Book Review – The World War I Reader

The World War I Reader by Michael S. Neiberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall this is a good set of primary and secondary accounts of the title subject. But be aware of the text’s limitations. As most perspectives are subjective and limited in scope, this isn’t the best choice for one’s first ever reading about the war. And several entries work better as artifacts than as education, particularly those where the writing is so terrible that it verges on unreadable. However, if you already have a firm grasp of the bigger picture, these snapshots from many particular angles prove fascinating more often than not.

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Book Review – Everything Is Tuberculosis

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The author of The Fault in Our Stars turns a nonfiction spotlight on the triumphs and tragedies in the battle against tuberculosis. I admit that before I read this I probably would have guessed that malaria or cancer was the world’s single deadliest health problem, but that’s mostly because I live in a country where this curable illness is easily treated in most cases and deaths are exceptionally rare. After establishing the history and biology of the bacteria, John Green spends the rest of his book explaining the roadblocks (mostly economic) that prevent people in many places in the world from getting the assistance they need. He puts a human face on the problem by focusing on one young victim from Sierra Leone, a case study that shows the perils of poor quality treatment and the promise of improved systems. The book is short but makes its points effectively enough.

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Book Review – Jesusland

Jesusland: Stories from the Upside Down World of Christian Pop Culture by Joelle Kidd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From the outside looking in, mass media produced specifically for evangelical Christian consumers looks a lot like a slightly distorted mirror image of its mainstream counterparts: somewhat crappier production values, the total absence of profanity and nudity, the bizarre delusion that Kirk Cameron is talented and smart, and of course the omnipresent evangelical agenda. But as Joelle Kidd ably demonstrates, the view from inside looking out is much darker. Focusing on her church school childhood in the early 2000’s, she explains how music, movies and other media produced by Christian nationalists are designed to unite “true believers,” often at the expense of everyone else. Thinking back on my own often-awkward younger years, I can only imagine how much worse things would have been if, in addition to masking my thoughts and feelings from those around me to avoid bullying, I also had to hide myself from myself in order to avoid spending eternity in Hell. Tempting as it is to regard right wing media as dumb but essentially harmless, Jesusland serves as a well-written reminder of the dire consequences of regarding this stuff as acceptable.

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Book Review – Not Built in a Day

Not Built in a Day: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire by Emma Southon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This must have been an extremely difficult book to write. Emma Southon’s affection for ancient Rome is evident in all her books. But here she undertakes 350 pages of unflinching discussion of the essential underpinning of Roman society: an unspeakably brutal system of slavery. And I do mean “unspeakable.” Despite her tireless scholarship, extensive vocabulary and brilliant wit, the author frequently finds herself at a loss when trying to express her feelings about just how cruel the Romans were to enslaved people. Nonetheless, she does her job as a historian. The result is an excellent account of the various forms of slavery in the republican and imperial eras, described in detail with a constant care for viewing things from the perspective of the enslaved.

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Book Review – The Disappearing Spoon

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sam Kean does another good job of making a scientific discipline accessible, this time bringing wit and history to bear on the chemistry and physics of the periodic table. Despite his best efforts, some of the doings of subatomic particles remained elusive. But I was fascinated by the personalities and processes that organized the table and put the elements in their places.

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Book Review – The Plutonium Files

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an impressively thorough study of the US government’s experiments in which human subjects were dosed with radiation without their informed consent and often without regard for the danger to their health. Journalist Eileen Welsome follows multiple paths taken by the Manhattan Project, Department of Defense, Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies to figure out what happens when radioactive materials find their way into the human body. The author adds an important extra dimension to the study by including the personal backgrounds of many of the victims, transforming a disturbing history from statistics to tragedies. This is a must read for anyone interested in the functions of science in the absence of morality.

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Book Review – How Comics Are Made

How Comics Are Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page by Glenn Fleishman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Glenn Fleishman possesses an impressive amount of knowledge about the historical relationship between printing and cartoon creation, a subject I find fascinating. And yet I found myself disappointed by this book. It’s poorly written, with far too much time and space devoted to points that have already been made or points he hasn’t gotten to yet. But more surprisingly, the layout is also awful. The main flow of the text is chopped to bits by side bars, pull quotes that look like sidebars, illustrations that don’t appear on the same page with their descriptions, and interruptions that hit in the middle of paragraphs and sometimes go on for pages before the narrative resumes. The book is also plagued by technical glitches including shifting font sizes and words that run together. The author has plenty of interesting facts and important insights to share, so it’s a real shame that the bad design work gets so thoroughly in the way.

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Book Review – The Knights Templar

The Knights Templar: A History Strange and True by Dorsey Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m in an awkward spot with the media here. “Audible Audio” was the only format option for this title on Goodreads. However, I actually watched the Great Courses video series and read the companion book. Regardless of delivery method, Dorsey Armstrong’s excellent expertise and witty delivery are the main appeals. She runs the gamut on the Templars, from historical context to rise and fall to cultural impact (including some fun and some not-so-fun conspiracy theory stuff). If you’ve any interest in the subject, this series is worth your attention.

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Book Review – The Fiends in the Furrows

The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror by David T. Neal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though I could’ve done worse for a quick summer read, overall this anthology wasn’t great. It got off to a good start with the first story or two, but then the problems set in. I abandoned two of the stories, one for excessive world building and the other for excessive (and frequently kinda random) adjectives. Animal abuse was also a frequent theme, which automatically isn’t a relaxing reading experience for me. One of the stories I liked had proofreading problems that made the flow choppy. And so on.

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Book Review – 101 UX Principles

101 UX Principles: A definitive design guide by Will Grant
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At last someone wrote a book about UX principles that’s actually about UX principles. This is aimed at designers, coders and other folks working directly in the title realm, not at mid-level managers trying to wedge user experience into a project management scheme. All of Will Grant’s advice is excellent. Even the points I didn’t entirely agree with were well made and worth at least considering. And though my focus tends to be more on the graphic design part of the process (roughly 20% of the book), I nonetheless gave enthusiastic amens to the technical points I don’t work with directly. Grant’s principles tend to focus on how to improve user interfaces rather than how to create them, so this might not be the best starting point for absolute beginners. But anyone who has mastered the basics and wants to get better at what they do will find plenty of useful tips here.

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Book Review – White Coat, Black Hat

White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine by Carl Elliott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I may be in a bad position to review this book. I picked it up as part of a research project on medical ethics that’s more focused on the Nazi krankenmord programs. And no matter how bad corporate dishonesty and greed get, they still don’t reach quite that far down. That said, Carl Elliott makes some excellent points about some of the pharmaceutical industry’s practices that definitely need to stop. However, he also points out some places where dancing with the big pharma devil has produced laudable results, such as cooperative efforts with AIDS activists back in the 1980s. Thus the narrative often washes the coat and hat in the same load of laundry, with a resulting tendency for things to come out looking grey.

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Book Review – Fulvia

Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome by Jane Draycott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jane Draycott does an excellent job of giving a second chance to one of ancient Rome’s most reviled women. Of course for a woman to be remembered by Rome’s rabidly sexist historians was almost certainly to be reviled, most likely either for being avaricious or promiscuous or both. It was also Fulvia’s particular bad luck to be married to husbands who were themselves wildly unpopular with contemporaries in a position to heap scorn upon them (particularly Cicero). But what emerges here is a more even-handed portrait of a woman possessed of great wealth and married thrice to great power. In this light, Fulvia’s efforts to protect and advance the interests of her family are more understandable, even if not universally sympathetic. The text is both readable and enjoyable, making this worthy of consideration for anyone interested in writing women back into history.

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Book Review – The Lives of the Caesars

The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After reading a couple of Tom Holland’s books about Roman history, I was curious to see how he’d do translating Suetonius. Though I’m not qualified to judge the accuracy of the translation, readability is high. Holland uses plain English without resorting to excessive vernacular, which was particularly helpful in the more sexually explicit passages sometimes omitted from older translations. And of course in keeping with the original author’s prose style, the contents are a bizarrely organized parade of the best and worst in the lives of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors.

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Book Review – What If? 2

What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you liked the first one, I’m confident you’ll like this one too. Randall Munroe’s continuing considerations of absurd physics problems begins with the effects of the entire inner solar system filling with soup, and it goes from there. Brief chapters are a fun way to spend some time between other commitments and even learn some scientific principles along the way.

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Book Review – Neurotribes

NeuroTribes: The Untold History of Austim and the Potential of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a journalist, Steve Silberman takes a badly-needed neutral approach to a topic that’s frequently the subject of considerable axe grinding. As the author recounts, defining and determining the nature of autism has been a long process with many false steps, and some folks can be downright hostile about sticking to whatever stage they happened to get stuck on. Though the text identifies dead ends as what they are, it’s still reasonably respectful even to theories that turned out to be wrong. Indeed, in some places it’s a little too respectful. I would love to see a new edition of this book that reflects some of the changes in conventional wisdom, particularly about Hans Asperger’s level of collaboration with the Nazis’ eugenics agenda. Also as upper middle class parents were historically best able to advocate for their children, there isn’t a lot of focus on any other populations until toward the end of the book. Drawbacks aside, this is an excellent job of explaining the history of medical diagnoses and popular perceptions of people on what’s now known as the autism spectrum.

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Book Review – Never Flinch

Never Flinch by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m sorry Holly Gibney didn’t come along earlier in Stephen King’s career. She’s a likeable, multi-dimensional character, so if nothing else she could have been a welcome relief from all those books about writers with writer’s block. Sadly, her series didn’t get underway until the author was painfully past his prime. This one reaches novel length only by awkwardly intertwining two different antagonists. And as neither villain has any kind of supernatural abilities, the tale rarely rises above mediocre crime thriller. Further, King seems to be leaning into the cliche about the trouble he has with endings, as the finale here is so abrupt that it makes the preceding 400 pages seem kinda pointless. This is a reasonably entertaining summer read, but it’s a high point neither in the author’s overall career nor the Hodges and Gibney sets in particular.

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Book Review – The First into the Dark

The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled by Michael Robertson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As the title indicates, this is a consideration of the krankenmorde, the Nazis’ formal and informal systems for murdering sick people. The authors divide their work into two parts. The first half is a fascinating yet hard to read history of Aktion T4 and other efforts to murder anyone too physically or mentally disabled to serve a purpose in the reich. This turns out to be one of those experiences where just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, it gets worse. The second half focuses mostly on debates about definitions and ethics. It’s important stuff, but it isn’t as compelling as the history.

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Book Review – Practical UX Design

Practical UX Design by Scott Faranello
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I read this while on a quest for a textbook for a freshman-level User Experience Design class, and wow was this ever not what I was looking for. The author serves abstruse design theory buried under a blizzard of baffling buzzwords. The result appears to be aimed at MBAs and MFAs without really meeting the needs of either (let alone the beginning-level students that are supposedly part of the target audience). The illustrations were a further obstacle to understanding, mostly screen caps from popular (in 2016) web sites that either did or didn’t clearly illuminate the point at hand. A sprinkling of errors – both typographical and factual – didn’t add to the credibility of the text. If you’re headed to a cocktail party where you’ll need to sound smart (without actually being smart) about UX, these lessons will do nicely. For other approaches to the subject, seek elsewhere.

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Book Review – The Vest Pocket Kodak and the First World War

Vest Pocket Kodak & The First World War, The: Camera & Conflict by Jon Cooksey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book was like lingering in an excellently-curated museum exhibit about the title subject. The text was concise and the illustrations copious. Though several sections left we wanting to know more about their topics, overall the coverage was comprehensive. In a war famous for inventing new ways of killing, there’s a wonderfully human quality to the simultaneous introduction of new ways of seeing and recording (not to mention camera marketing).

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Book Review – More Making Books by Hand

More Making Books by Hand: Exploring Miniature Books, Alternative Structures, and Found Objects by Peter Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book at the wrong point in my book-making career. I’m in my getting-my-feet-wet phase, just trying to figure out what goes into assembling an art book. So I found myself a bit overwhelmed by all the extremely specific instructions for creating various kinds of unusual books. Indeed, without the copious illustrations, I would have been completely lost. Thus I may find myself back here at some point in the future when I’m ready to break out the tools, stock up on supplies and actually start making. The examples from the authors’ work are also helpful, though I found their well-to-do white people’s aesthetic a bit inaccessible. Overall this does a solid job of providing what the title promises.

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