A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

BEING CALLED THE "KENNY G" OF ANY FIELD CAN NEVER BE CONSTRUED AS A COMPLIMENT: If you, like many of us here at ALOTT5MA, take a perverse pleasure in reading a bad review, may I point your attention to Bryan Burrough's takedown of Professor and the Madman author Simon Winchester's new book, A Crack in the Edge of the World, in the Sunday Times.

Among the highlights:

• "This is history as it might be written by Austin Powers. "Crack" is a book that bears the faint whiff of smoking jacket and brandy, as if the author had curled up in some leatherbound study with a few dozen previous books and his memories and banged out this one between puffs of pipe smoke."
• "If your idea of a nutty Friday afternoon is sitting through Geology 101, then this book's for you."
• And the kicker: "I wanted to drop-kick this book across the backyard. If Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough can lay claim to being the Miles Davis of popular history, Winchester is becoming the Kenny G."