Posted May 3, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight
The study of things like psychic powers and premonitions is always fascinating. There’s a sense that so many of us want to believe in this sort of thing — the way the human brain insists that there must be a pattern behind circumstances. One can be fairly intellectually sure that there’s no such thing as precognition per se, and yet find it a little freaky that (say) a young girl would dream of her school being swallowed up by black stuff a couple of nights before she dies in the Aberfan disaster…
This book is all about digging into that, mostly through looking at the investigations and interests of John Barker, a British psychiatrist who tried to gather up premonitions and test them scientifically. He was sometimes a bit too credible, a bit too inclined to influence the data — but then, two of his clairvoyants (percipients, as he called them) predicted his death fairly accurately, and had a number of other surprisingly specific hits (such as predicting a train derailment).
The book mostly follows Barker, along with a few of his colleagues, trying to understand his attempts to study premonitions, and why he was so fascinated by the subject. Knight doesn’t attempt to come to any conclusions, just presents the facts as best as they can be known — though of course there’s always a chance someone massaged the facts to make a better story, whether it was Barker, one of his colleagues, or Knight himself.
There’s quite a bit of detail on the Aberfan disaster in the first 50 pages, by the way, which hit me where I live. If that disaster is particularly evocative for you, then read with care.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Sam Knight, science
Posted April 19, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Sex: Lessons from History, Fern Riddell
A comprehensive history of sex would be a tall order: sexual behaviour doesn’t fossilise, after all, and it’s so often been a taboo subject that even in written history, it can be hard to find evidence. Riddell doesn’t try too hard to find evidence far back in the past, but works with what records we have, reminding us all of the lies we keep telling ourselves about the Victorians being total prudes about sex, about the historical treatment of queer people, etc. She dips into court records and ad copy, so it’s not just contemporary accounts that specifically aimed to discuss sex and attitudes toward it, but also additional evidence.
Riddell’s prose is really readable and full of anecdotes and illustrations from the records, which means it’s not dry at all. It does focus on sex and people who have sex, but touches on gender identity as well, with caution about applying modern labels and concepts to people who never wrote about what they felt or intended; asexuality is referenced, but not really discussed.
There’s quite a range of topics here (homosexuality, masturbation, orgasms, contraception), so it doesn’t go into too much depth on any one thing; rather, it’s a bit of an overview.
Referencing is fairly clear, using footnotes rather than end-notes (so more specific than many popular non-fic books), and there’s an index. There are a few editing issues that I really think should’ve been caught — typos and such.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Fern Riddell, history, non-fiction
Posted April 12, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Museum of the Wood Age, Max Adams
The Museum of the Wood Age sounded like a fascinating concept: a thought experiment about how to gather together the proof of mankind’s use of wood, what kind of exhibits should there be? How would you make people understand the importance of wood throughout the ages? How can we preserve the ways of working with wood that have been passed down to us?
In practice… it was kind of slow. I don’t usually mind obscure details about things outside my usual field of interest, so it’s not that I wasn’t interested. In the end, perhaps it was just too detailed — or Adams’ writing just isn’t engaging enough.
Overall it was a bit of a slog, sadly, and things I was really interested in (like Seahenge!) were more touched upon than really discussed. If you’re fascinated by wood and the things you can make with it, the ubiquity of it in our society, I think there are definitely bits you’ll enjoy. It’s just all a bit long-winded.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, Max Adams, non-fiction
Posted April 2, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Taste for Poison, Neil Bradbury
This book didn’t start quite where I expected it to, with the most conventional poisons — arsenic or cyanide or even digitalis. It began with insulin, which was an interesting way to approach the topic, and that gave it a certain amount of freshness. Each poison is illustrated with two or three stories about how it’s been used by someone or other, historically, and how they were caught (of course, cases where no one was caught are harder to prove).
It talks a little about how each poison works — not in exhaustive detail, but enough to give you a pretty good layperson’s understanding of why it should prove a poison.
It’s interesting how often doctors and medical professionals are the culprits in these stories. It makes sense — access to the poisons, and trust from patients — but it’s a little disheartening to read, actually!
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, Neil Bradbury, non-fiction, science
Posted March 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World, Bob Brier
I’ve been fascinated by ancient Egypt since I was a kid, like many people. One of the books that fed that interest when I was a teenager was Bob Brier’s The Murder of Tutankhamen, so I was intrigued to get this and read about his current take on the state of Tutankhamun studies. I also knew he said some things people found controversial and unnecessary about Howard Carter (highlighting what appeared to be thefts from the tomb), which… I was curious about, and not too surprised about.
Brier writes engagingly, and there’s a lot of fascinating stuff. I did find it not always entirely clear when a theory was considered solid or not — sometimes he’d report a recent theory and say that this and that were found on experimentation, and give all positive-sounding evidence about it… and then sort of step back and say well, we can’t trust that evidence. It’s probably easier to digest if you discuss both the positives and the negatives all in one go! (In particular I found this with the chapter aDNA testing on the mummies to establish familial relationships. Brier sounded like he was behind their conclusions, at least to me, and then in the next chapter mentioned how obviously it couldn’t be true.)
It’s definitely an interesting update both on the understanding of Tutankhamun and on Brier’s understanding of Tutankhamun, especially if you read his popular book, which suggested that Tutankhamun was murdered, when it was current. He’s completely disavowed all those theories now, but makes brief reference to them here.
It remains a popular book and biased, I think, to the author’s specific interests and view of the world. For example, he repeatedly conflates disability with frailty, which may or may not be true (someone with a club foot may still be fairly hale in other ways, for example). He’s very keen to portray Tutankhamun a certain way, and it’s important to remember that Brier is not neutral (no one is) in those interpretations. Some of this stuff we just don’t know, and is very difficult to know now thanks to the poor condition of Tutankhamun’s body.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Bob Brier, book reviews, books, history, non-fiction
Posted March 13, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Blue Jeans, Carolyn Purnell
This is a sort of non-fiction I really like — something that focuses on an everyday object and unpicks it. Here it’s blue jeans, and goes into the colour, the garment, how they became combined, and the fashions around them and perceptions of them. Parts of it, like the creation of indigo, I already knew about, but it’s different to have the facts marshalled together like this and get a really clear view on how the creation of synthetic indigo has led to huge pollution from the jeans industry.
Carolyn Purnell writes well and clearly, and without personal anecdote getting too much in the way — rather, the glimpses of her personal opinions and her family’s history with jeans helped to illuminate the topic.
I really enjoyed it.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Carolyn Purnell, history, non-fiction
Posted March 9, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Tutankhamun’s Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects, Toby Wilkinson
I love this style of history, selecting objects and focusing in on what they tell us, and I was hugely into Ancient Egyptian history when I was a teenager (obsessing in particular over Christine Desroches-Noblecourt’s book on Tutankhamun). So it’s no surprise that I really enjoyed this in a partly nostalgic way.
Unlike some other books of this type, it doesn’t explicitly mention at the start of each section which object is being discussed. Sometimes the object introduces the history that Wilkinson wants to explore; sometimes there’s a description of the state of affairs too, and then Wilkinson brings in the object that illustrates that from the tomb. Sometimes the object is mentioned rather glancingly, which is somewhat disappointing: I love it when historians and archaeologists really focus in and look at the object as an object as well as a symbol of hundreds of years of history.
Overall, I found this enjoyable, and despite eagerly reading many books both specifically about Tutankhamun and more generally about Ancient Egypt, I definitely found new information and (perhaps even better) new interpretations here. I’m reading Bob Brier’s Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World right now, for example, and he only mentions the usual theory that the tombs of many past pharoahs were looted by robbers and their mummies rewrapped and rehidden by the state “to protect them from further desecration”. Wilkinson instead mentions state-sanctioned looting in Ramesses XI’s reign to fund General Paiankh’s campaigns — something I don’t recall reading about anywhere else before.
Definitely got on better with this than A World Beneath The Sands, which bodes well for the other Wilkinson book I have on my TBR pile.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, non-fiction, Toby Wilkinson
Posted February 27, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments
Fever Season: The Story of a Terrifying Epidemic and the People Who Saved a City, Jeanette Keith
My interest in this book was mostly from a scientific perspective, rather than the historical, but it seems that there weren’t many scientific takeaways from this epidemic — or at least, this book isn’t interested in discussing them, though it briefly mentions that there were scientists and doctors in Memphis during the outbreak who tried to get what information they could.
Fever Season is more a historical chronicle, an attempt to draw together eye-witness accounts and historical events and make a record of the suffering and death the city suffered, with some nods to how that later influenced Memphis’ growth as a city. Keith writes with quiet sympathy for the major players, identifying the people who stayed, who did their best to combat the suffering. The discussion of the nurse Kezia DePelchin in particular is very sympathetic, showing her sadness, the ways she suffered as an onlooker.
It’s a fairly dry narrative, all the same, and it assumes at least some pre-existing knowledge about Memphis and the political situation in the US in that period. Nothing a bit of Googling couldn’t teach me, but that and the dryness made it heavy going in some ways.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, history, Jeanette Keith
Posted February 7, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment
Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore, Emma Southon
I really enjoyed Emma Southon’s book on murder in Ancient Rome, so I was eager to pick this up. I didn’t know much about Agrippina to begin with, beyond the most common stories, so it took some work to orient myself to her family tree (and of course, with the way that Romans only had about two names available per family so it sometimes feels like everyone is called Julia or Agrippina). Once oriented (with the help of Southon’s explanations and supplementary material), it’s quite the story: Southon sees Agrippina as a very capable woman who tried to do things not considered suitable for a woman in her context, and nonetheless being fairly successful, on the whole.
Southon’s tone is irreverent, as in her other book, and that might put off people who are looking for “serious” history. Despite that, and the lack of direct sourcing, Southon makes it very clear when she’s speculating and what she thinks is possible, what she thinks is likely, and what she thinks is a certainty. Don’t let the tone fool you: she’s really quite careful about that, and many historians are not (or not always). Southon outright tells you that she’s imagining what Agrippina might have done, and based on what; other authors will look at the possibilities, pick their favourite, and present that as what happened because it’s what they think happened.
Southon’s book is pretty sympathetic to Agrippina, where generally I’ve seen her treated very critically, and she does good work in revealing where that came from and why. Overall, Agrippina was an enemy I wouldn’t have liked to make — and one who got the things she wanted from life, even if they then killed her. Southon’s interpretation is striking and refreshing.
I did actually find it a bit slow going at times, despite that, but I don’t think that’s the fault of Southon, or of the material. This just didn’t feel as fresh as A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum — despite Southon’s irreverent tone, it’s still a biography, and those can kinda drag for me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Emma Southon, history, non-fiction
Posted February 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Murder: The Biography, Kate Morgan
Murder: The Biography is an interesting look at the history of murder, from the perspective of how different murder cases have changed the law (and how the law existing at the time impacted various murder cases). It’s written by a lawyer, but it’s accessible for the layperson, and Morgan remains keenly aware of how fascinating the topic of murder is to many. The details aren’t at all dry, but the back of the book contains details of how to find the relevant judgements, etc, for those who want to dig right into it.
For a reader of crime/mystery fiction, it has little to say about the fictional world (beyond a few comments that the bulk of murders are not like in books), just in case you were wondering — it focuses entirely on real-world cases, mostly things which helped to shape the law and other prosecutions. So we see things like the development of defences of diminished responsibility, and corporate manslaughter, through the lens of the events that prompted them. The latter law is still not really tested: the case of Grenfell, Morgan says, is a make-or-break moment for it, as you’d imagine.
I found it a really interesting read, and surprisingly quick. I wasn’t already aware of all of the murders, either. Just as a warning, there are a few really awful cases, such as the case of Dr Bateman’s negligence — skim that one if you’re a bit squeamish, and avoid the details.
Rating: 5/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, history, Kate Morgan, non-fiction
