I think this is a good reach for people who are interested but intimidated by the original document that is the 9/11 commission report. That being said, it’s intensely wordy and the Americans featured in the book are not labeled very well. At the date of publication this may not have been much of an issue but reading through the graphic novel today I found myself wondering who a lot of them were.

The graphic novel format functions the best establishing the timeline of the attacks and the background that lead to them.

The recommendations section was a miss for me. It also had a slightly jingoistic feel even though like the original report it lays bare how many gaps the US had in its approach to foreign terrorism.

This reads like the author just discovered how metaphors work. It was tedious. On a perfunctory level, I did appreciate the growth of the main character.

An excellent book that functions both as an autobiography of the author and her accounting of some of more harrowing assignments she’s had covering extremism post 9-11.

Even more than that, Mekhennet contextualizes the motivations behind the sects/movements of the extremists and jihadists she interviews. She’s got the right bona fides for this because she has both Sunni and Shia parents, something she touches on repeatedly.

I’d recommend this if you’re interested in the politics of the Middle East or journalism in general.

This was a fascinating look at the female descendants of Genghis Khan and how they shaped Mongolia and the larger world. It’s fairly readable but there are of course a million complicated names and places. I didn’t know anything about Mongolia and I enjoyed learning. Apparently the author has another book about Genghis Khan which I should probably have read first!

I’d recommend it if you’re interested in far eastern history or medieval history of a different bent.

This is such a goofy (is that the right word) travelogue about an early 1980s foray into the heart of Borneo.

Borneo is serious business: snakes, leeches, more insects than I’d ever care to see. And yet the writing style of this book treats the journey as a somewhat irreverent romp. I wish there were more pictures. However, it was apparently hell to photograph due to all the humidity.

I’d recommend it if you like Bill Bryson type books.

I’m sure this is problematic in some ways I can’t really grasp but I enjoyed it. It’s a dated look at some Navajo origin tales interwoven into a coming of age story about a young boy destined to be a medicine man.

This book functions as an overview of cults and let’s say cult adjacent communities and how they use language to entice and then insulate followers.

Its worth three stars alone for introducing me to the concept of “thought terminating cliches” which the author did not first identify but the naming of them is new to me nonetheless. One of the things that’s fascinated me about talking to people who don’t share the same belief system is you is how quickly they’ll throw one of these bombs out to destroy a conversation. “Well everything happens for a reason.” “No one wants to work anymore.” “Someone has it worse than you.” It kills discourse and silences the person who asks why.

But this concept has of course existed and was posited by other scholars earlier and the book is actually kind of a mess.

I’d read it if you’ve never read anything about a cult before. But I have because I have a small obsession, lol.

This was a very interesting look a massaging data in medical and nutritional studies. In addition to that, shoddy journalism reporting on those studies is covered. I enjoyed it but it was dense at times.

This was good, but very redundant. It’s also not the newest book so if you’ve read any non-fiction book that touches on criminology or behavioral profiling I would think you’ve already heard every salient point this book makes. I’m sure it was novel in its time though.

10/10

Beautifully written book about street basketball in Brooklyn during the 1970s.