Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Public World and the Private Domain

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

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Annette Gordon-Reed uncovers the family history of the Hemingses of Monticello, who are known as the slaves of Thomas Jefferson – though their story encompasses more than that. I knew a bit about Sally Hemings and her relationship with Jefferson, but the author goes beyond this notable person to expand her focus to her entire family. In many ways the Hemingses are remarkable for their blood relationship with Jefferson’s wife Martha and how that affected their treatment, but in others they were just like the thousands […]

Utah v. Lafferty

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

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Not long after, Ron handed Dan a piece of paper through the bars. Written on it was a revelation that Ron said he’d just received, in which God commanded Dan to let Ron kill him. After praying for guidance, Dan says, “I felt I should submit to what it said, and we discussed how it might be done.” In 1984, two men, fervent Mormon fundamentalists, murdered their sister-in-law and niece and claimed they had been commanded to do so by God. Krakauer is one of […]

“What seemed clear was this: in a town that refused to allow the government to protect it from bears, vigilantism seemed the only option. Just as the libertarians wanted, it was every man, woman, and bear for themselves.”

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

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Mind-boggling that this is a real place, with real people (and real bears). How does one begin to describe a book like this? I don’t know. If it wasn’t so early in the year, I might be tempted to review amnesty out of it and just point you in the direction of the many great reviews that have already been written about it, including one by our very own andtheIToldYouSos. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a long form journalist who spent a lot of time in the […]

Petticoat Government

Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, Reformers and Revolutionaries by Nan Sloane

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‘I told him I was not a felon, and that I would not be treated as one. His answer was, that there were many women in Newgate who had been well off, and who were obliged to sleep on the floor: there have been two hundred at once sleeping on those mats. Two hundred did you say? Yes. Then more shame for you. Had I been one of them I would have excited a rebellion against you…’ The years between the advent of the French […]

En Garde!

The Last Duel: A True Story of Crime, Scandal, and Trial by Combat in Medieval France by Eric Jager

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I got a familiar feeling when I read this, like I had read something like it before. So I looked up the writer’s name and sure enough, he wrote another, similar book about a crime involving French aristocracy. Blood Royal was a good enough book but it focused less on the crime and more on the budding Civil War in France over the death of Louis X. It dragged the story down and while it was readable, it wasn’t necessarily good. This one avoids that mistake. […]

Roll Call

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

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First book I finished in 2022…and it might already be the best thing I’ve read. Pack it in, people. I was hoping sitting on it for a day would help me form a more coherent review but I think I’m going to need to process it more to get there. This is gonna be a bit of sentence salad. What I love about Robert Caro’s books is how unconventional they are. Caro has no interest in the typical biography, whether it’s a hagiography, a hack […]



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