3-stars - Book Reviews

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3-stars

A collection of 46 posts

An Officer and a Spy

An Officer and a Spy

As anti-Semitic sentiment ran high in 1894, the French military conducted one of the most egregious witch hunts in modern history. In the dramatized "An Officer and a Spy," Robert Harris (author of "Fatherland") plunges us into the infamous Dreyfus Affair. Suspecting a German spy in their ranks, the French

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

I don't get what all the fuss is about. Peterson's book is a ultimately just a grab-bag of old-school self-help advice. He tries to do too much and in too short of a book, but his ideas are not particularly radical.

Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies

I don't always read chick-lit, but when I do... someone usually dies. Liane Moriarty's "Big Little Lies" did not disappoint in that regard. In fact, it was one of the more creative murder mystery plot structures I've seen in a long time.

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not

Hemingway bounces wildly between a bunch of different perspectives and somehow covers an enormous number of ideas in just 180 pages. Race relations, socialism, rebellion, crime, sex, greed, wealth, laziness, family life, gender roles, violence, nature, work, power, etc.

Jane Lathrop Stanford, Mother of a University

Jane Lathrop Stanford, Mother of a University

The founder of Stanford University was murdered?? And the case was never solved?! And the first president of Stanford may have been part of the murder conspiracy... how had I never heard about this before?

Against Nature

A book with no plot, just a deeply unsympathetic main character whose defining feature is his overwhelming malaise. In some ways it felt like an aristocratic, erudite precursor to "The Catcher in the Rye"

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

Explores the early days of large-scale credit card theft, detailing the mechanics of how hackers stole credit card numbers, manufactured fake cards, and employed a team of buyers to make fraudulent purchases with the cards.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

As the unsolved murders piled up, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover stepped in. The Osage murders were among Hoover's earliest major cases as director and his reputation was riding on their successful resolution. As we follow the undercover agents infiltrating the Osage reservation...

Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist

Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist

As the largest unsolved art heist in history, the ISGM heist should have made for a fascinating book. Yet "Master Thieves" often repeats itself, meanders wildly, and drags on to an inconclusive conclusion.

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens

True to form, Eddie's memoir "Believe Me" is rambling and hilarious. Several sections of the book are surprisingly touching - Eddie's artistic perseverance hit me right in the feels. As he says, the most important part of his success was "stamina, perseverance, and determination."

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

Internet rationality celebrity Eliezer Yudkowsky drags us through an epic logical journey to the land of the "Bayesian Conspiracy" and the idea that real rationality is about "winning."

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter

If you can get past the nuttery, Adams makes clear recommendations for how to apply insights from behavioral psychology to develop a "weapons-grade" persuasion capability. The main takeaway is that we're way less rational than we think we are and that visual persuasion is most powerful.

How Economics Shapes Science

How Economics Shapes Science

Stephan reveals how economic incentives have made American science risk averse and turned our universities into lobbying superpowers and employment pyramid schemes.

The Fold

Writing good sci-fi is hard. Peter Clines' "The Fold" starts at about 4 stars and ends with a 3... and he's lucky not to get a 2. He's got a fun take on the classic sci-fi trope of top-secret government labs, but the ending is contrived and doesn't

The Theory And Practice Of Gamesmanship; Or, The Art Of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating

The Theory And Practice Of Gamesmanship; Or, The Art Of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating

A wickedly dry satire dressed up as a self-help manual. Published in 1953 by British Gamesman Stephen Potter, this tiny book covers all phases of a game, from the pre-game disorientation with bad driving directions to "luncheonship" and "losemanship" (how to win, even if you lose)

Timberland Investments: A Portfolio Perspective

Timberland Investments: A Portfolio Perspective

"Timberland Investments" is more interesting than useful. Written in 1992 before timberland investing had become as mainstream as it is today among pension funds and endowments, Zinkhan's book offers a perspective from an interesting point in time. However, the landscape has become significantly more crowded and the world

Redshirts

I was grinning like an idiot as Scalzi skewered classic sci-fi tropes with irreverent panache in "Redshirts". The book's best feature is its outrageously sarcastic and witty dialogue. The first half was genuinely hilarious and I was prepared to give the book a 4 star rating, but then

Blood Meridian

Lots of people love this book, but I just couldn't get into Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian". I get that it's supposed to be a book about senseless violence. I get that it's not supposed to have any moral development. I get that it's written in a brutal, pseudo-biblical

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ray Bradbury is best known for his sci-fi, but when I stumbled across his ominously titled "Something Wicked This Way Comes", I had to give it a try. Macabre and brimming with baroque language, Bradbury's novel seems to be too dark and difficult for its target demographic of

The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception

Best known for his "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley also made his stamp on the counter-culture with his notorious mescalin book, "The Doors of Perception". In it, he brings us along on one of his mescalin trips and takes frequent detours into the worlds of art,

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

When I picked up Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark", I wasn't expecting such a thorough treatment of alien abduction claims! This book is Sagan's plea for our society to adopt a more scientific perspective as we confront both personal and global

Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes

Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes

"Warnings" asks the most important question of our time: "when it comes to predicting disasters, who should we trust?" Unfortunately, Clarke and Eddy's answer is vague and untenable. One of their four key recommendations is to build a system to "sift the credible from the

Science: The Endless Frontier

Science: The Endless Frontier

"Science: The Endless Frontier" is a landmark in the history of American science because it launched the National Science Foundation. At FDR's request, Vannevar Bush wrote this report to lay out how science would be funded in the US after WWII. Bush's career - entrepreneur, dean of MIT,

The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way

The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way

"The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way" feels like reading a late night self-help informercial but redeems itself with a few gems. Great literature, this is not. Occasionally entertaining and mostly tedious, this is. Profiling 15 men who made over $100 million (before the 1970's!

The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It

The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It

"The War on Science" does a good job of contextualizing the current science/politics debate but is unevenly written and methinks it smacks a bit too much of half-baked undergraduate political ranting. Otto's book gave me a better understanding of recent anti-science political history and helped me frame