Book Review:  The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee; Part One

Posted on January 24, 2026 by John Walters

Shortly after I began the multifarious medical appointments related to my own cancerous condition, I reserved a book from the library called The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It had been on my radar since it won the Pulitzer Prize over a decade ago, but until I became personally involved, I could never summon the inspiration to read a book about the history of cancer. Now, though, it seemed appropriate to conduct some research to discover what exactly I was dealing with. It is very well-written and well-researched and full of fascinating insight. For instance, there is a description of cancer in a papyrus record from 2500 BC, but for the most part the disease is absent from ancient medical literature. One of the main reasons, as Mukherjee tells it, is that “cancer is an age-related disease – sometimes exponentially so” and “in most ancient societies, people didn’t live long enough to get cancer.” He goes on to point out that “nineteenth-century doctors often linked cancer to civilization,” but “civilization did not cause cancer, but by extending human life spans – civilization unveiled it.”

Of course not all cancer is age-related; the author documents the traumatic struggle of attempting to find a cure for childhood leukemia. He moves from one iteration of cancer to the next, sharing how researchers devoted their lives to discover surgical, radiological, or chemical solutions to this deadly malady. Often it appeared that early pioneers of cancer took one step forward and two steps backward, but they persevered despite innumerable setbacks.

In the midst of reading this tragic epic, I wondered what the hell I was doing. Was it wrong to immerse myself in cancer stories? It was a brilliant book but it was dragging me down. Maybe instead I should be reading something that could get my mind off all of this: perhaps some science fiction or fantasy. Except that I shouldn’t run when I confronted the monster, when I realized it was much more horrible than I had imagined. Instead, I should face it head on. I had been flippant about it all: my diagnosis, the biopsies, and even the initial surgery. As I read on in this book, though, I realized I faced a profound and lengthy and all-absorbing battle – a battle that very possibly might be to the death. Wasn’t it better to know the monster that already had me in its claws? And rather than cower to spit in its face? Why back down? To hell with fear. And to hell with cancer. Getting to know your enemy – that’s the key.

*     *     *

Mukherjee devotes a lengthy section in the middle of the book to the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Long before mandatory warnings appeared on cigarette packages, scientists were aware that tobacco was a carcinogenic agent and was directly responsible for the explosive rates of lung cancer among smokers. However, the tobacco companies were extremely powerful and replete with well-paid politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists eager to do their bidding. In the years following the Second World War, cigarette smoking was well-nigh ubiquitous among men, and sales campaigns specifically targeted women so as to bring them into the deadly fold as well. It wasn’t until the mid-sixties that the government began to sit up and take notice: Americans were dying of lung cancer at ever-increasing rates, and the tobacco industry was clearly at fault. At first, the warnings on packages were watered down: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. Later, they became more direct.

Reading about the battle to publicize the toxic effect of cigarettes reminded me of how different things were in my youth. You could smoke anywhere: in restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, department stores, buses, trains, and even airplanes. Commercials saturated airtime on radios, television, and movie theaters; men were reminded of how macho and attractive to women they would be if they smoked, and women received messages of empowerment, freedom, and joy. And by the time I personally witnessed these commercials in the late fifties and sixties, the manufacturers knew that their products were deadly and they were killing their customers. They just didn’t care. The money was too good.

I first became hooked on smoking as a young teenager during an excursion for Seattle Times newspaper deliverers. The company booked a passenger liner and took us all on a cruise from Seattle to Victoria B.C. in Canada. On the voyage, the hallways and common areas were thick with smoke. Almost everyone was sitting around smoking and playing poker. The second-hand smoke was murderous enough, but I couldn’t risk ostracism and so I tried a cigarette. And then another. And another. It took just that one boat trip to get me hooked. In the days following, after I got home, I would daydream about living in a mansion with nearby warehouses stuffed with cartons of cigarettes. I soon discovered that the regular smokers, during breaks from high school, would walk up a nearby hill and light up, so I joined them as often as I could.

As a young man I tried to quit smoking at least four times, but always went back to it. At the start of my epic hitchhiking journey from Seattle to Goa, India, in the middle of winter in the 1970s, I hadn’t been smoking for months, but I made a conscious decision to start again because I thought that it might help me get through the hardships I knew were ahead. When I reached Goa, though, and I was about to join a commune of fellow travelers, I knew that they didn’t allow smoking. I made the decision to stop cold turkey as I was walking along the path towards the house and since then, almost five decades ago, I’ve never touched another cigarette. I dodged a bullet there. Mukherjee clarifies that there is no safe way to smoke; a cigarette habit is basically slow suicide. The filters that tobacco companies attached to their products, beginning in the fifties, are ineffective in reducing risk; their advantage, for the tobacco companies, is in the misconception of safety, in the illusion that because of them the toxic product is somehow safer. But it’s not true.

This tale of humans deliberately poisoning their fellow humans, their only motivation being the avaricious accumulation of wealth, is a true-life horror story. I can’t even imagine the mindset. Who would deliberately hurtle a fellow human into the ravenous maw of the cancer beast?

(To be continued)

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Book Review:  Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell

Posted on January 17, 2026 by John Walters

This book is a real eye-opener. It reveals that the deliberate dumbing down for profit that Cory Doctorow, in referencing the tech industry, calls enshittification (look it up; it’s even in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary) has hit numerous other facets of American industry and economy as well. In many cases, the culprit is private equity. Greenwell explains in the introduction that “private equity at large exists solely to make money for shareholders, no matter what that means for the companies it owns.” She explains “how private equity reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.” To accomplish this, she delves into the lives of four people whose lives were upended by the predatory rapacity of private equity as gigantic multi-billion dollar firms took over their businesses: “a retail chain, a small-town hospital, a newspaper company, and an apartment complex.”

In getting up close and personal, Greenwell allows us to viscerally experience the horrors as private equity purchases businesses and then obliterates them to create wealth for their shareholders. The pattern is similar across industries. Private equity firms first purchase businesses, or preferably blocks of businesses, mainly through massive loans, which they then unload on the businesses they are buying, putting them so deeply in debt that they have almost no hope of recovering. On top of the loan payments they impose substantial management fees and charge rent for the properties the businesses used to own outright – or often they sell the real estate, forcing the businesses to downsize and rent smaller spaces. The equity firms also institute cost-saving measures such as cutting staff and raising prices. They don’t give a damn about the businesses themselves or the communities they serve; in fact, most of the equity firms are in offices thousands of miles away.

To demonstrate the impact of such rapaciousness in the retail sector, the example is Toys R Us, a now defunct chain that was once a beloved institution nationwide. When private equity got its claws into it, Toys R Us and its offshoot Babies R Us didn’t stand a chance. No effort was made to upgrade the stores or create an online presence; instead, stores were shuttered and sold, employees were fired without severance, and generations of families who valued Toys R Us were left in the lurch. All so that rich investors could get even richer.

Have you ever wondered why healthcare has gotten so unreliable and expensive? To illustrate how private equity works in the healthcare industry, Greenwell uses the example of a hospital in a rural area of Wyoming. It was once a thriving medical center on which the small town of Riverton depended, but when private equity seized it, services were cut and staff severely reduced until people had to travel long distances to other locations to get the care they needed.

Journalism is another area that has become vulnerable to the ravages of private equity. Once newspapers are bought up, staff is slashed and local news is ignored in favor of generic national newsfeeds. And private equity has also gone after rental housing. After apartments and other facilities are acquired, rents skyrocket and maintenance becomes all but nonexistent.

Greenwell explains: “When we talk about how private equity affects communities, we’re really talking about how it affects people, the individuals who have no choice but to rely on firms for their jobs, their homes, their essential services.” That’s why it’s so powerful when she focuses on those whose lives are devastated by private equity: a Toys R Us employee, a small town doctor, a dedicated journalist, and a mother who becomes an activist when her family’s home, an apartment in a huge private equity-owned complex, begins to fall apart because of management neglect.

As I read Bad Company, I realized that its examples are only the tip of the iceberg. In modern-day America, the divide between the rich and poor gets ever wider, largely through the avariciousness of the wealthy predators that Greenwell exposes. She proposes possible solutions, but they are long shots, as even numerous politicians, who are supposed to be protecting the people, have gotten into the private equity game. Still, it is worthwhile to be aware of these things, and Greenwell does a great job of proving her points. Highly recommended.

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Book Review:  The Uncool: A Memoir by Cameron Crowe

Posted on January 10, 2026 by John Walters

The Uncool provides a stark example of the adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover – because it has got one of the worst covers I have seen in years. It is bright red with a small photo of a young Cameron Crowe, long hair flowing down on either side of his face, sticking out his big fat tongue at his readers. Why couldn’t you give us a smile instead, Cameron? Whenever I set the book down, I carefully place it with the back side up so I don’t have to look at that bloated tongue. And the irony is that the book itself does not carry that deprecating tone at all. It is smart, funny, friendly, and inviting. Crowe lets us into the extraordinary world of his youth with open mind and open heart.

The book mainly focuses on Crowe’s early years as a music reporter for rock magazines, especially the head of the pack, Rolling Stone. Despite the strong desire of his parents that he should enter law school and become a lawyer, music was Crowe’s true love, and at the age of fifteen he began interviewing rock stars and publishing reviews and interviews in a variety of magazines. His naiveté and sincerity appealed to normally reticent rock stars, which allowed him to befriend and interview celebrities such as the Allman Brothers, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Garcia, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, the Who, and many others. He would go on tours with them and sometimes live with them for weeks, immersing himself deeply into their lifestyles (although as a young minor avoiding the ubiquitous drugs and alcohol). As the famous people he hung out with opened up and shared personal secrets, Crowe’s star as a journalist rose until he was receiving assignments for cover stories for Rolling Stone and other prestigious magazines.

Crowe eventually branched out into writing and directing movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, and, of course, the autobiographical Almost Famous, for which he won an Academy Award for best original screenplay. In The Uncool he alludes to Almost Famous here and there because it is based on his early adventures pursuing interviews with rock stars. However, I would have liked him to delve much more deeply into his film work, which he mentions only in passing near the end of the book. Maybe he’s planning a sequel. If so, I’m in.

The fact is that despite the horrendous cover, this book is a hell of a lot of fun. Crowe is close enough to my age to be a contemporary. I grew up in the era when all these great musicians were making their marks on the world. I listened to their music on the radio and bought their albums. It’s fascinating to accompany Crowe behind the scenes and find out what all these performers were like offstage. Many of them were reserved, uncommunicative, and suspicious, living in isolated bubbles containing drugs, drink, groupies, and parties, and often feeling lonely in spite of it all. Others were light, carefree, friendly, and magnanimous, content to kick back and ride the wave of fame for as long as it lasted. Because Crowe had a talent for gaining their trust, which mainly consisted of his sincere infatuation with and appreciation of their music, his behind-the-scenes reportage consists of genuine revelations that are a delight to read.

So get past that dreadful cover, folks, so that you might be able to delve deeply into the riches within. This is a great book full of exciting wonders. And when you’ve finished reading it, watch or re-watch Crowe’s cinematic masterpiece Almost Famous.

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Another Journey

Posted on January 3, 2026 by John Walters

Regardless of outward circumstances, whether constantly traveling or remaining stationary for a prolonged amount of time, a perennial nomad recognizes the transitory nature of existence and acknowledges that life is a continually evolving series of adventures. My latest journey does not involve a shift in physical location but rather a plunge into another facet of reality: the world of the unwell. Mortality is hardwired into all of our lives, but when a potentially lethal disease rises up and attacks like an evil monster, what has been relegated to an abstraction takes on deadly corporeality.

I was first diagnosed as having early-stage prostate cancer back in 2017. At that time, it was advancing so slowly that no treatment was advised; instead, it would be monitored regularly through blood tests. My doctor assured me that many men get prostate cancer as they age, and most die with it rather than of it. The “wait and see” attitude was fine by me; I was busy with freelance work and raising my sons.

A few months ago, though, during a routine visit, my primary care doctor detected signs of another unrelated type of cancer erupting within my body. She was alarmed enough to insist on immediate tests. Examinations and a biopsy confirmed the presence of a malignant tumor, which was successfully removed through surgery. However, to minimize the possibility of reoccurrence or the cancer metastasizing and spreading elsewhere, follow-up radiation therapy and medication is necessary. Around the same time, another doctor dealing with my prostate cancer insisted that I was overdue for a biopsy.

I find myself increasingly caught in a quicksand of medical appointments, examinations, biopsies, and procedures. There seems to be no end to them. As Red Skull declares of the Hydra warriors in the Marvel movies, “Strike down one and two more will take their place.” That’s how it is with my doctor visits lately. One leads to more, and to more, and to more. I could have remained clandestine about this development in my life, I could have kept it to myself, but this would not be in keeping with my predilections as a writer. In fact, this is my latest adventure, my most recent journey. It is ongoing and extremely intense, and it is very possible, even likely, that I will not make it out of this one alive. This is not necessarily a cause for sorrow and lamentation; after all, the mortality rate for every member of humankind is one hundred percent.

Why do I share this with you, the readers of my weekly columns? Because as a perennial nomad, this is my latest journey, and I invite you to join me as I wander into the wilderness of mortality. All my posts will not be cancer-related; I will continue to write about travel, about museums and other local fascinations, and about books I am reading. However, sometimes I will also include observations from the realm of the unwell.

And I have another reason for sharing this. All of my writings on my website/blog, on Substack, and on Patreon have been freely available to all, and they will continue to be. Donations are optional. However, my medical appointments take up significant amounts of my time, which leaves me less time for the freelance work I undertake to be able to survive financially. If you value my weekly words, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. This is possible on any of the platforms, but the most versatile option is on Patreon.

Having shared my request, let me reassure you that whether you are able to assist financially or not, I welcome you to join me as we together explore the multifarious fascinating grand roads of the universe.

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Book Review:  Joyride: A Memoir by Susan Orlean

Posted on December 27, 2025 by John Walters

To many people, Susan Orlean is a character played by Meryl Streep in the film Adaptation, which is based on Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief. Others know her for her decades-long work as a staff writer for the New Yorker. Not long ago, I read and enjoyed The Library Book; in it, Orlean tells of the devastating fire that destroyed much of the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986, and then launches into a fascinating multifaceted true tale of libraries in general.

Joyride is a celebration of Orlean’s lifelong love of writing. Her writing career is the core of the book, compared to which the details of her personal life comprise a sort of scaffolding set up to support the writing adventures. Early on she states: “I write because I think it’s important. There are a million different kinds of writing, but this belief applies to all of them. Writing in all its forms is the essence of human interaction.” And a little further on, she clarifies that “I can respond to the question of why I write with a very simple answer: I write because I must.” This is similar to my own statement that I have repeated many times: I write because I can’t not write. The story of Orlean’s life is the story of her obsession with writing. That’s what drew me into this book and kept me enthralled throughout it. I soon realized that there were so many marvelous quotes on writing that there was no way I could include more than a smattering of them in this review. All you writers out there: read Joyride and you’ll recognize a kindred spirit.

That’s not to say that Orlean’s writing career is similar to mine or anyone else’s. She has great talent, true, but there are many other writers who also have great talent but have not had the opportunities or sheer luck that Orlean has enjoyed. When she was starting out, she advanced rapidly from small magazines to midsized magazines to journalistic giants such as the New Yorker. She’s had expense accounts that have enabled her to journey all over the world in pursuit of unique and often quirky stories. But expense accounts and high salaries and advances and royalties are not what make real writers. Those are just the peripheral tools, the fallout, the residue of the writing experience. I really don’t care about the glamorous aspects of working for a major magazine: interviewing and hobnobbing with celebrities and so on. That’s just bells and whistles. If that was the main focus of this book I would have tossed it aside early on. What redeems it is Orlean’s commitment to her work, to her art. It is obvious that she would continue to write even if she were relegated to a tent on a street corner. In fact, it is clear that what gives her writing flare and immediacy and grit and substance is her willingness to dive into extraordinary situations in pursuit of a story’s essence.

Apart from Joyride, Orlean has spent her career digging deep into the lives of others, diminishing her own presence so that the people and cultures she writes about can shine; it is exhilarating, though, to read of her stepping into the spotlight as she shares the process of writing her most renowned stories and books. Henry Miller wrote that “writing is a voyage of discovery,” and that’s the approach Orlean takes as she goes from an initial interest in a subject to diving in and researching and writing about it in all of its ramifications. At least for me, that’s what bursts through in Joyride more than anything: the sheer exuberance of the creative process.

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Strange Christmases – Part Two: Penang, Malaysia

Posted on December 20, 2025 by John Walters

Here’s a holiday reprint for your enjoyment and edification!

On one of the strangest Christmases I have ever spent, when I was all alone on the island of Penang in Malaysia, I received an unusual but intensely valuable gift: a clue that led me toward my destiny.

This was during the period of my life when I lived and traveled overseas for thirty-five years. I had been living in Nepal, had met a woman from New Zealand, and had gone with her to her home country. When we broke up, I flew back to my home town of Seattle via Los Angeles (where I briefly visited another ex-girlfriend). After an interlude with my family in Seattle and a brief flurry of work to raise landing funds, I was ready to be off again. My mother worked for Pan Am Airways and was able to obtain tickets for me at ten percent of cost, so I flew from Seattle to San Francisco to Hong Kong to Jakarta. In Indonesia I joined an Australian friend on a road trip across the island of Java to Bali. When I returned to Jakarta, I flew to Singapore, and after spending a few days in that idiosyncratic city-state I took a train to Bangkok. There I moved into a communal home with other young travelers and taught private English lessons.

All went well until I’d been there almost a month and my visa was about to expire. To renew it I had to take a train ride to the Malaysian border and back. I was making enough money for self-support but I couldn’t afford the visa trip. What to do?

The answer came out of the blue. A Thai film production was looking for foreign extras to appear in a Thai-language movie. Since one of my roommates knew someone on the crew, she managed to get several of us hired. All we had to do was dress up like hippies and walk in a bedraggled bunch through a section of the Bangkok Airport concourse, where we would appear as background color behind the main Thai actors. For that brief appearance, the other foreign extras and I were not only taken to a fine restaurant and treated to normally-unaffordable cuisine, but also paid enough to cover my round-trip train ticket to Penang and back with enough left over for food and a few nights at a hotel.

And here’s the holiday tie-in: my visa trip happened to take place over Christmas. There was nothing I could do about it. If I waited to celebrate the holiday with my friends, I wouldn’t make it out of the country in time and would risk getting penalized for overstaying my visa.

So it was that on Christmas day I sat at an outdoor cafe in George Town, Penang, perusing an English-language newspaper travel supplement that someone had left at the table. And in it, there were two human-interest articles about India. I had already spent a few years altogether on the Indian Subcontinent, in India and Nepal and Sri Lanka, and I loved it. It was one of my most favorite places on Earth, and if it had not been for the ubiquitous visa vicissitudes, I might have been there yet. One of the articles, I recall, was about an isolated island in the Andaman cluster where primitive tribes were protected by law from civilization. I forget the details of the other article. The point is that they got me thinking about India and how much I missed it. I decided then and there that when I got back to Bangkok I would somehow raise the money to return. As I made the decision, I burst into tears.

Destiny indeed. For on that next visit to the Subcontinent, I would eventually meet the Greek woman who would become my wife and the mother of my five children. All in all, at that cafe in Penang on Christmas Day, I made one of the best decisions of my life.

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Strange Christmases – Part One: Goa, India

Posted on December 13, 2025 by John Walters

Here’s a holiday reprint for your enjoyment and edification!

As we enter into the winter holiday season, I find myself looking back to some of the unusual places where I have spent past Christmases. The first that comes to mind is Goa, India, in the mid-1970s. I had spent the summer hitchhiking around Europe. As I was enjoying Greece late in August, wondering what I should do next, knowing that the hot weather would soon wane, I began to hear of other young budget travelers heading across the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent. This was in the days when the Overland Trail, also known as the Hippie Trail, was still open, and you could travel by hitchhiking or on cheap public transportation across Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan all the way to India and beyond.

The idea deeply appealed to me. I had come this far partially due to the example of literary progenitors such as Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller. They had got as far as Europe, but if I struck out farther east, I’d be accomplishing something that even they had never attempted. The problem was that I’d almost run out of money. So I first hitchhiked back to a friend’s place in Holland, where I worked in factories for a couple of weeks and saved up two hundred dollars. I then set out on my journey through Holland, Germany, Austria, and communist Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to the Turkish border. I managed to hitchhike with European truckers all the way to Kandahar in Afghanistan before I switched to buses and trains. By the time I made it to Bombay (what Mumbai in India was then known as) I had heard from numerous travelers that they were headed for Goa to celebrate Christmas. Goa was on the coast south of Bombay, and because it had been a Portuguese colony, there was still a strong Catholic influence.

And so, as Christmas approached, I found myself in a warm tropical paradise with incomparable sand beaches, coconut palms lining the shores, unimaginably beautiful sunsets, and friendly welcoming people. Oh, and quite a few of the foreign women would sunbathe in the nude, oblivious to the crowds of Goans who would observe them from polite distances. It wasn’t exactly the white Christmas that Bing Crosby sings about, unless you count the color of the sand on the beaches, but it bustled with activity and its own version of holiday cheer. The accommodations and food were dirt cheap, and many Goans were eager to extend hospitality to the foreigners who had come for the season.

All went well for several days. However, it was on Christmas morning, as I recall, that I was strolling from the room in a thatched hut I shared with several other foreigners to the seashore when I passed a shack with a makeshift kitchen where a Goan was preparing and selling masala dosa. These are folded-over pancakes with potato curry inside, and when they are prepared properly, as these were, they are delicious. I had three, and then continued on my way to the beach. I did not, however, account for the cook’s lack of sanitary precautions. Later in the day, I began to feel uneasy, and not long afterwards, my stomach erupted in pain. For the next three days I lay on my bed too weak to move, except to make frequent trips to the outhouse, where the resident pig waited underneath to noisily consume whatever I discharged. Finally one of my roommates called an Indian doctor, who stabbed me in the ass with a needle-full of what I presumed was penicillin. I was soon able to travel again, although my stomach was tender for several days.

All in all, despite the malady, my Christmas in Goa was a wonderful interlude. After all, as a budget traveler on the Subcontinent I expected to catch some sort of illness now and again. It was one of the prices I paid for a glorious adventure, and it was well worth it.

I’m a professional writer; I make my living by my words.  I’m happy to share these essays with you, but at the same time, financial support makes the words possible.  If you’d like to become a patron of the arts and support my work, buy a few of my available books or available stories. To send a one-time or recurring donation, click here. You can also donate via my Patreon account. Thanks!

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Book Review:  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Posted on December 6, 2025 by John Walters

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a children’s book, isn’t it? Then how came I to review it on this blog, which is devoted to literary works for adults? Not by the usual pathways, I assure you. In fact, renewed interest in Alice’s adventures was ignited in me by means of the song “White Rabbit,” which is written by Grace Slick and performed by her and the rock group Jefferson Airplane. It came about because the phrase “feed your head,” which is the song’s climax, came to me as I was writing about a perennial nomad staying on the move mentally, if not physically, by visiting local museums and reading lots of books. A bit of online research turned up a recent article in which Grace Slick explains that though the song definitely deals with the experience of taking psychedelics, “feed your head” also refers to the act of reading.

In my younger years, I took a variety of types of psychedelics in a number of places around the world, the most notable being an LSD trip in which a companion and I wandered up into the Himalayan foothills surrounding Kathmandu, Nepal. I have also done extensive reading in the science fiction and fantasy genres. My objective in reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was to find out if it was really written for children or if it has nuances that will absorb the attention of adults as well. I wanted to know what Carroll really had in mind when he wrote it.

A brief online perusal of several articles, including one by the BBC News, seems to indicate that there is no evidence that Carroll used drugs, even though opium, laudanum, and other now-forbidden substances were legal back then. As any writer will tell you, though, you don’t need drugs to take off on incredible flights of fancy. By all accounts, Carroll wrote the book simply as an entertainment. However, when I read it I realized that it contains many more nuances and complexities than are usually found in children’s tales. Carroll was a mathematician, and there is a fair amount of number play in the text. There is also pun after pun after pun, some of which children would be oblivious to, and a lot of word-play, such as the famous example: “Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). There are perplexing poems and idiosyncratic characters such as talking animals, an animate deck of cards, and a Queen of Hearts with a penchant for decapitating anyone who annoys her. Alice traverses this alternate universe with courtesy, intelligence, equanimity, and courage.

In short, I greatly enjoyed reading about Alice’s adventures. If the book was originally intended for children, I think that Carroll’s wit and intelligence and acumen and gift for storytelling made it so much more. Many modern fantasies have turned to repetitious epic patterns that have rendered them somewhat cliché, whereas Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, although published way back in 1865, to me was like a breath of literary fresh air. As for the psychedelic references, those seem to have been tacked on (brilliantly, I might add, in the case of “White Rabbit”) by the counterculture of the 1960s. In the book, unlike in the song, the dormouse does not say “Feed your head.” In fact, the dormouse is the epitome of laziness, always falling asleep no matter what is going on around. (Come to think of it, that’s how a lot of people react to drug intake too.)

In conclusion, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a dazzling, ingenious, well-written, and entertaining book. Its effectiveness does not rely on supposed hidden allusions. It is brilliant enough on its own.

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Book Review:  Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow

Posted on November 29, 2025 by John Walters

Lest anyone should conclude that the title of this book is merely a blatant foul-mouthed outcry for reader attention, Doctorow states in the acknowledgement section that “in late 2023, the American Dialect Society named enshittification their Word of the Year.” He then goes on to list some of the festivals, podcasts, and talk shows at which he was subsequently asked to speak on the topic. Doctorow, besides being a popular science fiction writer, is also a leading tech activist. Enshittification builds on ideas he proposed in his recent book The Internet Con, but ultimately goes far beyond it. In short, the largest internet companies, as well as auto manufacturers and many others, have ruthlessly eliminated competition to establish monopolies and cartels that they rule over unopposed, and they have taken advantage of their powerful positions to invade your privacy and degrade the quality of their products so that they might squeeze you for more and more profits.

To make the situation clear, Doctorow begins with a series of chapters detailing case studies of some of the worst offenders: Facebook, Amazon, iPhone, and Twitter. These examples are all horror stories of extreme and deliberate enshittification – in other words, reducing value to customers and businesses. He then delves into an equally horrific explanation (which he calls “the epidemiology”) of how things got this bad. As he convincingly explains: “All our tech businesses are turning awful, all at once, and they’re not dying. We remain trapped in their rotting corpses, unable to escape.” Hyperbole? Not at all. It is a mere statement of fact. That’s what makes this book so scary: because it is so true.

Establishing aggressive monopolies is a key to the success of the largest tech companies. Doctorow provides numerous examples of their misdeeds, but one of the most blatant, egregious, and well-documented instances is the deliberate decision of Google to dumb-down search results. If the results are less effective, this causes people to search again multiple times, and this in turn makes more money for Google through its sponsored advertising. For a more obvious personal example, I need only look at my feed on Facebook. It used to be that when my relatives and friends would post content, I would be able to scroll through and read these posts. Nowadays, though, my feed is inundated with advertisements and so-called “boosted” content – that is, content that someone has paid a lot of money to shove before my eyes whether I want to see it or not. As for the content I have logged on to view – the content that connects me with my loved ones – it is hopelessly buried in this – let’s face it: there is no word that better describes it: shit.

One of the favorite tactics of these “purveyors of cloud-based products” is what Doctorow calls “bait and switch.” These tech companies monitor every keystroke you make, and when they find out what facets of their services are most valuable to you, they “remove that feature from the product’s basic tier and reclassify it as an upcharged add-on.” And don’t think that you will be able to upgrade again in a one-time purchase; no, they’ll charge you rent for that upgrade for as long as you want to use it. If certain programs are desperately needed, you may have no choice. As Doctorow states: “Enshittification is what happens when the executives calculate that they can force you to go along with their schemes.”

The vile stench of evil, all too prevalent in American corporations nowadays, makes this uncomfortable reading. Nevertheless, it is vitally important to see how things are and how they got this way; otherwise, how are we going to have a chance to change it all? And Doctorow does offer some possible solutions, although none of them are easy. He affirms that we can have a new, good internet if we “restore the four forces that discipline technology firms.” These are competition, regulation, interoperability, and tech worker power. Antitrust legislation enables competition, and Doctorow explains the status of such legislation around the world, including in the United States. Regulation, of course, puts the greed of massive corporations in check. Interoperability enables us to own and repair our devices rather than have to be forced to go to company-approved repairers at bloated prices whenever anything goes wrong. As Doctorow demonstrates by example, tech workers used to be idealistic and hold tech executives and boards in check; now, however, tech workers who misbehave are being fired by the hundreds of thousands.

I have summarized a few basic ideas from this book, but these are merely examples. Before we can change things, we have to know how bad they have become. And they have become much, much worse than we could have imagined. Tech executives see us as chumps, nothing more. They want to extract as much value as they can from us and then toss us aside. The only way we can make things better is to first of all understand what is going on. Doctorow provides excellent explanations of the current state of affairs. This is essential reading for all of us. Highly recommended.

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Book Review:  Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways by Larry McMurtry

Posted on November 22, 2025 by John Walters

Larry McMurtry is best known for his award-winning novels and screenplays, but he also wrote several memoirs. Roads tells of a series of trips he made by car in 1999. By way of explanation he says: “I wanted to drive the American roads at the century’s end, to look at the country again, from border to border and beach to beach.” And: “Other than curiosity, there’s no particular reason for these travels – just the old desire to be on the move.” He writes that his “aim in recording these journeys is simple: to describe the roads as I find them and supplement current impressions with memories of earlier travels along some of the same routes.” And: “My method, to the extent that I have one, is modeled on rereading; I want to reread some of these roads as I might a book.”

McMurtry undertakes his journeys in an unusual way. When most people take a road trip by car, they use a vehicle that they own; McMurtry, however, flies to whatever point from which he wants to begin, rents a car, stays in high-quality hotels or motels en route, and either returns to his hometown or drives to whatever place he chooses to end his journey at and flies back from there. This is, of course, a method of travel that only the affluent would be able to afford, even accounting for the fact that airline flights, rental cars, gasoline, hotels, and so on were much cheaper back at the end of the 1900s.

In this way, McMurtry drives from Minnesota to Oklahoma, Florida to Louisiana, Maryland to Colorado, California to Texas, Washington D.C. to Texas, Washington State to Nebraska, and so on. Don’t think of this as a travelogue, though, in the conventional sense. He sometimes describes the landscapes he sees along the way, but that is not his main intention. Instead, he wants to “have a look at the literature that had come out of the states I passed through.” He was not only a writer, but also an antiquarian bookstore owner, and as he passes locales, he launches into stories of writers associated with those places or book-buying adventures he had there. It’s like taking a long drive with an exceptionally literate friend and listening to him reminisce along the way. But because of his bookselling background, he is aware of obscure local travel authors from all of these places, and he is able to draw upon this knowledge to provide fascinating glimpses into the literary scenes in various parts of the country.

Because McMurtry finds such genuine satisfaction and fulfillment in his journeys, he is able to pass on these emotions to his readers. Near the end he sums up his feelings thusly: “Being alone in a car is to be protected for a time from the pressures of day-to-day life; it’s like being in one’s own time machine, in which the mind can rove ahead to the future or scan the past.” For the perennial nomad who enjoys roaming the country, the world, and the entire cosmos through literature, this book is an excellent vehicle for enjoying a vicarious journey with an extremely knowledgeable and erudite companion.

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