Apr 08 2023
Thirty-six seconds. That’s how long the test that sealed Chernobyl’s fate lasted. The test itself was not unreasonable, and could only be performed as a reactor — one of four in operation at the power station in 1986 — was being shut down. It was designed to provide data to understand how the reactor and the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/04/08/chernobyl-by-serhii-plokhy/
Mar 18 2023
I first read What It Takes in the early 1990s when its subject — the 1988 US presidential election — was, if not exactly fresh in mind, then at least not consigned to the oblivion of an election held decades ago and deemed mostly inconsequential. Cramer’s book made the election not just interesting, but riveting. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/18/what-it-takes-by-richard-ben-cramer/
Feb 22 2023
This graphic novel might be the most relatable thing I’ve ever read about marriage, especially from the perspective of a white man. When gay marriage was legalized in 2013, Robert Kirby and his partner John had already been together for about a decade. They shared a dog and a house, and were thrilled that marriage …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/02/22/marry-me-a-little-by-robert-kirby/
Dec 30 2022
Time for some short takes to clear the desk for the coming year. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk. Nobel winner Tokarczuk uses very short chapters, each titled “The Time of …”, to depict life in an archetpyal Polish village from just before the outbreak of the First World War through the last years …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/30/wrapping-up-3/
Dec 23 2022
A Young Readers edition of her bestseller We Are Not Here To Be Bystanders. Wow, this book is a rollercoaster. And let me start out by saying that it’s actually quite good, and honestly great if you’re a young person looking to get started in advocacy and public policy in America, potentially worldwide. Linda Sarsour’s …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/12/23/were-in-this-together-by-linda-sarsour/
Nov 08 2022
As someone who has had the most frustrating experience with the United States’ health insurance system — my insurance company refused to pay for the $200+/month asthma medication my doctor prescribed because it can… also be used to treat COPD? Cigna is garbage — I found this book deeply relatable. Theodore Bear is bipolar, and …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/11/08/bipolar-bear-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-health-insurance-a-fable-for-grownups-by-kathleen-founds/
Oct 22 2022
“How would the history of international relations in ‘the East’ be written,” asks Ayşe Zarakol, “if we did not always read the ending — the rise of the West and the decline of the East — into the past?” (frontispiece) Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders is her effort to …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/22/before-the-west-by-ayse-zarakol/
Oct 15 2022
If not for Donald Fucking Trump, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would have had a long, distinguished and inspiring career serving the United States of America that nevertheless remained practically unknown outside the circles of her work. Perhaps she would have been best known for providing a crucial piece of local knowledge when the embassy in Mogadishu …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/15/lessons-from-the-edge-by-marie-yovanovitch/
Sep 11 2022
The name Solomon brings the word “wisdom” almost immediately to mind. Belatedly, it makes me think of the Temple. Now that I have read Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe by Verena Krebs, I will also remember the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia. That dynasty took power in the late 1200s and ruled, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/09/11/medieval-ethiopian-kingship-craft-and-diplomacy-with-latin-europe-by-verena-krebs/
May 22 2022
The subtitle to The Invention of Russia — From Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War — unfortunately now has to be followed with a question: which one? Even when the book was published in 2015, his wars were already plural (Chechnya and Georgia) but the author clearly means Russia’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula and its proxy war …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/05/22/the-invention-of-russia-by-arkady-ostrovsky/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire