NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tag Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: “Talk on the Wild Side” by Lane Greene shows how language is power

Excerpt: Lane Greene’s Talk on the Wild Side: Why Lan­guage Can’t Be Tamed came across, in its ini­tial read­ing, as a scat­ter­shot col­lec­tion of top­ics relat­ing vague­ly to the way the pro­nun­ci­a­tions, words, and gram­mars of lan­guages will change with time so long as those lan­guages con­tin­ue to live and have peo­ple speak them. What makes the […]
Published at:9:30 AM on Sunday, April 7th, 2019
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture
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Book Review: Kissinger is proof the adults in the room were “Reckless”, too

Excerpt: In the Mel Brooks par­o­dy “Space Balls”, the vil­lain­ous char­ac­ter Darth Hel­met brags to Lon­es­tarr, the pro­tag­o­nist, that, “Evil will always tri­umph because good is dumb.” This trope appears in fic­tion often, and some writ­ers rely on it almost entirely. The medieval­ist his­to­ri­an and cul­ture crit­ic Steven Atwell has observed that one of the cen­tral […]
Published at:6:00 AM on Sunday, January 13th, 2019
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture
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Book Review: In “10 Strikes”, historian Erik Loomis demonstrates how American labor’s fortunes are inseparable from U.S. politics

Excerpt: This is a good book in all the ways a history book can be good. You should buy it. You should read it. You should gift it to your friends and family, and stuff extra copies in Tiny Libraries you come across.
Published at:9:04 AM on Sunday, December 2nd, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Views & Reviews
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Book Review: In the future of “Unscaled”, AI will keep the rich different from you and me

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future.
Published at:6:30 PM on Saturday, October 6th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture, Views & Reviews
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Book Review: “How to Democrat in the Age of Trump” by Mike Lux is a suspiciously good read

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Mike Lux's timely book How to Democrat in the Age of Trump.
Published at:9:30 AM on Sunday, September 30th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Views & Reviews
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Book Review: This is your brain on “Collusion”

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, by Nomi Prins
Published at:9:30 AM on Sunday, July 15th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Economic Security, Media & Culture, Policy Topics
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Book Review: The real “Good News About Bad Behavior” is that the kids are already alright

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of The Good News About Bad Behavior by Kathleen Reynolds Lewis.
Published at:8:15 AM on Wednesday, July 11th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture, Views & Reviews
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Book Review: “The Bone and Sinew of the Land” recovers some American history that actually has been erased

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Anna-Lisa Cox's new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality.
Published at:11:24 AM on Sunday, July 8th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture, Views & Reviews
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Book Review: Author Christian Davenport, for one, welcomes our new “Space Barons”

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos, by Christian Davenport.
Published at:7:50 PM on Sunday, April 15th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture, Policy Topics, Technology
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Book Review: The airing of grievances in Donna Brazile’s “Hacks” comes at her true crime memoir’s expense

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Donna Brazile's Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House. The book has been portrayed in the mass media as a juicy tell-all, but a good chunk of it is actually a cybersecurity clinic that's worth reading.
Published at:11:42 AM on Sunday, January 21st, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Elections, Media & Culture
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Book Review: David Neiwert’s “Alt-America” is a very necessary — but difficult — read

Excerpt: Read NPI's review of Alt-America, local author David Neiwert's well-researched book about the rise of the radical right in the Trump error.
Published at:8:26 PM on Sunday, January 14th, 2018
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture
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Book Review: “The Future of War: A History” could be a bit more forward-looking

Excerpt: Lawrence Freedman’s "The Future of War: A History" is only about the more martial of the two human endeavors, but there’s a lot to love in it.
Published at:1:51 PM on Sunday, December 3rd, 2017
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture
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Book Review: Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider re-examines the biggest tragedy of the 1900s

Excerpt: It’s become a stan­dard bit of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry triv­ia that as ter­ri­ble as the First World War was, the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic coin­cid­ing with the armistice killed more than the con­flict itself. Now, an espe­cial­ly pedan­tic per­son might want to argue that WWI real­ly was the begin­ning of the ‘Sec­ond Thir­ty Years War’. They might treat as […]
Published at:9:30 AM on Sunday, September 24th, 2017
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Views & Reviews
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Book Review: Lynda V. Mapes’ Witness Tree makes for pleasant summertime reading

Excerpt: If human­i­ty does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly reduce our emis­sions of car­bon diox­ide, methane, and oth­er cli­mate-warm­ing air pol­lu­tants, glob­al tem­per­a­tures could rise by as much as 11.5 degrees Fahren­heit by the end of the cen­tu­ry, accord­ing to the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change’s most pes­simistic fore­casts. For some rea­son, this knowl­edge isn’t as fright­en­ing to us as […]
Published at:9:32 AM on Tuesday, July 25th, 2017
Written by:David A Johnson
Categories:Media & Culture
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