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Book 1,019: The West – Naoíse Mac Sweeney

Book cover of "The West" with Amazon Affiliate linkThis was a fascinating read. Mac Sweeney takes what you think you know about “Western Civilization” and attempts to flip it on its head via fourteen mini-biographies about historical figures, only a few of which I knew immediately.

I feel horrible it’s taken me this long to push my response out. The publisher reached out in January 2023. I blew past the publication date in May 2023, and finally read it in December 2023. So, I’m hanging my head, because it’s now taken me another month and a half to actually publish my response.

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Book 742: Crime Dot Com – Geoff White

Book cover of I honestly don’t know how people exist without being paranoid ALL THE TIME. When I first said yes to this after the publicist reached out, it was like 95% because the author’s first name was Geoff and 5% because the subject was interesting. And then I found myself completely absorbed with this book.*

Now I’m not saying we’re totally screwed, but I mean we’re not really that far from being totally screwed and White does a really good job of explaining all of it. He takes an in depth look at the start of cybercrime with the quaint “Love Bug” virus (Wikipedia) to the state sponsored hacking/cyber assault that nudged us into the rotting cesspool of Trumpism that is the US right now.
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Book 678: Blowout – Rachel Maddow

Cover art for "Blowout" and Amazon affiliate linkMy jaw legit hurt after I was reading this because my mouth kept hanging open at the sheer audacity of the companies, politicians, and countries in this book. Seriously though, let’s just say that, this is one of those books that if I used only emoji’s to review books would just be this one (link to gif of Nick from Big Mouth‘s head blowing up in amazement).

I stumbled across this book after seeing a review in the Washington Post (months after the book and review were published) and I reached out to the publisher for a review copy and they kindly sent one.* What I wasn’t expecting was for this thing to be like a spy/thriller novel. It. Was. Insanity. Just when you think something more ridiculous can’t possibly be done, Maddow gives her smirk and says, “but wait….there’s more.”

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Book 658: The Children of Harvey Milk – Andrew Reynolds

Cover art of "The Children of Harvey Milk"I’m not sure how I stumbled across this one, but when I did back in May I requested a copy from the publisher and they kindly obliged.* I was interested because of the subject matter, but also because Reynolds is based at UNC Chapel Hill (my undergrad) and his name rang a bell because he’d chaired the Sexuality Studies program there at some point in the recent past. And then with my master’s degree focusing on the Civil Partnership Act (2014) in the UK, of course I was going to want to read this book and see what he had to say.

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Book 588: Crashed – How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World – Adam Tooze

What a tome. I requested a copy of this from the publisher back in August 2018 after reading this review from the NYTimes.* It took me three months to get to it and another month-and-a-half to actually read it! And it was worth the read, now I just need to read the “Framing Crashed” posts on his website to see what else I missed!

There are some mixed reviews on Goodreads, some people think it’s boring (uh duh – hello finance, politics and history), some think they’ve written better books or articles (get out of here self-promoters, nobody wants you), and others, like myself, appreciated the staggering amount of ground covered by Tooze in this work.

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