denrs

Even though I am genuinely interested in understanding what happened in Detroit and why, there a certain level of guilt involved in reading a book like Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s a great read.  The guy knows how to tell a story.  But it left me with the sad feeling like there is not a lot of good news to be had in places like Detroit, and that I shouldn’t have been so interested in all of that badness. He tells it like it is, and shares his family’s stories as well.  Some of which are pretty heart-wrenching.

Read reviews from the New York Times and Goodreads.

I’d never heard of “platform studies” before, but in “Racing the Beam” (2009) Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost do a good job of telling the history of the Atari 2600 gaming console from the perspective of its game developers. The book got a bit technical at times, but it was not overwhleming for the non-techie.  And now I understand why the 2600 games that were ported from arcade versions looked almost nothing like the originals.

A good read for anyone who spent as much time as I did playing the Atari back in the day.

Read more from the publisher, and reviews from Wired and Retro Thing.

In “The Age of Edison,” author Ernest Freeberg reminds us of what we take for granted every time we flip a light switch or plug in a smartphone. The energy ecosystem that we enjoy today — power plants, transmission lines and network to deliver the current to homes and offices — took many years to evolve.

A very interesting and enlightening read.

Read reviews from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.