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The Final Solution: A Story of Detection
by Michael Chabon Enjoyable, well written, as expected. A quote: The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always...
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Weekend media roundup
I finished and/or read a number of books in the last few days. Here’s a roundup: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld; narrated by Kirby Heyborne I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. Rubenfeld...
View ArticleThings that make you feel your age
I just had an “old moment.” I saw a book in my list of books I’d given away on Bookmooch that looked really intriguing. It was called Take-Down, and was about the pursuit and capture of Kevin...
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar
by Maurice LeBlanc; read by various With grading finished and my intellectual activity relegated, for the next few days, to the backburner, I’m doing some home excavation. We’ve gutted the bathroom...
View ArticleDo your homework
My Writing and Rhetoric 2: Online! students are working their way through Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. One of the readings was a chapter called “Helen Levitt:...
View ArticleRhet/Comp and New Media
Fellow academics, please do read through (or jump) to the end and pick up the meme if you’re willing — it would be helpful to me. When I was on the job market, I got three interviews at MLA. One was a...
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The Alienist
Carr’s book is pretty great. It’s the story of a serial murderer in New York in the 1890s. The main character is a reporter who’s friends with Teddy Roosevelt (the chief of police) and with Lazlo...
View ArticleThe Secular Conscience
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life by Austin Dacey This book is pretty heavy in its philosophy for a general readership, but worth the slog. Dacey argues that the problem with...
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A nice feature of being slow on BookMooch
Illustration credit Andrice Arp, courtesy of BookMooch.com So I’ve raved before here about Bookmooch, the best book swapping site on the interwebs: You list books you want to give away, and get 1/10 of...
View ArticleBoy that feels curmudgeonly
I just got a free copy (thanks, Tarcher Penguin!) of THE DUMBEST GENERATION by Mark Bauerlein. Here’s the description on the back: They are The Dumbest Generation. They enjoy all the advantages of a...
View ArticleMcLuhan, Fiore, and You
My students turned in their “media massage” assignments yesterday and they’re pretty great. With that in mind, here’s one quote that stuck with me from my most recent reading of The Medium is the...
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Here Comes Everybody
Here Comes Everybody Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky My Writing for New Media class finished reading this last week, so I thought I’d post a few...
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Critical Regionalism
Critical Regionalism Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape by Douglas Reichert Powell *Full disclosure: the author works in my department and is a friend of...
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The Underground Empire of Joseph Wunderkind
I won’t review this book here, since it’s not published yet, but I just finished reading an early draft and enjoyed it very much. You should check out the teasers over at Andrew Kozma’s blog, An...
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The Suspicions of Mister Whicher
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective By Kate Summerscale, narrated by Simon Vance When the three-year-old son of...
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