Grady Elrod

Okay, let’s just get this over with- it’s hard for me not to think about Zach Galifianakis’ character, Alan, from The Hangover making a certain toast, every time I pick up my copy of Abby Wambach’s Wolfpack . There, I said it. Abby is a champion, so I know she can take that one small piece of criticism (actually, it’s probably more self-criticism, but I’m...some guy who writes infrequent short, lame, book reviews, so I can take it too). Abby Wambach’s “Wolfpack speech,” originally delivered as a commencement address for Barnard College students, and this ensuing expansion, is inspiring, powerful, and necessary.  The essence of Wambach’s book is in her comparison between what she sees as the “old rules,” which codify a series of messages society has been directing towards women and girls, and her own “new rules” which admonish all of us to be confident, driven, and team-oriented.  Those new rules are: Create your own path (we can’t allow others to limit what our lives will amou...

I’m an American;  so even though Moneyball was published in 2003, I was totally unaware of it until 2011, when the movie of the same name was released (yes, I read books sometimes, but I’m still pretty ignorant). Moneyball is one of my favorite movies. It’s about math (which isn’t my absolute favorite) and baseball (which I’m not all of that interested in, except as a way to spend time outdoors with friends, beer, and snacks), but I don’t even care. It’s also about one (or two, or a few) smart human trying to do something intelligent while surrounded by dumb humans who desperately want to thwart them.  It doesn’t get any more real or any more dramatic than that. In Moneyball (the book) we learn, of course, many things which were not revealed to us onscreen, but the most interesting facets of Michael Lewis’s book are the revelations about the people involved. Bill James, who was portrayed on the big screen as a caricature- security guard at a pork and beans factory who is also ...

After decades of slacking off, William McRaven has finally done the United States of America a great service. He has taken a giant leap forward towards the noble goal of uniting the sentiments of the eight-year-old children of both supporters of Bernie Sanders and the Squad, and those of Donald Trump and MTG. It is almost certain that the publication of his bestseller, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life... and Maybe the World, has been met with a resounding “No” from the children of this country.  Of course, the books’ genesis as a 2014 commencement speech delivered at the University of Texas at Austin suggests that Admiral McRaven’s audience is actually “grown-ups,” those of us who have lived long enough to royally screw up our lives to the point that we need to read books about how to change them. Take, for example, deposed Iraqi dictator Sadam Hussein. I don’t think anyone can deny that he accomplished a few things in his life, but he, much like you and I, ma...