Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Soylent Green is people!

Technopoly by Neil Postman

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It’s nearly impossible for contemporary critical thinkers to write about our relationship with technology without referencing Postman’s Technopoly. While it was originally published thirty years ago, many of its points and predictions remain as relevant as ever. However, Postman also gets a lot wrong. In particular, his solutions to cultural issues with tech problems seem shallow at best. For that reason, I would only recommend this book to readers interested in the history of our concerns about tech. Postman first asserts that “embedded in every […]

The End of Education – Neil Postman (1995)

The End of Education by Neil Postman

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The End of Education title is a double-entendre meaning not only the possible ending of education as we know it, and also an exploration of purpose of education. He anticipates the way in which teachers generally plan for education now, with the end in mind with this second meaning. Neil Postman writing in the 90s is among the most 1990s things I can conceive of. What this means is that while he’s very very on to something about the failures of contemporary education, that focuses […]

Conscientious Objections – Neil Postman (1988)

Conscientious Objections by Neil Postman

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I keep looking for Neil Postman chapters and essays to present to high school students, and man if he doesn’t pepper nearly every single one of them with just something a little too close to the line for my own good. I don’t mind the outdated references because we can bring those up to date, and I don’t mind the religious imagery, because those are interesting. His casual use of old school references to mental illness, his bad habit for casual political digs at conservatives […]

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 […]

The prince is sleeping now.

Letters from Atlantis by Robert Silverberg

Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Nightwings by Robert Silverberg

Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson

The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovannino Guareschi

Technopoly by Neil Postman

The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman

The Most Beautiful House in the World by Witold Rybczynski

Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

The Game of X by Robert Sheckley

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

White Fang by Jack London

The Man on the Balcony by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall

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Letters from Atlantis – 4/5 Stars In this novella, we meet a time travelling archeologist/anthropologist writing letters to his wife. Seems normal enough (well, minus the time travelling) but what we find out is that this narrator is actually 20,000 years in the past in Atlantis, the mythical or not mythical island country that existed pre-historically, and if the stories that go at least as far back as Plato go, was seemingly advanced. So the time traveler is observing, this society has electricity, as well […]

The word is everywhere, a plague spread by by presidents of the United States, television anchors, radio talk show hosts, preachers in megachurches, self-help gurus, and anyone else attempting to demonstrate his or her identification with ordinary, presumably wholesome American value.

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

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Age of American Unreason – 4/5 Stars This is the 2008 historical analysis of our exhausting times by the journalist and historian Susan Jacoby. I’ve read a previous work of hers, and my review of this one more or less matches this one. Jacoby’s collection of history and historical facts is mostly strong and effective, her analysis more than adequate, but her tendency to both attempt solutions or eradicate causes, as well as her need to cast herself as different or separate from the failures […]



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