Dave's Reviews

Thirty years ago, Walter Mosley busted open the LA noir crime novel, taking us to the backroom gin joints that Chandler never could. His laid-off worker turned detective, Easy Rawlins, has to navigate the racist seamier underside of the seamy underside of Los Angeles that most fictional gumshoes tread. It's a smoke-filled, bourbon-soaked, jazz-fueled and intensely atmospheric trek through the Harlem of the West Coast, expanding the idea of what LA noir could mean. Still one of the best detective novels I’ve read. — Dave

Adam Kirsch surveys themes of alienation in the Old World, assimilation in America, and newfound nationhood in Israel, bringing to light, or profoundly illuminating, some of the great works of Jewish literature. He ends with a selection of Judaism’s formative religious responses to the 20th century, from philosophical to feminist. His fascinating and enjoyably readable prose made me want to read, or reread, almost every one. I believe I will.  — Dave

This is sort of a history of late-stage 20th-century America, seen through the lens of the Simulmatics Corporation. Their forays into big-data human manipulation during the Kennedy election and Vietnam War would later metastasize into Facebook, Google, and the coinfections of Fancy Bear and Cambridge Analytics. Liberal social scientists with a plan to help elect liberal politicians turned, for the most part, into counterinsurgency consultants. But we did get FB likes and targeted ads out of it, so cool, right? — Dave

Ranging back and forth between the United States and El Salvador, and from the ‘30s of his father’s childhood to his own journey of discovery, Roberto Lovato uncovers the history, trauma, resilience, and love which powers Salvadoreños across the Americas. From the US supported massacres of the indigenous people of El Salvador, to the ongoing gang and immigration hysteria, Lovato uncovers how unforgetting our history lets us begin to heal. Go on this journey with him. You won’t forget it.  —Dave

This book is part of our Fall Reading Challenge. Read more here.

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!