book

Book Review: Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen

August 12, 2009

Full disclosure: Manuscript to review graciously provided to me by Dr. Tyler Cowen. I’ve really been struggling with writing this review.  The reason?  The book has gotten tons of positive press from the likes of Amazon, Matthew Yglesias, and Ben Casnocha.   The author of the book, Dr. Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics around my neck of the woods, George Mason University, has a fascinating and successful website, Marginal Revolution, which you should be reading if you’re not already.  ...

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Author Interview: Karan Mahajan (Family Planning)

August 2, 2009

It’s rare to find a really good satire that involves flyovers AND Bryan Adams these days. It’s even harder if, before reading that satire, you have no idea what a flyover actually is.  That’s why I was so exited to find Family Planning, the first novel by witty and insightful flyover expert and author Karan Mahajan. Family Planning is a satire of the Indian bureaucratic political system, large middle-class Indian families, wannabe-rocker teenagers, and soap-opera-watching Indian housewives.  It also tackles ...

4 comments

Book Review: Chasing the Sea by Tom Bissell

July 26, 2009

There are writers.  Then there are Writers.  Tom Bissell is a Writer. Lured by an incredible spurt of nobility (or stupidity), he decided to join the Peace Corps in college and was stationed in Uzbekistan.  You know how I always talk trash about Russia?  Uzbekistan makes Russia look like the Rockville Whole Foods by comparison.  Bissell ended up not finishing his stint, hightailing it out of the country after seven months (out of a two-year assignment.)  But then, five years ...

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Author Interview: Emil Draitser

July 21, 2009

You may remember from some time ago that I read Shush! Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin by Emil Draitser and reviewed it on the site. Recently, I had the chance to interview Dr. Draitser, a Professor of Russian at Hunter College in New York City.  I asked him all the questions I was yearning to know from his book, ranging on topics that both had to do with Russian Jewishness and writing a memoir.  The memoir bit, was, of course, ...

16 comments

Book Review: Surviving by Akira and Ellie Ohiso

July 15, 2009

Full disclosure:  Thank you to Akira Ohiso for kindly providing me with a copy of Surviving to review. You know that saying, “A Jew is whoever wants to call themselves one?”  It’s been true in several cases in my life.  Since I was born to a Russian father and a Russian Jewish mother, there have been times that I’ve vacillated between the two identities.  Heck, I vacillate between borsh and matzah ball soup all the time, just cause I’m a ...

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