Not that you asked, but here’s a list of (most of) the books I’ve read in the past two years. Seems like I average one every 20 days. The best or at least most memorable of the list? In no particular order: One Righteous Man; The Warmth of Other Suns; A Curious Man; Longitude; Jacksonland;…
Read more
I read pretty quickly. I’m always looking for new non-fiction. Particularly history. I’ve found Darkblue714 on twitter has never failed me with good book recommendations. He reminded me to read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Being a best seller in 1994, I don’t know how that bestseller managed…
Read more
Occasionally, really surprisingly rarely, some crusty old cop takes an instant dislike to me because I write and teach about policing even though I wasn’t a cop for long. I’ve never pretended to have as much experience as somebody with 20 years on the job, but I still find something pathetic when a police officer…
Read more
I finished reading Gun Guys, and it’s very good. Here’s Dan Baum talking about his book on the BBC. And here he a more in-depth interview with Dan Baum on KMO’s C-Realm Podcast (which just happens to have been recorded in my basement). [Update: and here is Baum in the New York Times.] Baum makes…
Read more
Gun Guysby Dan Baum. So far so good. Especially if you don’t understand gun guys. Or if you are a gun guy but don’t like the NRA. I’ve written about Baumbefore. Truth be told, I know the guy. Truth be told, sometimes when he’s in town he lets himself into my house and eats my…
Read more
Need some good summer reading? Why not Eliot? It’s fiction set very firmly in Baltimore’s Eastern District. I know those streets well (even if the cameras are new to me). (and I love that he gives a shout out to Larry, the world’s best dispatcher.) I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say…
Read more
The end of the semester means I get caught up on some of my reading. I finished The Autobiography of Ben Frankin (good stuff) and David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” (The footnote on the necessity of formal wear would have been very useful to read before we crossed the…
Read more
There’s a great review of William Stuntz’s book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (which I have but have not read). Stuntz was conservative, just FYI. The review is by Leon Neyfakh in the Boston Globe. Stuntz’s point is that procedural justice is not the same is real justice. And the trend towards the former,…
Read more
You might wonder (I certainly do): Does being on national TV for half an hour and having your book plugged in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers actually help book sales? Not really. Now my sales did triple for that week. Yes they did… but we’re still only talking an additional 25 copies sold.…
Read more
This may not be news to anybody who was old enough to read in 1975, but Joseph Wambaugh writes a good police story. I just finished reading The Choirboys, 38 years after it was written. It’s about a bunch of police in Los Angeles: “They were just policemen. Rather ordinary young guys, I thought” It…
Read more