Category: Book review
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Review: Connor Coyne’s “Urbantasm: The Dying City” original, dark, magical, and infused with Flint
Urbantasm Book One: The Dying City by Connor Coyne Review by Robert R. Thomas Connor Coyne’s Urbantasm is the most original take on Flint I have read to date. Set in the fictional Rust Belt city of Akawe, Michigan, “an hour’s drive north of Detroit,” Coyne’s allegorical tale is a serial novel of four volumes the…
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Review/Commentary: “Destiny of the Republic” a timely look at an honorable president
“When he (James Garfield) was still a very young man, he had hidden a runaway slave… In Congress, he fought for equal rights for freed slaves. He argued for a resolution that ended the practice of requiring blacks to carry a pass in the nation’s capital, and he delivered a passionate speech for black suffrage…‘Let us…
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Detroit 1967: a movie, a book, and a searing memory of when the riots hit Flint
by Harold C. Ford “A riot is the language of the unheard.” —Martin Luther King “The officer hit him and said, ‘We’re going to kill all of you black-ass nigger pimps and throw you in the river. We’re going to fill up the Detroit River with all you pimps and whores’” –from The Algiers Motel…
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Print show honoring DAS Print great William Stolpin opening at FIA Sept. 16
By Jan Worth-Nelson Note: Sadly, we have been notified that Bill died this morning, Aug. 21. Considering how much he loved space, it seems right that the sun will go dark as he passes to the other side. RIP, William Stolpin. William Stolpin, one of two remaining members of the legendary Southeast Michigan artists’…
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Review: Quoting Comey,”The Chickenshit Club” eyes why the DOJ goes easy on bankers
By Robert R. Thomas My wife, a retired librarian, came across a blurb for this book, of which she said, “This looks to be right up your alley.” She was correct, as usual, on many levels. I am hardly the only American who has never been satisfied by any answers as to why no banksters…
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Book Review: Sing for Your Life, a Story of Race, Music, and Family
by Harold C. Ford In 1994 at the age of 12, Ryan Speedo Green was taken forcibly to Virginia’s infamous DeJarnette Center after he threatened to kill his mother and his brother. The lowest point for Green at DeJarnette may have been when his downward spiraling behavior landed him in solitary confinement, as related by…
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Review: Why are we killing the planet? “The Myth of Human Supremacy” nails troubling answers
By Robert R. Thomas Human supremacy, according to Derrick Jensen, is a contradiction in terms. In The Myth of Human Supremacy, Jensen’s impassioned and intelligent analysis of the myth that proclaims we humans are superior beings, posits his approach with essential questions like, superior to what and whom? and the how and the why of…
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Review: “The Kremlin Playbook” depicts eroding democracies, prompting heebie-jeebies
By Robert R. Thomas While looking for a Canadian hockey channel between the interminable rash of mind-numbing commercials during the final two minutes of a basketball game, I stumbled upon the conclusion to a C-SPAN telecast of a federal intelligence hearing. I never got back to the the game. What caught my attention was mention…
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Review: From “Flint coney” to “Chevy in the Hole,” Flintstones, Michiganders have unique lingo
By Jan Worth-Nelson Ted McClellan, author of the regionally hot-selling How to Speak Midwestern from Belt Publishing can utter accents from Buffalo to Minneapolis and dissect how those accents came to be. He can also spell out origins of dozens of beloved and often sarcastic, often hilarious local phrases, from “Ooey Pooey” to “Bloomingulch” to “Naptown,”…
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Review: Idiot America by Charles P. Pierce
Review by Robert R. Thomas Reading a book by its cover is dicey business, but a cover can be enticing, both the graphic design and the title and typography. Such was the case with Charles P. Pierce’s IDIOT AMERICA How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. George Washington, sword drawn, seated…
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