Leni Zumas's writing crackles. Her books are sharp, bleak, funny, and possibly dangerous. When her collection of short stories, Farewell Navigator,...
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Ted Conover is the best American (possibly the world's best) practitioner of an underused literary form, participatory journalism. In past books...in Coyote, in order to study illegal immigration, he became an illegal immigrant and got a smuggler (a Coyote) to bring him across the United States/Mexican border. In New Jack in order to study crime and the American prison system, he got job as a prison guard.
In Routes of Man, Conover becomes a hitchhiker, riding along with truck drivers across Africa and Latin America...tagging along with an upscale car club as they race along China's new highways, navigating military checkpoints in Israel and the West Bank. This book is much more than a travelogue. It is really an amazingly broad study of human life in early twenty first century.
What makes Conover such an excellent and important journalist is his ability to interact with an amazing range of people of all religions, all economic classes, all ethnic groups in an open a friendly manner without any preconceived political or ideological baggage.
I highly recommend this book.
Ted Conover is the best American (possibly the world's best) practitioner of an underused literary form, participatory journalism. In past books...in Coyote, in order to study illegal immigration, he became an illegal immigrant and got a smuggler (a Coyote) to bring him across the United States/Mexican border. In New Jack in order to study crime and the American prison system, he got job as a prison guard.
In Routes of Man, Conover becomes a hitchhiker, riding along with truck drivers across Africa and Latin America...tagging along with an upscale car club as they race along China's new highways, navigating military checkpoints in Israel and the West Bank. This book is much more than a travelogue. It is really an amazingly broad study of human life in early twenty first century.
What makes Conover such an excellent and important journalist is his ability to interact with an amazing range of people of all religions, all economic classes, all ethnic groups in an open a friendly manner without any preconceived political or ideological baggage.
I highly recommend this book.
It may not be possible to turn to a highly detailed, scholastically rigorous history of the medieval and Renaissance world into an enjoyable page turner, but the Fourth Part of the World comes very close. Toby Lester has been able to turn his beginning chapters which recount the search for the mysterious Waldseemuller map into an exciting historical detective story.
The author then completes an arc from the discovery of the Waldseemuller map in 1901 back to medieval Europe's rediscovery of the Greek geographer,Ptolemy through the early European age of discovery back to the creation of the Waldseemuller map in 1507. In doing so, Toby Lester gives an interesting revisionist take on the relationship between medieval Europe and the Mongols at the height of the Great Khans' power. He goes on to deflate the conventional image of the great Christopher Columbus, showing Columbus as he was viewed by his contemporaries as just another explorer among many explorers. Lester unravels the puzzle of why America was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
The author strings his narrative together with maps, but you do not need to be a cartographer to understand and appreciate his work. Anyone with a vague knowledge of history between 1200-1500 will have no trouble with this book.
Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture was written by a writer with her foot in two worlds. An academic(Rutgers University) who was also, during the golden age of disco, a disco d.j. at a downscale disco in Ann Arbor, Michigan.A great(if somewhat encyclopedic) read for both music buffs and nostalgia buffs interested in the popular culture of the 1970s
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marcthomas7 has commented on (4) products.
The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today by Ted Conover
marcthomas7, June 15, 2010
Ted Conover is the best American (possibly the world's best) practitioner of an underused literary form, participatory journalism. In past books...in Coyote, in order to study illegal immigration, he became an illegal immigrant and got a smuggler (a Coyote) to bring him across the United States/Mexican border. In New Jack in order to study crime and the American prison system, he got job as a prison guard.
In Routes of Man, Conover becomes a hitchhiker, riding along with truck drivers across Africa and Latin America...tagging along with an upscale car club as they race along China's new highways, navigating military checkpoints in Israel and the West Bank. This book is much more than a travelogue. It is really an amazingly broad study of human life in early twenty first century.
What makes Conover such an excellent and important journalist is his ability to interact with an amazing range of people of all religions, all economic classes, all ethnic groups in an open a friendly manner without any preconceived political or ideological baggage.
I highly recommend this book.
The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today by Ted Conover
marcthomas7, June 15, 2010
Ted Conover is the best American (possibly the world's best) practitioner of an underused literary form, participatory journalism. In past books...in Coyote, in order to study illegal immigration, he became an illegal immigrant and got a smuggler (a Coyote) to bring him across the United States/Mexican border. In New Jack in order to study crime and the American prison system, he got job as a prison guard.
In Routes of Man, Conover becomes a hitchhiker, riding along with truck drivers across Africa and Latin America...tagging along with an upscale car club as they race along China's new highways, navigating military checkpoints in Israel and the West Bank. This book is much more than a travelogue. It is really an amazingly broad study of human life in early twenty first century.
What makes Conover such an excellent and important journalist is his ability to interact with an amazing range of people of all religions, all economic classes, all ethnic groups in an open a friendly manner without any preconceived political or ideological baggage.
I highly recommend this book.
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name by Toby Lester
marcthomas7, June 12, 2010
The Fourth Part of the WorldIt may not be possible to turn to a highly detailed, scholastically rigorous history of the medieval and Renaissance world into an enjoyable page turner, but the Fourth Part of the World comes very close. Toby Lester has been able to turn his beginning chapters which recount the search for the mysterious Waldseemuller map into an exciting historical detective story.
The author then completes an arc from the discovery of the Waldseemuller map in 1901 back to medieval Europe's rediscovery of the Greek geographer,Ptolemy through the early European age of discovery back to the creation of the Waldseemuller map in 1507. In doing so, Toby Lester gives an interesting revisionist take on the relationship between medieval Europe and the Mongols at the height of the Great Khans' power. He goes on to deflate the conventional image of the great Christopher Columbus, showing Columbus as he was viewed by his contemporaries as just another explorer among many explorers. Lester unravels the puzzle of why America was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
The author strings his narrative together with maps, but you do not need to be a cartographer to understand and appreciate his work. Anyone with a vague knowledge of history between 1200-1500 will have no trouble with this book.
Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture by Alice Echols
marcthomas7, June 10, 2010
Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture was written by a writer with her foot in two worlds. An academic(Rutgers University) who was also, during the golden age of disco, a disco d.j. at a downscale disco in Ann Arbor, Michigan.A great(if somewhat encyclopedic) read for both music buffs and nostalgia buffs interested in the popular culture of the 1970s