edh's reviews
352 reviews

Ann Angel's entirely accessible and compelling biography of Janis Joplin is a marvel of a book and well deserving of the 2011 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. Joplin's story is interwoven with period details about life and popular culture of the 50s and 60s, including pictures and descriptions for readers to use as they compare Joplin to her contemporaries. This approach is excellently executed, and walks a perfect line-- offering enough information for comprehension while enticing the reader to seek further resources on the era. I was particularly impressed by the book's layout. The selection of pictures and incorporation of graphic elements moves the reader through the narrative in a seamless fashion. I was afraid that use of 60s design elements would make the book seem dated, but the choices of color and pattern stamping somehow manage to be both true to the era and a bit contemporary at the same time.

Joplin's story is told warmly and simply, never faltering or pandering to a younger audience. Her journey from Port Arthur to Austin to San Francisco is set in a solid description of American mainstream life of the era, allowing readers to imagine what they might have chosen for themselves had they lived in conservative post-war times. Joplin's struggle to invent herself as an artist is depicted non-judgementally, with honest details about her experiences with drugs and alcohol as well as the brief time she spent attempting to live a "normal" life back home before abandoning herself to her art. Overall, I found this to be an exceptional addition to the field of biographies for teens.

Mnookin's The Panic Virus is an amazing investigation into the culture of vaccinations, and the deadly effects of those too selfish and shortsighted to see how their choices affect others. Stories of young infants too young to yet receive vaccinations die because of young carriers whose parents have decided to "opt out," citing herd immunity as a justification for letting their offspring go unvaccinated. Cases such as this are only growing as more and more families are gripped by the powerful fear that somehow their children will "catch" autism or other afflictions due to vaccines. Mnookin cites one parent: "...[B]ecause I live in a country where the norm is vaccine, I can delay my vaccines."

It's not just celebrities like Jenny McCarthy who stoke the fears of parents -- Bizarre tales of amateur so-called scientists who experiment in their basements and claim that vaccines cause autism are equally to blame. Cognitive dissonance sets in among those who don't know what "study" to believe, who hear horror stories and urban myths of children becoming unresponsive vegetables immediately following their vaccinations. Perhaps the most reprehensible villains of Mnookin's narrative are the ones taking advantage of "Big Autism," who hawk supposed cures, therapies, diets, and other treatments to desperate parents and have turned vaccination into a cultural debate that would be unrecognizable to those who lived through the polio epidemic. Even the Wakefield paper, which caused the physician in question to lose his license in the UK, was rooted in Dr. Wakefield's pecuniary interests: he was being paid to examine kids "as part of a lawsuit that was being prepared against drug manufacturers." He had also filed his own patent for a vaccine that would compete with the existing MMR. Yeah, no bias there.

It's a well-written book that looks critically at the massive vaccine spin machine, and pulls at the heart with touching stories of those who have been caught in the culture war over vaccination. Well worth the read... and if I ever have a kid, I'll remember little baby Danielle, who died because another family decided vaccines were "too dangerous" for their children, and who helped destroy the herd immunity that would have kept her alive to receive her own vaccines.

A sort of reimagining of the Jacyee Lee Dugard story from the POV of a small child, age 5. The unnamed mother was abducted as a 19 year old and trapped in Room, a secured shed in the backyard of a horrible man named Old Nick. Of course, he rapes her while she is imprisoned and she gives birth to a dead baby girl, then later to Jack. Jack is our protagonist and leads us through the minutae of his tiny life in Room, where possessions are few and hope is lacking. Ma, his mother, comes up with a plan to fake Jack's death and get Old Nick to take him to a hospital (now that Jack is old enough to tell an adult that he and his mother are being kept in Room). But will Jack be able to talk to someone he's never met before? And will he be able to handle being outside Room for the very first time? A harrowing tale ripped from the headlines, Room will capture the imagination of a wide variety of readers.

This reminded me strongly of Calling B for Butterfly, a favorite scifi book of mine as a middle schooler. Deep space travel with a twist - more later.

This book's subtitle should have been: Don't Take Your Slutty Daughter to Nazi Germany. (No, Seriously, Don't)

While I am usually an ardent fan of Erik Larson's nonfiction, this book is not my favorite. Not because the subject matter is not compelling, but because you know how the story will end. It's like reading about the Titanic -- fascinating, but ultimately disappointing. Basically, we follow newly minted Ambassador Dodd and his family (wife, grown daughter and grown son) to Berlin in 1933, where they take up residence and work in central Berlin (Tiergarten district, the English translation of which lends itself to the title). Dodd is a frustrated academic who would like nothing more than to live frugally within his means and finish his multi-volume magnum opus on the Old South. His wife and son are merely cardboard cutouts in the background, because daughter Martha takes front stage immediately. The best description of her comes from a diplomat party attendee, who said she was like a "butterfly hovering around [his] penis all night long." Martha goes through men like kleenex and has a disturbing amount of sympathy and admiration for all her new Nazi friends, only tempered through directly observing the many acts of violence they perpetrate throughout the book.

Ultimately, you will bite your nails at the growing volume of correspondence between Berlin and Washington that essentially reads: "Hey Roosevelt, these Nazis mean business and show no signs of stopping." Also shocking is the amount of (thinly) veiled anti-Semitism coming from America, where they feel that too many of "the Chosen People" are in positions of power. It's clear that if the world community really *wanted* to neuter Hitler early on, they certainly could have. There were plenty of signs and evidence that he was not going to be an adorable pussycat in the Garden of the Beasts.

I recommend this for hard-core fans of WWII as well as those who want to know more about daily life in Berlin in the interwar years.

Although I don't consider myself a gamer, I really appreciated this great look at how games and gaming culture can have a positive effect on those who play. McGonigal refutes the notion that games should be limited to the sphere of entertainment, and demonstrates that elements of gameplay integrated into everyday life can result in more "epic wins," engagement among citizens, and just plain fun. I particularly enjoyed her explanations of game architecture, and how to construct experiences that tap into people's desire to collaborate. I may have to buy a personal copy for my bookshelf at home!