Category Archives: history

Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow is a must read for anyone who loves the beautiful game. Read reviews from the Staten Island Advance, Publisher’s Weekly and World Soccer Talk.  Listen to a story about the book at NPR.

The Soccer Diaries, by Michael Agovino, is a very readable personal soccer history by a passionate follower of the game. It begins in the Bronx when, as a child, Agovino finds himself captivated by ‘the beautiful game.’  (It’s a lso … Continue reading →

I am fascinated with con men and others who engage in fraud, including art forgery.  In the art world (at least in today’s art world, which is driven in large part by commercial considerations), forgeries raise fundamental questions about the … Continue reading →

Even though I am genuinely interested in understanding what happened in Detroit and why, there a certain level of guilt involved in reading a book like Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a great … Continue reading →

I’d never heard of “platform studies” before, but in “Racing the Beam” (2009) Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost do a good job of telling the history of the Atari 2600 gaming console from the perspective of its game developers. The … Continue reading →

In “The Age of Edison,” author Ernest Freeberg reminds us of what we take for granted every time we flip a light switch or plug in a smartphone. The energy ecosystem that we enjoy today — power plants, transmission lines … Continue reading →

Phil Lapsley’s “Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell” tells the story of the underground “phone phreaking” culture of the pre-PC era.  That group included Steve Wozniak (who wrote the book’s forward … Continue reading →

In The Idea Factory (2012), Jon Gertner tells the story of Bell Labs, the “idea factory” of the title. Bells Labs was established as the research & development arm of AT&T (once known as “Ma Bell”), which was committed to … Continue reading →