Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

George Steiner (1)

Martin Heidegger by George Steiner

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“The crisis of spirit suffered by Germany in 1918 was more profound than that of 1945.” When you get to grad school in many humanities, you start to learn there’s a list of about 100,000 books you’re both expected to have read and know, and only later do you realize that not only is this an impossible task, no one, including your professors, except maybe that one person, has done so. Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time is one of those books, but so are, in […]

James Shapiro (1)

Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future by James Shapiro

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“Read by almost everyone at school, staged in theaters across the land, and long valued by conservatives as highly as liberals, Shakespeare’s plays remain common ground, one of the few places where Americans can meet and air their disparate views.” This book begins with a discussion of a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar not long after the 2016 election. That play, like most of Shakespeare’s plays, is decidedly ambiguous in engaging in moral questions, raising them, and often providing more than one […]

Anthea Butler (1)

White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America by Anthea Butler

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“White Evangelical Racism tells a concise history of the evangelical movement and–here is the hard part–the racist and racial elements that imbue its beliefs, practices, and social and practical activism.” I first learned of this book and its author from watching the Jerry Falwell Jr documentary on Hulu. Butler is one of the featured commentators, and in the early parts of this book, she spends some time framing her relationship to the material which comes in part from her professional and educational expertise, but also […]

Kevin M Kruse (1)

White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M Kruse

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“In the stories spun by its supporters, Atlanta had done the impossible.” That impossible according to those supporters is to navigate the difficult process of integration (or more so desegregation) of the 1940s through the 1960s. Kevin Kruse, of course, suggests that that process was a lot more rocky than otherwise stated, and also not actually particularly integrated in the end. The opening statement does speak to some relative success, but that success is less about white people in Atlanta looking for an equitable way […]

Edith Wharton (1-4)

Mrs Manstey's View by Edith Wharton

The Fulness of Life by Edith Wharton

Afterward by Edith Wharton

The Letters by Edith Wharton

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“Mrs Manstey’s View” “The view from Mrs. Manstey’s window was not a striking one, but to her at least, it was full of interest and beauty” In this first story, we meet Mrs. Manstey, an elderly woman living in New York in a boarding house. She has a room with a tremendous view, and because she doesn’t really want much else in life except to look out of her window, occasionally read or knit, and contemplate life, things are fairly good. She spends a good […]

Margaret Atwood (1-2)

Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021 by Margaret Atwood

Dearly by Margaret Atwood

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Burning Questions This is the latest collection of nonfiction from Margaret Atwood which comes from the years 2004-2022 or so. She mentions early on that she’s published a version of this book for each 20 years of her writing career, and given that she’s rounding the corner on 85 years, I am imagine there won’t be another collection of the same, but I wouldn’t put it past her. Among other things, there’s no doubt in my mind how ridiculous sharp she still is, and this […]



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