Some things that I read, served hot. http://www.noahveltman.com/books/ http://www.noahveltman.com/books/rss/logo.gif http://www.noahveltman.com/books/ Copyright 2008 Noah Veltman en-us hourly 1 Summary and review of Kook Kook
Peter Heller

Summary: A memoir of a year in Orange County and Baja California learning to surf.
Review: As someone with an inexplicable obsession with surfing despite virtually no actual experience on a surfboard, I had very high hopes for this book, but it was a big disappointment, in large part because it wasn't really about surfing. Instead it was a muddy stew of different more ambitious books about love and life and environmentalism that really didn't belong here, and through it all I just wanted him to shut up and get back to surfing. Not recommended.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=214 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=214Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Uncommon Sense Uncommon Sense
Gary Becker and Richard Posner

Summary: A collection of economic perspectives from two leading scholars.
Review: This book is basically a bunch of blog entries stapled together, which sounds pretty underwhelming until you notice that the authors are Becker, a Chicago school economist with a Nobel Prize and an absurd CV, and Posner, a prolific Court of Appeals judge and legal scholar. There are some dud chapters, mostly when they try to tackle very grand topics like national security or democracy, but for the most part it makes for a great book. Fair warning: reading this may turn you into a dispassionate libertarian jerk who gives people copies of Atlas Shrugged for Christmas and won't shut up about how people should be allowed to sell their organs.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=213 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=213Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Hello, He Lied Hello, He Lied
Lynda Obst

Summary: A Hollywood producer's tales from the trenches.
Review: Obst started out as a journalist, and it shows in her very lean, punchy writing. There are also some fun stories in the book. The trouble is that the whole thing doesn't really cohere - it's just a pile of disconnected thoughts and it feels like you're just hanging out in her head more than anything else. Add to that the fact that the book is pretty dated by now (it was published in 1997), and it's hard to recommend unless you're really curious about the subject matter.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=212 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=212Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Grounded Grounded
Seth Stevenson

Summary: The author and his girlfriend try to circumnavigate the globe without using an airplane.
Review: This is perfectly pleasant and harmless armchair travel lit, but I have two bones to pick with it. One is that it seems pretty likely that Stevenson had a future book in mind during this trip (and maybe even already had a book deal in his back pocket), which necessarily colors the way he approached things. That's not such a grave sin, but it took some points off in my eyes. The second thing is that Stevenson senselessly decides that the whole ground-level thing for its own sake isn't enough, and that he has to deliver a sort of anti-airplane manifesto. I thought that whole thread was way off base and took something away from the rest of the book.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=211 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=211Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Tough Jews Tough Jews
Rich Cohen

Summary: The history of Jewish gangsters in pre-WWII New York.
Review: This book probably could have shed about eighty pages (I seem to say that about a lot of books, which says something about either bloat in nonfiction publishing or my attention span), but it's a fascinating spotlight on a mostly-forgotten era. Cohen has an eye for detail and uses it to develop his characters and create a great sense of place, putting you right there at a union strike in the Garment District or on a Brooklyn street corner. If a book about Jewish gangsters sounds at least a little bit interesting to you, check it out.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=210 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=210Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Delivering Happiness Delivering Happiness
Tony Hsieh

Summary: A memoir from the CEO of Zappos and LinkExchange.
Review: The strange thing about this book is that it's billed as being about Hsieh's insights on corporate culture, but he only really dives into that stuff near the end and it was the weakest part for me. Maybe I missed the point. Regardless, Hsieh's nothing special as a writer, but I enjoyed getting his very unvarnished play-by-play of his days in the trenches building his different companies. To me, that was the heart of the book, and not the bizarre and overly theoretical discussions about happiness that he steps into in the final chapters.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=209 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=209Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of The Film Club The Film Club
David Gillmor

Summary: A father's memoir of allowing his son to drop out of high school on the condition that they watch three movies together each week.
Review: This is a nice light read with some good moments. The biggest problem I had with the book was that it was just a little uncanny. The whole premise of the book and the overly-meaningful father-son dialogue make the whole thing feel more like a Cameron Crowe screenplay than any sort of reality.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=208 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=208Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Israel Is Real Israel Is Real
Rich Cohen

Summary: A semi-historical, semi-literary discussion of Israel and Jewish identity.
Review: I guess you could call this a history book, since it is a loosely chronological account full of actual history, but it doesn't quite fit that mold. It's hard for me to describe, but I will say it raised a lot of interesting questions and taught me a lot about Jewish history. Cohen manages to take a very unwieldy topic and do about as good a job as one can do condensing it into so few pages. If you're trying to make some sense of Israel, this is a good place to start.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=207 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=207Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of The Lost City of Z The Lost City of Z
David Grann

Summary: A reporter retraces the life and final journey of famed Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett.
Review: Considering the source material, I was really disappointed in this book. With its logline, it would seem hard to go wrong, but wrong it goes. Instead of generating a real narrative arc Grann just kind of bounces around the minutiae of Fawcett's expeditions and never really creates a sense of place. At the end I was left wondering how Grann was able to take the daring tale of an Indiana Jones figure journeying deep into the heart of the jungle, never to be seen again, and turn it into something that felt like homework. Not recommended.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=206 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=206Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Waiting on a Train Waiting on a Train
James McCommons

Summary: A book about the present and future of passenger rail in America.
Review: I liked this book well enough - it's about as engaging as a book on transportation policy can be - but McCommons is not exactly an impartial chronicler. He makes no secret of his pro-rail tendencies, and at lots of points he seems to only present one side of a case, or to be seeing train travel through a very nostalgic lens. It doesn't help that there were also some factual errors in the book - not a lot, or especially major ones, but they were noticeable enough that it hurt his credibility on everything else. Skip this unless you really like trains.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=205 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=205Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Autobiography of an Execution Autobiography of an Execution
David Dow

Summary: A mostly non-fiction memoir about defending death row inmates in Texas.
Review: There's good news and bad news: the good news is that this book blew me away. The writing is fluid, the story is gripping, and I could hardly put it down. The bad news is that it left a bad taste in my mouth because of the "mostly non-fiction" aspect. In an author's note at the beginning, Dow explains that in order to protect attorney-client confidentiality, he's changed and composited various facts and characters, but he claims the substance of the book is all true. The trouble is there's no way to trust that he got that right. After I finished, I felt uneasy not knowing what was completely true, what was false, and what was somewhere in between. Was this character a composite of multiple people? Did these events really happen in that order? Was that he actually a she? The whole exercise didn't sit well with me, which is a shame because I loved the book while I was reading it, and it would have held up great were it truly non-fiction or even just a novel.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=203 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=203Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of The Big Short The Big Short
Michael Lewis

Summary: An account of the months leading up to the 2008 market crash that focuses on the short sellers who saw it coming.
Review: Nothing too special, but I enjoyed it. Lewis focuses on a handful of specific characters rather than the macro stuff, and he does it well, but if you're looking for something more explanatory about the subprime mortgage crisis, look elsewhere.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=202 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=202Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Courtroom 302 Courtroom 302
Steve Bogira

Summary: Documenting a year behind the scenes at the busiest criminal courthouse in the US.
Review: Just outstanding. The depth of research in this book and the quality of the storytelling are both hard to top. It provides a very detailed, grounded perspective on the wrong and right of the American criminal justice system that never preaches or falls too deeply in love with its own anecdotes. Highly recommended.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=201 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=201Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of Wired For War Wired For War
P.W. Singer

Summary: All about the fast-growing use of robotics in warfare.
Review: This book is a little bloated. Singer gives way too much airtime to quotations from experts who have nothing interesting or nonobvious to say and tends to replay a lot of his points over and over. There's a pretty solid core book buried in here, but this version needed better editing. Singer also acknowledges early on that we are notoriously bad at predicting technological development and its implications, especially when it comes to war. I appreciated that. Unfortunately he then proceeds to throw himself a 200-page prediction party, which made steam shoot out of my ears like a cartoon character.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=200 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=200Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700 Summary and review of American Nomads American Nomads
Richard Grant

Summary: A digressive look at wandering and exploration in the American West.
Review: This book is way cool. Grant weaves the story of his own personal obsession with the American Southwest and its subcultures together with historical threads about conquistadors, mountain men, and other wandering souls. It's a tough book to summarize, but I enjoyed almost all of it.]]> http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=199 http://www.noahveltman.com/books/?id=199Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:59:31 -0700