Category Archives: Reviews

Book reviews, as well as Reads to Reels

American Creation

Posted on June 29, 2013 by smellincoffee

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic© Joseph Ellis304 pages In Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis used a series of nonfictional ‘stories’ about the founding fathers of the United States to illustrate how their personal relationships with … Continue reading →

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The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Posted on June 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Story of my Experiments with Truth © 1927 Mohandas K. Gandhi480 pages Dover Press cover The Story of my Experiments with Truth is a piecemeal autobiography of Mohandas Gandhi,  who earned acclaim by leading India to independence from the British … Continue reading →

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This week at the library..money, Gandhi, and the American revolution

Posted on June 26, 2013 by smellincoffee

This week at the library, I am in the middle of my Revolutionary War reading, having finally finished the massive biography of Alexander Hamilton. I found it lived up to the recommendation as an antidote to the anti-Hamilton bias of … Continue reading →

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Alexander Hamilton

Posted on June 25, 2013 by smellincoffee

Alexander Hamilton© 2005 Rob Chernow832 pages Who is  Alexander Hamilton? The greatest founder save George Washington, or the Antichrist?  The latter is the view of Hamilton one may derive from the accounts of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, whereas Rob … Continue reading →

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Disrupting the Rabblement

Posted on June 20, 2013 by smellincoffee

Disrupting the Rabblement: Think  For Yourself, Face Your Fears, Live Your Dreams, and Piss off some Zombies© 2012 Niall Doherty~138 pages There are those who live, and those who simply exist. The majority of people, the rabblement, simply exist, and it’s … Continue reading →

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This Week at the Library: Star Wars, bikes, and evil farms

Posted on June 7, 2013 by smellincoffee

Fool’s Bargain, Timothy ZahnJust Ride, Grant PetersonAgainst the Grain, Richard Manning This week my  local library began officially offering electronic books via membership in a regional e-book collective.  Although I much prefer real books (see my printed-book snobbery? “real books”, … Continue reading →

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Salt, Sugar, Fat

Posted on June 6, 2013 by smellincoffee

Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us© 2013 Michael Moss480 pages Between the fresh produce, meat, and dairy sections that ring the perimeter of the average supermarket,  millions of unique foodstuffs are offered and advertised. But their apparent … Continue reading →

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Brilliant Harry Potter fanfiction

Posted on June 5, 2013 by smellincoffee

Last while I heard a fanfiction series, “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality“, mentioned on a podcast. In it, Harry is raised not by the abusive and smallminded Dursleys, but by a scientist, and thought to think critically. For … Continue reading →

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The Long Emergency

Posted on June 2, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century© 2005 James Howard Kunstler336 pages Well, we’re in for it. Such is the lesson of The Long Emergency, which predicts that the … Continue reading →

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Never Done

Posted on June 1, 2013 by smellincoffee

Never Done: A History of American Housework © 1982 Susan Strasser 365 pages Every time I turn around there’s something else to do Cook a meal or mend a sock or sweep a floor or two… (“Gonna Be an Engineer”, … Continue reading →

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