If I was a child and saw something creeping out of a hole in my mother’s leg, I would march to the nearest orphanage and put myself up for adoption. I would burn all pictures of her, destroy anything she had ever given me, and start all
...more
“Instead, people created their own house rules—rules that often made the game long and exhausting and gave rise to its reputation for being boring. In reality, when played according to its written rules, the typical Monopoly game lasts less than ninety minutes.”
― The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game
― The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game
“We have about eighty thousand people in solitary confinement in this country, more than anywhere in the world. In California’s Pelican Bay state prison alone, more than five hundred prisoners had spent at least a decade in the hole. Eighty-nine had been there for at least twenty years. One had been in solitary for forty-two years.”
― American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
― American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
“Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.18”
― Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
― Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“The myth of the crack baby was widely accepted as gospel, it seems, because it mapped so well onto existing ideas of Black biological inferiority and cultural pathology, and it stoked anxieties regarding violent crime and the cost of America’s social safety net. Indeed, in the form of the crack baby, America was delivered a perfect symbol for its animosity toward Black America—a ticking time bomb of violence and expense created because Black mothers cared too little about themselves and their offspring.”
― When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era
― When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era
“When people are telling the truth, they don’t feel doubted, so they don’t feel the need for additional support in the form of details. When people lie, however, even if what they say sounds credible to you, it doesn’t sound credible to them, so they keep talking.”
― The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
― The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
Dan ’s 2024 Year in Books
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