Agent Palmer

Soccer Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper was first published in 1994 with the subtitle “How the world’s most popular sport starts and fuels revolutions and keeps dictators in power.” I recently read the updated 2006 version, but since a lot has happened in those intervening years, like for example a World Cup in Qatar, this book is just exhibit A. This book is about Simon’s research by being boots on the ground in places like Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany,…

This book may have been written about one campaign, but it is timeless in the way that “the more things change the more they stay the same.”  Too many parts of this book are relevant to all of the subsequent elections since. Even worse, most of this book is remarkably relevant to all of the elections from 2000 onward. The book chronicles author Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s on-the-ground coverage of the 1972 campaign. It begins with the Democratic primary race,…

I previously went the full nine innings reviewing Bull Durham. It should be not surprise that I’d go another nine innings with The Church of Baseball written by Bull Durham writer and director Ron Shelton about the origin of, writing of, production, release, and reaction to Bull Durham.

So let’s do it, on to the first pitch… Play Ball!

Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post is not my usual reading. It’s extremely contemporary and is perhaps the most recently published piece of non-fiction I’ve ever read.

But as a former student of journalism, and as my friends currently introduce me as a “Features Writer & Documentary Conversationalist” which could arguably be at least tangential to journalism, this is a book that’s about much more than the sum of the three elements listed in it’s subtitle.