Review: The Lincoln Highway Across Illinois

The Lincoln Highway Across Illinois by David A. Belden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another in the series of historic snapshots books with sepia-tone photo covers. This one focuses on the Lincoln Highway through Illinois. The book generally follows the original generation of the road, passing through the Southern suburbs of Chicago, meandering Northwest to the Western suburbs, then heading along a number of state highways toward the Mississippi, where it rejoins US 30. I'm very familiar with the drive on US 30 in Illinois where it isn't called the Lincoln Highway, so this was a learning experience - I've mistakenly assumed I was driving on the Lincoln Highway for decades. But I'm also familiar with the actual route. I enjoyed the pictures and some of the description, but I found two issues. First, the descriptions were very repetitive. There were three or four places where the authors added descriptions of motor courts to go along with vintage photos of motor courts and tourist camps. The thing is that the description is almost identical. Same with some other descriptions - it seems like an editor was not involved. The second issue was the prevalence of photos from the South suburbs. The rest of the route seemed hit or miss in terms of the quantity of photos. I assume this is because the authors focused on sources local to them, and made few trips to remote locations to gather info. Nevertheless, an interesting set of photos for people interested in the history of the road and its businesses. My favorite parts were the photos and stories about the unpaved, rutted, muddy roads that made up the early highway. Some of those photos were from about 100 years ago, really not that long ago.

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Review: The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance

The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology Is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease, and Inheritance by Nessa Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like to talk about the march of technology, and the way I see it in software is that basic functions are understood and then packaged together into higher level functions, which are subsequently bundled together to create even higher level functions. In science, it seems the opposite is true – things keep getting broken down into their building blocks, which get more granular and interact in stranger ways. From this book I think of epigenetics as breaking down the concept that DNA is THE instruction for an organism into DNA being one of the pathways to determine what an organism is and how it functions. I really liked how the author time and again found analogous stories to describe the science, making it broadly understandable. She made the effort to explain, sometimes multiple ways, that you don’t always find in these kinds of popular science books. I’d say this is a bit deeper than an average pop science book, but better explained. I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.

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Review: Shadows in Flight

Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Having completed the Ender series and following by reading this to complete the Ender’s Shadow series, I was initially led to believe the stories were connecting. Ends up that was originally in the cards for this one, but the author changed the story. In the audiobook of this short novel, author Card himself appears at the end to explain why this, in fact, isn’t the advertised final book in the series. I have grown to enjoy his audiobook discussions of his books, and this few minutes was no exception, giving a peak behind the scenes of building and maintaining a reader-cherished story world.

This one wasn’t up to the quality of the earlier Ender books. Another name might be “Geniuses and Babysitter in Space”. In Card’s other Enderverse books you spent a lot of time in the heads of the characters so as you learned how they thought and could predict their actions, but here it just didn’t seem like that was the focus. The ending was abrupt and conveniently tied up many loose ends – too many. It was like one of those pulp westerns written a century ago where when the author hit his word count, the cowboy up and rides off into the sunset. I do hope there is another in the series that finishes re-connecting the best of the Ender and Bean storylines.


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Review: We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights

We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights by Adam Winkler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

200 plus years of lawyers and jurists interpreting, perverting, and writing the laws of the corporation, determining just how closely a corporation could be cast as a human, or a citizen. The author tells these legal case stories with relish, mixing the historic record with profiles of major players in this realm, from descriptions of Daniel Webster’s piercing black eyes to Samuel Alito’s brashness. Not dry, quite interesting.

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Review: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically

The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically by Peter Singer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Say you are Mr. Spock, and you take it as a personal goal to optimize the good in the world. You’d first define what good is. After some thought, you might come up with the good that you want to focus on is eliminating medical issues in the world to reduce human pain and suffering. Then you would emotionlessly put forward your efforts and wealth to making that happen. Only after you totally solve the problems of health would you consider turning your attention to something farther up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This path follows logic and optimization based on an assumption of what “good” is. What loses with Singer’s system? Tribalism and higher human callings like the arts. What really doesn’t feel right here is the thought that if everyone followed this prescription, the world would be very grey, leaving more of humanity alive but having less to live for. This was a very thought-provoking book to read, and I’m glad I did. Although I don’t agree in total with the author, I can easily understand those that do agree and I commend those donors on putting effort and reflection into their plans. I guess the rest of us will fund the local jazz radio station.

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Review: She Rides Shotgun: A Novel

She Rides Shotgun: A Novel by Jordan Harper
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This feels like the author has taken a good story, in this case a father teaching his child to survive bullies, and amped up a few variables. In this case, the bullies aren’t just going to beat anyone up, they kill entire families. And instead of a typical teen or young adult child, we have a pre-teen that plays with a teddy bear. That’s pretty much it. I found this read like it could be turned into a movie very simply. The plot is simple, the scenery is well described and the scenes could be filmed in California. I’d read more by this author.

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Review: Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail

Thousand-Miler: Adventures Hiking the Ice Age Trail by Melanie Radzicki McManus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book about the Ice Age Trail through Wisconsin. I had previously enjoyed books about these kinds of travels, although some, like “Wild”, ended up being as much inner psychology as travelogue. There was some cross-mixing of those two focuses here, but this was more a mix of the history of the trail, some character studies of some of the hikers the author met, and the diary of the trek. I hadn’t heard of this trail, which I have likely crossed multiple times as it is near to home. The existence of this book piqued my interest in the trail, and reading the book made me even more interested. I’ve reached a certain age where I have more “freedom” to complete a grand adventure (while beginning to lose the “freedom” of movement of my joints), and this stoked that desire. Nicely done.

I most enjoyed the author’s stories of her crew, a set of family, friends, and acquaintances that helped her to set a speed hiking record for this trail. Despite plenty of planning, I don’t recall any of her helpers being perfect at meetups, drop offs, or prepping, but they all had their own kind of magic on the trail. Ending with her parents as her crew was quite an interesting gamble.


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