en-US Sun, 10 Nov 2024 22:28:51 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 59039413
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2022
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

“Buzzy and enthralling …A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery…Fun as hell to read.�� �� Oprah Daily

"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ��20s and Great Depression." �� Vanity Fair

“A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed.”���� Esquire

"Exhilarating.�� �� New York Times

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds , a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
��������Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
�� �� At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 415 Hernan Diaz 0593420330 Jason 5 3.97 2022
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Jason
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 20435697 One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
��
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration�� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 793 Isabel Wilkerson Jason 0 currently-reading 4.59 2010
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Jason
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 42375461 Is it worth swimming in shark-infested waters to surf a 50-foot, career-record wave?

Is it riskier to make an action movie or a horror movie?

Should sex workers forfeit 50 percent of their income for added security or take a chance and keep the extra money?

Most people wouldn't expect an economist to have an answer to these questions--or to other questions of daily life, such as who to date or how early to leave for the airport. But those people haven't met Allison Schrager, an economist and award-winning journalist who has spent her career examining how people manage risk in their lives and careers.

Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out--the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life.

In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips readers with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers. For instance, she interviews a professional poker player about how to stay rational when the stakes are high, a paparazzo in Manhattan about how to spot different kinds of risk, horse breeders in Kentucky about how to diversify risk and minimize losses, and a war general who led troops in Iraq about how to prepare for what we don't see coming.

When you start to look at risky decisions through Schrager's new framework, you can increase the upside to any situation and better mitigate the downsides.]]> 236 Allison Schrager 0525533974 Jason 0 currently-reading 3.75 2019
author: Allison Schrager
name: Jason
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 60575065 ��Captivating . . . [Lowenstein] makes what subsequently occurred at Treasury and on Wall Street during the early 1860s seem as enthralling as what transpired on the battlefield or at the White House.�� —Harold Holzer, Wall Street Journal“Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives . . .�� Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain financial matters to readers who lack specialized knowledge.�� —Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review From renowned journalist and master storyteller Roger Lowenstein, a revelatory financial investigation into how Lincoln and his administration used the funding of the Civil War as the catalyst to centralize the government and accomplish the most far-reaching reform in the country’s history Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union�� that had first drawn him to politics. With Lincoln at the helm, the United States would now govern “for�� its it would enact laws, establish a currency, raise armies, underwrite transportation and higher education, assist farmers, and impose taxes for them. Lincoln believed this agenda would foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans.��Salmon Chase, Lincoln’s vanquished rival and his new secretary of the Treasury, waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. And while the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican-led Congress enacted a blizzard of legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The impact was revolutionary. The activist 37th Congress legislated for homesteads and a transcontinental railroad and involved the federal government in education, agriculture, and eventually immigration policy. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback—paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining, the South plunged into financial free fall, having failed to leverage its cotton wealth to finance the war. Founded in a crucible of anticentralism, the Confederacy was trapped in a static (and slave-based) agrarian economy without federal taxing power or other means of government financing, save for its overworked printing presses. This led to an epic collapse. Though Confederate troops continued to hold their own, the North’s financial advantage over the South, where citizens increasingly went hungry, proved decisive; the war was won as much (or more) in the respective treasuries as on the battlefields.��Roger Lowenstein reveals the largely untold story of how Lincoln used the urgency of the Civil War to transform a union of states into a nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and a Congress studded with towering statesmen, changed the direction of the country and established a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.]]> 445 Roger Lowenstein 0735223564 Jason 0 currently-reading 4.48 2022
author: Roger Lowenstein
name: Jason
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 40203647 From a psychotherapist, and national advice columnist comes a thought-provoking new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world -- where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.]]> 413 Lori Gottlieb Jason 0 4.41 2019
author: Lori Gottlieb
name: Jason
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2023/06/12
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 13124152 The New York Times–bestselling author delivers “a riveting saga about Big Sugar flexing its imperialist muscle in Hawaii��.��.��. A real gem of a book�� (Douglas Brinkley, author of American Moonshot). �� Deftly weaving together a memorable cast of characters, Lost Kingdom brings to life the clash between a vulnerable Polynesian people and relentlessly expanding capitalist powers. Portraits of royalty and rogues, sugar barons, and missionaries combine into a sweeping tale of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s rise and fall. �� At the center of the story is Lili‘uokalani, the last queen of Hawai‘i. Born in 1838, she lived through the nearly complete economic transformation of the islands. Lucrative sugar plantations gradually subsumed the majority of the land, owned almost exclusively by white planters, dubbed the “Sugar Kings.�� Hawai‘i became a prize in the contest between America, Britain, and France, each seeking to expand their military and commercial influence in the Pacific. �� The monarchy had become a figurehead, victim to manipulation from the wealthy sugar plantation owners. Lili‘u was determined to enact a constitution to reinstate the monarchy’s power but was outmaneuvered by the United States. The annexation of Hawai‘i had begun, ushering in a new century of American imperialism. �� “An important chapter in our national history, one that most Americans don’t know but should.�� —The New York Times Book Review �� “Siler gives us a riveting and intimate look at the rise and tragic fall of Hawaii’s royal family��.��.��. A reminder that Hawaii remains one of the most breathtaking places in the world. Even if the kingdom is lost.�� —Fortune �� “[A] well-researched, nicely contextualized history��.��.��. [Indeed] ‘one of the most audacious land grabs of the Gilded Age.’�� —Los Angeles Times]]> 449 Julia Flynn Siler Jason 5 3.94 2011
author: Julia Flynn Siler
name: Jason
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/02
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 55276620
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.

Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.]]> 410 Imani Perry 0062977407 Jason 3 3.96 2022
author: Imani Perry
name: Jason
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/01
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]]> 40193218 NY Times
Halberstam's magisterial & thrilling The Best & the Brightest was a defining book about the Vietnam conflict. More than three decades later, he used his research & journalistic skills to shed light on another pivotal moment in our history: the Korean War. He considered The Coldest Winter his most accomplished work, the culmination of 45 years of writing about America's postwar foreign policy. He gives a masterful narrative of the political decisions & miscalculations on both sides. He charts the disastrous path that led to the massive entry of Chinese forces near the Yalu River & that caught Douglas MacArthur & his soldiers by surprise. He provides vivid & nuanced portraits of all the major figures-Eisenhower, Truman, Acheson, Kim, & Mao, & Generals MacArthur, Almond & Ridgway. At the same time, he provides us with his trademark highly evocative narrative journalism, chronicling the crucial battles with reportage of the highest order. As ever, he was concerned with the extraordinary courage & resolve of people asked to bear an extraordinary burden. The Coldest Winter is contemporary history in its most literary & luminescent form, providing crucial perspective on every war America has been involved in since. It's a book that Halberstam first decided to write over 30 years ago that took him nearly a decade to complete. It stands as a lasting testament to one of the greatest journalists & historians of our time, & to the fighting men whose heroism it chronicles.]]> 744 David Halberstam Jason 4 4.53 2007
author: David Halberstam
name: Jason
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/01
date added: 2023/05/01
shelves:
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]]> 15811520
In another life, Charlie LeDuff won the Pulitzer Prize reporting for The New York Times. But all that is behind him now, after returning to find his hometown in total freefall. Detroit is where his mother’s flower shop was firebombed; where his sister lost herself to drugs; where his brother works in a factory cleaning Chinese-manufactured screws so they can be repackaged as “Made in America.��

With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark—and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses—LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He embeds with a local fire brigade struggling to defend its neighborhood against systemic arson and bureaucratic corruption. He investigates state senators and career police officials, following the money to discover who benefits from Detroit’s decline. He befriends union organizers, homeless do-gooders, embattled businessmen, and struggling homeowners, all ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination.

Americans have hoped for decades that Detroit was an exception, an outlier. What LeDuff reveals is that Detroit is, once and for all, America’s city: It led us on the way up, and now it is leading us on the way down. Detroit can no longer be ignored because what happened there is happening out here.

Redemption is thin on the ground in this ghost of a city, but Detroit: An American Autopsy is no hopeless parable. Instead, LeDuff shares a deeply human drama of colossal greed, ignorance, endurance, and courage. Detroit is an unbelievable story of a hard town in a rough time filled with some of the strangest and strongest people our country has to offer—and a black comic tale of the absurdity of American life in the twenty-first century.
]]> 304 Charlie LeDuff 1594205345 Jason 3
One can infer through these stories that the mismanagement of the auto industry, the city government itself, and the unions are all causes for this decline, but little energy is expended toward examining these decisions and missteps in detail. Rather, we are treated to a random assortment of personal stories from LeDuff's time as a child in Detroit through his employ with the Detroit News. These stories include riding along with Detroit firemen to arson scenes that were lit for insurance proceeds, driving through crumbling infrastructure, and meeting many a Detroiter who has fallen on economic -- and often spiritual -- hard times. While these stories are interesting and indeed, at times, engaging, they do not connect in a comprehensible pattern or timeline. They certainly fail to present an accurate autopsy of the current Detroit situation.

In short, if you are looking for an engaging read on how the people of Detroit are suffering due to its collapse, you will find this an interesting read. For a more investigative explanation of the reasons for this decline, you are best served elsewhere.]]> 3.93 2013
author: Charlie LeDuff
name: Jason
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/23
date added: 2015/09/30
shelves:
review:
There are several positives to this book. It is engaging, interesting, and provides a penetrating insight into the crime, decay, and poverty of modern Detroit. This book falls short, however, of its objective. An autopsy, by definition, is an examination of the causes of death. While he does an admirable job of illustrating the decay through personal stories and experiences, LeDuff does not closely examine the reasons behind Detroit's continued and accelerated decline.

One can infer through these stories that the mismanagement of the auto industry, the city government itself, and the unions are all causes for this decline, but little energy is expended toward examining these decisions and missteps in detail. Rather, we are treated to a random assortment of personal stories from LeDuff's time as a child in Detroit through his employ with the Detroit News. These stories include riding along with Detroit firemen to arson scenes that were lit for insurance proceeds, driving through crumbling infrastructure, and meeting many a Detroiter who has fallen on economic -- and often spiritual -- hard times. While these stories are interesting and indeed, at times, engaging, they do not connect in a comprehensible pattern or timeline. They certainly fail to present an accurate autopsy of the current Detroit situation.

In short, if you are looking for an engaging read on how the people of Detroit are suffering due to its collapse, you will find this an interesting read. For a more investigative explanation of the reasons for this decline, you are best served elsewhere.
]]> 7222829 496 Robert Perkinson 0805080694 Jason 2
Prepare yourself for a heavy helping of the word “sanguine�� (sometimes spiced up a bit, with “sanguinity��); other than this repetition, the author writes as though he held his notes in one hand and a thesaurus in another. The sentences and paragraphs throughout this work are lofty at best, but more often just obtuse and awkward. There were rarely instances of conciseness, but many instances of exposition �� the author devotes several pages to a minor folk singer who spent time in a Texas prison, but largely irrelevant to prison history.

Indeed, rather than a history of the prison system, this book focuses primarily on the history of slavery and how the author feels it has been institutionalized into prisons over time. While this is an interesting assertion and indeed a part of prison history, it is one component. It is interesting that there is little of note on prison management, private prison corporations, or even the architecture and internal workings of prisons over time.

Perhaps the most interesting �� and failed �� component of this work is the author’s attempt to link George W. Bush and his administration to Abu Gharib. The author’s effort to connect the Texas prison system with military action at Guantanamo Bay comes across as partisan and tenuous.

The last 1/3 of the book comprises the author’s notes section, presumably in an effort to lend credibility to the tome. While illuminating at points, this book was largely a bleeding heart assessment of Texas justice and a lament of the current prison environment. If you are interested in the social policy implications of criminal justice, you may find this an interesting read. For a historical assessment and survey, I recommend that you look elsewhere.
]]> 3.93 2010
author: Robert Perkinson
name: Jason
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2015/09/07
date added: 2015/09/07
shelves:
review:
I was eager for this book to arrive so that I could learn more about the history of the prison system, particularly in Texas; unfortunately, my eagerness for this tedious, plodding book to end far surpassed this initial anticipation.

Prepare yourself for a heavy helping of the word “sanguine�� (sometimes spiced up a bit, with “sanguinity��); other than this repetition, the author writes as though he held his notes in one hand and a thesaurus in another. The sentences and paragraphs throughout this work are lofty at best, but more often just obtuse and awkward. There were rarely instances of conciseness, but many instances of exposition �� the author devotes several pages to a minor folk singer who spent time in a Texas prison, but largely irrelevant to prison history.

Indeed, rather than a history of the prison system, this book focuses primarily on the history of slavery and how the author feels it has been institutionalized into prisons over time. While this is an interesting assertion and indeed a part of prison history, it is one component. It is interesting that there is little of note on prison management, private prison corporations, or even the architecture and internal workings of prisons over time.

Perhaps the most interesting �� and failed �� component of this work is the author’s attempt to link George W. Bush and his administration to Abu Gharib. The author’s effort to connect the Texas prison system with military action at Guantanamo Bay comes across as partisan and tenuous.

The last 1/3 of the book comprises the author’s notes section, presumably in an effort to lend credibility to the tome. While illuminating at points, this book was largely a bleeding heart assessment of Texas justice and a lament of the current prison environment. If you are interested in the social policy implications of criminal justice, you may find this an interesting read. For a historical assessment and survey, I recommend that you look elsewhere.

]]> 573647 350 Jan Jarboe Russell 1589790979 Jason 3
While it is no doubt true that Lady Bird was the exemplar of both of those assets, there is much more to her legacy as First Lady. It would have been quite helpful if the author had delved further into Lady Bird's involvement in LBJ's congressional office (indeed serving from time to time as a de facto congresswoman), her tenure as First Lady, and the development of Lady Bird into a political icon. Russell instead chose to focus primarily on LBJ's indiscretions and immaturities, and how Lady Bird dealt with these shortcomings.

Russell also expends a great deal of attention on Lady Bird's youth. While it is no doubt informative to Lady Bird's later years, there is a disproportionate amount of time dedicated to this earlier life at the expense of later chapters. Overall, the reader is left with a solid sense of who Lady Bird Johnson was, but will also be left longing for a bit more.]]> 3.73 1999
author: Jan Jarboe Russell
name: Jason
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2015/08/12
date added: 2015/08/12
shelves:
review:
This biographical work concerning Lady Bird Johnson provides an overview of her life as a child, congressional wife, and First Lady. It is, however, at best an overview of most of these. It is unfortunate that Russell chooses instead to focus on Mrs. Johnson's ability to "look past" LBJ's well documented indiscretions. Russell focuses the majority of her work on discussing Lady Bird's stoicism and strength.

While it is no doubt true that Lady Bird was the exemplar of both of those assets, there is much more to her legacy as First Lady. It would have been quite helpful if the author had delved further into Lady Bird's involvement in LBJ's congressional office (indeed serving from time to time as a de facto congresswoman), her tenure as First Lady, and the development of Lady Bird into a political icon. Russell instead chose to focus primarily on LBJ's indiscretions and immaturities, and how Lady Bird dealt with these shortcomings.

Russell also expends a great deal of attention on Lady Bird's youth. While it is no doubt informative to Lady Bird's later years, there is a disproportionate amount of time dedicated to this earlier life at the expense of later chapters. Overall, the reader is left with a solid sense of who Lady Bird Johnson was, but will also be left longing for a bit more.
]]> 20820666
America is once again gripped by fear that we are falling behind and fast. Unlike the Soviet threat that shook our nation a half century ago, the menace today is homegrown. On issues of national importance, the two parties in Congress appear incapable of working together. Whether the threat is competition from China, crumbling infrastructure, or rising debt, Washington’s legitimacy to govern and capacity to solve problems are in doubt.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s president, Jason Grumet, tackles this issue head-on by challenging the conventional diagnosis of the current gridlock. Rather than lamenting our differences, Grumet offers practical steps to govern a polarized nation, and he explores the unintended consequences of past reform movements. It’sa must-read for all who care about our country’s future.]]> 288 Jason Grumet 0762791586 Jason 0 to-read 3.38 2014
author: Jason Grumet
name: Jason
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20575423
So quipped Antonin Scalia about Sonia Sotomayor at the Supreme Court's annual end-of-term party in 2010. It's usually the sort of event one would expect from such a grand institution, with gentle parodies of the justices performed by their law clerks, but this year Sotomayor decided to shake it up—flooding the room with salsa music and coaxing her fellow justices to dance.
It was little surprise in 2009 that President Barack Obama nominated a Hispanic judge to replace the retiring justice David Souter. The fact that there had never been a nominee to the nation's highest court from the nation's fastest growing minority had long been apparent. So the time was ripe—but how did it come to be Sonia Sotomayor?
In Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice, the veteran journalist Joan Biskupic answers that question. This is the story of how two forces providentially merged—the large ambitions of a talented Puerto Rican girl raised in the projects in the Bronx and the increasing political presence of Hispanics, from California to Texas, from Florida to the Northeast—resulting in a historical appointment. And this is not just a tale about breaking barriers as a Puerto Rican. It's about breaking barriers as a justice.
Biskupic, the author of highly praised judicial biographies of Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, now pulls back the curtain on the Supreme Court nomination process, revealing the networks Sotomayor built and the skills she cultivated to go where no Hispanic has gone before. We see other potential candidates edged out along the way. And we see how, in challenging tradition and expanding our idea of a justice (as well as expanding her public persona), Sotomayor has created tension within and without the court's marble halls.
As a Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor has shared her personal story to an unprecedented degree. And that story—of a Latina who emerged from tough times in the projects not only to prevail but also to rise to the top—has even become fabric for some of her most passionate comments on matters before the Court. But there is yet more to know about the rise of Sonia Sotomayor. Breaking In offers the larger, untold story of the woman who has been called "the people's justice.]]> 288 Joan Biskupic 0374298742 Jason 0 to-read 3.60 2014
author: Joan Biskupic
name: Jason
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20342577
Steven Donziger, a self-styled social activist and Harvard educated lawyer, signed on to a budding class action lawsuit against multinational Texaco (which later merged with Chevron to become the third-largest corporation in America). The suit sought reparations for the Ecuadorian peasants and tribes people whose lives were affected by decades of oil production near their villages and fields.�� During twenty years of legal hostilities in federal courts in Manhattan and remote provincial tribunals in the Ecuadorian jungle, Donziger and Chevron’s lawyers followed fierce no-holds-barred rules.��Donziger, a larger-than-life, loud-mouthed showman, proved himself a master orchestrator of the media, Hollywood, and public opinion. He cajoled and coerced Ecuadorian judges on the theory that his noble ends justified any means of persuasion. And in the end, he won an unlikely victory, a $19 billion judgment against Chevon--the biggest environmental damages award in history.�� But the company refused to surrender or compromise. Instead, Chevron targeted Donziger personally, and its counter-attack revealed damning evidence of his politicking and manipulation of evidence. Suddenly the verdict, and decades of Donziger’s single-minded pursuit of the case, began to unravel. ����
��
Written with the texture and flair of the best narrative nonfiction, Law of the Jungle is an unputdownable story in which there are countless victims, a vast region of ruined rivers and polluted rainforest, but very few heroes.]]> 304 Paul M. Barrett 077043634X Jason 0 to-read 3.70 2014
author: Paul M. Barrett
name: Jason
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18114187 “Gaming the LIBOR—that is, fixing the price of money—had become just that: a game. Playing it was the price of admission to a club of men who socialized together, skied in Europe courtesy of brokers and expense accounts, and reaped million-dollar bonuses.��

In the midst of the financial crisis of 2008, rumors swirled that a sinister scandal was brewing deep in the heart of London. Some suspected that behind closed doors, a group of chummy young bankers had been cheating the system through interest rate machinations. But with most eyes focused on the crisis rippling through Wall Street and the rest of the world, the story remained an “open secret�� among competitors.

Soon enough, the scandal became public and dozens of bankers and their bosses were caught red-handed. Several major banks and hedge funds were manipulating and misreporting their daily submission of the London Interbank Offered Rate, better known as the LIBOR. As the main interest rate that pulses through the banking community, the LIBOR was supposed to represent the average rate banks charge each other for loans, effectively setting short-term interest rates around the world for trillions of dollars in financial contracts.

But the LIBOR wasn’t an average; it was a combination of guesswork and outright lies told by scheming bankers who didn’t want to signal to the rest of the market that they were in trouble. The manipulation of the “world’s most important number�� was even greater than many realized. The bankers kept things looking good for themselves and their pals while the financial crisis raged on.

Now Erin Arvedlund, the bestselling author of Too Good to Be True, reveals how this global network created and perpetuated a multiyear scam against the financial system. She uncovers how the corrupt practice of altering the key interest rate occurred through an unregulated and informal honor system, in which young masters of the universe played fast and loose, while their more seasoned bosses looked the other way (and would later escape much of the blame). It was a classic private understanding among a small group of competitors—you scratch my back today, I’ll scratch yours tomorrow.

Arvedlund takes us behind the scenes of elite firms like Barclays Capital, UBS, Rabobank, and Citigroup, and shows how they hurt ordinary investors—from students taking out loans to homeowners paying mortgages to cities like Philadelphia and Oakland. The cost to the victims: as much as $1 trillion. She also examines the laxity of prominent regulators and central bankers, and exposes the role of key figures such as: ��

Tom Hayes: A senior trader for the Swiss financial giant UBS who worked with traders across eight other banks to influence the yen LIBOR.

Bob Diamond: The shrewd multimillionaire American CEO of Barclays Capital, the British bank whose traders have been implicated in the manipulation of the LIBOR.

Mervyn King: The governor of the Bank of England, who ignored U.S. Treasury secretary Tim Geithner’s repeated recommendations to establish stricter regulations over the interest rate.

Arvedlund pulls back the curtain on one of the great financial scandals of our time, uncovering how millions of ordinary investors around the globe were swindled by the corruption and greed of a few men.]]> 304 Erin Arvedlund 1591846684 Jason 0 to-read 3.26 2014
author: Erin Arvedlund
name: Jason
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 20893947 272 William Powers 1608682390 Jason 0 to-read 3.45 2014
author: William Powers
name: Jason
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20945500 Patrick J. Buchanan, bestselling author and senior advisor to Richard Nixon, tells the definitive story of Nixon's resurrection from the political graveyard and his rise to the presidency. After suffering stinging defeats in the 1960 presidential election against John F. Kennedy, and in the 1962 California gubernatorial election, Nixon's career was declared dead by Washington press and politicians alike. Yet on January 20, 1969, just six years after he had said his political life was over, Nixon would stand taking the oath of office as 37th President of the United States. How did Richard Nixon resurrect a ruined career and reunite a shattered and fractured Republican Party to capture the White House? In The Greatest Comeback, Patrick J. Buchanan--who, beginning in January 1966, served as one of two staff members to Nixon, and would become a senior advisor in the White House after 1968--gives a firsthand account of those crucial years in which Nixon reversed his political fortunes during a decade marked by civil rights protests, social revolution, The Vietnam War, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, urban riots, campus anarchy, and the rise of the New Left. Using over 1,000 of his own personal memos to Nixon, with Nixon’s scribbled replies back, Buchanan gives readers an insider’s view as Nixon gathers the warring factions of the Republican party--from the conservative base of Barry Goldwater to the liberal wing of Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney, to the New Right legions of an ascendant Ronald Reagan--into the victorious coalition that won him the White House. How Richard Nixon united the party behind him may offer insights into how the Republican Party today can bring together its warring factions. The Greatest Comeback is an intimate portrayal of the 37th President and a fascinating fly on-the-wall account of one of the most remarkable American political stories of the 20th century.]]> 418 Patrick J. Buchanan 0553418645 Jason 0 to-read 3.91 2014
author: Patrick J. Buchanan
name: Jason
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 21888000
Since 1959, conflict and aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. Now, LeoGrande and Kornbluh present a new and increasingly more relevant account.

From Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Castro after the missile crisis, to Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Obama's promise of a "new approach," LeoGrande and Kornbluh reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path toward better relations in the future.
]]> 544 William M. Leogrande 1469617633 Jason 0 to-read 4.15 2014
author: William M. Leogrande
name: Jason
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18594341 Washington Post. The first in his family to graduate from college, he had landed a job at one of the country's premier newspapers. But his apparent success masked a devastating secret: he was a crack addict. Even as he covered the drug-fueled violence that was destroying the city, he was prowling S Street, a 24/7 open-air crack market, during his off hours, looking for his next fix.

S Street Rising is more than a memoir; it's a portrait of a city in crisis. It's the adrenalin-infused story of the street where Castaneda quickly became a regular, and where a fledgling church led by a charismatic and streetwise pastor was protected by the local drug kingpin, a dangerous man who followed an old-school code of honor. It's the story of Castaneda's friendship with an exceptional police homicide commander whose career was derailed when he ran afoul of Mayor Marion Barry and his political cronies. And it's a study of the city itself as it tried to rise above the bloody crack epidemic and the corrosive politics of the Barry era. S Street Rising is The Wire meets the Oscar-winning movie Crash. And it's all true.]]> 304 Rubén Castañeda 1620400049 Jason 0 to-read 3.91 2014
author: Rubén Castañeda
name: Jason
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 333010
In this remarkable book, Sandra Day O’Connor explores the law, her life as a Supreme Court Justice, and how the Court has evolved and continues to function, grow, and change as an American institution. Tracing some of the origins of American law through history, people, ideas, and landmark cases, O’Connor sheds new light on the basics, exploring through personal observation the evolution of the Court and American democratic traditions.

Straight-talking, clear-eyed, inspiring, The Majesty of the Law is more than a reflection on O’Connor’s own experiences as the first female Justice of the Supreme Court; it also reveals some of the things she has learned and believes about American law and life—reflections gleaned over her years as one of the most powerful and inspiring women in American history.]]> 352 Sandra Day O'Connor 081296747X Jason 0 to-read 3.69 2002
author: Sandra Day O'Connor
name: Jason
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12253269 292 John Paul Stevens 031619980X Jason 0 to-read 3.52 2011
author: John Paul Stevens
name: Jason
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 536269 320 Nina Burleigh 0060002425 Jason 3
Overall, the thesis is solid, and the subject matter is very interesting. There is that always ill-desired feeling, however, that the author is grasping at material in order to make the book of sufficient length. The coverage of the actual creation of the Institution and its early history is also left a bit wanting, as much time has been devoted to the early years of Mr. Smithson's life.]]> 3.49 2003
author: Nina Burleigh
name: Jason
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2014/10/15
date added: 2014/10/15
shelves:
review:
This book provides an interesting look at not only the creation of the Smithsonian Institution, but also about the culture and history of 18th and 19th century England. Unfortunately, this is also where the book meanders and becomes repetitious. While the information provided is both interesting and relevant, the author has a tendency to repeat a thesis multiple times within the span of several paragraphs. (For example, we are told on numerous occasions that Mr. Smithson was renowned for his attention to detail in the laboratory, or entreated to a multiple paragraph description of what might have been on the dinner menu on a given night.)

Overall, the thesis is solid, and the subject matter is very interesting. There is that always ill-desired feeling, however, that the author is grasping at material in order to make the book of sufficient length. The coverage of the actual creation of the Institution and its early history is also left a bit wanting, as much time has been devoted to the early years of Mr. Smithson's life.
]]> 414298 391 Richard Russo 0375701907 Jason 5 4.01 1997
author: Richard Russo
name: Jason
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/06/01
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This is an extremely humorous read, written in Russo's classic style that is both funny and poignant. The story focuses on a creative writing professor at a badly underfunded college in Pennsylvania, and follows him through his daily struggles. This novel is a satirical but not unrealistic look at the banality of academia. The English department that our protagonist chairs is marred with bickering and in-fighting; not to mention that he didn't want the chairmanship originally. Russo lampoons the academic enterprise skillfully, and leaves the reader with an entertaining story.
]]> 1068711




Now, at sixty years old, he and Sarah are about to travel to Venice, where Lucy's oldest friend and rival has traded life and family for a life far removed from Thomaston. The truth about why he left, and aboutthe ties that bind these three friends, is complex, heartbreaking and utterly compelling.]]> 352 Richard Russo 0099458977 Jason 4 3.71 2007
author: Richard Russo
name: Jason
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/05/30
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review:
This is a fantastic read set in a small-town community. It considers three families within the community: one embraces the small-town atmosphere and close-knit life, one shuns the small-town life and everything it stands for, and one attempts to strike the elusive balance. Ultimately, no path can entirely avoid heartache, and Russo writes an elegant story that is at once poignant, funny, and heartbreaking.
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