Category Archives: Books

Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America (Book recommendation)

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Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America by Will Sommer, is a must read for all of the loyal and long time readers and leaders in this blog community.

Remember the MRAs? They and others begat 4Chan. 4Chan begat QAnon. QAnon begat January 6th. And, never mind the guy with the horns. Donald Trump is the QAnon Shaman.

John Favreau interviews Will Sommer, author of Trust The Plan, on Offline:

Note: There are about the same number of QAnon followers in the US as there are “mainline Protestant,” ca 12-15%. Considering that this is a violently anti-Semitic belief system (and this Antisemitism is core to QAnon doctrine) it is concerning that there are about 17 million Jews in America, but close to 50 million Q-Anon believers (though the latter are hard to count).

Read the book. Watch the video. Don’t let your friends believe in this. Also, just so you know, children are not pizza.


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Arduino for Arduinians: New and higher level than the rest

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Let’s be real. Most books (and web sites) providing instructions for building projects with an Adruino assume the reader is just starting out in this arena of Maker-World. That is probably a reasonable assumption, but it also means that those of us who seek an Arduino guide that provides more advanced work are out of luck. Arduino for Arduinians fills that void. I highly recommend this rich, detailed, and extensive treatment of Arduino makery.

Arduino for Arduinians is suitably named, as it provides guidance and a beyond-the-basics level, for folks who have already been bitten by the Arduino bug, and can already tell the difference between a CAN Bus and an RS232, or Charlieplexing and ATtiny microcontrollers. In fact, one of my favorite applications laid out in this book is using the CAN bus interface to diagnose why the dashboard “transmission fault” light won’t go off on my friend’s Land Rover.

Arduino for Arduinians covers I2C bus devices, interfacing with or emulating the action of keyboards and similar devicese, some inexpensive but advanced Bluetooth mojo, and working with higher than novice-level voltages and currents. Be careful though.

You should know the basics of how Arduinos work (I recommend Arduino Workshop to get that if you don’t have it already). You should be able to read standard circuit diagrams. You should be familiar with Sketch and the Arduino IDE. Also, you will need parts. Helpfully, Arduino for Arduinians has a web site (see the inside of the book) with the Sketch related software, and yu can find in the intro a suggestion as to where to get parts (but you can get these parts lots of places, including Amazon.

The Author, John Boxall,is a master projecteer, and author of several Maker-supportive books in multiple languages.


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The Taken Ones, New Novel by Jess Lourey

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Evangeline Reed was a woman with some seriously disturbing secrets, at least one of which threatened to sideline her in a quest to put to rest a decades old and still ongoing crime. Jess Lourey, the author who created Reed and put her in the new novel “The Taken Ones,” continues in her own ongoing and highly successful quest to lure various facies of her readers’ limbic systems into a dark room and her her way with them.

Jess Lourey winning the Minnesota Book Award for The Quarry Girls.
Evangeline’s childhood was a horror, a horror that seems to have given her a gift, and a drive, that she would eventually put to use as a Minneapolis homicide cop to save lives, and to help snatch others from their own horrors. Known in adulthood as Van, detective Reed required the trust and goodwill of her partner to literally turn her nightmares into evidence, and procure extremely unlikely legal convictions. But that partner was now gone, and Van Reed was now barely holding on to her job as a cold case investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, her drive and her apparently preternatural evil detector now untethered.

There is an abyss, and Jess Lourey knows where it is. The Taken Ones, a complex mystery-adventure with a terrifying antagonist, a really annoying boss, a close-in set of very sympathetic compatriots, and a real jerk-face of a rival, implores the reader to visit multiple abysses, which may or may not (no spoilers) be linked in interesting ways.

Agent Harry Steinbeck, straight laced, well bred, and very put together forensic scientist is now the closest thing to a partner to Van. He seems to know more than he lets on. The years 1980 and 2022 bookend the activities of a spooky, demented, and highly unusual taker-killer. The four decade gap in time allows Lourey to create complex and interesting then-and-now type characters that seem to appear in many of her books.

You should read several of Lourey’s books, many of which are organized in series. The Taken Ones sports the subtitle “A Reed and Steinbeck Thriller.” We can rightfully assume that this is the first in a series, and it looks like it is going to be an excellent ride. I strongly recommend you pick up The Taken Ones as soon as it is available (pre-order here), then wait impatiently with the rest of us for the second Reed and Steinbeck to come out. In the meantime, read Lourey’s breakthrough book “Unspeakable Things,” her latest and highly acclaimed “The Quarry Girls,” and one of my favorites “Bloodline.”


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The Quarry Girls: Your next literary thriller

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The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey* is a literary thriller set in late 1970s Paynesville, Minnesota. To cut to the quick: I’m strongly recommending that you read this book.

Minnesota has an interesting relationship with “caves” and tunnels. Our downtowns have flying tunnels connecting the upper floors (third or fourth, usually) of skyscrapers. There are “caves” going under Saint Paul along the Mississippi river, some converted into tourist destinations, others sealed off because they are dangerous. Most or all of those are mines, not caves, but somehow our news media and other spokes-entities of our local culture have decided that a major human-made landscape feature that kills children will be dubbed natural. If you want more detail on that, put a note on a post-it to remind yourself to look it up at a later time. Closer to Minneapolis, and, really, beneath Minneapolis, is a network of natural caves. Actually, these natural caves are in many parts of the state. They would be better known were it not for the last glaciation, which covered much of our landscape with a very thick layer of till, temporarily (in geological time) obliviating the sinkholes that make up much of our karstic terrain. This is why we have very few home-swallong sink holes, even though we should have many.

Among all the tunnels and caves, some of the most interesting are to be found in Panville, Minnesota, which happens to be near where Jess Lourey lived as a kid. Panville, a neighborhood of Saint Cloud, was founded by a guy who seems to have been the Elon Musk of his day, sort of, by the name of Samuel Pandolfo. Pandolfo build an automotive factory, and an adjoining factory town with several dozen diverse homes. Pandolfo came up from Mississippi to Minnesota, so naturally, when he got a look at the climate, he freaked, and built tunnels connecting the factory town’s homes to the factory, in order to keep his workers at work and alive. He probably dind’t need to, they would have walked, but he was from a much warmer clime, so what did he know? Anyway, the Pan Motor Company’s cars never made much of a splash, and Pandolfo ended up in Leavenworth which at least is in warmer Kansas. But the tunnels, and the homes, remained. And the whole thing is a little spooky.

Enough about tunnels Let’s talk about serial killers. See the chart.

We’ve had a lot of serial killers in the US (check Wikipedia if you don’t believe me) but there seems to have been an extra large number in the 1960s and 1970s. Note that the rapid fall off on this chart probably reflects the fact that serial killers tend to remain active for decades before they are discovered and popped into the Table of Known Serial Killers in Wikipedia. But the 1980s looks like a real drop off, and I think it is safe to say that the American Serial Killer had a bloody golden age in the 1960s and 1970s. And, a few of them, at least, were operating in the general vicinity of Jess Payne’s childhood, both in time and in space.

So, what do you get when you add together a creepy old factory town with creepy tunnels, a plethora of mad men who abduct, rape, and kill, some nearby quarries, and a highly talented and experienced writer who is, by the way, actively and successfully experimenting with using writing to heal and understand childhood fear and adult angst about, well, serial killers and tunnels and stuff?

You get Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey.

Quarry Girls hase one of the best ever opening sentences at one end of the book, and a tear jerking final chapter. It is filled in between with a tightly structured story with characters that grab you by the limbic system, draw you in, and keep you there until you finish the story and order another one by the same author. In my fiction reviews, I rarely discuss the story itself. Let’s face it. If you are reading this, you are one of my trusted and trusting readers. Just go read the book.

I should tell you right now that I was drawn into the Lourey sphere of literature when I came across an earlier book, “Bloodline” This is a story set in a similar environment, central Minnesota (for reference, dead in the middle of Michele Bachmann’s old Congressional District, so you know it is going to be a little creepy). Also, in a similar older period. I sense that Lourey sets her stories in an earlier decade in part because the things that make Minnesota Minnesota were less adulterated by the outside world in those earlier times. (There are other reasons as well, having to do with her personal history, as stated by the author herself.) Bloodline is a creepy story about some creepy people, and a lovable but still a little creepy protagonist. I loved it, and it made me look for more, and that is how I eventually came across the author’s most recent book, Quarry Girls. Meanwhile there is another book that I’ve not read, and frankly I’m a little scared to. I have some of my own emotional baggage that is threatened with exposure from the story presented in Jess Lourey’s breakthrough novel, Unspeakable Things. I am going to read it, though. Fortunately on-line therapy has become readily available an doesn’t cost that much.

(OK, OK, I admit: I’m teasing the author here a little. I’ve got an unspeakable story, but it isn’t really that debilitating. I’m sure I’m going to enjoy the book. I’ll tell you about it after I read it.)

So, go start reading Jess Loury’s books, and report back!


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Get this guide to the unwritten rules of college success

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The Secret Syllabus, A Guide to the Unwritten Rules of College Success* by Jay Phelan and Terry Burnham is an unconventional yet science-based analysis of what a student entering college should do, to make that endeavor worthwhile. It is entirely counter-intuitive, and even shocking. Phelan and Burnham toss the usual advice into the garbage heap, and replace it with an entirely new mythology of how one should think about, and try to achieve, success in college.

And I’m sure this is excellent advice.

I’ve been advisor to college students, directed an admissions program, and I tutor college bound high school kids, so I know something of what I speak. I found the approach taken in this recently published book to be refreshing and very much on the money. I also know Phelan and Burnham pretty well. Jay Phelan and I taught together at Harvard for years, and I was one of Terry Burnham’s PhD thesis readers. I’ve been waiting for years for them to write this book, and now that they’ve done it, I’m very happy to recommend it.

The perspective Phelan and Burnham take is in part anthropological, in part rational-economic theory based, but mostly just plain creative and innovative. How to study. How to study a language. How to be job-marketable. How to have an effective plan for your college major and coursework, instead of the usual bone-headed plan everyone else has (and so often fails at). How to get a mentor and develop a productive relationship with them. This series of dependent clauses may not make great sentences but they accurately describe what you will get out of this book.

As with their earlier work (this is not their first book), Phelan and Burnham have their magic fingers on the pulse of current culture, and fold this into an engaging and humorous writing style. I know that these two authors have been through a lot, and they’ve turned their long and diverse experience into valuable advice.

If you have a kid heading for college, or even one who has been there for a year or so, just give them this book. If you are an advisor, counselor, or just the sort of prof or high school teacher that students look to for guidance, read this book, it will make you look wise. If you are a first or second year college student and want your instructors to be more helpful to you, and want to feel better about the choices you are making, put this book on your must-have list and actually read it when you cop a copy of it.

Here’s a video of the authors talking about The Secret Syllabus. Man have they grown up!


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The best books to give to your friends and family this holiday season

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Books for everyone: science, fiction, science fiction, culture, middle-age readers.*

Let’s start with two Native American related titles:

The Sea-Ringed World: sacred stories of the Americas by María García Esperón, Amanda Mijangos, David Bowles.

Fifteen thousand years before Europeans stepped foot in the Americas, people had already spread from tip to tip and coast to coast. Like all humans, these Native Americans sought to understand their place in the universe, the nature of their relationship with the divine, and the origin of the world into which their ancestors had emerged.

The answers lay in their sacred stories.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, and Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults.

Every single person seems to be reading this book right now. Are you? No? Well, that is easily fixed: Lessons in Chemistry b Bonnie Garmus.

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Speaking of novels, and this is especially for all you Minnesotans since it is set in the famous town of Lillydale (doesn’t really exist): Bloodline by Jess Lourey.

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting.

And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village.

The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall. So does the sinister secret of a little boy who vanished decades ago. And unless Joan is imagining things, a frighteningly familiar figure from her past is on watch in the shadows.

Her fiancé tells her she’s being paranoid. He might be right. Then again, she might have moved to the deadliest small town on earth.

Best science fiction of the year (except it was published a few years ago), from an author who mostly does not write science fiction: Saturn Run by John Sandford.

For fans of THE MARTIAN, an extraordinary new thriller of the future from #1 New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Sandford and internationally known photo-artist and science fiction aficionado Ctein.

Over the course of thirty-seven books, John Sandford has proven time and again his unmatchable talents for electrifying plots, rich characters, sly wit, and razor-sharp dialogue. Now, in collaboration with Ctein, he proves it all once more, in a stunning new thriller, a story as audacious as it is deeply satisfying.

The year is 2066. A Caltech intern inadvertently notices an anomaly from a space telescope—something is approaching Saturn, and decelerating. Space objects don’t decelerate. Spaceships do.

A flurry of top-level government meetings produces the inescapable conclusion: Whatever built that ship is at least one hundred years ahead in hard and soft technology, and whoever can get their hands on it exclusively and bring it back will have an advantage so large, no other nation can compete. A conclusion the Chinese definitely agree with when they find out.

The race is on, and an remarkable adventure begins—an epic tale of courage, treachery, resourcefulness, secrets, surprises, and astonishing human and technological discovery, as the members of a hastily thrown-together crew find their strength and wits tested against adversaries both of this earth and beyond. What happens is nothing like you expect—and everything you could want from one of the world’s greatest masters of suspense.

The Bitter End: the 2020 presidential campaign and the challenge to American Democracy is the best analsyis of the American Electorate, using amazing techniques and an unbelievable sample size:

John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck demonstrate that Trump’s presidency intensified the partisan politics of the previous decades and the identity politics of the 2016 election. Presidential elections have become calcified, with less chance of big swings in either party’s favor. Republicans remained loyal to Trump and kept the election close, despite Trump’s many scandals, a recession, and the pandemic. But in a narrowly divided electorate even small changes can have big consequences. The pandemic was a case in point: when Trump pushed to reopen the country even as infections mounted, support for Biden increased. The authors explain that, paradoxically, even as Biden’s win came at a time of heightened party loyalty, there remained room for shifts that shaped the election’s outcome. Ultimately, the events of 2020 showed that instead of the country coming together to face national challenges?the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, and the Capitol riot?these challenges only reinforced divisions.
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

The Unpersuadables : Adventures ith the enemies of Science by Will Stoor:

Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world—from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides—meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. Storr tours Holocaust sites with famed denier David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis, experiences his own murder during “past life regression” hypnosis, discusses the looming One World Government with an iconic climate skeptic, and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult.

Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological “hero maker” inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship and science denial.

Tangerine by Edward Bloor is often assigned to middle school kids. If you have a kid heading for middle school, get them to read this NOW so they can enjoy it, you read it so you can talk to them about it. Many messages, some subtle, very important commentary on modern American culture.

Three titles on evolution all three of which you should read. The history of life on earth is wonderfully summarized by my old buddy Henry Gee’s A very short history of life on earth. Best book of its kind ever, no kidding. Then, read my old buddy Don Prothero’s Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters (2nd edition). Then, a new title from a new author, my frien Steven Therough’s A most improbable story. So you get the whole history of life, then a more narrowed down view that focuses more on verts, then the human story. A great sequence. I have designs to get one or more author on our podcast, Ikonokast. I’ll let you know if that happens!

Also check out Reality Check: How science deniers threaten our future, by Don Prothero.


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Fundy Christians, MAGAjerks, Proud Boys, School and Library Board Members, Ban-Burning Books

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I use the word “burning” metaphorically. But it might as well be literal. If you ban a list of books in a system of libraries, the libraries have a bunch of recycling to do, and eventually … to the county incinerator go the books.

Book Man
In fact, I give you no truck, no room, no wiggle-space, if you even look at a book funny, because that is how it starts. I am champion of the books, all the books, and I am not alone, not by a long shot.

Here is a recent, disturbing, but typical example. Christians in Boundary County, Idaho, mobbed the local public library board, demanding the removal of a large number of books, including Gender Queer: A Memoir* by Maria Kobabe**, a book the library did not actually have.

These thugs intimidated the administrator of the libaries, Kimber Glidden, into resignation, in which she noted:

“My experience and skill set made me a good fit to help the district move toward a more current and relevant business model and to implement updated policy and best practices. However nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community.”

Gidden told reporters at Route Fifty that “If [this] was really about banning books, we’d have to have the books.” Food for thought. They don’t care about the books, they only care about being bullies, and intimidating people who love books, and the kids the books are there for.

In another case, MAGA-Republicans and Fundy-Christians took over the Lafayette, Louisiana library last year and this happened:

  • The library board rejected a grant to fund a program about voting rights, saying it was too left wing.
  • A display about Pride Month was cancelled, and today library displays are forbidden about any distinctive group — even French Cajun culture, of which Lafayette is the unofficial capital.
  • And this summer, when a popular librarian, Cara Chance, ignored that order and put up a display that included queer teen romance books, the board tried to fire her.

The actual police showed up at the Granbury High library in Granbury Texas to investigate a complaint made by book-burning-fundies last May. Five books were subsequently removed from the library shelves. The removal of these books was targeted harassmement of Trans students and other non-heteronormative-binary people by the school admins. This sort of thing has caused loss of life among school children. Even in relatively liberal Minnesota suburbs, a school board member went out of his way to indicate his discomfort with non-heteronormative school children, as noted in this LTE written by Yours Truly:

Plymouth Sun Sailor, Aug 11, 2022.

Locally, where the Jay Hesby problem recently emerged, we have an open seat on the Wayzata School District board. Hesby is one of a few candidates running. Sheila Prior, an active member of the school community especially interested in reading education, is also running, and she is by a gazillion miles my choice for the upcoming special election. (Feel free to visit her web site and donate ten bucks or more to this great cause. I just did!)

I gets scarier. Recently in the Reno Nevada area, suited up members of the “Proud Boys” (I call them Cucked Children) actually entered a library to disrupt a children story time because they did not like the book that was being read. They did the same thing near San Francisco, South Bend, Indiana, and Woodland California. There was violence. Over books. At events involving children. Derek Chauvin got extra time on his murder sentence because he carried out violence in the presence of children. For christakes.


Notes:
-* Links to books on Amazon help support this blog, see note below
-** From the publisher:

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created Gender Queer. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

This special deluxe hardcover edition of Gender Queer features a brand-new cover, exclusive art and sketches, a foreword from ND Stevenson, Lumberjanes writer and creator of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and an afterword from Maia Kobabe.


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Lucas Davenport vs Virgil Flowers: Which is better?

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People argue. Some say the Prey novels with Lucas Davenport are the best. Others, usually women, say it’s that fucking Flowers all the way. Like that. I say, why not have both. Righteous Prey is the new Sandford novel that comes out in October, available now for preorder. Beloved heroes Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are up against a powerful vigilante group with an eye on vengeance in a stunning new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.

“We’re going to murder people who need to be murdered.” So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as “The Five,” shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco. The Five is believed to be made up of vigilante killers who are very bored…and very rich. They target the worst of society—rapists, murderers, and thieves—and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they’ve killed, donating untraceable Bitcoin to charities and victims via the dark net. The Five soon become the most popular figures on social media, a modern-day Batman…though their motives may not be entirely pure.

After a woman is murdered in the Twin Cities, Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport are sent in to investigate. And they soon have their hands full–the killings are smart and carefully choreographed, and with no apparent direct connection to the victims, The Five are virtually untraceable. But if anyone can destroy this group, it will be the dynamic team of Davenport and Flowers.

I’ve ordered mine, have you ordered yours?

(BTW the price is lower than typical, not sure why, but I’m not asking questions.)


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Starry Messenger: New Neil deGrasse Tyson Book

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Starry Messenger*, a new book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, is coming out on September 20th, and you can pre-order it here.

Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all.

In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.

After thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about Earth as a planet, the human brain has the capacity to reset and recalibrates life’s priorities, shaping the actions we might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched.

With crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.Book Cover of Starry Messenger by Neil deGrasse Tyson


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Is The US On The Verge Of A Civil War: Yes, apparently

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How Civil Wars Start* and how to stop them” is a new book by Barbara Walter. Not Barbara Walters, Barbara Walter.

I quote from recent WaPo article:

“[There is a] scale that goes from negative 10 to positive 10. Negative 10 is the most authoritarian, so think about North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Positive 10 are the most democratic. This, of course, is where you want to be. This would be Denmark, Switzerland, Canada. The U.S. was a positive 10 for many, many years. It’s no longer a positive 10. And then it has this middle zone between positive 5 and negative 5, which was you had features of both. … scholars found was that this …variable was really predictive of a risk for civil war. That full democracies almost never have civil wars. Full autocracies rarely have civil wars. All of the instability and violence is happening in this middle zone. “

The US is in or near the middle zone.

This idea makes a lot of sense. This appears to be a must read book.


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A Trove of Excellent Books Cheap

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The intersection of STEM and equity; moving stories of overcoming racism and unfairness. Cheap on Kindle for most of you (YMMV).

I Never Had It Made:An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson*.

Before Barry Bonds, before Reggie Jackson, before Hank Aaron, baseball’s stars had one undeniable trait in common: they were all white. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke that barrier, striking a crucial blow for racial equality and changing the world of sports forever. I Never Had It Made is Robinson’s own candid, hard-hitting account of what it took to become the first black man in history to play in the major leagues.

I Never Had It Made recalls Robinson’s early years and influences: his time at UCLA, where he became the school’s first four-letter athlete; his army stint during World War II, when he challenged Jim Crow laws and narrowly escaped court martial; his years of frustration, on and off the field, with the Negro Leagues; and finally that fateful day when Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers proposed what became known as the “Noble Experiment”—Robinson would step up to bat to integrate and revolutionize baseball.

More than a baseball story, I Never Had It Made also reveals the highs and lows of Robinson’s life after baseball. He recounts his political aspirations and civil rights activism; his friendships with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, William Buckley, Jr., and Nelson Rockefeller; and his troubled relationship with his son, Jackie, Jr.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope*

Now a Netflix Film, Starring and Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor of 12 Years a Slave

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought and hunger. But William had read about windmills, and he dreamed of building one that would bring to his small village a set of luxuries that only 2 percent of Malawians could enjoy: electricity and running water. His neighbors called him misala—crazy—but William refused to let go of his dreams. With a small pile of once-forgotten science textbooks; some scrap metal, tractor parts, and bicycle halves; and an armory of curiosity and determination, he embarked on a daring plan to forge an unlikely contraption and small miracle that would change the lives around him.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a remarkable true story about human inventiveness and its power to overcome crippling adversity. It will inspire anyone who doubts the power of one individual’s ability to change his community and better the lives of those around him.

My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir Kindle Edition*

In 2015, at the age of 97, Katherine Johnson became a global celebrity. President Barack Obama awarded her the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—for her pioneering work as a mathematician on NASA’s first flights into space. Her contributions to America’s space program were celebrated in a blockbuster and Academy-award nominated movie.

In this memoir, Katherine shares her personal journey from child prodigy in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to NASA human computer. In her life after retirement, she served as a beacon of light for her family and community alike. Her story is centered around the basic tenets of her life—no one is better than you, education is paramount, and asking questions can break barriers. The memoir captures the many facets of this unique woman: the curious “daddy’s girl,” pioneering professional, and sage elder.

This multidimensional portrait is also the record of a century of racial history that reveals the influential role educators at segregated schools and Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in nurturing the dreams of trailblazers like Katherine. The author pays homage to her mentor—the African American professor who inspired her to become a research mathematician despite having his own dream crushed by racism.

Infused with the uplifting wisdom of a woman who handled great fame with genuine humility and great tragedy with enduring hope, My Remarkable Journey ultimately brings into focus a determined woman who navigated tough racial terrain with soft-spoken grace—and the unrelenting grit required to make history and inspire future generations.

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir*

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyle

A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy

At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

Hidden Figures Young Readers Edition*

The uplifting, amazing true story—a New York Times bestseller!

This edition of Margot Lee Shetterly’s acclaimed book is perfect for young readers. It’s the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

This book brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who lived through the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the movement for gender equality, and whose work forever changed the face of NASA and the country.


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Climate Change Action For Kids: The Tantrum That Saved The World

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The Tantrum That Saved the World* by Megan Herbert and Michael Mann is about a young girl who might be thought of as being on some sort of spectrum, but well at the rational end of the irrationality-rationality spectrum, who gets tired of the “bla bla bla” and forces the climate change issue.

It sounds like a book based on Greta Thunberg, but in fact, the first edition of The Tantrum That Saved the World predated Greta.

The book starts out with the little girl inheriting a huge problem she didn’t ask for, reshaping her very strong emotions into positive and inspiring action. We then encounter information about climate change science presented in a way that is fully accessible to children. Finally, as all worthwhile things do, there is an action plan. My copy came with a nice poster.

Tantrums are bad. Except when they save the world.


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Kids: Would you save the planet please?

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Check out this new book by my friend and colleague, Paul Douglas: A Kid’s Guide to Saving the Planet It’s Not Hopeless and We’re Not Helpless*. Chelen Ecija is the illustrator.

Not hapless either!
This new book, targeted to kids 9-13 years of age (4-6th grade), addresses the climate crisis, and offers doable solutions and activities for kids to help address it.

Part of the book is a mini-course in earth system science, tarted to the specified age group. It is clear and detailed enough to be a good text in 6th grade, when many of these concepts are being covered. The authors outline pre-existing environmental disasters and how they have been fixed, to give hope to the kids, and describes what you can do. The readers are even encouraged to go into climate related fields whey the grow up!

If you are linked to a middle school (like, your kid goes to one) maybe give a copy to the science faculty there!

Highly recommended.


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A short list of banned books

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To Kill a Mockingbird*
The Hate U Give*
The Color Purple: A Novel*
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian*
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning*
The Catcher in the Rye*
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley*
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings*
The Lord Of The Rings Illustrated Edition*
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Graphic Library)*
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)*
The Handmaid’s Tale*
Hop on Pop (I Can Read It All By Myself)*
Lord of the Flies*
1984*
The Giver (Giver Quartet, 1)*
Lawn Boy*
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition*
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*
The Complete Maus*
Lolita*
The Glass Castle: A Memoir*
Fahrenheit 451*
Out of Darkness*
Critical Race Theory (Third Edition): An Introduction (Critical America, 20)*
And Tango Makes Three: Book and CD*
Assata An Autobiography*
The Kite Runner*
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy*
The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War*
A Civic Biology: The Original 1914 Edition at the Heart of the “Scope’s Monkey Trial”*
The Bluest Eye*
Jack of Hearts (and other parts)*
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto*
Impending Crisis of the South “Annotated”*
Animal Farm*


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Excellent Critical Race Theory Novel: Tangerine

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It exposes white privilege. It indicts white supremacy. It problemetizes the cult of football. What’s not to love?

Tangerine* by Edward Bloor is written from the perspective of a sort of disabled (but not really? that’s part of the plot) middle school who is white, frail, very smart, repressed, and an excellent soccer player. He is forced to leave his white suburban school and either attend a nearby Catholic school, or alternatively, go to the “inner-city” tough kid not very white school. He readily picks the latter, for some very good reasons, and there he meets his first real fears, his first real friends, and sets about making and breaking heroes.

There are also tangerines, the fruit, which play a special role in the narrative.

This is a book that should totally be banned and burned if you don’t want kids to examine their own privilege, think about fairness and class, or confront racism. Or be mean to football. It is one of those books often assigned in middle school, and this is the time we are reading all the middle school books. Fits the bill as quick and entertaining, meaningful adult reading.


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