Dave's Reviews

Kind of a cross between “how to save your medium-sized city” and “architectural repurposing porn,” this book by an architectural photographer has almost got me ready to head out on the road to see what other kinds of awesome I’ve been missing. Case studies highlight Oakland, Portland, Austin, and Denver in the West as well as Rust Belt jewels and Southern revitalization in action. Cool Is Everywhere discusses gentrification and the unequal distribution of the benefits of urban recovery, but mostly it’s a naked-brick-and-stripped-hardwood-floor blueprint for saving your city, one abandoned factory at a time.

Scholarly, hilarious, and sometimes absurd, this interdisciplinary book is fascinating. I learned that Europe had been an archipelago, and that the apex predator of one island was a giant carnivorous hedgehog. And that such a thing as the giant winged and likely dinosaur-eating Transylvanian pterosaur Hatzegopteryx existed, described elsewhere as a “giraffe-sized, quadrupedal Panzer-stork.” No kidding, look it up. Sometimes it’s the ancient fauna that amaze; other times it’s the protopaleontologists that defy belief. This natural history is about as dry as albondigas soup.

Phuc Tran: Ubergeek. From discovering punk rock egalitarianism to relating The Iliad to girls’ high school sports, Tran is always ready to dive into whatever comes next. He puts it all down to a desperate need to fit in, as a Vietnamese refugee in small-town Pennsylvania, but you can tell that he’s always going to be the one in the deep end of the pool, regardless. He’s a Latin teacher, a tattooist, a TEDx grammar star, and now a touching memoirist. 

Wright cowrote a 1998 movie about extremists attacking New York City. With his new novel about a viral pandemic, you might think he’s prophetic. But the real trick is that he writes about what’s most likely to actually happen, researches how it might play out, then writes a book. I’m afraid he isn’t a master of character in fiction, but he does have a heroic scientist trying to save the world and a president who is going to let it go down the drain. That’s pretty realistic. And I still think we should airdrop this to every home in Santa Cruz County.

Gene doesn’t like sports, but he’s fascinated by the basketball program at the high school where he teaches: the stories of the coaches and team members and the history of basketball itself. Each chapter highlights one player and a game where they stood out. I learned a lot: why basketball is a city sport, why so many great teams are from Catholic schools, and how to write about basketball in a way that even non-sports fans can enjoy!

Polish literary fiction? Animal rights-oriented crime novel? Astrologically guided former civil engineer with a penchant for Blake? Check, check, check. I wasn’t really sure which bucket to put this beautifully written pastoral in, but really it can fit anyone looking for stellar writing or a meditatively paced mystery. I think I’m going to have to dig up anything else Tokarcruz has available in English. - Dave

Just prior to the Civil War, Frederick Law Olmsted —later the designer of Central Park—went on a tour of the South as a correspondent for the New York Times. Just prior to today’s civil war, Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, retraced Olmsted’s route from West Virginia to Texas and into Mexico. From plantations and a monster truck mudfest to a New Orleans gospel-rocking church, he documents how much has changed and what’s still strikingly the same. - Dave

You’ll want to read this one just for the extravagantly gothic yet entrancingly informative example sentences. This on the past participle: You won’t get far in those corrugated pantaloons, sire. And: Sylvia wantonly splits infinitives, often with unheard-of verbs. This beautiful book is so much fun that you’ll learn some grammar despite yourself. - Dave

Quite certainly the spiciest use of commas in an educational text. An example of commas between independent clauses: I won’t rise to the occasion, but I’ll slide over to it. Even more ambiguously suggestive: He told her he belonged to another, yet his pajamas clung to her tights. Also the probably immoral, yet proper, usage of semicolons, hyphens, apostrophes, and the dreaded ellipses. - Dave