Making It So is well written and has a few, mildly interesting segments, but it overall doesn’t offer much that is unique or freshly insightful in any broader sense.
Shahnameh Review
The ”Persian Book of Kings” is sometimes described as the Persian Iliad which, after reading it, I think is a terrible description. Shahnameh is far less narrative, and it is as much a history book as it is an epic.
Culture Smart: Japan Review
I have few critiques that I can make, which probably speaks to the importance of managing expectations more than it does the book itself. With sections on history, language, customs, religion, geography, and good, it addresses all of the basics.
How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England Review
Slice-of-life history books have a particular appeal, since they include the sorts of details that escape larger “history” texts, but that are exactly what can enrich a story and make its world immersive for the reader.
Nuts and Bolts Review
Simple machines offer a way of thinking about engineering at a more fundamental level, rather than a systems engineering approach, and Agrawal’s book is an insightful, modern iteration of that idea.
The Chimes Review
It's fortunate that I read The Chimes before rereading A Christmas Carol, as it allowed me to cleanse my palate with a satisfying, enjoyable story instead of…whatever The Chimes is.
Yumi and the Nightmare Painter Review
Reading a book like Yumi and the Nightmare Painter has me wondering if Tolkien ever envisioned this secondary world concept being taken to the imaginative extreme that Sanderson explores in the Cosmere.
The Valley of Horses Review
The fact that I read The Valley of Horses at all is a testament to how much I enjoyed the first book in Auel’s Earth’s Children series, and I enjoyed the second book almost as much as the first.
Critique of Pure Reason Review
Written and published in the context of the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason reads, to me, like the philosophical predecessor to Einstein’s Relativity.
Dialogues of Seneca (The Younger) Review
Presented in the fashion of the earlier Greek dialogues (like Plato’s), most of them revolve around the notion of “the wise man,” a kind of ultimate goal for which all human beings ought, according to Seneca, be striving.