The Lone Reader turns his gaze to this series of essays and photos describing the fate of the lower Duwamish River, which empties into Elliott Bay in Seattle.
cc Audio:
Early morning on Yaquina Bay, by daveincamas
Inderhalle
Samantha "Sam" Power's memoir of her time as a close confidant to President Barack Obama in the realm of foreign affairs.
Music: String Quartet No. 14 in D minor "Death and the Maiden," by Franz Schubert, courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Reveals the hidden world of "nomads," financially strapped older people that live in vans and cheap RVs, driving where their work takes them.
Music: Darkdance, by Eric Kanold
A manifesto against the belief that older people are weak, drab, depressed, dimwitted clones of one another.
Music: Blues Jam 2011, by Steve Belong
The story of the engineering of California's water supply. California leads the way, so they say. Unfortunately, as regards water, it seems to be leading us down a sinkhole.
Music: Supernal Liquid (Reign Water Remix)
Garry Kasparov, one of the strongest world chess champions of all time, also grew into his prime during the rise of computer chess-playing programs. This is Kasparov's story of the evolution of these programs, including his 1997 loss to the IBM-funded Deep Blue, a dedicated chess-playing supercomputer able to analyze 200 million positions per second.
Music: Petak 13Friday13, by Tomo Sombolac
The Lone Reader follows food guru Michael Pollan's foray into feeding not your body but your head: Reviewing studies in which carefully controlled doses of psychedelics like LSD and Psilocybin are shown effective in treating certain types of mental illness.
Music: Beats, by Crooked Vision
The Lone Reader seeks relief for his tech-driven nightmares through reading a radically different world view: Native American religion, as interpreted by Indian writer Vine Deloria, Jr. It doesn't help.
Stuart Kaminsky's irascible Soviet detective Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov travels to Siberia to find a murderer in a village full of exiles and incompetents.
Music: String Quartet No. 1, Op 7, by Bela Bartok, performed by the Borromeo String Quartet.
The Lone Reader takes aim at Joshua Hunt's scalding critique of the massive influence that the sports apparel manufacturer Nike wields over the University of Oregon and its football program.
Jonathan White's description of and homage to the mysterious phenomena we call tides.
Music: Francesco Iannuzzelli, "Tarantellamodale"
The Lone Reader takes aim at Henry Ford's incredible and futile effort to farm rubber trees and bring Midwestern small-town life to the Amazon jungle. A story of technological hubris and cultural arrogance, it's "Fordlandia," by Greg Grandin.
Music: "Tango," by Mischa Elman, Josef Bonime, I. Albeniz, Elman
Frank Herbert's "Dune": Interstellar intrigue! Psychedelic mind trips, swordplay, and a righteous triumph! It's time to re-read the most enduringly popular science fiction book in history.
Music: "Music for String Instruments, Percussion, and Celesta." Bela Bartok. Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, Harold Byrns, conductor. Recorded 1949.
Cameron Johnson is the Lone Reader. Kranz's book is the inside story of the geek squad that made the space program possible: Mission Control.
Music: "Beats," by Crooked Vision.
The Lone Reader holds forth on David Buerge's magisterial take on the life and significance of Chief Seattle.
Music: Wind Quintet op. 43, by Carl Nielsen, performed by James Galway and the Carion Quintet.
The Lone Reader talks about Dr. Coll Thrush's book Native Seattle, which credits native peoples' contributions to early Seattle. The book's second edition was published in 2017.
Music is "Klincek stojo pod oblokom," by Tomo Sombolac.
The Lone Reader previews this Harvard Law professor's take on the two-edged constitutional tool called "impeachment."
Music: The Firebird Suite, by Igor Stravinsky
The Lone Reader previews this Harvard Law professor's take on the two-edged constitutional tool called "impeachment."
Music: The Firebird Suite, by Igor Stravinsky
The Lone Reader looks at Thi Bui's haunting graphic memoir of the Vietnam War and its enduring scars.
Music: Petits planets: Hanoi Funeral
The Lone Reader homes in on naturalist Sy Montgomery's paen to the giant pacific octopus, Soul of an Octopus.
Music: Beethoven, Ludwig van Symphony No. 6 in F Major "Pastoral," Skidmore College Orchestra.
The story of Laika, the Moscow mongrel turned cosmonaut, who was the first creature to orbit the earth.
Music: Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The Lone Reader takes aim at Robert E. Ficken's Washington Territory: the farce and fury, fields and forests, mud and mania as wild Washington passes the veil into statehood.
Music: "Missouri Waltz"
An audio review of Montana Women Homesteaders, edited by Sarah Carter, which tells the tragic story of the women that homesteaded alone in the desert conditions of early twentieth century Eastern Montana.
The Lone Reader examines Paul Taylor's The Next America, which lays bare the ineluctable calculus of near-future retirements funded by a shrinking workforce.
The Lone Reader draws a bead on Mary Shelley's classic monster novel, seen by many as the first science fiction work.
Music: "Under the Porcelain," by Good Noise Bad Noise vs Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel.