Avid Reader Review by George Yatchisin As I was reading Tommy Tomlinson’s Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, something delightful and ridiculous—at least in…
Category: Nonfiction
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger
Harper Review by Walter Cummins My approach to The Light Eaters differs from those who have praised the book for its presentation of the latest findings about plant behavior, including…
The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet by Brett Christophers
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay An item in the Harper’s Index in the June 2024 issue of the magazine notes that corporate broadcast news coverage about climate change decreased by…
Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay Many years ago I wrote a letter to my county supervisor protesting the proposed development of an avocado orchard near where my in-laws lived. I…
Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters by Charan Ranganath
Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins It occurred to me that one approach to reviewing of Ranganath’s explanation of human memory would be to test my own memory as I recall…
The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster by John O’Connor
Sourcebooks Review by George Yatchisin How much of writing is staring down the dark. (Just ask Dante and his selva oscura.) Of course that also means, how much of life…
Muse of Fire: World War I As Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets by Michael Korda
Liveright Review by David Starkey “Reading about how a succession of relatively small misjudgments and poor decisions can lead, with surprising speed, to human catastrophe on an unimaginable scale should,…
Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World by Edward Humes
Penguin Review by David Starkey In 2013’s Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, Edward Humes describes in detail the massive harm caused by America’s profligate production of trash. Garbology…
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins We’ve all probably witnessed similar scenes afternoons when school is out, middle schoolers gathered in groups, all fixated on their smartphone screens and ignoring each…
Passport Photos by Amitava Kumar
California Review by Walter Cummins A tangle of borders dominates Amitava Kumar’s Passport Photos. The most obvious are the boundaries between nations that require verification of a small booklet to…