127 reviews found
Showing 61 to 80 of 127 results
Hard to know what I could add to my previous review of Sophie’s World. I suppose in the 6 years that have passed since that second reading I have grown and changed and that means my perspective on this book will have changed as well. But I stand by the earlier review, and now I’ll just elaborate.
I bought this fresh copy of Sophie’s World as a gift; actually, I bought it twice over.…
One of my most favourite episodes of the new Cosmos (because, honestly, they are all so good) is Episode 10: “The Electric Boy”, which focuses on the life and discoveries of Michael Faraday. In particular, the episode emphasizes how the invention of the dynamo and the electric motor spurred on a whole new technological revolution. The electric motor is just ubiquitous now, even more so than smarter digital electronics, and we take it for granted…
As Canada celebrated its 150th birthday this year, reconciliation was increasingly a buzzword on the lips of politicians, journalists, and celebrities. Most people seemed to recognize that we have a ways to go in our relationship with Indigenous peoples—but most people also seem unwilling to put that recognition into action. As my recent review of Seven Fallen Feathers shows, our country is still a hostile place when it comes to Indigenous lives. And the present…
First of all, can we agree that it should be “95” or “ninety-five” but never “ninetyfive”, like WTF.
Distinctly weird hyphenation aside, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation, is a thoughtful examination of one of those well-celebrated yet mythologized moments in history. Peter Marshall uses the stories surrounding Luther’s apocryphal posting of the 95 theses to examine the character of the Reformation in Luther’s time, his legacy and effects on the…
Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the eARC.
I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my…
So … this is a proof copy from the publisher via NetGalley (tanks), and I have to just put it out there that I didn’t actually see any maps in this version. I don’t know if that’s by design or simply that they hadn’t been set into the book at the type this version was exported. It seems a little silly to me that a book called A History of Canada in Ten Maps does…
This is one of those tough books to rate and review, because anything I say is going to feel too harsh. Bad Girls from History is not a bad book by any means; I think there is a sizable audience out there for whom this could be an interesting and informative read. I’m just not a member of that audience. Dee Gordon’s dive into presenting 100 women who misbehaved is a little too encylopaedic, a…
Yeah, my dad bought me two books about Jane Austen a few birthdays ago, and I figured I should read them back-to-back so I could compare them. The other was A Brief Guide to Jane Austen. This one, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World is much less a biography or analysis of her individual novels and much more an examination of how Austen went from moderately successful author in her time to…
It has been over six years since I last read and reviewed an Austen novel, and nearly as long since I received A Brief Guide to Jane Austen: The Life and Times of the World’s Favourite Author as a birthday gift, along with another Austen biography-like book that I’ll review shortly. Charles Jennings tackles his task with four parts: the actual life of Austen, her novels, life in Regency England, and then life…
This book makes one uncomfortable from the very start. Moore lists the ways in which American society embraced the use of radium at the turn of the century. They put it on and in practically everything. It glowed in the dark, after all! It was miraculous! Moore’s blithe list is just so jarring to a 21st-century reader who is aware of radioactivity and the dangers of radium. Yet it’s an effective way to establish the…
This is what I knew about vaccines prior to reading this book:
No, but seriously, did you expect anything less of a rating from me? This book is kickass. It is literally everything I have wanted in a science history book for a while.
Hidden Figures details the lives and achievements of the Black women who worked first as computers, then as mathematicians and engineers, for NACA (the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics) and its successor, NASA. Margot Lee Shetterly pulls back the curtain on an aspect…
It’s entirely a coincidence that I read about Marie Antoinette in Trainwreck just prior to picking up Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days. That being said, it was nice to have a little primer from Sady Doyle about why Antoinette is such a fascinating character from a feminist perspective. Here, Will Bashor pieces together Antoinette’s experiences while imprisoned in the Conciergerie prior to her trial and execution. He draws upon a wealth of primary sources in…
Oh man, I did not pick the right time to start reading Haters: Harassment, Abuse, and Violence Online (yay Oxford comma!). I started this two days before the American Election Day, and then after those results, I just had to kind of … put it down a bit. I was planning to read it over a week or so, because like Indigenous Writes, this is an academic-but-accessible book about some heavy stuff, and reading…
I spend a lot of time (hah) thinking about how little we understand the way people in the past actually lived, day to day, simply because technology that we now take for granted has changed things we don’t even think about. I take it for granted that I can know the precise time, as we currently measure it, all the time. I take it for granted that I can flick a switch and have light…
I hate listicles. I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t click on any post that starts with a number in its title. I know, I know, #notalllisticles, some are well-written and informative.
A Little Gay History is, when you think about it, a listicle; you could retitle it “82 Objects from the British Museum Related to Gay Sexual Desire”. Listicles were around before the Internet, and I suppose they will outlive the Internet…
You know what makes counterfactual fiction work? It’s fiction. Counterfactual history is just an exercise bound to end in tears.
So many histories of the British Empire, and with good reason—it was, in its time, quite a big deal. Many histories of the UK focus on the British Isles, on the monarchs and shenanigans happening in the succession. And that’s all very fascinating, but it’s not what Niall Ferguson wants to talk about here. …
I read most, if not all, of the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid (of course). I was very moved by Anne’s journey and transition to adulthood; even then, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a teacher, and so I was fascinated by her career path. While the details of the story have blurred with time, one memory continues to stick with me. In none book, Anne and a friend are…
You have no idea how hard it is for me to spell this title “correctly” (with the American spelling of centre). I have the forbearance of a saint, I swear.
The Island at the Center of the World is about the Dutch colony on Manhattan Island—New Amsterdam and its ancillary towns that would eventually be surrendered to the English and metamorphose into New York and New York state. Russell Shorto wants to bring to…
After a long spate of young adult novels, and in particular the very harrowing Asking for It, I needed a palate-cleanser. How much further can we get than a book about the expedition to define the metre?
I take the metre for granted. It’s just there. I was aware, vaguely, of the various ways in which it has been defined, and I knew that the metric system came out of the French Revolution.…
Showing 61 to 80 of 127 results