Category Archives: Books

One-A-Day: Norman Rush, Mating

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Timothy Burke

This is an essay on Norman Rush’s Mating that I wrote up for the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors blog, Critical Mass.

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Barbarians at the Gate

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I’m not the only one to take note of the New York Times‘ baffling decision to review Lee Siegel’s new anti-Internet broadside not once, but twice. Both times, moreover, the assignment was given to reviewers who were clearly predisposed to … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Books, Information Technology and Information Literacy | 5 Comments

One-A-Day: David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous

Posted on January 31, 2008 by Timothy Burke

Cory Doctorow makes a lot of sales to me through his recommendations on Boing Boing. He tends to have an eye for things that I at least think I’m interested in. Sometimes, though, I feel a bit let down, feeling … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Miscellany, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 6 Comments

One-A-Day, David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin, eds., History of Central Africa Volume 1

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Timothy Burke

Students looking at the piles of books strewn over my desk, my windowsill, my bookshelves and my floor sometimes understate things a bit and say, “You have a lot of books”. (One reason I don’t really want to move again, … Continue reading →

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One-A-Day: Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays in Algorithimic Culture

Posted on January 24, 2008 by Timothy Burke

Remember: these aren’t reviews. If I were reviewing Galloway’s Gaming, I’d spend a long while talking about why I like much of it, and think it works very well alongside similar works of critical theory applied to games and digital … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Games and Gaming, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 7 Comments

One-A-Day, Tsuneo Yoshikuni, African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Social History of Harare Before 1925

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I have a tendency to oversell the value of a generalist approach to academic work, partly to try and defend my own practices and interests. I genuinely think that many specialist monographs fail to make a case for their importance, … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 10 Comments

One-A-Day: John Wright, Fugitives of Chaos

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I feel like finding new authors to like in genre fiction can be quite difficult. You know who you already like, but the marketing of work by new authors often makes them seem either as if they’re derivative of someone … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 1 Comment

One-A-Day: Simon Winder, The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey Into the Disturbing World of James Bond

Posted on January 14, 2008 by Timothy Burke

Quite often, I read a book and think to myself that I need to find a class where I can teach the book. Sometimes that’s easy: there’s quite a range of work I can throw into my class on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 1 Comment

One-A-Day: John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History

Posted on January 9, 2008 by Timothy Burke

My next project, if I can put it together, is going to focus on Africa as a whole during the Cold War. So I’ve been diving into the general historiography of the Cold War as much as I can manage … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 12 Comments

One-a-Day: Bjorn Lomborg, Cool It

Posted on January 4, 2008 by Timothy Burke

I really want to like Lomborg’s work more than I do. I’m completely open to and interested in an argument that a smart cost-benefit analysis of conventional environmentalist policy recommendations suggests that money is best spent on completely different kinds … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments