Latest Read: God: A Human History by Reza Aslan

Loved it. Highly recommend. 

Got to see him at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the 2017/2018 Literary Arts lecture series. He is quite an engaging speaker and his lecture was on this book incidentally.

I was a little surprised by the conclusion drawn by him in the book, which I do not want to give away. I was surprised as he identifies as a Muslim. I actually agree with the conclusion, mostly because I feel that there is no distance between the two extremes of there is no god and all is god. Interestingly he did draw quite a bit from Hariri's Sapiens in this book which pleased me no end as Aslan and Hariri are two authors that I admire very much. 

Latest Read: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Hariri

This book should be mandatory reading!

It is rational and hopeful. It takes the prevalent pessimism of 'the world is falling apart' and smashes it to pieces with reasoning, graphs and history. 

Cannot wait to read the next one. 

Thank you for this book!

Latest Read: Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

A friend recommended this book after she attended the Portland Book Festival this year and heard the author talk about white nationalism. I was immediately interested and at first decided to wait till she had finished reading her copy; then, found that I could not wait and ordered my own copy.

Last year, I had started to read the tweets and posts of some white supremacist women after the Charlottesville rally. Their point of view was alarming and the words that they so casually used startled me - 'white genocide' being one of them.

This is the story of how one of the creators of that point of view and the heir apparent to the WN movement, Derek Black, changed his own point of view and then publicly disavowed his WN beliefs. It is fascinating and hopeful. 

I highly recommend this book. 


Added Nov 20th: . I was listening to Derek Black and Mathew Stevenson on NPR and one thing struck me particularly. Black emphasized that it was not ONLY the friendship and the quiet conversations that changed his mind but also the condemnation from others around him that forced him to rethink his stance. He said that you need both.