Book Review, 2025 Edition

Five years have passed since I started this project. Time flies (it actually doesn’t, as I learned while reading The Order of Time, but more on that later) but it does seem to go quite a bit slower when there are events anchoring our memories. More than what I’ve learned, which has been substantial, having a reference point to bring me back to a specific point in time has been incredibly impactful.

No longer am I left unsure where the time went, and what I did with it. Now, looking back, I see Anthropocene Reviewed- and I’m transported back to Catalina Island, fresh out of the water following my first Pacific dive and finding refuge in a nearby seafood shack where I decompressed over a shrimp taco, a beer, and a book. Then I consider Butler to the World, and remember being half-dead from exhaustion after six hours of snorkeling on Turks and Caicos, curled up on a recliner facing the ocean. Finally, I recollect the comparatively uneventful circumstances around The Last Lecture- sitting on a stone bench in Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, feeling the soft breeze of a spring evening, surrounded by vibrant flowers, as a few errant tears meandered down my cheek.

Each of the following books, and each of the books from past years, is tied to a unique time and place that no longer exists. The metaphysical and temporal river has continued to flow, renewing and refreshing itself, and revisiting the spots will not bear the same fruits from the past. But they survive, in memory, tied to the emotions and interpretations from my reading and who I was while I read. A place long gone, a person long dead, kept alive within the pages that anchor the memories of what once was.

2025

Bowling Alone

by Robert Putnam

A phenomenal book that has stood the test of time. Published in 2000, many of the issues outlined have continued, or exacerbated, in the intervening years, a testament to the extraordinary amount of research that went into framing a basic diagnosis of the ills that have corroded our social and political life. Drawing largely from the General Social Survey and other long-running social surveys on American sociopolitical life, Putnam plays the role of a gumshoe, exploring the evidence and working to identify the culprit behind our negative social change.

A few things stand out about Putnam’s research. First, it is unabashedly curious and honest- no possibility is skipped over, including uneasy racial or sexual issues. Putnam’s only interested in the data, following it to it’s conclusion. That conclusion, unsurprisingly to us in the 2020’s, is largely technological.

Advancements in media led to increasingly addictive forms of entertainment, often replacing the more social activities we would’ve otherwise been involved in- bowling, perhaps, or a volunteer organization. TV programs acted a form of subtle mental anesthetic, numbing the viewer during the period of watching, but equally importantly, leaving them at a lower cognitive baseline after they finished watching as well.

The greatest takeaway I found from Bowling Alone was the impact of this social change on the Baby Boomers, which my generation consider guilty of tremendous moral and political failings. Sacrificing future sustainability for short-term personal gain, the Boomers sold out their progeny to make the single most economically plentiful period that the US has ever seen just a bit more lucrative. While this assessment isn’t completely untrue, it is a gross oversimplification of a much more complex issue with roots dating back a century. The Baby Boomers were the victims of a social system that would forget about them, leaving them adrift in a quickly changing world, with angst they could not understand and wealth that would do nothing to plug the community-sized hole left in the wake of this change.

Bowling Alone helps to shine light on the root causes of the social changes that have severely harmed our society. While it doesn’t offer much in terms of remedying the issue- Putnam would leave that to his next book– it does help to better understand how we ended up where we are, and to provide a bit more sympathy for the group some of us wrongly blamed for this change.

The timing of the Internet explosion means that it cannot possibly be causally linked to the crumbling of social connectedness described in previous chapters. Voting, giving, trusting, meeting, visiting, and so on had all begun to decline while Bill Gates was still in grade school.

The Anthropocene Reviewed

by John Green

A good book with some deeply moving lines, but a bit too pedantic with a narrator that reads like the world’s biggest dweeb. Which, mind you, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that- but it just transports you to the most annoying people in high school. For every profound comment, there would be about a dozen cringe-inducing statements that leave you scratching your head.

The concept was simple enough- a review in the style of a Google Reviews page, applied to everything in everyday life. From Canada geese to the Notes app to the song You’ll Never Walk Alone, and even to specific experiences such as Googling strangers, John Green covers a fairly broad range of the human experience. Sometimes insightful, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes funny, the collection of essays covers the range of emotions required for such a broad enterprise.

My distaste for The Anthropocene Reviewed likely speaks more to my preferences than any actual shortcoming of the book or the author. For younger readers, this could make an excellent introduction to essay series before taking on some more serious works by David Sedaris or David Foster Wallace.

I'll never again speak to many of the people who loved me into this moment, just as you will never speak to many of the people who loved you into your now. So we raise a glass to them- and hope that perhaps somewhere, they are raising a glass to us.

The In-Between

by Hadley Vlahos

An incredible set of stories betrayed by some valid questions over the author’s trustworthiness. The In-Between chronicles the beginning of author Hadley Vlahos’ career in hospice nursing as she is forced to reconcile her pre-conceived notions about death with the strange reality of what she witnesses during her job. Told through a series of her clients, the stories are joyous and heartbreaking, inspiring and probing.

Now, the problem- some of the stories are unbelievable. As in, how the author describes the events occurring, I simply don’t believe it. Similar to my critique of John D’gata’s About A Mountain, the credibility of any of the narrative forces one to call the entire narrative into question. Real life is rarely so linear and theatrical, causing the scenes to be less impactful as the book progresses.

Despite this critique, the book is worth reading. Emotionally resonant and surprisingly not religiously pushy, The In-Between reports back on the phenomenon of death and the lessons to take away from it. How honest the reports and how accurate the lessons? I’m not quite sure.

I am continually amazed at how life just continues on as usual, despite the tragedy that exists all around us.

Butler to the World

by Oliver Bullough

Following a few less-than-stellar entries, it was nice to get an absolute banger. Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals explores the dark underworld of British business dealings and tax codes that prefer the ultrarich- regardless of how they made their wealth, and often at the expense of the underclasses.

Bullough posits that following the collapse of the British Empire, aristocrats and beuraucrats had to scramble for another source of national wealth. What they found was discrepancies in common law that could be extremely beneficial for some of the world’s worst industries and people- but lucrative for the country that allows it. These loopholes allowed shadow corporations to be found in Scotland that withheld liability from the owners and didn’t record any info on ownership, tax havens in Gibraltar to allow for the growth of call-in gambling, and the rise of the Eurodollar to allow for beneficial exchanges of wealth.

The territories that allowed this behavior thrived, along with the terrorists, kleptocrats, scammers, and tax avoiders that used the services. Meanwhile, justice was never served and the worst people on the planet could continue to operate with impunity, often while gaining preferential spots within elite British circles.

Eye opening and deeply concerning, Butler to the World shines a light on the dark underbelly of British post-colonial wealth. More concerningly, it shows how other international powers- including the United States- were not only complicit, but helped expand the butler’s offerings to compete for the business of the world’s worst people.

Faced with the choice between protecting Europe’s poorest country or saving the City an amount so small it wouldn’t even be a rounding error on a fund’s balance sheet, Butler Britain backed the wealthy and the powerful over the poor and weak, again.

Original Sin

by Jake Tapper

I mean, it wasn’t bad. It’s like reading a breaking news story about the invention of the internet in 2025- much less impressive or important long after the story is common knowledge. Had this been released a year or two prior, it would have been brave and insightful. As it stands, it is a testament to the cowardice and self-preservation that makes up all too much of modern political discourse.

So, the basic premise is that Joe Biden was too old to run for re-election and his aides knew it, but hid that from the rest of the party. Apart from the obvious holes that could be picked through this narrative (a lot of people had access, and an equal number kept quiet to protect themselves from the greater wrath of the party apparatus) it doesn’t really matter. Nothing reported was remotely new information. He was obviously too old, there was obviously a concerted cover up, and the cover up collapsed as soon as it was pushed too far during the presidential debate. The narratives that came out afterwards, including this book, was simply an attempt at self-preservation after a period of profound cowardice.

There is nothing brave about saying what is popular. Nothing in Original Sin was new information, though it was somewhat well-researched and fairly honest journalism. Still, as a fairly obvious attempt at maintaining credibility and profiting off of years of underreporting, Jake Tapper did not create anything novel nor insightful.

But no one went public. One donor who witnessed it all explained their tortured calculus: “We weren’t going to change that he was running, and no one wanted to be on the outside in case he did win. So no one said anything. No one wanted to hear it, and if you said anything, you got your head chopped off.

How the Irish Saved Civilization

by Thomas Cahill

Part of Thomas Cahill’s Hinges of History series, How the Irish Saved Civilization dives into the social changes brought by Saint Patrick to the land of Eire. A warring tribal society before his arrival, the once-enslaved immigrant Maewyn Succat returned to Ireland after receiving his freedom with the word of God and a mission to bring peace to the Irish. This mission was successful, but in ways he could have never imagined. Intersecting with the collapse of Rome and the destruction of Western civilization, the Irish’s new peaceful role as monastic bookmakers would help provide refuge to the West’s literary and philosophical tradition, ensuring it would be passed down following the dark ages.

Cahill has an accessible writing style for a historian, easy to follow and lively. Before getting into the weeds on the man who would become Saint Patrick, Cahill walks the reader through the prehistoric oral tradition of the Irish to set the stage. He used this to refer back to later, juxtaposing the common motifs and values of the time gone by- strength, bloodlust, resilience- with the newfound values of knowledge, sanctity, and hospitality. Unfortuntately for the Irish, this newfound peace paved the way for their demise at the hand of the Vikings a few centuries later.

The subject matter is incredibly interesting to me, making it difficult to accurately discuss the writing quality. In such a history book, I look for three things; story worthiness, uniqueness, and impact. The story was unique, with a setting and a primary character that everyone has heard of but few know much about. The uniqueness of such a social change can’t be overstated, with a full cultural 180 taking place within a single generation. Finally, the impact of the change- the preservation of much of the Western canon that very possibly would have been lost forever otherwise.

Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies' heads. Where they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking.

Dead Mountain

by Donnie Eichar

The book was good, but the subject matter? Oh man. For years the Dyatlov Pass incident has lived in a prominent part of my memory, a dying ember of the magic of childhood before pesky concepts like “science” stole all the wonder from the world. Witchcraft? Obviously fake. UFOs? Child’s play. But the Dyatlov Pass incident- now that was a conspiracy with some staying power. Not necessarily the definitive account of the incident (more on that later), Eichar’s research into the final days of the doomed expedition offers excellent insight into the social environment that framed the events at Dead Mountain and likely played into the legend that it became.

Eichar weaves a dual narrative, sharing his own journey following the trail taken by the Dyatlov group while sharing his research on all of the events, songs, writings, and visits from the original group leading up to their deaths. I was skeptical at first- this seemed to be unnecessary filler, adding nothing to the story while making it harder to follow the details of the actual expedition. As more modern characters were introduced and as the social climate took more of a central role, the decision made perfect sense. Russia was, and remains, a socially complicated country with a value system utterly foreign to Americans. The deep distrust of the Russian government by it’s citizens coupled with the general incompetence of the Russian bureaucratic apparatus created a perfect setting for conspiracy should anything… strange happen.

Well, it just so happens, something very strange happened. Still hotly debated, the Dyatlov Pass incident involved the death of nine experienced hikers in the Ural Mountains under conditions that seemed to defy explanation. The tent was cut open from the inside, mostly-naked bodies were found in every direction over a 1-2 mile range with a wide range of severe injuries, radiation levels were elevated, and there was a single picture taken that fateful night- a blurred shot in near-complete darkness with a ball of light smudged across the image. The official Russian investigation did not provide a cause, instead stating “an unknown compelling force” led to the team’s demise.

While Eichar’s account is comprehensive in covering the lead-up to the disaster and the investigation that followed, it did not convincingly provide any alternatives, despite attempting to. The last section was a hastily-written explanation of the current popular theories followed by a rebuttal of each. This all was fine. It was followed, however, by an equally implausible explanation of his own, based on scientists that he seemed to just meet explaining a concept that was brand new to him.

According to Eichar a wind phenomenon, Kármán Vortex Street, was caused by the high winds over the specific curvature of the nearby mountain slope, creating localized tornadoes that tore past their tent. This seems incredibly implausible for the same reason many of the other explanations were- experienced hikers will understand that their likelihood of death is higher outside the tent than inside the tent, regardless of any circumstances. In the tent, they may live- outside the tent, especially if they make the tent unusable, they face certain death. Without clothes or shoes? Even more likely. This half-assed theory made an otherwise compelling book end with a fizzle rather than a bang, an underwhelming conclusion to what was great up until that point.

“Siberia,” historically, has been less a geographical designation than a state of mind, a looming threat—the frozen hell on earth to which czarist and Communist Russia sent their political undesirables. By this definition, Siberia is not so much a place as it is a hardship to endure, and perhaps that’s what Vladimir means when he says that we are in Siberia. I trudge on.

The Last Lecture

by Randy Pausch

Strangely not depressing despite the subject matter. Randy Pausch, the author of The Last Lecture, was dead within a few months of the publishing date. This was by design. An enthusiastic, fairly young professor with a new family, Pausch wanted to leave something for his children to know what kind of man he was, what he stood for, and how he lived. This reflection became a lecture at his university, Carnegie Mellon, and that lecture became this book.

It’s hard to have such a topic not be fairly depressing, but the overall tone of the story was thankful and optimistic. His story was coming to a close, but what a story it was- pursuing and largely accomplishing many of his childhood dreams, marrying the woman he loved, and having a job that allowed him to make a real positive change in the world. The somber subtleties were in the young family he left behind, and the erased potential of the rest of his career.

Easily readable and capable of conveying such heavy themes without being a bummer, The Last Lecture is a good addition for anyone looking to get more out of life. It is incredibly hard to fully appreciate what we have without considering the fleeting nature of our existence- books like this help to drive that point home in a way that is entertaining and hopeful rather than bleak and existential.

Look, I'm going to find a way to be happy, and I'd really love to be happy with you, but if I can't be happy with you, then I'll find a way to be happy without you.

The Order of Time

by Carlo Rovelli

Probably much better for one smarter than I. While I could wrap my head around what was happening early on, the book quickly progressed- much like our understanding of time itself- into grounds far too abstract and academic to be easily accessible, despite Rovelli’s best attempts. Perhaps after another read through- making a point to read only in the mornings or afternoons, not right before bed which is my custom- I could better make sense of this. As it stands, The Order of Time is as hard to grasp as time itself.

The intention of the book was simple enough- break down the assumptions we hold about time with the scientific reality, then recreate a more scientifically concrete conception of what we experience as time. The problem, of course, is that the first part is easy to explain to the layman- the latter is mathematically and conceptually complex, requiring either a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of physics or a lot of time to read and reread the chapters to follow along.

Now, this is all a problem with me rather than the book. Had I not been half-asleep while reading, and had I taken more time to re-read each chapter, I think I would’ve gotten much more out of it. Hell, I fully intend to read back through The Order of Time and update this review. In the meantime, two things were apparent- one, that the book was great for a certain audience, and two, that I was not that audience.

is it really possible that a perception so vivid, basic, existential—my perception of the passage of time—depends on the fact that I cannot apprehend the world in all of its minute detail? On a kind of distortion that’s produced by myopia? Is it true that, if I could see exactly and take into consideration the actual dance of millions of molecules, then the future would be “just like” the past?

Voodoo Science

by Robert L. Park

A fun follow-up to Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories that I read last year, Park’s Voodoo Science explores popular instances of pseudoscience and fraudulent science with just the right amount of grace. To me, the psychology of conspiracism- be that political in the case of Voodoo Histories or scientific in Voodoo Science– is the most interesting facet of the phenomenon. People believe wacky things, and always have- but what compels one to create such a narrative, what inspires others to follow, and what main themes connect the theories that become memetic?

Park excels at examining the characters behind these fake scientific discoveries and identifying where they morally stand. Many, he believes, are truly sold on their ideas. Their shortcoming is a lack of scientific understanding needed to notice the obvious errors in their belief. Others, he believes, start off with good intentions but get in too deep, slowly pivoting from the space of ego-driven good intentions to outright fraud.

Each chapter is based around an invention or finding with no scientific validity, the creators that promote their finding, a media apparatus that supports the creators to boost ratings and ad revenue, and finally the gullible public that buy into the idea that is seemingly backed by an authoritative source, the media. As Park explores, this cycle has been played out time and again, working on the scientific illiteracy and wishful nature of the public. The stories themselves are compelling, which is why the media shares them- a self-taught electrical engineer that discovers something that could change the world. He could be anybody, he embodies an idea that is uniquely American- and he is, almost always, either a fraud or fraud adjacent.

Besides being an author, Park was a professor of physics at the University of Maryland and served as the director of public information for the Washington office of the American Physical Society. Through his writing it is apparent that he had an interest in helping the public to better understand the world around them in an uncondescending, honest way. He acknowledged issues within the scientific community and where scientific rigor fell to the demands of ego, media, and finance. Similarly, he pointed to the role that the media played in most of these stories, adding a layer of distortion to influence the public to believe lies for their own benefit. A great read from a humble, authoritative source to better understand how bad science spreads along with the motivations of each actor involved.

Society, in fact, often holds it to be a virtue to adhere to certain beliefs in spite of evidence to the contrary. Belief in that which reason denies is associated with steadfastness and courage, while skepticism is often identified with cynicism and weak character. The more persuasive the evidence against a belief, the more virtuous it is deemed to persist in it.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

by Haruki Murakami

This served as my introduction to one of my brother’s favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. Apparently I chose wrong, and should’ve gone for his fiction to start. I didn’t know this, but don’t have any regrets. This book was good in it’s own right, and seemed to meet what I needed; a treatise on making peace with an aging body, and what it means to find an athletic equilibrium as you age. Of course, Murakami’s version of this is running marathons slightly slower as a 50+ year old, so not sure that part is completely relatable, but as someone that just hit 30- the year that Murakami’s running career began- it is inspirational.

The sensation of aging is ever-present after one hits a certain point where the growth and potential seems to recede, then follows the sensation, real or not, of atrophy. At 30 years old, I know I am not old, but I also notice that this is when things can start to decline. Whether that is a part of the American lifestyle or a biological necessity, I am not sure, but it is a bit depressing nonetheless.

Murakami paints a different picture. Aging is a part of the normal cycle and should be appreciated as such, a life stage that one should feel privileged to be able to live through. While that natural progression is unavoidable, quitting the things we love is a conscious choice. Running times begin to decline, reaction times and fast-twitch muscles begin to fail us, but our decision to quit is ours. This is not the point of the book, but it is certainly what I got out of it.

Overall, for an author I’ve heard so much about, my first Murakami book was underwhelming. Still, the glimmers of brilliance were obvious enough to leave me excited to read IQ84 or Kafka on the Shore, as well as delve deeper into the works of other Japanese authors such as Yukio Mishima.

One of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.

Longitude

by Dava Sobel

Coming soon!

With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote