Sentence of Dave

If you want to read a totally fucked up book about a disgraced knight trying to protect a sanctified child in the bleakest of settings-- pla...

A Head Full of Ghosts , by Paul Tremblay, is a genuinely scary (and very transparent) pastiche of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived...

Robert B. Parker's fourth Spenser novel, Promised Land , is more about relationships than crime, and I should warn you: there's quit...

Mortal Stakes -- the third book in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series-- is about things I love: athletics, the ethics of sports, a confli...

  If you lived through the 1970s, but were too young to remember much of it-- aside from the absurd commercials and network TV-- then this e...

Robert B. Parker's first two Spenser mysteries-- The Godwulf Manuscript  and God Save the Child -- will give you a perspective on crime ...

Another end of the year book list . . . yuck . . . so let me boil it down to something practical. First some boilerplate: I read a bunch of ...

Over the past year, my friend (and fellow philosophy teacher) Stacey did something rather remarkable. I'm going to let her tell her stor...

My take on Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's new book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting...

Someday, I will tell the story of Pip and the Mace (it's set in Daytona, circa 1991 . . . a classic) but while today's post is about...

I often have a sinking sensation--  when I am stuck in traffic or taking a hot shower on a cold day or eating take-out food with disposable ...

Many liberals believe we need the government to protect us from the power of corporations and corporate lobbying, and many conservatives bel...

The new David Sedaris memoir/essay collection  Calypso  is darker and perhaps more candid and sincere than anything he's written previo...

I finished two powerful and poignant books (and thoroughly enjoyed both) on vacation that hammered home the exact reason you go on vacation-...

Our friend, colleague, and book club participant Nicole is heading to California with her husband, to teach in LA, and so for my book club c...

Florida,  Lauren Groff's collection of geographically related short stories, plunges you into the all the dangers the state has to offer...

Most educated people are dimly aware that time is relative-- clocks run slower when gravity is stronger and movement, confounded by the spee...

Michael S, Gazzaniga is one of our most celebrated neuroscientists and his new book certainly demonstrates this; The Consciousness Instinct:...

The setting of  Drown , Juno Diaz's collection of short stories about Dominican immigrants making their way in America in the 1980's...

I am making my way through Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson's book The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life . . . the the...