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 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain, Grace Lindsay
I’m probably slightly misquoting, but there’s a bit in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Clouds of Witness where Peter’s sister is explaining things to him, and asks him if she isn’t making his head hurt. “Damnably, but I like it. Go on,” Peter says. I felt kind of that way, when reading this — I wasn’t always 100% understanding what was going on, for sure, but I was intrigued and I wanted to read more. Each chapter helped build my understanding up a little more, too: I found it was well-written in that way, even if math really isn’t my thing.
I doubt I’ve retained a great deal of the information, sadly, but it was nonetheless an enjoyable reading experience. The brain is so complex and so fascinating, and Lindsay tries to show how mathematics has been able to illuminate parts of how it works — where squishy biologists like myself might shrug and say it’s too complex. (Maybe that’s just me.)
Most likely math can’t answer all the questions on its own, but Lindsay makes it clear that it’s offered some useful insights and paths to go down.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Grace Lindsay, non-fiction, science
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 11, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Personal Stereo, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
I love the idea of this series, but I chose this one somewhat at random — and it was a winner for me! I’m just old enough to have used a Walkman for a while before I started using things like CDs and a minidisk player, before moving onto an iPod. I was that kid blocking out all the other kids, as a teenager, though by then it was definitely CDs/minidisk/iPod: I was the one in my own little world, and I needed it amidst all the bullying at my school — an aspect of why people might have chosen personal stereos that doesn’t quite get covered here, though the concerns about people going off into their own little world, as well as the pleasures thereof, are covered.
The author has quite the nostalgia for personal stereos, but tries to look at them critically and pick apart the nostalgia to see what they really were. In some ways, the societal reaction to them was very similar to that toward mobile phones: they were making people anti-social, they were ruining all kinds of things, they were dangerous, etc. Always funny to see that we’re the same throughout generations…
It’s a short read, and I found it worthwhile. Surprisingly touching in some ways (the story of the co-founders of Sony, both having had strokes, communicating silently and remaining friends, for instance). I was absorbed enough to read it in less than an hour, without putting it down.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
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 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
Posted January 26, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Everybody Lies is an enthusiastic defence of the premise that “big data” — such as aggregate data from the kind of things people search in Google — might tell us things about humans that we wouldn’t admit even on an anonymous survey, and which things like implicit association tests hope to dig out. My main feeling going in was that I’d expect such a dataset to have its own drawbacks, and that I’d be very sceptical if the author pretended that it did not.
Well, though the author writes enthusiastically and persuasively about the subject, he does mention some cautionary tales and drawbacks, and he makes very good points about things like sexuality. Someone in the closet in a homophobic country doesn’t have much incentive to admit to being gay to an anonymous survey, but they might still search for gay porn (and indeed searches for gay porn match reasonably well across the world, showing that there’s a background rate of people who are at least interested in it in principle.
(His data actually just shows where men are interested in men having sex with men, not where men are gay, which is something he doesn’t really notice. Bisexual men don’t exist for the purposes of his discussion here, even though he’d be much better to just talk about same-sex attraction and include the possibility of both homosexuality and bisexuality.)
The book is full of interesting examples and applications, and a sprinkling of the author’s personality (as many pop-sci type books do). He’s excited about his work, but not too credulous, and it’s a reasonable introduction to the concept that has me… okay, not convinced that data science is actually necessarily going to produce the next great specialist in every subject (as he suggests), but hopeful that data from Google searches and other similar bodies of data can indeed teach us things about ourselves.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
