Tag: politics

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#BookReview: Broker Of Lies by Steven James

The True Successor To Vince Flynn. That’s basically what this entire review is going to boil down to – if you liked Vince Flynn (and particularly if you object to someone else using his name on their books after his death) and have been searching for an author who can tell that type of tale at least as good as Flynn ever did… welcome to Steven James and Broker of Lies. One huge difference here is that while Mitch Rapp almost tends into superhero/ super-soldier status, our heroes here are very skilled… yet also very flawed in their own ways. Ways that enemies can exploit, if they are known. Ways that enemies do exploit here, because our heroes are not as hidden as they would like to think they are. So yes, we get a lot of different (yet fairly plausible) tech – including some fairly scary, yet known for over a decade now, ways to exploit any body scan security -, several car chases, several fight scenes of various forms from extremely up close and personal to more building level, a lot of cat and mouse, and one heck of an explosive revelation at the end that pretty easily sets up at least one more book here. This isn’t a short book, clocking in at nearly 420 pages, but that last 20% or so in particular… you’re not going to want to put this book down through that stretch at minimum. Very much recommended.

This review of Broker Of Lies by Steven James was originally written on December 9, 2022.

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#BookReview: The View From Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior

Interesting Yet Oblivious To Own Criticisms. This is an interesting collection of essays written between 2012 and 2014, with an epilogue in 2017 after the election of Donald Trump to the White House. It presents a stark view of Middle America, but one that many, even on the coasts, will identify with. Kendzior even accurately identifies that the problems she notes had existed for quite some time and were proving little if any better after several years of “Hope and Change”… but then decries the efforts of Trump to even pay lip service (which is all he ever did) to these issues and people. Still, as a time capsule of what at least one writer was thinking of various developments of the era, this is an interesting book and a worthy read. But if you’re listening to the Audible, speed it up to around 1.5x to make it less of a lullaby. Recommended.

This review of The View From Flyover Country by Sarah Kendzior was originally written on December 6, 2022.

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#BookReview: Losing Our Elections by Jim Spurlino

Interesting Memoir From A First Time Candidate. This is a memoir from a long time business executive who decided to make his very first (and so far only, according to the text here) campaign for public office be to seek to replace outgoing Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner when Boehner announced his resignation in 2015. Spurlino speaks with candor about what was going on when he heard the announcement, what he was looking for in a candidate, and, when he didn’t see any of that… what influenced him to run in the first place. The rest of the book is largely a deep dive into what running for US Congress is really like, from an “everyman” (ish) perspective, and through this section Spurlino shows himself to be fairly well read and reasoned, as well as very approachable. The last section of the book is a bit of a lessons learned/ future proposals look, and through this section in particular Spurlino truly shines in speaking out against the more popular populist positions of the day, including expanding the Supreme Court (he says to expand Congress instead), eliminating the Electoral College (not going to happen), and general Congressional reforms. Overall a very easy to read and short-ish at under 300 pages real-world look into what really goes on in our Congressional electoral processes in the United States, and therefore very much recommended.

This review of Losing Our Elections by Jim Spurlino was originally written on October 18, 2022.

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Featured Release Of The Week: Divided We Fall by David French

In light of last week’s US Supreme Court rulings upholding the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and striking down Roe v Wade, and the fact that the middle of this book contains two prognostications for how the US could completely come unglued and each of those decisions last week plays into one of them, I’m doing something never before done in the history of this blog and bringing back a former Featured New Release and making it this week’s Featured Release post. Thus, this week we are again looking at Divided We Fall by David A French.

Looking through French’s tweets and writings on his site, it appears that there is much we will disagree over on many policy issues – I’m not exactly quiet about being an avowed Anarchist and 2nd Amendment Absolutist. (Pretty much an entire Bill of Rights Absolutist really, but there is at least some commonality with French on at least some of those points, apparently. :D)

But ultimately, I think we largely agree that the partisanship America is seeing right now is destroying it – and we seem to be edging ever closer to the moment of no return.

Indeed, with last week’s events in mind, they immediately triggered memories of the two most chilling and traumatizing chapters I’ve ever read in any book, anywhere. As it turns out, French actually posited in his “Calexit” chapter here – where he describes a fracture of the US from the left – that by a 6-3 SCOTUS decision, California would be transformed into a “shall issue” State for gun licenses. This has already happened, as California has already dropped its “good cause” requirement for obtaining a concealed carry license. He *also* pointed to Roe V Wade being overturned in his “Texit” chapter, where he describes a fracture of the US from the right.

I said two years ago when I first wrote my Goodreads review of this book that “Quite simply, I’ve yet to encounter a more important book for every American to read *immediately*, and *particularly* before you vote in the General Election this fall.” I thought then that this book should get quite a bit of attention, that it mattered and could help save this nation.

Given the events of the last week – not to mention the last 20 months or so since the publication of this book – I maintain this position with even more voracity. We’ve seen demonstrations all over the place. We continue to see both sides blatantly lie about the other side. We continue to see the hate and vitriol expanded on both sides to truly chilling degrees. If you care about saving this nation, if you care about preserving the American experiment even so much as another decade, you *need* to read this book and take its recommendations to heart.

And maybe, *maybe*, *together*, we can still save this land.

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#BookReview: Holding Together by John Shattuck, Sushma Raman, and Matthias Risse

Regurgitation Of Left-Of-Center Talking Points. I’ll sum this book up quickly: For any given problem it notes, it basically rehashes solidly leftist (though not extreme leftist) talking points before its policy recommendations come down to more National government spending and/ or action. Which perhaps is to be expected from a book dedicated to the memory of John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The problem is that it routinely ignores critical details – such as when it claims that recent election reforms in Georgia “left seven Counties with only a single polling place open on Election Day”. Georgia has 159 Counties, ranging in size from Clarke County (128K people) (home of the University of Georgia) at 121 sq miles to Ware County (36K people) (largely home of the Okefenokee Swamp) at 903 sq miles and ranging in population from Talaiferro County (population 1,558, area 195 sq miles) to Fulton County (the City of Atlanta, basically) (population 1.065 million, area 529 sq miles). In making a claim such as the one these authors made, population, County size, and where the population clusters are within the County relative to where the singular polling place is are all crucial factors – that the authors blatantly ignore and don’t even seem to account for at all in their analysis. Similar issues can be seen on every topic they discuss, from the need for Civics education (where they support the 1619 project despite its blatant racism) to the environment and gun control and every other issue covered here.

Now, I will admit that this text is fairly well documented at roughly 30% – but this just shows just how much cherrypicking of data and sources these authors did to be so well documented yet skip over so many critical facts.

Overall, this is one where if you agree with the leftist slant of the authors you’ll likely enjoy much of what you find here, and if you disagree with it, you won’t find as much here. Still, there are a few interesting points here and there, it is simply overall truly lacking in adding anything to the cultural conversations – which is sad, because based on its title and written description, it had much more promise than it ultimately contained. Not recommended.

This review of Holding Together by John Shattuck, Sushma Raman, and Matthias Risse was originally written on June 3, 2022.

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#TwelveDaysOfRomance #BlogTour: The Shoe Diaries by Darby Baham

For this entry in the Twelve Days Of Romance blog tour series, we’re looking at a tale that is, at its core, essentially a Black Sex And The City. For this blot tour, we’re looking at The Shoe Diaries by debut author Darby Baham.

Essentially A Black Sex And The City. This story is essentially Sex And The City, but replacing the mostly white cast with a mostly black one and replacing the “city” in question with DC. Same shoe fetish (though possibly amplified here?), used remarkably well as a plot device in this particular case. Same big oops moment with a former flame early on, only for the book to ultimately become a second chance romance later – with an interesting interlude in between. Minor discussions of the HBCU life and the central character wanting to be much more radical as a professional journalist than the “stodgy old white men” are allowing her to be, but at least here said “old white dudes” aren’t thinly veiled racist caricatures, as so many similar novels from less talented authors have done. (The desire to be more radical is more central than the HBCU mentions, to be clear.) Overall a strong tale that will clearly play well with a couple of demographics in particular, but may not be something that will play as well in a more general audience. Still, excellent book and very much recommended.

(Also, I should note that I’ve never watched a single full episode of anything in the Sex And The City franchise and only know the *general* plot from it being in the zeitgeist so much.)

After the jump, an excerpt followed by the “publisher details” – book description, author bio, and social media and buy links.
Continue reading “#TwelveDaysOfRomance #BlogTour: The Shoe Diaries by Darby Baham”

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#BookReview: Citizen Cash by Michael Stewart Foley

Detailed Examination Of Forgotten Elements Of A Legend. I grew up listening to Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and others of that generation via Country Gold Saturday Night on the radio in the late 80s and early 90s. My family would pile in the pickup truck, parents in the cab, myself and my two younger brothers in the back, and we would ride the backroads in the boonies of northwest Georgia between Atlanta and Chatanooga, listening to the radio and feeling the wind buffet our bodies. Honestly some of my most fond memories of the carefree era of my childhood, and Johnny Cash played a role there – a role he never knew about. And while I’ve known of him since then as a country music legend, I had never considered his politics or messages.

This book changes that.

This book, with its chapters focusing on specific elements of Cash’s political beliefs and how they developed, is less biography and more analysis of how the given message came to be espoused by this particular man and why. It shows that at his heart, Johnny Cash was a man who empathized with the low and down trodden. How his own childhood on a Depression era sharecropper farm came to shape much of how he saw the world, and how even his service in the US Air Force in Germany during the Korean War era would come to shape his views of the Vietnam War a decade later. The text does not shy away from Cash’s well known (and well documented) struggles with drugs and alcohol, even showing where Cash himself was hypocritical on the issues at times – ordering his wife never to touch alcohol, even in some letters where it is quite clear he himself is drunk while writing them. At the same time, it doesn’t spend much time on these particular facets or even his wives, the controversy surrounding how he eventually got together with June Carter, his various kids, or any other aspect an actual biography would. Instead, this text uses biography more as background and scaffolding to show how Cash came to the political positions he did and how he came to espouse them.

Truly an interesting take on a genuine legend, and very much recommended.

This review of Citizen Cash by Michael Stewart Foley was originally written on October 28, 2021.

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#BookReview: From Parchment To Dust by Louis Michael Seidman

Progressive/ Liberal Polemic That Moves The Conversation Yet Doesn’t Go Through To The Logical Conclusion. Lysander Spooner once said, during the early Reconstruction period, that “Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize” (Spooner; No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Appendix; 1870), and this is the same essential point that Seidman makes in proclaiming what he terms “Constitutional Skepticism”. Argued from a progressive/ leftist perspective of current American politics, Seidman’s text here uses at least one hyperbolic source (the oft-cited and yet demonstrably inaccurate and misleading GunViolenceArchive), stretches certain terms to implausible yet popular within his political allies lengths (claiming the events of Jan 6, 2020 in Washington DC to be an “insurrection”), and generally parrots progressive/ leftist talking points about at least two Supreme Court justices, the “problem of gun violence”, etc. All of this noted, within this particular sphere, Seidman actually makes his case reasonably well that the Constitution of the United States of America is, as Spooner proclaims, “of no authority”. And *to that point* and from the given perspective, Siedman is truly solid. Where he needs to expand his thinking a bit further is that he ultimately concludes that a more current Constitution, written by and binding on the “current generation” (which he fails to define, and fails to acknowledge that in any average human’s lifetime are three separate generations alive at any one time nor determine which of those generations should be allowed to bind the others according to his thinking) would be actually better than the one written so long ago and claiming to be binding forevermore. No, this is where he would actually do well to examine the writings of Spooner and other *anarchic* Constitutional Skeptics of American history and discuss his thoughts on their ideas as well. For, as Spooner then concluded his discussion quoted above, “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or bas been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist” – taking his own Constitutional Skepticism to its actual logical conclusion, which Seidman refuses to do. Still, this is very much a book that could actually help the overall political discussion both in the US and elsewhere, and it is one that many indeed need to read. Very much recommended.

This review of From Parchment To Dust by Louis Michael Seidman was originally written on October 1, 2021.

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#BookReview: Tech Panic by Robby Soave

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

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

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

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#BookReview: The Generation Myth by Bobby Duffy

Interesting And Well Documented Read. In this book, Duffy shows that what the media so often (and so lazily) proclaims to be “generational” divides… usually aren’t really. Yes, there is a generational component to at least some things, but time period (specifically for that “coming of age” period but also more generally throughout the individual’s life) and life progression play equally critical roles, and in many cases *more* critical roles, in showing how a particular group of people generally feel about a given issue. One of the things that makes the book a bit interesting is that even while presenting this much more balanced view of this particular field, Duffy exposes himself as a “climate” alarmist/ extremist, either not knowing about or outright denying similar work to his own in that particular field. (Ie, work showing that even though media lazily points to one thing, there are actually several different things at play and in some cases far more critical to the issue at hand. One work here on that topic similar to Duffy’s on this one is Unsettled by Stephen Koonin, released just 6 months or so prior to this book’s publication).

Still, this book is truly a remarkable work in its field (at least to someone who is *not* a fellow academic or in that field at all) and seems to be fairly comprehensive in its focus, even as its primary and secondary national emphases are the UK and the US, respectively. It looks at many, many issues from the social to the political and even to the personal, from housing to gender identity and sexual activity to political leanings and many, many more. This is also a fairly well documented text, with its bibliography clocking in at about 32% of the overall text – while not the *highest* I’ve noted in my work with advanced review copies, easily among the higher echelons there. Very much recommended.

This review of The Generation Myth by Bobby Duffy was originally written on September 14, 2021.