Reviews of other people’s books
Graham Moore. The Sherlockian. New York: TWELVE, 2010. 350 pages. Book Review Friday is back with a bang. After a little bit of a layoff, I’ve recharged myself with some excellent fiction. I really, really liked this book. There’s only so many places a mystery can go. Someone has to get murdered, and someone has […]
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book reviewsAvi Steinberg. Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2010. 416 pages. Memoirs by youngish literary types who’ve yet to find their calling are a growth industry. I recently read Beth Raymer’s Lay the Favorite, about her pre-MFA stint as a sports bettor’s assistant, and Avi Steinberg’s tale
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book reviewsSusan Casey. The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean. New York: Doubleday, 2010. 336 pages. In THE WAVE, Susan Casey looks at the science behind giant waves (towering over 100 ft), which were once thought impossible. Turns out, they’re crashing around the middle of the ocean all the time.
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book reviewsAlyn Shipton. Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 283 pages. Cab Calloway was an important figure in American popular music history: over his career, which spanned decades, he sold millions of records and blurred several musical genres. His big band was one of the crucibles of bop. In this studiously
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book reviewsErik Sass, with Will Pearson and Mandesh Hattikudur. The Mental Floss History of the United States. New York: Harper, 2010. 448 pages. Book review Friday is back! Again! There are plenty of statistics out there that demonstrate just how little most Americans know about their history. This is doubtless a bad thing, and not just
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book reviewsEran Katz. Where Did Noah Park the Ark? Ancient Memory Techniques for Remembering Practically Anything. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2010. 237 pages. Book Review Friday is back! With a vengeance! And since I’ve read this book, and I can’t cite forgetfulness as an excuse for not posting book reviews here each Friday. Everyone would
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book reviewsGraeme Donald. The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln, and 46 other stories of unknown players from history. Long Island City, New York: Osprey, 2010. 288 pages. Most people have an inkling of the major players in history: they know the name of John Wilkes Booth, the man who shot Lincoln. But how
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book reviewsBeth Raymer. Lay the Favorite: A Gambling Memoir. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 201. 240 pages. Sports betting might be the clubbiest form of gambling. Every game has its own lingo, but sports betting, maybe because it’s rooted in real physical competition, just seems a little more insular. There are plenty of books out there
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book reviewsLeo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters. Android Karenina. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2010. 541 pages. I don’t review too much fiction, but I thought I’d give this one a shot. Quirk Books has put out a few “mash-up” books–combinations of classic (and public domain) works of literature with genre fiction. The titles alone–like Price and Prejudice
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book reviewsLynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman. The Secrets of College Success: Over 600 Tips & Tricks Revealed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. 224 pages. Most college graduates feel that, if they’d have known everything going in that they knew when they graduated, they would have had a much better time. THE SECRETS OF COLLEGE SUCCESS
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book reviewsMatt Ridley. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 448 pages. It seems like there’s always a market for doom and gloom, even though, for the most part, things have gotten much, much better for humanity over the past few centuries and even the past few decades. In THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST, Matt
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book reviewsJoseph Mazur. What’s Luck Got to Do With It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler’s Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 277 pages. I’m on a real book-reviewing tear. I’ve got five more in the hopper, including two for academic journals that I’ll only post synopses of here. Today I’m sharing my thoughts
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book reviewsJack Harpster. King of the Slots: William “Si” Redd. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010. 273 pages. Si Redd might have had a bigger impact on American casino gambling than anyone else in the years 1960 to 1990. He’s got some big competition–Jay Sarno, Steve Wynn, and Kirk Kerkorian are a few names that spring to mind.
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book reviewsJonathan Weiner. Long for this World: The Strange Science of Immortality. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 320 pages. Immortality’s a tricky subject to write about. There are few people who wouldn’t be at least a little interested in the prospect of living forever, but since no one’s been documented doing it, there’s really not much to
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book reviewsAkasha Lonsdale. Do I Kneel or Do I Bow? What You Need to Know When Attending Religious Occasions. London: Kuperard, 2010. 336 pages. This book sets out to help people understand different religions, with an emphasis on the practical–how to behave at “religious occasions.” Written from a primarily British perspective, it covers eight religions: Roman
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book reviewsRobert L. O’Connell. The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic. New York: Random House, 2010. 336 pages. This book, by military historian Robert O’Connell, looks at the hows and also the whys of the battle of Cannae, one of the most conclusive–but ultimately least decisive–battles in Western history. In
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book reviewsDaniel Okrent. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scriber, 2010. 480 pages. Prohibition is one of the great riddles of American history. Looking at it from the distance of three generations, it seems inexplicable that Americans voted to outlaw intoxicating beverages, and it seems clear that the drys were on the
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book reviewsDavid Gordon. The Serialist. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2010. 335 pages. Fiction is much harder to review than non-fiction. With the latter, you just need a good topic and a passable writing style, and you can get a feel for the book within a few pages. Fiction, which requires a much bigger investment
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book reviewsJoel J. Miller. The Revolutionary Paul Revere. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 304 pages. Paul Revere is famous for his midnight ride, but his life says a great deal more about the founding of the American republic than that single incident. In this new biography, Joel Miller uses Revere’s life to tell readers a little more
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book reviewsJack Cashill. Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit & Debit, from Aristotle to AIG. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 259 pages. With many of our current economic problems blamed on over-leveraging (both nationally and right here in Las Vegas), it’s a good idea to get a sense of how credit and debt have historically
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book reviews