Category: Book review
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Review: Riveting Semaj Brown “bleeds fire” at Mott Warsh Gallery performance
By Jan Worth-Nelson Facing lies, atrocities and daily affronts to self-love and spiritual peace, “we have to tap that eternal spring of regenerative light,” Flint poet, artist, musician, scientist and activist Semaj Brown implored a rapt audience Aug. 21 at the Mott-Warsh Gallery, 815 Saginaw St. Brown, who moved to Flint from her hometown Detroit…
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Book Review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism–the Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
By Robert R. Thomas When entering foreign territories, orientation is the key to survival. Who is in charge? What are the rules? In her masterful analysis of the current state of global capitalism, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff, the Charles Edward…
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Book Review: “American Dialogue” offers indispensable conversation between “then” and “now”
By Robert R. Thomas In assessing the here and now, history offers an indispensable perspective. American Dialogue is an enlightening example. As author and historian Joseph Ellis puts it, “The study of history is an ongoing conversation between past and present from which we all have much to learn.” Subtitled The Founders and Us, his book’s…
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Review: “Poisoned democracy, poisoned water,” activists’ impact — themes of new Flint book
By Harold C. Ford “The lesson learned from the battle over the river was that the hardheaded resolve of even a small group of people could move mountains.” … from Flint Fights Back, Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis,by Benjamin J. Pauli, The MIT Press, 2019 A wonderful photo is conspicuously positioned…
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Central American turmoil and revolution highlight Flint author’s first novel
By Paul Rozycki It may have been St. Paddy’s Day March 17, but that didn’t stop a number of leading Hispanic leaders and their families and friends from gathering at Mott Community College Sunday afternoon to launch a newly published novel by Flint-based author Martin Barillas. About three dozen attended the event at the Regional…
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“America: The Farewell Tour” by Chris Hedges: a review
Reviewed by Robert R. Thomas An unsettling childhood memory is that things were not as they seemed, and nobody was talking about it. My brother Alan succinctly described our childhood milieu as a “culture of silence.” While reading America: The Farewell Tour, by Chris Hedges, that childhood culture of silence revisited me. The book’s chapters—DECAY,…
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Review: “A $500 House in Detroit” a familiar, complex story for Flint readers
By Harold C. Ford “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.”- Eldridge Cleaver “What I learned…was that my goal wasn’t to build a house. It was to transform myself by building a house.”- author Drew Philp, A $500 House in Detroit, Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City, 2017,…
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Book Review: “Winners Take All” pinpoints elites’ “helping and hoarding” while abetting unjust status quo
Review by Robert R. Thomas The recent successful Genesee County millage for-the-arts vote, which starting in January and for the next ten years will bring in $8.7 million/year of taxpayers’ money to a dozen nonprofit arts organizations, got me thinking about the mingling of private and public monies and how that business/governance hybrid works, especially…
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Book Review: David Buick’s Marvelous Motor Car by Lawrence Gustin
by Harold C. Ford Get your name on 40 million cars and you’re bound to find fame and fortune. Nonetheless, David Dunbar Buick was forgotten first by the company that bears his name, then by the public, and ultimately by historians. Author, Flint native, former Flint Journal reporter and retired Buick assistant public relations director…
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Luminous “JFK: The Last Speech” essay collection reverberates 55 years after one October day
By Robert R. Thomas On Oct, 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave his last public speech, at Amherst College in western Massachusetts. The occasion of Kennedy’s Convocation Address at Amherst was the ground-breaking ceremony for the Robert Frost Library. Frost, an avid friend and supporter of JFK, had taught at Amherst for many years…
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