Ziyad is a black, queer male writer from Cleveland, who now lives in New York City and uses the pronouns they/them (which shall be used in this review). They write about his struggles forming an identity in a world that seems violent and hostile to his health. While such an environment exists in some part for most children, Ziyad seems to have a particularly difficult time given a multi-religious home, public schooling that seemed to…
This work is spawn out of two entities: Unger’s life experiences while leading a diverse church in a diverse, urban neighborhood and her thirst for advanced education and stimulating reading. Using these two springboards, she shares lessons from her journey from a fundamentalist/evangelical background to where she is today. She describes how she believes that her life is now richer than it was before. She touches on issues of tribalism that plague pluralistic societies today…
In this brilliantly deliberate memoir, Obama reflects on the journey that is her life. She shares how an educationally-driven, middle-class, African-American girl from the south-side of Chicago could become First Lady of the United States. With the highest decency, she shares how she raised two girls while in the public eye and how she joined with her husband in carrying a difficult nation. Through her words, she courageously fights for the soul of a country,…
Historically, this work was written before the Civil Rights era (1940) and shed light on the terrible social circumstances that pervaded African-American life in the North. Set in Chicago shortly after the Great Migration, it portrays what we now would characterize as systemic racism – the realities of a dysfunctional society. A black everyman has his life cast away by a lack of opportunity to make his life count for something. It can remind today’s…
“You should read this.” Those simple words ran across my mind as I finished page 126 of this wonderful book. I am no political scientist though I follow current events tightly. This book, written in 2017 in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, reminds us how fragile history can be. By looking at the challenges of the present, it looks at how democracy was subverted by tyranny in the twentieth century. Snyder provides…
In the 1960s, McLuhan presaged the communications age through his studies of “electronic media.” His thoughts shone light on the way forward and are now standards of understanding today. For instance, he coined the term “global village” in showing the ways of globalization. This work consists of much more than text. Published in black-and-white, it portrays a series of images that move the reader through the contention that media – particularly electronic media – “massages”…
First, I must confess my biases. I develop software (browser- and mobile-based) for a living. I have committed my career to bettering the US healthcare system, both research and medical. I understand how the Internet works, in highly technical (and boring) detail. I work in a non-profit research university lab but willingly work with for-profit products. I mention this because Ball’s main audience in this work seems to be the general public and not me.…
This book was written in 2010 and covers how individual psychology affects society concerning race, gender, mental illness, age, and other differences. Its intended audience seems to consist primarily of Americans. However, it seems like the United States has travelled a long journey since 2010, since the beginning of the Obama era. That journey seems to have spanned places both on and off the beaten path towards social equality. After finishing this book, I’m left…
Humanity seems to be moving from paper-based forms of authentication (like licenses or passports) to electronic forms of authentication (like iris scans, face scans, or fingerprints). In this work, Grinnell signals that the changes wrought by such biometric technology might not be all good. Ever-anxious “biometric thought” arises from interacting with this technology, and he analyzes how this thought tends to leave out social relationships that really define us. By trade, I’m a software developer,…
Anyone who has had a baby in the social media age knows how difficult successfully traversing the social-media landscape is. Fringe groups are given equal (or maybe even greater) voice compared to established medical voices. As the authors chronicle well, technical and lay experts have their voices intermixed so that the distinction between the two seems somewhat arbitrary. Johnson and Quinlan share that this blurring process started a long time ago but has been amplified…