This book is a story about how one nation, the United States, turned people’s minds into blood-soaked battlegrounds—and how we, the people, can put down our weapons and build something better.” So writes Annalee Newitz in the preface to Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the...
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Many Americans seem to assume that the current tension between the US and China arose only with the election of Donald Trump in 2016—or with the rise of Xi Jinping to the top of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) four years earlier. But that’s far from the case. In Overreach: How China...
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A Harris Poll released in November 2022 by U.S. News & World Report revealed just how deeply divided Americans are about race. Forty-seven percent of Americans—and 71 percent of White Americans—said they were “unconvinced that systemic racism exists in the U.S.” And in a YouGov...
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Early in his career as a rising provincial official, people locally viewed him “as a cautious and somewhat nondescript administrator, one who preferred working by the book and avoiding decisions that could backfire later.” But, as Wall Street Journal reporter Chun Han Wong makes clear...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes Globalization is puzzling. That iPhone you may have at hand contains parts manufactured in forty-three countries on six continents—and that doesn’t even count the raw materials. But how did all that stuff get to the factory in China or India that fit them...
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Ask just about any American at random to describe the Chinese political system, and the answer is likely to be “Communism.” It’s a convenient label that results from Mao Zedong’s 1949 revolution and seven decades of reporting by and about the Chinese Communist Party. Not to...
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You may have come across reports about the violence surrounding the mining of the rare mineral coltan in Central Africa. It’s a source of the element tantalum, which is essential in the manufacture of cell phones and laptops. And about eighty percent of the world’s supply comes from...
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Follow the news about the high-tech industry, and you’ll likely come across apocalyptic warnings that China is about to overtake the US in just about every field that matters, from artificial intelligence to semiconductors. What a relief it is, then, to read Chip War, a sober, up-to-date...
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If anyone ever tries to tell you that politics doesn’t matter, I suggest you raise the case of North Korea. Now, I don’t mean the big abstracts like “Communism” and “dictatorship” and “rogue state.” I’m referring to the little things, the daily...
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What? Another book about Donald Trump? I’ve already reviewed nearly two dozen of them. So, what could possibly move me to read another one? Well, three things, as it turns out. First, author Mark Leibovich is one of the funniest observers of American politics I’ve come across in recent...
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The United States is coming to an end. The question is how. Every government, every business, every person alive will be affected by the answer.” Thus opens Canadian journalist Stephen Marche’s deeply disturbing assessment of America’s prospects in the third decade of the 21st...
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Humanity has wrested enough abundance out of Planet Earth to feed, clothe, and house every man, woman, and child in comfort. Why, then, do tiny numbers of ultra-wealthy people possess so much more than they could ever use or spend in a hundred lifetimes—while most of the rest of the human race...
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Many of the thousands of books about Donald Trump that have seen the light of day in recent years—Amazon lists more than 30,000—were written by people with an axe to grind or a reputation to restore. Not so the latest of Bob Woodward’s twenty-one books, Peril, coauthored with fellow...
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If it’s too early for a post-mortem on the COVID-19 pandemic, America’s publishers haven’t gotten the memo. Amazon lists 642 titles in response to the query “books about the COVID-19 pandemic.” The pandemic still rages on, filling hospitals in heavily impacted states...
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In two books published over the course of the past decade, Brad Stone has told the inside story of Amazon’s rise. The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound chronicle the company’s growth from a quirky online bookstore founded a quarter-century ago into the corporate juggernaut it has...
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The phrase “nightmare scenario” in the title of this rushed exposé of the Trump Administration’s response to COVID-19 has a double meaning. It refers, of course, to the pandemic itself. Not the worst case scenario like the 1918 influenza epidemic, which killed an estimated 50...
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In May 2019, my wife and I spent three days in Rwanda’s charming capital city, Kigali, on a side trip from a visit to Kenya. We were enchanted by the rolling hills and by the spotless, flower-lined streets and sidewalks that conjured up memories of Singapore. At the Kigali Genocide Memorial,...
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Back in 1996, a book entitled The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko hit the bestseller lists. The two authors demonstrated that owning a small business such as a dry cleaners or a neighborhood grocery, for example, might over time make its frugal owners into...
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Amazon lists more than 1,000 books about Donald Trump. And only two US Presidents—George Washington and Abraham Lincoln—account for more (over 2,000 in each case). But Trump hasn’t even completed a single term in office, and there are lots more books to come. One of the latest, and in its...
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Here’s America’s leading scholar of Right-Wing politics with an up-to-the-minute analysis of the contending forces that have seized hold of the Republican Party. Because, as UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Rosenthal explains in Empire of Resentment, conservatism comes in many flavors, of...
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Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Science Fiction Monday includes my latest SF book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.