The Questioning Librarian

It's almost too obvious to be worth pointing out, but healthcare impacts everyone. And it seems like there's one thing everyone can agree on. Healthcare is expensive, whether we're talking about drug prices or insurance premiums. It wasn't always like this. The story of how healthcare got this way is the subject of Elisabeth Rosenthal's book An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back . I'm always interested in current events, and with the battles over healthcare on the national stage, this book seemed particularly timely. It turned out that this was the most important book I've read all year. I read a lot of non-fiction, but this is the first book in a long time that made me truly, absolutely angry. And there is quite a lot to be angry about. Rosenthal charts how multiple players in the healthcare industry figure out all manner of ways to take in as much money as possible. Listing example after mind-numbing...

The past few years have seen a veritable flurry of renewed interest in the idea of bringing extinct species back into our world. Multiple books, articles, and even a few TED talks have been released, each approaching the topic from different angles, or focusing on different candidate species. One of the newest of these caught my attention, not only for its approach to the topic, but for the almost haunting art that graces its cover. Rise of the Necrofauna by Britt Wray, looks at de-extinction from perspectives that aren't heard as often in the ongoing discussion, and stands out from the others for that very reason. Wray, a science communicator, is ideally suited to the task of writing a book like this. The science of resurrecting extinct species is there, of course, but written in a way that's understandable to a non-scientist like myself. The "how" of de-extinction is fascinating, however many obstacles and improbabilities still stand in the way of bringing ba...

Since the week before it was to be published, Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House  has been, by far, the most-talked about book in the country. The furor, prompted by an angry denunciation-by-tweet from the President, a cease and desist letter from his lawyers, and salacious details from the book making their way into the press, immediately catapulted it to bestseller status. Being a political junkie, of course I couldn't resist giving it a read. While the book sold out almost immediately in print, I was lucky enough to borrow the digital audiobook from my local public library. I rushed through it in just a few days - not only because of how engrossing it was, but also knowing that there were a lot of people waiting to read it after I was done. As enjoyable a read as Fire and Fury was, the deep irony of the book is that it would likely have received little attention had it not been for the attacks by the Trump Administration. In attempting to st...