“The Berlin Wall is demolished. Marx is dead. Try telling that to Ramon and his desperate men hiding in the jungle cradling their AK-47’s, dusting off the slabs of Semtex and dreaming of world revolution.”
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Black and Blue is a bruising baseball history of the ’66 World Series
I’ve never met Tom Adelman, but I feel as though we just had a wonderful conversation. Black and Blue: The Golden Arm, the Robinson Boys, and the 1966 World Series That Stunned America was the conversation we shared.
This book is fantastic, and that’s coming from an Orioles fan who has also enjoyed Dodger baseball for the past decade plus. Through telecasts I’ve absorbed the history of both clubs, but this book does something else.
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Straken is excellent fantasy history repeating itself
Straken is the final book in the High Druid of Shannara trilogy, concluding the events of Jarka Ruus and Tanequil. As the third book in a trilogy, this harkens back to The Wishsong of Shannara, the last book in The Sword of Shannara trilogy. There are various groups of characters meeting and leaving, all while a war is raging and other battles are waged for the betterment of all in a good-versus-evil trope.
Declassify >The Founders demystifies the dot-com era success of PayPal
How did the PayPal service that we take for granted today come to pass? How close did it come to going under more than once? Just how precarious was its position in the fintech field?
These questions are answered in The Founders: The Story of PayPal and The Entrepreneurs who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. This book is more than just a story about the supposed PayPal Mafia; it’s the story of Silicon Valley success.
Declassify >In a three network world, always be the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
Today, the average content creator is likely to get “canceled” by either the right or the left because what they said was ideologically different.
But decades ago, the Smothers Brothers were removed from the airwaves because they were ideologically ahead of their time, and perhaps because they were trying to ruffle a few feathers along the way.
The point is, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” by David Bianculli is more than a walk through a different time.
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