The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
Very well-researched nonfiction with excellent storytelling and pacing. It never drags and strikes just the right balance between cold, hard facts and the personal details that give the story its heart.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A History fo the World is 6 Glasses was just the type of accessible and fun non-fiction that I needed during the pandemic. I thoroughly enjoyed it’s well-laid out structure and the balance that it struck between presenting scholarship and archaeological evidence with engaging anecdotes and plenty of historical context. It wasn’t too heavy, and that’s precisely what I liked about it. Dare I say I found 6 Glasses refreshing?
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage
Shorter than I wanted it to be. This book goes into just enough detail without getting too far into the academic weeds, but it was so fascinating, that I could have definitely read an entire book that was a deep dive into each of the beverages covered.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Next I’ll cover two non-fiction history reads of 2020 that took me completely by surprise. First, The Jamestown Brides was shocking to me for imparting so much of my own country’s history that I’d never known about before. I’ve had a patchy formal education in history, but I considered myself unusually well-read in this area. I may have to reassess whether I truly am well read in history or not, though, because I learned so much through reading The Jamestown Brides and subsequently viewing the fantastic series America’s Untold Story from Secrets of the Dead on PBS that I’m certain I’ll be reading a lot more early American history in 2021 if only to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.
The Jamestown Brides: The untold story of England's 'maids for Virginia' by Jennifer Potter
Solid research, which must have been difficult given the geographic spread and dearth of historical records. I wish there would have been more personal stories, but it's good that the author didn't try to invent too much and shoehorn it in. The few inclusions of historical fiction excerpts were intriguing, though. I don't see that done often in non-fiction. A fascinating topic that has whet my appetite to queue up more reading on America during the colonization period.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The second book that really surprised me a lot was Blitzed. I was absolutely shocked to learn that the Nazis war machine was run on methamphetamines during WWII and that Hitler was being injected with meth and testosterone. Hitler’s private physician injected him with so many vitamin cocktails and an opioid cousin of heroine called Eukadol that he soon couldn’t function without several injections in a day. Also shocking was the fact that Hitler received dozens of untested hormone treatments that were produced in unsanitary facilities that processed slaughterhouse offal and likely developed serious complications due to this practice. This was all new information to me, which accounts for part of why I found it so fascinating, but also I was again able to draw parallels with current events. The suspicion that Donald Trump abuses cocaine and Adderall is fueled by his often erratic behavior and movements and the frequency of his public appearance with extremely dilated pupils and instances where a hard white substance has sprayed from his mouth and nasal passages as he was giving public addresses. I found the descriptions of Hitler’s stimulant abuse and behavior in his final days startlingly similar to accounts of Trump’s reported relationship to stimulants and the behavior I’ve witnessed him display in public.
Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler, translated by Shaun Whiteside
Very well organized with excellent writing and research. I didn't know the extent of the Nazi regime's use of stimulants and the chapters on Hitler's drug abuse were fascinating.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Now, from my top two sleeper hits of the year to my two biggest disappointments, though I hesitate to put The Golden Thread into the same category with When Women Rules the World because it deserves better.
I didn’t write a GoodReads review of The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair. I do intend to re-read it eventually to give it a fair shot at impressing me when I’m not out of my mind with worry about the global pandemic, so perhaps I’ll write a review then. I really enjoyed St Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color. It’s one of the books I like to dip in and out of on occasion just to reference as I write. So when I heard she had a book about textile history coming out in 2020, I was really looking forward to it as textile history aligns with my interested in fashion history. I have to say, though, perhaps because of this high level of anticipation, I was left feeling let down by the actual book. I had a hard time staying engrossed in it, and didn’t find it very memorable. I do recall being enthralled by one section, so perhaps my biggest reason for not giving the book a starred review is that the sections were uneven.
This next one, though… I have to say that I rarely give one star reviews. I’m a fairly regular consumer of Egyptology media, not because I’m particularly interested in Egyptian history, but I am deeply interested in archaeology and a lot of popular media gets made about Egyptology because the pyramids and mummies and tombs are “sexy science”. So I went into this decidedly feminist take on Egyptian history with high hopes only to have them dashed. This is just a very poorly researched and very poorly written book by Kara Cooney.
When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt by Kara Cooney
So. Much. Conjecture.
Here's how this book plays out: It asks a leading questions, then answers it without bothering to support the position with research. I expect better from non-fiction written by an academic and presumed expert in her field.
I'm strongly feminist, but this book leans hard into some gender issues that aren't strongly supported by the historical record. Sometimes I want to applaud when the author pulls no punches discussing the roll that Hillary Clinton played in her husband's administration and the roll that Ivanka Trump is currently playing, but the text never actually accurately draws the comparison between modern times and the historical figures being discussed adequately. I see the parallels with the ancient Egyptian queens she's trying to draw, but I don't think the writing and research quite got to the point it needed to be at. Perhaps it was rushed to press?
In any event, it was frustrating to read and I almost "DNF"-ed several times. The author did admirable narration on the audio version, though.
⭐️
Random Review Roundup
Sometimes I’ll write a review on Goodreads just because I know I’ll be writing this year-end retrospective and I want to record my thoughts on a book while they’re still fresh. This is the case with these few straggler reviews. I was pretty critical of romances this year. I don’t know if it’s because I’d exhausted my supply of excellent titles in the free library and was now down to the mediocre or average examples of the genre, or wether I’ve just had enough exposure to the genre now that its novelty has worn off for me. In any event, this year was an excellent year to indulge in reading romance. Having a guaranteed happy ending and fairly predictably structured conflict was a balm to frazzled nerves.
Secrets of a Spinster (Arrangements, #3) by Rebecca Connolly
Thoughts on the Arrangements series up to book 3: They're fine. There's not much to elevate them above others of their kind, but they will give you all the right feels. They're very chaste, if that's your thing. And they're not too heavy on research or period correctness. That's not to say they're incorrect. There's nothing to pull you out of the story screaming "that wasn't a THING then", but it also is nebulously framed in a wide swath of the period of horses and candlelight and quills and ink. The setting could float around in time by half a dozen decades and still not offend nitpickers. So if you're into specificity, there's not much here for you. The one thing that all three thus far have shared that had me sheer off a star on my rating is a propensity to cover the same emotional terrain too often. The stories could do with quite a bit less internal dialog about how dreamy/loathsome one character finds another. To me, it feels like the author doesn't respect my intelligence when they reiterate the same emotional guidepost thrice in as many pages. I'm not sure if I'll continue to read on until the rest of the cast get paired off. Collin might be worth sticking around for, but I'm still on the fence. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Annabelle (The Four Sisters, #2) by Audrey Harrison
This series is the worst offender of "head hopping" I've ever read. The abrupt shifts in POV take a lot away from the misunderstandings that provide the conflict in the story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This final review comes from the only historical fiction book I read this year. I remember very little about it, and I’m sure that is saying a lot.
Pont Neuf by Max Byrd
I can't imagine why this doesn't have a higher rating. I suppose because it is genre bending. People who love historical romance will dislike the literary quality of the description and management of the timeline, I suppose. I, for one, very much appreciated the complexity and subtlety.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
