Books on the Table June 2025

This just in!

  • No Straight Road Takes You There, by Rebecca Solnit. Essays

  • A new History of Stalin’s War, by Sean McMeekin

On the table, top to bottom

  • American Heresy, about the Christian background of the US

  • Crossings, by Ben Goldfarb. A book literally about highway crossings that I got because I thought it was about the highways themselves. Oops!

  • The Heat and the Fury, by Peter Schartzstein, about climate violence

  • So Very Small, by Tom Levenson, about germs, and how their role in disease (they cause it) was discovered.

  • Built from Broken, by Scott Hogan. Physical therapy exercises and how to practice them. I plan to write about this in practiceletter.com

  • Rin Tin Tin, the life and legend by Susan Orlean. Rin Tin Tin, a silent movie start of the 1920s, was born an orphan on a WW 1 battlefield in France.

  • The Information by James Gleick. History of information. I picked this back off the shelf to check out the history of the telegraph, which is poorly covered in another book I’m reading “What Hath God Wrought”.

  • The Undoing of Alejandro Velasco, by Diego Boneta. A murder mystery (I think), set near San Miguel de Allende

  • A Numerate Life, Irreligion, and Beyond Literacy, by John Allen Paulos. Three books on math by a math writer, inspired by a toddler who, visiting for a party, pulled another book by Paulos (Innumaracy) off the shelf, and it looked pretty good

Formerly On the table

  • You Dreamed of Empires, a novel by Alvaro Enrique. Cortes arrives in Tenochtitlan in 1519. DNF too strange

  • The Heat and the Fury: on the frontlines of climate violence by Peter Schwartzstein

  • Third Millenium Thinking – in reserve for when I finish thebullshitmachines.com

  • The verge : Reformation, Renaissance, and forty years that shook the world (2021) By Wyman, Patrick. Definitely on the re-read list! ( Told thru the stories of 9 people

    • Columbus

    • Isabel of Spain

    • Fugger!

    • Aldo Manutius

    • Charles V

    • four others!


Meanwhile:

I posted ‘best of 2024’ reads from last year.

— all photos Copyright © 2022-2024 George D Girton all rights reserved