READINGS FROM MAY 2026

READINGS FROM MAY

These are the recommended books from my month of May.

All are worth reading. All of them are books I enjoyed.

But good luck getting your hands on Captain Cool! The book is a collectible that has, to my knowledge, never been reprinted beyond its first run. (I got a copy as a gift.) But it’s a story that seems too wild to be true. Yet there’s documentation!

As always, your mileage will vary.

 

ADDICTION BY DESIGN: machine gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

Addiction By Design: machine gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Dow Schüll

Originally published in 2012, this book began as an ethnography of slot machine players in my hometown. But what Schüll found was much more profound and troubling than a mere anthropological study, a process she relates in her preface to the 2025 reissue of Addiction By Design.

Would it surprise anyone to realize that casinos are designed to entrap us? It's not just that they want to lull us with comfort & luxury; it's that they are actively engaged in short-circuiting our judgment by basically hypnotizing us into a zombie-like state of mind.

And the psychological state that Schüll describes as the “Machine Zone” and the behaviors that this state elicits have ramifications well beyond slot machines. In fact, they explain much about how social media (indeed, all media) works, as well.

In other words, the lessons learned by casino and slot machine designers have informed social media and game designers on how to elicit “infinite scroll” behavior much the same way compulsive gamblers can be induced to enter the “Machine Zone” that Schüll describes.

This book goes deep into the details, from first-person accounts from compulsive gamblers to explications of how floor placement affects casino traffic, and, personally, I gained some strong insights about Sin City, one of them being why there is a shrinking footprint of table games on the Strip. (It all comes down to money, for sure, but the processes behind that shrinkage say a lot about our worst impulses.)

Now as I walk through a casino, furtively glancing up from my smartphone so I don’t trip over a bank of slots, I’ll have a better understanding of what I’m navigating. And maybe, just maybe, my opened eyes will better defend me against falling into the “Machine Zone” myself.

Get Addiction By Design here: https://a.co/d/0hm7I048

TASTES LIKE WAR: a memoir by Grace M. Cho

TASTES LIKE WAR: a memoir by Grace M. Cho

A finalist for the 2021 National Book Award, this memoir recounts Cho’s upbringing as a mixed-race American child of the Korean conflict. Her narrative ranges from her earliest memories to her adulthood, circling back as events in her present recall, refine & ultimately reshape her past, using food & locations as touchstones.

As Cho figures out who she is, where she came from, and who she wants to be, she also grapples with the diverging fortunes of her parents, each of whom has their own complex histories. 

Though Cho relates the story of her problematic American father with some sympathy, the real focus of her story is Cho’s mother, whose journey from Korea to America is fraught with violence, displacement & shame, not to mention serious mental illness, raising compelling questions of cause and effect.

What Cho recounts is deeply human, informed by the sweep of world events as well as the chaos of emotional conflict, and it is also incredibly humane, giving voice (however incomplete, however inchoate) to Cho’s forebears. It’s clear that this author is a compassionate, thoughtful and insightful witness, using the grist of her personal history to mill a remarkably rich story.

And Cho is the best kind of truth-seeking guide, for whom even the smallest discovered detail can yield a rumination on the largest questions. (For instance, what does it say about our culture that the word “whore” is almost always a pejorative while the word “soldier” almost never is?)

I found surprising, even troubling, parallels between Cho’s family life and my own, which speaks to the role that U.S. military action in Southeast Asia has played in so many lives. I guess the give-and-take between nations makes victims of us all, such that, whatever your particular heritage, none of us is immune to history.

And yet we persist. And some of us, like Cho, fashion sublime testaments as a result.

Get TASTES LIKE WAR here: https://a.co/d/0d4TAaAY

JUST READ: America, América by Greg Grandin

 

JUST READ: America, América by Greg Grandin

“Who is an American? And what is America?” asks this book in its preface.

Pulitzer Prize winner Greg Grandin has written a history of the United States of America that focuses on how what we now call Latin America has been a pivotal influence on the formation of our place in the world order.

Going back over 500 years, Grandin makes a strong argument that many of the ideals that we assume as intrinsic to our idea of what it means to be an “American” were born from our relationship with the land & cultures south of us.

Also from the preface: “But America, América is more than a history of the Western Hemisphere. It’s a history of the modern world, an inquiry into how centuries of American bloodshed and diplomacy didn’t just shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also gave rise to global governance — the liberal international order that today, many believe, is in terminal crisis.”

Grandin has crafted a compelling narrative that contextualizes our current moment. It’s actually scary to me how many parallels he draws between now and what has happened (often many times over) over the past few centuries.

History rhymes, in a mulitlingual chorus that even the ignorant (willful or not) cannot afford to ignore.

Get America, América here: https://a.co/d/0eIcxh83

JUST READ: Separation of Church & Hate by John Fugelsang

JUST READ: Separation of Church & Hate by John Fugelsang

Like Fugelsang, I was raised Christian, but the religion I grew up with bears little resemblance to what is practiced by many I know, so this book comes as a breath of fresh air.

Its rebuttal of difference & division and of grievance as an animating spirit is more in accord with what I was taught, which is that compassion and community matter more than conflict.

It helps that Fugelsang is also a working comedian, so his book is full of chuckles, despite its seriousness.

Get Separation of Church and Hate here: https://a.co/d/01ctVVuc

MIXED PLATE by Jo Koy

Mixed Plate: chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy

This one hit home, because Koy's early biography has close parallels to my own. Not that I have any talent for comedy, but both Koy & I share a similar racial & cultural heritage, right down to having an Air Force father who married our Filipina mother and brought her to the States via Clark AFB. (But where Koy was raised by his mother after the divorce of his parents, I was raised by my father.)

Koy's rags-to-riches memoir is so authentic that I had to take my time with it. Again, the similarities struck me: the chaotic home life, the contentious social life, the myriad confusions of being "mixed," the endless struggle. And the differences were equally evocative. Where Koy hustled & risked everything in the pursuit of his dream, I buckled down and played it safe, keeping jobs I should have left. It was like reading a "what-if" version of my own diary.

But, as befits the story of a comedian coming into his own, there are laughs on every page. And Koy is clear-eyed about his own failures and shortcomings. In such clarity lies wisdom. This is one book where the audio version, read by Koy himself, adds dimension to the text.

But the print version has recipes! And the recipes that start some sections of the book managed to inspire both nostalgia and irritation, because no two families do anything exactly the same. (My Mom put raisins in her lumpia -- I know, it's crazy!)

In the end, Koy's story is so honest, so raw & self-aware, that I found it to be a profoundly uplifting read, making me more of a fan that I already was.

Get Mixed Plate here: https://a.co/d/06RmvTyw

Vigil: a novel by George Saunders

 

Vigil: a novel by George Saunders

How it starts: A spirit of some sort visits an oil tycoon on his deathbed. What happens next is that Saunders is a particularly brilliant writer who is able to imaginatively embody a conceit, no matter how fantastical. This time, he imagines a kind of ushering angel tasked with shepherding someone completely unlike herself, eliciting all sorts of questions and sympathies (and not a few irritations) along the way, all done through dialogue that veers wildly from the hilarious to the heartbreaking, often sentence by sentence. It’s a wild ride, well-worth taking, covering way more ground than its mere 192 pages would suggest. Get Vigil: a novel here: https://a.co/d/09S6tnyD