Copyright 2025 by David Benjamin. Published by Last Kid Books, Madison WI.
This is the 14th David Benjamin book that I have reviewed. And while it is true that he is one of my oldest and best friends, I would not read 14 books by anyone if I didn’t enjoy them. He is a very good writer.
One of his specialties is the “screed” – a short (about 1,000 words) essay. He publishes one screed almost every week. You can find them all – over 600 of them – here. This is his third book containing collections of his best screeds, the others being Almost Killed by a Train of Thought (2019) and Christmas in a Jugular Vein (2024).
Reading one of these collections of screeds is entertaining but makes me marvel at the breadth of Benjamin’s interests and the depth of his thoughts. He has a way of looking at something that makes me look at it differently (example: who is the “+” in “LGBTQ+”?). In this book he categorizes the topic. Here is the list of topic categories, most common category first:
- Satire – 12 (I include here the 3 “Bienfang” essays, which is a particular kind of satire)
- Memory – 11
- Paris – 8
- Language – 6
- Culture – 4
- Technology – 4
- Civics – 3
- Journalism – 3
- Movies – 3
- Covid – 2
- Guns – 2
- Travel – 2
- America – 1
- Death – 1
- Faith – 1
- Gender – 1
- Horror – 1
- Olympics – 1
- Polemic – 1
He is nothing if not eclectic. Many of his essays are autobiographical (I am mentioned by name in two of the “Memory” essays and can attest that the events he mentions really happened). The “Death” essay is about his wife’s mother who survived the bombing of Hiroshima to die at 93. Some are touching. Many are thought-provoking. All are worth the few minutes it takes to read the essay.
9 out of 10.