Dan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest-blogger.
Some books and longer articles I’ve recently been reading or re-reading:
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece (IMO). Chilling alternate history, set in an America that lost World War II to Germany and Japan.
The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder, a warts-and-all biography of investor Warren Buffett. His Nebraska-kid schtick hasn’t fooled anybody for a long time, but he’s even more complicated than we suspected.
What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis‘ thought-provoking look at our changing world from a “life is beta” perspective. I don’t agree with all of his arguments, some of which strike me as throwing out the proverbial babies with the bathwater, but this book is well worth a read.
Severance Package, a noir-squared novel by Duane Swierczynski, about a memorable last day at work. Violent, mordant and an absolutely compulsive read.
“The Gatekeeper,” a New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza about Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emannuel. Hugely detailed, but has a more suck-up-to-power story ever been published in a magazine that prides itself on serious journalism? Yuck.