Twenty-five nonfiction reviews a-comin'

What does an education look like?

Call me crazily old-fashioned, but I believe that entails reading full-length books. I model reading full-length books with my students every day, and I hope they're also actually reading with me.

I read at home a bit as well, and when you add it up, I've devoured a lot of books. This month, I'll be updating my 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend project with 25 new books and accompanying reviews. Each day, I'll post a review, so enjoy!

Most people — including teachers — don't read full-length books. Now, those alliterate educators can indeed learn from textbooks, the Internet and word of mouth, but with Gen X by and large being a generation of non-readers, how can we expect Gen Z or future generations to read full-length books?

Well, I'm hopeful because the minds of our Gen Z youngsters work faster and are more malleable than us Gen Xers. Being forced into Zoom School during the pandemic, that process highlighted how school is so superficial — systemically. However, the kids I run across yearn to actually learn. When given the chance, they absolutely want to read relevant books to their lives, the time and place. They don't want to pretend to read To Kill a Mockingbird.

So in my classroom, I do my best to encourage students to read books that are meaningful to them. It's called extended reading. I look at how extended reading has helped me grow over the past decade, and I'm astonished where books have led me.

I fell in love, got married for a second — and final — time, raised two strong and reliable teenagers, and just got so much healthier. Nonfiction books played a huge role in all of that.

I must stress how crucial extended reading is to education. Where will you really get in life without books? In my classroom, that's the message, and I love that my first assignment of the school year is "Hey, kid, get a library card."

On a recent Fourth of July, somebody asked me what I thought the best thing about America is. I went with "opportunities for women." Not a bad answer. Right? I'd have to put public libraries and public education on the list as well.

With my project this month, each book gets a review and thoughts, but beware, I pretty much write off the top of my head. The reviews aren't as detailed as something you may read in, say, The New York Times Book Review. My reviews focus on what stood out to me and what I remember.

If you know me or this blog, this should be a jackpot for you because these are vetted books I've read cover to cover that are 100 percent worth reading. That assumes you like my sensibility.

I'll be writing 25 new reviews, meaning that a fourth of the 100 books I recommend are changing since I did the original project back in 2019. But, y'know, nothing really of note has happened since then.

I categorize the books in 10 categories, but truthfully, many books could cross over their categorizations. Also, I have eliminated three categories — "humor," "grab bag" and "recommended by readers." I believe it makes sense to be more specific with grab bag, and I actually only recommend three of the books people recommended to me. Thank you so much to those recommenders — Dave Davis, Matt Gailey and my wife, Dina!

With humor, I realized that my selections were pretty weak, so that category is out. Only two books on that list make the cut, and I'm moving them to different categories. Why would I read a George Carlin book when I can actually watch his stand-up?

"Teaching," "capitalism" and "humanity in the digital age" are the three new categories in the project, and all the other categories have at least two new books, except "leadership."

Look for a post every day this month — save Sundays — and enjoy the book reviews. Hopefully, my captivating prose will keep you glued to this blog. But if not, do what I suggest students do with books they find hard to connect. Drop it, and move to the next one. But read a book; it's quite worthwhile, especially in the digital age.

We live in the Fantasy-Industrial Complex

Editor's note: In the final category of 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend, we have taken suggestions from friends and readers for books new to me. My friend Matt Gailey, a Cleveland native now in San Diego, recommended Fantasyland (2017) by Kurt Andersen.

If we truly examine it, Donald Trump's election makes perfect sense because the United States has been blending politics, news, infotainment, corporate money and madness for at least the past 40 years.

We are living in a world of constant corporate fantasies — or "Fantasyland," AKA the Fantasy-Industrial Complex as Kurt Andersen calls it.

Andersen walks us through our country's relationship with over-the-top fantasies from 1517 to current times. Some of the highlights include the Salem Witch Trials, P.T. Barnum, Mormonism and other religions created in the United States, Ronald Reagan and the X Files.

Fantasyland is a pop culture smorgasbord that repeatedly goes back to the thesis that the United States always has been a land of dreamers, hucksters, conmen and naive followers. The state of affairs today coupled with technology is in alignment with our history.

Once I soaked in Fantasyland, I saw my surroundings in a new light. When I'd see groups of kids on phones, I got it — part of the fantasy. When I looked at CNN and Fox News for comparison, I saw the fantasy — each's slanted narrative to lure viewers. When I was chatting with a friend during a hike and said, "We have more stories about TV than what we've actually done," we acknowledge Fantasyland. Then after the hike, I checked my fantasy football lineup.

So, yes, I concur with Andersen's thesis. But now what? Or better yet... so what?

Fantasyland did indeed make a much-needed point and had a zillion examples to support it, but where does that leave us? In the final pages, Andersen writes about the importance of making America reality-based again. OK, true, but what in detail does that entail?

To me, it goes back to previous books promoted in 100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend. Dark Money by Jane Mayer comes to mind as does Born on Third Base by Chuck Collins. Digging just slightly deeper, the reason we are in the Fantasy-Industrial Complex is that it makes corporate BANK.

Disney, the NFL, ESPN, WWE, CNN and any other entertainment entity that comes to mind is there because fantasies can be commodified on a mass scale in the 21st century. It's been that way for quite some time; some might argue it started with the printing press. Now, with all the tech and options, we find ourselves in the Fantasy-Industrial Complex.

So the fact that America is living in a fantasy world is less about the mindset of the individuals than the scope of media, but that is my view. Andersen takes more of a stance that it's on the individual, who needs to weed through the fakery and find the reality. OK. That's fine. But isn't the bigger issue that fantasies constantly are packaged as reality for corporate profit and that the lines of reality deliberately are blurred for bigger profits?

In the end, I recommend Fantasyland but with reservations. It's repetitive. It could go deeper and stray from its thesis to become the indictment of corporate infotainment that would be more on the mark in my eyes. In other words, it could focus more on the present and potential future than so much on the history.

I would have liked to see Andersen examine himself more. Finally, on page 433, as Fantasyland is about to end, he brings up his upbringing in Nebraska. His inner search lasted a whole three paragraphs before he went on to explain the logic of his agnosticism.

Ah. There it is. The hidden thesis! The Fantasy-Industrial Complex has created a world of constant phone users, screen time gone awry and a reality TV star as president. How has this happened?

Well, perhaps the main reason is it keeps individuals from searching inward and analyzing themselves. I believe this corporate fantasy world would go in a better direction if individuals looked inward, understood who they are and then understand what they are watching or consuming. But it's easier to look at a TV or iPhone than one's self.