27 June 2017

Review: Mad as Hell: America's #1 All-Night Radio Host Takes on the Dangerous World We Live In

Mad as Hell: America's #1 All-Night Radio Host Takes on the Dangerous World We Live In Mad as Hell: America's #1 All-Night Radio Host Takes on the Dangerous World We Live In by George Noory
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

So I admit that I really only knew George Noory from when I had late nights out and listened to Coast to Coast with him as a guest host. But still, this is marketed as a political book by a well-known conspiracy monger (at least the fun ones), so why not take a flier on it?

The elephant in the room is that the politics really take a back seat here. There are a few mentions here and there, but they're mostly in the context of well-known alien abduction and government conspiracy tales. So instead of getting some hot takes on the current climate from the context of someone who may or may not believe in lizard people, it ends up being an introductory primer on a bunch of conspiracies I was already aware of. Great for people new to the area of interest, pretty useless for the rest of us.

The best part of the book for me, though, was the mini-memoir Noory includes in the end, telling his story and how he got to the point he's at in his career. This was perhaps the most interesting part of the read for me and might have been more valuable as the framework for whatever the intention was here than anything else.

Overall? I can't recommend it unless you're REALLY into what Noory's into and his mere existence is enough to get you excited. It offers nothing new to anyone already familiar with the topics Noory operates in. It's way too light and introductory for most audiences.

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26 June 2017

Review: Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As someone who has a degree in history and political science, I fully recognize that books like this have limited value. They're written quickly, with little care for accuracy and a lot of reliance on background/anonymous claims, and are often ways for people involved in campaigns to shift blame off of themselves and onto someone else.

With that said, man did this book scratch that schadenfruede itch.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I was very against Clinton as well. This sort of deep dive into what went wrong for Clinton in what should have been a winnable election will certainly be of some value to some people, but a lot of this seems to be an attempt to sort of square the chaos coming from the Clinton campaign with the result. I would have loved to see how this would have read had she won.

As for other criticisms, there is a lot of assumptions of prior knowledge - if you don't know a lot of details about the campaign, you will be lost by some references to bills or situations that do not get a firm explanation. That's a problem for me as a reader, and will be a bigger problem for those who might read this in thirty years fine.

On a whole, though, closer to a 3.5, and more enjoyable for what it stands for than what it is. A better book about the campaign that deals with both sides will come someday, and it will certainly be better.

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