Genre: Non-fiction

Review – All That Remains

Posted October 6, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – All That Remains

All That Remains: A Life In Death

by Sue Black

Genres: Memoir, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 368
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

Sue Black confronts death every day. As a Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating mass fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her.

Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue's book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel.

Sue Black’sĀ All that RemainsĀ is more personal than her other book,Ā Written in Bone. Much of it still discusses her work as a forensic anthropologist, but it also discusses her early experiences of death, discusses a bit about how she can see horrors and compartmentalise them away from the rest of her life, and talks about how she views death personally, and how she’d like to die.

Throughout, her writing is straight-forward, unflinching from gory details, but clinical. In every case, you get the sense of Black’s respect for people, no matter who they are, where they come from, and the details of their lives: if you had to be identified in this way by someone, you’d hope it was her.

Her attitude to death is one that I’dĀ like to internalise more, being an anxiety-ridden mess about all things that touch on death (thanks, trauma). Her work makes for difficult reading in some ways, but her straightforward, unfearing attitude alongside her respect helped me see things more her way (at least for a while). I cried at some of the stories here (stories about her own family, stories about her time in Kosovo, etc), but not in a bad way. OneĀ should feel moved by this kind of thing.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker: The Art of Resurrection – Beyond the Veil

Posted October 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker: The Art of Resurrection – Beyond the Veil

Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker: The Art of Resurrection - Beyond the Veil

by Square Enix

Genres: Game, Non-fiction
Pages: 336
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The second volume of a two-volume set of the official art books for the global hit game Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, featuring hundreds of pages of full-color art and an exclusive item code!

Featuring roughly 800 pieces of artwork created during the development of the critically acclaimed Endwalker expansion, The Art of Resurrection -Beyond the Veil- is a visual feast for players and fans of Final Fantasy XIV! This deluxe, large-format volume covers content through Patch 6.5, including Myths of the Realm, PandƦmonium, and Island Sanctuary. It also features detailed illustrations of characters, equipment, dungeons, trials, and more across hundreds of pages. Volume two of a two-volume set with The Art of Resurrection -Among the Stars-.

TheĀ Beyond the Veil installment of Final Fantasy XIV’s two artbooks for Endwalker features the patch content, basically everything from 6.01 onwards. It includes the character and location designs for the Myths of the Realm raids and the Pandaemonium raids, along with the main scenario quests from 6.01 onwards.

As usual it also features the art from various events like the Moonfire Faire, all the new gear that’s been added, new minions (the Hythlodaeus minion art is adorable), etc. There’s no commentary really, except for some quick paragraphs from the artists at the back, so it really is just the art — I really liked the one that had some comments included, but they seem to have moved away from that these days.

That said, of course the art is gorgeous.

It comes with the Zodiark Idol minion code. Before anyone asks, yes, I’ve claimed the code and it is not available for giveaway or sale.Ā 

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Universal Basic Income

Posted September 27, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Universal Basic Income

Universal Basic Income

by Karl Widerquist

Genres: Non-fiction
Pages: 272
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

An accessible introduction to the simple (yet radical) premise that a small cash income, sufficient for basic needs, ought to be provided regularly and unconditionally to every citizen.

The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?

Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago through the two waves of support it received in the twentieth century to the third and largest wave of support it is experiencing now. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the worldā€”making this volume an especially timely and necessary read.

Universal Basic IncomeĀ is part of a series from the MIT press, the “Essential Knowledge Series”, and this installment is by Karl Widerquist. The point of it is to act as a primer on the subject of Universal Basic Income (UBI), and be a bit of an advocate for it, based on what we know about similar programmes and test cases.

The evidence is (or was at the time of posting) not totally straightforward, because the true test of a UBI would be universality and unconditionality, and most trials have not been universal even within a small area, and may have contained conditions. Widerquist makes a good argument that the results we see are indicative of success, though, and that some aspects of the effects of a UBI might beĀ underreported in such a small study (while acknowledging that some are probably overreported).

There are quite a few acronyms flying around which I didn’t always find easy to remember, but mostly it’s a fairly straightforward explanation and manifesto. However, there were a few editing booboos, including an entire paragraph being repeated verbatim in a list, which was a bit annoying.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life

Posted September 23, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Review – Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish & Other Sea Life

by Helen Scales, Marcel George

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 216
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

This is an inspiring tour of the world's oceans and 80 of its most notable inhabitants. Beautifully illustrated, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life - whether in our medicine, culture or folklore - in often surprising and unexpected ways.

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish and Other Sea Life is in the same format as Jonathan Drori’s books about plants and trees, but has a different author (Helen Scales) and a different artist (Marcel George). Ocean life isn’t entirely my thing, but nor are plants and trees: what matters is the enthusiasm of the author — and in this case, the beautiful illustrations, which aren’t always just of the animal in question, but an interpretation of how humans have interacted with it or legends around it.

The amount of life in the ocean is so immensely rich that you could miss out everybody’s favourites and still have 80 creatures, so it’s hard to say whether the choices are right or wrong, though my prediction is that almost everyone will have a question about some preferred animal that has been neglected. Scales includes some striking stories and some very curious creatures, and the illustrations are (as I expected from this series) really beautiful. There’s no overarching narrative here — one could dip in and out easily, turn to random pages, etc, etc. I read it cover to cover in that order, as is my wont.

As ever, it highlights the effects humans are having on marine life. Many of the creatures discussed are endangered, or have at the very least had their environment affected by humans in some way or another. Scales doesn’t linger on it to a depressing extent, especially as each segment is so short, but it’s unavoidable to notice it in the aggregate.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Moneta

Posted September 16, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Moneta

Moneta: A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins

by Gareth Harney

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 384
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

The extraordinary story of ancient Rome, history's greatest superpower, as told through humankind's most universal object: the coin.

Moneta traces ancient Rome's unstoppable rise, from a few huts on an Italian hilltop to an all-conquering empire spanning three continents, through the fascinating lives of twelve remarkable coins. In these handcrafted pieces of ancient art we witness Caesar's bloody assassination, follow the legions to the edge of the known world, take a seat in the packed Colosseum, and ultimately, watch as barbarian armies mass at the gates.

The Romans saw coins as far more than just money - these were metal canvases on which they immortalised their sacred gods, mighty emperors, towering monuments, and brutal battles of conquest. Revealed in those intricate designs struck in gold, silver, and bronze was the epic history of the Roman world.

Hold the glory and the infamy of ancient Rome in the palm of your hand.

I picked up Gareth Harney’s MonetaĀ on a bit of a whim, and partly because it had Emma Southon’s endorsement on the cover, and I’ve really enjoyed her books. And indeed,Ā Moneta is just as readable as Southon’s work, and I found it surprisingly engaging: coins in and of themselves aren’t that interesting to me, but using an object to interrogate a wider history is great.

One quibble, I suppose, inasfar as it matters, is that it’s not really just twelve coins. Each chapter mentions plenty of other coins. And I’d have loved more images of the coins, close to where they get discussed in the text — I’m no good at imagining what’s not in front of me, since I have no visual imagination at all.

Still, I found it a really engaging read. I’m not usually a fan of imaginative reconstructions, but Harney has a knack of storytelling that made them interesting (though of course one should take them with several pinches of salt). The coins and scenarios he chooses to highlight are fascinating, and worthwhile in understanding the Roman Empire.

I guess the ultimate accolade is that even though it’s non-fiction, I found it pretty unputdownable.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Invisible Friends

Posted September 14, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Invisible Friends

Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us

by Jake M. Robinson

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

As we continue to live through a pandemic, all eyes are on microbes: an imperceptible and pervasive threat that hangs heavy on the air and clings to surfaces. But the reality of micro-organisms is far more diverse and life-sustaining than such a notion would have us believe (hence the title of this book). Not only are they omnipresent, but we are highly attuned to their workings - both in the world at large and right here within our own bodies. Meanwhile, cutting-edge microbiome research is changing our understanding of reality, challenging fundamental concepts of free will and individuality. Threaded through everything are microbes: the very glue that holds ecosystems together.

This topical, engaging and original book counters the prevailing narrative of microbes as the bane of society, along the way providing much-needed clarity on the overwhelmingly beneficial role they play. We discover how the microbiome is highly relevant to environmental and social equity issues, while there's also discussion about how microbes may influence our decisions: even the way we think about how we think may need to be revisited. Invisible Friends introduces the reader to a vast, pullulating cohort of minute life - friends you never knew you had.

Jake M. Robinson’sĀ Invisible Friends is a fairly basic discussion of microbes and what they do — how they don’t just make us sick, but also influence how we feel through their influence on our guts, immune systems and more. It really is very, very basic though, touching only lightly on important topics like antibiotic resistance, andĀ extremely lightly on what we might do about that, barely giving half a page to the potential of bacteriophages. Which is a shame, because we need to move toward using methods like bacteriophages, and for that people need to know more about them and not be afraid of them. (Check out Tom Ireland’sĀ The Good Virus, to that end.)

I know that I’m not exactly the target audience for this book, given my background knowledge and interests even before I started doing an MSc in this stuff, but it still felt excessively simplistic. Really, it seemed like a vehicle for Robinson to tell people to spend more time outside and stop being so germophobic.

It’s true that that’d be good for us, and he’s not wrong about the impact of city living on the human microbiome, nor about the potential benefits of trying to fix that. It’s just that sometimes it begins to feel like he’s self-aggrandising, discussing this project or that that he’s been involved with that aims to improve this or that in order to, you’ve guessed it, improve people’s exposure to microbes in the city environment. We also hear repeatedly about the fact that he’s writing the thing outside in a forest. He does at least touch on the fact that there is some serious inequality in ability to access natural landscapes, at least on an economic level, which is good. (He doesn’t discuss accessibility issues of other kinds other than location and money, though.)

Anyway, I know I’m a harsh judge of this kind of thing, but I’m perfectly capable of enjoying a good book aimed at laypeople for being clear and precise in communication, even when it’s the basics — like Philipp Dettmer’sĀ Immune — so I don’t think it’s just that.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – The Sarpedon Krater

Posted September 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Sarpedon Krater

The Sarpedon Krater: The Life and Afterlife of a Greek Vase

by Nigel Spivey

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Series: The Landmark Library
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Once the pride of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sarpedon krater is a wine-mixing bowl crafted by two Athenians, Euxitheos (who shaped it) and Euphronios (who decorated it), in the late 6thc BC. The moving image Euphronios created for the krater, depicting the stricken Trojan hero Sarpedon being lifted from the battlefield by ā€˜Sleepā€™ (Hypnos) and ā€˜Deathā€™ (Thanatos), was to have an influence that endured well beyond Antiquity.

Nigel Spivey not only explores the vibrant Athenian civilization that produced the krater, but also reveals how its motifs were elaborated in later Greek art and in the Christian iconography of the Renaissance.

He tells the story of a small object, once consigned to the obscurity of an Etruscan tomb ā€“ yet a work of art whose influence extends far beyond its size and former confinement. The Sarpedon Krater is a fascinating case-study of the deep classical roots of the ideas and iconography of western art.

Nigel Spivey’sĀ The Sarpedon Krater is part of a series about “landmarks” in world history and art. Obviously that’s a bit of a metaphor when we’re discussing this mixing bowl, since it’s not a landmark in the same way as Stonehenge is — but in metaphorical terms, it seems it (or at least the themes on it) really was a landmark. Spivey discusses not just the origin of the vase, the artist and their context, but also the afterlife, including the burial in an Etruscan tomb, the looting, and the sale to a museum, along with its brief involvement in the Marion True saga. It also discusses how the motifs may have been copied by — or at least influenced — later artists.

I didn’t know much about this specific object before I started, though I knew a certain amount about symposia, Greek vases, etc, so this filled in some interesting gaps. It’s beautifully illustrated, with close-ups of the krater and other artwork that’s related in some way.

In the end, I don’t know how to evaluate Spivey’s claims about how influential this artĀ was, but it does all hang together pretty well and make sense as an argument — and regardless of that, I enjoyed the contextualisation of the krater and its afterlife.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – They Were Here Before Us

Posted September 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – They Were Here Before Us

They Were Here Before Us: Stories from Our First Million Years

by Ran Barkai, Eyal Halfon

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 208
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

An epic and highly readable investigation into our very earliest ancestors, focusing on the land corridor thorough which humans passed from Africa to Europe and the evidence left behind of their lives and deaths, struggles and beliefs.

This is not a book about archaeological sites. We shall come across flint tools, bones, skulls, surprising structures, and layers of earth that we can date to different periodsā€”but they are not the heart of the matter. This book is about us, human beings, and about our place in the world. About what we have done, where we came from, which other humans used to be here, why they are no longer with us, and how and why our lives have changed. Itā€™s also about where we went wrong. What did early humans do because they had no choice and what is the price we paying for this now?

Taking as the focus ten sites in Israel, the land corridor through which the human species passed on its journey from Africa to Europe, the story ranges far and wide from France, Spain, Turkey and Georgia to Morocco and South Africa, North America, Columbia and Peru. The authors follow the footsteps of our ancestors, describing the tools they used, the animals they hunted and the monuments they built. Fascinating revelations include:

- The earliest evidence of human use of fire;
- The meaning of cave art and the transformative effect of touching rock;
- The woman for whom 90 tortoises were sacrificed;
- What happened in the Levant following the disappearance of elephants;
- The monumental tower built at the lowest place on earth;
- Why we should envy modern hunter-gatherers ā€“ and much more ...

This provocative and panoramic book shows readers what they can learn from their ancestors, and how the unwavering ability of prehistoric people to survive and thrive can continue into the present.

There isn’t much in Eyal Halfon and Ran Barkai’s They Were Here Before Us that will come as much of a surprise if you’re already familiar with the stories of humanity’s origin, though they do mention a few new-to-me theories and go into some of the history of how things were discovered which I didn’t know. The broad strokes are familiar, but they write very clearly and explain things well. At times there’s a touch of the travelogue, because they describe visiting various of the sites as part of giving their context, but it’s not the main point of the narrative.

They do some imaginative reconstruction in the course of this, trying to figure out why people might have put a swan’s wing here or built a tower there, but I felt like they didn’t go wild: they presented these ideas as theories, as a way of understanding the data, and it’s pretty clear when they’re guessing and when they’re stating a fact.

The book doesn’t have numbered references, but it does have a solid bibliography including both books and papers, most of which look reasonably well-related to the topic to my eye (though this isn’t my field).

I found it enjoyable, and the translation (by Eylon Levy) is very readable.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Last Days of the Dinosaurs

Posted September 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Last Days of the Dinosaurs

The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World

by Riley Black

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 304
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

In The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Riley Black walks readers through what happened in the days, the years, the centuries, and the million years after the impact, tracking the sweeping disruptions that overtook this one spot, and imagining what might have been happening elsewhere on the globe. Lifeā€™s losses were sharp and deeply-felt, but the hope carried by the beings that survived sets the stage for the world as we know it now.

Picture yourself in the Cretaceous period. Itā€™s a sunny afternoon in the Hell Creek of ancient Montana 66 million years ago. A Triceratops horridus ambles along the edge of the forest. In a matter of hours, everything here will be wiped away. Lush verdure will be replaced with fire. Tyrannosaurus rex will be toppled from their throne, along with every other species of non-avian dinosaur no matter their size, diet, or disposition. They just donā€™t know it yet.

The cause of this disaster was identified decades ago. An asteroid some seven miles across slammed into the Earth, leaving a geologic wound over 50 miles in diameter. In the terrible mass extinction that followed, more than half of known species vanished seemingly overnight. But this worst single day in the history of life on Earth was as critical for us as it was for the dinosaurs, as it allowed for evolutionary opportunities that were closed for the previous 100 million years.

Riley Black’sĀ The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is not entirely about dinosaurs — in fact, a large chunk of it is about what came after the dinosaurs, the period of renewal in which the avian dinosaurs and mammals recovered from the Chicxulub impact and dinosaurs didn’t.

The main body of the text is an imaginative reconstruction, based on the data we have, choosing examples from particular species to illustrate how the impact (and aftermath) affected different kinds of animals, and how some may have survived. It’s followed by an appendix which discusses some of the scientific evidence behind the reconstruction. None of this is footnoted or explicitly linked in any way to a specific source, unfortunately (though it accords with my knowledge as far as that goes).

So as a casual read for laypeople, this is fine — Black’s writing is clear and her enthusiasm for the subject spills out at all turns, but for those who read a claim and then want to see what it’s based on, this would be pretty frustrating.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Colour

Posted August 26, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments

Review – Colour

Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox

by Victoria Finlay

Genres: History, Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 494
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Discover the tantalizing true stories behind your favorite colors.

For example: Cleopatra used saffronā€”a source of the color yellowā€”for seduction. Extracted from an Afghan mine, the blue ā€œultramarineā€ paint used by Michelangelo was so expensive he couldnā€™t afford to buy it himself. Since ancient times, carmine redā€”still found in lipsticks and Cherry Coke todayā€”has come from the blood of insects.

Victoria Finlay’sĀ Colour: Travels through the Paintbox is an examination of dyes and pigments, rather than colour per se — there’s a bit of discussion of why we perceive colours the way we do, but not in depth. It’s more about how various pigments are mined or made, and it’s also part travelogue and part-memoir. The fact that Finlay couldn’t get coffee in Beirut because of Hafez al-Assad’s funeral is neither here nor there, as with the fact that she wore a broken boot to climb in and had to keep tying it together with string. The book could probably do without a great deal of this flavouring, since it slows it all down.

But, viewed as Finlay’s account of a personal quest to discover the origins of a handful of colours — neither exhaustive nor greatly in depth, in many ways — there’s definitely a lot of interest here: random facts, suggestive examples of tradition that may tell us something about how things used to be done, and an idea of how things are done now. Sometimes Finlay’s choices were more about some kind of personally satisfying quest than about really understanding a colour: were her quests for visas really about the colour, or about being able to say she’d visited a mine in Afghanistan?

I guess I feel a bit cynical about some of her motivations because I’m not the type who must necessarily go and see a thing to say I understand it. When she tried to pick saffron, that was an experience worth having to understand the process — but did she need to travel so far? Does one have to see the “original” place where indigo grew to understand indigo?

It’s very readable and full of anecdotes and imagination, to the point where I couldn’t really say it’s a good read to learn about colour. It’s a good read to understand someone else’s journey to personally discover the origins of a handful of pigments and dyes. It does have a bibliography and full footnotes, too, but primarily it’s about how Finlay feels about colour, and the stories she discovered (and liked enough to recount). That can be very enjoyable, it’s just worth bearing in mind.

Rating: 3/5

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