Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

The Cult of the Presidency

Posted on February 14, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power © 2008 Gene Healy 264 pages Every four years, men and women with permanently-fixed smiles assure us that they will end corruption in D.C, get the economy moving, and … Continue reading →

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Lost to the West

Posted on February 14, 2016 by smellincoffee

Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization © 2009 Lars Brownsworth 329 pages The Roman empire not not fade quietly into history in 474, when a Gothic warlord decided to run the city of Rome directly instead … Continue reading →

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Posted on February 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

2001: A Space Odyssey© 1986 Arthur C. Clark, Stanley Kubrick316 pgs At the dawn of the twenty-first century, mankind makes an extraordinary discovery: unmistakable evidence of life outside the environs of Earth. An object on the moon makes plain the … Continue reading →

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Genome

Posted on February 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

 Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters© 1999 Matt Ridley317 pages   The human genome is a recipe book, divided into 23 chapters, but considerably larger than Matt Ridley’s Genome. Were it to scale, he writes, a genuine … Continue reading →

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Onward to the Edge

Posted on February 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

“Science is like a hungry furnace that must be fed logs from the forests of ignorance that surround us. In the process, the clearing we call knowledge expands, but the more it expands, the longer its perimeter and the more … Continue reading →

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This week: the usual suspects

Posted on February 8, 2016 by smellincoffee

Well, dear readers, it’s another month! I have a serious itch for science and science fiction at the moment, so I have no less than five potential science reads stacked up now, and three potential SF books. Among the numbers…Domesticated: Evolution in … Continue reading →

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Unstoppable

Posted on February 6, 2016 by smellincoffee

Unstoppable: the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State© 2014 Ralph Nader224 pages George Carlin groused that when he heard the word bipartisanship, he knew a larger than usual deception was in the works. Ralph Nader’s Unstoppable offers a different … Continue reading →

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Ten Stories by Isaac

Posted on February 4, 2016 by smellincoffee

Back in 2007, I discovered Isaac Asimov’s short stories and became a trifle obsessed with him, to the point that I have an entire bookcase devoted to his short stories, essays, novels and books.  Lately I’ve been feeling the itch … Continue reading →

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Ain’t My America

Posted on January 31, 2016 by smellincoffee

Ain’t My America:  The Long and Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle Class Antimperialism ©  2008 Bill Kauffman 304 pages “You can have your hometown, or you can have the empire. You can’t have both.” You don’t have to … Continue reading →

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Taxi!

Posted on January 30, 2016 by smellincoffee

Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver©  2007 Graham Russell Gao Hodges225 pages No film set in New York City is complete without scenes of Manhattan traffic, dense with yellow cars — the patrolling ranks of the … Continue reading →

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