Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Somewhat Relevant

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell

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Sarah Vowell brings history to life. She presents stories of history as though you’re her neighbor and the craziest thing just happened to her and she just has to tell you about it. It’s fun even when it’s tragic. What I really enjoyed about Lafayette in the Somewhat United States  was the connection between Lafayette’s actions and our current situation. Drawing these lines from our founding fathers to policies that are still in place and the ways they affect us is a powerful tool that reminds […]

Churchill, the Blitz, and British Grit

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

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I’ve read most of Erik Larson’s books, and you really can’t go wrong if you want an interesting (some say cinematic) take on history. That said, I had more trouble becoming engaged with The Splendid and the Vile than I have some of his other works, my interest in London during the Blitz notwithstanding (and really, will Larson ever be able to top Devil in the White City?). Slow to get going, the book picks up in the second half, and it’s definitely worth sticking out to […]

Bondage

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

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I feel like I’m the last person in my circle to have not read Michelle Alexander’s landmark work The New Jim Crow. It’s one of those books I’d always meant to get to but never had the chance. I borrowed it from someone in my family over a year ago and since I’m going to see them this weekend, I figured there’s no better excuse than that to finally read it. I’ve heard a lot of arguments adjacent to it in favor of ending the drug war […]

If You’re Sick of Reading About Our Current Disaster, Try This One.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham

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Let’s distract ourselves from current disasters with even worse ones from the past, shall we? There are nor many single-event disasters with greater name recognition or cultural impact than the meltdown at Chernobyl—so much so, that it still shapes the zeitgeist around nuclear power 25 years after the event. Adam Higginbotham does an excellent job at detailing exactly how the world fell apart and the exact human cost. It certainly seemed like the end of the world for the town of Pripyat, which was built […]

“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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This was really interesting to read back to back with How to Be an Antiracist; they shed light on each other in weird ways. But they are also two very different books! My main takeaway from Caste is that Isabel Wilkerson is a great writer. I’m set to read her first book next month, and I’m now looking forward to it even more. She employs metaphor and other literary techniques in a way that you don’t normally see from non-fiction writers. It brings a depth […]

A small book about big ideas.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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I now see why this has been a bestseller. I mean, I loved his first book, so I figured I would like this one, too, but his first book was a straight up history, and this one was much more of a genre mish-mash. I didn’t at all realize going in that a large portion of it would be memoir, and that turned out to be the best part of the book! I finished this book on January 6th. It is ruining my reviews, so […]



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