The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

The book's earnest environmental message resonated with me, and I share the author's sincere concern about our nation losing the "glue" of agricultural and village life (something which bonded us as a nation for centuries, but is now long gone after decades of urbanization, centralization, regulation and sociocultural atomization).

At the same time I was concerned with a lack of rigor in the book, both in the case of various unsubstantiated and/or incorrect facts and statistics in this book [an example: "It is estimated that it now costs (by erosion) two bushels of Iowa topsoil to grow one bushel of corn" something that if true would suggest that by 2020 there would be no topsoil left in the entire state], as well as the general Malthusian lens the author uses to perceive reality.

The embarrassing thing about Malthusianism: at some point the author has to look at the scoreboard and admit his predictions of doom never happened. You can't always just push things out into the future and excuse being wrong by claiming, "I'm still right, I'm just a little early. We're still doomed, just wait!" By that logic Thomas Malthus himself would be "not wrong, just early" in calling for horrendous famines and widespread starvation in late 18th Century England (which never happened, not even close).

Even a book as sincere and earnest as this one has to be held to some standard of rigor and logic, otherwise we give away ammunition to an anti-environmentalist opposition, who can point out the unwarranted statistics and the garden-variety Malthusianism and declare an easy victory.

The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb

"What is this book about? It is about the taking of collateral, all of it, the end game of this globally synchronous debt accumulation super cycle. This is being executed by long-planned, intelligent design, the audacity and scope of which is difficult for the mind to encompass. Included are all financial assets, all money on deposit at banks, all stocks and bonds, and hence, all underlying property of all public corporations, including all inventories, plant and equipment, land, mineral deposits, inventions and intellectual property. Privately owned personal and real property financed with any amount of debt will be similarly taken, as will the assets of privately owned businesses, which have been financed with debt. If even partially successful, this will be the greatest conquest and subjugation in world history." Sometimes a book hits you with a central idea that seems at first so preposterously unlikely that you can't help but laugh out loud (as I did) and think, &quo

The Two Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren

What is wrong with the following statement? "But the two-income family didn't just lose its safety net. By sending both adults into the labor force, these families actually increased the chances that they would need that safety net. In fact, they doubled the risk. With two adults in the workforce, the dual-income family has double the odds that someone could get laid off, downsized, or other wise left without a paycheck. Mom or Dad could suddenly lose a job." You've just read the fundamental thesis of The Two-Income Trap. If you agree with it--although I truly hope you're a better critical thinker than that--you'll have your views reinforced. Thus reading this book would be an unadulterated waste of your time. If on the other hand you are capable of critical thinking and you can successfully see through hilariously unrigorous "logic" of the above statement, then this book will still be a waste of your time (unless you like reading books for the s

Net Wars by Wendy M. Grossman

Workmanlike book about the early Usenet message boards that made up much of the internet's landscape in the early- to mid-1990s. While it offers helpful analogies for certain internet controversies today, I'd only recommend it to serious internet history geeks. It's not interesting enough of a read for the casual reader. However, books on technology ( and investing ) from past periods can offer surprisingly useful insights for current-day readers. The flame wars of the early days of Usenet rhyme with today's malevolently sarcastic social media arguments. Censorship battles of the 1990s give us a tiny hint of what they look like now. Spam, surveillance--we are grappling with the same problems today, just in far more extensive forms. And then again, there are some issues that seemed like a really big deal to everyone back then that, once enough time passes, end up hardly mattering at all. I wonder what things we think matter today that don't, and what things we think

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