Tag: non-fiction

Review – A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World

Posted August 28, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World

A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World

by González Macías

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 150
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

There is something beautiful and wild in the impossible architecture of lighthouses. They have been the homes and workplaces of men and women whose romantic guardianship has saved countless lives from cruel seas. Yet while that way of life fades away, as the lights go out and the buildings crumble, we still have their stories.

From a blind lighthouse keeper tending a light in the Arctic Circle, to an intrepid young girl saving ships from wreck at the foot of her father's lighthouse, and the plight of the lighthouse crew cut off from society for forty days, this is a glorious book full of illuminating stories that will transport the reader to the world's most isolated and inspiring lighthouses.

With over thirty tales that explore the depths to which we can sink and the heights to which we can soar as human beings, and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, nautical charts, maps, architectural plans and curious facts, A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World is as full of wonder as the far flung lighthouses themselves.

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn.

González MacĂ­as’ A Brief Atlas of the Lighthouses at the End of the World was a very random pick from the library, inspired by Postcrossing’s first ever postcard, PT-1, and the semi-frequent requests from other members for postcards of lighthouses. The book covers ~35 lighthouses, recounting some of their histories and sources, and locating them on the map.

It’s a fun little history, albeit very light and including stuff like ghost stories with dubious levels of sourcing. Fact and fiction can be hard to tell apart in that context. Sometimes it describes photos without including them, too, which is a bit annoying — I’d love to have seen them.

Still, pretty interesting as a surprise light read!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Preventable

Posted August 27, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Preventable

Preventable: How A Pandemic Changed the World and How to Stop the Next One

by Devi Sridhar

Genres: Non-fiction, Science
Pages: 432
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The definitive story of COVID-19 and how global politics shape our health - from a world-leading expert and the pandemic's go-to science communicator.

Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In Preventable she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic - including her personal experience as a scientist - and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come.

In gripping and heartfelt prose, Sridhar exposes the varied realities of those affected and puts you in the room with key decision makers at crucial moments. She vibrantly conveys the twists and turns of a plot that saw: deadlier variants emerge (contrary to the predictions of social media pundits who argued it would mutate to a milder form); countries with weak health systems like Senegal and Vietnam fare better than countries like the US and UK (which were consistently ranked as the most prepared); and the quickest development of game-changing vaccines in history (and their unfair distribution).

Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart - it will challenge, outrage and inspire.

Devi Sridhar’s Preventable is a discussion of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the global response to it, and how we could’ve handled it better (mostly, how governments could have handled it better). It came out in 2022, so it’s a little out of date now, but I found it an interesting read nonetheless.

Before I go further with the review, a quick note that I studied Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, starting in 2020 and completing this year, achieving an MSc with merit. So this is a field I know well and am well-qualified to comment on, and I know a fair amount of the cutting-edge stuff about SARS-CoV-2 because I was taught by people who were (and are) researching it. I also volunteered with the WHO managing data about travel restrictions and lockdowns, so I kept fairly abreast of that side of things too. All this to say, you should always take things on the internet with a grain of salt, but that’s where I’m coming from as a reader.

Broadly speaking, I agree with Sridhar’s discussion of how we could’ve prevented the pandemic, or at least the loss of life (and disability-adjusted life years as well). I’d say I remain a little more cautious than she was in 2022, since now in 2025 I still wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces, but things have changed since then (e.g. COVID vaccines are no longer available on the NHS for the majority of people), and I think a bit more is understood about long COVID (or at least about the fact that there isn’t an easy and immediate solution to it just waiting in the scientific wings to fix everything).

I found her tone a bit defensive, but that kinda makes sense: as a scientist and a woman who was saying some pretty unpopular (but generally sensible) things, she faced quite a bit of abuse from the public. Still, I’m a bit iffy about her defenders being people like Piers Morgan, not scientists, and the amount of celebrity name-dropping she does in the book (and which her publisher does on the book cover). I don’t care what Piers Morgan thinks of her!

I was a bit surprised by her degree of support for the idea that SARS-CoV-2 came out of a lab. I do understand the reasons she gives, and the suspicious behaviour of the Chinese government, but… I’m surprised it’s not being treated as a more fringe belief here (though she does emphasise that she’s not seeing any malicious intent, just some kind of lab accident through contact with infected bats).

Her critiques of the British, Swedish and US governments are pretty sound as far as they go, and her praise of the response in other countries likewise tallies pretty well too. I’d just wish for a bit more attention re: long COVID, and maybe a bit more understanding that the vaccine isn’t perfect, and then vaccination wasn’t enough for everyone to go back to normal. She does highlight the problematicness of people with disabilities being told to cut themselves off from society to survive, but she seems to have forgotten that by the conclusion of the book, in her optimistic hope for things to get back to normal.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Monsters

Posted August 22, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Monsters

Monsters: A Bestiary of the Bizarre

by Christopher Dell

Genres: Non-fiction
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Monsters have preoccupied mankind from the earliest times: even cave art includes animal-human monsters. Certainly monsters were present in the ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia; the Old Testament describes the giant land and sea monsters Behemoth and Leviathan, while in the world of Classical mythology, monsters embody the fantasies of the gods and the cruellest punishments of human beings. While we may no longer worry about being eaten by trolls on the way home, there remains a fascination with these creatures who have shadowed us throughout history. This book explores monsters down the ages and throughout the world. It provides a dark yet engrossing visual history of the human mind, lit up by flashes of wild and unearthly inspiration.

Christopher Dell’s Monsters was a bit of a random choice from the library while I happened to be in that area of the library for something else. It’s a pretty fun volume, largely reproducing images of monsters with only brief discussion of those monsters — it’s all in full colour, glossy pages, etc, so it certainly looks good.

I would’ve loved a bit more discussion, of course, but that’s not really what the book is meant for. If anything, given that, it felt like it needed to be longer and include more examples and images. In addition, it’d have been helpful to have an info bar about each individual image, rather than just a bare list of the images on preceding pages.

Interesting, but not well executed.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Beneath Our Feet

Posted August 21, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Beneath Our Feet

Beneath Our Feet

by Michael Lewis, Ian Richardson

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 240
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Britain has a rich past, with incredible archaeology. Every day, new discoveries transform our understanding of its history. Most are made not by professional archaeologists, but by ordinary members of the public. Some are chance finds; others are recovered by the thousands of fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and metal detectorists who scour Britain's countryside and waterways looking for artifacts and coins.

Beneath Our Feet is a celebration of this growing public involvement in archaeology, and of the groundbreaking work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme managed by the British Museum in England and Amgueddfa Cymru in Wales. Its mission is collaboration with public finders, encouraging them to report their discoveries so they can be recorded on a national database and shared with archaeologists, historians, and everyone with an interest in the past buried beneath our feet.

From the 3,500-year-old Ringlemere Cup to the Anglo-Saxon Staffordshire Hoard, a heart pendant connected to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, and a jar of American gold coins buried by a Jewish refugee fleeing the Nazis, these are the stories of more than fifty astonishing treasures, the people who found them, and how they are reshaping British history.

Beneath Our Feet is by Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson, but it covers the finds of many ordinary people — not archaeologists, but metal detectorists, fieldwalkers, mudlarks, and people who just chanced across their finds. In the UK there’s a system to get such things declared and recorded in order that museums can acquire them for display and study, which is great, and here the authors show off some of these items.

It’s a fully illustrated book with colourful, non-glossy pages, some of which are the items themselves and some just images that cast some light on them. I could’ve done with more sense of scale on some of the items, but for a few they do show the scale and the comparisons. Each object or set of objects gets discussed quite briefly, within a couple of pages, and a note about where it can be found now (e.g. a museum or a private collection), so it’s more of a taster than anything.

I really liked it — as a kid who grew up watching and loving Time Team, this kind of “everyday archaeology” (though some of the objects found are in fact officially Treasure and incredibly opulent) is incredibly fun to read about. And it’s a really well-presented book.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Most Delicious Poison

Posted August 20, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Most Delicious Poison

Most Delicious Poison: From Spices to Vices - The Story of Nature's Toxins

by Noah Whiteman

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

A deadly secret lurks within our kitchens, medicine cabinets and gardens...

Digitalis purpurea. The common foxglove. Vision blurs as blood pressure drops precipitously. The heartbeat slows until, finally, it stops.

Atropa belladonna. Deadly nightshade. Eyes darken as strange shapes flutter across your vision. The heart begins to race and soon the entire body is overcome with convulsions.

Papaver somniferum. The opium poppy. Pupils constrict to a pinprick as the senses dull. Gradually, breathing shudders to a halt.

Scratch the surface of a coffee bean, a chilli flake or an apple seed and find a bevy of strange chemicals - biological weapons in a war raging unseen. Here, beetles, birds, bats and butterflies must navigate a minefield of specialised chemicals and biotoxins, each designed to maim and kill.

And yet these chemicals, evolved to repel marauding insects and animals, have now become an integral part of our everyday lives. Some we use to greet our days (caffeine) and titillate our tongues (capsaicin), others to bend our minds (psilocybin) and take away our pains (opioids).

Inspired by his father's love of the natural world and his eventual spiral into the depths of addiction, evolutionary biologist Noah Whiteman explores how we came to use - and abuse - these chemicals. Delving into the mysterious origins of plant and fungal toxins, and their unique human history, Most Delicious Poison provides a kaleidoscopic tour of nature's most delectable and dangerous poisons.

Noah Whiteman’s Most Delicious Poison: From Spices to Vices – the Story of Nature’s Toxins is primarily focused on the issue of addiction, and includes discussion of his father’s alcoholism and death due to complications thereof. It muses on his own likely propensity toward addiction as well, and generally seems to be part an exorcism of Whiteman’s own demons around addictive plant products.

There is a great deal of discussion of chemistry and biology as well, discussing how exactly the toxins work, and how they interact with receptors — and even how that might have evolved (often coincidentally, but sometimes based on the fact that some things are widespread across the animal kingdom, having evolved early on). It was this that I was interested on, and it largely didn’t disappoint, though I felt the emphasis on addiction meant a bit of a narrowed focus beyond some other plant toxins that would’ve been interesting. Basically everything came down to addiction within a few pages, and I don’t think that emphasis was really clear in the book’s description.

I did also find Whiteman’s style a bit challenging, rather inclined to jump around/link together topics that aren’t closely linked in a very “and another thing!” manner.

Overall, not quite what I hoped for.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Underwear: Fashion in Detail

Posted August 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Underwear: Fashion in Detail

Underwear: Fashion in Detail

by Eleri Lynn

Genres: Fashion, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 224
Series: Fashion in Detail
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Get intimately acquainted with the V&A's world-renowned collection of undergarments in this eye-opening visual history. From camisoles to corsets, basques to boudoir caps, Underwear: Fashion in Detail traces the peculiar evolution of underwear. Revealing photographs highlight close-up details in the garments, while intricate line drawings show their masterly construction. A wide range of designs is represented, from rare 16th-century examples to Dior's curvaceous New Look, to Calvin Klein's notorious briefs.

Underwear: Fashion in Detail is another of the books from the V&A delving into a particular topic through their collections, this one written by Eleri Lynn. I found it a little less easy to read than the others, with text arranged in columns rather than going smoothly across the page, and it doesn’t provide full images of many of the items discussed. Just seeing the detail without seeing how it fits into the whole is pretty unedifying, to be honest.

There’s a lot of information here, and someone with a better visual imagination might find it more useful for envisaging the whole thing, but I was a bit disappointed in the presentation.

Still, if it’s a topic you have interest in, it’s worth it!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Book Forger

Posted August 12, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Book Forger

The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime That Fooled The World

by Joseph Hone

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

London, 1932. Thomas James Wise is the toast of the literary establishment. A prominent collector and businessman, he is renowned on both sides of the Atlantic for unearthing the most stunning first editions and bringing them to market. Pompous and fearsome, with friends in high places, he is one of the most powerful men in the field of rare books.

One night, two young booksellers - one a dishevelled former communist, the other a martini-swilling fan of detective stories - stumble upon a strange discrepancy. It will lead them to suspect Wise and his books are not all they seem. Inspired by the vogue for Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, the pair harness the latest developments in forensic analysis to crack the case, but find its extent is greater than they ever could have imagined. By the time they are done, their investigation will have rocked the book world to its core.

I have a weird quibble with Joseph Hone’s The Book Forger which is going to sound very, very niche, but took me aback: he talks about Dorothy L. Sayers, and compares the real people about whom he’s writing to her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. He quotes from The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, and then… very bizarrely gets everything wrong, claiming that Wimsey has found arsenic on the victim’s shoe (no, he found varnish) and that he died of it (no, he died of digitalin). What actually happens is that Wimsey visits the analyst with the varnish sample, and the analyst is finishing up with a sample that’s full of arsenic unrelated to Wimsey’s case.

It’s just a weird sloppy mistake, and it’s not germane to the overall point he’s making or the real detective work he’s recounting, but at the same time… if he can’t manage to read that scene properly, or research it to check his recollection is correct, how do I trust the rest of the book?

I keep getting stick now and then for noticing and caring about this sort of thing (and counting it into my ratings), but in non-fiction, it does matter. If you get wrong a point I can verify, or interpret a study without noticing it has bias (in the technical sense, e.g. like selection bias), or just make a muck of explaining something I understand well… how can I trust the rest of the work?

Now, that aside I did rather enjoy The Book Forger. I knew little about Thomas J. Wise beforehand, and nothing at all about the two men who unmasked him (Pollard and Carter), so the fact that it’s careful to set the scene is helpful, though there’s a certain amount of imaginative reconstruction (quoting e.g. letters wherever possible).

It’s worth keeping in mind while reading it that a certain amount of it is fiction in a sense, but it does lay out the likely events, grounded in the evidence that’s available (so far as I can tell), and it is quite the story. I’d maybe have liked to see the impacts a bit more: do the fakes still circulate? Might there be more that we haven’t identified and dissected? How has it impacted e.g. scholarship?

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Medieval Scriptorium

Posted August 8, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Medieval Scriptorium

The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages

by Sara J. Charles

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 352
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Illuminated with illustrations, an exploration of medieval manuscript production that offers insight into both the early history of the book and life in the Middle Ages.

This book takes the reader on an immersive journey through medieval manuscript production in the Latin Christian world. Each chapter opens with a lively vignette by a medieval narrator—including a parchment maker, scribe, and illuminator—introducing various aspects of manuscript production. Sara J. Charles poses the question “What actually is a scriptorium?” and explores the development of the medieval scriptorium from its early Christian beginnings through to its eventual decline and the growth of the printing press.

With the written word at the very heart of the Christian monastic movement, we see the immense amount of labor, planning, and networks needed to produce each manuscript. By tapping into these processes and procedures, The Medieval Scriptorium helps us to experience medieval life through the lens of a manuscript maker.

Sara J. Charles’ The Medieval Scriptorium is an in-depth look at book production in the Middle Ages — and not just the writing of books in a scriptorium, but also the process of making the parchment and bindings, the ink, the pigments, doing the illuminations. The most surprising fact for me was that actually, we don’t really know what “a scriptorium” was like, and we’re not even sure they existed: the evidence suggests they probably weren’t universal, at the very least, and that instead probably in many institutions the work was done in special cubicles in the cloisters.

Each chapter opens with a bit of fiction, which I found a bit unnecessary: they do meticulously demonstrate the conclusions of each chapter, bringing them to life, and I think some readers might like them a lot, I just… prefer my non-fiction to be non-fiction.

I’d say most of the information here wasn’t surprising to me, but there are some corners where I had never read about it in so much detail before, a few facts here and there that came as surprises. It’s a nicely presented book, with in-line colour illustrations (I seem to be seeing this more lately, which is welcome), detailed references (hurrah!) and an index. The facts line up with what I know from studying English lit, so all in all, recommended!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – 18th-Century Fashion in Detail

Posted August 3, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – 18th-Century Fashion in Detail

18th-Century Fashion in Detail

by Susan North

Genres: Fashion, History
Pages: 224
Series: Fashion in Detail
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

This beautifully illustrated book reveals sharp pleats, high collars, gleaming pastes, colorful beads, elaborate buttons, and intricate lacework that make up some of the garments in the Victoria and Albert Museum's extensive fashion collection. With an authoritative text, exquisite color photography of garment details, and line drawings and photographs showing the complete construction of each piece, the reader has the unique opportunity to examine up close historical clothing that is often too fragile to be on display. It is an inspirational resource for students, collectors, designers, and anyone who is fascinated by fashion and costume.

The V&A’s 18th-Century Fashion in Detail is written by Susan North, and it’s a beautiful item, with glossy full-colour images of details from the garments discussed. My main quibble is that it doesn’t provide full images of how the garments looked as a whole, rather breaking them down into one bit that the author has chosen to discuss, like just a close-up of some embroidery. There are sketches showing the garments and how they’re put together, but it’s not really the same.

It’s still a fascinating read, especially when it discusses some of the unfinished garments that were sold part-completed, so they could be fitted to the wearer. There’s almost nothing about children’s clothes, which made me curious — I think in this period they were still usually mini-versions of the adult clothing, but I’d still like to see some examples.

It’s a lovely volume, despite the caveats.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – The Buried City

Posted July 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Buried City

The Buried City: Unearthing the Real Pompeii

by Gabriel Zuchtriegel

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

This is Pompeii, as you've never seen it before.

In this revelatory history, Gabriel Zuchtriegel shares the new secrets of Pompeii. Over the last few years, a vast stretch of the city has been excavated for the first time. Now, drawing on these astonishing discoveries, The Buried City reveals the untold human stories that are at last emerging.

Pompeii is a world frozen in time. There are unmade beds, dishes left drying, tools abandoned by workmen, bodies embracing with love and fear. And alongside the remnants of everyday life, there are captivating works of art: lifelike portraits, exquisite frescos and mosaics, and the extraordinary sculpture of a sleeping boy, curled up under a blanket that's too small.

The Buried City reconstructs the catastrophe that destroyed Pompeii on 24 August 79 CE, but it also offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the city as it was before: who lived here, what mattered to them, and what happened in their final hours. It offers us a vivid sense of Pompeii's continuing relevance, and proves that ancient history is much closer to us than we think.

The cover copy on the inside flap of the dust cover suggests that Gabriel Zuchtriegel’s The Buried City is about amazing new finds at Pompeii, but that’s not really a good description of the book (though it does discuss some recent finds). It feels more like a manifesto for seeing Pompeii differently, for seeing it not just as a source of treasure, nor a tourist site for income, but a piece of heritage that everyone has a stake in, and everyone deserves the chance to learn about.

It takes a while to unfold to anything like that, though, because it’s also partly autobiographical, Zuchtriegel’s musings on what makes him who he is as an archaeologist, what drove him to the point that he became the director general at Pompeii. All of that led him to his excitement on unveiling the life of slaves in Pompeii, his attitude toward his work there, his involvement of young people in actually putting on drama in Pompeii — something which was revelatory for them and for the team involved.

It’s a fascinating book about archaeology in general, not just Pompeii; I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for being about Pompeii, but more as a view of a career and an attitude that culminated in a change of focus at Pompeii. And it really does ramble, sometimes.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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