Everything I Consume: Midcentury and Innumeracy

These were two busts. I loved John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy and this book is written in the same style. There are multiple narrators, profiles of important representative people of the times and chapters that are snippets of songs, articles and expressions of the time. He was very ahead of his time. While U.S.A. was filled with a compelling variety of characters this book is mostly about bitter old ex-radicals and their miserable life dealing with labor unions. I gave up after 160-odd pages.

I think my train was barely into Manhattan the day I started Innumeracy before I bailed on it. It was supposed to be about teaching important math concepts that average Joes, Joe Sixpacks, what have you don't know and are important in our daily lives. Well, we'll never pick it up when it's written this poorly. His jokes weren't funny either.