Nathan Bick

  I first encountered the book Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder when I was in high school. For a history project in the IB Program, I was tasked with engaging in some academic research into a historical topic to produce a written report or analysis. I had by that time attempted to read Thomas Pynchon due to the reputation as intellectually challenging. Specifically, this meant Gravity’s Rainbow . From my current vantage point I now realize I didn’t understand the wider context of the tradition in which that work sits. I think it is fair to say that at least in some ways Gravity’s Rainbow is part of Western attempt to grapple with and understand World War II from the Western perspective and experience. Not to get too diverted in this topic, one of the subjects Pynchon explores is the Herero genocide in Southwest Africa in the first decade of the 20th century, taken by him and many others as an epsiode that foreshadows the larger actions in Eastern Europe a few decades later. I myself to...

  Evicted is a fantastic book - it’s well written and highly enlightening. The author, Matthew Desmond, describes people and places as if he were writing a novel, meaning one can read and enjoy like one would popular fiction but also come away benefiting from the deeply researched and educational content on this serious matter. It has three parts; the main body of the work, a policy proposal epilogue, and a final self-reflection on the technical details of the project. The majority of the book, as mentioned, is written almost with a story-like narrative recounting the difficult housing and life journeys of several different figures across the city of Minneapolis after the Financial Crisis and Recession of 2008. Interspersed are more directly informative sections. Desmond follows several very poor people, Black and White, with no housing security and a couple landlords specializing in urban poverty housing. Particularly unique is the story of Sherrena, a Black woman landlord who al...