Harry Freedman writes excellent popular books on Jewish subjects, and his Shylock's Venice: The Remarkable History of
Venice's Jews is no different. The
Venice Jewish community looms large in the annals of Jewish history; it was surprising
to me that they never numbered more than five thousand. Read this book and learn about their sustained success in a time and place which should have prevented them from becoming a
great Jewish society.
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon is a very engaging build, decentered the male-centric game of biology at every turn. Bohannon creates a compelling counter-narrative of the centrality of the female body in mammals. At times rare time the theories propounded here seem a bit far-fetched, but this does not take from the overall excellent research.
Certainly there is much to be said about Butler's work, but Kindred fell short of my expectations. I tried, and stopped, reading this novel several times, and decided I would read it regardless. It was difficult to understand the mechanism of the time travel (yes, it just happens). That is fine, but reality was never suspended for me. The novel felt like a forced exploration of a topic that is important, and probably hard to write, but in there somewhere. It is just hard to see what Butler was after in this novel.
