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I mean really out there. It’s hard to describe this book. The title is accurate: it is a chaotic story. It starts from a conspiracy to conceal the true motive in the Charles Manson family murders and expands very far. I am pretty convinced it’s the truth.

This was my first book on degrowth and I thought it was well written and mostly well researched. There were references to works from Yuval Harari and Jared Diamond that I have read and know are popular and mostly well regarded but also debunked by historians. That was frustrating and tainted the book for me. But mostly the research and references and stories felt good and right. And that the recommendations point in a worthwhile direction, particularly on how to raise kids.

I think this was my 8th Stephenson book. It’s not the first one I’d recommend but I really liked the characters and story.

I did not know anything about it in advance and was pleased to discover that it’s about climate and solar geoengineering. I have been consuming a lot of non-fiction and fiction climate media lately and this was one of the best. It felt the most grounded in reality: self-interest driving action more than anything else.

A second Dirac, but human. An incredible life and person (and book).

This was a great follow up to The Geography of Nowhere, which I read many years ago and has influenced how I think about cities. I hope more Americans learn about roads, streets, and stroads and advocate for better infrastructure.

This is the kind of topic that deserves the prestige of a book but where the ideas can fit in a blog post without losing anything important. Here, the length and examples are worthwhile. The show the scope of the problem in a way that is both interesting and enraging.

The bomb is used halfway through this book and the rest is about the tragedy of the McCarthy era. It includes a play-by-play of terrible moments in anti-communist fear mongering. It's worthwhile history though not nearly as interesting as the complexities of Oppenheimer's success in leading scientists with competing egos under immense pressure.

Good summary of how we got to this point and how the Supreme Court is delegitimizing itself. And finishes with good solutions. There’s a seemingly infinite list of blood boiling developments these days, but this is an important one.

If you have ever been unsatisfied by the idea that we don’t know what happened before the Big Bang or that it somehow doesn’t matter, you’ll enjoy this.