John

Truly a special book. Takes a huge amount of perspective from various social sciences and combines it with a (to me, at least) incredibly original idea. And an idea at the very core of civilization.

Jeff Guinn seems to think it is his responsibility to report with extreme facticity, even when (especially when) the topic is as profoundly wrong as Jonestown. However, I do fear that this left something out. And by the time of the massacre it felt like the book had run out of steam. The aftermath/discussion section was woefully short, which is a shame since the rest of the book was so even. Once it began to leave the realm of historical fact, Guinn balked. So I guess I'd say this was a great read, but it might be bad to be your only read on Jonestown, and at least for myself it likely will be.

5 stars because the writer both understood the assignment perfectly and undertook it with commendable diligence. A really quick read which doesn't feel like it leaves much out. Engaging but also thorough when it counts.

Excellent historical fiction (emphasis on both words), but it got a bit tiring towards the end

(Very much spoilers cause all I talk about is the ending)

Really good book but 4 stars because the author didn't stick the landing at the end. And because this book is prudish about sex despite being proffered as an example of an LGBTQ+ book by my local bookstore.

Muir's command of writing is good but less so of scene and especially worldbuilding. It's like she thought we'd be impatient with anything extended, or she hadn't come up with it yet. Or maybe none of it will matter since the characters will all have Lycter-level godpowers going forward and much of what's said here will be irrelevant.

The ending felt fresh and unexpected despite my reservations. I have a feeling a lot of that will be undone at some point, but, still, a GOOD undying necromancer Emperor? Okay, let's see how this one goes

The more I think about it, the more holes I poke. It was fine! The pace was great! The ending was rather good and rather bad at the same time! I'll give the benefit of the doubt.

An excellent history book. Some other reviewers' reservations—weird splits of the myths, a lack of accounting of the conquistadors' own attitudes, overreliance on native sources—seem to me to be not the case. I thought the author did a good job of addressing all three. The tone was highly readable while also being academic and precise. This is exactly the sort of popular history book people should be reading and I'm really happy I found it from r/AskHistorians's book rec page.

Movie was actually better... I wish the ending was a mix between the 2 tbh. Some good writing but not good enough. Good ideas though

Very disappointing.

The writing is simply bad. Grant wanted to play with the sexual tension between the main characters (adopted bro and sis) and failed to walk the line. The result is not smart but discordant. Not to mention that Sean's character is pretty wooden/tropey in general (tbf, part of the blame here lies with the audiobook narrator, who gave him a grade school bully sneer). The plot twist was ‘foreshadowed' with floodlights and a marching band. Many turns of phrase were used repeatedly and boringly. The politics and message of the book never rose above CNN level ‘analysis'—seriously, the book takes national politics at face value. It's difficult to think of something which would make me take you less seriously except, well, the main message of the book, which is that Truth exists out there as something journalists can go and discover when no one else (even those being paid to secure a hazard zone 20 years into an apocalypse) can. Not to mention that the action scenes are pretty weak. There are no hordes, there's no looting/survival, there's maybe 2 hand to hand encounters with zeds, and no cool weapons. I mean come on, she introduced fire trucks with flamethrower/pesticide hoses and we didn't get to see them used??

Also sad that Berkeley cameo'd as its least inspired and most obvious form, replete with villainous Repubs. We are NOT more paranoid than Nowhere, NV, and we have way less guns. The highways are already clogged to hell as it is. The bay area would be toast.

I finished the book because I need to get rolling on my goal, but perhaps that was the wrong move.

The book isn't dry at all if you think analysis is more interesting than details. Which I do.

Like so often with books, when I finish them I just want there to be MORE. Well, I'm pleased to know that I have 3 more volumes of this series and I'm excited to get started on them.

My only criticism of this book is that it assumes you're already familiar with many many details. I understand why this has to be done, but there were occasions where I didn't really understand what was being talked about since apparently that was the lecture I was asked for in junior year of HS.

Overall, I'm glad I read it and I hope to take my understanding of history to the next level with this series

Super enjoyable book written for history lovers. It's basically a nonstop action adventure (read: many tenuous plot devices) with a generous helping of historical facts and trivia at every opportunity. Would make an excellent movie or video game.

4 stars because of some flaws but they don't get in the way at all. Check it out

Edit: actually, there is a movie, and it performed abysmally. Also, people hate the characters? I mean, they weren't super great but also this is not meant to be high fiction. The slightly cardboard main characters were more than made up for by history and fun action—which is basically what I expected when I started the book

Very meh

Engaging but rather full of fluff. Quality fluff nonetheless.

Short and sweet, but its a bit boring on account of its age. The narration is extremely direct and leaves little to the imagination. The themes are blindingly clear. Characters are mostly leaden.

Magic was cool but also not. Mechanics mostly unexplained but the air of mystery was good.

I feel bad giving it a 3 star when it was quite enjoyable and I'm about to start the next one but yeah, it's not a 4 star.

Really more like 3.5 stars. Armstrong is an excellent writer and starts the book off very strong, but it becomes more of a recounting of important episodes than adding anything new or interesting to the thesis. Still, I appreciated the breadth of the book and the style, so it was well worth the time.

Thoroughly enjoyed this. The choices he makes about what to include and how to move across so much info made a lot of sense. He's an engaging lecturer and does a ‘reading from an essay' style without feeling stilted or tedious in the slightest. Poetic and food cultures were particularly interesting

Inevitably partisan and narrow but still delivered a strong case backed up by tightly packed facts. Depressing but not as depressing as it could have been, mostly due to the author's tone (not the content).

The best part of this book imo was the imparting of a general impression of each President going back to around Eisenhower. It went through certain events in each presidency and explained how they affected public perception and especially the far right's perception of America and its politics. It also documents the connections of each Republican president to far right groups, which every one of them had.

For this book to get 5 stars, it would have had to have been 3 times as long. For most people, then, I think it's just right.

Note: I wish I could give this a 4.5/5. Both 4/5 and 5/5 feel unfair. Oh well :/

The history of 20th century psychiatry is appalling, and Scull is direct in relaying the facts. He is as balanced as can be expected of a story which offers both hope and horror. There's tons of interesting asides which I enjoyed, though he always keeps a unified narrative that doesn't leave important things out of the frame.

That is, until we get to the present day. Scull's treatment of psychiatry post-deinstitutionalization is limited (though high quality), and I suppose understandably so, but it still makes me want more. So many books I read today feel this way. I want someone to explain the mess we're wading through as well as the mess it was in the past. So yeah, just a little more book and it would have been 5/5.

Anyway, in general I think this is exactly the sort of nonfiction I like. Direct, expansive, authoritative. And on the topic of something at times so horrible we must face it.

I refuse to pick favorites, but... I can think of any book that's better than Oryx and Crake. Really. This is the book.

Atwood is simply stunning. The world she built is devastating. I can't stop recommending this to everyone even years later.

Read it.

This book is pure sugar. Like playing Call of Duty but more historical. Uhtred is a real life badass. What an actual person with actual legends about them might have been like. And he's also an arrogant, prideful young man. He makes no apologies and destroys his enemies. He fights for himself, his friends, and his name—and nothing else. No cause, no reflection from the viewpoint of modern morality. It feels great.

Only 4 stars because the writing is extremely straightforward. Really it should be a 4.5. The book accomplishes everything it wants to do and no more. It doesn't reach for anything and often ‘tells.' But you know what? That's fine. The Last Kingdom is an epic adventure without those things. It doesn't need to be changed one bit. I just feel weird giving it a perfect score.

I read it on audiobook without the endnotes, so I guess I pissed everyone off. Truth is, I'm too lazy to get my entertainment in any form that isn't force-fed to me. What, you say mimicking the broken pattern of human thought is one of the points? Please. Make me. (or make me, please?) DFW makes a case against it, but he still acknowledges that we do CHOOSE between pressing the brain-stimulating lever and not. ig.

I read a lot of his short works before Infinite Jest, and I'm glad I did. Many of the short ones show an idea related to someone else, or to the real world (in his nonfiction) and rendered in even more intelligible English. Infinite Jest touches on basically everything he'd ever written about, but filtered through Himself, like, at least three times.

Sometimes when I read novels from the 50s or so, they seem really short and self-contained. A prime example of the novel format. Laser-focused, trimmed of all the fat. This book is like that in the sense that it's self-contained (self-absorbed, too). But of course it's extremely long. Everything DFW ever chose to talk about and nothing more. But everything done at A level without fail. Not A+, not A-. It's odd to read a 1000+ page book and feel like it's been wrapped up nicely.

4 stars because DFW never got to write about the (mature) internet age, and I don't know of any artist who can treat the internet as well as DFW did to television. And because I don't have the emotional firepower to believe what he says at the deepest level.

Pure entertainment, but pure as in “this is the good stuff,” pure.

I spent hundreds of afternoons hanging out in my local library as a kid. I loved this book doubly, though, because as an adult I've come to realize how utterly unlike anything else libraries are. They're a rare treasure to accept anyone and give knowledge and resources out for free. I even heard about this book when my librarian recommended it to me. The book isn't for everyone, but it is for library lovers, and I hope everyone becomes a library lover

3.5/5 imo. In terms of exploring postmodernism, the book does a good job. However, the author is too confident in some of their criticisms and doesn't touch on some areas I felt quite relevant. Good for someone acquainted with postmodernism looking for an overview, but I'd be cautious in recommending this as a true introduction.

I keep coming back to this book. It has changed my perspective more than any single thing in quite some time. The tone can be annoyingly smug at times, but look past that. There's a lot to learn here.

Fairly good, satisfying for sure, but some annoying bits of bad writing.

Pros:
-Main ending was satisfying
-Page turner
-All that you want from a zombie survival book

Cons:
-2/5 character arcs ended in a way I didn't like (Justineau and Gallagher). Others were good and I was quite pleased with Caldwell's final scene
-Some notably low moments with immersion-breaking bad writing. Otherwise good quality
-Thematically predictable