Reviews with TLC

War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow is a fascinating look at the role of diplomacy in America's dealings around the world. Farrow spares no one as he examines the successes and failures of diplomacy. He demonstrates how the erosion of diplomacy has coincided with the increase of militarization of negotiation. Farrow details the complicated internal negotiations and jurisdictional struggles that go on within the myriad branches of the United States government and explains how those struggles shape our reactions around the world in ways that often seem more detrimental to peace and more conducive to war than we'd like to believe. Farrow interviewed many people who have participated in diplomacy and presents their experiences and opinions amidst the facts and evidence to demonstrate the complexity of the role of diplomacy in the world we all share. In the process, he also demonstrates how that erosion of diplomacy affects the...

Original Fire: Selected and New Poems by Louise Erdrich explores religion, death, and life in ways that are thought provoking and emotionally provocative. Some of the poems made me squirm as I read. Some felt like a glimpse inside a world I'll never be part of. Some resonated with me more than I expected. Erdrich writes about the intersection of cultural identities in a world where those identities both uplift and suppress. The poems within Original Fire plays with our perceptions, instincts, and assumptions about the world we inhabit. At times the religion aspects overwhelmed me even as they showed me a glimpse of the way religion permeates life and invades culture. Overall, Original Fire is filled with stories written as poems that spark the imagination and offer an interesting perspective on the interactions between human beings, nature, and other Earthlings.

I felt like I lived between the pages of  The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas the entire time I read it. The story infiltrated my imagination and stayed with me even when I wasn't reading and after I finished it. Even now, weeks later, the characters still resonate with me. I felt Starr Carter's pain as she watched her friend, Khalil, die and as she tried to navigate her life while trying to keep her status as the witness from becoming public. Thomas pulls the reader into Starr's life as she moves between two very different worlds highlighting the the way our life experiences taint our perception of ourselves and of others. As Starr fights with her friends and boyfriend as well as her family in the midst of a grief she hides even from herself, the reality that living two different lives never works crashes down on her and forces her to face the consequences that come with every choice she makes or avoids making. The Hate U Give is an intense, engaging, empowering, enlighten...

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civil Life by Eric Klinenberg delves into the connections that form when infrastructure is designed to bring people together to support building community. Klinenberg writes in way that feels like a story unfolding that explores the decline of community by the decline of social infrastructure as well as the solutions to bring community together. Palaces for the People delves into how libraries bring people together, community gardens create not only food but fellowship, and how storm walls can be built to double as gathering places among other structures built with the people who will use them in mind. Klinenberg presents research that shows how community changes when infrastructure supports the community. He examines the myths and the realities surrounding how infrastructure succeeds and fails. Palaces for the People offers an honest assessment of infrastructure, communiti...

Culling the Herd by Edward R. Etzkorn drew me in quickly and held me captive until the end. Etzkorn paints a picture of what happens when scientists decide to take extreme measures using science to fight what they see as the cause of the end of humanity. Culling the Herd is at times an uncomfortable book to read because Etzkorn creates a real enough world that the reader can imagine the events taking place even when they feel a bit unrealistic. His characters are a amalgam  of good and bad with even some of the worst characters seemingly having good, or at least understandable, motives, and some of the worst characters having discernible flaws creating characters that are realistic. Culling the Herd forces the reader to question their own reactions to the actions the characters choose while contemplating the role we all play in preserving and protecting the planet we call home. Note: This review is based on a free copy I received from the author.