Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

End Zone – Done Delillo (1972)

End Zone by Don Delillo

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CBR13Bingo – Sports Ball Probably the sneakiest anti-Vietnam book I’ve ever read, and this includes Norman Mailer’s pretty sneaky anti-Vietnam book “Why are we in Vietnam?” If you look up American literature during the Civil War, there’s not much there. Sure, Melville and Whitman wrote some war poetry, there’s still a lot of journalism, some essays and poetry, and while the Civil War becomes the focal point of American literature for about a century after, nothing stands out as too connected to the war years. […]

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant – Ulysses S Grant (1885)

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant by Ulysses S Grant

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CBR13Bingo – Rec’d (https://everyday-offershub.com/2020/12/personal-memoirs-and-the-autobiography-of-benjamin-franklin-thewheelbarrow/) There’s a few reasons why this is probably the pinnacle of presidential memoirs. For one, Grant is the second most important military commander in US history (arguably the first but regardless). Two, his prose is pretty straight-forward, readable, and succinct. Three, he spends a lot of time citing sources, debunking myths (often in gracious and conciliatory ways, usually elevating someone’s else status or lauding or defending them — both friend and enemy). Four, he more or less only covers the war. […]

Civil War: A Narrative vol 2 – Shelby Foote (1963)

Civil War: A Narrative vol 2 by Shelby Foote

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This is the meat. The first volume of the Shelby Foote trilogy focused pretty heavily on the politics of both Lincoln and Davis, the lead up to secession, the political make up of the country, and then the early battles. The early Southern successes at Bull Run and a few other places spoke to the enthusiasm gap of the two armies and the general competency of the Southern generals (although I do think this is more in doubt than otherwise supposed) and the unreadiness of […]

Building a Bridge to the 18th Century – Neil Postman (1999)

Building a Bridge to the 18th Century by Neil Postman

Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman; Charles Weingartner

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3/5 stars Neil Postman at possibly his most curmudgeonly and that’s saying something. This feels like an old man’s work, a last chance to have a word about the world. He would die a few years later, but more so than growing old, he’s been proven right in so many of ideas, analyses, and predictions. That’s not to say I agree with everything he’s saying here, but he is right about plenty. The focus of the book is to look back on the 18th century […]

To Be Young, Gifted, and Black – Lorraine Hansberry (

To Be Young, Gifted, and Black by Lorraine Hansberry

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CBR13Bingo – UnCannon Here’s a list: This random list of things Lorraine Hansberry liked and disliked is delightful. It’s important to know first what this book is: it’s a collection of quotes, snippets, excerpts from a variety of Lorraine Hansberry’s unpublished writing, and you need to go in knowing that it’s a gut punch. It was edited and published after she died by her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff. The collection involves various dialogues, bits of speeches, songs, ideas, thoughts and diaries not otherwise published in her […]

The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins (1976)

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

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Putting aside Richard Dawkins as a person, and especially as a public figure, this book is a really great example of a few different impulses in writing, argument, and scholarship. The basic idea here as an argument is that when thinking about evolution and “survival of the fittest,” that it’s not the individual organism that we’re focused on, but the specific gene as the most basic unit. “Selfishness” as we’re thinking about it here is the drive to spread that gene and to act in […]



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