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 […]
Tag: Books
Book Review: In “10 Strikes”, historian Erik Loomis demonstrates how American labor’s fortunes are inseparable from U.S. politics
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.
Book Review: Hilarie Gamm’s “Billions Lost” sadly has nothing useful or progressive to say
Read NPI’s review of “Billions Lost: The American Tech Crisis and the Roadmap to Change” by Hilarie T. Gamm.
Book Review: In the future of “Unscaled”, AI will keep the rich different from you and me
Read NPI’s review of Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future.
Book Review: Dana Fisher’s Activism, Inc. is a reminder of the sin of ideals procrastinated
Read NPI’s review of Activism, Inc., a 2006 book by Dana Fisher that examines “how the outsourcing of grassroots campaigns is strangling progressive politics in America.”
Book Review: “The Storm Before the Storm” and the seduction of history’s lessons
Read NPI’s review of The Storm Before The Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic, by Mike Duncan.
Book Review: This is your brain on “Collusion”
Read NPI’s review of Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World, by Nomi Prins
Book Review: The real “Good News About Bad Behavior” is that the kids are already alright
Read NPI’s review of The Good News About Bad Behavior by Kathleen Reynolds Lewis.
Book Review: “The Bone and Sinew of the Land” recovers some American history that actually has been erased
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.
Book Review: No Ashes in the Fire by Darnell L. Moore burns bright and goes out too soon
It’s a rare thing for a book to conclude and the reader’s biggest complaint be that there quite wasn’t enough of it. Yet, that’s what Darnell L. Moore accomplished with his memoir No Ashes in the Fire.
Book Review: Barbara Ehrenreich is old enough to die, but still has plenty to say
Read NPI’s review of “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer” by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Book Review: Read “Inventing Ourselves” to learn about the latest brain science research
Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s book Inventing Ourselves is a fascinating examination of what recent decades of technological progress and investigation have shown us about the teenage brain.
Book Review: Author Christian Davenport, for one, welcomes our new “Space Barons”
Read NPI’s review of The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos, by Christian Davenport.
At Everett Library, crowd gathers to discuss Trump, fascism, and white supremacism
Read NPI’s recap of yesterday’s symposium on right wing extremism with investigative journalists David Neiwert and Scott North, titled The Radical Right and Its Effects on Communities.