Napa at Last Light by James Conaway
★★★★☆ The genesis of Napa at Last Light, the final volume of a trilogy, began with Napa: The Story of an America Eden (1990), “a journalistic foray to California in the early 1980s.” What...
Category: Nonfiction
Built by Roma Agrawal
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The wind blows, the ground shakes, and your home remains standing whether it is stick-built or a skyscraper of steel and concrete. There are specific reasons why this is...
Ethics: The Art of Character by Gregory R. Beabout
★★★☆☆ If you only vaguely remember Plato’s cave analogy or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, or you are confused as to what passes for ethical behavior in our current fraught times, then Gregory R. Beabout’s succinct...
The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks
★★★★☆ In January 2015, neurologist Oliver Sacks learned that the ocular cancer he had battled years before had metastasized to his liver. He was given six to eighteen months to live. Upon hearing the...
On Power by Gene Simmons
★★☆☆☆ KISS co-founder Gene Simmons really likes power. So much so that his new book’s title contains this word three times. On Power: My Journey Through the Corridors of Power and How You Can...
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
★★★☆☆ Shame on UK Native Reni Eddo-Lodge for titling her debut with a bold declaration, then walking it back in the book’s second sentence. In this caveat, she clarifies that she’s not abandoning all...
The Secret Life by Andrew O’Hagan
★★★★☆ Twenty-first century technology has allowed us to disappear into our machines, to hide behind avatars and fake user info and engage, anonymously, with the digital world around us. Although people can become anybody...
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
★★☆☆☆ “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.” In Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Neil deGrasse Tyson begins at the beginning – the very beginning, as in 14 billion...
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee
★★★★☆ With roughly 30 published books and more than 100 pieces in The New Yorker over the course of a half century, John McPhee is widely regarded a master and a pioneer of the...
