Bullshit Jobs — A Review
David Graeber’s important new book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, begins with “a paradigmatic example” of a bullshit job as …
Category Archives: Books
Keeper of the Flame – A 1943 Movie for Today
In 1943 the United States was fully engaged in desperate wars in Europe and the vast Pacific. Film studios …
The Fifth Risk – Michael Lewis
When I first saw the title of Michael Lewis’s 2018 book, The Fifth Risk, my associative circuitry immediately connected …
The War: A Memoir – Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu was seventeen years old when she moved to France from a small village near Saigon, Vietnam, where …
The Gallery by John Horne Burns: Americans in Naples, 1944
Missing in almost all war fiction, from the time of Gilgamesh (2800 BCE) on, is the recognition that war …
One Man’s Justice – Akira Yoshimura
The stories we tell about what we know and what we suppose, what we fear and what we love, …
A Small Circus – Hans Fallada; Small town life in 1929 Germany
One of the most memorable and powerful novels I have read in recent years is Hans Fallada‘s Every Man …
Pablo Neruda in Valparaiso
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Altobasso lost his mother at age thirteen, and the support of his father even before …
Patagonia — Not Just a Clothing Brand
Patagonia Before there was Chile, before there was Argentina, there was Patagonia. Before there was a Patagonia, when in 1520 …
The Value of Everything – Mariana Mazzucato
Once upon a time the value of something determined its price. Today, price determines value. As capitalism began its …
Soldiers Alive – A Novel of the Japanese in China, 1937
For century upon century, from the time of the stories of Gilgamesh (18th BCE), stories of war have been told …
Red Cavalry — Isaac Babel; Russia at War
In between wars are other wars. Men fight in them all, whatever is available. Between World War I and …