Review: How To Be Black

How To Be Black by Baratunde R. Thurston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Baratunde Thurston seems like a pretty cool guy. He has a fairly interesting story about how (basically
through his mother's determination) he grew up in "inner city*" Washington, DC, attended the Sidwell
Friend's school and Harvard, and then became a dominant internet personality. (He made his name on
the internet writing for the Onion, and Jack and Jill Politics and his twitter coverage of the 2012 republican national convention was hilarious.) I would love to get the chance to hang out
with him and talk about race and class in modern American society. I was hoping that this book would be like
a distillation of that experience in easily portable book form.

Unfortunately, it's not.

The problem I had with this book is that it's just not enough. It's not funny enough, it's not provocative
enough, it's not prescriptive enough. I mean, the book is called "How to be Black." But the answer to the
question: "How to be black?" is "Just be yourself (assuming you're black)."

The greatest sin is the first, of course. The Onion has produced some of the most incisive humor of the last
decade. I was expecting more from this book, but unfortunately, far too often the humor boils down to: list 3
real but outrageous things followed by one wildly outlandish thing.

The best part of the book is the black panel of experts, but there's no dialogue presented, just paragraph
responses to the author's questions.**

Occasionally the book shines. There are maybe 3 very funny pages.*** There's a really interesting interplay
between the author Christain Lander about how to the extent that there's a white culture, it's a product of
privilege and wealth and what this means for other cultures.**** But again, it's just not enough.

* Questions I would have liked answered in this book: What are white people supposed to call the crack-blighted neighborhoods where so many black people live.

** I did appreciate that Christian Lander of Stuff White People Like was included on the black panel, but
again, it would have been much more effective to have Baratunde Thurston and Christian Lander have a
discussion on some issue, and explore it in depth rather than (i'm guessing) cutting and pasting an email
response into the book.

*** The office party section from the chapter: How to be a Black Employee is my favorite.

**** Persistent readers of my reviews will notice a theme here.



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Review: Liar's Poker

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Liar's Poker

It's hard not to compare this book to the Big Short. For one thing that book was my introduction to Michael Lewis, and my introduction to reading popular nonfiction about the financial industry. Unfortunately, the book doesn't stand up to the comparison well.

There are two major problems with this book. First and foremost, the events discussed are coming up on 30 years old. It's hard
to get too excited about financial misdeeds that have been so thoroughly overtaken by events.* Second, it's just not as
interesting as The Big Short was. The middle third of the book which delves into the formation of a real estate backed bond market
is much too light on story or details. Michael Lewis's talent is creating engaging biographical sketches of the people who are involved
in these world changing actions, but for the stories that he didn't participate in directly, his access wasn't good enough to tell a compelling or plausible story.**

By way of comparison, The Big Short managed to both explain how the Mortgage Backed Securities crash happened, and tell an engaging story about how certain individuals figured it out and bucked the system.

Despite it's shortcomings, this is a pretty important book. It meticulously documents just how awful the world financial system is. Moreover, the observation that money shouldn't be the end goal*** is highly relevant in today's political landscape. But it doesn't offer much in the way of solutions beyond: "the only way to win is not to play."


* Of course, that being said, it's downright chilling to read about the original formation of the mortgage backed
securities that would lead to the financial crash 25 years later (And which Michael Lewis would also write about...)

** For example, it's never made terribly clear why Lewie Ranieri was so insistant on forming that particular bond market.
Many reasons are given for why it's a bad idea, and obviously it ended up being very lucrative, but how did this guy know? We're left wondering...

*** Which I acknowledge is an attitude that can only be adopted by someone who is extremely privileged to begin with. (As Randall Monroe put it: "'Because it's there' is more poetic than, 'I'm rich enough that my goals are arbitrary.'" http://www.xkcd.com/1110)





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Review: Outliers: The Story of Success

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This a neat book. While masquerading as a a book about what makes people successful, it turns out to a lengthy exploration of how much privilege and luck has to do with individual success (and how little raw talent does.*)

Of course, this is a pop non-fiction book, so it's never quite clear how many of the author's conclusions generalize beyond the case studies presented. Even so, the fact that Malcom Gladwell has tricked so many people into thinking about privilege makes him a genius in my book.

* Also interesting is how controversial this idea is. I frequently mention this idea to coworkers and colleagues, and every single one of them has argued against me, in favor of raw talent being king.




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Review: King of Thorns

King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



So, I was a little harsh on Prince of Thorns.

Having read king of thorns, I'm not so sure it deserved it. I think perhaps Mark Lawrence willfully sacrifidcd
a satisfying ending to his debut novel to bolster the theme of his trilogy. In which case Mark Lawrence has a scary
degree of talent, and I would advise against ever playing poker against him.

Because where Prince of Thorns was about free will and determination, King of Thorns is about acknowledging your
position in the world and all of the things both within your control and out that got you where you are.* And that,
I suspect, is leading us to a much interesting (and perhaps profound) conclusion than I had previously thought.

Regardless of the deeper themes (I suspect we'll need to wait until Emperor of thorns comes out to really see
what he's up to), Mark Lawrence is a tremendously talenter writer. The structure of this book is a literary feat
to behold, juggling four parallel plotlines separated across years of book time and making everything readable and interesting
and entertaining.

None of the individual scenes in King of Thorns** is quite as awesome as the best of Prince of Thorns but the
overall plot hangs together much better. More of the characters get fuller development, and I'm very excited to see
what happens to the survivors in the next book.*** Finally, threats and villains abound , and most of them remain undealt with.

I am giddy with excited for the conclusion of the trilogy and anything else Mark Lawrence has up his sleeve for the future.

*Or maybe i'm overthinking it again.
** {Possible Spoiler Alert} and i'm not quite sure the author did the math on some of them. Does anyone know how much heat is required to melt an ice lake? I'm thinking it's a lot more than someone could be within close proximity of, and survive.
*** On the other hand did we really need both monographs about the world AND paragraphs about Jorg's brothers. While the latter did a great job of adding depth to the first novel's too-many characters,
in this book they just feel superfluous.





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