Recent Books -- What's Our Problem, Fiber, Storming Las Vegas, I Who Have Never Known Men, Glass Houses, She's Under Here, An African History of Africa, 1929, Money, Lies, and God, Allies at War, Is a River Alive?
28 February 2026
- What’s Our Problem? by Tim Urban. Couldn’t finish. His breezy pedantic style is grating, treating the reader like a second grader. And lord he is wordy. Perhaps there is something good in here, but I am not going to spend the time. Go read Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind instead.
- Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution–And Why America Might Miss It by Susan Crawford. Dated, completely misses LEO solutions. There might be some good points in here but it illustrates the folly of overfocusing policy on a particular technology.
- Storming Las Vegas: How a Cuban-Born, Soviet-Trained Commando Took Down the Strip to the Tune of Five World-Class Hotels, Three Armored Cars, and $3 Million by John Huddy. The story behind a wave of violent robberies in Las Vegas in the 1990s. The perpetrator makes for a fascinating case study.
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Lots of ways to look at this book, I see it as an allegory about all of humanity, adrift in the universe apparently alone, with no clear explanation for why, and we have to find meaning.
- Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby. This is a stupid story, and Goodreads warned me it was, but I was looking for light entertainment. But too much stupid in here.
- She’s Under Here by Karen Palmer. True story of a woman who went on the run from her violent ex-husband, changing identity, building a new life. I saw the author speak about the book, and her story is compelling.
- An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi. Great walkthrough of African history that was never taught in school.
- 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin. A very humanized telling of the crash, with focus on the people involved.
- Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart. I just couldn’t get into this; I’ve read too much about the perversion of the religiout right and I just can’t stomach more of it.
- A Will to Kill by R. V. Raman. A modern Agatha Christie knockoff – a country manor, a landslide trapping everyone there for a weekend, secrets and murders. I would just go back and read Agatha Christie instead.
- Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World by Tim Bouverie. The story of all the various Allied power relationships during World War II. It is kind of remarkable the alliance held together as long as it did.
- Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane. Poetic and lyrical. And the main central argument is that rivers and other natural features should have legal personhood. It is an interesting idea and no more absurd than corporations having legal personhood.
