Angela Ambroz

Really sweet, rambling slice of life graphic novel about a 30something Spanish(-Italian?) comix artist living in Berlin, struggling with writer's block, and becoming a father. This comix SPOKE TO ME, MAN, as it intersected so many of my interests: living the expat life in Berlin, the exhaustion and exhiliration of new parenthood, the heart-drama of making art (how will you find the time???? the inspiration?????).

I do wonder if people who are not freshly-made parents, who care a lot about their artistic output, and are Euro, will react to this book? But for me - the scenes where he worries about his Sunday mornings doodling at the cafe, and then brings his 1-year-old boy there and they read in glorious, companionable silence together at the cafe, and then the son gets all silly and runs around shrieking, and the father feels immense love for him - well, I got choked up.

Oh man. This kinda hit all my buttons. I am a YUUUGEE fan of several things:
- Incan civilization
- Especially Incan weaving and textile geniusness
- Especially quipu, aka a possibly completely independently-developed and interesting form of writing, I AM DYING OF EXCITEMENT HERE PEOPLE
- Especially people figuring things out, related to the above

So this is about 2 twin kids - a boy and a girl - accompanying their “scientist” parents (anthropologists? I dunno) to Peru, where they're working with a local professor on deciphering some quipu, I guess. (It's actually unclear what the parents are working on. Textile geniusness, of some kind.)

The kids grab some like super ancient and probably not to be taken out of the controlled-atmosphere museum piece of textile, and decide to go on a bit of an Indiana Jones-esque adventure throughout the Peruvian highlands. They come upon a very Indiana Jones “lost city” indeed (this was less amusing to me, since we were edging close to those old school portrayals of South American “lost civilizations”). I - AN ADULT - learned about an entirely new animal to me, the guanaco (a llama relative).

Anyway. This was maybe the most light touch of my Math For Kids reading crusade; it's mostly about patterns. I do love it. I LOVED it. I might buy this one. Now if only they made something mathy and anthropologistical and light-touch about my beloved Renaissance Italy... sigh, one can only dream...

A lively, provocative university lecture on international migration - freedom of movement/labor - told in comic book form.

So Bryan Caplan is an economist at George Mason, which already got my hackles up: I worried about the libertarian, faux-apoliticism of (white guy...) economists wrapping up their traditionalist arguments in contrarian, faux-objective speculation. I was surprised, then, that Caplan makes a forceful argument - using the empirical research of Michael Clemens and Lant Pritchett (two economists I LOVE) - that borders are bullshit.

He then spends the rest of the book dismantling, one by one, each counter-argument - from the more reasonable (low-skill workers overwhelming social safety nets) to the more xenophobic (but my culture!!!?!!!). He THEN proposes - bless his technocratic heart - some policy solutions to address each of the potential downfalls.

So I went into this as a politically progressive economist-by-training/technocrat-by-heart who has never spent more than a few minutes thinking about immigration. Now that Trump won again - and largely on an anti-immigration platform - and the AfD is similarly making gains in Germany via anti-immigration platforms - I decided to learn a bit more. And I'm so glad I did! I went into this relatively immigration-cautious, not even immigration-curious, and I came out of this saying... borders are bullshit!!! And a relatively modern invention, part of the nationalism wave of the 19th century, but not even really enforced until WW1 and WW2! And they are 100% suppressing global economic output and human welfare!! The Michael Clemens paper! But even beyond the economists cited in this book - the Mariel boatlift paper!!! Which I know for its methodology (shift-share instrumental variables, aka Bartik instruments), but never really absorbed the content that - oh, another paper showing BIG GAINS for immigration!

I was also provoked - specifically, apart from changing my mind on immigration, I also argued with Caplan in my head a lot re: his policy proposals to assuage anti-immigrant/xenophobic fears: e.g. make immigrants pay higher taxes and literally hand that money to low-skill native workers. EVEN if that was logistically possible (and I doubt it would be? like, “Here's your check from Mr. Immigrant, Mr. Trump Voter! See how nice he is!?”), I'm 100% not convinced that this would assuage the political pressures on using immigrants as scapegoats for general economic anxiety.

Anyway. Ha-Joon Chang (another economist I am loving at the moment) had a great “thing” in 23 Things about how borders are just wage protectionism and I was like, gasp.

A disturbing and distressing examination of the currently-happening Uyghur genocide, and how it's accelerated by modern surveillance state technologies to create “smart” labor/reeducation camps.

Just like the Nazis leveraged early 20th century industrialization to organize the Holocaust, so China is leveraging computer vision, smartphones, and machine learning to organize its own destruction of the Uyghur, Kazakh, and other ethnic minorities along its borders. A short book, but an informative and scary one! Darren Byler situates this genocide in the overall history of genocides and state surveillance; this book made me want to restart James Scott's Seeing Like a State - since this book, and this genocide, is very much the eventual, worst extension of what Scott described: the creation of last names, street names, and order so that the state may “see”.

Meh. Pretty unsatisfying. A brief novel about a young, brilliant Pakistani dude who lives the high life in NYC, falls in love with an Ophelia-type waif, and generally meditates on social mobility. Then 9/11 happens, and he is radicalized. Well, mildly. He grows a beard and feels strong feelings. Is that a spoiler? I mean, I don't think so.

I was medium into this while reading it, even though I found (a) the people didn't talk like real people, and (b) Pakistan/South Asia was exoticized in a way that made me feel pandered to. On (a), everyone felt - well - like a person in a novel? Like, I found Changez's unreliable narration tediously self-aware, I found his Princeton friends likewise dull, and I found the romance with Erica, She of the Sad, veeeery... pretentious? performative? boring?

On (b), I found the portrayal of Pakistan likewise exoticizing in a way I didn't like. I dunno. Like, dude, don't explain jalebis to me. And kurtas. Hamid assumes his audience knows zero about Pakistan, except for random bigoted caricatures, I guess? Which, maybe, hey, fair. But I know a bit more than zero, not even much more (lekin mujhe Hindi/Urdu aati hai! well, sorta), and I found it both pedantic and pandering. Like the way panhandlers in Zanzibar shout “HAKUNA MATATA!” in your face cuz of the damn Lion King. I mean, again, fair, that's probably what most American tourists know. But still, oof.

Sweet, slice of life about a big family (7 kids) in the middle of Maryland. Fictional Maryland, maybe? Told from the perspective of the oldest daughter. Mostly about how she wants her own room, and wants to make art. The mom is a coder?! The dad is a stay at home novelist. Tbh I was kinda charmed by the whole thing.

A slim, charming book of random photographs of random people knitting (mostly socks and scarves, it seems?).

PROs:
- We need more books like this: illuminating and celebrating the quotidian crafts! Knitting is amazing! I want to learn more about its anthropology. SOMEONE TELL ME ABOUT DIFFERENT KNITTING THINGS. I have a brain that is yearning to learn. But, ALAS, knitting knowledge seems to be locked in the craft itself: in words like “Fair Isle” and “Selbu” etc. And yes, it is true that, in practicing it, you do feel connected to these mysterious ancestors and their folkways. But srs, Ravelry.com cannot be the only way I learn about the world of knitting!
- The photos are, indeed, really interesting and charming. They leave you wanting more!

CONs:
- The index, as has been mentioned in other reviews, is not terribly helpful, and so you're presented with, essentially, a semi-random collection of photos that have no context or explanation. You can GUESS that, okay, this looks like a daguerreotype and so I guess it's the 1800s. But that's it and that's a shame. More information is DESPERATELY needed, and better placement of that info.
- I had assumed that the “century” being referred to would be the 20th century, but it's actually more like 1850-1950. Which made me, again, WANT MORE - i.e. I would love to see modern knitting! I am often the only knitter in a sea of smartphone-absorbed people on public transport or in waiting rooms. But I would love to catch glimpses of more present-day knitters! Wherever they may be! Even just sweet pics from, e.g. stitch n bitch/knitting meetups.
- Similarly, the book leaned very heavy on Anglo contexts: whenever you could see the hands well, it looked like people were knitting English style. I would have loved to see more diversity in the knitters (and, to this book's credit, there IS quite a bit of diversity), and maybe even some organization into chapters: English style, continental style, modern techniques, etc.

So it's a sweet book, it's heart is in the right place, but it also made me think that the author (and collector of photos), Levine, is not, indeed, a passionate practitioner herself - and so a LOT is missing. Still, I will kinda take what I can get in this regard!

Mmmmeeh. I was super excited to read this, but it ended up just being OK. It's an enamored, almost sycophantic look at the good ol' boys club that is the long line of White House Chiefs of Staff. Beginning with Nixon, it runs through each presidency until Obama's 2nd term and the election of Trump. We meet a lot of Chiefs of Staff. Some are good. Some are bad. One guy seemed terrible. One guy - Reagan's first COS - was a star.

Honestly, this sells itself as a broad, engrossing look at the last 40 years of American politics. And, yeah, it does have some fun, soapy details, like how Nancy Reagan consulted astrologers, and that one Chief of Staff who was a drunken lecher and poured some booze down some lady's dress, and Rahm Emanuel says a lot of swear words. But, like, I don't really care about that stuff that much? I certainly don't worship at the altar of that stuff. It also felt like Whipple (the author) was enlarging the Chief of Staff's role to the point that huge political events - Watergate, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, even Obama's decision not to bomb Syria - were centrally influenced by the COS at the time. I was like - maybe?! But maybe they were also influenced by all the other frickin' stuff going on?!

Throughout the whole read, I couldn't help but be reminded of The Brothers (about the Dulles bros), which WAS a vast and engrossing look at 20th century American politics. The George W. Bush section also made me remember a (better) book: Jean Edward Smith's magisterial biography of him. Even Ezekiel Emanuel's super bleh memoir about him and his brothers, Rahm and Ari, was often more captivating. (And that book was, for the most part, not really captivating.)

So... yeah. A disappointment. Don't judge me, but I felt like I got a better handle of how the West Wing - or, let's say, how a Platonic ideal of a West Wing - works via The West Wing. Specifically, the phenomenal season 1 finale - MAMMA MIA, WHAT TELEVISION.

I was surprised by the writing in this - where was the editor? Starting and ending a paragraph by saying that a relationship “was symbiotic”. Yeah, I got it the first time. This happened a couple more times and - given that I read Brad Stone's The Everything Store - I decided to DNF.

A sweet, evocative slice of imaginative life. Iris the protagonist is a big sister. Ugh, lame. She enjoys pushing elevator buttons. But sometimes her parents let her little baby brother push them as well. As the book gently says: “BETRAYAL!” Iris finds an elevator button in the maintenance man's bucket o' stuff, tapes it to her wall, and uses it to go to space.

This is a sweet, funny, and beautiful portrayal of kidhood, siblinghood, BETRAYAL, and space. I think it would be quite good for a preschooler, especially one with an annoying baby harshing her mellow. Or, you know, just tryna get by as well! (Babyhood is hard!)

Beautiful drawings. That one mom looks like a cool lady. And that very very sad story about childhood: your best friend moving “away”. To where are they moving!?! sob sob sob emoji.

Really fascinating, especially if you're a fan of recent Indian history. I didn't realize the famous picture of the Mountbattens with Nehru laughing between them (the cover of this wonderful book) was by Cartier-Besson. Lots of other famous pics of Gandhi, as well.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the book's presentation of these photographs - they jump around across time (photos of fleeing refugees during Partition in 1948, then suddenly Keralan dancers in 1960s, etc) and across space (Rajasthan on one page, Orissa on the next). If someone doesn't know India very well, or even just doesn't read the captions, they may not realize that they're seeing such very different contexts.

Also, funnily, given the intro by Satyajit Ray, I did feel a deep familiarity with these black and white portrayals of rural poverty thanks to old Indian cinema - specifically, it reminded me of some old Hindi films like Awaara or Chori Chori (incidentally, I read somewhere that Nehru adored this song - boy, do I agree). Ray's Pather Panchali, as well.

I do wonder how someone who's totally unfamiliar with Indian history, regions, etc, would interpret all these pics. The book mentioned that Cartier-Bresson (who I know zero about) made a similar book about Mexico (that I know almost zero about), so maybe I'll check that out next.

Bad news, kid: cats die. Yes, our cat will die too. Then you get a new cat. Everyone feels pretty sad though. New cat has a lot to live up to. The end.

Obviously, its heart is in the right place. But my audience did not care to be lectured to about what they can or cannot do with our fluffy companions. I might try this again in a few months...

A small, dense, elegant book about physics. It was oddly moving in the end; Rovelli does a great job capturing the wonder and near-spiritual glory of reality, as understood by science. I listened to this in Italian, and I wonder how it translates: every time I read translated Italian, it sounds soooo purple - embarrassingly so.

So I worry about gushing too much, but, okay, I'll be honest, I had tiny nano sparkle-tears in my eyes by the end, when Rovelli reassures us, grandfatherly, that the capital weirdness of quantum mechanics and general relativity is as natural and normal as the rest of “our home” (this reality). He notes that we're just curious apes, from a large family of curious apes - but all our cousins are extinct (e.g. Neanderthals). I found that strangely touching as well, and a fresh way to think about things.

I also found Rovelli's quantum-sized packets of physics lessons refreshingly different. I've been a fan of quantum mechanics and general relativity and the whole Einstein/Bohr/Planck/early 20th century physics gang for a long time, so I felt like I may have heard these same lessons many times: from Michio Kaku, from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, from good science fiction. But Rovelli's description of the bending of space around large objects (space == gravitational force), of the curiosity that is the illusion of forward-moving time, of probabilistic thermodynamics (it's not deterministic!?!), and all that: I found my mind pleasantly bent. I also appreciated his ultimate (super Buddhist!) conclusion that reality isn't a bunch of stuff, it's a bunch of events - a bunch of interactions.

Oh YES, and I ALSO appreciated his low-key Italian pride: he specifically notes the contributions of many modern Italian scientists (and also specifically notes how none of them work at Italian universities; get it together, Italy, come on), especially in particle physics, and this, too, filled me with gentle Italian pride and Italian fondness. I've been generally despairing at the scarcity of Italian books, especially non-fiction, and how that keeps certain great Italian thought locked away from me (e.g. I just discovered Margherita Hack a couple years ago - I want to read her books!!! where are they!!?). So this was also a nice, in that regard. Yeah, I think I just said “Italian” 8 times in this paragraph. Ooooh, vaaaa pensieeerooooo sull'aaaaaaaliiiii doraaaaateeeeee... sparkly tears of national pride and cosmic wonder

Warm, funny, humane, and now I feel like I'm basically a licensed psychotherapist myself. I loved this. We follow an LA therapist and a handful of her patients through their therapy sessions/journey and just, like, LIFE, man. I cried, I laughed, I also laugh-cried with vicarious joy. Really glorious. This opened my heart and my mind in the same way Kristen Neff's Self-Compassion showed me that there are ways to human better.

A fun, lively bio of Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos. It kind of styles itself an exposé, but there isn't much to expose: Bezos just seems like a super-driven, super-smart, super-productive dude who's sometimes a screamer and a giant TNG fan (word). This doesn't necessarily make me dislike him (though I prefer non-screaming bosses, of course). In fact, I went into this book feeling all champagne socialist about it - woe the Amazon warehouse workers, woe the independent bookstore, a pox on DRM, etc etc - and the author certainly includes warts and all. But I ended up - gosh - kinda excited about my Kindle again (cuz it is basically my intellectual lifeline when I am in Far Off Lands, and its design - oh, so silky smooth!). Like, as a physical manifestation of TNG-ish futurism. Tech optimism! Nice feelings. Seriously, I could marry my Kindle.

Somebody smartly remarked that the Fear of Bezos derives less from his current activities, than from Amazon positioning itself as a potential monopoly (they basically operate on near-zero profits at the moment). Fair. But I guess he's just hauling us all into the post-dead-tree book world (seriously, people, stop fetishizing the “smell of books” and blah blah), and creating the stage for a Bezos 2.0. Which means structural change (structural unemployment!), which means pain in the short run. But cars and jet planes in the long run!

What else, what else. Oh yeah - the author does a SUPERB job of enriching sometimes dry business case study-feeling moments with fun, human details. Great journalism.

Definite recc.

Wow. This blew me away. This is a novel set in 1930s Berlin, following a large German Jewish family in their daily lives. Given the rise of anti-democratic forces in the US and many other countries (including Germany's AfD) now, in the 2020s, it felt apropos.

I was worried that the 90-year-old writing would feel alienating and stilted. Also, a translation! Double trouble. But - amazingly (and I credit the 2022 English translation) - it was, instead, relatable and absorbing. I read the last third in a daily-responsibility-ignoring tear during a weekday morning. It was SO GOOD.

Briefly: We follow the 5 middle-aged Oppermann siblings - but especially the intellectual Gustav, the businessman Martin, their brother-in-law Jaques Lavendel (be still, my heart, Jaques Lavendel!!!), and Martin's son, Berthold, as well as Jaques's son, Heinrich. The scenes of Gustav and Martin's everyday lives prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor - their expectations about their world, politics, etc - well, it was VERY relatable. Gustav, in particular, is a dreamy intellectual who dismisses barbaric politics because, well, SURELY no one takes these thugs seriously?

This novel is also remarkable as a historical artifact. As I was reading, I started wondering, “oh, I wonder what will happen to these characters”. Then I realized... this was written in 1933. So, before the Holocaust. The author, Lion Feuchtwanger, didn't actually know what would happen - though he did understand what was happening in that year (which many many people did not, or at least underestimated). This meta-awareness informed a lot of my reading: here was a clairvoyant voice speaking brave, absolute truth - across time and space. Remarkable!! This book, indeed, was burned by the Nazis - Feuchtwanger was stripped of his citizenship, property, and career: wiki. He eventually emigrated to the US.

Really incredible.

Neargh. I couldn't wait for this to end.

I discovered Connie Willis long ago, via her Hugo/Nebula winner, Doomsday Book, which is a great read. It's rich in detail, with a good balance of humor and pathos, and a tantalizing glimpse both into the deep past (14th century, Black Plague-ravaged Oxford) and into the near future (21st century, slightly high-tech Oxford). Unfortunately, Willis did have a tendency towards flat characterizations and one-note plotting - something which you don't really notice in Doomsday, since the parallel of plague-ridden Oxfords was compelling enough. But you really, really notice it in this. (And it makes me worried about All Clear, despite the Hugo/Nebula wins, since I've seen these same criticisms leveled at her before.)

From the same Oxfordiverse, here we follow a different batch of time-traveling historians, this time a group scrambling to reconstruct the WW2-destroyed Coventry Cathedral. The protagonist, Ned Henry, gets sent to Victorian era Oxford to (1) recover from his pretty severe case of time-lag (kind of like existential jet lag), and (2) do the usual Time Travel Plot Device - that is, address an “incongruity” in the fabric of time-space before the entire universe collapses or multiple timelines develop and the Nazis end up winning.

The book is an examination of that darling of 1990s pop science: chaos theory. Cue Dr. Malcolm. It's also a bit about historiography, and free will vs. Fate. And that's all fine and well and interesting. But Willis, unfortunately, ruins everyyyything by turning it into a madcap, Victorian farce that is, oh my Lord, not funny at all. Ever. I can get what she's going for: that old fashioned comedy of manners stuff where doors open and close a lot, there are lots of missed calls and close calls, and everything could probably be resolved if just one character explained The Problem to everyone in about ten minutes. That stuff can sometimes be funny, if the dialogue's good enough - though it does try my patience even then.

But in this book! Oh dear. Every character is a flat caricature who engages in broad comedy, mostly relating to either One Principal Behavior (e.g. American is bossy, loud, and American! Oxford don is eccentric and spouts Latin!) or a semi-offensive “funny” accent (e.g. “Yes, sorr!” the Irish maid says). The same gags are endlessly repeated (e.g. Ned is oh, so tired - but - ho ho! - his sleep is interrupted again; or, Cyril the Dog is anthropomorphized and funny!). And - worst of all - I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE CATHEDRAL. OR THE BIRD STUMP. OR WHO MARRIES WHO. I also don't care for the uber-twee Anglogasm setting, full of dreadfully English things and words and people. Or the weird sexism, where the female characters are divided between (1) objectified, or (2) completely ridiculous (giggly, or shrewish, or just stupid).

You let me down, S.F. Masterworks series!

DNF @ 27%.

Not gonna bother rating it, but I DNFed it very intentionally and with great gusto - I BANISHED it. Here's why:
- This was published in 2010. Fourteen years later, it felt VERY dated.
- The science felt dated. For example, the author talks about how completely implausible it is that we'll EVER get off coal and this 2022 video by Kurzgesagt discusses just that.
- The examples of EVERYTHING felt cherry-picked. The scientists he spoke with, the historical figures he chose to centralize (rainmakers and Edward Teller).
- The anti-geoengineering arguments felt overstated and strawmanly. Like, I AM very curious about the political economy of geoengineering. But it was hard to wade through all the broey journalist “aaaaaah” noise to find the kernels of ACTUAL argument.
- DID I MENTION HOW BROEY THIS WAS? The straw(s) that broke the proverbial feminist camel's back were a few: (1) first, who he chose to emphasize and centralize the voices of - it just felt so incredibly limited and boring. Like, I just learned that the inventor of the solar desalination still was Maria Telkes - DOUBLE X CHROMOSOME COMIN AT YA. But, here, no. It's just a history of great men. (2) Next, he makes several off-hand broey jokes like, “Mother Nature was showing some serious leg” (to signify that it was a beautiful day) and how Great Man Scientist X spent his youth “shagging nurses” and was “refreshingly candid about sex” and I was just like, ya know... this is obnoxious. And finally, (3) I kinda already stated this, but I feel like this interaction between presenting geoengineering as another example of Great Men of History guiding history was just so boring and reductive and not actually informative.

Soooo. Yeah. If anyone knows any more recent books, with updated climate science and with a less simplified and more political economy-minded portrayal of the pros and cons, HIT ME UP.

Incredibly remarkable memoir of Representative Jamie Raskin, as he reflects on the period of December 2020 to now (December 2021, basically) - from when his son, Tommy, died by suicide, to the week after, when the January 6 insurrection of the US Capitol occurred.

The first half of the book is a gut-wrenching and heartbreaking reflection on Tommy's final days, as well as Tommy growing up. Raskin adored and adores his son, who he beautifully calls a “radical visitor from a progressive far future” (I paraphrase, but the idea struck me). Hearing about this kind, intelligent boy being consumed by depression and OCD was just so incredibly sad.

Raskin then vividly describes - with a novelist's eye for human details - the alienating and terrifying attack on the Capitol. He jokes at one point about all the middle-aged congressmen running for their lives through various underground hallways; “I didn't think we had it in us.”

The second half of the book describes - also in great, quotidian detail - the second impeachment trial of Trump for inciting a riot. Raskin was asked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be the lead impeachment manager, something which fit him perfectly, as a former professor of constitutional law and, in general, giant democracy nerd.

So this book was a tearjerker, a chilling warning of fascism/authoritarianism in America, and an inspiration. Raskin is really amazing. He writes with enormous enthusiasm, lyrical and intelligent and emotional. He made the day-to-day reality of being in Congress fascinating and involving and exciting - like “The West Wing”! He made me want to watch CSPAN, for the love of God, haha. We're really lucky to have him in Congress.

Super good. A smart, sensitive portrayal of a 1980s immigrant nerd, Oscar, with amazingly depthful portrayals of the 1980s, immigrant communities, and nerdery.

I read this book after hearing that it was a smart look at being a POC nerd and how hard/alienating that can be. I don't pretend to know, though I have sometimes felt alienated for being a female nerd - so I can imagine. The protagonist, Oscar, is your very standard nerdy dude: imagine him in a fedora and neckbeard, hopelessly and passionately romantic, a very “Nice Guy” in the not so great meaning of the phrase. What I was surprised by was the sparkling originality of how Junot Diaz weaves together 20th century Dominican history, multi-generational dramas, and nerdery. When he refers to Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo, as manipulating the Dominican Republic like his “own personal Mordor” - when one of his goons is described as scarier than the “Witch King of Angmar” - I was like, WAHT. It was double-take-inducing, dizzying. It was FUN. It was also, as fiction is wont to be, such an empathy-building machine.

This book sort of reminded me of Zadie Smith's White Teeth, and Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi's Americanah - post-colonial, a smart portrayal of both the US/UK and the home country, many generations, bittersweetness. I couldn't really buy the grand finale of this, but it was a 5-star experience anyway. Oh yes, and narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda - who better to capture earnest geekery and Latino pride?! V v good.

One of the big, scary themes of this book is about the shortness of our memories, the narrowness of our perspectives. It's really kind of awful. This book was published in 1970, and Studs Terkel - American genius if there ever was one! - interviews two generations: older people who lived through the Great Depression in the 30s, and some of the Baby Boom 1968ers, who are, in 1970, in their prime, after all. Also, in classic Studs-style, he interviews a huge diversity of people: from the wealthy to the poor, from right-wing nuts to actual card-carrying Communists (they exist(ed)!), from mobsters to religious people to Cesar Chavez (!) and Dorothy Day (!). It's gigantic, mesmerizing. BIG INSPIRATION.

And, again and again, Studs stresses the ways that this diversity equals a huge variance in what people think happened during the Great Depression. You read 100 pages of people starving - STARVING. LET ME EMPHASIZE THAT. I CANNOT EVEN FATHOM. 1930s America = developing country?! - anyway, 100 pages of people starving and scrounging and struggling in the South, in the Midwest and in California, and then you read a couple interviews with some real zingers who “never saw a bread line” and didn't think the Depression was that bad. Amazing. In terms of these people who live with dog-cones on their heads, my favorite might be the “PMA” (positive mental attitude) Big Business guy towards the end of the book. To quote him, “Rrrrrright!”

Then there's the big generational shift, the Great Forgetting. Many of the younger interviewees don't know much about the Depression. It's really jarring: especially after you read about some insane occurrence that must surely be remembered FOREVER, at least in the place it happened, because it's just so insane (I'm thinking of the near-lynching of a judge issuing foreclosures in Le Mars, Iowa, or the struggles for labor rights in Michigan or even just the existence of Alf Landon (the fate of Mitt Romney?)). You read about these amazing events or people and then Studs will have an interview with a 30-year-old taxi driver who's never even HEARD of any of this stuff, and knows “Teddy” but not “Franklin” Roosevelt. My God! Think of everything we're forgetting?!

(That said, hearing from the informed young college people (he finds some SDS types, including one guy who ended up joining the Weathermen!) is just as interesting, and jarring.)

There are so many amazing stories in here; it's the human zoo, the most interesting spectacle of all. Highly recommended, especially if you're into US history or oral histories in general.

Wow, what in the heck is going on in South Korea!!

This ties together a bunch of different news tidbits I had been seeing over the last few years. The pinching emoji drama (I remember thinking, “people are upset about THAT?! what in the world”). The cratering birth rate and the suggested “birth strike”. The high-pressure corporate work culture.

This book tied it together and educated me a LOT about the recent wave of feminism that took over South Korea in the last 5-7 years (from 2015 to 2022ish), and the attendant reactionary “men's rights”/MAGA-esque response of the last couple years. Much of the book is really depressing, angering, and inspiring. Aka, classic feminist lit, lolsob. I was very very upset by a lot of what I read - the ubiquitous spycams, wtfff - but I was also kinda amazed by some of the feminist pushback - the birth strike being the big one, but also the amazingly interesting “single women communes” that cultivate an alternative to traditional families in otherwise-alienating urban circumstances. Really amazing stuff.

Ha, I kinda agree with the 1-star reviews... AND the 5-star reviews.

This is a self-indulgent Doctorow romp that I kept telling myself I'd DNF and ended up... finishing it, lol. It's kinda utopian/dystopian: this is the world a specific set of progressive, Democratic Socialists of America would want. It's not a bad world. But it did strain credulity (e.g. the protagonist's housemates praising the ability to move into his affordable home and pay low rent... and then a few months later, happily and readily agreeing to tear that house down and find a new place to live). The “Magas” were all basically caricatures - your worst white male tribalist nightmare.

I'm deep in Learning from the Germans now (which is great btw) and (1) it has made me appreciate that those people-caricatures DO actually exist as living, breathing Nazis/Lost Cause Confederates, but (2) the Hannah Arendtian “banality of evil” masses, the “thoughtlessly” evil, bystander effect people, aka the vast majority of us!, are, well, the VAST majority. That second category simply does not exist in this book - everyone is VERY driven by ideals. And, yeah, the groups are all compelling and I kept wanting to read about them - Brooks (the hero) and his fun world music-listening hacker DSA friends; the Magas; the (VERY DISAPPOINTINGLY BELIEVABLE) Libertarian plutocrat-wannabes on their anarcho-capitalist “Flotilla” of yachts.

Hmm. I guess Cory shines when he, indeed, writes about ideals - the clash of them (this), the passionate having of them (any of his other books lol), the internal struggle of them vs. pragmatism (Attack Surface). So his world makes sense when we're in the head of the idealist, looking out at all those bystander sheeple and trying to shepherd them to the glory land. But when the ENTIRE WORLD is made up of ONLY righteous idealists - for good causes or “Lost”/evil causes - then it starts to feel unreal.

Oh yeah, and is Cory gunning for a cooking show/podcast? He clearly loves to write about food. (Another reason I kept reading, lol! The loving portrayals of hedonistic gourmandy delight!)