Nov 17 2024
Any book about current events eventually becomes a book about history, and a bit of a historical object itself. If it’s a good one, its insights will transcend the immediate period of its writing, illuminating its subject over a longer period, showing readers how the long term looked at a particular time. Michael Thumann’s Das …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/11/17/das-lied-von-der-russischen-erde-by-michael-thumann/
Oct 17 2024
translated from the original Italian by Willard Wood. This review is going to require a lot of background on me as a reviewer so buckle up, or feel free to scroll down till you get to the parts that are primarily about this book, around six paragraphs down. When I was a girl growing up …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/10/17/gaza-faces-history-by-enzo-traverso/
Jul 08 2024
Every so often, the publicist Alex Kelleher-Nagorski (hi, Alex!) sends me a book and starts firmly (but gently) persuading me to read it. This is one of those books. I was genuinely afraid that I wouldn’t have time to get into it but Alex assured me that it would be totally worth my time. After …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/07/08/unbecoming-by-seema-yasmin/
Apr 29 2024
subtitled The Cold War, Joe McCarthy, and the Red Scare. Ever since the end of the Second World War, the word “communism” has been used as a bogeyman for the average American, and is often the default label for any behavior that threatens a selfish sense of privilege. Why explain why you don’t like something …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/04/29/witch-hunt-by-andrea-balis-elizabeth-levy-illustrated-by-tim-foley/
Feb 13 2024
So I know that that order of attribution seems weird, as Fahmida Azim is the artist, Anthony Del Col the reporter and Josh Adams the art director of this Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novella. Like, who even puts the art director’s name on the cover of a book? But once you look at the contents, you’ll …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/02/13/i-escaped-a-chinese-internment-camp-by-fahmida-azim-anthony-del-col-josh-adams/
Jan 10 2024
Hunh, this had better not be the last book in the Counterfeit Lady series, as seemed to be hinted at in the afterword. I understand how this seventh volume would be a thematically appropriate story to finish on, but it absolutely lacked the larger part of why so many readers, myself included, have adored these …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/10/city-of-betrayal-by-victoria-thompson/
Dec 30 2023
Samantha Power was a writer before she went into public service. And even though she’s been America’s ambassador to the United Nations, and is now serving as the chief of the US Agency for International Development, it’s possible — maybe even probable — that she’s a better writer than anything else. Which means that even after …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/12/30/the-education-of-an-idealist-by-samantha-power/
Nov 26 2023
Right up front I should say that Henry Farrell, one of the authors of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, is a friend from graduate school. Part of me read this book the way one would read a draft of a friend’s project — not that Henry has ever wanted or needed my …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/11/26/underground-empire-by-henry-farrell-and-abraham-newman/
Oct 18 2023
In comparison to most of the graphic novels for grown-ups I’ve read recently, this felt quite long, but I think there’s a good reason for that. The original, published in 2020, only collected the first six issues of the series. This follow-up contains those and six more chapters that round out, at least for now, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/18/heart-attack-by-shawn-kittelsen-eric-zawadzki-mike-spicer/
Aug 27 2023
If you worked for a while in an oil refinery in Louisiana in, say, the mid-1980s (as I did), part of your orientation was hurricane training. The briefing I attended noted that there are two places on earth where the combination of low elevation, coastline shape, concentrated population, limited escape routes, location relative to wind …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/08/27/katrina-a-history-1915-2015-by-andy-horowitz/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire