Lucas Blogs About Books

True story, the Krackle effect actually emanated from Jack Kirby's person during moments of inspiration. Also, any statement immediately following or preceding the phrase "true story" is a lie. So, what's this book's deal? Well, as you might guess from the title: Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics is a comic book biography of Jack Kirby (né Jacob Kurtzberg) one of the most influential comic book artists of the Twentieth (or any other) Century. It's written and drawn by Tom Scioli. You may recall that in the past I have expressed enthusiasm for comic books based on characters created by or evoking the style of Jack Kirby. You may have mentioned him a few times, yes. Heck yes, I have! Even before I knew who he was I was a fan of his creations. I loved the X-Men, Iron Man, and Fantastic 4 cartoons in the 90s. I'll give you the X-Men but the Iron Man and FF cartoons in the 90s sucked. I don't deny that, but I loved them. I especially lo...

Pretty sure something is getting DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC on this cover. So, what's this book's deal? Well, the deal with Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left  is that it's a pamphlet by Rutgers University Philosophy professor Ben Burgis. And the deal of said pamphlet is . . .  That philosophy and logic should not be thought of as primarily tools of the political Right. You see, an extremely online person might be aware of a certain political commentator ( seen here demonstrating his ignorance of the adversarial interview technique and his interlocutor's political leanings ) who proclaims that, "Facts don't care about your feelings." A statement which, while true, tells you more about the speaker (it's Ben Shapiro, I don't know why I didn't just say his name outright, there's a cartoon of him being shushed by David Hume on the cover) than anything else. Less online people are probably at least tangentially aware of ...

Drunken monkeys? Tell me more. So, what's this book's deal? Well, do you remember Robert Evans from cracked.com ? He's the guy who did stuff like go into active war zones to talk to people about their experiences ? Yes, yes he did. He's not with Cracked anymore, but when he was he wrote a book called A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization. How would you describe the genre? Oh, um, I guess this is loosely, a popular science book, although it does also have a lot of stuff about history and sociology, so maybe it's more of a hodgepodge. It's maybe more of a collection of essays exploring various things that are considered vices in modern society: drugs, prostitution, and being an asshole. It doesn't necessarily advocate for or against any of those things, Evans is more interested in exploring the ways in which these behaviors (and society's reaction to them) has shaped our modern world. He also includes instructions fo...

This book cover brought to you by Wes Anderson. So, what's this book's deal? Well, since you asked, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution examines experiments in evolutionary biology meant to test whether evolution is the random, non-repeatable result of every selection pressure that's ever acted upon a species or whether it is limited to the possibilities present in an organism's genome, meaning it can be predicted and will inevitably give rise to to the same convergent phenotypes. You're not expecting me to roll out the "English, please," cliche, are you? No. Anyway, this is a popular science book about evolutionary biology by Jonathan B. Losos, a herpetologist who has conducted evolutionary studies on anole lizards in the Caribbean. Specifically, to test the hypothesis that ground-based predation pressure will lead to natural selection for shorter legs in order for increased climbing stability on thin branches (I m...

Huh, it's like a textbook about everything for grown-ups who aren't enrolled in a class. So, what's this book's deal? You remember those books from when you were a kid that explain how things work? Of course. So, this book is kinda like that but for grown-ups. It's sort of a wide-ranging guide to the basics of science, technology, art, and philosophy (various philosophical schools are pithily described by their attitudes toward high fives). Oh, and it's also a work of science-fiction. So it's non-fiction and science fiction? Yeah. The subtitle is "A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler." The author,  Ryan North , has an introductory note explaining that he found the text embedded in Pre-Cambrian rock, and that it appears to have been written by one Ryan North, a technical writer from a different timestream. The text itself claims to be a repair manual for an FC3000™rental time machine. Only the thing is, when you open up the s...

Game recognizes game, as the young people say. Excellent face concealment! As you may have guessed from previous blog entries, my fiction reading habits tend toward genre and escapist material. However, as a non-fiction reader, these days I find myself more inclined to tackle subjects that are inescapably tied to the problems of the real world. So let's talk about Masha Gessen's The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia . Before reading this book, I knew Gessen mainly from her appearances on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee . So all I really knew was that she was a sharp-witted Russian journalist and activist who had fled the country. Having read the book, I now know that she is both a skilled prose writer and an excellent journalist. However, as the book is not about her, I had to do some quick googling to obtain a little biographical info for this review. Per Wikipedia: Masha Gessen was born into a Jewish family in the Soviet Union in 1967, but lived i...