Some minis on remarkable women doing amazing things today, because we can always use more of that. The Double Life of Katharine Clark: The Untold Story of the Fearless Journalist Who Risked Her Life for Truth and Justice, by Katharine Gregorio. Published March 15, 2022 by Sourcebooks Used or new @SecondSale.com Quite the incredible story... Continue Reading →
Restaurants and Feeding Families: Two on Foodways
An important flip side to foodie lit are books looking at the ethics of the food business, foodways, the food supply chain, and aspects of the food industry. Two recent books take deep dives into the rapidly evolving future of the restaurant and delivery industries post-Covid, and how different families eat at varying income levels.... Continue Reading →
Two Social Sciences: Middle School Trauma and Mediocre White Guys
My reading lately has been heavily gearing towards pop science and medical and social science topics. These two deal with very specific breeds of evil: mediocre white men who think they deserve the world at the expense of people of color and women, and the middle school experience. Both are atrocious in their own special... Continue Reading →
The Ominous Ripple Effects of the Gender Data Gap
Book review: Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez I use gender data gap as an overarching term because sex is not the reason women are excluded from data. Gender is. [...] The problem is the social meaning that we ascribe to that body, and a socially determined failure to account for it. Caroline Criado Perez's... Continue Reading →
A Little of Why We Love Dolly
She Come By It Natural collects author Sarah Smarsh's four long-form essays about Dolly Parton and the beloved singer's connections to feminism through her roots in rural poverty in Tennessee (it's better than I'm setting it up, but that's the basic premise). These essays were the result of a Freshgrass Foundation journalism fellowship Smarsh won,... Continue Reading →
The Rollercoaster Story Behind the Trillion-Dollar ‘Flash Crash’
Book review: Flash Crash, by Liam Vaughan (Amazon / Book Depository) Over 36 minutes on the afternoon of May 6, 2010, a trillion-dollar crash, "the most dramatic market collapse in recent history," occurred on the US stock market. It (mostly) rebounded when the unusual trading activity that caused it ceased, but the exact impetus behind... Continue Reading →
Fast Food and the American Dream
Book review: Drive-Thru Dreams, by Adam Chandler (Amazon / Book Depository) Drive-Thru Dreams opens with an affecting story about how a prank inspired one of those benevolent gestures from a big company, leading to a feel-good video for social media and wins all-around for everyone involved -- on the surface, at least. It establishes an... Continue Reading →
An Exposé of America’s Low-Wage Workplaces
Book review: On the Clock, by Emily Guendelsberger (Amazon / Book Depository) When the newspaper she worked for closed in 2015, journalist Emily Guendelsberger used the opportunity to pursue a project she'd long been interested in. Over the next two years she worked in some of America's common, controversial low-wage jobs to see what conditions... Continue Reading →
Going Underground in the Truffle Market’s Dark Economy
Book review: The Truffle Underground, by Ryan Jacobs (Amazon / Book Depository) The larger industry has managed to manufacture an image of pure beauty and romance for its consumers. "They see the truffle on the table...but before that, they don't know anything. They don't know the underworld." Truffles, one of the priciest delicacies you can... Continue Reading →
Witty, Sharply Smart Essays on All Kinds of Thickness
Book review: Thick, by Tressie McMillan Cottom (Amazon / Book Depository) Being too much of one thing and not enough of another had been a recurring theme in my life ... Thick where I should have been thin, more when I should have been less, a high school teacher nicknamed me "Ms. Personality," and it... Continue Reading →
Be Very Afraid
Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward (Amazon Book Depository) (I keep promising myself I'm not going to read any more of these Trump/White House books but I'm unable to resist, apparently.) Real power is fear. That's the mantra seeded throughout veteran political reporter and one-half of Woodward and Bernstein Bob Woodward's diligently... Continue Reading →
The Working Poor of the Heartland
Book review: Heartland, by Sarah Smarsh Journalist Sarah Smarsh is a fifth generation Kansan who grew up with her family life centered around a wheat farm in the countryside, with Wichita being the closest big city. In her memoir, she chronicles generations of her family, particularly the strong but troubled women in her lineage, and puts... Continue Reading →