Nonfiction – Ring Reads

‘Such Great Heights’ Traces Indie Rock’s Past and Present

The cover off Chris DeVille's Such Great Heights, featuring an upside down electric guitar, a bass drum, a disco ball, a vinyl record and a microphone illustrated to look like balloons against a pale blue background.

The family tree of indie rock branches as wide and far as its roots in past musical and cultural movements. DeVille maps it out clearly and with obvious love for the genre.

‘Breakneck’ Takes Aim at U.S., China’s Flaws – and Promise

The cover of Breakneck, with the title, subtitle, and author superimposed in sans-serif text upon a photograph of a woman in what appears to be traditional Chinese clothing standing on ground surrounded by vegetation. Behind her, rising out of a body of water, is the smog-faded image of a building being constructed.

Breakneck reads like being cornered at a party by someone itching to rant about both the U.S. and China’s approach to growth and policy. Fortunately, this rant is well researched and reasoned.

‘Feather Detective’ Gives Voice to One Woman’s Quiet Efforts

The cover for The Feather Detective, featuring an illustration of what appears to be a colorized and stylized version of the titular figure, Roxie Laybourne, with over a dozen trays of colorful and largely tropical bird specimens.

Roxie’s life is fascinating on its face, but Sweeney’s writing lets it shine with an effective choice of details and events to illustrate such an illustrious life.

‘Flower’ a Gripping, Sobering History

While the prose and structure is a nice read, there’s no making this subject matter go down easy. But then, forced family separation, rampant human rights violations, and elusive justice should never go down easy.

‘Race’ A Nail-Biting Cross-Country Roadtrip

The cover for Eric Moskowitz's debut, The Longest Hardest Race, featuring a colorized picture of two early Ford Model-Ts racing down a dirt road. The portrait of a fairly young Henry Ford is superimposed just beneath the title.

The Hardest, Longest Race at its core is about the struggle between the past and the future, between what’s true and what gets remembered.

‘Boomtown’ Juggles Loads of Stories

The cover of Joe Pappalardo's Boomtown, featuring an illustrated flame over a sepia-toned photo of crashed 1920s-era cars on a dirt city street.

Pappalardo took on quite a project in trying to tell the story of Borger’s hectic year, particularly his dedication to weaving together so many threads rather than focusing on a single character or sector.

‘Forest’ a Rallying Cry for Conservation

When the Forest Breathes is an important book detailing important work. It just also happened to be a very depressing book. But then, that seems less the fault of the trees than the state of the world we’re inflicted with.

The Past Feels Too Familiar in ‘Fear’

The cover of Fear and Fury, the center of which has what appears to be a black and white photo of protesters and counter protesters at a court hearing about the case; the photo has been shaded blue. The title and subtitle are in white text at the top against blocks of red and blue.

The ideas that led to the shooting and Goetz’s subsequent exoneration are still alive and well, and while it may not be easy, it’s crucial to understand and confront them.

‘Little Bosses’ a Hard but Crucial Book for Understanding Today

Multi-level marketing companies haven’t had a good reputation for a while, and recent publications like Hey, Hun, a behind-the-curtain look at MLMs through the eyes of someone who was sucked in by one, or the 2018 podcast The Dream, which examines the promise and cost that many of these companies have on their supposed “consultants.”Continue reading “‘Little Bosses’ a Hard but Crucial Book for Understanding Today”

‘Captain’s Dinner’ Focuses on Legal Drama, Not Cannibalism

The cover to Adam Cohen's Captain's Dinner, which features the title, subtitle, and author on a detail of what looks like an 18th-century painting of four men in a rowboat on choppy sea with dark clouds overhead.

There’s a delicacy in writing about history. For one thing, having the benefit of knowing the end of a series of events from the beginning makes it easy for us to criticize the actions of those who lived it. It can be tricky, too, to not overlay the norms and expectations of today to thoseContinue reading “‘Captain’s Dinner’ Focuses on Legal Drama, Not Cannibalism”