Tag: nonfiction

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Review

“The Power of Scenery”

Dennis Drabelle

If I was shelving this, I’d have a tough time deciding between “literature” and “history” as the genre. It went back and forth; some sections felt like pretty straight history, while others sent me back to freshman year of college, reading Walden and Thoreau for a class on “writing the Western landscape.”

Whichever genre this falls into, though, I did enjoy the read. For all that I love the national parks system, I didn’t know much about the history, and this book really told that story well.

A very enjoyable read; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Prisoners of Geography”

Tim Marshall

I went in expecting this book to be mostly history, through the lens of geography; it proved me wrong, right off the bat, by talking about as-of-its-publishing current affairs in Russia, and why Russia was doing what it was doing. Later chapters did devote more time to history, but overall, this was more of a political science book, with a little bit of history, through the lens of geography. I suppose the foreword having been written by a former head of MI6 was a hint about what sort of book it was going to be.

None of that is to say it was a bad book, just not remotely what I expected. Maybe not the best in ebook form, although to really get the benefit of the maps I think it’d be better to be sat down with both this book and a proper, full-sized atlas, rather than relying on the insets at the beginning of each chapter.

An interesting book; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Key to the City”

Sara C. Bronin

This feels like a book that I wasn’t quite the target audience for. I’m a secondary target, because I’m sitting here contemplating sending a copy of this book to everyone on the city council. That’s who this is for—the people who can update the zoning code, and haven’t realized yet that they can. Or, more importantly, that they should.

It’s an interesting overview of various parts of the zoning code, and strikes a pretty good balance of pointing out the good and bad outcomes that have come from those zoning codes. Parking minimums: pretty uniformly bad, we should get rid of them. Historic preservation districts: can be used for good! I think the bit that felt the newest to me was minimum size requirements, which is something I hadn’t much thought about until now—and, now that it’s been pointed out to me, I’m considering the spacing between houses in various towns in my area, and realizing how much nicer a neighborhood you can create just by getting rid of, like, social distancing for houses. Having neighbors nearby is pretty nice, actually!

Overall, an interesting read; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Atomic Frontier Days”

John M. Findlay & Bruce W. Hevly

At some point I may have to run through the database here and figure out what percent of reviews tagged “history” are also tagged “nuclear”. And then how many have the much more specific tag “Hanford Site”. I’ve got an area of interest, you see; considering how nearby it is, one of these days I really ought to make a trip out there, and have a photography post join that collection.1

This was a fun one, which I stumbled across entirely by accident—I was looking for a copy of Atomic Days and instead came up with Atomic Frontier Days. Which was, in point of fact, about the same thing—the history of the Hanford Site. Having not yet read Atomic Days, I can’t do the direct comparison, but reviewing the cover blurb thereof, I suspect that the distinction will be something Atomic Frontier Days was leaning hard into: it’s not just about the “woo, look at how awful Hanford was, look at all the ways it polluted the area and was terrible to the people who lived there!”

And, sure, that’s present, but this also had a lot more discussion of the other side of the story. People were proud to work at Hanford; they were contributing to national defense, they were on the cutting edge of technology, they were pioneers in a way that wasn’t really a thing anymore.

Past that, there were people looking at the ‘company town’ nature of the tri-cities, and trying to avoid the problems that always face company towns. What happens when the company goes out of business? What happens when the Cold War ends and we no longer “need” to keep manufacturing nuclear weapons? Even if the plan is just “last one out the door, turn off the lights”… moving to a more established city isn’t cheap, and it’s pretty hard to get a good sale price on your home when everyone is moving away. So, instead, the folks who liked living there said: how do we diversify our economy? What else can we do here that isn’t just “work at Hanford”?

It’s an interesting perspective, and one I haven’t thought much about before. Honestly, the final chapter kinda sold me on going out there for the sort of tourism I’d usually do over in eastern Oregon; I love the Columbia Gorge, so why not go see some more of it and also poke my nose around a historical area of interest?

That said, the one flaw I felt in this book was that it felt like it ended at about 2000. Given that it was published in 2011, it does feel like there could’ve been a bit more mention of the aughts, at least. Even just some notes in the epilogue would’ve been nice.

Still, I enjoyed the read; if you want to join me in being a big ol’ Hanford nerd, check it out.2

  1. Well, it wouldn’t be tagged ‘review,’ within the way I use that tag. I’m not much of a location-reviewer. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Doughnut Economics”

Kate Raworth

An absolutely fascinating read — I think this is the highest density of pull-quotes I’ve ever taken from one book, just going off the number of pages in my notebook I filled whilst copying stuff down to prepare for the book club discussion.

I went back and forth a lot in how I felt about it, past that fascination: there’s a great deal of what the book is espousing that I very much agree with and would like to see, but there’s also parts where I felt myself resisting the ideas. Either a flat-out “that couldn’t work, could it?” or just a “that’s a lovely idea, but we’ll never actually get everyone to agree to it.” It’s the former that I want to spend more time thinking about, and that have me looking forward to the actual book club discussion; it’s the latter that I think I’d rather avoid thinking about, at least until I’ve got a bit more energy available to set myself tilting at those windmills to try to change some minds.

Overall, an absolutely fascinating read; also felt quite fitting that this one was my first ebook read via the Bookshop app.1 Well worth the read; check it out.2

  1. Do keep in mind, future reader, that I have a lengthy queue of these posts; at the time I wrote this, Bookshop’s app had been out for less than a month. I’m not that behind the times, particularly when it comes to support a business whose ideals I very much support! ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Persians”

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

I continue my slow procession eastward in my reading of history!

The core concept of this book was, really, “hey, you: most of what you know about Persia was written by the Greeks, who were writing it as anti-Persian propaganda. Let’s talk about the Persian Version of history.” And, for the most part, it sticks with that — there’s a few places where what’s available gets a bit thin, as the Persian Empire didn’t really do written records of history, they went in for the oral tradition, which… doesn’t survive well, after that many centuries. Whereas the Greeks sure liked writing down their stories, and hey presto, we’ve been basing our entire shared background knowledge of an ancient culture on… someone using them as a definitive Other around which to construct a shared identity. Not great, Bob!

As per usual with my reading of history, I don’t really expect to retain a whole lot of detail, I’m just trying to fill in enough that I’ll have some vague knowledge to get me started if I want to dive deep again later. As such, the middle section, where the author pauses the actual “and so-and-so did such-and-such thing” history bits and instead devotes a fair chunk of time to just talking about how the Persian Empire worked, how people lived, was my favorite. That’s what I wanted from the history book! I wanted to know what my fellow, like, mid-level bureaucrats were doing; that’s the lifestyle I occupy now, and it’s the one that’ll be the most directly comparable for me mentally then.

Overall, a good read; occasionally in danger of getting a bit too dry, but Llewellyn-Jones managed to balance that out with the occasional flash of that characteristically British dry humor, which somehow cancels out any dryness in prose. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Chip War”

Chris Miller

I wound up with pages and pages of notes to discuss this book during the actual book club session, but I think I’m going to keep this review short — in no small part because I’m tagging it geopolitics, and as I’m writing this in February of 2025 to be posted roughly a year later, anything I have to say about that is likely to have aged.

The history components were interesting; I knew the very broad strokes of the foundation of Silicon Valley, but I’m so used to the current “it’s all manufactured in Asia” state of affairs that I’d honestly lost track of the fact that it’s Silicon Valley because they manufactured silicon chips there originally. My other “no duh” moment was the realization that of course TSMC was founded with massive support from the Taiwanese government. It’s in the name, Grey. Keep up.

Other than those bits, the thing that most stuck with me was the actual technology of lithography, and exactly how ridiculous it has gotten. It’s extreme-ultraviolet lithography because the light waves in the visual spectrum were bigger than the transistors they need to print. The mirrors are so smooth that, if you scaled them up to the size of Germany, their largest imperfections would be a millimeter or so—and the targeting systems built for those mirrors are so precise that they could target a golf ball on the moon. And, lastly, the cooling fans for the lasers need to spin so fast that ball bearings were too much friction, so they are maglev fans. No wonder those EUV machines cost half a billion dollars each.

Overall: an interesting read, though already feeling a bit dated; by the time you’re reading this, it’ll probably be a bit more dated, but the background remains useful. Worth a read.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Good Enough Job”

Simone Stolzoff

A whole lot of this book I found myself nodding along with like “yep, yep.” Specifically in the way of, these are things I’ve thought for quite a while, just put together into a single narrative, rather than my usual approach to it of “one idea bubbles up, a few weeks or months later another one does.” I have, as it turns out, done a pretty reasonable job of building up a work/life balance for myself! 🎉

That said, I still found it a useful read; going through things like that, where it’s been put together into a single coherent flow, is useful to help one’s own thoughts coalesce.

Past that, there’s also some new things in there! I actually quite liked, from the very end, this call to action:

What we often lack—both as individuals and as a society—is the ability to imagine a less work-centric existence. So my question for you, dear reader, is: What’s one small change you can make to elevate your nonwork self? Perhaps you schedule a weekly walk with your best friend. Maybe you get involved in a neighborhood group where no one has any idea how you make a living. Maybe you pick up a new hobby without the expectation of mastering it. What can you do to remind yourself that you exist on this earth to do more than produce economic value?

Because, yes, I read through this whole thing and thought to myself “yeah, I should think about that a bit more,” but that’s an Ivory Tower sort of thought. It’s a thing I think while I’m already thinking about the shape of my life. It’s harder to put that sort of thing into action. This idea, though, of making one small change? That’s a great way to approach it.

An excellent read overall, well worth it; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Emperor of Rome”

Mary Beard

My expectation here was definitely set by John Julius Norwitch’s style, where he kinda just started at the beginning and went in chronological order. Which is… an approach to talking about history. Probably the most traditional one, really.

This, however, was more willing to bounce around. There was certainly some amount of following chronology, but the chapters were each grouped by theme rather than, say, emperor. “The Emperor Abroad,” to discuss the various travels about the empire that they dead; “Face to Face” for an absolutely fascinating discussion of the art of the emperor, and the degree to which everything we have these days is the result of ancient PR campaigns.1 In general, the book isn’t about an emperor, or even a succession thereof, but about the emperor; the concept of the emperor, the office of the emperor. The continuity of imperial power.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that made the book more enjoyable to read. I’m never going to be able to keep track of the years in which things happened, the order of the emperors, any of that. But I’m going to remember that dinner parties were an effective way to express soft power, that imperial edicts were more performative than actually implemented, that politics has been politics for thousands of years. Human nature doesn’t change that much, really.

A great read overall, and an interesting approach to the broad cultural background that is the Roman Empire. Totally worth the read; check it out.2

  1. Also, some mind-blowing discussion of the amount of unofficial merch that there was for the emperor; ‘the ancient equivalent of refrigerator magnets,’ locally-made stuff that made the emperor, a distant figure even for those living in Rome itself, very clearly match the same vibe we have for the British royal family, or just random celebrities, now. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Give Her Credit”

Grace L. Williams

I’m really on a kick of “books about people building something” of late! And this one gets bonus points for being nonfiction, so the thing that got built really got built, which is even more fun.

“Give Her Credit” is a well-chosen title for a book about the opening of Women’s Bank in Denver, and the women who built it. It’s a cool piece of history, and touched on something I’d never really thought about: people, like, create banks. They aren’t all horrendously gigantic corporations that have existed since the 1800s! And, unsurprisingly for the banking industry, it’s a whole process to do.

I actually made it through this book in, basically, one sitting.1 It was pretty approachable! I was worried about how much sexism I was going to have to make my way through, because, again, this is a book about women opening a bank for women. In the 1970s. And the decades leading up to the 1970s. And boy, was there ever a lot of crap they were forced to go through, but the way the story was told managed to keep it from feeling overwhelming.

All in all, a good read about an interesting little corner of history. Worth a read; check it out.2

  1. Well, I moved from the couch to the counter so that I could eat dinner while reading, but other than that… ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Unruly”

David Mitchell

From right at the beginning of the first chapter:

England was a word that gradually gained currency, like mansplain or staycation, and it was fully in use by the time William the Conquerer was king of it. I expect you’ve heard of him. Most people know that, in 1606, William the Conquerer (not at that point so named) won the Battle of Hastings and became king of England. When it comes to the likely readership of this book, that ‘most’ must rise to ‘all’. If there is anyone reading this book who didn’t already know that, I would love to hear from you because you are genuinely reading in a genre that was previously of no interest. You, if you exist, and I bet you don’t, are an absolute confounder of the algorithms.It would be like someone reading a biography of Elvis Presley who did not already know that he was a singer. What you are doing is probably more statistically remarkable than what William the Conquerer did. (14)

I have exciting news for the author about the level of knowledge I had about British history coming in to this book! To whit, none; I grabbed it specifically because I don’t know anything about the topic and have been wanting to learn more.

This feels very approachable and very British; it’s like Cunk on Britain in written form, and taking itself marginally more seriously. Also, notably uncensored, as the chapter on Cnut covered.1 I will admit, here at the end of the book, that I don’t know that I’ve retained much detail, but I wasn’t really expecting to — the point of reading this was that I knew nothing about British history, and wanted to have at least some broad-strokes vague ideas, not that I was trying to make a career pivot into ‘historian.’ So I think that’s alright. And I wouldn’t be a great historian, particularly British historian, as my level of attention to details like “which number Elizabeth was that” is such that I was very surprised that the book ended after Elizabeth I. It says, right on the cover, “A tale of power, glory, and gore from Arthur to Elizabeth I,” and I was still expecting it to carry on all the way up to the death of Elizabeth II. Whoops.

Anyhow, for the goal of “a broad overview and an entertaining read,” this absolutely delivered. If you’re interested, give it a go.2

  1. If you can’t guess what sorts of jokes were made throughout, I don’t know how to be more clear. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“A City on Mars”

Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith

The Weinersmiths once again knock it out of the park; they’re truly some of the best pop-science writers out there.

A City on Mars is an overview of, basically, the entire concept of “can and should we be trying to colonize Mars?” And, unlike the many, many blog posts out there where people say “yes!” and then excitedly talk about the Sabatier reaction, they spend a lot more time talking about the very real challenges. And, yes, a lot of that is the scientific — rockets are big, expensive, complicated machines! Biology is weird and we have literally no idea what happens to people if they spend as much time in microgravity as would be necessary to get to Mars, much less the amount of time they’d spend living in the lower-gravity environment of Mars (or the moon).1 But what this book touches on that I think a lot of other media on the subject ignores is the law. Like, we know Elon likes to hand-wave away regulation, and every libertarian fantasizes about living in space where there’s no government, but that’s… not actually how it works?2 Like, if you get filmed committing a murder in international waters, it’s still a murder, and you can and will be prosecuted for it, there’ll just be an awkward phase at the beginning of the trial where your lawyer argues with the prosecution about which specific jurisdiction you’re going to be tried in.

Overall, quite an interesting read; you’ll learn a lot more about international law than you probably know, and it’s a fun book all the way through. Well worth it. Check it out!3

  1. Like, maybe after two consecutive years of living in microgravity, you start aging backwards? It’s not likely, but nobody has checked. More realistically are the questions like “the thing where being in space screws up your eyes, does that keep getting worse over time? Does anything go wrong in your brain if it’s not getting pulled into shape by gravity? Can people even get pregnant in space?” Again, things that nobody has gotten around to testing. Oftentimes for good reason, but still. ↩
  2. Note: I’m writing this in early January of 2025. Elon may yet become god-emperor, in which case, my argument here is partially moot. ↩
  3. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Radical Acceptance”

Tara Brach

This was a “wandering around Powell’s” find, and I picked it up, read the first line of the back, and accepted immediately that I was going to buy the book.

“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book.

Frankly, I didn’t even make it to the end of the sentence; just the quote was striking enough. It is, indeed, a deep and tenacious suffering; it’s something I’ve struggled with a great deal in my life, and keep coming back to, time and again.

For the most part, the book continued in that “this is about you, personally” kind of feeling as I read it. I suppose it is, at bare minimum, somewhat validating to hear that I’m not the only one who falls into these patterns? And it’s hopeful, to read through the standard self-help-book anecdotes about someone who had a problem, and how, with the help of the author, they were able to address it. And, honestly, bonus points for not promising to fix the problem, just address it; if the claim had been “follow these three simple steps and you’ll be cured forever!” I’d be rolling my eyes and tossing the book aside, but it’s willing to admit that the problem will remain. It doesn’t solve the problem, it addresses it; it teaches you ways to manage it, to keep it from overwhelming you, to work through it.

I’ll admit to having drifted off a bit towards the end, where the book started to shift from “meditation and psychology” into “spiritualism and Buddhism,” because I’m not exactly one for spiritualism or religion. But I’m already planning to reread this at some point in the future, so who knows, maybe once I’ve spent some time applying the earlier chapters, I’ll be more receptive to the latter ones?

Anyhow, just for the way it grabbed me, and how effectively it held on, I have to recommend this one. It was well worth the read, and I filled pages and pages of my notebook. Give it a go.1

  1. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
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Review

“Countdown”

Sarah Scoles

Bumped this up in my reading queue so I could have it done prior to the discussion of my recent book club read, The Curve of Binding Energy. It seemed like it would be a nice accompaniment, and it was—didn’t captivate me with the writing style in the way McPhee does, but it sure tackled the same material from a perspective 40-odd years later. Not an update, per se, but a companion.

I’ve read a fair few books about the nuclear industry, both weapons and civilian, and found this to be a very interesting addition to that set. Because it’s not about the history, really, the way most of those others have been. Sure, there’s some context provided, but it’s mostly interested with what’s going on right now. It’s very clear that, for all our collective willingness to treat nuclear weapons as a problem that ended with the Cold War, they are still very much an ongoing concern. And boy, is that ever a thing to be worried by. Although how much to worry might vary a bit as you read the book, because a lot of the people working in the industry are doing so because they want to make sure it’s safe, that we won’t be facing the nuclear apocalypse.

This was an absolutely fascinating read, and I got through it… not in one sitting, because I started it too late in the day for that, but in the space of 24 hours. Well worth reading; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Curve of Binding Energy”

John McPhee

Truly astonishing that it took me this long to read this book; it’s thoroughly right up my alley.1 To start with, it’s McPhee, and he’s my favorite nonfiction author. And after that, it’s about nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and proliferation… with a solid digression into nuclear rocketry, which has long been an interest of mine.2 Nothing in the rocketry section was new to me—I’ve read up enough on that to the point that everything was familiar, although the personal story of Taylor, the interviewee, selling Wernher von Braun on the concept wasn’t something I recalled previously.

What was new, and awe-inspiring in a sort of dry-mouthed terror kind of way, was the nuclear weaponry aspect. This is a book about Theodore B. Taylor, one of the world’s greatest experts in the design of atomic weapons. Over the course of the book he does things like, sitting in front of McPhee during an interview, sketch out plans for a low-yield atom bomb that could be built using only commercially-available equipment and products, with the sole exception of the enriched uranium. He does so while carefully using only publicly-available information. And, in the midst of doing it, he describes each likely point in the commercial reactor fuel processing cycle that said fissile materials could be stolen, and exactly what you would need to do to process that form of the material into what you’d need to build a bomb. This book is, in essence, just a little bit short of being an instruction guide on How To Build A Nuke In Your Garage.

Pair that with a series of explorations of nuclear facilities, in-depth review of the various security failings therein, and a memorable anecdote about the time a fourteen-year-old boy came up with credible designs for a hydrogen bomb, and the fact that the we still, nearly 50 years after this book came out, have yet to see a terrorist organization—or just a really motivated whack-job—build their own bomb is, as I said, awe-inspiring in a dry-mouthed terror kind of way. It isn’t nearly as hard as it should be.

That’s really the key point of this whole book, and the thing that kept standing out to me. I had moments of fun dorkiness—laughing aloud about midway through when Taylor, distracted by a thought, started describing his plan to build what we’d today call a hyperloop network. A certain somebody isn’t nearly as inventive as he’d like to pretend he is; this guy was talking about it when you were still in diapers!3

All in all, this book was an absolute delight to read. I’m likely to reread it again in the next month, and only partially because I wound up finishing it with a bit too much lead-time before the actual book club meeting. I just really enjoyed it, and would like to take a second crack at it, this time without the commonplace book beside me to jot down notes. I absolutely recommend the read; check it out.4

  1. It says good things about my devotion to the whole “don’t buy yourself new books until you finish reading all the ones you’ve already bought” plan that I had to sell my book club on reading it so I could sneak it through the “buying books for book club doesn’t count” exception. ↩
  2. I’m a little tempted to publish the essay I wrote in high school about nuclear rocketry, since I dug it up to look at again while reading this, but probably for the best that I don’t. I’m not interested in knowing how bad my writing skills were that long ago. Or, worse, finding out that they’ve decayed. ↩
  3. Admittedly, Not Tony Stark’s approach gets some points for doing tunneling the boring way (ba-dum-tss) instead of through Taylor’s proposed plan of nuclear shaped charges.
    That said, Taylor’s expertise, and the paragraph of explaining how well one actually can shape a nuclear explosion when they’re Theodore Taylor, makes it a more credible plan than when I talk about that kind of concept. ↩
  4. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩