Welcome to the United States of Anxiety, by Jen Lancaster (Little A, 239 pages)
Jen Lancaster, self-described reforming neurotic, is a little anxious these days. Specifically, she is “a bundle of nerves, swaddled in a blanket of panic.”
You might find this surprising, given that she is a wildly Continue reading “Welcome to the United States of Anxiety”
Billion Dollar Burger, by Chase Purdy (Portfolio/Penguin, 236 pages)
You don’t have to be vegan, or an animal-rights zealot, to be deeply uncomfortable about what is required to keep the meat shelves at your local supermarket stocked with ground beef and pork tenderloins.
In about the time it took Continue reading “Billion Dollar Burger”
The Dynasty, by Jeff Benedict (Avid Reader Press, 528 pages)
To hell with Tom Brady. The real GOAT is Robert Kraft. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from The Dynasty, Jeff Benedict’s exhaustive examination of the Kraft-Belichick-Brady era. There is nothing more to be written, at Continue reading “The Dynasty”
Here She Is, by Hilary Levey Friedman (Beacon Press, 225 pages)
Mark Zuckerberg, as it turns out, wasn’t the first entrepreneur to gather pictures of women and ask people to rate them. That distinction belongs to P.T. Barnum, the 19th-century showman.
In 1854, not long after he started his Continue reading “Here She Is”
Fathoms, The World in the Whale, by Rebecca Giggs (Simon & Schuster, 284 pages)
In July rescuers worked three days to free a humpback whale that had become entangled in 4,000 pounds of junk near the entrance to New York Harbor. This story had a happy ending; many do Continue reading “Fathoms”
by Tom Cooper (Random House, 379 pages)
“Florida Man” became a meme in 2013 because of the bizarre headlines that seem in endless supply in that state, such as “Florida Man Wearing Crocs Gets Bitten After Jumping Into Crocodile Exhibit at Alligator Farm.” (True story, circa 2018.)
Florida Man is Continue reading “Florida Man”
by James Hamblin (Riverhead, 253 pages)
He was a doctor with questionable judgment, or so it seemed, when he gave up medicine to become a journalist and, at roughly the same time, decided to stop showering.
So why isn’t Dr. James Hamblin’s new book called “Unclean”?
It’s because there’s an Continue reading “Clean, The New Science of Skin”
Let Them Eat Tweets, by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 217 pages)
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are not amused, no matter what their book title says.
In fact, the political scientists, who live on opposite coasts, are convinced that America is becoming a plutocracy, governed Continue reading “Book Review 20/08/20”
Midnight Sun, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown and Co., 658 pages)
Twilight aficionados read the first pages of Midnight Sun 12 years ago. They just now found out how it ended.
That’s because when Stephenie Meyer learned that the beginning of Twilight 2.0 — the same vampire love story, Continue reading “Book Review 20/08/13”
Make Russia Great Again, by Christopher Buckley (Simon & Schuster, 274 pages)
When word got out that Christopher Buckley had a new book, this one about the Trump administration, Buckley fans didn’t just salivate; they drooled.
Buckley, the son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., made his own Continue reading “Book Review 20/08/06”
