Book reviews
Larry Gonick, The Cartoon History of the Universe Volumes I-III, and The Cartoon History of the Modern World Volumes 1 and 2. Overall a very good series, and highly recommended. Caveats are of course the subject matter and the format, since he was kind enough to create something smaller holdable by a human, as opposed to an elephant. Also, given the amount of sex and violence in the subject matter, you may wish to be circumspect if you are considering giving it to small children.
Volume I covers From the Big Bang through Alexander the Great. Excellent, with the only weird thing being the artwork in the last chapter not matching the rest of the book at all.
Volume II has a chapter about the Indian subcontinent, and then switches back and forth between China and Rome up to about 400 AD (or CE, or whatever it is). Very good, though of course more history is known/recorded, and it simply doesn't all fit. He's fairly clear about what he can't fit in, however.
Volume III is still pretty good, but came from a different publisher rather later than one would have expected from the gap between the first two. There are also some signs that the author was getting fatigued with the subject, but it still ties together how Timbuktu affected Egypt affected Venice and suchlike. Covers up to the sailing of Columbus.
Modern World definitely shows signs of author fatigue, and I noticed a couple of (not relevant to the main point) factual errors for the first time. Still does an excellent job tying influences together, and it almost manages to make sense out of the Reformation and the French Revolution.*
Michael Goodwin, Economix; One could regard this as a supplement to Larry Gonick's work covering the history of economic thought, from just before Adam Smith past Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Very difficult to recommend too highly. The author is quite honest that this book is his take on things, and has an excellent further-reading section. Sacred cows die left and right. Recommended to me by mrissa.
John A. Long, The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex; picked it up in the new books section on my way to grab Economix. The author is one of the discoverers of the most ancient fossil fish with viviparous embryos; unfortunately, this book has three separate themes which do not play well together. The first is his personal story of the discovery, which comes across as name-dropping puffery. The second is the actual scientific process and evidence found for this discovery. This part is interesting, and would probably be difficult to disentangle from the first. Unfortunately, it also seems to be the shortest of the themes. The third part is a random list of the weird ways that various animals have sex, which does nothing for the other themes, seems to only be there as semi-titillation, and reads like a slightly less annoying version of an article on Cracked.com. Of course these themes are mishmashed without much logical order. Not really recommended, unless you're desperate for a less annoying Cracked article.
Mick O'Hare, Why Are Orangutans Orange?: Science Questions in Pictures--With Fascinating Answers; another "saw this on the way to something else." Lots of neat tidbits, but it's based off of http://www.last-word.com/index.php, albeit with much cleaner graphic design and glossy paper. But this means that there are links in the text which one has to manually type in, and half of them no longer exist.
*This is a compliment. There was so much mess with so many different things going on in each of these events that I'm pretty sure making complete sense out of them (honestly) is impossible.
Volume I covers From the Big Bang through Alexander the Great. Excellent, with the only weird thing being the artwork in the last chapter not matching the rest of the book at all.
Volume II has a chapter about the Indian subcontinent, and then switches back and forth between China and Rome up to about 400 AD (or CE, or whatever it is). Very good, though of course more history is known/recorded, and it simply doesn't all fit. He's fairly clear about what he can't fit in, however.
Volume III is still pretty good, but came from a different publisher rather later than one would have expected from the gap between the first two. There are also some signs that the author was getting fatigued with the subject, but it still ties together how Timbuktu affected Egypt affected Venice and suchlike. Covers up to the sailing of Columbus.
Modern World definitely shows signs of author fatigue, and I noticed a couple of (not relevant to the main point) factual errors for the first time. Still does an excellent job tying influences together, and it almost manages to make sense out of the Reformation and the French Revolution.*
Michael Goodwin, Economix; One could regard this as a supplement to Larry Gonick's work covering the history of economic thought, from just before Adam Smith past Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Very difficult to recommend too highly. The author is quite honest that this book is his take on things, and has an excellent further-reading section. Sacred cows die left and right. Recommended to me by mrissa.
John A. Long, The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex; picked it up in the new books section on my way to grab Economix. The author is one of the discoverers of the most ancient fossil fish with viviparous embryos; unfortunately, this book has three separate themes which do not play well together. The first is his personal story of the discovery, which comes across as name-dropping puffery. The second is the actual scientific process and evidence found for this discovery. This part is interesting, and would probably be difficult to disentangle from the first. Unfortunately, it also seems to be the shortest of the themes. The third part is a random list of the weird ways that various animals have sex, which does nothing for the other themes, seems to only be there as semi-titillation, and reads like a slightly less annoying version of an article on Cracked.com. Of course these themes are mishmashed without much logical order. Not really recommended, unless you're desperate for a less annoying Cracked article.
Mick O'Hare, Why Are Orangutans Orange?: Science Questions in Pictures--With Fascinating Answers; another "saw this on the way to something else." Lots of neat tidbits, but it's based off of http://www.last-word.com/index.php, albeit with much cleaner graphic design and glossy paper. But this means that there are links in the text which one has to manually type in, and half of them no longer exist.
*This is a compliment. There was so much mess with so many different things going on in each of these events that I'm pretty sure making complete sense out of them (honestly) is impossible.