All My Stars (12)

By: Joanne McNeil
March 24, 2016

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

To my surprise, the newsletter I sent a couple weeks ago was very on trend. Tumblr teens are all about American history these days. I loved this piece on founding father shippers by Rebecca Onion. (“Popular ‘ships,’ … are ‘lams’ — John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton — and ‘jamilton’— Jefferson and Hamilton.”)

The “jamilton” fans and I might be the only ones watching Turn: Washington’s Spies but it’s good! It’s a fascinating story (checkout this Spycast interview with the author of the book it’s based on.) I recommend starting mid-series and just read some recaps to get up to speed. It starts out slow and unfocused with too much windup.

I had to consult a wiki anyway because the cast is mostly strapping young lads from the grand British theatre and I have trouble telling these lesser Redmaynes and Hiddlestons apart. But I love the scenes with early spycraft like hiding messages in eggs. And its AMC so they get amazing talent to direct episodes — Kimberly Peirce and Allison Anders (Anders wrote a lovely blogpost in which she reveals she can trace her ancestry to the Culper Ring on both sides of her family — “[it] blows my mind when I see scenes where Caleb and Abe are together, knowing they are ancestors from both my maternal and paternal lines.”)

Speaking of enormous casts of white male actors I can’t tell apart….I also watched The Big Short this week. I liked it but something about the rhythm was off. I watched and fast-forwarded the scene with Byron Mann and Steve Carrell about seven times because I couldn’t understand “synthetic default swaps.” Only to find that Selena Gomez would break it down minutes later. Despite the director, despite the glittery cast, it feels like a Michael Lewis movie above all. And here’s the thing about Michael Lewis: at his worst he distracts readers enough into thinking they understand difficult concepts. A few years ago, I made the mistake of reading his book of essays on the European financial crisis. It left me with a frustrating sense that I didn’t know enough to say why he was wrong, but I didn’t trust him. This is a great comment on that book and The Big Short, explaining the problem with how he decouples a fascinating story from real analysis of the “mechanics.”

Another podcast recommendation: Loved this episode of BackStory on “past visions of the future.” Now I need an excuse to visit Birmingham, Alabama to see the Zeppelin dock on the hotel roof. This sounds like a great book: The City’s End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York’s Destruction. And they even interview Paleofuture’s Matt Novak about labor and (the lack of) social change on The Jetsons too.

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