Agent Palmer

There is something more authentic and honest about this book than most biographies or autobiographies. Perhaps it’s the fact that this book is a collection of essays, stories, pictures, lists, images, and other ephemera created by Mike Diamond (Mike D), Adam Horovitz (Ad Rock), and their friends, assembled together in chronological order.

Or… Perhaps it’s just the fact that the Beastie Boys are the Beastie Boys.

Deep Undercover by Jack Barsky is the story of a former KGB spy turned Americanized operative turned American citizen, an enthralling and compelling read.

In truth, the most direct and apt description of the book is contained in the afterword, written by the CIA agent who brought him in, Joe Reilly. “This book takes you through many adventures and reveals much about the world of the Cold War. But the most interesting parts are about the man himself.

Empire of Imagination by Michael Witwer is a grand retelling of the life and times of Ernest Gary Gygax, from his childhood and earliest inspirations, playfulness, and adventurousness ness to his early wargaming and the creation of the game which is synonymous with his name Dungeons & Dragons, to the exile from the company he founded in TSR and his resurgence as a celebrity. It’s all in the pages of this books.

The author of this book takes a novel approach to the telling of Gygax’s life story by making a narrative out of it.

“From the emergence of the first browser through the boom of social media, this fascinating history reveals how the internet changed everything we thought we knew about technologies–and ourselves.”

That first sentence from the inside cover flap explains in broad strokes what How The Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone is. But it is more than that.

Zeppelins, or rigid airships, are now just a distant memory. While there are still blimps occasionally in the sky over our heads, they are in fact similar but not the same. The airships discussed in this book, Airshipwreck, are what was and at one time they were the future.

For author Len Deighton, who wrote this book, “the airship has a magic that the aeroplane cannot replace. The size is awesome, the shape Gothic, a pointed arch twirled into a tracery of aluminum. And the reality is not disappointing.”