Societies have long known that when inventors don't ask hard questions of themselves, the results can be catastrophic. Mark Zuckerberg learned this the hard way this week when he testified before Congress over two consecutive days concerning Cambridge Analytica's breach of ...read more
by Jan Frel It came in a vision a few years back -- a book for children that approximated some of the horrors of society that everyday people face, and the monstrous qualities that many people take on as they try to earn a living. Especially since the financial crisis. Mortgage ...read more
(Image: New York Public Library) by Amien Essif If you were airdropped, blindfolded, into a strange town and given nothing but a bus ticket, to where would you ride that bus? You might be surprised to learn that there’s only one good answer, and that’s the public library. The ...read more
Today marks the start of National Library Week in the United States (14-21 April). This year's topic is "Communities Matter @ Your Library." Sems like a good time to look at how much the library matters to our communities and the important role librarians play for the patrons. ...read more
I am currently reading The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend it, it basically discusses the role journalism played in the civil rights movement. * Objectivity. One of the themes running ...read more
I just got Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press by Eric Boehlert, who works where I do and shares a birthday with me though I've never actually met him in real life. I also got The Final Four of Everything. I'm still not sure why the publisher ...read more
Ezra Klein pointed to this devastating review of Chesa Boudin's Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America, and I couldn't help feel as if I had read that sort of pretentious liberal fart-twaddletm before. And I had! It was the very funny Neal Pollack's The Neal Pollack Anthology ...read more
Well, the e-book just got interesting... Starting Wednesday, owners of these Apple devices can download a free application, Kindle for iPhone and iPod Touch, from Apple’s App Store. The software will give them full access to the 240,000 e-books for sale on Amazon.com, which ...read more
If you're a book junkie like me and you like to check Amazon.com to either see reviews of a book while you're in a book store or cheat and use Amazon's recommendation engine, you should use the new Amazon.com app I just found yesterday from them. It works much faster (for me at ...read more
There are lazy college and high school students who do a better job of b.s.-ing. The first few pages of David Freddoso's book, The Case Against Barack Obama, are marked by false and misleading assertions about Sen. Barack Obama, accompanied by dubious citations. A Media Matters ...read more
ReceivedNixonland by Rick Perlstein. I've been looking forward to this ever since I finished Before The Storm. ReadingThe Race Beat - About how the media, especially black media, affected the Civil Rights struggleCrusader Nation - I currently have a fascination with the pre-WWI ...read more
Recently sent to me Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics by Glenn Greenwald of Salon and blogosphere fame Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors by Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint Recently read God Save the Fan: How Preening ...read more
Sounds neat: Publisher to Let the Public Have a Vote on Book Projects. The site itself is here. ...read more
Amen to this a thousand times. What if Harry Potter was a black kid? That’s the question that author Troy CLE initially tried to answer when he created his character, Louis Proof. But it would be simplistic to paint Louis as simply a black version of the beloved Harry. Louis ...read more
First, buy this book. Monkey Girl is a detailed and lively chronicle of the Dover, PA case that decided whether or not Intelligent Design (Creationism) should be taught in science class in a public school. Edward Humes, who is a Pulitzer winner, distills complex scientific ...read more
I am something of an insane reader. At any given time I'm usually reading 3-4 books at a time, plus about 10 magazines a month. Here are a couple books I've read recently of note. Fame Junkies by Jake Halperin Want to know what kind of culture produces the around the clock ...read more
