Tag: nonfiction

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#BookReview: Decade of Disunion by Robert W. Merry

Interesting History That Doesn’t Really Fulfill Its Premise. As a general history of the titular “Decade of Disunion”, this is actually a reasonably well written and documented look at the overall political situation in the US in the decade (and then some) just before the onset of the American Civil War, including solid biographical overviews of several of the key players- both the actual key players and the ones Merry chooses to try to focus on, namely those from South Carolina and Massachusetts.

But that is actually where the book fails to really drive home its purported premise, that these leaders from these two States in particular played particularly important/ oversized roles in the events of the decade, in the events that lead to war. There really is just *so much* that happened in that decade that lead to disunion, and so much of it happened outside the States of South Carolina and Massachusetts – and even outside the District of Columbia – that it really was quite a stretch to claim that *any* two States could have played outsized roles in all of it, though in picking States that did in fact lead in the opposing ideals, Merry perhaps at least came closer than other potential selections.

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.

I read this book in the days before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, and I’m writing this review on the day this book releases, less than 48 hours after President Biden’s announcement that he would not seek a second term – and while President Biden hasn’t been seen in public in days now, somehow the Director of the US Secret Service still has her job. In other words, quite turbulent times indeed in this country.

But as Merry points out early, often, and frequently throughout this text – as turbulent as these times are, there have indeed been much, much worse. So pick up this book – and the aforementioned Morone text – and learn a degree of historical perspective that is desperately needed in these times.

Very much recommended.

This review of Decade of Disunion by Robert W. Merry was originally written on July 23, 2024.

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#BookReview: Beyond Policing by Philip V. McHarris

Laughably Dumb? You Decide. This is another of those books where my own experience with the topic absolutely plays into my judgement here, so up front: I’m an Autistic who studied police brutality for years after some… unfortunate… (though mild, comparatively) encounters with police throughout my life. I actually became quite an expert in tracking police murders, helping with a now-defunct project similar to MappingThePolice – MTP being a project McHarris cites in this text. I was also active in CopBlock many years ago after watching its founders have their own unjust encounter with police. I’ve even known one of the victims – though to be clear, I knew him as a toddler and it was over a decade later that he was murdered by police. I’m a former Libertarian Party official at both State and local levels and 2x rural small town City Council candidate. I’ve even given a presentation at the Georgia Sociological Association’s conference. Which is a lot to say that while Mr. McHarris has me beat as far as degrees go, I’m not some bum off the street who doesn’t have both lived and academic experience with this topic as well. 🙂

As to the title of this review and the substance of the book, really all you need to know here is that Mr. McHarris’ aforementioned degree, at least one of them, is in African American studies from Yale. That alone clues you in immediately to the extreme leftist and even racist bent you’re going to get from this book, either proclaiming all white people as racist or dismissing white concerns related to the topic. How you feel about that bent is largely how you’re going to feel about this book. Also, to be clear, the actual “Laughably Dumb” bit was the comment a friend made when I showed them a one of the points we’ll get to below. 🙂

But wait! It gets better! First, some truly, truly great things: 1) The documentation, though slanted, is at least reasonably thorough, clocking in at around 20% of the text. Using the Sagan Rule (“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”), perhaps that might not be enough for the claims of this text. But it *does* fall in line with the norm of my experience with similar texts, and at least some of the sources cited are some of the very same ones I would cite as well, were I writing a book on this topic myself – including The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Rise Of The Warrior Cop by Radley Balko (whose history of policing is far more complete and balanced than the one McHarris offers in the first third of this text), and Torn Apart by Dorothy Roberts, among others. Furthermore, though from a clearly extreme leftist position, McHarris does indeed offer some interesting ideas at times, delusional though they may be in terms of his exact preference of implementation. But at least he is proposing *something*, and some of the ideas truly have merit.

And then we get to the stuff where you really need to decide how laughable you think they are. For one, McHarris proclaims the LA riots after the Rodney King beating to be an “uprising against police”, and uses similar “uprising” language to denote the mass riots of 2020. As if that weren’t bad enough, McHarris, while still coming from an “all whites are evil racists” perspective, openly advocates for “direct participatory democracy” to make “all” political decisions. Can you, dear reader of my review, please tell me why that may be a *horrible* idea indeed for minorities? As in, if you truly believe that all white people are evil racists and that there is nothing good about them, why would you want to give them such absolute power in so many areas?

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.

As I said from the beginning, you decide, dear reader of my review, what you’re going to think of this book. I absolutely think everyone should read it, just know that roughly half of you, perhaps more, are going to want to defenestrate it from the highest available window fairly early and fairly often. Still, stick through it. Finish it. Review it yourself. And *then* defenestrate it, if you truly need to. 🙂

Very much recommended.

This review of Beyond Policing by Philip V. McHarris was originally written on July 12, 2024.

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#BookReview: Big Brother And The Grim Reaper by Benjamin Ginsberg

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.

Indeed, the only weakness here is simply that at 13% bibliography, I simply expect at least a *touch* more – even, perhaps, as low as 15% (on an already expanded window that was once 20-30%).

Beyond this particular quibble, read this book – you’re going to learn a lot and have a lot to think about. I know I did and do.

Very much recommended.

This review of Big Brother And The Grim Reaper by Benjamin Ginsberg was originally written on July 5, 2024.

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#BookReview: Key To The City by Sara C. Bronin

Taylor Swift != “Modern Day Elvis Presley”! I came into this book wanting to read about the American Government on the Fourth of July. Honestly, as an avowed Anarchist and former Libertarian Party official at both the State and local levels + 2x rural small town City Council candidate… I probably should have known better. 😉

It isn’t that this book isn’t illuminating nor well documented – it actually is reasonably good at both, with a bibliography clocking in at 21% of the overall text. Seriously, if you’ve never considered the topic of land zoning as it is practiced in the United States and how it is used to control you, your neighbors, your town, even to a slightly lesser (direct) manner your State and even the entire Country… you need to read this book.

Bronin truly does a great job of examining the history of zoning as practiced in the US, including how it came to be and why and how it has been used over the century or so since it first came into being. (Indeed, according to Bronin, the Supreme Court cases that effectively legalized the practice are still not quite a century old at either the writing of this review in early July 2024 or when the book is scheduled to be released in early October 2024.)

My issue, and I think it is objective enough (if, perhaps, barely) is that Bronin approaches this topic as a Chair of a Zoning Board who wants Zoning Boards to be even *more* active in limiting what you can do with the property that you legally own and actively encourages strategies to accomplish a very progressive agenda, including “Climate change” and mass transit theories that barely work in the extremely densely populated “Boshwash” (Boston – Washington DC) corridor she rules the aforementioned Zoning Board in – theories that could never work in the *far* less densely populated areas of South Georgia or even Central South Carolina that I’ve lived in, much less west of the Missisippi River where population densities (until you get to the Pacific Coast) largely truly plummet. And yes, there are *reasons* I mentioned my political background up front in this review. 🙂

As but an example, I point to the title of this review – at one point in this text, Ms. Bronin does in fact claim that Taylor Swift is a “modern day Elvis Presley”. To be clear, if she had compared Ms. Swift to say the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or even Johnny Cash himself, that would have been a fair comparison and I would have had to find another example of where she is particularly outlandish without going into the actual details of the book (ie, spoilers). But as Ms. Swift never had to so much as register for the Draft – much less be selected by it and forced to serve in the US Military, this alone shows that Elvis was a different breed entirely. And to be clear, lest any Swifties attack this review just because of this paragraph, I’m not actually criticizing Ms. Swift. She is indeed a global phenomenon and is clearly quite talented in her own right. I am not saying otherwise or taking anything from her. I’m simply noting that for all she has done and all the fans she has, Elvis was *still* on another level from her.

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.

Recommended.

This review of Key To The City by Sara C. Bronin was originally written on July 5, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Deepest Map by Laura Trethewey

Interesting And Comprehensive Examination Marred By Leftist Ideology. If you can overlook (or if you like) the *frequent* bigotries against “males”, “white males”, and/ or “rich white males” and if you agree with Greta Thunberg re: “Climate” “Change” (or whatever the hell they’re calling it now as you read this review), you’re going to love this book. The star deduction comes specifically because of such slanted “reporting”. (I read the Audible version of this book and thus can’t comment on the length of its bibliography one way or another.)

If the above doesn’t apply to you, you should read this book anyway.

Because when it stays on subject about the efforts to map the seas and specifically the deepest parts of them, both cutting edge and throughout history, this book actually is quite good. Tretheway manages to show both the necessity of the effort and just how dangerous it can be in both academic and very real senses, along with all of the problems associated with having the data or not as well as gathering the data in the first place. Along the way we’re going to encounter quite a few legendary people, some truly globally famous even well outside their exploratory regions, others famous only within very narrow, sometimes quite niche, fields – but famous nonetheless. She manages to make the reader care about both the historic exploration and the current efforts, up to and including even using AI drones to get data humans otherwise can’t easily obtain. And all of this is quite remarkable indeed.

It is simply a shame that she had to integrate so much bigotry into this reporting – it truly could have been a truly remarkable work otherwise. And yet, the tale as written is still strong enough even with the integrated bigotry to still warrant a read by truly everyone remotely interested in the oceans for any reason.

Recommended.

This review of The Deepest Map by Laura Tretheway was originally written on July 1, 2024.

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#BookReview: American Covenant by Yuval Levin

Dense Yet Optimistic Treatise Calls For Revival Of Long-Lost Ideals. In American political discourse, the tide turned significantly towards a more Jeffersonian approach based on liberal ideals such that most all American political discourse for quite some time now is mostly based on rights – who has them, who needs them, whose should have them, who should defend them, etc.

Here, Levin argues that this focus on Jeffersonian thoughts has led us to the current divisive era, one that threatens to tear the American nation apart.

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.

Levin does a detailed look at the ideas, how we got to where we are, how each plays out in each realm of American polity, and how a renewed focus on republicanism could heal our divided land. It is a dense look mostly written for scholars and deep thinkers, but for those that can hang with density akin to some substance just shy of lead… this promises to be quite illuminating indeed. And it is one that more Americans *should* read than likely actually *will*.

The single star deduction here is simply due to the shorter than expected bibliography, clocking in at about 13% of the Advance Review Copy of the text I was able to read, where even in a relaxed posture on that point I would still expect around 15%. Splitting hairs at that point, perhaps, but I’ve had these standards since I began reviewing books several years ago, and it wouldn’t be fair to either this book or all the others to not hold to the same-ish standard.

Very much recommended.

This review of American Covenant by Yuval Levin was originally written on July 11, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Understory By Lore Ferguson Wilbert

Better Sipped Than Shot, Intense Political “Flavor” Means Taste Will Vary With Reader. There are times when you’re drinking (even non-alcoholic beverages) where you just plow through them. Maybe it is your first coffee of the day and you need that caffeine NOW! Maybe it is a hot summer day and that glass of lemonade disappeared *real* quick. Or maybe you just broke up with your significant other, and yeah, that tequila hit the spot.

A lot of books are like this. Action thrillers where reading at a frenetic pace to match the action being shown is part of the fun, for example.

This… is not that book.

This, instead, is one of those fine bourbons where you’re going to lose a lot of the nuance if you shoot it down too fast. One of those women’s fiction tales that feels like it is taking forever to have any real plot at all, but feels so *immersive* in the tale even still. One of those quasi-memoir/ quasi-religious pondering books (exactly what this is) where you really need to, as Wilbert did in taking inspiration for the overall narrative here, sit at your window and ponder the forest outside.

Read in such a manner, Wilbert’s struggles are more understandable and even relatable, as you consider your own similar struggles – and here, the things Wilbert struggles with really are things most all of us do at some level. The overarching forest narrative is a genuinely good guide for such contemplation, at least as Wilbert has written it here.

But what could ruin the taste – or make it truly exquisite – is the intense politics that are never far from the narrative, to the point that if there isn’t a political comment on *every* page, it certainly feels like at least some comment is made on at least the *majority* of pages. And yes, Wilbert’s politics are, to put it mildly, “left of center”. So know that going in.

This noted, where Wilbert eventually arrives… is a place we all probably need to, even if, again depending on your own political tastes, perhaps she arrives there a bit condesceningly.

Overall an intriguing read that truly urges us to slow down in this hectic world, it is one that we should all likely ponder – though I suppose few enough actually will.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Understory by Lore Ferguson Wilbert was originally written on May 25, 2024.

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#BookReview: Unstuck by Stephanie Stuckey

Fascinating And *Southern* Tale Of Near-Death Of Road trip Staple. Stephanie Stuckey has led a life few Georgians have. She is a scion of a family that had become somewhat rich and somewhat powerful over the last century, whose grandfather once proclaimed (per Stuckey, here in the text) that he had made more money than his grandchildren could ever spend (but which they did, again, per Stuckey here), whose father had been a Congressman and who herself had been a State Representative for nearly 15 years. Both she and her father are UGA alumni, both from well before the era where the HOPE scholarship made such an achievement much more doable for many Georgians.

All of this is included here, but really, this is the tale of the ascent to those heights… and the downfall from them, as changes mostly made by others – as well as a few mistakes made within the company – led to near non-existence of the family company, fortune, and even legacy.

Herein lies a quintessential Southern tale of Southern family and business acumen, of a legacy built, nearly destroyed, and of one woman’s fight to restore that legacy to all that it had once been… and maybe, just maybe… even increase it for her own children.

The story is told with all of the grace, grit, and wonder of a granddaughter who clearly grew up living at least some of the history involved, but only much later in life finding out all that she *didn’t* know, including just how fundamental the black community was to her (white) grandfather’s success in the era of Jim Crow, and how mutually beneficial and respectful the relationships there were. Up to and including Civil Rights activists actively encouraging their people to stop at Stuckey’s, knowing that they would be treated with the respect they didn’t always get in the South in that era.

As someone who has also uncovered lost family history later in life – and who has lived in some of the regions this tale centers around, as well as, yes, having sampled quite a few of the family’s candies-, this was a story I could connect with on several levels, even as my own family was… let’s go with “not quite so fortunate” over the years, to the point that when I graduated from Kennesaw State University near the turn of this Millennium, I was the first in my family to have graduated college at all.

Overall truly a triumphant and hopeful tale, well told with the respect, humor, and candor one doesn’t always get in such deeply personal tales fraught with such sensitive topics as race relations in the South. Very much recommended.

This review of Unstuck by Stephanie Stuckey was originally written on May 24, 2024.

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#BookReview: Down With The System by Serj Tankian

Fascinating And Humble Blend Of Personal Memoir, Cultural/ Personal History, and Activism. Serj Tankian burst into the public scene 25 years ago as the lead singer of System Of A Down – the band that had the number one album on 9/11, days before Tankian wrote a reflection on that day that nearly destroyed everything they had built.

This… is his story. We get to that day, but we get a long build up to it, explaining everything that had led him to that point in his life, including his grandparents’ survival of the Arminian Genocide in the WWI era through his dad’s legal troubles in Tankian’s teens and early adulthood, through his initial work creating a software company, finding music, eventually forming System… and then his life with and after System.

Through it all, Tankian’s activism to bring light to the horrors of the Arminian Genocide is never far from pretty well literally anything he is writing about in that moment. It is clear that it truly forms the backbone of his identity and everything he considers himself to be about – and truly, as the grandson of two survivors of WWII’s Battle of the Bulge, I actually can appreciate the personal family history, even as the particulars of our families are so very different.

Indeed, even our reactions to 9/11 were distinctly different, as Tankian was an immigrant from the Middle East region in his 30s on that day and I was an 18yo American fresh out of high school rocking out to Toxicity that summer before that day. I don’t remember my reaction to Tankian’s post that day, if I ever even saw it or heard of the public outcry. My own reaction was better summed up first by Alan Jackson’s Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning) (which I *finally* had a chance to hear him perform live in 2022) and the (sadly now late) great Toby Keith’s “Courtesy Of The Red White And Blue”. I was a college junior that day, even though I had just graduated high school at the beginning of that summer, but still an 18yo male with a US Selective Service card – the knowledge that if America went to war, I could be called to fight in it very, *very* real on my mind in the immediate aftermath.

But that day and the fallout are but a small part of this book, though it *is* discussed. The overarching tale being, again, that of Tankian’s work bringing publicity to the Arminian Genocide and his efforts to get to get the world to force Turkey to so much as acknowledge their crimes of that era and all that it has led to, including a new war in Armenia this decade that Turkey had a hand in, according to Tankian.

Overall this was truly an interesting look at a remarkable life that many of us had heard of before, but I suspect few of us indeed knew of the depth of the passion involved here and everything Tankian has done.

Very much recommended.

This review of Down With The System by Serj Tankian was originally written on May 24, 2024.

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#BookReview: Rings Of Fire by Larry J. Hughes

Winding Tale Of Americans Coming Together To Capture The Earth. Why does every nonfiction book about the American side of WWII these days have to proclaim that whatever it is talking about “helped win WWII”???? Because let’s face it – with many things, such a claim is tenuous at best, and perhaps the most glaring weakness of this text is that while the calcite is shown to be an important tool of the war, it is never truly established how it “helped win” the war. Indeed, the book as written does a far superior job of establishing how this calcite crystal that everything in the book revolves around was crucial in capturing “Earthrise”, the famed Apollo-era shot of the Earth from orbit around the moon, than it does in establishing how this particular technology “helped win WWII”.

Beyond the criticism of the subtitle though, this truly was a well documented examination of how a group of Americans that couldn’t actively fight in the war – though some later did just that – still found a remarkable and obscure way to contribute to the overall war effort. Essential, during times of total war such as WWII. It also shows how these people – and the Polaroid Company – would advance knowledge of optics and sights to levels unknown before, and how such advances really did need such a wildly disparate group of people all around the country to work together to achieve a common goal.

Ultimately, this book is about teamwork and the “can-do” spirit that American propagandists of this and later eras were so ardently promoting – even into the modern era, in some circles – as much as it is the science and tech of the calcite and optics. So take that for what you will, though I will say that this book never actually feels like a propaganda piece. If anything, it feels so *real*, like you’re actually there as these events are happening. That is clearly thanks to Hughes’ research as well as the way he chose to write this narrative, and speaks well for his abilities in both arenas.

Overall an interesting book with perhaps a few quibbles here and there, but one esoteric enough that few (relatively, at least) will likely read it – even though it really does show a glimpse of an America and Americans rarely seen in reporting of this era. Very much recommended.

This review of Rings Of Fire by Larry J. Hughes was originally written on May 23, 2024.