The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert: I held off reading this for a long time – not to bury my head in the sand about climate change, but to try to keep it from becoming the only thing that I think about all day, every day (when I’m not thinking about Sagan-adjacent meaning of life things). It was far less apocalyptic and depressing than I expected, without being overly optimistic.
Panic in Level Four, by Richard Preston: Unfortunately, the primary feeling I had while reading this collection of essays based on Preston’s work for the New Yorker and other publications was “I wish this was more about Ebola and less about everything else.” I have his newest book (which is, like The Hot Zone, about Ebola, but about 2014 instead of the early 90s) on hold, so I’m curious to see if it will sustain my interest or if his writing just isn’t for me (I never read The Hot Zone itself).
The Road to Jonestown, by Jeff Guinn: I read this, then listened to the podcast You’re Wrong About‘s Jonestown episode and felt like…they were just giving a summary of the book (I’ve listened to some of their other episodes and haven’t felt that way, but maybe I had an overall unrealistic expectation about the amount of original research they would be doing?). This is an incredibly comprehensive and detailed examination of Jim Jones and the events leading up to THE event that everyone remembers.
The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, by D.T. Max: The thing about prions is that there are so (relatively) few clearly defined/understood prion diseases that a book about one prion disease (in this case, Fatal Familial Insomnia) inevitably becomes a book about all prion diseases. That’s not exactly a critique, but because I’ve read multiple prion-centric books there was a fair amount of repetition in this one. Everything about the family at the center of the book, though, was new. This came out in 2006, but it didn’t seem dated at all…which suggests that 13 years later we have very little new information or insight about prions (to continue the podcast theme, I immediately listened to the This Podcast Will Kill You prions episode).
Asperger’s Children, by Edith Sheffer: I’d read about Asperger himself only in the context of the broader history of autism, and had no idea that many of his ideas were so closely tied to/in service of Nazi ideals (it seems like another topic for the You’re Wrong About podcast). I’d heard about Asperger and his “little professors” and the shifting definition of Aspergers as it was included in the spectrum and then removed from the DMV, but I’m not even sure I realized what time period he was working in, much less that he was part of programs that euthanized “atypical” children (he not only developed the diagnostic criteria that could deem a child “unfit for the volk” but also personally diagnosed hundreds of children as unfit).
That was a serious run of nonfiction. I’ve started both The Castle and The Sellout but have had a hard time really getting into them, and I have Pachinko on my Kindle. In desperate need of some fiction.
