The Wrath to Come is a stirring and challenging book that exposes so many of the myths Americans deploy so that we can ignore the dark chapters of our nation's history, and soothe our conciseness. Churchwell wrote a thoroughly researched yet extremely readable book that uses Gone with the Wind as a vehicle to identify and catalog myths in the American understanding of our history. This book was released in 2022 but it has only become more relevant since it was released.
Midnight in Chernobyl is an equally thrilling and chilling book that goes into great detail about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster that occurred in 1986. What I appreciated most about this book was not only its detailed chronology of the disaster on the day it occurred, but also the breadth of context that Higginbotham provides of the years leading up to the destruction of reactor number 4. Disasters are always more than just the decisions made on the day they occurred, and for that reason Higginbotham tells the reader about Soviet reactor design philosophy and the mistakes built into the Chernobyl reactors from their inception. Higginbotham managed to write a book that is both riveting and informative.
A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner
From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that reads almost like the script for a movie” (The Wall Street Journal)—a powerful investigation into Chernobyl and how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the history’s worst nuclear disasters.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the…
Plagues Upon the Earth is the type of book that can make you reshape the way you look at and understand the world. This should be obvious, but Harper's book reminds us all the central role disease plays in shaping human events. Some diseases have been with us from the beginning of our species, while others have only developed in the last few thousand, or few hundred years. Here's just one example of how Plagues Upon the Earth can make you rethink what you thought you already knew. Harper points out that a lot of diseases that have existed or still exist today can only survive and remain viable because of the developments of human civilizations. Without large scale transportation and trade networks, even in the ancient past, many diseases would not be able to find enough new hosts to survive. Unintentionally the world humanity has built for itself also allows certain microbes to develop and flourish that would otherwise die off.
A Lot of Questions, with No Answers is a collection of six essays about
different philosophical topics published by Atmosphere Press. The topics of the
different essays range from how history is taught and understood by the general
public, and why that matters, to the importance of questioning what we believe,
and the assumptions that underlie our beliefs, and how mythologizing historical
figures distorts the reality of that figure’s actual life.
I hope the book
encourages a sense of critical thinking and reasoned judgment in the reader.
