FAKE POLITICS: How Corporate and Government Groups Create and Maintain a Monopoly on Truth, depressing in 2019...grim beyond words in 2025

FAKE POLITICS: How Corporate and Government Groups Create and Maintain a Monopoly on Truth
JASON BISNOFF
Skyhorse Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 hardcover; backordered, but used copies are available

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In “grassroots” campaigns, the grass isn’t always green—or natural.

In today’s chaotic world, where the multiplication of information sources creates competing narratives, credibility is the key to winning the war of ideas. This is the reason why governments and corporations resort to astroturfing—creation of ostensibly grassroots movements set up to advance political agendas and commercial campaigns. The democratization of information and polarization of politics offer a perfect storm.

Fake Politics tells the stories of how this practice has transformed political activism into a veiled lobbying effort by the rich and the powerful. Through a series of vignettes involving the tea party, oil industry, big tobacco, big data, and news media, this book will explore the similarities and differences between various campaigns that appeared as grassroots but, in reality, were lobbying efforts fueled by governments, corporations, major industries, and religious institutions.

The process, named for the artificial grass fields at football stadiums and high schools across the country, became so prevalent in the last two decades that it now sits at a tipping point. In the era of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” with the truth well on its way to becoming indistinguishable from fabrication, what can the past of astroturfing tell us about the future of grassroots activism?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: More important to read now than when it came out. I'm seeing the direst predictions made a generation ago about the effect of media "consolidation" not only coming true, but feeling like a relief from the "post-truth" landscape we're living in.

In writing my review I searched for "reviews" using the full book title. Literally no review not on a book sales site, and none of those in any way informative, came up. Searching for Author Bisnoff, I found nothing new by him except in something called "The Putnam Voice", and in no way does that person's bio suggest he's the author of this book. Similarly a LinkedIn profile of either the author or someone with his unusual name contain any reference no matter how tangential of this book's authorship.

This is very interesting, don't you think? A book written about the perversion of politics and the political process by gigantic piles of money controlled by people who like the status quo just fine, if they can't have a fascist dystopia, just...vanishes? You can always buy a used one.

You should. Footnoted to a fare-thee-well, Author Bisnoff, during Trump v1, details how "astroturfing" works, why it works, and who benefits from its use; all extremely relevant in the media landscape we possess in 2025.

I'm sensing an applecart that might not be wise, for the author, for me to upset. I will say that reading this book in 2025 is even more upsetting than it was in 2019. Then it was so deeply traumatic I couldn't bring myself to write a review.

I truly wish I had. Now, in 2025, the moral high ground I might've held is gone. I hope you'll seek out a print copy of this book and absorb its very sadly relevant message.

LAUNCHING LBJ: How a Kennedy Insider Helped Define Johnson's Presidency, history told by a fine man's daughter

LAUNCHING LBJ: How a Kennedy Insider Helped Define Johnson's Presidency
HELEN O'DONNELL
Skyhorse (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Kenneth O'Donnell was JFK's Chief of Staff, among the group known as Kennedy's "Irish Mafia." O'Donnell was with President Kennedy through his entire time in office... and he was on Air Force One in Dallas on November 22, 1963, at Jacqueline Kennedy's side, as Lyndon Johnson got sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ asked Ken O'Donnell to stay on and work with him through the first nine months of his administration, to help the country transition and heal, and to help Johnson set his own agenda for his presidency. Although they were political adversaries, they developed a mutually respectful rapport, and Ken helped LBJ find his voice, starting with his work in voting rights and developing the civil rights agenda. Ken O'Donnell was a prolific diarist and note taker, and in 'Launching LBJ', his daughter Helen, a respected historian and journalist in her own right, takes her father's journals and fills in the gaps to create an unprecedented, inside look at the early days of President Lyndon Johnson's regime.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: How does the country switch leaders in a crisis? It's not something we do on the regular, so each time there's much to be reinvented to meet the circumstances of the moment.

This assassination took place in my youth, and was a steady drumbeat in politics as I became aware of the entire field. The day itself I, all of three years old, was aware something REALLY BIG had happened because my mother ran into our family room, shouting "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" at the TV, which was momentous in my little world because she was *not* a woman to swear or curse. Not long after that, and just as momentous in my little world, my teenaged sisters came home early, excitedly chattering to each other...a thing they never did...so it was a Day of Wonders indeed.

It was astounding how much changed that day, and how deeply felt that event was even in my household. My parents were politically to the right of Hitler, had never said a single good word about Kennedy, and my Texan mother despised LBJ, "a damn communist" to her New-Deal-hatin' self. (She was a teen, and later a new mother, in the run-up to WWII.)

I think Author O'Donnell is around my age, her parents were a bit younger than mine and she was born in about 1956 as far as I can tell. O'Donnell père died in 1977 after his first wife died of complications from alcoholism, a problem that took his life as well. So I read his book aware that the writer was approaching it as more or less a family history, a chance to know her dad better. Enviable access to primary written sources aside, her name and pedigree opened doors to people who might otherwise not have bothered to speak to an historian from outside the Kennedys' charmed circle.

LBJ would've known that feeling well. He needed O'Donnell père's insider status to get his staff-running feet under him as he focused his initial efforts on healing his traumatized country. O'Donnell, no fan of LBJ, was nonetheless an honorable sort. He helped craft LBJ's startlingly successful assumption of JFK's ambitious, previously doomed, social agenda. It was partly his planning and partly LBJ's long Senate career that taught him where the bodies were buried and who buried 'em that came together to launch one of the twentieth century's most sweeping and successful reforms of sclerotic Federal social spending agendas. I'm not inclined to uprate the book because it is less about the nuts and bolts of the effort and more about the personalities...it falls into a kind of gauzy "weren't they something special" attitude that grates on me, smacks of worshipful attitudes I don't share.

It is largely Johnson's legislative success that is being dismantled today. It was won by the blood of one not-very-honorable man and the sweat of several very honorable ones, eg Kenneth O'Donnell. We sit passively watching as the current administration and its partisan GOP lackeys destroy the greatest society we could create.

Resist.

EDELWEISS+ MYSTERIES/THRILLERS/CRIME STORIES: Burgoines to read for #Deathtober 2024

CALICO by LEE GOLDBERG

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg, comes an explosive, page-turning investigative thriller - with a mind-blowing twist.

There's a saying in Barstow, California, a decaying city in the scorching Mojave desert . . .

The Interstate here only goes in one direction: Away.

But it's the only place where ex-LAPD detective Beth McDade, after a staggering fall from grace, could get another badge . . . and a shot at redemption.

Over a century ago, and just a few miles further into the bleak landscape, a desperate stranger ended up in Calico, a struggling mining town, also hoping for a second chance.

His fate, all those years ago, and hers today are linked when Beth investigates an old skeleton dug up in a shallow, sandy grave . . . and also tries to identity a vagrant run-over by a distracted motorhome driver during a lightning storm.

Every disturbing clue she finds, every shocking discovery she makes, force Beth to confront her own troubled past—and a past that's not her own—until it all smashes together in a revelation that could change the world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Entertaining fluff to pass an afternoon. The kind of read that scratches the same "tell me a story but don't make me think too hard" that television has historically specialized in. In fact, this'd make a *great* Movie of the Week, whatever we're calling those now. Netflix Originals? Prime Videos?

Any road, there's a lot less here than meets the eye in substantive themes, but who cares? Read it for the sci-fi-lite elements, the interesting Western US setting (problems and all), and the relatable characters. But seriously, Author Goldberg..."Ben Cartwright"? SMH

Severn House wants $6.99 for the Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link), a reasonable price for the fun I had.

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The Labyrinth House Murders (House Murders #3) by Yukito Ayatsuji (tr. Ho-Ling Wong)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: THE TWISTY AND INGENIOUS FOURTH INSTALLEMENT IN THE BIZARRE HOUSE MYSTERIES.

The famed mystery writer Miyagaki Yotaro lives a life of seclusion in the remote Labyrinth House. When Yotaro invites four young crime authors to his home for a birthday party, they are honoured to accept. But no sooner have they arrived than they are confronted with a shocking death, then lured into a bizarre, deadly competition…

As the twisted contest gathers pace, murder follows murder. The ingenious sleuth Shimada Kiyoshi investigates, but can he solve the mystery of the house before all those trapped in its labyrinth are dead? And can you guess the solution before he does?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This entry in the ongoing series is billed as the third and the fourth in it (see above synopsis), and as I don't speak Japanese I can't be certain which it actually is. Since the original publication date was in 1988, it ought to be easier than this.

Truly doesn't matter to the reading pleasure of the book, so I suppose the now-normal lie that "this series can be read in any order" is, for once, true. Do take note that this is NOT a fair-play mystery, as there's at least two details crucial to resolving the plot that are not given to you, or even hinted at.

What the read does, however, is to take you through a very well-constructed labyrinth. Playing Theseus is entertaining when the stakes are 1) completing your in-progress novel and b) inheriting cash and copyrights from a very well-known mystery writer. Adjusting expectations this way presents a good day's entertainment.

Pushkin Vertigo brings this out either on 10 October 2024 or 13 May 2025. Either way it's a preorder, so check prices with your chosen retailer.

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The Devil of the Provinces by Juan Cárdenas (tr. Lizzie Davis)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After a series of failures, a biologist returns to his hometown to live with his grieving mother. But in this gripping crime novel that upends the genre’s conventions, strange events unravel what he thought he knew of his past, his present, and himself.

When a biologist returns home to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a drug dealer seeking transcendence, a boarding school where students disappear and girls give birth to strange creatures. An encounter with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a job offer in big agriculture, and he’s gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city he’d hoped never to see again. In The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: It feels a bit like cheating to call this a crime novel on first glance. It took the publisher an afterword essay to make a (flimsy) case for it. But on sober reflection lasting months, I came to agree that this IS a crime novel of a specific sort:

The biologist observed that, as with most extravagant paintings, the fabrication of custodiae had flourished during the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church set in motion its major propaganda operation: the colonization of the senses through artwork. Persuasion wasn't enough anymore, subjugation was the aim. The passage from education to spectacle, evangelization to fanaticism. These images were made to trap the eye and flood it with vibration, illusions of movement, space-time dislocation.

The crimes committed, a murdered brother and a drug-dealing bestie (nothing solves the murder, no punishment accrues to the dealer) aside, are the truly vile crimes of misusing language and power to manipulate and control others for fun and profit. The criminals are both persons and institutions, as always in the annals of crime.

That's all told in the voice you read above; you'll like it or not, I very much do, but it takes time and a strong willingness to engage with the vocabulary to glean the story's full affect.

Coffee House Press asks $17.95 (non-affiliate Amazon link) for one. The library's free. Unless you fell in love with the sample go check it out...but read it. This is a tendentious meditation on what a true true crime is.

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Alcatraz Ghost Story: Roy Gardner's Amazing Train Robberies, Escapes, and Lifelong Love by Brian Stannard

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The Incredible True Story of the Most Hunted Man in Pacific Coast History—and the Woman He Loved

Before the 1920s found their roar, a charismatic gambling addict named Roy Gardner dominated news headlines with daring train robberies and escapes from incarceration. Nicknamed "the Smiling Bandit," Gardner spilled no blood—except his own—as he cut a felonious path across the western United States, as the country hobbled through a recession in the aftermath of the First World War.

Once imprisoned for the long term in federal prisons, including Alcatraz, the most notorious prison's second-most-notorious inmate won over some unlikely champions. Both Gardner's wife, Dollie, and a police officer who once arrested him launched extensive campaigns for Gardner's release on the vaudeville circuit, claiming a brain operation would cure his lawless ways. Was Gardner a good man who made bad decisions as the victim of injury and circumstance? Or was his charming personality merely the poker face of a scoundrel?

Richly researched, drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, Alcatraz Ghost Story explores the life of Roy Gardner in the context of his great love story and the larger backdrop of drug addiction, incarceration, and the racial and labor violence of the 1920s and 1930s.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: An uneven true-crime story, one that reminded me of the old film Falling Down. How hard can you push a fundamentally decent man with charm and charisma until he gives violently up on The System?

Add the fillip of never being quite sure which Gardner was the fundamental one, the sales whiz charmer or the criminal manipulator, and you have a catchy book. My rating reflects mostly a dissatisfaction with the choppy pacing...we slow down to discuss historical events that end up being peripheral to the story, eg World War I bond drives, and gloss over things I'd like to hear more about, eg life in/on Alcatraz...rather than the research, or the story being told.

(Also I deeply dislike his One True Love, Dollie...shallow Babbitty broad.)

Skyhorse Publishing is asking $19.99 for a Kindle edition. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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Saving Myles by Carl Vonderau

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When the FBI can’t help, an unassuming banker takes matters into his own hands to bring his son home

Wade, a respected banker in La Jolla, CA, and his estranged wife, Fiona, make the unbearable decision to send their teenage son, Myles, away to an expensive treatment center after a streak of harmful behavior. After a year of treatment, Myles comes home, seemingly rehabilitated. But soon, he sneaks off to Tijuana to buy drugs—and is kidnapped.

When the ransom call comes, Fiona is frantic and accepts help from Andre, the Quebecois whose charity Fiona runs. Wade is wary of Andre’s reputation and the bank he owns, but seeing no other way to secure a kidnap negotiator or the ransom, he swallows his doubts to get his son home.

In order to get the ransom money, Wade makes a deal with Andre—he’ll work for Andre’s bank in exchange for the cash. But as Wade races to rescue Myles before his kidnappers lose their patience, he realizes he’s wrapped up in more crime than just a kidnapping—he’s now indebted to a cartel.

Perfect for fans of Harlan Coben and Lisa Scottoline.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Kid-in-jeopardy thriller, with Dad chasing after his kidnapped teen son for a change. Usual useless woman trope found too often in male-oriented thrillers: his ex-wife involves a villain so obvious he should twirl his mustachios, which—shock twist!—makes everything harder for Dad to fix.

I want to belt the idiot kid upside his head for being such a shit. The writing's good, the pacing's propulsive, the publisher's comps are spot-on.

Oceanview Publishing asks $9.49 (non-affiliate Amazon link) for a Kindle edition. Go to the library, says I.

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The Belgrade Conspiracy: A David Rivers Thriller (Shadow Strike #6) by Jason Kasper

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: **FROM FORMER GREEN BERET AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR JASON KASPER**

A lethal shipment of military hardware. An international terrorist group on a mission of mass destruction. One man stands to forever change the course of history…unless David Rivers can stop him.

David Rivers is an expert in the art of violence. Together with his team of CIA operatives, he's executed dozens of covert assassinations―but this mission might turn out to be his deadliest yet. One man stands behind the transfer of high-level military hardware to an international terrorist syndicate.

The CIA has uncovered his identity: Yuri Sidorov, a Russian arms dealer with state protection. With the arms deal only days away, David and the team are faced with an impossible to get close enough to take out their target, they must first win his trust. David and the team infiltrate a black market arms network in Serbia, negotiating a web of secret police and mafia hitmen. Each wrong turn may prove fatal, but they're determined to succeed at any cost. But Sidorov is still alive for a reason, and when the team uncovers dark forces at work in the Balkans and America, they realize that killing him is the least of their worries. By the time they learn the truth, it's too late…and now they're the ones being hunted.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I knew when I asked for this read it was #6 in a series, but let's be honest. It's a military thriller. The characters are fairly interchangeable in the genre, they're archetypes: Tech genius, spycraft maven, violent guy...nobody really needs to know much except the outlines to follow along. It's stakes and pacing that matter in this genre.

Still true. If your idea of fun is taking a fast-paced ride through some unfamiliar world locations, here's you a violent, nationalistic read. Guilty pleasure, for me at least, and not a series I'll be pursuing.

Severn River Publishing wants $6.99 for a Kindlebook. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

BEWARE..."BE AWARE"...OF SOCIAL MEDIA'S EFFECTS ON YOU & OTHERS: THE TWITTERING MACHINE, leftist thinker's assessment & ESCAPING THE RABBIT HOLE, what to do about it,

ESCAPING THE RABBIT HOLE: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect
MICK WEST
Skyhorse Publishing
$18.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Earth is flat, the World Trade Center collapse was a controlled demolition, planes are spraying poison to control the weather, and actors faked the Sandy Hook massacre….

All these claims are bunk: falsehoods, mistakes, and in some cases, outright lies. But many people passionately believe one or more of these conspiracy theories. They consume countless books and videos, join like-minded online communities, try to convert those around them, and even, on occasion, alienate their own friends and family. Why is this, and how can you help people, especially those closest to you, break free from the downward spiral of conspiracy thinking?

In Escaping the Rabbit Hole, author Mick West shares over a decade’s worth of knowledge and experience investigating and debunking false conspiracy theories through his forum, MetaBunk.org, and sets forth a practical guide to helping friends and loved ones recognize these theories for what they really are.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the most successful approaches to helping individuals escape a rabbit hole aren’t comprised of simply explaining why they are wrong; rather, West’s tried-and-tested approach emphasizes clear communication based on mutual respect, honesty, openness, and patience.

West puts his debunking techniques and best practices to the test with four of the most popular false conspiracy theories today (Chemtrails, 9/11 Controlled Demolition, False Flags, and Flat Earth) — providing road maps to help you to understand your friend and help them escape the rabbit hole. These are accompanied by real-life case studies of individuals who, with help, were able to break free from conspiracism.

With sections on:

the wide spectrum of conspiracy theories

avoiding the “shill” label

psychological factors and other complications

(and concluding with) a look at the future of debunking

Mick West has put forth a conclusive, well-researched, practical reference on why people fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and how you can help them escape.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Okay, I thought as I read The Twittering Machine, I've got the stakes clear in my head and I know where I fall in relation to the problem of social media's misuses by conspiracists. Now what?

The reason I love social media, in a nutshell, is: This book's existence would never have made it to my attention without social media, specifically bookish social media eg, LibraryThing, Goodreads, and Edelweiss+. I am clear enough on the issues created that I saw immediately how useful this book's message and techniques would be to me. This leads me to a confession: I am very much in need of help figuring out how to speak to conspiracists respectfully, or even just politely. My contempt and derision for and of them is part of what entrenches their adherence to these beliefs. How better to express one's rejection of being rejected than to double down?

Help me Obi-Mick West, you're my only hope, I thought as I began this read. My prayers were answered with a "sure, no sweat there, Grasshopper." (Have I used enough ancient-history media references to make my age obvious? I got more if you want 'em.) Author West is clearly in the business of debunking for a considerable span (see his amazing site Metabunk.org). He's lauded by the publishers of Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines, as well as producers of The David Pakman Show, The Skeptic Zone, and even The Joe Rogan Experience. He is, in short, in command of his material.

It’s also tempting to simply label conspiracy theories as either "mainstream" or "fringe." Journalist Paul Musgrave referenced this dichotomy when he wrote in the Washington Post: Less than two months into the administration, the danger is no longer that Trump will make conspiracy thinking mainstream. That has already come to pass. Musgrave obviously does not mean that shape-shifting lizard overlords have become mainstream. Nor does he mean that Flat Earth, Chemtrails, or even 9/ 11 Truth are mainstream. What he’s really talking about is a fairly small shift in a dividing line on the conspiracy spectrum. Most fringe conspiracy theories remain fringe, most mainstream theories remain mainstream. But, Musgrave argues, there’s been a shift that’s allowed the bottom part of the fringe to enter into the mainstream.

Finding someone else's words to make your central argument for you requires deep involvement in and command of the landscape you're describing. And describing the landscape is the first part of the task of teaching others what you know. An equally urgent need is to show the potential future debunkers what the stakes are, simply, directly, and convincingly:

These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, in terms of money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing citizens’ genuine participation in democracy.

–and–

Helping a friend break free from the spiral of conspiracism is not easy and it will take time. No matter how politely you do it you are still challenging some fundamental aspects of their identity. They will push back, and they may fight you. But it is an immensely valuable thing that you are doing for them. Freeing their minds from the burden of conspiracy theories and letting them see and participate in the world more as it really is. Do not give up. The stories in this book prove that people do get out with help.

What he does in the text that follows is provide simple and easily absorbed ways to get your embroiled friend or loved one to engage with you on their chosen "alternative facts" so you can get past the initial resistance that is inevitable. Anyone who seeks out alternative facts is already feeling lost, or powerless, or just fed up. The rabbit holes they fall down are coping mechanisms and become, like any group identification, part of their identity and sense of self and purpose in the world.

This is something literally all of us seek. Some choose religious affiliations to build social networks through; others politics; still others identity issues. All of us, without exception, build identities. It is here that Author West does something I very badly needed done: He states that conspiracists aren't stupid, as a rule, but simply lack a wide array of "relevant information sources." It can be fatal to anyone's objective thinking to limit the sources of information one consults...it reduces the opportunities to compare and contrast the sources' sources, so to speak. Do I trust Fox News? Not to tell me the truth; but I still engage with it, in a limited fashion, to learn what will be floating past my deck chair as the great liner United States sinks.

Where I got to after reading this book was someplace I really wanted to get: Accepting that, while I am sure there are conspiracies out there in the world, there are no reasons to accept conspiracies as the one true explanation for the events of the day. I think that belief, here reinforced, is the solid rock to stand on when speaking to people who aren't moored in consensus reality. It's a lot harder for me personally to engage with the people involved deeply in some of the conspiracy theories politely. That being a personal issue, rooted in my own mishegas, I didn't expect Author West's book to help me address it as much as it did.

Most people can escape the rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking because most people who get stuck down there are ordinary people like you and me. They are not, as a rule, any more or less crazy than the general population. People don't get sucked into conspiracy theories because they are mentally ill or deficient, they get sucked in because they watched some videos at a point in their lives when those videos resonated. They stay down there because they lack exposure to other information sources. They lack relevant facts, they lack context, and they lack perspectives on, and other ways of thinking about, the issues. These are all resources you can bring to them. The most effective way to bring that information to your friend is with honesty and with respect. Mocking and harsh criticism do not work because people push back when they feel threatened. Even if you feel their position is ludicrous, respectful disagreement works better than derision.

Simple. Actionable. Applicable to me, on a personal level. Maybe it can give you the support you need in resisting the encroachment of this dangerously misguided thinking deeper into the Body Politic of a threatened democracy.

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THE TWITTERING MACHINE
RICHARD SEYMOUR
Verso Books
$26.95 hardcover, available in the US and Canada only now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience.

The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think.

Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The author, a trenchant leftist social and political analyst, refers in his choice of title for this book to artist Paul Klee's watercolor painting, "Twittering Machine," from 1922:

Art critics have deeply divided opinions and interpretations of this small MoMA-owned piece of paper infused with artistic imagination, ink, watercolor paint, and gouache. Biomechanical pastoral, oppressive and unnerving enslavement of nature to the machine, triumphant use of machine for nature's purposes...it's not clear to anyone (except the Nazis who labeled it "degenerate art") what we should make of this cool-blue musically evocative strangeness.

In many ways, Author Seymour couldn't have chosen a better image to hang his leftist social analysis of social media on. The facts of modern social life are such that we're enmeshed in the internet to a greater degree than even when he was working on this book, or even when the publisher brought it out in September 2020...the middle of the crisis times of COVID-19's ongoing plague. I literally can not interact with the bureaucracies that control my life without internet access. My assisted-living facility has always provided wi-fi access and a bank of desktop computers...recently they've upgraded our wi-fi to better serve an increasingly online population of elders. This is the best time to think about the issues surrounding social media's impact on the societal world we all, regardless of age or level of active participation, live in.

If the social industry is an addiction machine, the addictive behaviour it is closest to is gambling: a rigged lottery. Every gambler trusts in a few abstract symbols—the dots on a dice, numerals, suits, red or black, the graphemes on a fruit machine—to tell them who they are. In most cases, the answer is brutal and swift: you are a loser and you are going home with nothing. The true gambler takes a perverse joy in anteing up, putting their whole being at stake. On social media, you scratch out a few words, a few symbols, and press ‘send’, rolling the dice. The internet will tell you who you are, and what your destiny is through arithmetic ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and ‘comments’.

It is this weird truth that dictates our modern media landscape. It is a symptom and a cause, simultaneously. Gamblers don't gamble because gambling is available, they gamble because they must. Addicts aren't getting high, in whatever way they do so, because the means to do it exist; they do it because they must.

The Twittering Machine may be a horror story, but it is one that involves all of us as users. We are part of the machine, and we find our satisfactions in it, however destructive they may be. And this horror story is only possible in a society that is busily producing horrors. We are only up for addiction to mood-altering devices because our emotions seem to need managing, if not bludgeoning by relentless stimulus. We are only happy to drop into the dead-zone trance because of whatever is disappointing in the world of the living. Twitter toxicity is only endurable because it seems less worse than the alternatives. "No addiction," as Francis Spufford has written, "is ever explained by examining the drug. The drug didn’t cause the need. A tour of a brewery won’t explain why somebody became an alcoholic."

What this book does, and does well, is present the case that the social media landscape, while it requires social media to exist, doesn't exist in a vacuum but in an economic system that needs growth of use and therefore numbers of users to make its owners as powerful as they desire to be. The platforms offer us a digital space that enables connection and rewards separation from all but those we most want to be like.

Yet, we are not Skinner's rats. Even Skinner's rats were not Skinner's rats: the patterns of addictive behavior displayed by rats in the Skinner Box were only displayed by rats in isolation, outside of their normal sociable habitat. For human beings, addictions have subjective meanings, as does depression. Marcus Gilroy-Ware's study of social media suggests that what we encounter in our feeds is hedonic stimulation, various moods and sources of arousal—from outrage porn to food porn to porn—which enable us to manage our emotions. In addition that, however, it's also true that we can become attached to the miseries of online life, a state of perpetual outrage and antagonism.

What I enjoyed about this read was the sense that, in detaching his analysis from blaming Social Media™ and attaching it to the capitalist profit-motive driven mindset, he validated my sense that it's all, au fond, about greed...theirs for money and power, ours for meaning and purpose. The result is, as Elon Musk tweeted after his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter was completed last week, a situation in which a capitalist says that Twitter "...cannot become a free-for-all hellscape." I quibble with "become" in that sentence:

...if we get hooked on a machine that purports to tell us, among other things, how other people see us—or a version of ourselves, a delegated online image—that suggests something has already gone wrong in our relationships with others. The global rise in depression—currently the world's most widespread illness, having risen some 18 per cent since 2005—is worsened for many people by the social industry. There is a particularly strong correlation between depression and the use of Instagram among young people. But social industry platforms didn't invent depression; they exploited it. And to loosen their grip, one would have to explore what has gone wrong elsewhere.

How this Brave New Twitter will cope with the simultaneous free-speech absolutism of Musk, the capitalist need to growgrowgrow, and the social need to reduce harm to the people who make up the ailing Body Politic will be a fascinating collision to watch. Armor yourselves against the smaller pieces of social-fabric shrapnel with the wise words of a man of principle, intellectual clarity, and a powerful communication style.

I'll leave the last words to Author Seymour at his most openly anti-capitalist (thereby closest to my heart):

The internet's history also shows us that when we rely on the private sector and its hallowed bromide of 'innovation,' quite often that will result in technical innovations that are designed for manipulation, surveillance and exploitation.

The tax-evading, offshore wealth-hoarding, data-monopolizing, privacy-invading silicon giants benefit from the internet's 'free market' mythology, but the brief flourishing of Minitel shows is that other ways, other worlds, other platforms, are possible. The question is, given that there's no way to reverse history, how can we actualize these possibilities? What sort of power do we have? As users, it turns out, very little. We are not voters on the platforms; we are not even customers. We are the unpaid products of raw material. We could, if we were organized, withdraw our labor power, commit social media suicide: but then what other platforms do we have access to with anything like the same reach?

THREE KINDS OF TRAVEL-TIME READS: The Bowery; David Mogo, Godhunter; Disasters at Sea

THE BOWERY: The Strange History of New York's Oldest Street
STEPHEN PAUL DEVILLO
Skyhorse
$16.99 ebook editions, available now

KINDLE EDITION ON SALE NOW! $1.99 (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: It was the street your mother warned you about—even if you lived in San Francisco. Long associated with skid row, saloons, freak shows, violence, and vice, the Bowery often showed the worst New York City had to offer. Yet there were times when it showed its best as well.

The Bowery is New York's oldest street and Manhattan's broadest boulevard. Like the city itself, it has continually reinvented itself over the centuries. Named for the Dutch farms, or bouweries, of the area, the path's lurid character was established early when it became the site of New Amsterdam's first murder. A natural spring near the Five Points neighborhood led to breweries and taverns that became home to the gangs of New York—the "Bowery B'hoys," "Plug Uglies," and "Dead Rabbits."

In the Gaslight Era, teenaged streetwalkers swallowed poison in McGurk's Suicide Hall. A brighter side to the street was reflected in places of amusement and culture over the years. A young P.T. Barnum got his start there, and Harry Houdini learned showmanship playing the music halls and dime museums. Poets, singers, hobos, gangsters, soldiers, travelers, preachers, storytellers, con-men, and reformers all gathered there. Its colorful cast of characters include Peter Stuyvesant, Steve Brodie, Carrie Nation, Stephen Foster, Stephen Crane, Carrie Joy Lovett, and even Abraham Lincoln.

The Bowery: The Strange History of New York's Oldest Street traces the full story of this once notorious thoroughfare from its pre-colonial origins to the present day.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I've lived in or near New York City for twenty-five of my sixty-*cough* years. I'm not surprised that I'm still learning stuff about my home town. And considering the astounding difference between the 1980s New York I moved to and the gentrified, sanitized Newyorkland it's become, I have no trouble relating to Author DeVillo's interesting browsing-book's premise of the many streets that Manhattan has called "The Bowery" over the centuries.

Exhaustively researched...the Bibliography and Endnotes will swell your TBRs, fellow New Yorkophiles!...and anecdotally presented, this is a perfect holiday-weekend-travel book. I call them "browsing books" because you can set it down at any point, pick it back up and take right up from where you left off. More than trivia lists, less than in-depth formal Histories, this is exactly what a beach bag or backpack needs loaded on your Kindle to stave off wait-time boredom.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DAVID MOGO, GODHUNTER
SUYI DAVIES OKUNGBOWA
Abaddon Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Nigerian God-Punk - a powerful and atmospheric urban fantasy set in Lagos.

Since the Orisha War that rained thousands of deities down on the streets of Lagos, David Mogo, demigod, scours Eko’s dank underbelly for a living wage as a freelance Godhunter. Despite pulling his biggest feat yet by capturing a high god for a renowned Eko wizard, David knows his job’s bad luck. He’s proved right when the wizard conjures a legion of Taboos—feral godling-child hybrids—to seize Lagos for himself. To fix his mistake and keep Lagos standing, David teams up with his foster wizard, the high god’s twin sister and a speech-impaired Muslim teenage girl to defeat the wizard.

I CHECKED THIS DELIGHT OF A BOOK OUT OF THE LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY...USE THEM OFTEN!

My Review: ...and then I ran out and bought one so I could dip in and out, savoring my time with David Mogo the demigod with family problems, money problems, and a new job...freelance godhunters can't be all that choosy!...that he just *knows* is very, very bad luck and news.

I'd like to see the "controversy" about the Lagos setting and the use of Naijá dialect sometimes, plain Colonial English others, all sent to the bin for incineration, please. Most of the folk doing that whining are also guilty of whining about human beings in the US *daring* to speak Spanish or Vietnamese or whatever isn't familiar to them. Yes, dear, we know that when you're Privileged others having parity feels like an attack. You'll get used to it in time, and discover how enthralling it is to be inside somene else's world for once.

And it isn't like you've spent time whinging about learning what orcs are, or how to pronounce "Boba Fett", or that Han understands Jabba een though we don't...so let's just cut through the padding and call this what it is: Racism. Face it so you can start to fix it. And that is something you badly need to do.

The godpunk elements of the story...the facts of David's existence, the rain of gods that's seriously plaguing Lagos...are the real draw to this Continental-Op-in-Urban-Fantasy tale. We've got beaucoup examples of urban fantasy with old-fashioned loner/fixer PIs in them. Chicagoland has Harry Dresden, San Francisco has Toby Daye, New York City has Charlie Parker, Kaaro in a different Lagos, and the list goes on. I hope we can add David Mogo to this list permanently, with more adventures to come.

The novella length is tailor-made for use in lines, on planes, in trains and cabs. You can take your time with the read, of course, but you can also read novellas in quick hits. It's the most brilliant thing to happen in technology's long, ugly slide into surveillance, the presence of a reading app on every device you drag with you everywhere you go.

I was always amused, as I read the book on the town's boardwalk outside my building, at the responses of young Black people to my elderly white-beareded face shoved into the book. Several asked me why I was reading it, and after a few minutes of my gushing description of David hunting the godling in the cistern and how absolutely wonderful that scene would be on film, made polite noises and skedaddled.

Heh. *Still* scarin' the straight folk at sixty*ahem*!

As the Memorial Day travel weekend is here, with our new freedom from Plague restrictions I expect lots of y'all will travel. Take Doctor Suyi's David with you for the ride. Best $6 I've spent...on a book I've already read!


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DISASTERS AT SEA: A Visual History of Infamous Shipwrecks
LIZ MECHEM
Skyhorse
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The stories behind over sixty historical shipwrecks, with extensive illustrations.

Whether they’re caused by rough weather, human error, collision, piracy, or mutiny, shipwrecks are fascinating stories filled with history and human drama. This book reveals the facts behind numerous catastrophes around the world, and legends, myths, and mysteries of the sea from ancient to modern times—including widely known disasters such as the Titanic and Andrea Doria, as well as the cases of:
The San Agustin
The 1715 Treasure Fleet
USS Monitor
The Endurance
SS Edmund Fitzgerald
RMS Empress of Ireland
The Henrietta Marie
HMS Bounty
The Mary Celeste
The General Slocum
The Flying Dutchman
And many more
Includes detailed maps and shipwreck locations

I BORROWED THIS BROWSER'S DELIGHT FROM THE PRIME READING LIBRARY AT AMAZON. INCLUDED WITH PRIME!

My Review: It felt a bit odd to recommend a book of shipwrecks on a travel holiday blog post. I'll tell y'all what, though, it's nowhere near as odd as recommending a reader go spend yet more money than they already are on a holiday travel weekend...and thus this free-to-read recommendation.

This is eye-candy, pure and simple. Of course there is a bibliography, de rigueur in modern publishing, and it also has a very nice Index with hyperlinks to the subjects! It's really designed to be a picture book though, a lovely ornamental thing; those fare notoriously poorly on the Kindle. The small screen, the limited graphics capability, the inevitable awfulness of publishers' preferred Satanic nightmare, the PDF, playing badly with Amazon's technology so no one will be able to enjoy them. UNLESS you've sprung for a Fire tablet.

Now we're cookin' with gas.

Skyhorse, this book's publisher, has landed in the news here lately for their determinedly contrarian actions. What I think of that isn't meant for this occasion. What I think of their willingness and apparent ability to make illustrated history and nature and such-like ebooks available inexpensively and in formats that play well with Amazon's tech is entirely laudable.

This book is designed for browsers. There are call-out boxes labeled "Flotsam and Jetsam." There is beautiful chapter-opening art:

Shipwreck on a Rocky Coast, Wijnand Nuijen (1837)—from Wikimedia Commons...opens Chapter 2, "The Fatal Flaw"

I think that's pretty much the perfect tone for art I'm happy to look at for holiday travels taken in crowded modern conditions! And the chapters have self-contained stories about the events leading up to, surrounding, and following the shipwrecks; there are trivia sidebars about people, places, and inventions (lots of inventions! Mel Fisher's "mailbox," invented to seek the treasure galleon Nuestra Se&ntil;a de Atocha in the Florida Keys, is by itself worthy of a book) related to, stemming from, or causing (in a few cases) the shipwrecks.

The famous wrecks...the Titanic and the Mary Celeste and the Indianapolis are all there. The freshwater sinkings of the General Slocum:

The General Slocum burning in the East River, 1904...contemporary photo via Wikimedia Commons

...and the Eastland and the Sultana. All those get their due; the memories of stories half-heard on TV shows about ancient aliens and the like get their proper debunking in sections on the Bermuda Triangle; the pirates of the Caribbean (not the Mauschwitz version!) and their Queen Anne's Revenge sagas are touched lightly on. No tum, sodomy, and the lash for this book!

*sigh*

Arctic and Antarctic exploration losses like the Endurance in Antarctica and the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus of the newly re-remembered Franklin Expedition (if you haven't watched the TV show The Terror, load it up now!) all come in for scrutiny as well. I am always down for a mental trip to the icy parts of the world in summertime:

The Sea of Ice, Caspar David Friedrich (1824)—Wikimedia Commons again
Doesn't that just take the Curse of Summer right off your mind? Pity it can't act like sunscreen too.

A bit of attention goes to the supernatural-tinged stories, like that of the Flying Dutchman, but there we go...must sell books. And buy them we must, too, of course...but if cash is tight and the various travels have stretched the plastic a bit too far, procure this fom Prime Reading.

If you're traveling, in spirit or flesh, I wish you godspeed and urge you to spend a bit of time, in bursts as long or as short as you need them to be, with a lovely, informative, and entertaining companion...a book.

THE PALLBEARER, Appalachian grit-lit QUILTBAG criminality

THE PALLBEARER
JORDAN FARMER
Skyhorse Publishing
$24.99 hardcover, $16.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Lynch, West Virginia, is a husk of a town: houses collapsing, deserted coal mines, the money gone. The residents who have not abandoned their homes find themselves living in poverty with little-to-no job opportunities, fighting for scraps and survival under the rule of Ferris Gilbert—the patriarch of a local family who governs the town with manipulative cruelty.

When Jason Felts, a dwarf and aspiring social worker who lives above the town funeral home, is assigned to counsel one of the Gilbert brothers incarcerated inside a youth correctional facility for possession charges, Ferris Gilbert sees a rare opportunity. He seeks out Jason and insists under threat of violence that he smuggle an ominous package into the jail. Torn between his desire to save the young Gilbert brother from a life of crime and concern for his own safety, Jason must make a life-altering decision. At the same time, Gilbert has his hooks in Terry Blankenship, a strung-out young man desperate to carve out a secret life for himself and his boyfriend. If Terry cannot pay his debts to the Gilberts, he has one choice: kill the local sheriff or face the consequences. Sheriff Thompson is found dead soon after. Now both implicated in serious crimes, Jason and Terry must outrun the law and escape the threat of Ferris Gilbert but there may be nowhere to run . . .

The Pallbearer is an unflinching debut for fans of Frank Bill and Sarah Waters that lays bare the lives of the outsiders of society’s outskirts.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM SKYHORSE PUBLISHING VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Terry Blankenship is a stand-in for all the boys who grow up queer in homophobic places. He has a dead mother, a drunken abusive father, and a drug habit he steals to support. He's a complete dead-ender, and he knows it; he's not even trying to run anywhere except up into the hills where an abandoned hunting cabin hides him and his eighteen-year-old boyfriend, stoner Davey. Old Man Felts, once the town undertaker, gives Terry, in cash, about half what he's really earned at the end of every day that they try to fix up a badly decayed old house in Lynch, where there's no opportunity and no hope:

Even at sixteen, Terry was no stranger to labor and didn't mind the work, but this place felt like a lost cause to him.
–and–
Staying closeted created a certain pain, but it was still an option in a place where being yourself meant risking your life.

So there he is; the way out closed to the likes of Terry a long time ago. He still has Davey, who was the proximate cause of Terry's dad throwing him out of the house after walking in on them, and Davey wants bright lights, big city, maybe Charleston, or Lexington? They need money, so they decide to enter Terry's dog in a dogfight.

This does not, I realize you'll be stunned to learn, go well.

What happens is, the two fools end up owing the local big baddie fifteen hundred dollars. This might as well be a million to these folks. There's no way they can pay it back, so the big baddie (after some murderous threats) tells dear, dim Terry he can work it off: Kill the local sheriff. Here's the gun. Go!

And we're off! Terry escapes the consequences of his crime by going to juvenile prison; there he meets Jason Felts, the sadly crippled (one assumes by in utero exposure to teratogenic substances in the embalming room) nephew of the ex-undertaker and a psychologist at the facility; the big baddie's baby brother; and his doom. Not that Jason doesn't do his goddamnedest to keep Terry from losing his short struggle for life. He does, because his own dreadful disability makes life in this horribly dying corpse-factory of a town such a struggle that he empathizes with its no-hopers.

What Terry cares about, in his time inside juvenile prison, is the dog he used and abandoned. He begs the facility doctor (cold and calloused by the endless parade of the state's wasted youth):

"I need somebody to go by the house and see about my dog," Terry said.

"Not my concern," the doctor said and adjusted his stethoscope.

Then he begs Jason, all he wants is for Jason to deliver a letter to Davey, alone in their shared squat at the abandoned cabin, not knowing where Terry was, probably worried sick:

{Jason} kept thinking about {Terry's} small handwriting, the elegant loop in the cursive P of please. It was capitalized, a single word followed by the dark blot of a period. Words were such fragile, imprecise things, but that please explained everything.

It's completely heartbreaking to me to read books like this, full of the desperation of tiny lives lived in the sweaty asscrack of capitalism, places abandoned because the profit's gone and why should the shareholders pay for crappy, useless people to exist? There's money at stake, fuck their health, their lives, their futures!

This is the burden of the refrain that ran through my head, a grinding sound as the people of Lynch watch the armored cars take the money as the scum run. It's the same the world over, of course; Jordan Farmer has stories to his credit in The Southwest Review, for one example, that explore these same conditions. Like Donald Ray Pollock, he's writing what he knows, or I miss my guess. He's an able talespinner, and he's an above-average writer. His subject is territory he can honestly say is in need of bards. That not one person gets out of this jail free is not his fault, it's simply the truth of the people in the place he writes about.

As the body count mounts, as the damage to the world the small people in here care about grows catastrophic, Jason Felts stands for the Right and the Good. He's lacking in inches, he's been badly served in body by Life, but he does the jobs that no one else wants to do. He ends one long nightmare. It doesn't cost him his life, just his spirit: Rooted forever in Lynch, he's doomed to find his one happy moment far, far away.

It is exactly the right ending.

ALL I KNOW ABOUT MANAGEMENT I LEARNED FROM MY DOG, a concise guide to business life

ALL I KNOW ABOUT MANAGEMENT I LEARNED FROM MY DOG
MARTIN P. LEVIN
Skyhorse Publishing
$19.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: When 91-year-old legendary management guru Martin Levin decided to adopt a dog by the name of Angel, he thought he was in for an interesting experience, yet not a challenging one. It didn’t take long for him to learn that he was wrong. Very wrong. Following one of the guiding mantras of his life to never stop learning, Levin found that each day with his dog brought new insights. Through interacting with Angel, he began to recall some personal adventures that added to this insight. And as it turned out, his journey led him toward realizing the Four Golden Rules of Management:

Rule 1: Trust and Leadership
Rule 2: Communication
Rule 3: Problem Solving and Decision Making
Rule 4: Perseverance

In the end, Levin found that his Four Golden Rules of Management were so simple that even Angel understood them. Thus, if a manager can develop trust, it will lead to corporate excellence, provided he or she is able to communicate effectively, make the right strategic decisions, and, above all, persevere. Levin’s book is one to entertain, inspire, and educate business executives (and dog lovers).

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER IN A TWITTER GIVEAWAY

My Review: Martin Levin lost his wife of sixty-eight years, so he went and got a dog. The dog needed to be coaxed into a relationship with him, as she had been abused by a man before coming to a local shelter. Levin's seventy-plus years of business acumen got a sharp workout in the process of leading his dog Angel into her new life as his Service Dog.

Okay, them's the bones. The meat is, do you love dogs, and do you like Levin's personable, guy-in-the-next booth personality? You know the answer to the first one already, but let me tell you about the ninety-something Mr. Levin: If you don't like him, I doubt seriously you have a sense of humor.

Levin takes his cogent and credible four maxims lightly, telling stories on himself and his late-life love Angel the dog that relate to the facets of his principles. These stories are amusing, in that way that the modest and elderly raconteur learns is going to keep his audience attentive. No belly laughs (well, one if you're willing to be a little mean-spirited, involving a wheelchair) but a sense that the man regaling you is entertaining you on more than one level.

I'm compelled by my curmudgeonly perfectionism to complain about the use of the possessive for the plural, the strange comma usage...not in places it would help clarity, used in places not necessary...and other punctuation foibles, and some deeply picky referential infelicities (eg, short story titles are enclosed in quotation marks, not italicized). I noticed them, and even winced a bit, but kept reading.

It's impossible to live a full and rich life for over ninety years and not come away from it with many a story, and luckily Levin has shared a few of his choice ones in a brief, informative, and very useful package. I'd say it's most useful to an entrepreneur with a young business, or a post-entry-level management candidate.