Tag: nonfiction

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#BookReview: The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees

Solid Nonpartisan Examination Of The Psychology Of Nazism – And All The More Terrifying For It. This is one of those *detailed* looks at the full history of Nazism, all the way back into its origins in the 19th century, that uses different psychological concepts as the focus of each chapter and shows how both the leaders of the Party and even the German laypeople fell under its spell.

Even with most chapters being a detailed history of the Nazi period of Germany and with only the final “Twelve Warnings” chapter having really anything to do directly with life a century later, the parallels to political life now – on *all* sides – become quite clear, even without Rees having to explicitly detail them. Whether it be the anti-immigrant MAGA or the anti-white “Woke” Left, the parallels to the various psychological foibles of Nazism are quite clear in Rees’ history here – which makes it all the more utterly terrifying.

Because no matter what modern society wants to think, and as a great grandson of an American soldier who was a German POW during WWI and a grandson of two survivors of the Battle of the Bulge on the American side (one of whom earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for this actions in that particular battle) of WWII, I think I have some space to talk here: Nazis did utterly horrific things, this is clear. Things that would drive those who even witnessed them – even as liberators – to lifelong alcoholism after the war, and that was among the *better* effects. But Nazis were *not* some mythical monster. They were utterly, completely, 100% human – and we and our society – *any* of us – could fall into their depravities much easier than we like to think in the 2020s. Rees’ history here makes this all too clear, and should serve as a clarion call to *ALL* of us, no matter our political beliefs or reasonings.

Read this book. Apply it to your political enemies – that’s the easy part. Then critically look at those closest to you politically… and apply it to them as well. That’s hard. Then critically look into your own mind, seriously examine your own thought processes and how you believe what you believe, and apply this book to that as well. That’s the hardest part of all. Yet it may indeed be our only way of truly preventing the horrors of the past from becoming a prophecy of a future that could come again.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees was originally written on April 25, 2025.

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#BookReview: Life Is Fighting by Kevin Robert Kesar aka WWE’s Karrion Kross

On Par With Foley and Jericho RE: Best Written Wrestling Memoirs. Admittedly, my favorite memory involving Kross as a wrestling fan, one I actually repeat occassionally, was actually something his opponent said to him a few years ago. He was in a feud in NXT as the NXT Champion with the former NXT Champiom, Adam Cole (now working for rival promotion AEW) when Cole said to Kross “This brand has done everything in their power to make *you* feel special. You got the cool music, you got the lights, you got the fog machine, you got the girl. You know what they do to make Adam Cole feel special? They ring the freakin’ bell.” This was during the COVID, “Thunderdome” era of WWE/ NXT, when Kross had a shaved head and was tearing through any and all competitors – a period he does in fact discuss over the course of this book.

I actually read the book on Wrestlemania 41 weekend in April 2025, specifically on Wrestlemania Sunday – when Kross wasn’t on the card, but would ultimately have a “run-in” during the AJ Styles/ Logan Paul match… and then go on to cut what is likely the defining promo of his main roster career after the event, in a 3 minute video that has already gone viral this week with many calling for now WWE Hall of Famer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, Head of Creative for WWE, to give Kross a push the likes of which he hasn’t really seen since that run he was on when Cole made the comment above.

I mean, I already had the memoir of a current WWE Superstar in my hand on Wrestlemania Weekend, I needed something to do before the show started up Sunday night, this book is sub-300 pages and thus a relatively quick read… so… yeah.

And y’all, it really was an excellent look into the life of Kevin Kesar, both long before the Kross character ever came into being – and even a fair amount of how Kesar created Kross – and at least some about his new career as Killer/ Karrion Kross. Indeed, most of the text is actually spent on his pre-WWE days – while there is *some* discussion of his WWE colleagues, the singular most common one discussed is his now-wife, known by her government name of Elizabeth but known to wrestling fans as the character Scarlett, a witch who both empowers and is powered by Kross’ brutal warrior.

Those looking for a lot of behind the scenes name dropping are going to be sorely disappointed. Kesar keeps the book focused on himself, even when discussing Elizabeth/ Scarlett. Even when others are in the scene, such as when he is meeting Elizabeth those first few times before they really started dating, or when he finally gets the call from WWE, or even when he and Elizabeth get married on an Alaskan glacier after having both been recently “let go” from WWE (and before they were both ultimately brought back), throughout the tale we see much more of Kesar than anyone else… as s memoir should be, to an extent, but also not as perhaps some fans reading wrestling memoirs specificlaly would necessarily like as much.

Instead we get all of Kesar – at least as much as he is willing to discuss publicly, even/ especially in book form. We see his early days as a kid watching wrestling and knowing even then that he wanted to do that “someday”. We see his beginnings in what turned out to be a very “unsanctioned” dive bar bare knuckle fight. We see his first career as a bouncer and later professional bodyguard, in Vegas and beyond – again, without any name dropping and with quite a bit of channeling Patrick Swayze in Road House, specifically as it relates to professionalism, treating people well, and “being nice”.

And then… a scene that ultimately reads much as the church scene from the original Kingsmen movie played out. I don’t want to go into too many details and spoil the scene, but this scene will very likely be one of the most memorable scenes in the entire book for readers, perhaps even above and beyond even his wedding (which, as he mentioned in the text, he did put pictures of on Instagram, and they truly were absolutely stunning) or anything he has done to date (as of the writing of the book) in WWE. This scene is *BEYOND* bonkers, and it really shows Kesar in all of his abilities outside of WWE.

Overall a very easily read and very approachable book about a guy that even guys that consider themselves dangerous likely would at minimum pay extra attention to if they saw him on the street, and yet the text shows that Kesar’s mind is at least as skillful as anything he can make his large, muscular body do. A guy who is much more easily approached here, at the standoff distance of a book, than he ever is staring into a camera with that fire in his eyes. Kesar takes pains to make sure the reader understands that he knows 100% that Kross is a character, and that outside of WWE work, Kross prefers to be known as “Kevin” – even among friends he works with. Yet he also does a damn good job of showing that while Kross may be borderline (or even well beyond borderline) psychotic, Kevin is a very sane – yet also still quite dangerous, when he needs to be – man. One who is, despite his appearances (both intentional and not, at times), as much a philosopher as a fighter – and thus proves to be as adept at writing as he is at fighting… and breaking bats. (Check his Instagram for that last. 😉 )

Very much recommended.

This review of Life Is Fighting by Kevin Robert Kesar was originally written on April 23, 2025.

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#BookReview: Whack Job by Rachel McCarthy James

Short, Accessible Primer On The Field. While a lot of the 2* reviews criticize this book claiming that the author “never defined ‘axe murder'” and that the overall narrative “lacks cohesion” and/ or “doesn’t show enough murder”, I feel like these reviewers are being perhaps too pendantic and/ or legalistic. Instead, the author makes clear – repeatedly – that this book is about the evolution of both the axe and its use as a mechanism of killing humans – regardless of whatever government decrees at the time may or may not excuse certain individuals (particularly those working for said governments) for killing their fellow humans. For those of us who feel that *any* killing of *any* human for *any* reason is murder… this book is absolutely a primer on the history of axe murder, in all of its varying forms over the expanse of human existence.

The book begins with the earliest axes and the among the earliest proto-humans, showing that injuries above the “hat line” of the head are generally considered “intentional acts” (ie, murder) rather than accidental, as that particular region of the head is apparently difficult to injure accidentally, at least according to the text here. There is apparently at least one example of just such an injury in an early protohuman that seems to have been caused by one of the earliest, flint-knapped, hand-held axes, before handles were later added to axes, and this history is the core of the beginning of the book.

The book then goes through the evolution of the axe and its uses as tool for clearing land – and in warfare and government-sanctioned executions, particularly during the reign of Henry VIII of England – all the way up to the 2020s in showing how homeless people will often carry an axe (or its smaller form, a hatchet) as a basic tool of survival in the streets, both for clearing debris and, when needed, for personal defense. And yes, Lizzie Borden is discussed along the way.

Indeed, the one area the book is lacking, the reason for the star deduction – and the reason one *should* be at least somewhat skeptical of the author’s perhaps more fantastical claims, including those about modern era homeless people, is that at just 13% documentation, this book falls short of even my more relaxed standards of 15% documentation, much less my older, more stringent need to see at least 20% documentation. Carl Sagan had it right in proclaiming his standard of “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, and sadly, this book is simply lacking – if by not much – in this regard. A more complete bibliography could have landed this in the 5* territory, it simply wasn’ present in the Advance Review Copy of the book I read.

Overall this really is a short, well written, approachable and understandable primer on the general topic of humans killing other humans (ie, humans committing murder) with a particular tool (the axe, in all of its various forms) over the course of human evolution. Yes, it is missing many key details and events, but in its brevity it is clear that it is meant to be more a primer of the topic than any extensive discussion thereof, and as a primer it works remarkably well to encourage people to do their own research into the topic, should they be so inclined.

Very much recommended.

This review of Whack Job by Rachel McCarthy James was originally written on April 23, 2025.

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#BookReview: Secrets Of The Killing State by Corinna Barrett Lain

Utterly Horrific. The crimes of Josef Mengele (Auschwitz) and Shiro Ishii (Unit 731) during WWII will (hopefully) live on in infamy throughout human history as among the worst things governments have ever done. Sadly, even since then, humanity has shown its horrific side more times than any of us care to really think about, be it genocides in Myanmar and Rwanda, the continual sex trafficking that despite efforts has never been eradicated, the child sex scandals that have rocked so many once-trusted professions, and many, many other ways.

While none of the above should be downplayed in any way whatsoever, they *do* set the stage for the horrors of this particular tale in that we know that most of those involved in the above were the bad guys. They were monsters clothed in scrubs or robes or wearing ties. Here, the monster is… well, the government itself and the sheer ineptitude of its bureaucracies and even legislative and executive leadership – not to mention the judicial leaders that are *supposed* to alleviate some of the worst excesses of the legislative and executive branches, but as Barrett Lain shows here, rarely do when it comes to the mechanisms of putting condemned criminals to death via lethal injection in the United States.

What Barrett Lain lays bare here in this very well documented (29% of the overall text) expose are the true horrors of lethal injection – the very execution method *specifically created* to give the *illusion* (as Barrett Lain makes clear) of a “humane” murder. Except that, as noted often within this text, the particular mechanisms of how this is done in humans are actually so barbaric and horrific that they are actively outlawed for use in animals!

No matter your position on capital punishment, no matter how much you may think a particular convicted criminal (or even, as is so often the case in social media, people merely accused of various crimes and yet so many still clamor for their execution before even a criminal conviction, without any form of legal due process as guaranteed for all persons – not just citizens – in the US Constitution) “deserves” to die… you NEED to read this book.

Read this book, and consider your own conscience. Can you honestly say after reading this book that this particular method is truly reasonable in its actual application today? Can you honestly say after reading this book that you are 100% comfortable with your own loved one going through this exact process? Because as others have noted in so many other works about the other problems with the American retribution system, there are next to no actual guarantees that you or your own loved ones won’t face this fate at some point, no matter how good and righteous you may feel you are – there are simply far too many laws – even laws with felony penalties! – within the US now, to the point that *no one* can truly know when they are not running afoul of at least one of them in any given moment or action. Read this book, examine your own conscience, and truly ask yourself if you could do this job or ask your best friend to do it. Read this book, examine your own conscience, and ask yourself if you could bear to allow your children to witness this process.

Read this book, examine your own conscience, and write your own review.

As SCOTUS has decreed, as documented by Barrett Lain here, that the condemned must offer an alternative to lethal injection for their challenges to have even a possibility of even being heard, let me state clearly here now that I would vastly prefer a firing squad to the inhumane and downright barbaric practice of lethal injection. As for me, while I’ve been an advocate of permanently ending the death penalty in favor of life without parole for many years now, even I hadn’t been fully aware of just how utterly horrific this particular execution method – posed to the US public as the more “humane” option – truly is, and I for one now count as one calling for the end of this particular method even if capital punishment must be allowed to continue.

Read this book, examine your own conscience, and let the world know in your own review whether you agree with me or not.

Very much recommended.

This review of Secrets Of The Killing State by Corinna Barrett Lain was originally written on April 8, 2025.

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#BookReview: Let The Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah

Solid Examination Of The Topic Told Mostly Via The Stories Of Those Involved. To be a bit more precise, if the topic at hand is “the rise and fall of the death penalty” throughout the United States generally… this book doesn’t fare as well. While it does make various attempts to show national issues and trends in capital punishment, the subtitle here really should more accurately be “The Rise And Fall Of The Death Penalty *In Texas*” (emphasis mine)… which is 100% accurate as to what you’re getting into with this book.

Chammah does a solid job of using his case studies and biographies to show the different people involved in the various cases and how they came to be in the moments they found themselves, and while the stories *can* get a bit too muddled and choppy at times when a lot is going on at once, it really isn’t any different than a multi-POV fiction novel only sporadically popping in with certain characters’ perspectives, which is a storytelling strategy I’ve seen more than once – and thus this really wasn’t a problem for me, but could absolutely be an issue for some readers. He does a similarly solid job of showing the various cases and people that played into the rise of capital punishment in Texas and the broader national trends that were occurring at the same time… and the same with the fall, showing the various people and cases that were leading that effort in Texas and how broader national trends also came to bear there as well.

Overall though, this is a reasonably well researched book, clocking in at about 17% documentation, per a Twitter conversation I had with the author, as I read the Audible version of the book and had no easy access to a Kindle or print copy of the text for purposes of this review. (My local library system here in Jacksonville, FL did in fact have print copies available even at the branch barely a mile away from my apartment, but I was working on this review before I could get there and it did *not* have eBook copies available, unfortunately.) Far from the best documented I’ve ever seen, as I’ve read a few books approaching or seemingly even over 50% documentation, but also within the more relaxed 15% or so standard I’ve been trying to adopt these last few years.

For those interested in capital punishment and related issues, this is going to be a book you should absolutely check out. Even for more general audiences, this really is a solid look at this particular topic, and you’re going to learn some things from reading it – even I did, and I’m at least somewhat well versed in the topic already due to prior reading and activism.

Very much recommended.

This review of Let The Lord Sort Them by Maurice Chammah was originally written on April 1, 2025.

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#BookReview: The Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior

Negative On Everything. Straight up, this is the most depressing book I’ve ever read other than The Road by Cormac McCarthy – which is the singular *worst* book I’ve ever read. Kendzior’s all-encompassing and ever present sense of doom drips from every page, and it is truly exhausting to even read a book that is this utterly bleak. I truly can’t imagine living life so utterly despairing – even in my own darkest of times. And this was the reason for one of the star deductions. This tale could have been phenomenal, even transcendental, as a more hopeful look at traveling the US to see its various national parks – and it could have been such even with a pessimistic world view and even with the author’s rampant cognitively dissonant political views intact. Simply write with a more hopeful tone than what is presented here!

The other star deduction is the dearth of the bibliography, clocking in at just 7% of the overall text, well short of even the 15% or so I would expect to see in even my more relaxed bibliographical standards of these last couple of years.

For those that see the United States as something to “survive, not thrive” as Kendzior so often notes – even during the Obama and Biden years! – and those that see “women treated as second class citizens, no longer having the same rights as men” (a paraphrase, but not too far off from an exact quote)… you’re probably going to think Kendzior a savant here, describing exactly how you feel to a T.

For the rest of us that choose to look on every situation, no matter how bleak, with hope – indeed, particularly for those of us who will *NEVER* see our own political preferences win in any ballot box, given the current state of affairs, yet we fight on for a better future for everyone anyway – this book is going to be one you’re going to want to defenestrate early and often.

To be quite honest, had I not accepted this as an Advance Review Copy given the strength of Kendzior’s prior work A View From Flyover Country, I would have been right there with you. Had I known how utterly depressing this book would be – obvious in even the first few paragraphs, much less the first chapters – I would have returned it in a heartbeat and never looked back.

As an exemplar of how at least some Americans are feeling and have felt for several years, yes, this book will stand as a time capsule of an era.

But it is also *a* time capsule, and one that will earn its place in the annals of history – if it is remembered that long – for how wrong it is. For how utterly depressing it is, even in a time when America and Americans are more prosperous than literally any generation before them. Things that were science fiction even in my own childhood, just a few scant years behind Kendzior’s own, are now science fact. Devices and technologies that Kendzior describes *in this text* as using at various points were barely imaginable in my own childhood, certainly to the level that they both now exist and permeate modern life.

Yes, we absolutely face challenges today, as *all* eras have faced. Denying this is denying reality at least as bad as Kendzior does. But for a book so replete with so much historical data about so many different places, Kendzior seems to miss that many of the very eras she discusses had *just* as many problems. Hell, not only this, Kendzior openly discusses the history of “Blood Island”, where politicians and others would go to duel… and yet still decries a heated political rally as a “coup”, even when no weapons were present other than in the hands of police.

No, this is a book that will play well with a very particular mindset and a very particular political view… and in all honesty, the only use anyone outside of that mindset and worldview would have to read this text is simply to see this mindset and at least attempt to understand it. Hell, maybe you’ll have more success on that point than I have after reading this.

Recommended. Only for certain readers.

This review of The Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior was originally written on March 27, 2025.

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#BookReview: Lost At Sea by Joe Kloc

Interesting Expose Of A Particular Community, Suffers From Problems Typical Of Its Form. As an almost anthropological examination of a particular culture that arose over decades in a very specific region of California – the roughly six square mile region known as Richardson’s Bay, an offshoot of San Francisco Bay – this text is a pirate’s treasure trove. Specifically, as it examines the “unhoused” people who have claimed homes among the derelict and otherwise vessels floating in the bay, the so-called “anchor-outs”, it truly does a phenomenal job detailing the history of how the culture arose, a lot of the features of the specific culture, and even a lot of both the key historical figures of it and at least some of its living practitioners.

As a *journalistic* piece… it may fly in today’s “lived experience” version of “journalism”, where objectivity and distance from subject are defenestrated in favor of being “up close” and “real”… but it still would have been enhanced by being a more old school journalistic type text, at least to my mind.

Instead what we get here is almost an action, thriller, and memoir mashup wherein the author inserts his own views into the text, but the story itself becomes one of a community’s fight for its right to survive and the dastardly developers and government officials seeking to eradicate it from history once and for all.

Which for a narrative, works well. For what is supposed to be a nonfiction work… maybe doesn’t work as well.

The star deduction comes in from the dearth of bibliography, which is likely due to not much written work existing about this particular group or its history, but still, there is quite a bit here that *could* have been documented more thoroughly, if even detailing newspaper or other media reports about various events over the years.

Very much recommended.

This review of Lost At Sea by Joe Kloc was originally written on March 17, 2025.

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#BookReview: Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis

This Book Has So Very Many Problems. Read It Anyway. First, let’s dispense with the fact that this is a fairly well documented book, clocking in at about 26% documentation… even if Karakatsanis’ sources are pretty clearly slanted one direction… which we’ll get into momentarily. No matter what else is said here, everyone considering reading this text should at least appreciate that Karakatsanis clearly shows his work. 🙂

Because of my own work and experiences within the anti-police-brutality spaces and indeed even the projects I was working with before giving them up in favor of book blogging, I bring a lot to this particular book that not everyone will have… which gives me a fairly unique perspective on it overall.

I can tell you that even as a former Libertarian Party official and activist, and thus someone who knew a lot of people of a *very* wide range of political persuasions… I’ve known *few* over the years who would be to the left of Karakatsanis. Indeed, your opinion of terms like “pregnant person” and “wage theft” is likely a good barometer of how often you’re going to want to defenestrate this particular text. “Wage theft” seemingly a phrase Karakatsanis is particularly fond of.

This noted, *from his perspective*, the narrative here is at least largely coherent, and even from such a far leftist perspective, he brings up a fair amount of solid points that every American *should* read and understand… even if you have to squeeze your nose so hard you’ll be afraid it will turn into a diamond as you do.

The problem, and the star deduction, comes from the simple fact that very nearly every single logical problem Karakatsanis decries in others… he also largely *employs* in building his “arguments” against them.

Hell, he even manages to fall into former Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington’s “perception of crime” problem – claiming over and over (and over and over and over and over…) that “statistics say” crime is down (which, as he points out, is *always true*… when you’re selective with your time ranges 😉 ) even as people report seeing ever more crime. As Richard Pryor famously said – “who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”.

Indeed, part of the star deduction also comes from the pervasive “no true Scotsman” problem that runs rampant through this text. No matter how far left the politician, no matter how hard the most progressive activists pushed for a particular policy – especially in California and particularly the Bay Area – Karakatsanis *insists* that the policies were never actually progressive, that it was instead the bureaucrats and the media (“controlled” by the usual leftist scapegoats) – those he deems the “punishment bureaucracy” and that the *actual* leftist policy had never been implemented.

Still, despite the rampant problems and extremist politics, there really is quite a bit here about understanding how police and media collude and conspire to hide essential information from the rest of us, so you really do need to read this book.

Ultimately, I think there is a point Karakatsanis tries to make but utterly fails to, in his attempt to appear authoritative here:

Question. Everything.

Including this book.

And I’ll go so far as to say even this very review.

Read the book yourself. Write your own review of it – cuss me up one wall and down the other if you think I deserve it, if you think Karakatsanis is perfectly correct in all things and should never possibly be even looked askance at, much less questioned. Or maybe you’ll agree with me to some extent or another. *My* entire point here is to get you to read the book yourself and make up your own mind about it. I guarantee you you’re going to learn *something* you didn’t previously know along the way.

Recommended.

This review of Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis was originally written on March 16, 2025.

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#BookReview: Starbound by Ed Regis

Solid Look At Complexities Both Scientific And Ethical Regarding Interstellar Travel. This is exactly what the title says – a solid look at pretty well all aspects of the complexities of interstellar travel from both scientific and ethical directions, with discussions of the sheer distances involved, the various proposed types of habitation possibilities, propulsion technology, and seemingly every other conceivable facet of the topic at hand.

At 300 ish pages with just 11% or so of that being bibliography, the actual discussion is somewhat brief while still being comprehensive. Technical enough in both science and philosophy to underscore the key issues, yet informal enough to be easily followed along with by most readers. Indeed, the only real problem I had with the text was that 11% bibliography – it needed to be 50% ish larger, from what I’ve seen across my several years of reviewing advance review copies of nonfiction books, as I’ve done here.

Overall truly a fascinating book and a great primer for anyone even remotely interested in the complexities of actually achieving interstellar travel.

Very much recommended.

This review of Starbound by Ed Regis was originally written on March 1, 2025.

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#BookReview: Grocery by Michael Ruhlman

Memoir That Happens To Contain History. This book is less a history of the grocery store and absolutely less about the even then-current (nearly a decade ago as I write this review) grocery store practices and more about this one particular food writer’s experience in… Cleveland, of all places, home of Michael Symon, MTV and WWE’s Mike ‘The Miz’ Mizannin, and apparently this Michael… and his love of grocery stores. In particular, a local brand that while has expanded to Chicago, apparently hasn’t spread too far outside of the general Ohio region. And I get it, grocery stores in America are *highly* regional. Outside of supermarket chains like Walmart, Target, and Costco, there are few if any national grocery store chains here in the US – and Ruhlman certainly doesn’t go into any of the few (such as Kroger) that exist, instead harping incessantly about the aforementioned supermarkets and their impact on the industry.

Read as more memoir and personal shopping/ cooking / eating philosophical text, this is a clear love story for the grocery store and the author’s dad, which is quite awesome – to use Mizannin’s word – to read. That aspect worked quite well, for what it was.

But the bibliography alone – a bare 11% of the text – shows just how little actual details of grocery store operations you’re going to get, and a very large chunk of what we do get comes from the author’s direct interviews with – and being taken to trade shows by – executives from the local grocery store chain that Ruhlman’s dad took him to all those years prior to the writing of this book. Which are insightful, so far as they go, but also pale in comparison to the more comprehensive look at the topic through multiple eyes that we see in say The Secret Life Of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr, which is absolutely recommended more than this particular text if you’re looking for a more comprehensive examination of the grocery store and its practices. It is this dearth of bibliography that is the reason for the star deduction here.

Still, organized as it is around the various sections of the grocery store, this book works well for what it actually is and how the author and editors chose to organize the information it does present, so I’m comfortable with the single star deduction overall.

Recommended.

This review of Grocery by Michael Ruhlman was originally written on March 1, 2025.