Missive #728 Published 6 Jun 2026
In Deeds of Darkness Master Hugh learns that the Bampton coroner, an old friend, has been slain while traveling to Oxford. As he seeks the killer (or killers) he discovers a band of goliards in the area between Oxford and Bampton. But how to apprehend these youths? They have protectors far above Hugh's station. He must deal with the claims of justice on the one hand and the power of great men to protect their henchmen on the other.
Missive #726 Published 3 Jun 2026
In his boldest and most far-reaching book yet, world-famous economist Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun.
Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism.
Missive #725 Published 1 Jun 2026
This is an interesting book but has it's downside. The author is more of a poet that a novelist and uses a lot of poems, or parts of poems, to make his points. That may be fine for those people that understand poetry but I'm not among them. He also uses fairy tales and other mythological tales as a base for the book. These stories I liked and they did help make his points. Recommended but with the qualifier.
Missive #723 Published 30 May 2026
…acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd-friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc.) — the word is well worth hearing. Mostly well-reasoned examination and partial rant, Stephenson's In the Beginning... was the Command Line is a thoughtful, irreverent, hilarious treatise on the cyber-culture past and present; on operating system tyrannies and downloaded popular revolutions; on the Internet, Disney World, Big Bangs, not to mention the meaning of life itself.
Missive #721 Published 28 May 2026
Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online - X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple - this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed 'enshittification'. First, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetized, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders.
Missive #720 Published 27 May 2026
Americas favourite Southern-fried, stand-up comedian and TV sitcom star Jeff Foxworthy brings his humor to the page in this riotous laugh-out-loud book. In No Shirt. No Shoes. No Problem!, Foxworthy examines the hilarity of growing up, love, sex, crazy families, roommates, friendship, mooning, having a crush on your cousin, and the real stories behind many of his favourite Redneck jokes. So get readyYoure in for a helluva good time!
Missive #719 Published 25 May 2026
By Kingsnorth’s lights, the origin of so much of the world’s current crisis is an “ongoing process of mass uprooting,” not just from one’s native place (as with China’s relocation of Tibetans and Uyghurs) but also our cultural uprooting from our traditions and our divorce from nature. Kingsnorth often paints with a brush that may be a few hairs too wide: He condemns science, for instance, as “an ideology posing as a method,” when science is likely the only thing that might rescue the world from the worst consequences of climate change, and his insistent view of cities as doomed and soulless places devoted only to profit too often slides into cant. Still, a little fire and brimstone never hurts an argument against things as they are, and if decrying the “the holy effort to which all human will, skill and energy is now bent: making money” gets a little shrill, his closing invocation of a culture in which “people, place, prayer, the past” are rediscovered resounds nicely.
Missive #717 Published 23 May 2026
Derrick Jensen takes no prisoners in The Culture of Make Believe , his brilliant and eagerly awaited follow-up to his powerful and lyrical A Language Older Than Words . What begins as an exploration of the lines of thought and experience that run between the massive lynchings in early twentieth-century America to today's death squads in South America soon explodes into an examination of the very heart of our civilization.
Missive #715 Published 19 May 2026
I should have known better. I almost never find a New York Times Bestseller to my liking. This book was no exception, the best part was it is reasonable short. In ePub it was 260 pages, or about 56% of the total book pages. The Notes make up 25% of the book which leads me to believe that the author had AI write the first draft. I do not recommend reading it.
Missive #712 Published 14 May 2026
In this major new book, the leading sociologist, historical anthropologist and demographer Emmanuel Todd sheds fresh light on our current predicament by reconstructing the historical dynamics of human societies from the Stone Age to the present. Eschewing the tendency to attribute special causal significance to the economy, Todd develops an anthropological account of history, focusing on the long-term dynamics of family systems and their links to religion and ideology - what he sees as the slow-moving, unconscious level of society, in contrast to the conscious level of the economy and politics. He also analyses the dramatic changes brought about by the spread of education. This enables him to explain the different historical trajectories of the advanced nations and the growing divergence between them, a divergence that can be observed in such phenomena as the rise of the Anglosphere in the modern period, the paradox of a Homo americanus who is both innovative and archaic, the startling electoral success of Donald Trump, the lack of realism in the will to power shown by Germany and China, the emergence of stable authoritarian democracy in Russia, the new introversion of Japan and the recent turbulent developments in Europe, including Brexit.