If you’re addicted to Gangland reruns, Under and Alone (2005) is the book for you. ATF agent William Queen tells the story of going undercover in the vicious Mongol biker gang, rising through the ranks to become a fully patched member and eventually the Mongols’ treasurer. The information he risked his life to gather became… Continue reading Riding with the Mongol Horde: A Review of Under and Alone
Category: Books
Why Ladies Can Do Stuff Now: A Review of Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed
Everybody knows that most governments treated women as little more than chattel for a good deal of history. Thank goodness that all changed overnight in America when women got the right to vote… Except it didn’t. Suffrage was an essential first step, but just one of many that got modern American women to relative equality… Continue reading Why Ladies Can Do Stuff Now: A Review of Gail Collins’ When Everything Changed
Review of Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV
In the early 1980s, NBC was a television network ranked dead last. They trailed behind CBS and ABC (Fox didn’t arrive until the late 80s), and considered themselves in the business of “event programming” in lieu of scripted dramas and comedies. The joke at the time was that NBC was in “fourth place in a… Continue reading Review of Top of the Rock: Inside the Rise and Fall of Must See TV
Everybody Loves Our Town — Review
Krist Novoselic: We were these young people, from southwest Washington; we were Ill-equipped. We didn’t have the emotional support or the experience at all to deal with this. And we were just whisked away, whisked, whisked up into it and it went up, and up and up like the spaceship challenger. And then it exploded.… Continue reading Everybody Loves Our Town — Review
Cool Drinks and Cheap Reads at the Friends Book Shop
What’s just as good as reading a library book for free? Buying a new book for two dollars and not having to return it. But where can you get new or almost-new books for just two bucks? The Friends Book Shop at the Ferguson Library! There are two locations: one at the Ferguson’s Main… Continue reading Cool Drinks and Cheap Reads at the Friends Book Shop
A Rough Self-Portrait
So, I guess it’s time for a little self-promotion. Alternative Control has been kind enough to yield another book review to allow me to flaunt myself for a second time. That’s very nice of them, isn’t it? It is. And yet by agreeing to this, I’ve also put myself in a very awkward position.… Continue reading A Rough Self-Portrait
Twenty Soundtracks to Twenty Different Lives: A Review of the Essay Collection Heavy Rotation
An old roommate of mine worked for a company that organized trade conferences, and one day he came home from a publishing conference with a pile of free books. “You like books, right? Here…” I sold some of them on Amazon and gave others to Goodwill, but one I hung on to was Heavy Rotation:… Continue reading Twenty Soundtracks to Twenty Different Lives: A Review of the Essay Collection Heavy Rotation