Book Review by Brent M. Jones
The Code Breaker Review: A Fascinating Story That Sometimes Gets Technical
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race is one of Walter Isaacson's most ambitious biographies. Rather than simply telling the story of Jennifer Doudna, he also explains the development of CRISPR gene-editing technology and explores the ethical questions it raises for humanity.
Overall, I would rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
I don't have a scientific background, so I occasionally found myself slowing down or skipping some of the more technical explanations. Even so, I never felt I had lost the central story. Walter Isaacson succeeds in showing why this discovery matters and why Jennifer Doudna's work will likely shape the future of medicine.
What the book does well
Isaacson has a gift for making complicated scientific discoveries feel like compelling human stories. Much of the book reads like a detective story, with scientists around the world racing to understand how bacteria defend themselves against viruses. Those discoveries eventually led to CRISPR, a tool that allows scientists to edit DNA with remarkable precision.
The strongest parts of the book include:
The biography of Jennifer Doudna. She comes across as brilliant, collaborative, curious, and surprisingly humble.
The competition between researchers. Isaacson captures both the excitement of discovery and the rivalries over patents, credit, and Nobel recognition.
The ethical discussion. The final chapters ask difficult questions about where gene editing should stop, especially after the birth of the first gene-edited babies in China.
Why some readers struggle
Your experience is actually very common.
Isaacson wants readers to understand enough biology to appreciate why CRISPR is revolutionary. That means he spends considerable time explaining:
DNA
RNA
genes
proteins
bacteria
viruses
enzymes
molecular biology
If you don't already have a background in genetics, those sections can become dense. They're accurate and well written, but they require concentration.
Many readers enjoy the biography and ethical discussions much more than the chapters explaining molecular biology.
What I liked most
The book reminds us that scientific breakthroughs rarely come from one genius working alone.
Instead, discoveries grow from decades of work by hundreds of researchers building on each other's ideas. Isaacson also shows how personality, persistence, competition, luck, and international collaboration all influence scientific progress.
Another strength is that the COVID-19 pandemic becomes part of the story. The same RNA research that helped make CRISPR possible also contributed to the rapid development of mRNA vaccines, giving the book immediate real-world relevance.
A few weaknesses
The biggest weakness is simply its depth.
Readers looking for a straightforward biography may find themselves bogged down in the scientific explanations. Some chapters feel almost like an introductory college genetics course.
The book is also long, and the detailed explanations occasionally interrupt the narrative momentum
Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
Daring Greatly challenges the common belief that vulnerability is a weakness, arguing instead that it is the foundation of courage, authentic relationships, creativity, and effective leadership. Through research, personal stories, and practical examples, Brené Brown encourages readers to embrace uncertainty rather than hide behind perfectionism or fear. The book has resonated with millions because it offers an accessible and hopeful perspective on living more openly and authentically.
While the book presents an important and worthwhile message, I found myself wanting a deeper exploration of the ideas behind it. Brown identifies compelling patterns and associations, but I was not always convinced she sufficiently examined the underlying causes that produce those outcomes. At times, the discussion feels more descriptive than analytical. Even so, Daring Greatly succeeds in starting meaningful conversations about shame, courage, and human connection, making it a valuable read for those interested in personal growth and relationships.
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation
The book is less a “general history of ordinary Americans” and more an inside narrative of the financiers, bankers, politicians, and speculators who helped create the speculative bubble and then struggled to contain the collapse.
For many Americans outside the Northeast financial centers, life was still modest, regional, practical, and far less connected to speculative wealth. Large parts of the country were rural or industrial-working-class. The “Roaring Twenties” prosperity was real, but unevenly distributed. The book’s focus on New York elites can therefore feel almost foreign compared to family memories passed down through ordinary households.
The book is not simply about a market collapse. It is about what happens when a society begins to believe that prosperity is permanent, that risk no longer matters, and that wealth itself becomes detached from ordinary life.
The crash and the Great Depression exposed serious weaknesses:
almost nonexistent market regulation,
insider trading,
excessive leverage,
weak banking protections,
and little separation between speculation and ordinary banking.
The aftermath eventually led to reforms that reshaped American finance:
the SEC,
FDIC deposit insurance,
stronger disclosure rules,
banking reforms like Glass-Steagall,
and broader federal involvement in economic stability.
In other words, the suffering of the 1930s forced the country to build guardrails that many people later took for granted.
But there is also an irony the book seems to emphasize—and modern reviewers notice this too. The same patterns tend to return:
speculation,
belief that “this time is different,”
concentration of wealth,
financial innovation moving faster than regulation,
and optimism turning into panic.
Nightshade by Michael Connelly Review:
When I first realized Nightshade was introducing a brand-new main character instead of returning to familiar territory, I’ll admit I felt a little disappointed. Connelly’s long-running detectives feel like old companions, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to start over.
That hesitation didn’t last long.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell may be “exiled” to the quiet rhythms of Catalina Island, but the calm doesn’t hold. What begins as routine island policing quickly turns dark with the discovery of a woman’s body weighted at the bottom of the harbor—known only by a streak of purple hair—and a separate investigation into poaching that uncovers violence and long-buried secrets among the island’s elite.
What surprised me most was how fresh the setting felt. Catalina Island isn’t just a backdrop—it becomes part of the story’s tension. The contrast between the island’s idyllic beauty and the darkness beneath it gives the novel an atmosphere that feels new for Connelly while still carrying his trademark precision and momentum.
Stilwell himself grows on you quickly. He’s relentless, flawed, and willing to cross lines when he believes justice demands it, very much in the spirit of Connelly’s best characters, even if he’s walking his own path.
By the time the two cases begin to intertwine, the book had fully pulled me in. Connelly once again proves how effortlessly he can build suspense, layer detail, and guide readers through a world that feels real and immersive.
In the end, what I thought might be a letdown became a reminder of why I love his writing in the first place. His novels take me into another world, and Nightshade was no exception. Reading Connelly is a kind of relief: a chance to step away from everything else and trust a master storyteller to carry you somewhere compelling.
Verdict: A strong, atmospheric start to a new character arc that feels fresh without losing the depth and drive longtime readers expect.
The Proving Ground: A Lincoln Lawyer Novel — Book Review
Michael Connelly’s The Proving Ground stands out in the Lincoln Lawyer series not because it abandons what works, but because it subtly shifts the terrain beneath it.
At its core, this is still a Mickey Haller novel driven by sharp dialogue, clean pacing, and Connelly’s steady command of the legal world. The pleasure of reading it comes from that familiarity—the confidence of the writing, the clarity of the plot, and the sense that the story knows exactly where it’s going. I enjoyed the book largely for those reasons alone.
What makes The Proving Ground different from the previous entries, however, is its legal pivot. Instead of focusing on criminal defense, Haller moves into civil law, filing a lawsuit rather than defending an accused client. That shift—from protecting individuals to holding an institution accountable—adds a fresh dimension to the series and reframes Haller’s role in a way that feels both natural and revealing. It’s not just a change in legal procedure; it’s a change in perspective.
The case itself centers on Tidalwaiv Technologies, an AI company whose chatbot is alleged to have influenced a violent crime. While the premise touches on timely concerns about artificial intelligence, the novel avoids turning into a cautionary screed. The real issue isn’t AI as an abstract threat, but the biases embedded in its design—the flawed assumptions, blind spots, and human decisions that shaped the system. In that sense, the technology is less the villain than the mirror.
As someone who uses AI tools like ChatGPT and finds them genuinely useful, I found this aspect of the book especially interesting. Connelly doesn’t argue that AI is inherently dangerous; instead, he explores how unexamined bias, poor oversight, and lack of accountability can turn powerful tools into harmful ones. That nuance gives the story weight without tipping into fearmongering.
Beyond the courtroom drama, Connelly weaves in personal threads—Haller’s family dynamics, disruptions caused by Los Angeles fires—that ground the novel and keep it human. These moments don’t distract from the plot; they deepen it, reminding the reader that legal battles don’t happen in isolation.
The Proving Ground may be the eighth Lincoln Lawyer novel, but it doesn’t feel like a repeat performance. It’s a confident evolution—familiar in voice, different in structure, and timely in its questions. For longtime readers, it offers something new without losing the rhythm that makes the series work. And for anyone interested in how law, technology, and human responsibility intersect, it gives you something to think about long after the case is closed.
History Matters: David McCullough
David McCullough doesn’t argue that history matters. He shows it. In this collection of speeches and essays, history is not treated as a subject to master but as a responsibility to carry. What stays with me is not a list of facts or accomplishments, but the steady reminder that every moment we inherit was shaped by people who acted without certainty, often guided only by character, preparation, and a sense of duty. History Matters is less about looking back and more about learning how to pay attention—to context, to consequence, and to the human choices that quietly shape the future.
By the end of History Matters, what lingers is not instruction but perspective. McCullough leaves the reader with a deeper awareness of how easily progress can be taken for granted and how much depends on ordinary people choosing to act with care and responsibility. The book doesn’t ask us to admire the past or fear the future. It asks us to pay attention to the present—to the choices we’re making, the stories we’re carrying forward, and the small moments that, over time, become history themselves.
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
A Story About Death, Identity, and the Language of Grief
William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying is unlike almost any other novel in American literature. At its simplest, it tells the story of the Bundren family as they attempt to honor Addie Bundren's dying wish to be buried nearly thirty miles from home. What should be a straightforward journey becomes a remarkable exploration of grief, identity, family relationships, and the often irrational ways people respond to loss.
The novel opens as Addie lies dying while her son Cash builds her coffin outside her bedroom window. The steady sound of sawing and hammering becomes one of the novel's first unforgettable images, quietly preparing both the family and the reader for the journey ahead.
After Addie dies, her husband, Anse, and their five children load the coffin onto a wagon and begin a difficult trip across rural Mississippi. Flooded rivers, fire, exhaustion, pride, and conflicting personal motives all threaten to derail their promise to bury Addie where she wished.
Yet the journey itself is only part of the story.
The Characters Matter More Than the Plot
Each member of the Bundren family experiences Addie's death differently.
Jewel expresses grief through fierce loyalty and action. Cash approaches life with careful craftsmanship and quiet dignity. Vardaman struggles to understand death through the limited perspective of childhood, leading to one of the most famous lines in American literature:
"My mother is a fish."
Darl, perhaps the novel's most fascinating character, views the world with extraordinary perception while gradually losing his grip on reality. His philosophical questions about identity, existence, and death often blur the line between insight and madness.
Faulkner never tells us how we should judge these characters. Instead, he allows each voice to reveal its own truth.
A Remarkable Writing Technique
One of the novel's greatest achievements is its structure.
Rather than following a single narrator, As I Lay Dying unfolds through 59 short chapters told from the perspectives of 15 different narrators, including Addie herself after her death.
Each narrator sees the same events differently. Gradually, the reader pieces together the story from conflicting memories, emotions, assumptions, and misunderstandings.
The result is a novel that rewards careful reading. No single narrator possesses the complete truth.
Language That Becomes the Story
Faulkner's prose can be challenging.
The dialogue is fragmented. Thoughts shift unexpectedly. Sentences sometimes flow like streams of consciousness rather than conventional conversation.
For new readers, this style can initially feel disorienting. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the language itself reflects the emotional lives of the characters. We experience their confusion, grief, pride, fear, and isolation not simply through what they say but through the way they think.
This is one of the reasons the novel remains so influential.
Why It Still Matters
Although the novel centers on one family's attempt to bury their mother, it is ultimately about much more than death.
It asks enduring questions.
How do we understand loss?
How do families carry both love and resentment at the same time?
What happens when language can no longer fully explain what we are experiencing?
Few novels examine these questions with as much originality or emotional honesty as As I Lay Dying.
Favorite Quotes
"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die."
"The reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time."
"People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too."
"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
My Rating
★★★★★ (5/5)
As I Lay Dying is not an easy novel, but it is an extraordinary one. Faulkner asks readers to work harder than most authors, yet the reward is a story that continues to reveal new meaning with each reading. It is a powerful meditation on grief, family, identity, and the limits of language, and it deserves its place among the gre.at works of American literature
Being and Time: What Heidegger Asks Us to Consider About Our Own Existence →
Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, first published in 1927, is one of the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy. It is also one of the most difficult books I have read.
At the center of the book is a question that sounds simple: What does it mean to be?
Heidegger believed that philosophy had spent centuries discussing the things that exist while giving too little attention to the meaning of existence itself. His approach begins not with an abstract definition of being, but with the particular kind of being that can ask questions about its own existence.
He calls this Dasein, often translated literally as “being-there.”
We Don't Simply Exist
One of the ideas I found most interesting is that human existence is not simply a matter of occupying space in the world.
We find ourselves already in a world filled with relationships, responsibilities, expectations, possibilities, and a past we did not entirely choose. We make decisions within that world, and those decisions help determine who we become.
But we can also lose ourselves in it.
It is easy to live according to what other people expect, what society considers normal, or what Heidegger describes as the anonymous influence of “the they.” We can go through life doing what one is supposed to do without asking whether those choices genuinely belong to us.
That is where Heidegger's discussion of authenticity becomes especially interesting.
Authenticity does not mean withdrawing from other people or simply “being yourself” in the way we commonly use that phrase. It involves recognizing that our lives are our own to live and that our choices cannot ultimately be made for us.
Time Changes the Question
The second half of the title matters just as much as the first.
For Heidegger, being and time cannot really be separated.
Human life is finite. We live with a past that has already shaped us, a present in which we must act, and a future filled with possibilities that will eventually come to an end.
Our awareness of mortality changes the meaning of our choices.
If our time were unlimited, choosing one possibility over another would carry far less weight. But it isn't unlimited. Every choice opens some possibilities and closes others.
This is one reason Heidegger's discussion of being-toward-death is so important. He is not simply asking us to think about dying. He is examining what awareness of our mortality means for the way we live.
What I Took From the Book
What stayed with me most was the connection between time, choice, self-awareness, and authenticity.
We inherit much of the world in which we live. We don't choose where our lives begin, many of the circumstances that shape us, or all the things that happen along the way.
But within those circumstances, we still confront possibilities and make choices.
And because our time is finite, those choices matter.
That makes Being and Time more than an abstract philosophical exercise for me. It raises a very personal question:
How much of the life I am living reflects choices I have consciously made, and how much simply reflects the life I fell into?
That is a question worth considering even if you never make it through all of Heidegger's book.
A note on reading it: Being and Time is challenging. Heidegger develops his own terminology, revisits ideas from different directions, and can take long philosophical detours. At times, I found some of his discussion reminiscent of religious questions about conscience, mortality, and how one ought to live, although his philosophical project is not based on belief in a deity
Related: Now Is Full of Then
Our experience of the present is never entirely separate from what came before. What happens to “now” when our connection to “then” begins to change?
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2016 Reviews & Before
Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
The BBC asked C.S. Lewis during World War II to do some radio programs about the fundamentals of Christianity. He started these 15 minutes broadcasts in 1941, and they came together in part as the book "Mere Christianity,” published in 1952. It is a timeless classic as influential today as when Lewis originally wrote it.
The book takes us from when Lewis was an Atheist through his ultimate conversion to Christianity. The book looks closely at what it calls moral law and says that understanding it is essential. His sense of humanity's failure to keep the moral law is key to how he sees Christ's work in overcoming the effect of Satan's rebellion.
It gives a comparison to other views of what God is. He states that Christ either was God or was not or just thought he was, and then based on Christ's character, he concludes that he was. The book looks at how Christian beliefs result in creditable ethics.
An introductory look at Christianity serves as a fundamental touchstone for Christian discourse.