Joe C

Fantastic book, highly recommend! More than most histories, this book is explicit about its historiographical lens. Dunbar-Ortiz forces readers to see US history from the perspective of those whose expulsion, destruction, and assimilation was the goal of the American settler colonial project from the beginning. Although roughly chronologically ordered, the primary organization of the narrative is thematic, allowing Dunbar-Ortiz to weave the present into her recounting of the past. For that reason, I especially recommend the book for those who have a relatively strong background in US history. Profitable for all readers, however. You'll leave the book (I hope) convinced of the moral necessity of land restoration and the recognition of indigenous sovereignty.

Did not read in translation (I just couldn't find the original Spanish version here).

As a work of popular social science, the book is decent. As a call to arms for parents and all of us to preserve the existence of a play-based childhood and adolescence with limited influence from phones and social media, the book is excellent.

Compelling story and writing, so long as I read it as its own thing - I hated Miller's interpretation of Patroclus. I enjoyed it significantly more than Circe.

I accidentally read this book. I pulled it off the shelf with zero context (and thankfully the standard academic library cover instead of the campy cover it apparently should have had) and read the first page. That first page still didn't help me know what the book was about exactly, but I loved it and wanted to read the rest.

After reading it, it's still a difficult book to categorize. It's perhaps best described as a travel memoir of a writer and fan of the Book of Mormon, trying to understand what it is to write a sacred text. As a practicing (but often skeptical) Latter-day Saint/Mormon, it was fascinating to see the Book of Mormon from an outside perspective. So rarely does anyone outside the faith tradition take the book seriously that it's easy to think the only ways to engage the book are as orthodox believer or incredulous critic. Steinberg is neither.

Often laugh-out-loud funny, especially in the first chapters, I enjoyed myself all the way through, even if the concluding chapters had less insight than the first half. All in all worth reading for any fans of the Book of Mormon.

A great guide to some of the basic science of habits, at least as far as I could tell as an absolute layperson in any of the relevant fields. An entertaining read with particularly good story-telling for the type of popular non-fiction book this is. If you want excellent and careful interpretation of the current state of science, I suspect this book isn't your best bet, but my impression was that this book was carefully researched and articulated enough for my purposes. I'm optimistic that the ideas in this book will help me with the constant challenge of crafting better habits!

I have a lot of feelings about this book. The first hundred pages won me over completely. Courtenay beautifully captures the worldview of a precocious and horrifically mistreated child, sandwiched in the tight space between British, Boer, and black in 1930s-40s South Africa. I became less enamored of the book as Peekay aged, continuing in the role of indefatigable hero but without increasing awareness of the suffering of those around him. Black South Africans remain mystical secondary characters, good-hearted and simple. Every character around Peekay is fascinating but static; with black characters this was particularly uncomfortable for me as a reader because Peekay interprets them through racist (though kind and well-meaning) eyes. And while this book can absolutely be read with Peekay as an unreliable narrator of his own story, acknowledging that possibility does not make this any more comfortable.

I'm still processing the somewhat shocking finale. Peekay finishes his journey to adulthood with an act of crass revenge on the first tormentor of his childhood, although admittedly he acts initially in self-defense. It's a conclusion that beautifully calls into question the entire heroizing narrative. But, like the book's depiction of black Africa, it left me with an uncertain taste in my mouth because of the possibly more straightforward interpretation - defeat and humiliation of one's enemies is the ultimate demonstration of one's manhood.

Utterly gripping narrative account of the wars following on the heels of Alexander the Great's death. Very much in the tradition of ‘great man' political history (although among the best books of this type I have ever read), for better and worse. Only 4 stars instead of 5 because I was occasionally disappointed by the way Romm talks about the women and the mentally disabled man who play crucial parts in this story.

A slow-moving exploration of the stories we tell ourselves about the world and the people around us. I found moments deeply moving and insightful about my own life and relationships, even if I occasionally lost interest in the characters and their story.