Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Successionary

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

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Look, I’m simple: if you bill a book as a “non-fictional Succession,” load it with family drama and a bunch of wannabe Richard IIIs and Lady Macbeths, and put billions of dollars and a major media or financial empire at stake, I’m absolutely going to devour it. This is no exception. As to the quality of the book, it’s fine. Quite good at times. James B. Stewart wrote the magnum opus of these kinds of books in Disneywar and I was kind of expecting that. But it didn’t […]

out of the way, Mr. Hughes. Let the real stars shine.

Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth

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You’ve seen The Aviator, yes? If not, maybe you know that it’s about Howard Hughes? Yes- the Spruce Goose guy. Yes, the keep on failing upwards guy. Yes, the “keep your pee in jars” guy. We’ve all heard or seen at least a little bit about Howard Hughes. His reach was wide and heavy, and he swept away businesses, careers, and entire studios in his wake. Karina Longworth, author of Seduction and podcaster extraordinaire, covered Howard Hughes’s Hollywood during a whole season of her phenomenal podcast a […]

News from back then

Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors by Jan Bondeson

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Strange Victoriana, the first from my massive pile of Christmas swag, is an entertaining collection of the weird, wonderful, spooky, salacious, and sometimes downright macabre stories taken from the Illustrated Police News (IPN) – an immensely popular tabloid of the time (you’ll have seen some of its illustrations before, particularly if you’ve ever had any kind of interest in the Jack the Ripper case which the IPN went to town on). Victorians are often thought of as incredibly repressed and prudish, while a quick peruse […]

An appeal to Americans to shake off the chains of economic injustice and complacency

Workin' on a Chain Gang by Walter Mosley

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This non-fiction contribution by the highly-respected African-American author addressing some of the many problems afflicting the United States today is a must-read. Written in 2000 in a presidential election year (but today more timely than ever), the socially-conscious Mosely intended his book-length essay to awaken the majority of Americans—black and white—who go through life too easily content to wear what he calls the chains of economic oppression, cultural ignorance and racial prejudice. Thus the title of his discourse.   Moseley says that while it is […]

Sex, Drugs, and Manipulation by the Media

Scandals of Classic Hollywood by Helen Anne Petersen

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I had been reading Anne Helen Petersen’s columns on The Hairpin for years, with articles analyzing classic Hollywood lives with a great deal of wit and insight. When this book was published, I ordered it right away, read the first few chapters, and then just let it sit. It just wasn’t as compelling as I thought it was going to be. However, I went on a work trip this week and had to spend hours in layovers, so figured I would use my captive audience […]

MSNBC Isn’t All That Liberal…

#Newsfail: Climate Change, Feminism, Gun Control, and Other Fun Stuff We Talk About Because Nobody Else Will by Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny

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There’s an awesome podcast out there called Citizen Radio, and it is amazing. The hosts are a comic and journalist, respectively, who record at their home and talk about news that either doesn’t get covered or that gets covered in ridiculous ways. There is a ton of swearing, a lot of joking, some bizarre recurring characters (“Republican Baby,” for example), and a crap ton of actual, honest, news. Citizen Radio is independent media that seeks the truth without being worried about what sponsors are going […]



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