Some Interesting Tales About Animals in the Human World
An incomplete listicle of how we think about animals.
By Gerald Early
With God on Our Side
A book like this intensifies a sense of black community for its readers by being racial, yet universal. It is almost a totem.
“Wise Unto Salvation”: The Fugitive Slave’s Leap of Faith
Never Caught is a fascinating, absorbing account of slavery and freedom in the early days of our nation and is especially accessible for the non-specialist, non-academic reader.
How to Draw Comics and Influence People
Last Girl Standing, the autobiography of cartoonist and comic book historian Trina Robbins, tells the story of a New York Jewish girl “who didn’t grow up in a dysfunctional family.”
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Jonathan Eig has compiled the most interesting and informative details from the best of the Muhammad Ali biographers, boxing historians, and Ali’s friends and family to give readers a comprehensive look at a complex life both blessed and cursed by the sports world’s toughest profession.
Colin Kaepernick, Kneeling, and the Meaning of Gratitude
In some ways, the current wave of African-American football players kneeling during the national anthem replicates the Bebop revolution that changed the public persona of the black male jazz musician. Now it is black players demanding that audiences recognize that their attitude is not the same as their white peers.
Don’t Fence Me In
The Working Class Republican is thesis-ridden, repetitive, and does what any “Gospel According to ... ” book does: it gives all the best lines to the Messiah-figure, in this case, Reagan.
Winning One for the Gipper
The story of the rise of Reagan is the story of the successful rise of movement conservatism through rebranding the Republican Party. As Shirley writes astutely, if somewhat glowingly, in Reagan Rising: “In fact, the party was broadening the base by narrowing the appeal. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, the GOP, with Reagan’s gutsy leadership, was becoming one thing to all people."
My Mother, The Star
I now think about my mother every day. I did not do this before she came to St. Louis to live. There was, in fact, a stretch of years when I did not think about her much at all.
Reflections on the Fever Season
How the Hell Did This Happen? is a quick and diverting read that offers a bit to think about whether, and how much, our most recent presidential election reveals the country going completely off the rails.
A Tough Cop’s Patriotic Gore
Cop Under Fire is a rambling monologue, aggressively expressed if not always cogently persuasive as a set of arguments. It would serve Clarke adequately as a campaign book as it expounds his policy views in a number of areas, some only tangentially related, at best, to law enforcement.
Editor’s Note
Maybe money changed us a long time ago and there is really nothing it can do for us now as it is, in the human mind, both everything and nothing.