Tag Archives: Politics-CivicInterest

Go Directly to Jail

Posted on August 27, 2020 by

Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything © 2004 ed. Gene Healy 194 pages What good are laws so numerous they cannot be known, or so opaque they cannot be understood?  James Madison knew enough to ask that … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Great Ron Paul

Posted on August 21, 2020 by

The Great Ron Paul: The Scott Horton Interviews, 2004-2019 © 2019 ed. Scott Horton 315 pages Selected quotes Who is Ron Paul?    That question was on posters across my university campus in 2008, and I couldn’t help but be curious.   … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Left, The Right, and The State

Posted on August 11, 2020 by

The Left, The Right, and the State © 2009 Lew Rockwell 556 pages “Society is held together not by a state but by the cooperative daily actions of its members.” Who’s up for six hundred pages of essays on politics … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Losing an Enemy

Posted on January 8, 2020 by

Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy 472 pages © 2017 Trita Parsi Losing an Enemy is now a profoundly depressing book,  being an extensive history of an agreement that could have started erasing fifty years of … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

A Warning

Posted on January 2, 2020 by

A Warning © 2019 A Senior Trump Administration Official 272 pages In 2018, a disturbing op-ed ran in The New York Times declaring the existence of a secret band of White House staffers who were ‘working diligently’ to frustrate part … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Rubbish!

Posted on December 18, 2019 by

Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage © 1992 William Rathje and Cullen Murphy 250 pages Given that historians often use the contents of middens to glean information about societies which have long faded away, it’s only fair to see what our … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Junkyard Planet

Posted on December 6, 2019 by

Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade © 2013 Adam Minter 304 pages I once encountered a pair of supermarket clerks unloading cases of bottled water from their pallet jack to the shelves where the water awaits the … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Romance of the Rails

Posted on March 21, 2019 by

Romance of the Rails: Why the Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need© 2018 Randal O’Toole300 pages “These are the 1930s again, with all the charm and romance, all the gaiety! That was a carefree world, Danny, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Walkable City Rules

Posted on March 16, 2019 by

Walkaable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places © 2018 Jeff Speck312 pages In Walkable Cities, Jeff Speck argued for the virtues of a city optimized for pedestrian travel, and offered ten general guidelines  for making it happen — … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Why We Hate and How to Heal

Posted on February 15, 2019 by

Them: Why We Hate and How to Heal  © 2018 Ben Sasse 272 pages The tenor of civil ‘discourse’ in America today is disheartening and distressful, in part for at least over a decade there has been little discourse at all, … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | 14 Comments