Snap Judgement: Books.("We the Media," "Frenchy," "Mill, Alm, Money, Lemon: A Family Conversation")(Book Review)

Byline: John Ness, Tracy McNicoll, Mac Margolis

We the Media by Dan Gillmor

Complaining about the media is a popular pastime but no one did anything about it, says Gillmor, until Weblogs came along. The California-based columnist explains why the legion of blogs--several million to date--are on a collision course with big media as it slides steadily toward cheaper and dumber news. Gillmor's world is one of heroes (the journalists and concerned citizens taking the press to task one HTML link at a time) and villains (the Disneys and Microsofts using copyright law to stymie innovation and freedom of speech). Like the best blogs, Gillmor's primer is occasionally scattered, but its insights are indispensable.

--John Ness

Frenchy by Benjamin Cros (in French)

Political thrillers about persecuted minorities in the American South may be a subgenre all their own. But the hyphenated Americans under threat in Cros's first novel are novel indeed: Parisian-Texans. As anti-French animosity roils to a fever pitch in the Lone Star town of Hornflat, the ...