clock … watching time, the only true currency

Racing Tactics for Cyclists by Thomas Prehn entertains with its anecdotes about the author’s racing experience. The lessons build slightly on Bike Racing 101. The crosswind echelon described in Chapter 5 was the truly new tactic for me, though I’ve rarely ridden in groups large enough or experienced enough to practice this energy-saving technique. The [...]

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Bike Racing 101 details about what the title promises. I’m foolish enough to read this near the end of my first season of bicycle racing. (I finished the book maybe a fortnight ago.)
If I’d read it at the beginning, I might have saved Ken a few questions during the year. Still, even though the “Essentials [...]

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Eating has been a more conscious act for me since seeing Super Size Me. No claims to remarkable health or true moderation, but I do pay attention. Left over from the wife’s book group, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan lived up to (most of) the hype. My favorite portions (ahem) included the exposition of [...]

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Steven Berlin Johnson has been justly celebrated for several of his books. I’ve read his blog and many of his articles in Salon and The New York Times, but The Ghost Map was the first book I’ve read. The subtitle is “The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the [...]

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The pursuit of victory: the life and achievement of Horatio Nelson pursues a personage whose fictional counterparts have entertained me for years. After multiple readings of C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels, and a pleasant perusal of the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, I could not miss the opportunity to learn the facts behind the legend. Roger Knight [...]

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Web Project Management, by Ashley Friedlein, lingered on my shelf for years. A quick, skimming read, and I learned very little, unfortunately. Maybe that’s because it’s from 1999. Even though it’s tool-agnostic, the book felt dated.

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The name Robert Fisk was new to me when my friend Chris dropped this weighty-in-every-sense book on me many weeks ago. A reporter for the UK newspaper The Independent for several decades, Fisk has his own unofficial website. This is an advocacy site, though not affiliated with Fisk himself. Why does a reporter who lives [...]

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If all history were this well written, everyone would be a historian. War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World by Max Boot is a joy to read.
His writing is clear. That’s rare enough to be notable. I can summarize the five themes in his four military revolutions because he’s not [...]

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Fifteen years after the author signed it, I finally finished The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley (1874-1958); An Epic of Urban Politics and Irish America. Read a little on Google Books if the topic interests you.
The author, Jack Beatty, was a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly during my time [...]

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I’m always impressed when a well-done magazine excerpt sharpens my anticipation of a book, rather than removing the need to read the full-length work.
I first read about Michael Oher in Sports Illustrated (Sep 25, 2006). Michael Lewis’s full book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game goes deeper and broader, to great effect.
The game is [...]

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