Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

Field Grey

Posted on September 29, 2013 by smellincoffee

Field Grey© 2011 Phillip Kerr384 pages Bernie Gunther survived Hitler’s Germany and a Soviet prison camp, so when he’s forcefully detained by the American  Navy on the open seas and interrogated, he’s not too much impressed by their attempt at … Continue reading →

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Home Economics

Posted on September 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

Home Economics© 1987 Wendell Berry192 pages The term economics originally referred to household management, and to Wendell Berry, that’s what it should remain still. Home Economics collects essays on the meaning and relation of economy to human life. In it, … Continue reading →

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The Working Poor

Posted on September 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Working Poor: Invisible in America© 2004 David Shipler352 pages “Like my daddy used to say — ‘Son, life’s hell to pay for when you’re poor — cause  always just outside the door’s another Hard Time.’”    (Jerry Reed) The … Continue reading →

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Free to Choose, Born to Buy (and Left to Die)

Posted on September 24, 2013 by smellincoffee

In the past two weeks I’ve been reading a series of books which connected together despite being on disparate subjects. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, published in the 1970s, argues for a completely free market — that is, one with … Continue reading →

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The Sky is Not the Limit

Posted on September 21, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Sky is not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist © 2004 Neil deGrasse Tyson203 pages           How does a young black kid from the Bronx become a world-famous astrophysicist, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and the … Continue reading →

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The Disappearance of Childhood

Posted on September 20, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Disappearance of Childhood©1982 Neil Postman177 pages Television is killing your children — conceptually. In 1985, Neil Postman penned Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he, building off of the lesson in Technopoly that technology changes our culture without our knowledge, … Continue reading →

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This week at the library: vanishing children, the suburbs, and markets run amok

Posted on September 16, 2013 by smellincoffee

Dear readers:  Last week I paid a visit to my alma mater’s library, my first since finding out I still have borrowing privileges there. I emerged from my first half-hour with a large stack of books, then halved it out … Continue reading →

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Sky Walking

Posted on September 15, 2013 by smellincoffee

Sky Walking: An Astronaut’s Memoir© 2007 Tom Jones384 pages Although the exploration of space has a scientific edge, the first astronauts were not scientists: they were military pilots. Thomas Jones is no exception, establishing the foundation for his career in … Continue reading →

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Satisfaction Guaranteed

Posted on September 12, 2013 by smellincoffee

Satisfaction Guaranteed: the Making of the American Mass Market© 2004 Susan Strasser348 pages America was born of the frontier, its citizens people who by necessity often manufactured their own household requirements.  This was the case throughout most of the 19th … Continue reading →

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Two Fronts

Posted on September 9, 2013 by smellincoffee

The War that Came Early: Two Fronts© 2013 Harry Turtledove416 pages In Hitler’s War,  Harry Turtledove began a new alternate history of the Second World War, one in which the conflict started in 1938 when Britain and France decided Hitler … Continue reading →

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