Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Genre: Non-Fiction

“The craft of writing as the art of thinking”

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

by Leave a Comment

I did not want to finish this book, because I knew I’d then have to write a review, and I don’t know if I can do Between the World and Me justice. This short National Book Award winner from 2015 by Ta-Nehisi Coates is a three-part letter to the author’s (then) 15-year-old son, Samori Coates. It was written shortly after the killer of Michael Brown was acquitted, inspired by his son’s reaction to the injustice, and is a Coates’s paean and lament about the truths […]

Cowboys in the City who are real

The Compton Cowboys by Walter Thompson-Hernandez

by Leave a Comment

I think I had my expectations wrong; that’s why I wasn’t as into this one as I’d hoped. I somehow thought/hoped The Compton Cowboys was going to be more history than it was the personal stories of the current generation of members. The idea of urban cowboys is fascinating enough by itself, but add in the racial and socio-economic complications and this could have been really amazing. I’m not saying it isn’t interesting or not a good book; it’s fine. I was just hoping for […]

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (audiobook)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

by Leave a Comment

The New Jim Crow @thenewjimcrow – There were a lot of things I wanted to highlight and take notes on. The hypothesis on mass incarceration being the new form of racial control in the US was incredibly compelling and well laid out. Highly recommend

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (audiobook)

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

by Leave a Comment

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by @Isabelwilkerson dives into its case that the US has a racial caste system with compelling empirical and anecdotal evidence. I audio-booked this and found it to be a good delivery for this book. Recommend.

Arguably – Christopher Hitchens (2011)

Arguably by Christopher Hitchens

by Leave a Comment

I made my initial rendering of this book 5 stars based on about 3/4 of the way through it. At that point, I’d read about 600 pages of Hitchens mostly reviewing books, discussing history, talking about contemporary writers and thinkers, and addressing a few off-kilter and slightly ill-advised topics like “Why Women Aren’t Funny”. That last essay, I found last strident and offensive than I originally remember it, because his title is more provocative than the essay ends up being. The book reviews here are […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo
  3. Google Pay