2024 Book Review

The fourth installment of a project that does not feel like it began so many years ago. Besides keeping me dedicated to learning new things, this review has acted as an interesting anchoring point for memory; remembering months by the books I read and the feelings they elicited, rather than a hazy fog of January, February, and March that passed with little recollection of what I had done or accomplished. This is but one of the fringe benefits I’ve enjoyed since making reading an everyday part of my life.

I set no intention for 2024. No specific genres, no specific authors; just whatever happens to catch my eye. As December 2023 fades the pile next to my nightstand has been growing steadily taller, a consequence of a few trips to thrift stores with deals I couldn’t pass up. Seeing some of the stories that await me- supervolcanoes, panpsychism, hillbillies- I am eager for a new year.

2024

The Will to Meaning

Victor Frankl

Having read Frankl’s more popular and much more accessible book, Man’s Search for Meaning, as a student, I had a cursory understanding of Frankl’s therapeutic approach and the beliefs that underpin it. The Will to Meaning provided a deep dive into his practice of logotherapy, complete with a plethora of examples of its application. When considered alongside some of the other existentialists writings I’ve consumed over the past few years- Camus, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard- Frankl provides not only a compelling rebuttal to the bleak interpretation of our position, but a framework for finding purpose in a seemingly empty space.

Unlike Kierkegaard who pulls heavily from Christian motifs, Frankl took insight from his anecdotal experience witnessing the worst of human suffering, examining the factors that allowed some to overcome and applying that to everyday human suffering in his psychological practice. While circumstances may differ greatly in severity- the prisoner of war being starved and tortured fighting for survival alongside the depressed upper middle class American that has trouble getting out of bed- the ability and inspiration to overcome the challenge was largely the same, and the same therapeutic practice could benefit both sufferers.

Frankl creates a much more hopeful view of existence than existentialist philosophers, not solely focusing on addressing existential crises but seemingly believing the intrinsic value of life and power of purpose. My biggest critique with existentialists was in painting the broad stroke of living experience with the same narrow brush; flow states, moments of awe, and transformational phenomenological experiences get compressed into the same 2-dimensional plane. When viewed outside the lens of spirituality, these human phenomena are often ignored, but Frankl reminds the reader of how important they are for personal fulfillment and as a positive expression and recognition of our humanity. 

It goes without saying that meaning and purpose in life cannot be prescribed like a drug. It is not the job of a doctor to give meaning to the patient’s life. But it may well be his task, through an existential analysis, to enable the patient to find meaning in life.

Galileo'S Error

by Philip Goff

I was first introduced to panpsychism through an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast that I can’t recommend highly enough. Goff’s philosophy was compelling even though I had very little understanding of philosophy of mind outside bits of writing from Sam Harris and David Chalmers. I had heard of dualist and non-dualists approaches to consciousness, in addition to the Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness. So, basically, I was completely incompetent but knew a few buzzwords. 

Goff’s Galileo’s Error provides an excellent jumping off point to understand the foundational elements of the state of philosophy of mind. While he defends his belief, panpsychism, he provides accessible introductions to dualist and materialist approaches to consciousness. Unlike other popular science books that are tailored to a general audience, Goff provides fairly good proofing for his ideas where possible, and references his full academic proofs when such in-depth proofing would be unfeasible for the book’s main audience. In this way, the generalist can get the main points while those that want to better understand the theoretical underpinnings can do a deeper dive.

I am not a philosopher, nor am I a physicist. Yet my best guess as to the nature of consciousness is about as likely, and certainly as provable, as any leading researcher’s explanation. This is indicative of a shortcoming of our current scientific toolkit to address such problems. Goff argues this dates back to the Galilean separation of the physical from the mental and spiritual, which must be reconciled to make any further progress within the field. One could argue this has been done successfully in other fields, such as Amishi Jha’s synthesis of modern western psychology with traditional eastern mindfulness and meditation practices to create an evidence-based optimization of working memory and focus. 

The argument from “physical science has been extremely successful” to “physical science will one day explain the sensory qualities of consciousness” is not supported by the history of science... I’m not saying that this proves that physical science cannot explain consciousness. But it does undermine arguments that try to show that it inevitably will.

How to Have Impossible Conversations

By P. Boghossian & J. Lindsay

Damn, now this was a book that became way more controversial than I assumed it would be. To start off, I know almost nothing about either author outside of their participation in some more recent right wing podcasts and news stations, and their participation in the now-infamous grievance studies affair of 2018. While this book was helpful as someone that has some fairly insane friends and family on the left and the right, perhaps the more interesting narrative is the path that took Boghossian and Lindsay to writing this book and how their beliefs have seemingly evolved over the last few years.

This book acts as a how-to manual for talking to people with different viewpoints and varying levels of ideological capture. Strategies are provided on facilitating these difficult conversations and examples are included on how the dialogue often goes. While this is helpful, the examples are often impossibly simplified; pushback is minimized to a point that would never occur during an actual conversation. Further, the idea of a conversation seems to imply a less structured, less combative back and forth than what the authors are providing. A more appropriate term would be debate, as there is a fairly apparent emphasis on an ideological back and forth with socratic scrutiny that may not be known and certainly not desired by the other party. 

While there are some good suggestions in this book, it reads a bit disingenuous. The goal isn’t conversing, it is evangelizing; it seems to start at the assumption that your opinion is the correct one and the one that must be conveyed. Techniques are provided to scrutinize the opinion of the conversational adversary, without equal consideration into the ideological or rational underpinnings of your own idea. This, to me, is little better than the guy that bases his ideaology off of a handful of political Youtube videos. You know how to dissect the opposition’s position, but don’t really understand your own. It becomes a slightly rebranded political sophistry.

Which, again, isn’t to say the book is bad. It takes a largely respectful position on different ideas and aims to facilitate constructive conversations- the only issue is the construction seems to be directed.

If civility is your primary goal, or if productive conversation is impossible, make learning your go-to. If you just want to get through a family reunion, learning is your emergency exit that allows you to make almost any conversation civil.

Super Volcanoes

By Robin George Andrews

Perhaps I’ve read too much geology, perhaps I just don’t care enough about volcanoes- but this book was a bit of a chore to finish. The subject of super volcanoes seemed to imply a focus on the earth- whether this was my fault for misinterpreting or the author’s fault for not sufficiently conveying the subject matter, I am not sure, but the majority of the book focused on volcanoes elsewhere in our solar system. This was certainly somewhat interesting, but moreso for a chapter or two rather than a full four chapters out of eight.

The terrestrial volcanoes were quite interesting, with chapters on the volcanoes of Yellowstone, Hawaii, Tanzania, and underwater volcanoes, along with fairly detailed descriptions of the history of volcanology and some of the important scientists within the field. The later chapters tackled volcanoes on the moon, Mars, Venus, and the moons of other planets. While these last few chapters became a bit tedious, it was interesting to learn about the scale of some of these volcanoes- thousands of times larger than domestic volcanoes, potentially large enough to alter the planet’s rotation and orientation.

Volcanology also provides insight into the origin of planets and their timelines. By understanding the dynamics of heat and pressure management, a better understanding can be grasped of how planets are born, how they regulate heat and cycle heat, and how they eventually cool down and die. 

Grand Prismatic Spring may as well be the poster child for the entire park. Larger than a soccer field, it takes on the appearance of an interdimensional oasis. An ethereal, deep-blue hue paints its pupil, while adventurous bacteria thriving in the piquant waters fleck its iris in shades of yellow, orange, and green. In the winter, the snow sizzles into steam as it drifts onto the spring’s rocky eyelid.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

One dollar thrift store book bins for the win! The Reluctant Fundamentalist provides an important cultural critique framed around an immigrant in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The narrative is a frame story, taking place over a single evening in Pakistan between a local professor and an unnamed American visitor. The story reads very similar to Camus’ the Fall, with the protagonist starting from a precarious desirable position, suffering a crisis, and retreating to a life that better fits their ideaology. Throughout the book are (perhaps a bit too) thinly veiled references. The United States is the company he works for, Underwood Samson, the characters name is Changez, and his deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend is a metaphor for the strained relationship between the middle east and the west.

I came into this book with minimal expectations and was very impressed. While some of the on-the-nose references read like a book for much younger audiences, the overall critique is powerful and still relevant almost 20 years after publishing. 

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

by Jonathan Haidt

After reading The Coddling of the American Mind I was interested in the other writings by Haidt that better reflected his research. The Righteous Mind is arguably his seminal work, providing an explanation for and defense of moral intuitions theory. In his view, we make decisions on things based not on logic and reasoning but on the set of values that we hold relating to that subject. Our opinions on immigration, birth control, universal basic income- any social or political issue- can boil down to what values we hold and by extension how we envision a just world.

The importance of Haidt’s work can best be explained by the timeless observation by Socrates that nobody does wrong knowingly. Our political beliefs that frame our idea of the world are based on the values we hold, and more specifically the hierarchy of those values. Political differences through this lens can be examined as diametrically opposing value hierarchies that aim for the same goal- a better society- but have completely different ideas of what that means and what it entails.

This theory recognizes two important points. One, that almost everybody, regardless of religion or political persuasion, want to create a better world. Two, that the way we understand our own politics is likely a far cry from how we actually arrive at them. Our values dictate the lens we view situations through, and from there we rationalize around those values. Whether those rationalizations are logically sound or not is immaterial- we hold the values that say a certain thing, and we will maintain that belief in spite of reason.

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.

The Genesis Enigma

by Andrew Parker

A grand attempt at reconciling a biblical view of the world with the state of current science, written by the discoverer of one of the most important evolutionary changes in the fossil record. Such a bold undertaking requires a tremendous amount of tact, research, and intellectual honesty- three elements missing from The Genesis Enigma. While his discovery of the evolution of vision is incredibly important for the field, The Genesis Enigma failed to convincingly argue for a biblical compromise. 

Now, it is important to note that Parker did not and does not actually believe in the creation account provided by the Book of Genesis. Instead, he tried to provide an accessible ramp to scientific literacy to those lost in religious dogma. While this is an admirable goal, the end result is something that capitulates a bit too much to religion and draws parallels that simply aren’t there.

The overall goal of this book was to reconcile the account of Genesis- how the earth was created and inhabited- with the story from the geological and paleontological record. While Parker was correctly explaining the similarities between the accounts and arguing for a metaphoric interpretation of Genesis that allowed for ‘a day’ to be millions of years, he offered inadequate pushback to the parts of Genesis that did not line up. Instead, he made absurd associations that forced the two to reconcile.

While the book was a largely interesting read and provided a lot of good information on the origin of the earth and the direction of evolution, the focus on aligning the Book of Genesis account undermined the rest of the writing. The two don’t fit together perfectly, and that’s okay. A more honest account- accepting the similarities and pushing back at the differences- would have made a much better book, but would have continued to villify the audience The Genesis Enigma was written for. 

Coming soon!

Botany of Desire

by Michael Pollan

An enjoyable read from the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind. Pollan argues that the relationship we have with domesticated plants is largely reciprocal- we are modifying the way they taste, look, smell, and feel, but they are modifying our behavior and values as well. Through four plants that have changed our landscape and culture- the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato- Pollan demonstrates how appealing to human desires- sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, respectively- has allowed for a partnership that has spread these plants far and wide, cemented in our collective consciousness.

Pollan’s prose are unpretentious yet poignant; accessible without leaving anything out. He tells a story of his investigation into these human/plant partnerships that spans space and time, sometimes recounting long-dead Dutch royalty embroiled in the tulip boom and sometimes journeying by foot through the alleged farm that once belonged to a Mr. Jonathan Chapman- Johnny Appleseed.

A repeating theme throughout the book is the impact of culture on the interpretation of the plants and the people surrounding them. Johnny Appleseed, for example, has climbed to an almost saintlike figure of generosity and altruism in spreading apples far and wide- what is often missed is that he was a capitalist selling his apple tree stock, and that the primary use of his apples was in liquor production (applejack).

Similarly but less interestingly, the tulip trade transcended any sense of sanity through the prominence of early cultivators, and the rapidly increasing worth of bulbs. What the plant was paled to what it represented, or what people believed it to represent.

Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.

I'm Glad My Mom Died

by Jennette McCurdy

A book that others will likely get much, much more out of than I did. The writing was fairly good if not plain, the prose honest. Unfortunately I just don’t have much sympathy for celebrity woe-is-me stories.

Jennette McCurdy was a child celebrity on iCarly and had an abusive mom that pushed her into show business to achieve the celebrity status that she was never able to attain. That is… just about everything. Jennette accidentally creates an interesting thought experiment through her story- is it better to have a harder upbringing for later rewards, or an easier upbringing with a harder future? One could imagine that early suffering is not the worst thing if financial stability is all but guaranteed by the time most are starting their careers. The option of pivoting as McCurdy described- going from childhood actress to author, producer, etcetera- is virtually impossible for anyone not born into that world or forced into it at a young age.

The judgment is a complex one; more complex than McCurdy seems to give it credit for. She is somewhat fair to her mother, though, recognizing that she was a victim of an eating disorder that she passed down to her daughter. The greatest complexity in the book revolved around that relationship; a daughter deeply desiring approval and acceptance, a mom constantly subjecting her daughter to various forms of abuse.

I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.

The Monster's Bones

by David K. Randall

The untold story of Barnum Brown, the man that discovered the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil and transformed the New York Museum of Natural History into one of global recognition and prestige. Barnum was a true rags to riches story, born to farmer parents in the midwest and through a mix of genius, intuition, and determination managed to scrape his way into the highest echelons of scientists. Unlike the London elite from Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed the World, Barnum was able to successfully leverage his intellect and determination into a successful career, cementing his legacy and bringing his museum to international prominence.

The Monster’s Bones opens at the conclusion of the Bone Wars, a Cretaceous conflict that played out over the fossil-rich fields of the Western United States. A young self-styled paleontologist begins working alongside a well-connected socialite, with the shared goal of making the American Museum of Natural History a destination- and cementing their own legacies.

Everything about this book- the people, the expeditions, the state of the science at the time, the recently-ended Bone Wars- was interesting and engaging. Randall succeeds in marrying the human interest component, a poor young farmer’s rags to riches story, with the grander narrative of an institution in crisis and a science still in it’s infancy. The portrayal and motivations of Henry Fairfield Osborn, the curator of the museum, was also enthralling; status-driven, motivated, and quite racist (he was a staunch eugenicist), Randall paints a picture of a particularly complex individual.

Coming soon!

Voodoo Histories

by David Aaronovitch

The only thing more fun than reading conspiracy theories (looking at you, Chaos) is reading books dissecting the motivations behind their inception and distribution. Aaronovitch tackles some of the most widespread conspiracies in history- from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the JFK assassination- shedding light on the circumstances that make for a compelling conspiracy and what they say about human nature.

Though a worthwhile read, Voodoo Histories failed in a few important ways. The most obvious was the progression; the conspiracies jumped around from the mainstream to the niche, the outright evil to the largely innocuous. While this would otherwise be fine- albeit clunky- the connection of conspiratorial thinking with right wing extremism paints it in a different picture. I don’t believe it is remotely fair to claim that one wishing for hidden meaning to prove their life has a purpose- which is one of Aaronovitch’s claims- necessarily leads to blatant racism or antisemitism. The human mind is rarely that simple, and to assume such a leap is, dare I say, using the same frameworks that lead one to conspiracy. That being said, it is absolutely true for certain flavors of conspiracism and the point is well taken- the devil is in the details, and for such a bold claim, the details matter.

Similarly, the analysis of conspiracists was odd when considered alongside the underlying rationale for their conspiracism; the former ridiculous, and the later largely sympathetic. It read like a thorough, reasoned explanation of a medical condition- say, schizophrenia- followed by a denouncement of all schizophrenics. It could be argued that this is unfair, since there isn’t a disease for conspiracism. Well, perhaps not, but there sure are a lot of comorbidities. To take conspiracism seriously is to take conspiracists seriously, not in terms of what they say, but in the circumstances leading them to believe what they do. If not out of human decency, out of tact; you are unlikely to change the opinion of one you openly mock.

Now that I’ve expressed in two long, boring paragraphs why the book sucks, I’ll get to the point- it was pretty great. While Aaronovitch may not have made a masterpiece takedown of conspiracies or a definitive explanation of the motivations underlying conspiracism, he did a fairly good job in both pursuits. 

Relativism doesn’t care to distinguish between the scholarly and the slap-dash, the committed researcher and the careless loudmouth, the scrupulous and the demagogic. For that reason, it is hard to see how an insistence on “proper events” can ever be said to be dogmatic, or a refusal to insist can be anything other than treacherous.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

by Kurt Vonnegut

A truly fantastic book that I plan to re-read next year. It is not particularly complicated, lacking the switches through space and time characteristic of other Vonnegut novels. What it aims to accomplish it does so expertly; a takedown of our social system, the people at the top of it, and the money that supports it. 

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

Into Thin Air

by Jon Krakauer

Like many of Krakauer’s books, Into Thin Air comprehensively covers an interesting event- in this case, an ill-fated expedition to the peak of Mount Everest. Unlike his other works, he is in the middle of the disaster as it is unfolding around him. By the end of the day, 8 people would be dead, including his guide and multiple other members of his expedition.

Jon Krakauer, the author, was hired by Outside Magazine to climb Mount Everest and report on the experience. He already had decades of mountaineering experience, and was paired with the most respectable guide, Rob Hall of Adventure Consultants. Through the beginning of the book Krakauer provides necessary context into the history of Mount Everest, mountaineering expeditions, and the effects of being at prolonged elevation on the body. Through the story, his narrative- meant to be as definite of a retelling as possible- becomes clouded by altitude-induced delirium. He does not know who or what he is seeing, decision making is impaired, and hallucinations manifest. Despite this, Krakauer is able to piece together a fairly complete account of the events of the expedition that took eight lives and almost killed several more.

This book is an adventure from beginning to end. There are no deeper takeaways or undertones; simply people struggling to survive and fighting to maintain their sanity. The various perspectives are interesting, as they often don’t align on the seemingly simplest points; once a certain altitude was passed, none of the mountaineers were remotely trustworthy to report on what was happening. Krakauer himself made an incredibly costly error, interacting with someone that he believed to be someone else- that were not remotely similar, from body size to mannerisms- and then reporting on their whereabouts as safely back at camp. In reality, the person he claimed to have seen had likely been lost to the mountain for hours.

The author owns this mistake, and while he is devastated it happened, understands how it happened. He was losing his mind. Everyone around him were in similar states of distress and delirium, with some exhibiting end-stage hypothermia through paradoxical undressing and others signs of severe altitude sickness with hallucinations and frothy, bloody spit.

Into Thin Air provides exactly what it promises. For anyone interested in mountaineering, adventure, or disaster novels, this is a must-read. 

Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.

The Map That Changed the World

by Simon Winchester

My first (likely of many) Simon Winchester books. It took me a while to get into it, with a far dryer writing style and far less compelling subject matter than The Monster’s Bones which I thoroughly enjoyed. Though a bit of a slog at times, it came into it’s own in the final few chapters. A true page-turner, if you ignore the first hundred or so pages.

Perhaps that assessment isn’t exactly fair; I know very little about geology, mapping, or geological maps. What I do know I picked up from 2023’s The Seashell on the Mountaintop which was far more focused on Nicholas Steno and his contributions to stratigraphy and paleontology (turns out fossils don’t just emerge from the earth for fun). While Steno formed a few foundational rules for stratigraphy that would help future geologists, he did not have a way of knowing directly what kind of rock was where and how it shifted over land. This problem William Smith would solve.

Throughout the book, Smith’s discoveries would often take a backseat to the politics of the time. Being an outsider, the scientific elite did not believe Smith worthy of his discoveries and would try to undermine him, often successfully, almost always through direct plagiarism. These setbacks cost Smith dearly, leading him to be sent to debtors prison- the location the book begins. Over time, he was able to win favor and scrape back the honor that was his due; the founder of stratigraphy, and the creator of the first stratigraphic maps in the world.

The subplots take a while to develop, but boy are they interesting. A snobby scientific cabal working in the background to sabotage the work of the plucky little guy? A race to develop the first of a world-changing technology? Bankruptcy? This book has it all, once you get past a bit of a slow start.

With every few hundred yards of eastward progress one passes through hundreds of thousands of years of geological time: a million years of history goes by with every couple of miles march.

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

I wanted to like it. I don’t like the fact that I didn’t like it. Here we go.

Frankenstein reads like a novel that should’ve been a short story by an author that needed another few years to hone her craft. From constant repetition of phrases to Inception-esque narrative structures, the book didn’t make itself easy to read or simple to follow. For example, you start in the north pole as a set of letters being written home- then you’re having a story conveyed to you by a doctor you find- then that doctor has a story conveyed to him by a monster- with all of these narratives being nested within the original. Not impossible to follow, but annoying writing to say the least.

The problem is, the book isn’t bad- it’s just far more stretched out than it feels like it should’ve been. Beyond that and the annoying phrase repetition, it was quite enjoyable. Is the monster a sympathetic figure? It claims it did not intend to hurt anyone until it was driven away and spurned repeatedly; but this would require taking the monster at it’s word.  Was the doctor right in destroying the bride, driving the monster to kill again? On one hand he had given his word to complete the project in exchange for peace, but on the other had no way of knowing if the monster would be true to his end of the bargain. At what point does ambition turn from a positive virtue to a danger?

I’m still glad I read this, even if it wasn’t my favorite book of the year. It is a classic that spawned of the most long-lasting characters in the horror genre. Oh, and spoiler- Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. 

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

In My Time of Dying

by Sebastian Junger

An honest, raw examination into our relationship with death and the processes the body goes through as it is dying. Uniquely, the latter is told in the first person- a perspective rarely available for those that are so close to death. By the time of these events, Sebastian Junger was no stranger to death, having been party to numerous Taliban assaults while following the second platoon of Battle Company in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan as a war correspondent. Even still, he failed to fully appreciate the fragility of life and the reality that it could be stripped away at a moment’s notice.

A short read, In My Time of Dying dedicates about the same amount of time to describing the physical and mental manifestations of dying- failing vision with lapses in and out of consciousness, hallucinations, unstable heart beat, change of skin color and fading of the lips- with the personal and cultural attachments that we have to living and dying. Each are deeply interesting and, frankly, painful to digest. Humanity can only proceed with an understanding of mortality by burying that knowledge deep down; systems emerge to help us cope, including religions and developed egos. While other books I’ve read in the last few years have tackled this problem (Camus and Kierkegaard wrote extensively on the topic) In My Time of Dying takes it from a different angle- the dying man, in first person. Theory dissolves, and you’re left with one man fighting to stay alive for his family, his fate entirely outside of his hands.

“I was young and had no idea the world killed people so casually.”

Freedom

by Sebastian Junger

I was expecting something closer to the writing style of In My Time of Dying; this I did not receive. Once that expectation dissolved, I considered it akin to In Praise of Paths; this, too, was a mischaracterization. Freedom is unlike any book on walking I’ve read- which by this point is a good few- because it considers foot travel at it’s most brutal. There is constant danger, whether from the territorial mentally ill that call the railroad their home, or from the police that respond to loiterers along the tracks. Ultimately, Freedom was an escape; a temporary period where there was a focus on one particular goal, a struggle considerable enough to force focus on that goal, and a small team to share the experience with.

Had I read War first, Freedom would have made substantially more sense. Junger does not approach foot travel in the airy, transcendentalist way Thoreau did; it is brutal, goal-oriented, and bleak. Within this bleakness emerges salvation; a life of one’s own making, with no outside assistance or hinderance. What you have is limited to what is in front of you, a liberating experience if you are willing to accept it as such. 

We walked around four hundred miles and most nights we were the only people in the world who knew where we were. There are many definitions of freedom but surely that is one of them.

Troubled

by Rob Henderson

To call it Hillbilly Elegy would be unfair, because while the life trajectory is similar between Henderson and Vance- extremely tumultuous upbringing, drugs and fighting in youth, enlistment in the military, somehow making it to an Ivy League school- the devil is in the details, and for such stories the details are everything. Being a psychologist, Henderson is uniquely positioned to perceive the behaviors of those around him and more accurately gauge their motivations, leading to his “luxury beliefs” theory that frames the second half Troubled. A profoundly honest storyteller with quite the story to tell, Henderson managed to scrape out of the largely hopeless situation he was born into and is now able to shed light on a segment of society that is all but ignored.

The first three fourths or so of Troubled chronicle Henderson’s early life, navigating foster home after foster home. Substance abuse and physical abuse frame a daily life of tumult that he escapes by joining the military, where he is able to find structure and begin to move past his upbringing, eventually making it to Yale as an undergraduate. The final quarter of the book investigates the foreign world he experiences in elite institutions, where politics seem focused around the world he experienced- yet policy far removed from what could possibly be considered helpful to those he grew up with. These luxury beliefs, Henderson believed, served to position the espouser in a positive light for believing the right things, without any care about the people at the end of that policy decision.

While it was a very good read, Troubled was not groundbreaking. Like Christopher Columbus, Henderson is sharing a discovery to the only people remaining unaware of it. In the aftermath of the re-election of Donald Trump, this divide between the espoused beliefs of the elite class and the actual needs of the underclasses has never been more stark. A good read? Absolutely. Groundbreaking? Not quite, to any that grew up without mansions or butlers. 

Successful people tell the world they got lucky, then tell their loved ones about the importance of hard work and sacrifice. Critics of successful people tell the world those successful people got lucky, and then tell their loved ones about the importance of hard work and sacrifice.

Against Empathy

by Paul Bloom

Coming soon!

If God exists, maybe He can simultaneously feel the pain and pleasure of every sentient being. But for us mortals, empathy really is a spotlight. It’s a spotlight that has a narrow focus, one that shines most brightly on those we love and gets dim for those who are strange or different or frightening.

Explore More From The Review