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Aug. 22nd, 2016 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe Ghost Map by Stephen Johnson
This was one of the books I received for Yuletide bookswap, and have finally finished. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's one of the best popular science books I've ever read, and I have had a few opinions about popular science books in my day.
It tells the story of an 1850s London cholera epidemic and the amateur epidemiologists who finally provided compelling statistical and epidemiological evidence of cholera's water-borne cause and the specific locus of the outbreak in one particular well.
Its central protagonists are a pioneeering anesthesiologist, John Snow, and a church curate, Reverend Henry Whitehead, who together did the excruciating and dangerous work of surveying residents of the afflicted neighborhood and piecing together the water usage trails that proved their case, work that ultimately saved millions if not billions of lives down the line. And it was so good at giving me scientific method feels, so that the moment when Whitehead uncovered proof of how the water had been infected (a proof that was inevitable by that point in the analysis, but which provided the basically indisputable proof that the analysis had been correct), it actually made me weep with pride for humanity (though I was admittedly on 30 hours without sleep at that point, stuck in my second airport of the day).
The epilogue is a little loopy in its speculative extrapolations, but otherwise I have no complaints. Grateful to my gift giver for introducing me to this wonderful story. I may request John Snow/Henry Whitehead fic for Yuletide, too.
The Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Fleming
A short little book, more of my reading around Hamilton. (Though as a document of the Jefferson presidency, this features more of Burr than Hamilton.)
Fleming takes as a given that the Louisiana Purchase ultimately worked out well for the US- few historians would disagree, I think. For a relatively small amount of money, spent at a moment when Hamilton's banking reforms and a booming American economy had the US comparatively flush, the US greatly expanded its territorial claims, avoided a war with Spain or France that Fleming thinks may have been looming, and set the tone for a century of American expansion. (Of course, in other ways this expansion was a mixed legacy. It's obviously not clear that France had the right to sell this land given that it was occupied by numerous Native tribes. If France did have a right to sell this land, this right was governed by treaties the Louisiana Purchase obligated the US to also recognize; the US immediately proceeded to disregard these treaties and also impose martial law on the remaining French in New Orleans out of a concern from Jefferson that they were not ready to enjoy the fruits of democracy.)
Fleming's focus, then, is on the difficulties surrounding the actual purchase, of the role of the brutal war of the French to retake Haiti and its impact on the terms of the purchase, on the political wrangling between Jefferson Republicans and the weakened remnant of the Federalists, on the personal rivalries between chief negotiators Robert Livingston and James Monroe, and on the difficulty of negotiating with Talleyrand and Napoleon. Fleming's writing is clear, straightforward, and detailed, and he creates a vivid picture of the setting. I found the book informative but not deeply significant.
I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton
Possibly the best of the series, it innovates in form while retaining all the core elements that make the Kinsey Milhone books great- the vivid California setting deepening in complexity with each story, the toughness and vulnerability of Kinsey, the importance of actually pounding pavement to investigation, the complexity of the motivations for the interactions of witnesses with Kinsey, the monstrous but recognizable villains.
Unlike a lot of the series, which get conventional in their ending with Kinsey finally putting the pieces together and outsmarting the bad guy, I liked that even after Kinsey put the pieces together, the villain succeeded in tricking her for a time. It made him seem even more dangerous and capable, and made the ultimate conclusion feel that much more earned.
Medium Rare by Anthony Bourdain
Borrowed from the swaps table at Vividcon because the flight delays meant I'd read all the books I'd brought and needed something for the trip home. It's not a book I'd otherwise read, and I actively disliked a good third of the book, the part that consisted of personal vendettas against other chefs. But there were some good parts, some good meditations on the place of food and restaurants in our culture, and it was certainly fine as an airplane book, where you're always getting distracted from being able to really focus on anything complex anyway.
This was one of the books I received for Yuletide bookswap, and have finally finished. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's one of the best popular science books I've ever read, and I have had a few opinions about popular science books in my day.
It tells the story of an 1850s London cholera epidemic and the amateur epidemiologists who finally provided compelling statistical and epidemiological evidence of cholera's water-borne cause and the specific locus of the outbreak in one particular well.
Its central protagonists are a pioneeering anesthesiologist, John Snow, and a church curate, Reverend Henry Whitehead, who together did the excruciating and dangerous work of surveying residents of the afflicted neighborhood and piecing together the water usage trails that proved their case, work that ultimately saved millions if not billions of lives down the line. And it was so good at giving me scientific method feels, so that the moment when Whitehead uncovered proof of how the water had been infected (a proof that was inevitable by that point in the analysis, but which provided the basically indisputable proof that the analysis had been correct), it actually made me weep with pride for humanity (though I was admittedly on 30 hours without sleep at that point, stuck in my second airport of the day).
The epilogue is a little loopy in its speculative extrapolations, but otherwise I have no complaints. Grateful to my gift giver for introducing me to this wonderful story. I may request John Snow/Henry Whitehead fic for Yuletide, too.
The Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Fleming
A short little book, more of my reading around Hamilton. (Though as a document of the Jefferson presidency, this features more of Burr than Hamilton.)
Fleming takes as a given that the Louisiana Purchase ultimately worked out well for the US- few historians would disagree, I think. For a relatively small amount of money, spent at a moment when Hamilton's banking reforms and a booming American economy had the US comparatively flush, the US greatly expanded its territorial claims, avoided a war with Spain or France that Fleming thinks may have been looming, and set the tone for a century of American expansion. (Of course, in other ways this expansion was a mixed legacy. It's obviously not clear that France had the right to sell this land given that it was occupied by numerous Native tribes. If France did have a right to sell this land, this right was governed by treaties the Louisiana Purchase obligated the US to also recognize; the US immediately proceeded to disregard these treaties and also impose martial law on the remaining French in New Orleans out of a concern from Jefferson that they were not ready to enjoy the fruits of democracy.)
Fleming's focus, then, is on the difficulties surrounding the actual purchase, of the role of the brutal war of the French to retake Haiti and its impact on the terms of the purchase, on the political wrangling between Jefferson Republicans and the weakened remnant of the Federalists, on the personal rivalries between chief negotiators Robert Livingston and James Monroe, and on the difficulty of negotiating with Talleyrand and Napoleon. Fleming's writing is clear, straightforward, and detailed, and he creates a vivid picture of the setting. I found the book informative but not deeply significant.
I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton
Possibly the best of the series, it innovates in form while retaining all the core elements that make the Kinsey Milhone books great- the vivid California setting deepening in complexity with each story, the toughness and vulnerability of Kinsey, the importance of actually pounding pavement to investigation, the complexity of the motivations for the interactions of witnesses with Kinsey, the monstrous but recognizable villains.
Unlike a lot of the series, which get conventional in their ending with Kinsey finally putting the pieces together and outsmarting the bad guy, I liked that even after Kinsey put the pieces together, the villain succeeded in tricking her for a time. It made him seem even more dangerous and capable, and made the ultimate conclusion feel that much more earned.
Medium Rare by Anthony Bourdain
Borrowed from the swaps table at Vividcon because the flight delays meant I'd read all the books I'd brought and needed something for the trip home. It's not a book I'd otherwise read, and I actively disliked a good third of the book, the part that consisted of personal vendettas against other chefs. But there were some good parts, some good meditations on the place of food and restaurants in our culture, and it was certainly fine as an airplane book, where you're always getting distracted from being able to really focus on anything complex anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-08-31 08:39 am (UTC)