Justin Matt
Outstanding and extremely gripping. I thought that Tara's writing style conveyed her thoughts and emotions in such a precise and relatable manner, which is very difficult to do. I felt what she was feeling and couldn't help but relate to my own life and my own family, even if I grew up drastically differently than her.
Wow. I feel sad and shocked that I have never learned of the majority of events discussed in this book, even as someone who is interested in these topics. It feels bleak, like we will never learn from such horrible, recent history because it is so hidden from our culture and education.
Despite how dark it was, I found I could not put this down once I picked it up. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
A great and important book. I loved the closing statements of the epilogue, which expresses better than I could why it is so worth reading:
“...in almost every school in America, King's life and lessons are often smoothed and polished beyond recognition.
...
Our simplified celebration of King comes at a cost. It saps the strength of his philosophical and intellectual contributions. It undercuts his power to inspire change... the nation remains racked with racism, ethno-nationalism, cultural division, residential and educational segregation, economic inequality, violence, and a fading sense of hope that government, or anyone, will ever fix those problems.
...
Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.”
This is the kind of book that you finish and feel everyone needs to read. Desmond shows that poverty in America is not some unfortunate happenstance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. These choices have led to the richest nation in history having significantly higher poverty rates than any other comparable country. I particularly loved that the author highlighted the fact that the people who seem (to me) to be most likely to read this book - the affluent, the upper middle class, the highly educated - are benefactors from the same policies and systems that create a cycle of poverty in the U.S. So, if we want to eradicate poverty, we must work to tear down these systems that often unfairly benefit ourselves while further hurting the poor.
A manifesto on walkability. Speck is informative, clear, funny, and sassy. He writes from the perspective of the “generalist” that he endorses, who considers all aspects of urban planning and their effects on walkability, from streets to parking to trees to architecture. Ultimately, the book lists ten ways to create walkable cities and explains the positive impact this simple design choice has on the health, safety, environment, economy, and overall quality of life of a city.
I loved this book. Sinclair brings the pages to life with often gruesome descriptions of life in the U.S. as a working class family at the turn of the century. The last few chapters, where the main character joins the Socialist movement, are very exciting to read and offer a nice history on the origins of the Socialist movement in the U.S. It is interesting reading 100 years later and hearing many of the same arguments being had. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys politics and/or US history.
Overall an excellent and enjoyable read! The dive into the history of the hot hand debate in academia was very thorough, well written, and intriguing. The numerous anecdotes throughout the book are fun to read, however sometimes the connections to the main themes of the book are not very strong. Cohen often leaves cliffhangers and abruptly switches topics at the end of sections. Sometimes this builds curiosity and provides neat parallels, but other times it is tiring and breaks my focus as the reader.