{"id":17781,"date":"2022-12-27T21:51:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T02:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/?p=17781"},"modified":"2022-12-27T21:53:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-28T02:53:08","slug":"the-books-of-2022-non-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/klishis.com\/notreally\/archives\/17781","title":{"rendered":"The Books of 2022: Non-Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t read a lot<\/em> of non-fiction, but I generally read some. However, from 2016 to last year I read almost none. So, I am pleased to note I read several excellent non-fiction books this year (and most of them were NOT about pandemics).<\/p>\n

Mind you, I’m not berating myself for not reading non-fiction. Reading is my happy place, and I try to place no restrictions upon myself–I read what makes me happy, and if something doesn’t make me happy, I don’t read it. The belief you should only read “good” or “important” books is stupid and harmful. <\/p>\n

Reading should never be a chore, it should be a joy.<\/p>\n

And with that, these are the excellent non-fiction books I read in the past year.<\/p>\n

~ 9\/10 ~ <\/strong><\/h5>\n

\"No<\/a>No Man\u2019s Land: The Trailblazing Women Who Ran Britain\u2019s Most Extraordinary Military Hospital During World War I<\/em><\/a> (2020)
\nby Wendy Moore<\/a>
\n[History, War, Women]<\/p>\n

Until coming across the Scottish Women\u2019s Hospital<\/a> in a romance I was reading, I had no idea there were women run hospitals during the Great War. Wanting to learn more, I then discovered there was an official military hospital run entirely by women during that war.<\/p>\n

This book tells the story of Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray, the suffragettes who founded and ran the Endell Street hospital\u2014and worked to change medicine.<\/p>\n

In a joint research paper published in The Lancet, charting their efforts to tackle septic wounds in one thousand patients in the first six months at Endell Street, they concluded that standard antiseptics were virtually useless. 59 They had slightly more success with three new approaches: Eusol (Edinburgh University Solution of Lime, a combination of bleach powder and boric acid first trialed in 1915), salicylic acid paste (a derivative of aspirin), and washing the wound with a salt solution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

~ 8.5\/10 ~ <\/strong><\/h5>\n

\"A<\/a>A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie<\/em><\/a> (2015)
\nby Kathryn Harkup<\/a>
\n[Literature, Medicine, Science, Women]<\/p>\n

This opens with a brief explanation of how Agatha Christie became so conversant in poisons, and then looks at the poisons used in her books (and sometimes the crimes that may have served as ideas for her stories) as well as fun details such as Scheele\u2019s green,<\/p>\n

The great popularity of the colours red and green in Victorian England meant that arsenic was used to dye almost anything and everything, from wallpapers and clothes to toys and even food, such as sweets and cake icing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

\"Pale<\/a>Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World<\/em><\/a> (2017)
\nby Laura Spinney
\n[History, Medicine, War]<\/p>\n

This seems to be the last book I\u2019ll read for a while on the 1918 flu. Published in 2017, looks at everything from the history of the flu up to the most recent (as of 2017) research.<\/p>\n

As with all the books I read about the 1918 flu, it\u2019s disconcerting to read about what scientists thought would happen if another pandemic appeared in the world.<\/p>\n

Information and engagement are not the same thing, however. Even when people have the information they need to contain the disease, they do not necessarily act on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

~ 8\/10 ~ <\/strong><\/h5>\n


<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook\u2019s Battle for Domination<\/em><\/a> (2021)
\nby Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang
\n[Technology]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that I need convinced that Facebook is hugely problematic and out only for the almighty dollar.<\/p>\n

I just like seeing just how terrible things are, I guess.<\/p>\n

The task of deciding what Facebook would and would not allow on its platform fell to a group of employees who had loosely assumed roles of content moderators, and they sketched out early ideas that essentially boiled down to \u201cIf something makes you feel bad in your gut, take it down.\u201d These guidelines were passed along in emails or in shared bits of advice in the office cafeteria. There were lists of previous examples of items Facebook had removed, but without any explanation or context behind those decisions. It was, at best, ad hoc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

\"Monster,<\/a>Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction<\/em><\/a> (2019)
\nby Lisa Kr\u00f6ger<\/a> and Melanie R. Anderson<\/a>
\n[History, Literature, Women]<\/p>\n

I do not read horror, because I do not like to be scared. Luckily, this look at women in speculative fiction is not scary at all. Unless you\u2019re talking about the misogyny that kept (and still tries to keep) women writers on the romance and women\u2019s fiction shelves and out of science fiction (and fantasy).<\/p>\n

The pulps, along with dime-store paperbacks also made from cheap paper, got fiction into the hands of a wider audience because they were so affordable. But the transitory nature of that low-cost material meant that unknown numbers of those stories were lost forever as the paper they were printed on decomposed to nothing…<\/p>\n

…All of which helps explain the accepted wisdom that few women wrote speculative fiction in the early 1900s and that, instead, the lineage starts in the 1960s and 1970s with writers like Ursula Le Guin and Joanna Russ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

\"Women<\/a>Women Warriors: An Unexpected History<\/em><\/a> (2019)
\nby Pamela D. Toler<\/a>
\n[History, War, Women]<\/p>\n

I picked this up after reading a lackluster book about women in World War One. Although I wanted a much longer book, covering more women, this was still an excellent (and at times snarky) look not just at women who have gone to war, but why parts of American society are so opposed to the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe horror of women in body bags is not a horror of a dead woman. It\u2019s that the woman was a warrior, that she is not a victim. American culture does not want to accept that women can be both warriors and mothers. . . . To accept women as warriors means a challenge to patriarchy at its most fundamental level.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

\"We're<\/a> We\u2019re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation<\/em><\/a> (2021)
\nby Eric Garcia
\n[Health]<\/p>\n

When parents make autistic kids not flap anymore or boys wear jeans instead of dresses, they replace the child that exists with the one they wished existed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Identity, and the Meaning of Sex<\/em><\/a> (2020)
\nby Angela Chen
\n[LGBT]<\/p>\n

The label of asexual should be value neutral. It should indicate little more than sexual orientation. Instead, asexual implies a slew of other, negative associations: passionless, uptight, boring, robotic, cold, prude, frigid, lacking, broken. These, especially broken, are the words aces use again and again to describe how we are perceived and made to feel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


<\/p>\n

As noted, I read non-fiction across a variety of subjects this year, so here’s how the subjects tumbled out.<\/p>\n