Good News, a novel by Edward Abbey This book was painful to read, and this book review even more painful to write. Spare yourself the agony of reading this post-apocalyptic fantasy with pointless dialog within a meandering and lackadaisical plot that goes nowhere. Most books have meaningful conclusions, but this book just ends. And hardly soon enough. The bad news about “Good News” is that you’ll find Abbey’s classic polemics on only 16 pages of this 242-page novel. The rest

The Native American Southwest in the Middle Ages by Frederick S. Paxton Human history is not the full record of the human past, but only of what has been written about the human past (and what has been written about what has been written about that past, and ad infinitum). Where there are no historians, there is no history. As a college professor of history, Paxton “…wondered why the people who had lived [in the American Southwest] had no place in American history.” When I

photo by Mark Mathew Braunstein Call me materialistic insofar as I prefer to own the books that I have read. Unfortunately, I am often left with books that I had hoped to read but never read and never will read. So around once every 15 years, I venture to the used bookstores to unburden myself of my orphaned books. Many years ago, while living for five years in Manhattan, I made several cab trips with armfuls of my unwanted books to Strand Bookstore, NYC’s largest used book

Playing Possum by Susana Monsó Animals and Death both are fascinating subjects, so this book that explores how animals perceive and conceive of Death holds great promise. The author poses the question whether animals might grasp the abstruse notion of the inevitability of their own deaths in the way that humans are thought to be aware. Sadly, the author’s speculative answers often proved elusive or disappointing. This is hardcore hardnosed academic philosophy written by a phi

“Should We Go Extinct?" by Todd May The title is a question that the book never definitively answers. As the author gyrates back and forth between yes and no and maybe and maybe not, he leaves it to you to decide for yourself. I marvel at the brilliance of his mind and the eloquence of his prose, which captivated my interest all the way to the concluding chapter. I had anticipated that a chapter titled, “Conclusion,” would provide a conclusive answer. Alas, that chapter was

Madness by Jim Mason www.JimMason.info/madness A PORTRAIT of the AUTHOR as a YOUNG FARMER Allured by its provocative title, “Madness,”...

Meathooked by Marta Zaraska Meathooked “is an investigation into why humans love eating meat.” (page 6) The author, Marta Zaraska, calls...

“Age Like a Yogi” by Victoria Moran Enumerated as 75 years, three-quarters of a century is a nice roundish number that makes reaching the...

Protest Kitchen by Carol Adams and Virginia Messina This book’s writing is visionary, as expected, but this book’s formatting is...