Critiques de livres de Josh
218 critiques · note moyenne 79/100
The three musketeers
Alexandre Dumas60/100
Did not finish. The book isn't bad, but I live in 2026 and have the attention span of a goldfish and I just can't work up much interest in swashbuckling. Here are some notes I wrote while reading, mostly about dueling: The first thing that bothered me in this book was that the…
Lire la critique complèteThe Pimping of Prostitution
Julie Bindel40/100
Note: Couldn’t finish this one, review based on the first few chapters. Politics makes strange bedfellows and nowhere is that more true in the convergence of views among between ‘radical feminists,’ and far right conservatives on sex work. The Pimping of Prostitution attempts to…
Lire la critique complèteThe Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain60/100
I’m setting aside The Innocents Abroad about halfway through. Maybe I’ll come back to it; maybe not. It’s not holding my attention. Every time I pick it up, I read about a page and then think of something else I’d rather be doing. The book is based on a series of 50 newspaper…
Lire la critique complèteThe Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafón80/100Lu le oct. 2026
This book reminded me why I read fiction - and why I read so much less of it than I used to. Start with the positives: Zafón is a masterful storyteller. He grabs you from the first page and doesn't let go until his tale has wound its way to a conclusion that is both formulaic…
Lire la critique complèteTheir Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston80/100Lu le sept. 2026
Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Janie Crawford, a light-skinned Black woman born around the turn of the 20th century. As a teenager, Janie is briefly trapped in a dismal arranged marriage to an older farmer. But she meets and marries a charismatic younger man named…
Lire la critique complèteMy sister, the serial killer
Oyinkan Braithwaite80/100Lu le sept. 2026
This was a fun, fast-paced read—I finished it in a single evening. The story is told in the first person by Korede, a nurse who lives in Lagos with her sister, the serial killer Ayoola. These are boom times for stories about women burning with murderous rage. But unlike *The…
Lire la critique complèteBilly Budd, Sailor
Mary Gladwin60/100Lu le sept. 2026
Meh, not for me. Billy Budd is a handsome sailor who is falsely accused, for reasons that are never entirely clear, of fomenting mutiny. When these charges are brought he stutters but can't get out a reply and finally punches his accuser, killing him. There's a trial and he is…
Lire la critique complèteMuskism
Quinn Slobodian80/100Lu le sept. 2026
I listened to Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism a few weeks ago and have been trying to figure out what I think about it ever since. I may have an unusually personal reason for being interested in the book. I worked in tech for the better part of 15 years, and about five…
Lire la critique complèteThe Memory Police
Yōko Ogawa80/100Lu le juil. 2026
The Memory Police takes place on an unnamed island where whole categories of things disappear and are quickly forgotten. Perfume disappeared and people not only forgot the word for it, but lost their ability to smell it even if they encountered it. Later boats disappear. Then…
Lire la critique complète1873
Liaquat Ahamed100/100Lu le juil. 2026
This is an excellent history of the crash of 1873, its origins and repercussions. It's also surprisingly entertaining - Ahamed has a keen ear for a quotable line and manages to make what might otherwise be a rather dull topic fascinating. A few of the lines that stuck with me: *…
Lire la critique complèteMadame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert80/100Lu le juin 2026
Madame Bovary is about a doctor's wife in a small French town who tries to alleviate her ennui by shopping and cheating on her husband. Her husband - Charles - is kind, but rather dull and unambitious. She cheats on him with fuckboys - then known as dandys. The Bovarys aren't…
Lire la critique complèteIvanhoe
Sir Walter Scott60/100Lu le juin 2026
This was a full-cast audio performance of Ivanhoe, so I can't completely disentangle my thoughts on Scott's novel from my impressions of the production itself. Before downloading Ivanhoe, all I knew about Sir Walter Scott was that his novels were enormously popular in the…
Lire la critique complèteIsrael Potter His Fifty Years of Exile
Herman Melville80/100Lu le juin 2026
Just a few days ago I noted in my review Omoo that I didn't quite see that the book lived up to its subtitle which proclaimed it an 'adventure.' Israel Potter, by contrast, seems like an exemplary adventure story, but for some reason Melville declined to tout it as one. Potter…
Lire la critique complèteEthan Frome
Edith Wharton60/100Lu le mai 2026
Ethan Frome is the story of an unhappy middle aged man, who used to be an unhappy young man - back in the 1890s. One reason young Ethan was unhappy was because he lived on a dumpy farm that didn't make any money and was cold and dark for half the year. Another was that his wife…
Lire la critique complèteTokyo Junkie
Robert Whiting80/100Lu le mai 2026
Robert Whiting grew up in a small town in California and came to Tokyo in the early 1960s as a GI. After his military service ended, he stayed on, working as an English tutor, encyclopedia editor, and eventually a freelance writer. Tokyo Junkie is part memoir and part ode to the…
Lire la critique complèteTypee : a Peep at Polynesian Life
Herman Melville100/100Lu le mai 2026
THE SEA — NUKUHEVA — RUNNING AWAY — LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS — THE TYPEE, NOBLE SAVAGES — TATTOOS AND TABOOS — CANNIBALS? — HAPPY POVERTY — CAPTIVITY AND ESCAPE — RANDOM NOTES The decline of whaling and piracy over the past few centuries is probably for the best. Still, it’s hard…
Lire la critique complète1971
Anam Zakaria100/100Lu le mai 2026
For over a century, the British ruled over a vast swath of South Asia that today includes three of the world’s ten most populous countries: India (#1), Pakistan (#5), and Bangladesh (#8). In 1947, the British departed, and the subcontinent was partitioned into two states: India…
Lire la critique complèteHow Africa Works
JOE STUDWELL100/100Lu le mai 2026
Several years ago I read and enjoyed How Asia Works, Joe Studwell’s previous book. It’s deeply informed but easy to read, and offers a plausible account of how Asia got rich. Apparently Bill Gates enjoyed Studwell’s book too, and asked him whether he might take a similar…
Lire la critique complèteIndonesia etc
Elizabeth Pisani100/100Lu le mai 2026
In rural Indonesia a woman had recently been eaten by a crocodile. "But it's okay, they're hiring a shaman to catch it" a policeman said. "He explained how it works: the crocodile whisperer goes to the shore near where the person was eaten and drives a sacred spear into the…
Lire la critique complèteDaughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back
Janice P. Nimura100/100Lu le mai 2026
Daughters of the Samurai tells the fascinating story of five girls who, in 1871, were sent to the United States by the Japanese government. The youngest, Tsuda Ume, was just six years old when she left. She was accompanied by Masuda Shige (10), Yamakawa Sakiko (10), Ueda Tei…
Lire la critique complèteCapitalism
Sven Beckert100/100Lu le mai 2026
Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History adopts such a broad definition of capitalism that it comes to encompass nearly the entirety of the last five hundred years of economic history. It recalls the old joke about the compulsive gambler who loses his shirt every night at poker…
Lire la critique complèteKorean Messiah
Jonathan Cheng100/100Lu le avr. 2026
Korean Messiah is a fascinating account of Christianity in Korea and its influence on Kim Il Sung and the cult of personality built around him. That cult is well known, but a few examples help illustrate its intensity: * Every North Korean household is required to display framed…
Lire la critique complèteJesus in Beijing
David Aikman60/100Lu le avr. 2026
I picked up Jesus in Beijing because I was looking for a history of Christianity in China, and it was the only option available on Audible. There appear to be better alternatives in print - so unless you're illiterate, I’d recommend exploring those instead. Many of the book’s…
Lire la critique complèteThe Palestine Laboratory
Antony Loewenstein100/100Lu le avr. 2026
I've generally avoided reading too much about Israel because I find it depressing. Israel was founded in 1948, the same year the apartheid regime was established in South Africa. Both countries saw themselves as outposts of European civilization surrounded by barbaric…
Lire la critique complèteI Am a Strange Loop
Douglas R. Hofstadter80/100Lu le avr. 2026
I Am a Strange Loop is Hofstadter's account of how consciousness and personal identity work. He is a physicalist - meaning that whatever consciousness is he thinks it arises from from the substrate of meat (brains). At the same time, he rejects the view that consciousness can be…
Lire la critique complèteKingdom of Characters
Jing Tsu100/100Lu le avr. 2026
Starting in the mid-19th century the Chinese script faced a number of challenges. Some of these arose from the development of new technologies, notably the telegraph and typewriter. Both of these devices had been invented in the west and were designed to work with western…
Lire la critique complèteHouse of Huawei
Eva Dou80/100Lu le mars 2026
This is a pretty solid history of Huawei, covering its rise and the U.S. government's campaign against the company. The campaign has had two prongs: on the demand side the government has largely banned Huawei from competing in the U.S. market and has tried to pressure other…
Lire la critique complèteA crack in the edge of the world
Simon Winchester100/100Lu le mars 2026
I quite like Simon Winchester's audiobooks. He narrates them himself, and they have the feel of a genial professor telling stories about whatever obscure matter he is fascinated with at this moment. Many of Winchester's subjects are the type of thing that could be painfully…
Lire la critique complèteRestless giant
James T. Patterson60/100Lu le mars 2026
The latest disappointing volume in the Oxford History of the U.S. Like the preceding two volumes of the series Restless Giant is largely focused on federal political actors and reads like a textbook - not inaccurate but with a moderate conservative bias and a tendency to focus…
Lire la critique complèteGrand Expectations
James T. Patterson60/100Lu le mars 2026
Meh, reads like a textbook. It's a conventional account of the era with a focus on major political actors, but it doesn't contain any great insights and didn't really change my view of the era in any meaningful way. Random notes: * Patterson repeats the book's title many times…
Lire la critique complèteFreedom from fear
David M. Kennedy60/100Lu le mars 2026
Like every volume in the Oxford History of the United States, Freedom from Fear is arguably the definitive single volume work on its era. Sadly, being definitive is not the same thing as being good, and I don't think this is an especially good work of history. Kennedy is an…
Lire la critique complèteOn the make
Brian P. Luskey80/100Lu le mars 2026
This is an interesting little book on the lives of clerks, in 1840s and 1850s New York. Clerks were junior salespeople working in retailers and wholesale establishments. They showed off items to customers, described their selling points, wrote up bills of purchase and collected…
Lire la critique complèteThe Ministry of Time
Kaliane Bradley80/100Lu le mars 2026
The first half of The Ministry of Time I give five stars, the second half three stars. So, from a mathematical perspective it is a four star book. You can check the math for yourself if you don't believe me. The basic plot goes like this: the British government has stumbled upon…
Lire la critique complèteA short history of tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka60/100Lu le févr. 2026
I bought A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian because it was supposed to be funny. I didn't laugh even once though, so I'm giving it 3 stars. It reminded me a bit of French Exit or a Gentleman in Moscow in that it felt like the author aspired to be clever but couldn't think…
Lire la critique complèteThe Eighteenth Century
John O. Voll60/100Lu le févr. 2026
Meh, fine short survey, but you could get the same content from Wikipedia.
Lire la critique complèteThe Secret Life of Groceries
Benjamin Lorr100/100Lu le févr. 2026
The Secret Life of Groceries is not standard business journalism of the extended WSJ piece variety. It's anthropological reporting - Lorr goes native with the grocery people: traveling cross country with a trucker, visiting trade shows with a food-entrepreneur trying to bring…
Lire la critique complèteBreakneck
Dan Wang100/100Lu le févr. 2026
Breakneck is an an excellent introduction to and survey of Chinese and American efforts to shape the future in the early 21st century. In the first chapter, Wang contrasts China - a nation of Engineers - with America - a nation of lawyers. He points out that engineers like…
Lire la critique complèteSkin in the Game
Nassim Nicholas Taleb80/100Lu le févr. 2026
Fuck, this guy Taleb irritates me. He reminds me a bit of Slavoj Žižek. Both men seem like they crave nothing more than the adoration of the intellectual establishment, which they also argue is filled will craven idiots who can go to hell. Both have held various academic…
Lire la critique complèteDrinking in America
Susan Cheever100/100Lu le févr. 2026
Drinking in America is a survey of the ways in which alcohol and drunkenness have impacted national history. Cheever, a former alcoholic and daughter of the novelist John Cheever, intertwines her own family's history of alcoholism with the national story. Cheever is pretty…
Lire la critique complèteGhostland
Colin Dickey100/100Lu le janv. 2026
Ghostland is more than a history of haunted places, it presents of a sort of theory of ghosts. According to our best scientific theories of how the world works ghosts do not exist. Despite this, 39% of Americans believe in ghosts, and literally millions of people throughout…
Lire la critique complèteWild milk
Sabrina Orah Mark80/100Lu le janv. 2026
WTF did I just read? I honestly have no idea. I'm giving it four stars, but it could just as well deserve eight, or negative three (if only Goodreads allowed such things). It consists of a few dozen micro-stories - just a few pages long. They all display a kind dream logic: In…
Lire la critique complèteThe Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón100/100Lu le déc. 2025
The Shadow of the Wind is a Gothic mystery set in Barcelona between roughly 1919 and 1955. The story opens in 1945, when Daniel Sempere—then ten years old—is taken by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret library of banned and neglected works. Daniel chooses a…
Lire la critique complèteThe map that changed the world
Simon Winchester100/100Lu le déc. 2025
In Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, The Judge, that ominous representation of 19th century hubris, says, "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent... He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem…
Lire la critique complèteGirl on Girl
Sophie Gilbert100/100Lu le déc. 2025
*** This review contains some NSFW content - it also cuts off at the end due to GR character limit.*** Feminism has always been a moving target. It has meant different things to different people, and no group can claim full ownership of the term. The issues of central concern to…
Lire la critique complèteTravels with Charley
John Steinbeck80/100Lu le déc. 2025
A pleasant, but unmemorable, travelogue
Lire la critique complèteMark Twain
Ron Chernow100/100Lu le déc. 2025
At roughly 1,200 pages, Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain covers nearly every aspect of the humorist’s life in exhaustive detail. In this review, I’ll focus on a few of the central themes that run through Twain’s life and work: race, women, and business. On Race Sam Clemens…
Lire la critique complèteLittle Bosses Everywhere
Bridget Read100/100Lu le déc. 2025
This is an interesting and well researched survey of pyramid schemes/MLM. For Read's purposes, a pyramid scheme is a system where the salespeople focus more on attracting new salespeople than on selling to end users. She discusses famous examples such as Nutralife, Mary Kay…
Lire la critique complèteBlood and Oil
Bradley Hope80/100Lu le nov. 2025
I doubt Mohammed is going to be buying copies of the book to hand out to his friends, but it seems like a pretty fair biography to me. MBS comes off as a paranoid machiavellian schemer, but so do all autocrats. Hope also acknowledges Mohammed's positive contributions. He's…
Lire la critique complèteThe great cat massacre
Robert Darnton80/100Lu le nov. 2025
Fine but not for me. I bought this book because I thought it would be a collection of weird stories about weird French people doing weird stuff. The title suggests this. Instead it turned out to be a serious academic book. A lot of the book is dedicated to questions of…
Lire la critique complèteThe Rational Male
Rollo Tomassi20/100Lu le oct. 2025
I don’t usually review books without finishing them, but I feel like I got the gist of The Rational Male—and I don’t have the attention span to endure the rest. I bought it on a whim—a 2-for-1 Audible sale, and I couldn’t find anything else. The target audience seems to be men…
Lire la critique complèteCursed Objects
J.W. Ocker80/100Lu le oct. 2025
This book delivers on the promise of its title. It is a series of anecdotes or folk tales about cursed objects. Examples: * Busby's Chair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby%27s_stoop_chair * The Curse of the Pharaohs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_pharaohs * The…
Lire la critique complèteNormal Women
Philippa Gregory80/100Lu le oct. 2025
Pretty good history of British women.
Lire la critique complètePax
Tom Holland80/100Lu le oct. 2025
There's a meme on TikTok that men think about the Roman Empire five times a day or some such thing. I can't speak for other men, but in my case that seems a bit high. I probably only think the about the Roman Empire a few times a week. Roman history feels to me like a soap opera…
Lire la critique complèteThe Icepick Surgeon
Sam Kean60/100Lu le oct. 2025
Maybe 3.5 stars? This Icepick Surgeon is a collection of stories - I wasn't surprised to learn Kean is a podcaster as each chapter feels like an episode in a series connected only by the very general theme of people doing bad things in some way connected to science or medicine…
Lire la critique complèteThe Library
Andrew Pettegree80/100Lu le oct. 2025
This one of those books that will be enjoyed by people who enjoy this type of thing. If a history of libraries sounds mind-numbingly dull to you, don't read it. A few unstructured notes: * The book is relatively Eurocentric (shifting to U.S.centric in the final chapters). I'm…
Lire la critique complèteMedieval Horizons
Ian Mortimer80/100Lu le oct. 2025
Medieval Horizons is history with an axe to grind. The history is largely that of England from 1100 - 1600. The axe is that Mortimer is fascinated with the middle ages and like all people with strange obsessions he thinks everyone else should be equally fascinated with it. The…
Lire la critique complèteReappraisals
Tony Judt100/100Lu le oct. 2025
Reappraisals collects several of Tony Judt’s essays, many first appearing in the New York Review of Books. Until his death in 2010, Judt likely knew as much about 19th–20th century Europe as any living historian, and it shows. He can be an intimidating reviewer - fair but, when…
Lire la critique complèteA people's tragedy
Orlando Figes80/100Lu le sept. 2025
A People's Tragedy is an exhaustively researched and well written overview of the Russian Revolution. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 only because I feel like the author's biases occasionally cloud his historical judgement. Figes clearly has strong anti-Bolshevik views. There's…
Lire la critique complèteAn Immense World
Ed Yong100/100Lu le sept. 2025
Fascinating. I still don't know what it's like to be a bat, but I have a better sense of it now.
Lire la critique complèteThe Sleepwalkers
Christopher Clark100/100Lu le juil. 2025
Interesting overview of long lead up to WW1. A random thought I had while listening: it's no wonder that game theory was primarily developed by Europeans born in the pre-war period. Oskar Morganstern was born in the German Empire in 1902 and John von Neumann was born in…
Lire la critique complèteFur, Fortune, and Empire
Eric Jay Dolin80/100Lu le juin 2025
I listened to the audiobook, and it was fairly interesting. Much of the book is a narrative history of the various troubles fur traders got into. Dolin seems to generally accept these narratives unquestioningly, which gives the book an inevitable European-centric gloss, since…
Lire la critique complèteOf Walking in Ice
Werner Herzog80/100Lu le juin 2025
Werner Herzog's writing moves effortlessly between fact and fiction and it's often hard to tell which is which. Sometimes it's not even clear if he knows. This book is, as the title suggests, his journal of a hike he took in 1974 from Munich to Paris (~800 km). He broke into…
Lire la critique complèteThe Making of Modern Economics
Mark Skousen60/100Lu le juin 2025
As Skousen acknowledges in the introduction this book is not intended as an impartial overview. Skousen is a supporter of the Austrian school whose representatives play a disproportionate role in the story. That said, Skousen does his best to present even economists whose work…
Lire la critique complèteThe Great Leveler
Walter Scheidel80/100Lu le juin 2025
The Great Leveler invites comparison with two other books: Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, and Rising Up and Rising Down by William Vollmann. All three books make the point that violent shocks to the established order can result in large scale redistribution of…
Lire la critique complèteThe Culture of Defeat
Wolfgang Schivelbusch100/100Lu le mai 2025
Culture of Defeat is made up of three interconnected essays, on historical losers: - Confederate States (loser of U.S. civil war - 1865) - France (loser of Franco-Prussian War - 1871) And - Germany (loser of World War I - 1918) In each case, defeat led to a national reckoning…
Lire la critique complèteJames
Percival L. Everett60/100Lu le mars 2025
Fine, if you like experimental fiction. I don't get the hoopla. I was under the impression that James was going to be a retelling of The Adventures of Huck Finn, told from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave who runs away with Huck in Twain's novel. It's not. Rather, the…
Lire la critique complèteNegro with a Hat
Colin Grant100/100Lu le févr. 2025
Huh, just realized I never posted my notes on this from like a year ago. Here they are: This book might been entitled "The Negro's Greatest Enemy". That's the name of an essay Garvey wrote in 1923. To some, the title might have suggested the KKK, whose ~3-4m members Garvey saw…
Lire la critique complèteIf Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin100/100Lu le janv. 2025
If Beale St Could Talk is told from the perspective of an 18 year old, Tish, who finds out that she’s pregnant a few days after her fiancé is arrested and charged (falsely) with rape. The book is about her family’s efforts to free him, and the barriers they run into at every…
Lire la critique complèteThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain100/100Lu le janv. 2025
I read Huck Finn because I'm fixin' to read [b:James|173754979|James|Percival Everett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1704107491l/173754979._SX50_.jpg|181379063] and I reckoned I should have some familiarity with the source material. Huck…
Lire la critique complèteThe Book of Eels
Patrik Svensson80/100Lu le oct. 2024
I’m really not sure how to rate this book, or even whether or not I liked it. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. It’s not really a book about Eels. Or rather, it’s as much about Eels as Moby Dick is about whales. There is a great deal of serious Eel content. The author has…
Lire la critique complèteSupermarket USA
Shane Hamilton60/100Lu le oct. 2024
I think Fresno Bob’s review is basically right: the author seems to have come up with “farms race” as an analogue to “arms race” and been so struck by it that they took a notion to write a book. They use the phrase 76 times, by my count. It got a bit tiresome. The book does have…
Lire la critique complèteMy Brilliant Friend
Chiara Lagani100/100Lu le oct. 2024
Elena Ferrante is a skilled prose writer. She has good ear for dialogue and for the subtle nuance of social interactions. She effectively portrays what it felt like to be a girl from a poor family growing up in Naples in the 1950s. The book reminded me a bit of Cat's Eye, by…
Lire la critique complèteWeavers, Scribes, and Kings
Amanda H. Podany100/100Lu le oct. 2024
I really liked Weavers, Scribes, and Kings. I was surprised at how much we know about the ancient near east based on archeological evidence. It seems like far more written records survive from the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian empires than from later civilizations. This is…
Lire la critique complèteThe Oxford history of Mexico
Michael C. Meyer80/100Lu le oct. 2024
The Oxford history of Mexico is a mixed bag, in terms of quality and style. Each chapter is written by a different author and is a more or less self contained essay on a particular aspect of a particular period. Overall I found it to be a decent introduction or overview of a…
Lire la critique complètePower Failure
William D. Cohan80/100Lu le sept. 2024
This is an excellent history of GE, albeit a clearly biased one. I'm giving it four stars instead of five because Cohan's focus on scandals and stupidity makes it seem like he has an ax to grind which, which makes him less than perfectly reliable narrator. The book's depiction…
Lire la critique complèteChristendom
Peter Heather100/100Lu le sept. 2024
Christendom is a well written and insightful account of Christianity's growth from a minor cult into the dominant religion of Western world. As Heather points out in the introduction, historically, most church histories have been written by Christians. For those authors, the…
Lire la critique complèteThe Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt100/100Lu le août 2024
My five star rating doesn’t mean I think Haidt is right about everything. As he points out, the advent of what he calls “phone based childhood” is essentially an unplanned experiment that kids have been enticed to opt in to. Given the scale and diversity of the experiment (and…
Lire la critique complèteHow to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England
Ruth Goodman100/100Lu le août 2024
I found this book delightful. On the one hand, it is a guide to the things that people in Elizabethan England found offensive, disgusting, outrageous, or otherwise distasteful. It includes a guide to verbal insults, which come to us both via literary works and via court cases…
Lire la critique complèteHeaven
Mieko Kawakami100/100Lu le juil. 2024
Very good, but tough to read at times. There’s an interesting contrast with the last novel I read, Whale. Whale contains far more brutal and intense violence, but is far less emotionally intense because the characters are more two-dimensional. By contrast, I couldn’t help but…
Lire la critique complèteThe Wages of Destruction
J. Adam Tooze100/100Lu le juil. 2024
This book gave me a new understanding of the World War Two (and the lead up to it). The histories of the period I'd read before tended to focus on political events, as Tooze argues, many of the political events only come into focus if you understand the economic factors and…
Lire la critique complèteRise and Fall of the EAST
Yasheng Huang100/100Lu le mai 2024
tl;dr is that the book is excellent, and intentionally ambitious. Even if Huang isn't right about everything (an inevitable hazard of writing something of such great scope), I think he is right about a lot of things.
Lire la critique complèteThe emissary
Yōko Tawada100/100Lu le févr. 2024
The Emissary is high among the best novels I've read in many years. It takes place in a future Japan that has cut itself off from the rest of the world. The story centers on Yoshiro (107 years old) and his great-grandson Mumei (7 years old). The government of Japan has passed a…
Lire la critique complèteStolen Focus
Johann Hari60/100Lu le déc. 2023
Stolen Focus suffers, ironically, from a lack of focus. When the author mentioned at the end that he was friends with Naomi Klein I was not surprised. Fans of her work will likely enjoy this book. I’m not a fan of her work. Three stars because there are glimmers of very…
Lire la critique complèteSeaguy
Grant Morrison80/100Lu le déc. 2023
I’m not sure what I just read, but it held my attention.
Lire la critique complèteGrit
Angela Duckworth80/100Lu le juil. 2023
Maybe I'll write a longer review eventually. For now, I'll just note that while I enjoyed Grit I was somewhat surprised that Duckworth dedicated a section (p. 74-78) to Catherine Cox's 1926 "Genetic Studies of Genius" a work I took to be thoroughly discredited. In fairness, the…
Lire la critique complèteGay New York
George Chauncey80/100Lu le juil. 2023
Would have been significantly better with more historical research and less theory and jargon.
Lire la critique complèteThe slave trade
Hugh Thomas80/100Lu le juin 2023
I'm glad I read it - I'm also glad to be done with it.
Lire la critique complèteTelephone
John Brooks60/100Lu le mai 2023
Generally interesting (if you’re interested in business history), but a little heavy on anecdotes for my tastes. Not nearly as good as Brooks’ shorter journalism.
Lire la critique complèteMarco Polo
Laurence Bergreen100/100Lu le mai 2023
This is a super interesting book, at least if you're you're the sorta person who's interested in this sorta thing. Bergreen uses Polo's book as a jumping-off point but cross-references it with local sources and the work of modern historians. The story itself reads like a novel…
Lire la critique complèteChildren of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky60/100Lu le févr. 2023
Meh, fine but not for me.
Lire la critique complèteScraping by
Seth Rockman100/100Lu le oct. 2022
Scraping By is much more interesting and important than its apparently narrow focus would suggest.
Lire la critique complèteUpgrade
Blake Crouch60/100Lu le sept. 2022
Meh. Crouch’s impression of a super-intelligent person reads a lot like a really high freshman liberal arts major.
Lire la critique complèteProject Hail Mary
Andy Weir40/100Lu le juil. 2022
Wait for the movie, then don’t waste your time on that either. If this was just a mediocre sci-fi adventure book I’d have given three stars (four if it was funny). It gets two starts because of the thread of authoritarian politics underlying the bad writing. Wooden dialogue, two…
Lire la critique complèteWish Lanterns
alec ash60/100Lu le juil. 2022
I like the concept but couldn't get that interested in the individual characters.
Lire la critique complèteBeer Blast
Philip Van Munching80/100Lu le juin 2022
The first 2/3s of Beer Blast is a general history of the U.S. beer industry. That history goes like this: in the later 19th century beer sales soared. Beer had been around for much longer, of course, but Americans primarily drank whiskey. The rise of beer was driven by the wave…
Lire la critique complèteHow the World Really Works
Vaclav Smil80/100Lu le mars 2022
Smil comes off a bit grumpy, but that doesn't mean he's wrong.
Lire la critique complèteYou Don't Know Me but You Don't Like Me
Nathan Rabin80/100Lu le févr. 2022
This book is about two bands I have never personally listened to, Phish and Insane Clown Posse (henceforth ICP). Both groups have exceptionally devoted fan bases and are regarded with contempt/disgust by society. As Rabin put it, "[ICP] didn't seem to have casual fans: Either…
Lire la critique complèteKidnap
Anja Shortland100/100Lu le févr. 2022
I'm not totally sure how to rate a book like this. It's five stars in the sense that IF you want to read a book on the microeconomics of the kidnapping/ransom business, this is the one to read.
Lire la critique complèteLabor of love
Moira Weigel80/100Lu le janv. 2022
This is a fun book with many amusing anecdotes, but Weigel has an unfortunate tendency to gloss over facts to create a smooth narrative, so I only gave it four stars. Stuff I liked: * The book contains several fun sections on various fads over the years, such as the popularity…
Lire la critique complèteCharlatan
Pope Brock100/100Lu le janv. 2022
If it were a novel I'd consider this absurdly implausible.
Lire la critique complèteThe Glass Hotel
Emily St. John Mandel60/100Lu le janv. 2022
Quit 43% of the way through. I just couldn’t bring myself to care what was going to happen next. The writing was fine. Felt kinda like a spoken friend telling a meandering story with no discernible purpose. Except I’m not friends with the characters (because they are made up).
Lire la critique complèteThe Traitor Baru Cormorant (Baru Cormorant #1)
Seth Dickinson80/100Lu le déc. 2021
Maybe 5 stars if you can keep track of all the character names.
Lire la critique complèteConquest of the Useless
Werner Herzog80/100Lu le oct. 2021
There's a lot going on in this little book. The ostensible subject is Herzog's experience travelling to the Peruvian Amazon to film a movie called Fitzcarcaldo. It is not, however, about the technical aspects making a movie. Rather, I got the sense that Fitzcaraldo was conceived…
Lire la critique complèteDish
Jeannette Walls80/100Lu le sept. 2021
I enjoyed Dish but thought that it had the potential to be more than it was if Walls had taken things in a slightly different direction. At the center of this story are supermarket tabloids, most famously the National Enquirer. These publications were hugely popular from the…
Lire la critique complèteParable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler60/100Lu le sept. 2021
So here's the quick summary of the book: In the mid-2020s the U.S. government has effectively collapsed. Roving bands travel the highways robbing and pillaging, there's not enough water or food, debt slavery is widespread, the only remaining function of the police is to shake…
Lire la critique complèteTuring's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (Penguin Press Science)
George Dyson80/100Lu le août 2021
The points made in the 1 and 2-star reviews of this book are largely accurate: 1) Dyson includes a history of the Princeton, NJ area going back to pre-Columbian times, which has no clear direct relevance to the main topic of the book. 2) The book is highly digressive…
Lire la critique complèteMerchants of Culture
John B. Thompson100/100Lu le juil. 2021
I'm giving this book 5 stars because it delivers what it promises: Namely providing a detailed analysis of the trade publishing industry in the U.S. from roughly post-WW2 to the present. That said, it's a 5-star book that I probably wouldn't necessarily recommend to anyone I…
Lire la critique complèteLove in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez80/100Lu le juin 2021
Four stars on the first go, but I think I will want to reread it in a few years and may reappraise it then. The world will wait with bated breath, I’m sure.
Lire la critique complèteThe fire next time
James Baldwin100/100Lu le juin 2021
Maybe 4.5 stars, but I'll round up. Quite good anyways. Baldwin knows a good phrase when he finds one and I would often find myself thinking "that's brilliant" and only later asking "is that actually true?" (much of the time it was, sometimes not).
Lire la critique complèteThe Feral Detective
Jonathan Lethem60/100Lu le juin 2021
Meh. I guess I just don't dig Jonathan Letham's writing that much. The characters seemed wooden and forgettable. I guess the protagonist was supposed to be witty/clever, but she just came off as kinda generic. It wasn't painful to read.
Lire la critique complèteProust and the squid : the story and science of the reading brain
Maryanne Wolf60/100Lu le mars 2021
Proust and the Squid is a rather meandering book. It includes stuff about how kids learn to read that was largely already familiar from a combination of pop psychology and linguistics (e.g., The Language Instinct) and various half-remembered college classes. This was…
Lire la critique complèteFactfulness
Hans Rosling100/100Lu le mars 2021
Factfullness is a good book. It builds on a lot of the work in heuristics and biases done by psychologists, economists, and philosophers over the past several decades to argue that people misunderstand the world in significant ways. More specifically, we generally have negative…
Lire la critique complèteThe Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen80/100Lu le mars 2021
I think I probably need to reread the Sympathizer to fully appreciate it. I'm pretty sure there were some metaphors I missed. Some social commentary I failed to appreciate. Some stuff about race and alienation that I didn't fully get my head around. Even on the rather…
Lire la critique complètePeak
K. Anders Ericsson100/100Lu le févr. 2021
My one complaint is that the marketing people at the publisher clearly dickered with the (sub)title. Nothing in this book is a secret. It's a summary of academic research from the last ~30+ yrs on skill acquisitions (much of which was done by Ericsson), written for a popular…
Lire la critique complèteThe Liar's Dictionary
Eley Williams60/100Lu le janv. 2021
The Liar's Dictionary is a book about logophiles (lovers of words). Folks with this particular fetish are rightly considered by the general public to be harmless weirdos. They are sometimes mistaken for being exceptionally intelligent. Underlying logophilia there are some mildly…
Lire la critique complèteFrench Exit
Patrick deWitt60/100Lu le janv. 2021
I’ve been thinking about how to write something about this book that represents what I thought but isn’t unduly mean. I guess maybe I can start with the positives: it’s a quick and easy read and generally not unpleasant. The prose is fine (certainly better than I can write). I…
Lire la critique complèteThe European Guilds
Sheilagh Ogilvie100/100Lu le janv. 2021
I ain't gonna lie; this was not a fun book to read. The book is meticulously researched, and Ogilvie thoroughly convinced me of pretty much all of her claims about the guilds. She also makes a lot of points with potential implications for modern economics. Hence 5-stars. But it…
Lire la critique complèteNotorious RBG
Irin Carmon40/100Lu le nov. 2020
If I’d bought this book in physical form (vs e-book) and been able to flip through it in advance I might have been saved a great deal of irritation. It is a sort of hastily pulled together collage of pictures (sooo many pictures...), fragments of opinions, and fun trivia facts…
Lire la critique complèteThe Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Jennifer 8. Lee80/100Lu le oct. 2020
3.37 stars. If you want to read a book about the globalization of Chinese cuisine explained in a breezy and anecdotal way this is the book for you. If that doesn’t sound interesting maybe this isn’t the book for you. I enjoyed it but it’s not something I’m going to go around…
Lire la critique complètePop. 1280
Jim Thompson100/100Lu le août 2020
Wow. Pop. 1280 knocked me plum on my ass, as the narrator might put it. Pop. 1280 is literature dressed up to look like pulp fiction (specifically crime fiction). I went into it expecting something in the general vein of Chandler, Christie, or Hammett with perhaps a bit more…
Lire la critique complèteLovecraft Country
Matt Ruff100/100Lu le juil. 2020
Maybe 4.5 stars? A lot of the negative reviews focus on how the book is disjointed or doesn't cohere in the way they wanted. In the afterword, Ruff explains that he initially started working on the story as a serial TV show, which I think explains the style. It is, essentially…
Lire la critique complèteAshes to ashes
Richard Kluger80/100Lu le juin 2020
Exhaustively researched, which makes it occasionally exhausting to read. Kluger doesn't help matters with his love of extremely long sentences containing sub-clauses within sub-clauses. Overall, it's a solid history but a good editor could have cut about 400 pages without losing…
Lire la critique complèteRecursion
Blake Crouch80/100Lu le mai 2020
Trippy and fun - read it in a weekend. Similar premise to the Lathe of Heaven, but with a semi-scientific gloss.
Lire la critique complèteThe Cabin at the End of the World
Paul Tremblay60/100Lu le janv. 2020
Airport impulse buy. Endorsement from Steven King on the cover gives a sense of what you're in for. Engaging enough - it is what it is.
Lire la critique complèteA Tale for the Time Being
Ruth L. Ozeki100/100Lu le janv. 2020
A Tale For the Time Being is a story that could very easily have gone off the rails in the hands of a less skilled writer, but Ozeki pulled it off well IMO. Here are just a few of the ingredients: Metafiction, analogies between Buddhism and quantum mechanics, multiple suicidal…
Lire la critique complèteMy Favorite Thing Is Monsters, vol 1
Emil Ferris80/100Lu le févr. 2019
Really more like 4.5 stars.
Lire la critique complèteThe Twenty-Seventh City (Bestselling Backlist)
Jonathan Franzen60/100Lu le mars 2018
Twenty-seventh City is the least enjoyable of Franzen's books that I've read (I've read all his other novels, except for Strong Motion). It was written when he was young and, I think, trying too hard to please the professors he'd taken literature classes with. Part of the issue…
Lire la critique complèteThe paranoid style in American politics
Richard Hofstadter100/100Lu le janv. 2018
A classic. Explains so much about Trump, despite being written decades ago.
Lire la critique complèteLegacy of Ashes
Tim Weiner100/100Lu le mars 2017
Legacy of Ashes is an excellent, if fundamentally conservative, history of the CIA. As you could guess from the title, the book is scathing. The CIA’s history consists of a long and unmitigated string of screw-ups and idiocy. There’s not really any more charitable way to put it…
Lire la critique complèteGood to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Jim Collins40/100Lu le oct. 2016
Collins explains how your organization can make the leap to greatness like Circuit City, Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo.
Lire la critique complèteDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Pauline Francis80/100Lu le janv. 2016
Kinda ridiculous but fun. My favorite part was when Mr. Hyde ran over a child “like a juggernaut.” He was on foot, so it must have taken some doing. That’s what happens when ya do drugs though. You turn into a weird child-trodding juggernaut. At least that’s the lesson I took…
Lire la critique complèteJapan Inc
Shōtarō Ishinomori40/100Lu le nov. 2012
Who'd have thought a book about the Japanese economy in the 80s could be so boring? Japan Inc. tries to be both an economics textbook and a narrative and doesn't do particularly well at either. The economics is light and often incompletely explained, and the characters in the…
Lire la critique complèteThe Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes
Neil Gaiman80/100Lu le sept. 2012
Enjoyable enough, but I still don't really get Gaiman's cult following.
Lire la critique complèteThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins80/100Lu le sept. 2012
If you like romance novels but wish they had more violence directed towards children, this might be the book for you. It's a beautiful story about love, with a great deal of brutal violence.
Lire la critique complèteMoby Dick; or, the Whale
Herman Melville80/100Lu le juil. 2012
Moby Dick is so much better than its reputation led me to believe it would be. I expected four-hundred pages of meandering prose about the misery of the human condition. What I got was six-hundred pages (I was even wrong about the length!) of jaunty, conversational, and good…
Lire la critique complèteBartleby, the Scrivener
Herman Melville100/100Lu le juil. 2012
I'd rather not say why I like this story.
Lire la critique complèteOh the glory of it all
Sean Wilsey80/100Lu le mars 2012
This book really deserves perhaps 3.5 stars. It gets off to a 4 star start, and has some 5 star moments, but lackluster editing leaves a lot of dead weight. I think this could have made an even better 200 page book (it's almost 500). Perhaps the publisher thought the imposing…
Lire la critique complèteOmensetter's Luck
William H. Gass60/100Lu le mars 2012
Reverend Furber's sermon near the end of the book sent a chill down my spine, but otherwise I just felt like I was missing the point.
Lire la critique complèteCotton
Stephen Yafa80/100Lu le janv. 2012
Cotton is a series of closely connected essays on the plant. A few of them are of questionable relevance. For instance he dedicates a fair amount of space to a short of the history of the Blues on the grounds that there are some blues songs about Boll Weevils, and some blues…
Lire la critique complèteDiary of a very bad year : confessions of an anonymous hedge fund manager
Keith Gessen80/100Lu le janv. 2012
These interviews with an anonymous hedge fund manager give a nice summary of the '08 financial crisis, along with its causes and consequences. The writing is approachable for folks without much background in finance.
Lire la critique complèteThe White Tiger
Aravind Adiga80/100Lu le janv. 2012
The White Tiger starts out funny and gets progressively darker. The storyline bears a strong resemblance to Native Son, while the prose reminded me of Absurdistan or perhaps a Confederacy of Dunces. I enjoyed all of those books, so I can hardly be too critical of a writer whose…
Lire la critique complèteBetter
Atul Gawande80/100Lu le déc. 2011
Much of the book is a defense of what might be called "boring virtues." These are things like diligence, and persistence. Improving care outcomes doesn’t require genius or cutting edge technology, but competence, and systems that help reduce errors.
Lire la critique complèteCrime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky40/100Lu le déc. 2011
I found Crime and Punishment generally boring, and at times barely coherent. Perhaps I’m no longer at a proper point in my life to appreciate Dostoevsky. Like all of his books Crime & Punishment is a polemic, and like most of what he wrote post 1864 it's a conservative polemic…
Lire la critique complèteWittgenstein's mistress
David Markson60/100Lu le déc. 2011
I am a bit ashamed to give only three stars to Wittgenstein's Mistress. In an interview in the afterword Markinson refers to the "C students," and "semiliterates" who rejected the novel 54 times before it was finally accepted. Maybe I’m one of them, or maybe he’s an ass.
Lire la critique complèteThe Prize
Daniel Yergin80/100Lu le nov. 2011
In its 800 pages The Prize begins to get a bit repetitive. This isn't strictly Yergin's fault - the history of the oil industry is itself repetitive. Still, from a reader's perspective it's not particularly edifying to spend ten pages on yet another story of gritty oil men who…
Lire la critique complèteEverything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer40/100Lu le août 2011
Nothing was Illuminated and I was bored.
Lire la critique complèteGroundwork of the metaphysics of morals
Immanuel Kant60/100Lu le août 2011
Ugh, just imagine what the world would be like if everyone read Kant (shudders).
Lire la critique complèteVive La Revolution
Mark Steel40/100Lu le janv. 2011
Mediocre history + bad jokes.
Lire la critique complèteOpen Veins Of Latin America
Eduardo Galeano80/100Lu le sept. 2010
I'm a little bit surprised at how controversial this book apparently is. I mean, it's true that Galeano makes some controversial claims, but the most scandalous stuff he talks about is generally well documented. For instance, it's a matter of historical record that the U.S…
Lire la critique complèteThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz80/100Lu le sept. 2009
This book reminded me of what a dork I am for not knowing Spanish.
Lire la critique complèteUnderstanding China
John Bryan Starr40/100Lu le janv. 2009
After finishing the book I still didn’t understand China. I had to go read some other books.
Lire la critique complèteMarx
Peter Singer80/100Lu le janv. 2009
A good very short introduction to Marx... Precisely as the title and author would lead you to expect.
Lire la critique complèteA Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole80/100Lu le sept. 2008
Very enjoyable, a bit sloppy in places, but the quality of the protagonist easily overcomes the occasionally weak prose.
Lire la critique complèteMaus
Art Spiegelman80/100Lu le févr. 2008
Not as good as it's reputation, but still damn good.
Lire la critique complèteThe American Way of War
Russell F. Weigley80/100Lu le févr. 2008
The 2/3s of this book I read were a good survey of American military policy and strategy.
Lire la critique complèteThe poems of Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl80/100Lu le févr. 2008
I share Wittgenstein’s assessment: I do not understand [Trakl's poems]; but their tone pleases me.
Lire la critique complèteCivilization and Its Discontents
Sigmund Freud60/100Lu le janv. 2008
Some of Freud’s analogies meander on for a long time without really leading anywhere, but it’s still an interesting read.
Lire la critique complèteBlood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy100/100Lu le janv. 2008
Blood Meridian is enjoyable; for the kind of people who enjoy deeply disturbing things that they can’t unread. For first time readers, I would suggest purchasing a bottle of whiskey to accompany the book.
Lire la critique complèteNaming and necessity
Saul A. Kripke60/100Lu le janv. 2008
Naming and Necessity is Saul Kripke’s famous proof that you can be a genius and still not have anything useful or interesting to say.
Lire la critique complètePostwar
Tony Judt100/100Lu le juil. 2007
It's huge, it's filled with data, it's incredibly written, if you only ever read one book on European history this should be it.
Lire la critique complèteTruth and Truthfulness
Bernard Williams80/100Lu le juin 2007
I recall enjoying this in grad school, but when I went back to it years later it reminded me why I quit grad school.
Lire la critique complèteA heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Dave Eggers80/100Lu le mai 2007
Very enjoyably. Witty. Doesn't require you to think too much. Everything one could want in a book.
Lire la critique complèteAnarchy, State, and Utopia
Robert Nozick80/100Lu le avr. 2007
Nozick is wrong about almost everything, but he’s wrong in interesting and sometimes illuminating ways.
Lire la critique complèteLibertarianism without inequality
Michael Otsuka40/100Lu le mars 2007
The one interesting part is his argument that the constitution should expire every generation.
Lire la critique complèteTaking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right
Harry G. Frankfurt100/100Lu le févr. 2007
Taking Ourselves Seriously is a very good essay.
Lire la critique complèteLiving high and letting die
Peter K. Unger100/100Lu le févr. 2007
Argues that non-consequentialist moral theories collapse into intuitionism, which gives self contradictory and unhelpful guidance on what to do.
Lire la critique complèteTheory and Reality
Peter Godfrey-Smith80/100Lu le janv. 2007
Decent introduction to philosophy of science.
Lire la critique complèteMeditations
Marcus Aurelius Aurelius80/100Lu le janv. 2007
Not quite as good as Epictetus, but still enjoyable.
Lire la critique complètePresent past
Richard Terdiman20/100Lu le janv. 2007
I couldn’t understand anything in this book. maybe it was good. I really wouldn't know. I read it cover-to-cover though.
Lire la critique complèteTractatus logico-philosophicus
Ludwig Wittgenstein80/100Lu le déc. 2006
I like what little I understand of the Tractatus.
Lire la critique complèteNabokov's Pale fire
Brian Boyd80/100Lu le oct. 2006
Great, if you want to know what the fuck is going on in Pale Fire. Some nice general information on how to read and specifically how to read Nabokov.
Lire la critique complèteSwann's Way
Marcel Proust80/100Lu le sept. 2006
The first half is significantly more enjoyable than the second, but an all around pleasant read. I don't know that there's much to his stuff on memory once you actually try to pin down what it is but the prose is nice.
Lire la critique complèteStrong opinions
Vladimir Nabokov80/100Lu le févr. 2006
Entertaining interviews in which Nabokov mercilessly attacks everyone he's ever met or read.
Lire la critique complèteThe Cambridge Companion to Nabokov
Julian W Connolly80/100Lu le janv. 2006
Some enjoyable essays on Nabokov's life and work.
Lire la critique complèteA Season in Hell & Illuminations
Arthur Rimbaud60/100Lu le janv. 2006
I don't like Rimbaud as much as everyone else seems to, but he does have an occasional great line.
Lire la critique complèteThe roads have come to an end now
Rolf Jacobsen100/100Lu le janv. 2006
Many of the best poems I have ever read are in this short volume. You have to sit down after reading them.
Lire la critique complèteSelected Poems
William Carlos Williams40/100Lu le janv. 2006
Even when Williams’ poems are well crafted (they usually are) he is among the most boring poets I’ve ever read.
Lire la critique complèteBetter Off
Eric Brende100/100Lu le janv. 2006
Inspirational, really makes me want to get rid of this stupid computer.
Lire la critique complèteRobert Nozick (Contemporary Philosophy in Focus)
David Schmidtz80/100Lu le janv. 2006
Some very good essays explaining why Nozick is wrong about various things (and occasionally sticking up for him). Actually the essays are better than most of Nozick's own writing.
Lire la critique complèteSurvival In Auschwitz
Levi100/100Lu le janv. 2006
One of the dozen saddest books I've ever read.
Lire la critique complèteBeyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche80/100Lu le janv. 2006
Quite entertaining, even when he's wrong.
Lire la critique complètePale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov80/100Lu le janv. 2006
Reading Nabokov always makes me wish I were smarter because he makes you feel like there's something absolutely incredible under the (admittedly very nice) surface. This can be a pleasant feeling, but it can also be disappointing when you scratch the surface and find that what's…
Lire la critique complèteDostoevsky
Joseph Frank100/100Lu le nov. 2005
Frank's biography is, perhaps, as good as anything by its subject. It helps that Doestovsky’s life in these years was more wild than a character in a novel. He was arrested for printing subversive tracts, sentenced to be executed, taken out to be executed (czarist Russia didn’t…
Lire la critique complèteEugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin40/100Lu le oct. 2005
Probably better in Russian.
Lire la critique complèteDark Continent
Mark Mazower80/100Lu le juil. 2005
Nice explanation of why the "triumph of democracy" wasn’t as inevitable as it now appears, and why fascism was so appealing in the 20s and 30s.
Lire la critique complèteSpreading the American dream
Emily S. Rosenberg100/100Lu le févr. 2005
Great book, filled with numbers and facts about how America worked to ensure its cultural hegemony in early and middle twentieth century, and to what ends. Goes well with the Tragedy of American Diplomacy (focused more on economic hegemony).
Lire la critique complètePower and protest
Jeremi Suri100/100Lu le févr. 2005
Détente was the result of tacit agreement between the major powers to focus on controlling their own citizens.
Lire la critique complèteVintage Hughes
Langston Hughes60/100Lu le janv. 2005
Hughes has a couple of poems I really like, but his prose isn’t for me.
Lire la critique complèteSomething Happened
Joseph Heller80/100Lu le janv. 2005
Takes a long time to get through, depressing as hell, boring in places, yet somehow worth reading.
Lire la critique complèteFreedom evolves
Daniel C. Dennett80/100Lu le janv. 2005
Great survey of the implications of scientific developments for the idea of free will.
Lire la critique complèteThe painted bed
Donald Hall60/100Lu le janv. 2005
Poems about how Hall’s wife died and his life fell apart. It’s a bit of a downer tbh.
Lire la critique complèteSavage inequalities : children in America's schools
Jonathan Kozol80/100Lu le janv. 2005
Incredibly sad.
Lire la critique complèteThe Nicomachean ethics
Aristotle60/100Lu le janv. 2005
Aristotle liked to say incorrect things in a very authoritative way.
Lire la critique complèteBowling Alone
Robert D. Putnam100/100Lu le janv. 2005
How U.S. communities broke (before the internet).
Lire la critique complèteCulture jam
Kalle Lasn60/100Lu le janv. 2005
About on a par with No Logo, but more focused on consumerism.
Lire la critique complèteSceptical essays
Bertrand Russell80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Fine arguments for skepticism about various things.
Lire la critique complèteSailing alone around the room
Billy Collins80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Amusing, clever, little poems.
Lire la critique complèteThe Eden express
Mark Vonnegut100/100Lu le janv. 2004
Great book about going crazy in the 1960s and getting over it.
Lire la critique complèteThe Man Who Loved Only Numbers
Paul Hoffman80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Interesting story about obsession and single-mindedness and how great they can be.
Lire la critique complèteWhen Nietzsche Wept
Irvin D. Yalom60/100Lu le janv. 2004
As novels about the intersection of continental philosophy and psychoanalysis go this one was pretty good.
Lire la critique complèteThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon80/100Lu le janv. 2004
A very enjoyable book with some tips on writing mystery novels and and math.
Lire la critique complèteIn the belly of the beast
Jack Henry Abbott80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Reasons to avoid being sent to prison.
Lire la critique complèteReefer Madness
Eric Schlosser80/100Lu le janv. 2004
More fine journalism, should probably be three books to really give adequate treatment to each of the topics, but he does well with the limited space.
Lire la critique complèteThe Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin100/100Lu le janv. 2004
Who wouldn't want to be an anarchist after reading this?
Lire la critique complèteNo Logo
Naomi Klein60/100Lu le janv. 2004
A laundry list of complaints and grievances against globalization and capitalism. Would be significantly improved if Kleinman had a read a book or talked to an economist. That’s not to say all of the complaints and grievances are off base. There are reasons to complain and be…
Lire la critique complèteLudwig Wittgenstein
Ray Monk80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Actually read this before I read any Wittgenstein. It’s will written and interesting, though maybe a bit longer than it needed to be.
Lire la critique complèteBlue Blood
Edward Conlon80/100Lu le janv. 2004
Really well written memoir on the day to day experience of a NYC cop.
Lire la critique complèteWhy I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects
Bertrand Russell80/100Lu le janv. 2003
Nice summary of arguments against the existence of God in general and Christianity in particular. I don't know that there's anything too original here, but Russell is a good writer.
Lire la critique complèteBrave New World Revisited
Aldous Huxley100/100Lu le janv. 2000
Probably better than Brave New World.
Lire la critique complèteAtlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC)
Ayn Rand40/100Lu le janv. 2000
Great for people who liked the Fountainhead but wished it was longer
Lire la critique complèteThe Fountainhead
Ayn Rand40/100Lu le janv. 2000
Not as long as Atlas Shrugged - so it's better in that way.
Lire la critique complète
