Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To tell the truth, the whole truth

Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria by Muhammad Najem

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cbr17bingo Diaspora (this could be culture, but he upheaval of the Syrian people unfortunately fits.) Sadly, this book, Muhammad Najem, War Reporter: How One Boy Put the Spotlight on Syria, is nonfiction. I say sadly as nobody, let alone children and teenagers should have to go through what he did. Muhammad Najem, Nora Neus and Julie Robine gathered their talents and told the story of Muhammad as he risked not only his life, but the lives of his family, friends and neighbors. He wanted to be […]

The Bearmuda Triangle

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

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Something this dire – a town of people so opposed to paying taxes that they become a country-wide hotspot for bear attacks – should not be this funny. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling carefully walks the line between Bill Bryson and a VICE documentarian while spinning this wild story of a Free Town and the beasts- man and animal alike, within. This collection of people, carefully and deliberately documented by Hongoltz-Hetling, shoot themselves in the foot so many times and with such ferocity that it is amazing the […]

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes

Blood of Brothers by Stephen Kinzer

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Although Nicaragua is important to me for family reasons (my brother has lived there for the last 5 years), the more I learn about its history the more I think everyone- particularly Americans- would find it fascinating and should be learning about it.  Blood of Brothers is history filtered through memoir, narrated by being Stephen Kinzer, formerly an NYT bureau chief stationed in Nicaragua.  Kinzer lived in Nicaragua during its tumultuous and horrific civil war, book ended with the Sandinistas ousting the brutal Somoza dictators […]

I Blame TV

The Cadaver King and Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

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You will never look at science the same way after reading this book. Even if you know that the shows like C.S.I. are science fairy tales what Balko and Carrington chronicle isn’t so much a miscarriage of justice but a deliberate hoodwinking by a group of men (the two in the title are the most important but hardly the only ones) who didn’t give a damn about the truth because those accused were poor, or black or the forgotten or all three. The book focuses […]



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