This is an academic resource; not entertainment in the strictest sense. 

However, the topic is one of the darkest in all academia. The eradication of Mesoamerican history. One would think North American Archeology would have a lot more to say on the subject than they actually do. It's truly, the most heinous atrocity humanity is known to have done. And very little follow-up has happened. That's why this book is a big deal. It doesn't have big reveals in it. It has starting steps. Steps that should have been taken long ago, but the expedition starts here.

 "How you get to do your dream job everyday?"

Von Karmen Lectures suck since about five years ago. You can see them evolving, but they are rarely informative anymore. This one has a strong feel of JPL jerking themselves off, while in the current environment JPL is under fire in the planetary community for budgetary epic-fails. So to that end this one happens to be informative! If only to prove the cynical point.  

 I was hoping the ratio of botany to geology would be reversed. But this is Arizona-Trail gold-standard for botany.

 

This book is what happens when someone gets quarantined in a studio apartment with two kittens and a big bag of weed. This is one example of first-person-pet genera (FPP). Which I'm pretty sure I mostly, didn't just make up. Other FPP will emulate some of this. The chapters are short, layout is charming. It's perfect for stalling out till the Ambien kicks in.

 This book is shit. Merde.

You know how clickbaity titles will do a "Mars__water__" for easy clicks? This is the book version of that. It's exactly what you would expect a clickbait book would be, and little current 2022 planetary science. It has no pictures, so it already failed, like cutting the other 999 words out was how you were supposed to interpret that phrase. It has no pictures because pictures are expensive. "Saturns moon Titan Owners Workshop Manual" is an example of a planetary science non-fic that gives a shit. This has lovely layout, and typesetting. Chapters no more than four pages long. It was probably the raw from the author horribly mangled into a Mars-Flags Waterpark corporate-approves. Like the Simpsons episode.

In American history, the nineteen hundreds, when life was moving so fast no one had anything in common with their parents or their children; this is what East Coast defunked-urban life was.

 It's a romanticized introspection, as a nihilistic dirtbag smears himself across the smears Europe.

That's a full spoiler of the plot, but not of the book.

 The book has some clever tricks to make a petite and aesthetic home garden and it teaches well. 

However, it's greatly hampered by a lack of imagery. Cartoons are present but there are not nearly enough of them for a DIY non-fic. Pictures are absent but should be abundant. There are other issues that may not carry over from the ARC, and it would be a strong DIY if these issues are resolved.

 

The names of profound WW II men are known, but not for the deeds within this history. Certain events were perquisite to the final product. 

Amy Shira Teitel writes with a style that can easily be reformatted into a bulleted list; which for a non-fiction works.

 

There should be a book like this about every celestial body in the solar system. A book crammed with facts like a textbook, but serving them for delight instead of a textbooks obstructionist ways. 

I cannot think of anything to nit-pick. This is a superb example of what non-fiction should be.

 

This is a left-wing Trump history with a slant looking towards declining love, birthrates, and relationships. Make no mistake, this is a liberal eco-box book. This will convert no conservatives, and no scholarly moderates either. 

Our author writes passionately, biased, and with a talented pen. A firehose pumping words forming sentences that often would make no sense out of context. It works, making the book a fast read. There is a whole lot of attributing to malice what is certainly the product of stupidity going on in here. The citations are perhaps too weak and the conclusions too untested to call this a particularly good non-fiction, but if you are already mad as hell at the NAZI-ness of American conservatives, this will make you madder.

A nostalgic cowboy-romance in non-fiction form. This is the memoir of a supreme court justice, not about her life, but about her birthplace and her father. Think if Arya Stark wrote a book about Winterfell, but Americanized completely.

Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother write a book that spends few words on politics, however history of American law is in there regardless. At times not so subtle, this book chronicles the lives of those who lived on The Lazy B ranch, and the changing world distantly around them. If you look you can see America evolve in the background, legally, infrastructurally, and ecologically. 

Politics are downplayed to a minimal. Nothing partisan or truly controversial. It is simply inter-mountain ranching of the twentieth century laid bare for a reader to observe. 

 What this book excels at is encircling "slap-in-the-kisser" type situations and giving a woman tools to recognize them. For example, say you are touchy-feely and he hates being touched, your intended affection is met with revulsion. Anyone can see how hurtful such a situation is, and this book finds and tags many such cases that commonly appear in heterosexual relationships; very effectively.

There's a lot of downside though, It isn't suitable to a male reader, it does not address sex and family planning at all, nor does it address when the best relationship might be solitude or alternative. In other words its got great ammo for a limited scope of issues. It cannot stand alone as your only self-help book and absolutely must be supplemented with others.

 

Far more relevant than I had been lead to believe. The pathos is sharp and omni-effective. It is still a classic to be sure, and will grow as one. Mandatory before one can be called literate.

 

Here's a book that is frequently cited as a classic, mandatory for all who aspire to be called literate, and it is. 

Curiously, it has been borrowed from so often since it's publish, that I can't tell if authors like J.K. Rowling borrow from it liberally and intentionally, or unintentionally because so many others have too. It was once far more original than it comes across now. At any rate, you can consider this J.K. Rowling for grownups.

Interesting that there are many literary tricks Eco used that have not been widely mimicked since, and they work. 

Elementary in a good way, this guide is appropriate for supervised children and passionate chefs with access to a thriving forest.

This book teaches well, but it leaves me with a few nitpicks. The images in chapter 3 seem more glam-shots, and there are too few of them. I would like to see mushrooms in various stages of growth and concealment. This goes triple for anything poisonous, where I would want to see diagnostic images. I feel it may be irresponsible to make a mushroom foraging guide that does not include psychedelics. If that's what your looking for give this book a hard pass because it has none. Nor is it comprehensive, so you cant guess a mushroom is psychedelic by process of elimination. You may run into something poisonous.

But this sets out to be a good rated-G guide, and it is. I can't help but believe there are better mushroom foraging guides out there, but this one does teach well. 

 

There's only one thing I grade non-fiction on. Does it teach?

This does. It doesn't teach the most accurate information. It's sensationalist; starting-facts exaggerated enough to cross the line into 'wrong' sometimes. However because the author is not an expert, that not only works, but may in fact be the correct thing for a modern & moral person to do in this day & age. 

At its core, this book is an ammo-can. It may not appeal to a group outside an echo-box, but it excels at arming those in that group for some family debates.

 If I don't give this five stars, then I cannot claim to know what I'm saving the fifth star for. 

The two differences between a good climate change book and an average climate change book are simple; do they address carrying capacity, and do they have some solutions in mind? This one does, and does so elegantly. The solutions are a tad debatable, and that is the only flaw I can find. 

You can hear the authors narration as you read. The book is well paced and does not dwell on the already overexposed symptoms, but calls out the root cause and makes suggestions. It teaches each point well. There is nothing for me to do but recommend.

 This is the most depressing non-fiction I've ever read. Not only does the author somehow manage to die at the end (tholins are carcinogenic), but all throughout he is clearly, simply, and pointedly, laying out all the ecological and economical problems we are currently failing to deal with. He died in '96. Worst death letter ever, only read if you want to mainline shame.

 It wouldn't be that bad of a book if this was the nineteen-fifties. Even then it lacks that certain charm. 

There are two things in science that are difficult, only two. The first is scale, and the second is terminology. This book is first and foremost, guilty of obfuscating its intended information with gratuitous name-dropping and narcissistic terminology. The kind scholars looking to name stuff after themselves are known for. It falls far short of the non-fiction standard set by Andy Knoll (who is among the many names dropped within). Ultimately, it's just bad at teaching, and the thing it should be able to teach is connecting mineralogy to evolution. Only two families of minerals dependent on biological evolution are even mentioned, and neither is elaborated. There is no reason for anyone who is not named within, or obligated to a dropped-name as a pre-doc, should read this, because A Brief History of Earth by Andy Knoll is far better in every way.

This book is the gold standard for all modern scientific non-fiction. The very measuring stick by which all others must be compared.