Thumbs up for Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection by Kate Beaton. Comics.
I did not laugh quite as uproariously as I did when reading the first Hark! A Vagrant book, but that is setting a very high bar indeed. Check out the webcomic, and if you dig it, you’ll find that the print collections are well-worth adding to your shelf.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Medicine/history.
Somewhat uneven—or perhaps it’s just that I found the development of the rabies vaccine a far more riveting story than the section on the folklore of vampires and werewolves, which even the authors acknowledge have only a pretty vague connection with rabies.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua. Graphic novel/historical fiction.
So Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage were real people, back in The Day, and Babbage designed the first computer but didn’t build it, and Lovelace wrote imaginary programs for it, and they were BFFs until Lovelace died way too early.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. Philosophy.
A beautifully-written book about a horrible subject, by someone who has seen it from a very short distance indeed. Hedges explores what war does to humanity (both in the sense of the human race, and our humane-ness), using stories from his own experience to provide context and structure for his philosophy.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Writing on the Wall: Social Media – The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage. History.
This is not, of course, really the history of what we think of when we say “social media” – MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and so on: as the sub-subtitle hints. More accurately it’s the history of all pre-centralized media. Here you will find out about the postal system of the Romans; how Luther made it big; secret messages passed via poetry at the court of Henry VIII; the political rhymes of the French revolution; how early coffeehouses were pretty much like the Internet; and what exactly was the importance of the Stamp Tax.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for Underwear: What We Wear Under There by Ruth Freeman Swain, illustrated by John O’Brien. Children’s history.
Quite cute. Rather embarrassing to admit: my knowledge of the history of underwear already surpasses this book.
… >> Read more“N” Day was May 15th, 1940, the day when nylon stockings first went on sale to the public. Across the country [US] crowds waited for hours outside stores.
Thumbs up for White House Interpreter: The Art of Interpretation by Harry Obst. Linguistics/Memoir.
The author is German-English interpreter who served the U.S. State Department for nineteen years, working with seven presidents. He does a brilliant job of mixing on-the-job anecdotes – sometimes funny, sometimes embarrassing, always interesting – with non-technical descriptions of what an interpreter does, while throughout making the clear and illuminating point of why it is one of the most important jobs that no one thinks about.… >> Read more
Thumbs up for The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History by Katherine Ashenburg. History.
You know it had to exist: the history of hygiene. This microhistory is better-than-average: just the right combination of easy-to-read and informative. Exactly as a writer of historical or historical-ish fantasy might wish, in fact….
… >> Read moreIt follows that hygiene has always been a convenient stick with which to beat other peoples, who never seem to get it right.