for me every time I see it in a text. Second, I honestly fail to see why this particular book exists, as it offers nothing particularly new – not even a real discussion of more current social issues and an Apologetics-based response to them. Indeed, in quoting the legends of this field – C.S. Lewis and Lee Strobel – and especially in basing such a decent chunk of the text around Lewis’ “Liar, Lunatic, or LORD” argument… there isn’t really anything novel at all about this book. It is good enough for what it is, and for those unaware of Christian Apologetics as a field it is a pretty decent summary of a high level view of its arguments, but there’s no real “meat” here, and certainly nothing worthy of deep contemplation the way Lewis and Strobel achieved. Hell, I largely left Christian circles 20 ish yrs ago as my faith in Christ deepened while my faith in people faltered, and the arguments presented in this text are remarkably similar to ones that were even then at least a few years old.

So don’t get me wrong here, this book is in fact solid for what it is, and again, for those unfamiliar with the topic, it does indeed serve as a decent overview and introduction. Clocking in at 12% bibliography as judged by the Acknowledgements section after yet with documentation at the end of each chapter as well that seemingly bumps the actual total documentation to around the 15% or so I consider the bare minimum for a nonfiction text, there is nothing overly *wrong* here other than the prooftexting. I was just expecting *some* kind of new slant or potentially *some* level of new argumentation, and this book fell rather flat on those accounts.

Recommended, particularly for those who have never considered Christian Apologetics.

This review of What If Jesus Is Right by Douglas Groothuis and Lindsey Medenwaldt was originally written on March 1, 2026.

February 27, 2026

#BookReview: In Defense Of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen

Short Yet Thoroughly Documented Clarion Call Inspired By Pollan’s In Defense Of Food. In this text, Jacobsen explicitly sets out to do for sunlight what Michael Pollan once did for “real food” several years ago… and largely nails it. The writing here is engaging and explains the science at a level that most will be able to understand it yet doesn’t shy away from the more complex areas of the science either. At just under 300 pages with just over a quarter of even that being documentation, this is an easy one day read for many people… and yet will also be one that many readers will want to sip and savor and perhaps spread out over a much longer reading period.

Perhaps, even, via reading it for a few minutes per day as the sun rises or sets… which is a particular period Jacobsen shows does quite a bit for the human body.

In all honesty, I read this book when I did – days before the dreaded “Spring Forward” of “Daylight Saving Time” – hoping for a much stronger anti-DST argument here, which isn’t as present as I had hoped… but that actually points to the actual strengths of the text, as Jacobsen is more concerned that you get outside at all than *when* you get outside, though he does indeed go into detail about what the sun’s light at different times of the day can do for you and does in fact make at least some case for the earlier sunrises of so-called “Standard” time, while also pointing out the science of living on the eastern vs western edges of a time zone, among many other topics.

Overall a very thorough text covering all aspects of the science of the interaction of the sun and the human body, this is absolutely one book everyone needs to read and make their own calls about… and perhaps even recommend it to your medical providers. I know I’ll be recommending my own docs read this.

Very much recommended.

This review of In Defense Of Sunlight by Rowan Jacobsen was originally written on February 27, 2026.

February 25, 2026

#BookReview: Chosen Land by Matthew Avery Sutton

“His Assessment Told Only Half The Story”. Yes, this is a direct quote Sutton used in this book… and also quite possibly the most succinct summary of this text available. Despite having an ambitious premise with a rather large page count to expound upon it, Sutton here still manages to omit or dismiss key figures and movements when he deems them problematic (Lottie Moon, the Student Volunteer Movement, and Annie Armstrong), fails to show moderating actions by groups he opposes (the Southern Baptist Convention in particular), and fails to show similar controversies involving those he generally supports (black prosperity gospel preachers TD Jakes and Creflo Dollar) while showing in some detail at times the controversies of those he opposes.

And yet, despite all of this – and particularly for those who align with Sutton’s progressive biases – there is enough here that you are likely to learn something, almost no matter how much you know about the history of Christianity in the United States.

For those who know no better, Sutton’s history here shows at least one version – a significantly biased one – of the history of American Christianity that largely downplays or outright omits much of the history of Christianity in the American South, including the efforts of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong in the era around the turn of the 19th century into the 20th in particular. Through this period, more focus is placed on the religious developments of the enslaved or formerly enslaved, even when other leading figures – such as first female US Senator and last formerly slave owning US Senator Rebecca Latimer Felton – were pivotal through this period. Further, key Southern revivalists such as Sam Jones are omitted entirely, even when similarly situated and influential black, Northern preachers are later discussed and even when discussing white Northern predecessors and successors to Jones’ style, such as Billy Sunday (the real one that the fictional character played by Robert De Niro in Men of Honor claimed no relation to) or Billy Graham.

And yet, for those who perhaps don’t know much about the history of American Christianity at all… there is truly enough here that warrants reading this book. As I noted above, you’re truly going to learn at least a little. You just also need to treat this as a biased primer and actively seek out a more complete picture, including from original sources such as Felton’s Country Life in Georgia In The Days Of My Youth or Jeff Guinn’s excellent chronicle of the siege at the Branch Davidian compound, Waco.

Ultimately, the star deductions are for a lack of bibliography, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text available in the Advance Review Copy edition of the book I read, the stark omissions that show only part of the overall premise, and the bias bordering on bigotry against anything white and/ or conservative that is so pervasive throughout this text.

One final curious note is that deep in the text, in the penultimate chapter to boot, there is a brief chronicle of one particular pastor named Doug Wilson who holds a very distinctive view of Christianity…. and who lives in and “took over” the next town down the road from Sutton’s base at Washington State University. While there is no public record of any animosity between the two, the lack of balance and clear bias towards perspectives even remotely similar to Wilson’s seems more than coincidental – though again, to be crystal clear, there is *zero* public evidence to support this. Still, that particular passage made me wonder, and I leave it to you, the reader of my review and possibly reader of Sutton’s book, to draw your own conclusions there.

Those that have a conservative lean to their politics and/ or religion are likely going to want to defenestrate this book long before completing its 600 ish pages. Don’t. There really is enough through most of this text that you’re going to learn something. Those who lean more in Sutton’s direction will likely praise this book quite highly. Again, I leave it to you, the reader of my review, to decide for yourself whether to read this book or not, and I do hope that if you decide to read it at all – even if you wind up DNFing it – that you’ll leave your own review and tell all of us what you thought of the text and why.

February 18, 2026February 18, 2026

#BookReview: The Greatest Scientific Gamble by Michael Joseloff

Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. J. Robert Oppenheimer and Werner Heisenberg. In this text, Joseloff almost portrays the leading nuclear scientists of the WWII era – particularly Oppenheimer and Fermi vs Heisenberg – as a Professor X vs Magneto friendship yet rivals, still with humanity’s freedom – and possibly existence – at stake. Written in an approachable more journalistic rather than academic style befitting Joseloff’s background as an Emmy award winning news producer for various cable networks, thriller/ action fans may actually be able to enjoy this particular nonfiction book quite well.

This noted, the cast of “characters” is rather large – if you have trouble keeping track of half a dozen different characters in a tale, this one may not be for you after all, as there are nearly that many major players here along with several more supporting players for this particular narrative (many of whom were far larger players in the overall scheme of WWII, but who weren’t *as* prominent directly within the efforts on both sides of the war to build a working atom bomb).

Clocking in at roughly 23% documentation though, this tale is fairly well cited, and even if you think you know absolutely everything about nuclear development during the WWII era, this book will likely show you at least a few you didn’t. For example, I personally learned of the Allied attempts to assassinate Heisenberg, that Heisenberg was a version of the US/ Confederate States of America’s Robert E. Lee… and that the plutonium blast at Nagasaki that effectively ended the war (once the Russians finally declared war against Japan the next day) actually hit facilities used to produce torpedoes that had been used to attack Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier (along with a *lot* of other facilities in Nagasaki).

But really, it is a story of friends finding themselves on opposing sides of a war, both seeking to both be the best in their field and uncover new scientific breakthroughs before the other does… knowing that their governments intend to weaponize these breakthroughs to use against the other side. It is a story of one man remaining staunchly loyal to his homeland, knowing its faults and yet choosing his home and family anyway. It is a story of his friends already seeing how evil their friend’s homeland is – even before its full evils were truly known – and doing absolutely everything possible to convince their friend to abandon his home and join them… even if they have to kidnap him to save his life.

It is a story you think you know… and yet you almost certainly never knew these particular aspects of it.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Greatest Scientific Gamble by Michael Joseloff was originally written on February 18, 2026.

January 30, 2026

#BookReview: I Told You So by Matt Kaplan

Interesting History That Can In Fact Comes Across As Extended Ad For Author’s Day Job. I was perusing the existing reviews on Goodreads as I sat down to write this review, as is my custom, when I saw a 2 star review mention that this book felt, to that reviewer, at least partially like an extended ad for the author’s day job as a science reporter for The Economist and actually agreed with that point in retrospect.

Written almost as much in a memoir style as even a popular science history type book – the author’s bread and butter for twenty years now both in articles for The Economist and in books on various topics over the years, if you didn’t know (see what I did there? 😉 )- this is actually the second book this month I read that dealt with a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweiss and his pioneering antiseptic work in the 19th century, with the other being The Great shadow by Susan Wise Bauer, about the history of sickness and healing more generally whereas Kaplan’s text here focuses more on how right Semelweiss was… and how much a price he paid for being the one man that was beginning to get at least something right in an era when The Establishment (to use a more modern phrase) was oh so very wrong.

Semmelweiss’ story is the binder of this narrative, but along the way we encounter a few others similarly situated, from the famous (Galileo, Lister (whom Listerine is named after, to give those who may not be familiar with the name an idea of why it may be significant), and Pasteur, among others) to the more bleeding edge and let’s say not-yet-as-globally-famous, even though this modern set has at least one Nobel Prize winner among it and one who was essential in the creation of the COVID 19 vaccine.

The history is well written – as should be expected with someone of Kaplan’s experience – and doesn’t shy away from relevant facts that may make the historical figures look not so great in modern eyes, yet the modern is, while still well written, perhaps a touch *too* personal, offering insights into Kaplan’s own training and direct interactions with some of the subjects he is profiling. This is where the more memoir aspects of the tale kick in, and again, these are still well written and engaging, they just don’t share the same psychological distance as is notable when Kaplan is writing of Semmelweiss and others.

Still, the only reason for the star deduction is, as long time readers of my reviews of nonfiction books can probably already guess, a lack of documentation, clocking in at just 12% of the overall text here, just shy of the 15% or so of even my more recent more relaxed expectations on this point after having read quite a few nonfiction Advance Review Copy books over these last eight or so years.

Overall though, the book is truly fascinating and brings to light quite a bit of obscure history of the last few hundred years, and does a great job of making the points Kaplan is trying to make quite clear without veering too deeply into preachiness. Most readers will likely learn quite a bit from reading it, and have a generally pleasant experience doing so.

Very much recommended.

This review of I Told You So by Matt Kaplan was originally written on January 30, 2026.

January 29, 2026

#BookReview: Feed The People by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg

Food – Like Reading – Is Not Political, Despite Authors’ Claims. I came into this book expecting a more science/ tech look at why industrial food is good (it is, and the authors are correct on this) and how it can be made better… and instead got a book focused almost entirely on the politics of the food industry and why the authors think that the small food/ farm to table crowd ala Michael Pollan and others is wrong. While I tend to agree with the authors in outcome, their reasoning here was extremely elitist and pro-totalitarian-government-intervention, with nearly every recommendation they make ultimately coming down to “government should dictate either specific actions or at worst the range of choices that businesses and consumers will have available to them”.

Given that one of the authors works in NYC and the other in Europe, perhaps this is understandable cultural bias, and perhaps you, the reader of my review, will agree with their reasonings as well as their outcomes. But for myself, a former Libertarian Party official who tends to agree more with the writings of Ayn Rand and Lysander Spooner… yeah, there wasn’t much here I could actually endorse myself. 😉

Ultimately, it isn’t the specific direction they chose but the sheer fact that they considered these recommendations the only possible policies and did not even allow for the possibility of other possibilities that lost a star. I love finding texts that come from different perspectives, but I expect *any* nonfiction book to at least mention other potential views and why they are more easily dismissed in the views of the author(s), and this simply wasn’t done here – making the overall text have at minimum an appearance of elitism. Again, your mileage will absolutely vary there, and I know people personally who will five star this book as among the most important food books you will ever read and people who will wish they could give this same book zero stars as utter trash that should never be read by anyone *for exactly the same reasonings* that I’m ultimately winding up in the middle of the road there.

Oh yeah, kind of gave away that there was another star deduction coming there, right? This is one long time readers of my reviews will be quite familiar with in my reviews of nonfiction books – the bibliography simply wasn’t long enough, clocking in at just 10% of the overall text here. The applicability of the Sagan Standard (“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”) is perhaps debatable given the ultimate discussions of this book, but even without applying Sagan, I’ve maintained for years that in my vast reading of even Advance Review Copy nonfiction books over the years, a bare minimum – by my later expanded standards – of roughly 15% documentation is needed to get this star, and as noted, that is actually expanded , as for many years I required a bare minimum of 20%. So yeah, 10% simply isn’t going to cut it there.

Still, for all this, read this book. Seriously. You may want to defenestrate it because it openly embraces unions and calls for more of them. You may want to defenestrate it because it says openly and honestly that if we are going to provide meat for billions of people, industrialized animal farming is the only realistic way that is going to happen. But you should read it anyway, no matter your own political persuasions, because ultimately this *is* a pretty realistic book looking at exactly how we can feed the masses going forward, even if it is an extremely pro-government-mandate and anti-individual liberty view.

Oh, and I repeat the title, since the authors were so adamant in the opposing view: Food is **NOT** political.

January 23, 2026January 23, 2026

#BookReview: Citizenship by Daisy Hernandez

Ironic Downfall. Seriously, how much more ironic can you get than a book about citizenship being felled by… *a lack of documentation*????

To be clear, there are *many* more issues with this book. The biggest being that it is marketed as a critical and intellectual examination of the concept of citizenship (which is intriguing and deserves to be written about)… and instead what we actually get is a racist memoir that openly proclaims that the entire concept of citizenship was created whole cloth in the US in the 19th century to keep the brown person down and give the evil white man a way to exclude brown people while claiming to be objective. Seriously.

Now, maybe that last bit is something you tend to agree with. Even there, you should be pissed off at this book because it doesn’t even begin to try to objectively make this case. Further, when you make an extraordinary claim such as what this book proposes, the Sagan Standard applies and extraordinary evidence is expected – yet there is next to no documentation, clocking in at just 8% of the Advance Review Copy that I’ve had for four months before finally reading it just weeks before publication.

All of this noted, it actually was rather intriguing as a personal memoir of one person’s thoughts and experiences on the subject at hand. So yes, *as a personal memoir*, this book works much better than as any form of objective intellectual endeavor, and from the memoir angle it really is a compelling read of one person’s thoughts.

But that’s not what this is being marketed as, at least at this stage. At this stage, it is being marketed as much as a scholarly work as memoir, and as a scholarly work this book utterly fails in every conceivable respect.

Still, read this book as a memoir. Please. Hernandez has a clear and rare voice, and her story needs to be heard. I just wish she had put as much effort into integrating it into an actual objective examination of the topic as she did in expressing how evil the white man is.

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026

#BookReview: Country Life In Georgia In The Days Of My Youth by Rebecca Latimer Felton

Fascinating Look Into A Bygone Era From A Truly Remarkable Woman. Rebecca Latimer Felton was born in 1935 in DeKalb County, GA. She died in Cartersville, Ga – my own hometown – in 1930, just 53 years before my own birth. Her grandparents witnessed the American Revolution. Mine were children when she died – one of them a small child when Felton became the first female US Senator – and, in the same moment, the last formerly slave owning US Senator – in 1922.

This book is both a memoir of her early years through the Civil War and just beyond and also a collection of several of her writings and speeches as she became politically active in the last decades of her life, becoming a leader in both (white) women’s suffrage and the temperance movement that eventually lead to Prohibition – and its repeal – in her final years.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind has become a legend in American lore of the antebellum and Civil War periods. Meanwhile, Felton’s *real* story of those same periods has largely been forgotten. Even in Cartersville, where a home still stood on her plantation land *this Millennium* (as an abandoned lot, according to my memory of living just a mile or so away) until it was destroyed by arsonists in 2001, Felton’s name appears on a couple of shopping centers and a couple of roads near where her plantation once was.

This story, *her* story, deserves to be read and understood far more than it currently is. Felton was absolutely a person of her time and era, and this book shows it. She does not hide that she owned slaves. She is quite clear that she believes the white race superior to the black – or any other. Yes, that even means that she uses a certain word beginning with “N” that is virtually *never* used by anyone other than the most hardcore avowed racists of the 2020s. Even with these views however, Felton makes great effort to explicitly state – and devote a decent section of this book to conclusively proving in her own way – that the Civil War was explicitly because rich Southerners wanted to defend slavery specifically. Though in one of the more prescient statements that many today should take heed of, she also explicitly states that at least the politicians of Georgia had wished – and genuinely believed – that they could peaceably secede from the Union without bloodshed.

*And yet*, Felton also speaks highly of the society the Cherokee Nation built. She shows herself, particularly in the speeches and writings that form the back end of the book, to be a strong and stirring leader in pushing for women’s rights – not just to vote, but to be free from spousal and societal abuse. Indeed, it is clear that one large reason she was so passionate in her views of temperance was due to how drunk men treated the women around them – reasons that some of my own grandparents would see play out in their own lives after both of my grandfathers served in WWII and both survived the meat grinder of the Battle of the Bulge only to both be there to directly see the concentration camps liberated by them and their fellow American soldiers.

I’m not going to bullshit y’all. Felton is truly a fascinating and complex woman, and by 2000s standards, particularly 2020s standards, yes, she can be quite problematic indeed.

*And yet*, by the standards of her own era, she was more progressive than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or even Bernie Sanders are considered today.

Read this book. Learn about an era that so many today have so many strong and passionate views on *from someone who was actively there*. Even as someone who grew up separated by just a few decades in time and barely a mile in distance from Felton, who went to elementary school literally down the road from the last home Felton lived in, even *I* learned many things about this era that *I* had previously never known, and it opened even my own eyes in several ways. Thus, I have every confidence that anyone not both from Cartersville and at least as knowledgeable of its history as I am will absolutely learn a great deal here, even if this is admittedly a difficult read almost a century after Felton’s death.

Very much recommended.

Download this book from the Internet Archive here.

This review of Country Life In Georgia In The Days Of My Youth by Rebecca Latimer Felton was originally written on January 21, 2026.

January 19, 2026

#BookReview: The Price Of Mercy by Emily Galvin Almanza

Leftist Language Will Annoy Some Readers. Read This Anyway. Straight up, Galvin Almanza is absolutely a product of her time – in this case, “her time” being 2010s Harvard and Stanford and then abolitionist activism. So the words she chooses – “latinx”, apologizing for being white, etc – are going to annoy at least some readers.

From my view (see postscript for a brief bio relevant to this discussion)… this book is right up there among the ones those new to the field should consider. Those in and around criminal justice will likely know most everything Galvin Almanza presents here – or at bare minimum have largely similar stories of people they did know more directly. Her writing style is engaging – far from the academic speak one might expect from a Stanford Law lecturer and much closer to the dynamism one would expect from a tenacious advocate of the accused during a trial. While this is far from a John Grisham or Randy Singer courtroom drama, Galvin Almanza’s overall style bends more in that direction than a desert dry academic treatise.

One weakness here was her framing of the “racist” origins of policing, but again, that’s the culture Galvin Almanza comes from. It is unclear at this time if she’s ever even heard of Radley Balko’s excellent history of policing The Rise Of The Warrior Cop, released between The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (who blurbed this book, in case you, the reader of my review, missed that) and the 2013 execution of Michael Brown. Balko has a much more even handed look at the rise of policing in the American tradition, tracing it back even beyond the first “Shire Reefs” in feudal England and up through 2010 or so (with a 2020s update I’ve yet to go back and read). Even here, however, Galvin Almanza’s incorrect history of policing comes across more as a cultural/ worldview thing than an attempt to mislead the reader – she appears to genuinely not know the actual history at hand and genuinely (and uncritically) believes the constant leftist refrain.

That particular weakness aside, however, this is a particularly well documented book, clocking in at about 28% documentation on even the Advance Review Copy edition of the text I’ve had for several weeks before finally reading roughly a month before release. It is quite clear that on most of her points, Galvin Almanza both knows exactly what she’s arguing and is more than willing to show you her work – which is always appreciated (and, yes, frankly expected) in any nonfiction work.

Ultimately Galvin Almanza’s proposals – because all books of this type must end with proposals in nearly as ironclad a genre rule as RWA/ RNA types try to insist that any romance novel end in a happily ever after – all come down to variations on “more funding” and for the most part are things most that are familiar with the field have already heard of before, but Galvin Almanza does put at least enough of her own specific vision in here that the text is still worth reading to see exactly what her own brand of reasoning comes out as.

Overall this was a strong book of its type, just not an overly novel one other than in Galvin Almanza’s own particular experiences.

Very much recommended.

Brief bio of me: Hi, I’m Jeff, and I used to work for a District Attorney for a bit as their office tech guy. Even got sworn in as a witness in one particular trial, in addition to helping my bosses with an “everyman” look at the case he had in a couple of cases. Even then, I was *also* a Libertarian Party official and an anti-police-brutality activist working with an org that has long went by the wayside (at least relative to what it was) and which particularly after Michael Brown’s execution in 2013 was rarely heard from again as more prominent orgs rose up. I even, at some of the very times Galvin Almanza was being recognized as one of the most promising young lawyers in America, had a database that virtually no one knew of, but which made me *the* world’s leading expert in mass shooting, school shooting, and killed by police events – at least in terms of the data I had and was actively both collecting and analyzing.

Which is a particularly long winded way of saying that I’ve been around the block more than a few times as it relates to the subject of this book. Frequently around it, rarely directly in it, but very much close enough to know much of what was happening… from most every side.

This review of The Price Of Mercy by Emily Galvin Almanza was originally written on January 19, 2026.