Tag: nonfiction
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The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer
This was, as advertised, the fastest 1,000 pages I’ve ever read. It was a lot more than that too. I didn’t know anything about this story going in. I didn’t even seek this out. I was browsing a bookstore and it was thick, I knew Mailer’s name (and had read nothing by him), and it…
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Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
The grimmest travelogue I have ever read. This blew me away. The author’s style is blunt, clear and succinct, which makes this very readable and fast. The subject matter is another story though. Kara structures his book carefully, taking the reader on a trip from Kinshasa to the deepest parts of the Congo, to site…
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Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen
I put this on my library hold list because of the rave reviews at Book Marks. Even still, after I picked it up I was reluctant to start reading it. I didn’t expect it to hit home like it did. I watched television the way I read books: studying, memorizing, looking for clues. As if every…
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These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
I read a lot of ‘capitalists behaving badly’ books, and this was stunning even by those standards. It’s an interesting companion to The Big Myth in that it details exactly how wealthy private equity convinces governments and regulators that it’s a force for good in the world, while that’s only true for the bank balances of…
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Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon by William D. Cohan
The most readable corporate profile I have read in years, maybe ever, but Cohan has really written detailed biographies of Jack Welch and Jeff Immelt. It succeeds at that level. Cohan sums up the first eight decades of GE’s existence in about 150 pages, which felt way too rushed. But when Welch shows up, Cohan’s…
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The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
This is brutal and upsetting, and at times I wondered if I could continue reading. But it’s not war porn by any means — Chang wanted to both educate and understand with this book. So she spends a lot of time pursuing the (predictably elusive) why of the event. It’s similar in some aspects to Shake Hands with…
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In a Flight of Starlings by Giorgio Parisi
This was not what I expected — heavy on the math and memoir, light on philosophy or life insight or metaphor or whatever I thought I was getting. I was hoping for something more in the vein of Rovelli’s There are Places in the World Where Rules are Less Important than Kindness, but this was…
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Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman
I had an hour to kill at the library, figured I would burn the time by skimming this book until I got bored – a middling actor’s adventures in crypto didn’t sound like compelling reading. Boy was I wrong. This is quite good, and will surely ride you over until the Michael Lewis/SBF book comes…
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G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverley Gage
I took my time with this — it’s 730+ pages of dense, small type, narrow margins. It’s a beast. It cost $60 Canadian (at Ben McNally books – one of my absolute faves). But it was worth it. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, and it’s only been the last decade or so…
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Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work by Mark Ellison
There are some great anecdotes in here and some interesting ideas, but it’s fucking insufferable: Math is a tool well suited to every manner of ends. When I encounter someone who doesn’t know its uses, even at the relatively simple level our work requires, my heart sinks. Everyone’s math should be at least good enough…