Reviews and Comments

I started parenthood around the moment that the pandemic started. The lockdown and my maleness meant that I didn't really get a lot of in-person advice about parenting. I relied on books to be a father and equal parent to my child. One of my favorite books is The Whole Brain Child by Dr. Daniel Segal (@DrDanSiegel) and Dr. Tina Payne Bryson (@tinabryson). They wrote another book that I just finished: No Drama Discipline.

My kiddo is starting to gather her own will. I have been encountering all of the tantrums, demands, and hitting that you might expect. At first, I had no idea what to do. Then, No Drama Discipline and #GentleParenting Tik Tok helped me to develop a philosophy that guides my parenting actions to teach my child emotional regulation instead ugly pavlovian behavioral approaches.

I can't recommend No Drama Discipline enough for anyone that interacts with children, teenagers, and honestly, even adults.

Other parent book recommendations
-The What To Expect books (@WhatToExpect)
-The Informed Parent by by Emily Willingham (@ejwillingham) and Tara Haelle (@tarahaelle)
-The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp (@DrHarveyKarp)

The library and the post office were once the most supported parts of federal government services in the United States. A fascist demagogue attacked USPS to attempt to keep a grip on the reigns of power. Religious fundamentalists and people against the free exchange of ideas have begun attacking librarians and libraries too.

But it wasn't always this way. If you love reading, you probably have strong positive feelings about the library. However, the modern existence of libraries isn't as you might remember from childhood.

During the pandemic, Amanda Oliver (@aelaineo) decided to get her complicated ideas about the library onto the page after a harrowing 6 years of experience in Washington DC's elementary school libraries and public libraries in DC that became day centers for houseless folks.

As a public educator, I really emphasized with Oliver's journey. The fall from the romantic vision of a profession before being smashed against the rocks of raw human need is rough. Libraries fill adults needs that are unmet by our government and society in the same way that schools fill children's unmet needs. Oliver's assertion that librarians are both first and second responders to crisis feels very close the way that teachers are "trained" to deal with active shooters and asked to carry weapons to kill their own students if they turn out to be active shooters.

I also saw the parallels between the internet's effect on libraries and its effect on schools.

Her conclusion built on the philosophy of stoics is also something that I have incorporated into my teaching mindset and health.

I highly recommend you read Overdue by Amanda Oliver.

Many hard science fiction authors use the early Apollo astronauts as models for their characters. The trite pilot, cowboy, large-ego, insensitive, over-competitive, womanizing, straight, white, male space explorer isn't really accurate to real astronauts and a bore.

Kate Hope Day's (@katehopeday) In the Quick features June, a natural engineer whose skills are honed by her late uncle, Peter Reed. June's coming-of-age arc is fascinating. Most of the plot is driven by a McGuffin: a fuel cell worked on by students and guided by Reed.

However, the book just stops at the end without a satisfying end of the plot arc. I have heard that In the Quick had literary parallels to Jane Eyre by Jane Austin, but these superficial similarities don't really solve the problem in the book.

In the Quick feels feminist without deeper philosophical notes, it doesn't have the comedy or detail of hard science fiction like The Martian by Andy Weir, and its plot fizzles out after the climax (however, I haven't read Jane Eyre for a while). I read the audiobook, but I have heard that the dialogue doesn't have quotation marks.

I would recommend this book for what I used it for, it filled a time in my life where I needed to avoid thinking about my own problems. I need to find some more feminist science fiction.

If you are feeling psychologically overwhelmed by the news and near the breaking point, don't read How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter (@bfwalter) or my summary until you have the space for it.

However, if you would like a primer on the political science about civil war and the implications in the United States aimed at an audience of lay-people, you found your book.

Most of Walter's arguments are couched in the scales that political scientists use to analyze states. The polity index scale measures a society's place between dictatorship (-10), anocracy (-5 to +5 | "an" = not, ocracy = government), and democracy (10+). After January 6th, the US fell from a +7 to a +5. After the transfer of power from Trump to Biden, the US is at a +8. The US has not been at a +5 since the 1800s.

Much like the study of fascism, Walter places the blame for a democracy's fall to an anocracy on a lack of services provided by the government in question. Encourages ethnic entrepreneurs to turn political parties into ethnic factions based on race and not policy or ideology.

At the end of the book, Walter fulfills her promise and gives a prescription to America to stop a civil war.

1) Improve the quality of governance
2) Improve voter turnout
3) Reduce Gerrymandering that encourages extreme candidates
4) Create a system that equally values the votes of citizens
5) Increase Civic Education
6) Reduce the money in politics to increase belief in democracy
7) Reform social media influence on elections

Also, her short story about what an American civil war would look like is very similar to Robert Evans (@iwriteok) description in the It Could Happen Here Podcast (@HappenHerePod). Walter's description centers a larger picture while Evan's description centers an individual. You can read Walter's description of an American civil war here: pdfhost.io/v/s5DYVGDnp_What_a_Civil_War_Would_Look_Like

Since reading Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), I have become obsessed with his books. I have read the Mars Trilogy several times and found new and interesting details each time. I am also a Midwest-based outdoors-person and lover of mountains.

KSR's Sierra book is beautiful. His discussions on Muir and the conservation of the range are interspersed with gear philosophy, life advice for outdoors people, and the stories that are swapped when outdoors-people start talking.

I was just thrilled to learn that my obsession with KSR's work and mountains are intertwined in a way that seems obvious in hindsight. So many physical descriptions in his books are inspired by the Sierra.

The highest complement that I can pay this book is that it has helped to inspire me to start an outdoor project to inspire my daughter to love the outdoors in the rivers and forests I grew up in.

The High Sierra: A Love Story by KSR, possibly his past book, is worth your time.

Anyway, Cory Doctorrow's review is better. Go read it: twitter.com/doctorow/status/1529416706376052736?t=lYNLNw-FiOSxuzqj25Zzwg&s=19

If you have spent some time on Youtube, you have watched at least one beautifully produced Kurzgesagt (@Kurz_Gesagt), German for in a Nutshell, video. Youtube is packed with science communicators, but the beauty and humor of Kurzgesagt videos is hard to beat.

In 2021, Philip Dettmer released Immune. After more than a decade of interest in the topic, he released it in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic; he has shockingly good timing.

The Immune audiobook is narrated by Steve Taylor, but the beautiful illustrations in the book should make you want to reach for a ebook or even a hardcover.

Immune's extended metaphors and allegories help even the least scientifically trained folks like myself to start to grasp a shockingly complex topic, which is something that I should have expected.

I also should have expected the "in a nutshell" guy to write "in a nutshell" a lot. The Google ebook preview shows that Immune says "in a nutshell" 34 times. It felt like I heard it about once every 5 minutes in the audiobook.

Immune is a fantastic read.

I have a book pairing to suggest if you are interested in anti-authoritarian action and horizontal organizations: A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy (@magpiekilljoy) and The Democracy Project by David Graeber (@davidgraeber).

A Country of Ghosts, a novel by Margaret Killjoy, employs a journalist protagonist who is required to report back to the Borolian Empire about their recent attempted acquisition: Hron. Like many early European invaders of the American continent, Dimos Horacki finds himself taken from colonialist forces and experiences a better, more interesting and fulfilling life with people practicing direct democracy and horizontal consensus.

Killjoy's plot is full of beautiful fantasy and keeps you engaged and inspired from cover to cover.

A line that just keeps coming back to me from the novel is "freedom is a relationship between people, not an absolute and static state for an individual."

A fictional romp through Hron before diving into the Occupy Movement grounds Killjoy's philosophy into the direct democracy and consensus building that you can start doing around you right now.

Like all of Graeber's work, The Democracy Project is a somewhat disjointed collection of effective arguments. Much of it shows a potential facilitator how to start thinking about running a general assembly. Graeber suggests readers study Starhawk's guide to consensus facilitation: starhawk.org/short-consensus-summary/

A line that I just can stop thinking about is: "the system itself was undemocratic—having been reduced to a system of open institutionalized bribery, backed up by coercive force. We wanted to make that fact evident to everyone, in the United States and elsewhere."

Reading this back-to-back in any order is valuable and worth your time.

Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs provides a rare window into the lives of Berdis Baldwin (mother of James), Alberta King (mother of Martin Luther), and Louise Little (mother of Malcolm). If you are a product of the US public education system in a white dominated area, you were probably taught about Martin Luther King during Black History month. If you had a particularly good English or History teacher, you might have learned about Malcolm X or James Baldwin. You probably had no chance of knowing anything about these men's mothers, which is a shame.

As Tubbs outlines in her book, James, Martin Luther, and Malcolm were raised to be brave, driven, revolutionary men. Tubbs account of Berdis, Alberta, and Louise's lives show proud and unwavering strengths driven by love against white supremacy. The way these women lived their lives is important to all of us to know to face the struggles ahead. Tubbs writing is enhanced by her choice to write it while pregnant with a child of her own. The audiobook is narrated by Tubbs and worth your time.