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...

One of the joys of being a Middle Earth enthusiast is that, over forty years after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, new works from his papers continue to be published - a feat remarkable for any author. No matter how regularly this happens, news of a new Tolkien book still manages to surprise as well as delight. My own joy at hearing of the forthcoming publication of Beren and Luthien , edited by Tolkien's son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien, left me quite literally jumping up and down with excitement, to the mild bemusement and possible chagrin of my co-workers. The tale of Beren and Luthien was considered by Tolkien to be one of the most important in his mythology. Beren, a mortal man, encounters and falls in love with the immortal elf Luthien, though their union was forbidden by her father. To win his approval, the two embark on a dangerous quest to retrieve one of the Silmarils, jewels prized by the elves, from the very fortress of their great enemy. The story was o...

Anyone who knows me for more than ten minutes knows of my deep and abiding fondness for dinosaurs. It's a holdover from that phase most children go through, re-ignited during a summer class on the extinct beasts during college. Yet the drawback of being an adult who loves dinosaurs is readily apparent when you visit the shelves of your local library or bookstore. Most dinosaur books published are aimed at a far younger audience than myself, and the books for adults are often more technical works. Imagine my delight in seeing the newest book by John Pickrell waiting to be cataloged at my library! I placed a request for the book as quickly as I could pull out my smart phone, and I was not disappointed! Weird Dinosaurs: The Strange New Fossils Challenging Everything We Thought We Knew , is an excellent overview of many of the fascinating and bizarre new discoveries, and rediscoveries, of the past decade. A journalist and editor by trade, Pickrell is passionate about dinosaurs, ...

The President-Elect and the President meeting at the White House Like so many others in this country, the results of the Election came as a shock to me, the outcome a possibility so mind-numbingly terrifying that, until the very end, it did not even seem worth thinking about. Yet here we are, watching as lobbyists fill out the transition team , Washington insiders are considered for Cabinet positions , and Trump promises to at least consider keeping parts of the Affordable Care Act that he and other Republicans pledged to repeal and replace immediately. While politicians often don't keep their promises, the speed with which so many of the President-elect's campaign promises have been abandoned is dizzying. My initial shock, and deep sadness, in the first few days have gradually begun to give way to anger instead. I've wondered how something like this could have happened, how a know-nothing charlatan blustered his way into the highest office in the land. Much ink ...

I've long been fascinated by the occupants of the White House, along with the history of slavery in the United States. Given that, a book like Robert Strauss' new biography of James Buchanan,  Worst. President. Ever.,  was going to be a must-read regardless, even if it hadn't been given such a catchy title.  Plenty of ink has been spilled about great men who've held the highest office in the United States. Any reader interested in learning any imaginable minutia about the lives of Lincoln, Washington, and the Roosevelts have hundreds of books to choose from, including multi-volume doorstoppers like Edmund Morris' three volume biography of Teddy Roosevelt, coming in at over two thousand pages. But with forty-four presidents having taken the reins in our two hundred forty year history, inevitably not all come out looking so great. While the current vogue is to label either George W. Bush or Barack Obama as the "Worst President Ever," depending on ...

Science writer Mary Roach is never one to shy away from parts of science that verge on the absurd, as anyone who has read any of her books surely knows. I'd read two of her previous books, and been enchanted enough by Roach's unique combination of endless curiosity and a wry sense of humor that I rushed to lay my hands on her newest book. Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War will not fail in living up to the expectations that fans of her work will bring. Those who have never read her before will be hard-pressed to put down a book that I finished in a few short days.  The real joy of reading something by Mary Roach is her talent for seeking out strange areas of science that a reader might never have known about. As an investigator, she answers questions you never knew you had. Her newest work   is no exception. We discover, for instance, how the military tests the ability of a fighter jet to survive a mid-air collision with a large bird--by firing a dead chicken...

The jurors take a break in 12 Angry Men On the hottest day of the year, the trial of an eighteen year old boy for the murder of his father concludes--the jurors withdraw for deliberations, tasked with determining whether the defendant is guilty. If they agree, a death sentence will be handed down. The case seems an easy one, with the jury ready to reach a verdict in less than five minutes of deliberation, but one juror is not convinced. Over the objections of the others, he demands a recounting of the evidence presented, arguing that surely a man's life is worth more than a few moments' thought. Over the course of several hours, the jurors weigh the evidence of the case, and with it weightier issues of class, justice in the United States, and the intersection of the two. 12 Angry Men  remains relevant to us as we continue to deal with these issues nearly sixty years after the film's release. The great strength of the film lies in the fact that only two of the jur...

Klansmen during the Reconstruction era While catching up on Game of Thrones a few weeks ago, I was particularly struck by the appearance of the terrorist organization known as the Sons of the Harpy. After the outlawing of slavery, this group, sporting golden masks to hide their identities, wages a campaign of terror against former slaves, the occupying army, and those who support the new government. Their parallel in the real world is obvious, an echo of the horror unleashed by the Klan and other white supremacist groups during the Reconstruction period of U.S. history and continuing for well over a century beyond that. This unprecedented campaign of violence against newly freed slaves and those who supported them crushed the hope that emancipation and the early stages of Reconstruction promised, disenfranchising African-Americans who had only just begun to exercise their right to vote and hold office.  In the face of this backlash, the Federal government finally backe...

Trump supporters pledging to vote in primary elections  A few years ago, a friend of mine recommended that I read one of Sinclair Lewis' later works, a novel called It Can't Happen Here . Writing in the 1930's, Lewis imagined what a fascist government would look like in the United States, his work rebutting the idea that such an idea was impossible in a nation that took so much pride in democratic principles. From his vantage point, this outcome was not impossible in the slightest. With figures like the pro-fascist radio priest Father Coughlin, and Louisiana governor Huey Long prominent in those years, an American version of fascism in power was all too easy to imagine. In the novel, Senator "Buzz" Windrip wins election to the Presidency after promising a return to American greatness, one that had no place for outsiders, dissenters, and minority groups. While cloaking himself in the rhetoric and symbols of American patriotism, his inauguration ushers in a r...

There is nothing quite so insulting to one's intelligence as a snake oil salesman. Even worse is one who comes back to the same place, peddling exactly the same shoddy goods as the first time. An editorial that appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review last week is one of the finest examples of snake oil salesmanship that I've read in quite a while. The author, hailing from the conservative Commonwealth Foundation, is hawking the same old batch of peculiar remedies that conservatives have been promoting since the early eighties.  Pennsylvania's population is declining, he laments, and it's all because of the reckless tax and spend policies of Governor Wolf! Breathlessly, he relates just how many Pennsylvanians are leaving the state, crushed under taxes, longing to breathe free elsewhere. If only the state would slash taxes, our residents would want to stay, and corporations would beat down the door to open up shop here--utopia would be achieved! This argum...

It's a rare gift to be able to accessibly present real science to the public. It's even rarer to find someone who does so with an enthusiasm and humor that Mary Roach brings to the table. I picked up a copy of Packing for Mars  on a whim. I'd never heard of the author before, but the premise sounded interesting. Humans evolved to survive the conditions on Earth; what happens, then, when we go into space, a place without air, food, water, or anything else we need? This thought fascinated Roach so much that she spent two years finding out, traveling and interviewing and researching all possible aspects of it. This isn't the glory you see on television, she writes. Far more interesting than the glamour shots of the moon landing are the mundanities that make it all possible. To illustrate her point, she begins with the flag planting ceremony from the moon landing. Months of preparation went into ensuring that a flag would go with the Apollo astronauts; since there is n...

I've always been interested in history, but in high school I found American history to be incredibly boring. It was often presented as a black and white affair, completely scrubbed of any nuance. It was only after discovering the true complexity of our history that I began to find it fascinating, and there are few who portray this complexity as well as historian Joseph Ellis. This meant that his newest book, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution , was an immediate must-read. Ellis, the author of numerous other books on U.S. history, takes on the story of how we came to have our Constitution. This development was far from inevitable, he asserts, and would have been an unlikely outcome after the Revolutionary War had it not been for the efforts of four individuals. Washington, future Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Monroe all worked both publicly and behind the scenes to ensure that the Constitution came into being.  Bo...

Old reels of microfilmed newspapers (image from the Manchester Library of New Hampshire) Last year, as the terrorist group Daesh expanded the territory under their control, they made a great show of destroying artifacts and sites of historic value in their wake. They were only the latest in a long line of similarly fundamentalist groups that took pride in working to erase our history--the Taliban notoriously demolished ancient statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan, and Malian rebels torched hundreds of manuscripts before they abandoned Timbuktu, to name just two examples. But you don't have to burn books or pick up a hammer to destroy history. While it is not spectacular enough to attract headlines, benign neglect has destroyed enough of the historical record to warrant notice as well, thanks in part to the underfunding of libraries and historical societies. It doesn't generate the same outpouring of outrage and emotion that the deliberate destruction of our past doe...

In one of his final essays , Oliver Sacks wrote about what he felt after an accident left him dragging himself down a mountain with a broken leg. Memories of all sorts came to him, but he described an overwhelming feeling of gratitude through them all. It was surprising to read about, and I very much doubt that, were I in the same situation, gratitude is what I would feel. Being positive has always been hard for me. My mind latches on to what's wrong, and tends to dwell on it excessively. This is by no means unique to me; the human mind seems adept at remembering negative events, to the detriment of happier thoughts.  It is a terrible way of thinking about life, viewing it through this particular glass. There is, after all, much to be grateful for, even when things often seem so abysmally dark. Sacks was reflecting back over eight decades of life; I have nowhere near that amount of time to reflect upon, but even looking at the past few years is enough. It is hard for me to ima...

A Syrian refugee, photo from the U.N. Refugee Agency I was finishing reading a new book on the Armenian genocide just as the anti-refugee sentiment began its upswing. The actions were different, but the basic instinct behind it--a fear and hatred of those different from ourselves--was the same. Often, our default instinct is to be suspicious, and hostile, towards those who are outside of our group. It's a habit that seems common, but it remains disturbing to see it in action just the same.  Send them back, lock them out, take care of our own first. And those were just the mildest sentiments anyone could hear. There was certainly anti-refugee sentiment before (right-wing groups warned of the President admitting "10,000 Muslims" into the country), but the tenor ratcheted up after the attacks in Paris. The very same people who make a habit of never helping anyone suddenly were overcome with concern for the homeless in our country, for veterans, when before they de...

While I tend not to read many books on the bestseller list, I was intrigued by a lot of what I was hearing about Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I read it in just a few short days, and in large part it lived up to the hype. Yet I had two criticisms of the book, the first of which was that the idea of speaking to your possessions, including thanking items you are about to part with for their role in your life, seems like a bit of nonsense. Kondo believes that one's possessions have energy, and sending positive energy their way will result in your belongings supporting you in turn. She even, she writes, greets her home verbally at the end of the day. If it works for her, and for her clients, I cannot object to it, but it would feel strange in my own life. The larger criticism is that, while I appreciate her advocacy of decreasing clutter and being more mindful about your things, she barely touches on stemming the inflow of new possessions. Towards th...

We've come to expect that many of our politicians are going to be hypocritical in some aspect of their lives. Whether it is a "family values" politician like Louisiana's David Vitter being caught with prostitutes, or candidates who pledge to be honest being netted in corruption stings, revelations of hypocrisy are so frequent that they hardly even seem to merit a shrug. Yet there is at least one type of political hypocrisy that, no matter how often it happens, we should be paying attention to. Hypocrisy in any form is contemptible, but hypocrisy on matters of economy affects us all. This issue was brought to mind this week with the entrance of Rep. Paul Ryan into the race for Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful positions in the nation and third in line to the Presidency, after the Vice-President. Paul, often held up as a reasonable man in a party gone off the deep end, is well-known for his proposals to reform Social Security, which usually involve...

I was intrigued when I came across a review of a forthcoming book that sought to reconcile the seemingly contradictory legacies of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. A few months later, I borrowed a copy and was enthralled by what the author had to say. Greg Grandin, author of well-received books like Fordlandia and Empire of Necessity , tackles the thorny issue of one of the United States' most notorious diplomats in Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman .  Drawing on newly declassified documents, Grandin's portrayal of Kissinger is far from complimentary. While giving him credit for his role in helping to normalize relations with China, and in brokering an arms-reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, the majority of the work zeroes in on acts that were an outgrowth of Kissinger's own philosophy of history, as outlined in his undergraduate thesis. Decline, Kissinger wrote, is not inevitable in a great power, s...