Book Bites: The Greatest Nobodies in History

The Greatest Nobodies of History: Minor Characters from Major Moments by Adrian Bliss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Greatest Nobodies of History is a valiant attempt at a witty, readable history text. Each of the book's brief stories or events (Leonardo DaVinci's painting of 'Lady with an Ermine', Henry VII's marriage to Anne of Cleves) is re-told through fictionalized primary source documents (the Ermine's psychic testimony, the diary of Henry VII's toilet attendant) with varying success. The text is often not so witty as it thinks it is. Especially on events which can be summed in a single sentence, chapters tend to drag. Though a good entry point for people turned off by dry, stolid history tomes, The Greatest Nobodies of History doesn't quite hit the mark it aims for.

View all my reviews

Book Bites: Outraged

Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground by Kurt Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outraged is the rare, shining example of a pop-psychology book worth reading. Many in the genre fall into the tropes of overextrapolation and padding out word counts on what are essentially blog posts.

This is not that.

In Outraged, Kurt Gray lays out a simple hypothesis, backed by mountains of science: all morality stems from a fear of harm. Humans are more prey than predators, our brains evolved to detect harm before it can harm us, meaning our ideologies are far more alike than they are different. Knowing this, Gray provides simple, actionable and proven steps on how we can bridge seemingly impossible gaps and foster understanding. (Bonus points for repeated, gentle dunking on Jonathan Haidt).
One of the few pop-psychology books actually worth your time and effort. Highly recommend.


View all my reviews

Book Bites: Selling Sexy

Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon by Lauren Sherman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Selling Sexy is an unphotoshopped picture of mall-shopping stalwart, Victoria's Secret, warts and all. The short of it is that Les Wexner's timing in buying the brand from Gay and Tom Raymond was extremely, extremely lucky: VS grew as malls expanded, as consumer habits shifted toward single-item stores, as vertical integration in fashion retailing made fast fashion possible. Surfing the wave of consumerism and rampant misogyny in the 90's and 00's to billion-dollar valuation, Wexner's boys-club C-suite, high on their own importance, refused to see their objectification and womanizing as a downside, refused to see the looming importance of Social Media and eCommerce, thus dooming themselves. A later chapter on Pedophile to the Rich and Famous, Jeffrey Epstein, almost becomes totemic for the company at-large; a failure of empathy borne of wealth, privilege and proximity to power. Sherman and Fernandez, much like the Jax song, reveal Victoria's real Secret: she's an old man who lives in Ohio, cashing in on womens' body insecurities with cheaply-made bras and panties.

View all my reviews

Book Bites: Right on Cue

Right on Cue by Falon Ballard
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF @ 40%. Right on Cue’s problem is there isn’t one. Emmy is an Oscar-winning nepo baby who is distressed at having to act in a movie (which she wrote) opposite a (gorgeous) man who said a mean thing about her when they were both teenagers. Boo friggin’ hoo. All her sleights are imagined. I fully understand romance as a genre peddles in fantasy and escapism, but there has to be some sense of reality. Emmy is so entirely unrelatable as to make the rest of the book, written with humor and zip, entirely moot.

View all my reviews