Blogroll

Book Review: F.U.B.A.R. (2006)

If you couldn’t laugh, you’d cry.

That adage seems to sum up a segment of liberal authors when it comes to the Bush Administration. F.U.B.A.R.: America’s Right-Wing Nightmare, written by the co-host and a producer of Air America Radio‘s “The Majority Report“, is the latest entry in the field of books taking on Bush and […]

Book Review: Everyman (2006)

As I was reading Philip Roth’s Everyman, the person sitting next to me noticed the plain black cover and said, “That looks depressing.” I think it is more accurate to call it an existential meditation on death. But don’t let even that somber description put you off. Mind you, the book isn’t a blithe beach […]

Book Review: Terror Nation (2006)

Everyone at some time must respond to their conscience. When Charlie Johnson’s inner voice leads him in new directions in Mike Palecek’s Terror Nation, Charlie finds himself truly a prisoner of conscience in middle America.

Charlie is retired after spending 35 years as a sportswriter and sports editor in Saint Smith, Iowa. He is a […]

Once an “illiterati” always an “illiterati”?

I’ve said before that my book tastes would probably mean those who pride themselves on their literary status would classify me as an “illiterati.” The NYT Book Review asked a large panel of judges to vote for “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.” While certainly the Review doesn’t […]

Book Review: Space Race (2006)

If there’s one thing more difficult than making history interesting to a general audience, it’s writing a history of scientific achievement. While Deborah Cadbury’s Space Race is not a perfect work, it does a worthy job of telling the history of the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve supremacy in […]