What makes Late Admissions so fascinating to read, and such an important autobiography, is its self-awareness: it is actually a story about how embracing one’s self-destructive tendencies, one’s voracious selfishness and appetites, gives life meaning because, if nothing else, they make life interesting to oneself and they actually make you interesting to other people. It is a book about the ferocity of self-regard.
Lawrence Tierney is a solid biography that describes in detail Tierney’s career as an actor, which are the best parts. The worst parts, where the book becomes a slog, are the endless episodes detailing Tierney’s drunken street and bar brawls.
We always flatter ourselves by the assumption of our own righteous virtue, especially when it is not put to the test. The Dreyfus story, we were told, revealed how precarious assimilation was for racial and religious minorities.
The Forerunner is one of the more important autobiographies written by a St. Louisan. It ought to be read by Democrats, Republicans, and all third-party members. It takes a bit of skill to merge leftist politics, old-time Black evangelical Protestantism, and the supporting craft of nursing into something coherent.
Amul Thapar, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the son of Indian immigrants, wants to show that Clarence Thomas is not alone in his views or somehow a fluke, a mistake, or an aberration as a minority jurist. In other words, Thapar wants to make clear that Thomas’s relationship with the American community of color is not defined solely by the people who hate him.
Mocked as an Italian, disappointed by his Catholicism, physically unprepossessing, rock and roll offered Felix Cavaliere the charisma of revolution. And revolution is always about how the odd get even.
All of the men profiled in Ron Cooper’s book have been trained to be Santa, have been taught how to talk to children, to put nervous children at ease, and to make misbehaving children less truculent. They have been taught how to deal with difficult or awkward requests or wishes. It takes some dedication to be Santa. Maybe we all need to take a bit of instruction at a Santa school.
If Amiri Baraka was the godfather of the 1960s Black Arts Movement, Sowell is the godfather of Black conservatism. And Black conservatism is as important to African American Studies as the Black Arts Movement no matter how disagreeable many of us in the field may find many of Black conservatism’s assumptions to be.
Why We Love Baseball is an enjoyable book. It is well-written, tugging at the heartstrings one moment, being like Ripley’s Believe It or No” in another. There are lots of good portions here for St. Louis Cardinals fans, and aspects of the book could actually appeal to people who are indifferent to baseball. Still, this book is clearly for fans.
Criminal (In)Justice is an accessible, highly readable book that does an excellent job presenting the counterarguments to the anti-mass incarceration, defund the police crowd. If you want to know arguments and the evidence for them, this book is a concise, painless way to learn.