Erdogan Pizza in War Nerd Reading List

Feb 27, 2024 Adam McPhee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2024, far-corners, history, travel, memoir, journalism

There's plenty of history and geopolitics for the War Nerd fans, but the real delight of this book is in following long-suffering podcast host John Dolan as he traipse across the last frontiers of the affordable world. A picaresque, anti-travel memoir, an antidote to FOMO-inducing, pixel perfect Instagram fantasies. ...more

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Jan 11, 2024 Rashid Yasin rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

I will read basically anything John Dolan writes and indeed have already read big sections of this book because it's a compilation of his newsletters. But I still enjoyed it and was happy to get the new content as well as review some of the old. As an "anti-travel" book, it gets to both show off the varied places Dolan has visited and unique aspects of their culture/history while also reveling in mocking a standard touristy account of jet-setting across the globe, often by focusing on how terrib ...more

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Dec 31, 2023 Ezra rated it it was amazing

I vaguely remember reading some of the dispatches in this collection when they came out at the time but I wasn't good at keeping up with them so I'm glad to see that John Dolan is going to make them into a series. It's said that he added new material to bind the stories together and I guess the bits about the Radio War Nerd podcast are part of it. I enjoy reading Dolan's essays on war and history so I recommend this to anyone interested in an unsentimental look at these kinds of things. ...more

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Feb 05, 2024 Jeremy Ago rated it it was amazing

This book, as well as "dispatches" are by far and away, the best travel books I've ever read. John's first hand descriptions and the context he lays around those descriptions explain historical accounts and the current results based on those accounts in a way that is absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend this book to everyone who can read. ...more

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