I’ve debated a bit about how to approach reviewing this book, because I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand, I was captivated from page one. CompI’ve debated a bit about how to approach reviewing this book, because I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand, I was captivated from page one. Completely absorbed, I flew through this book and I learned a lot from it.
On the other hand, it might be a bit too introductory if you’re well-versed in this specific period of history.
That being said, I have a few nonfiction reading niches and none of the include Ancient Egypt, so this book was entirely new information to me, and it opened up an area of history that I’m currently excited to learn more about.
That’s the mark of a successful nonfiction book, in my estimation: does it make people want to learn more?
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones has an almost conversational way with his prose. I felt like I was sitting in a college class with my favorite professor. He has the ability to break down complex topics in a way that is easy to understand and relatable to the average reader.
I should clarify: I did not feel lectured to, but rather like I was sitting front-row for an epic story.
I learned a lot from this book, not only about the Cleopatras but also about the world they lived in. Llewellyn-Jones puts the events that transpire and the women involved in them in context with the world they inhabit. This was particularly interesting in a few points, where some of the Cleopatras were portrayed historically as being particularly brutal or determined to attain power (arguably, they were), and the author took time to address how the very fact that she was a woman impacted how her actions were portrayed by those who recorded the history.
To be clear, some of the Cleopatras truly were brutal and strived for power and glory, but the author worked hard to humanize even their most outrageous actions and put them in context in the time in which they lived, which was a magisterial feat, considering some of the events covered in this book.
It’s difficult to keep the family lines in order, and I was grateful that there were family trees in each section of the book. That, along with the author’s careful writing, kept everyone clear in my head as I read. I learned as well that the Cleopatras were not numbered in their lifetime. The numbers came later, as a way to make it easier to keep them apart (there were seven in total, and I greatly appreciated having them numbered as I read).
Some of the Cleopatras get more attention than others, but some lived longer than others and some had their lives recorded a bit better as a result. The few who came before Cleopatra VII (the Cleopatra) had scarce information on them, but that was also when the dynasty was starting to crumble and there was just generally less information about them and their lives. I also was interested in the reasoning behind all the familial marriage, and he goes into a bit of the logic behind that (which was fascinating), but it’s not the focus of the story here aside from making the family lines difficult to track.
On a personal level, I found the later Cleopatras to be less interesting than the first three. The earlier women lived when the empire was building and growing and the Cleopatras retained the most power and impact on the political landscape around them (There were also some wild things that happened in their lives.). I found the later ones to be less compelling for a few reasons: there was less information about a few of them, and I’ve already read enough about Cleopatra VII to not really glean more new information about her here (which is going to harken back to my first point about the book: your interest level will wax or wane depending on how much you already know when you start reading). I think what I’m saying is that I realized that I know nearly nothing about this part of the world during the earlier time period, and I realized I wanted to learn more.
Which, as I said earlier in this review, is the mark of a successful nonfiction book: it makes the reader want to learn more.
None of this takes away from the fact that these women lived at the heart of an empire that was rising and falling during a fascinating period of human history. They (sometimes) grabbed power and (sometimes) retained it. They made distinct impacts on the world they inhabited. Some of them are still talked about reverently today. One of them might be one of the most famous female figures in history.
This is history in its most epic form, a true example of reality being stranger than fiction.
The Cleopatras was a fascinating book. While it very much is an overview about the lives of these seven historical figures, it is packed full of interesting information and written in a highly accessible way. If you’re already well-versed in this period of history, you might discover you already know a lot of what’s written here. However, if you’re like me and you know very little about any of this, give the book a try.
This is a biography of Vladimir Putin, a detailed story of his rise to power. Yes, it can be a bit dry, but it’s well worth reading, especially if you’re interested in the roots of where Putin came from, as well as how he’s come to exercise his power.
Clocking in at about 600 pages, it’s not a small book, and there’s a lot that’s covered, a lot of events that might get a passing reference in other texts gets time on this stage. That being said, where this book truly excels is how Myers digs deep into the early career of Putin, his time in the KGB, his formative early years in the Russian government. Myers has done a lot of work to shine light on a part of Putin’s life that can seem shrouded in mystery.
Putin, however, has a gift for switching the narrative and gilding the lily. So, here we see how he took an event, like Chechnya, and brutally suppressed it, then turned it into something that bolstered his popularity and increased national zeal and fervor at the same time. Then, we see how all of that impacted his political career and prospects. It all spirals a bit, and Myers does a fantastic job at showing the formative events in Putin’s career, and how he managed to take them and use them to create… himself.
That is truly where this book rises above the others. Here, we see a lot of events we might only know about in passing, but through studied focus on Putin, we see how he used them as tools to further his own political prospects and career. There’s a lot of detail here, and a lot of names and events. If you aren’t into this sort of thing already, you might get a bit lost in all of it. However, if you stick it out, the reward is well worth the effort. Very rarely have I seen an author do as good of a job showing the rise of a powerful person, and how he used events as building blocks, how he changed the narrative, and how certain happenings informed his perspectives on the West, NATO, the UN and more.
I just finished this book last night, and to say I was captivated is an understatement. I remember a lot of the deaths mentioned in these pages, but so many of the details that are discussed here never made news headlines. Furthermore, Blake goes back in history a bit, and talks about how Putin made the shift from KGB to powerbroker in Petersburg, ties with various crime syndicates (and why he formed them). What From Russia With Blood does really well, though, is show how past events impact current events through a more personal lens.
The Moscow Bombings, and the gassing of the theater, the war in Chechnya are all things I’ve heard about in the periphery, but they never really made huge headway in Western media. Blake, however, ties them all to Putin, the dynamics of his power, and then his covert assassination program of expatriates. It's quite a tangled web, and somehow it remains clear throughout, regardless of which thread the author is pulling at the time.
I read this to better understand Putin's power, and how he operates behind the scenes to keep a grip on his empire, as well as how that might inform current events. And while you might be wondering how this, in any way, informs the current situation in Ukraine, it’s important to realize that nothing that is happening is really new. All of this has been done before, and Putin absolutely has some default behavior patterns which you’ll pick up on if you read enough about him. This book does a magnificent job of showing how Putin views the West, and how he keeps an iron fist clamped around the source of his power and authority.
Blake uses declassified texts to weave a narrative of a covert assassination campaign which has been used to tidy up loose ends via people falling out of windows, or being dosed with Novichok, and how the UK government often overlooked this in favor of strengthening Russia/UK ties. While Blake does poo-poo the UK government a bit for how they handled this, I tend to take a bit of a more lenient view of it all, as it must have been an impossible situation for the government at the time. That being said, I'm not a British person, so take that for what it's worth. I'm looking at it from the outside.
There are some weaknesses here. Blake obviously has an agenda and she’s setting out to prove her point. This doesn’t mean she’s wrong on any of this, it just means that sometimes there’s spin. However, the way Blake weaves together events like the fall of the USSR, the rise of organized crime, brutality like what happened in Chechnya and the Moscow Apartment Bombings right when Putin was really solidifying his power is nothing short of captivating, and extremely informative. To see how the man operates is to better understand how he interacts with the world.
What surprised me about this one was how it felt a bit more personal. Blake weaves together interviews, court transcripts, letters, emails and more, giving all of these people their own voices, which is something I think a lot of nonfiction books lack....more
I have recently become extremely frustrated by a whole lot of people having a lot of very loud opinions about stuff they don’t know anything about, and so I’ve decided to make a concentrated effort to not be like that. When an issue arises that a lot of people are yelling about, rather than shouting along with them, I go to my local library and find some books about the issue/region/people and read them. Then, I form my opinions.
Due to recent events, the Middle East has been (I think it always kind of is) a hot-button topic. I started out reading a bunch of books about Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, but one thing leads to another and that particular rabbit hole lead to the book Black Flags, which is about Isis, which lead here, to The Daughters of Kobani.
The Daughters of Kobani is a sweeping journalistic endeavor focusing on a few brave Kurdish women in war-stricken Syria in a town called Kobani, which was near the Turkish border but fell within Isis control. In 2014, women in this town in northeastern Syria waged a war against their occupiers, fighting alongside Kurdish men.
When one considers the patriarchal society under Isis control, one realizes just how brave and determined these women must have been to stand and fight. Cornered, surrounded by misery and war on all sides, and being regarded basically sub-human under Isis, they still stood and fought. Without training, without a lot of equipment, at extreme risk to themselves, alongside men who often saw them more as a joke than a threat, they fought. If you want a story about people facing down long, impossible odds, I really don't think you can do better than reading about the Kurdish women who fought against Isis.
The book is set against a backdrop that is so dramatic, it almost doesn’t seem real. On the one hand, you have Isis, this sweeping fundamentalist group that was so radical even Al Qaeda wanted nothing to do with them. On the other hand, you have the dictator of Syria himself killing his own people, tearing his own nation apart in an effort to retain control. Civil war on the left and a fundamentalist militia on the right. The people of Kobani were stuck in a terrible situation, with no relief and no way out.
When Isis swept into Kobani, many people fled. Anyone who could, basically did. Soon, however, it became impossible and those who didn’t leave as soon as they saw trouble brewing were stuck. Isis had snipers on the rooftops, IEDs in the streets. People who were caught trying to flee were captured. Some were used as human shields against US strikes. Some details of Isis slavery are woven throughout this book, including stories of slave markets, women in cages, brides being bought and sold, sex slaves, as well as public executions and the like. The people in Isis-occupied territory faced situations I cannot even begin to imagine.
The women in this book ended up doing what they could, how they could. They were outnumbered and underequipped, but despite that, those who could, fought, not only against Isis, but eventually ended up gaining massive toeholds in the women's rights movement as well. Many of them functioned as snipers. Many of them subverted authority where and how they could when they were capable of doing so. The bravery that must have been involved in these actions is staggering, especially considering the situations encroaching from all sides. Despite the odds, however, these women ended up forming the YPJ, or the Kurdish Women’s Protection Unit, and ultimately ended up being one of the deciding factors that turned the tide of Isis, being instrumental in driving them out of Syria and breaking their control over several important cities in the region.
The Daughters of Kobani is a short book, clocking in at just under 300 pages, and perhaps this is both its greatest strength and it’s downfall. On the one hand, the length of the book makes it easy to get through. It's not overly long, so it doesn't walk that line between interest and emotional exhaustion. On the other hand, I felt like there was too much packed into these pages. The author was both trying to tell the stories of the fighters and trying to give a detailed history of the region and conflict as well. This made me feel, at times, like too much attention was being put on one thing and not enough on the other. Occasionally, I was so desperate to get back to the stories of the women, I skimmed information.
One thing I will say, is that "Kurdish" is a term that gets thrown around a lot on the news when I hear stories regarding this region, and yet I never quite understood what it meant. A nationality? A cultural group? Something else? Due to the fact that these women are Kurdish, I feel like this book informed me quite a bit about what being Kurdish actually means and how it fits into the tapestry of conflict in the region, something I truly appreciate and plan on reading more about so I can better understand.
The Daughters of Kobani is a powerful journalistic work telling the stories of the women who became a defining force in a very painful, brutal, bloody conflict. This is a book about good vs. evil, only instead of being on the silver screen, some made up action movie, this is real life. These are real living, breathing people who acted despite all their fear, and anger, and the extremely high risk to themselves. Most of these women lost absolutely everything, things I can’t even imagine losing, and still they fought.
Is the book perfect? No, but this is a story that needs to be told. The Daughters of Kobani is a sweeping narrative about the power of women. Ultimately, it’s a story about heroes. ...more
I have read this book twice, and I’ve put off reviewing it both times until now. The reason for the delay isn’t that grand. It’s nothing that will impress you. This is just one of those books I don’t quite know how to review. One big reason for that is because, with all things history, Stalin is one of my obsessions. The guy was just so… Stalin. So much of history hinged on him, and he was such a huge player on the global stage, but for various reasons, we don’t hear a whole lot about him in the west.
I think, at this point, I’ve read at least fifteen Stalin biographies, and countless books about his various purges, and other pivotal things that took place while he was in power. I mean, when I say the guy fascinates me, I mean it. I don’t admire him, but I find the dynamics of his particular brand of power absolutely captivating.
So when I saw this book, I knew I had to read it. World War II is also interesting to me, probably right below Stalin on my personal interest level chart, but it’s hard to get any really good accounts of the Eastern Front of World War II. In school, we learned all about what happened in England and France, but it wasn’t until I was older, doing my own nonfiction reading in my free time, that I learned about the true meat and potatoes of World War II. The power struggle between Stalin and Hitler, the fact that the real heart of that particular part of the global conflict was in neither France nor England, but in the Eastern European borderlands where a war of ideology was waged between nationalists and communists.
Stalin’s War is one of those rare books that scratched an intellectual itch as nothing else has. A lot is going on in this book, but the Soviet policies in the 1920s and 1930s were fascinating, and really helped me understand how and why Stalin felt he needed to position himself on the global stage in a certain way in response to some of the European conflicts and changes happening nearby, leading up to 1939. It gave a bit of context for the Nazi-Soviet pact, which has always had a lot of attention because it was so unexpected. However, this book, with all its context and information, does show that Stalin wasn’t, perhaps, as hoodwinked and surprised by Hitler as popular belief might have it. According to this book, Stalin wasn’t surprised by Hitler acting against the pact. Rather than being blindsided, McMeekin argues that Stalin knew Hitler would invade eventually, and he prepared for that very thing to happen, but the Soviet army, for all its size, was just not nearly as good at mobile warfare as the Nazis.
This book, in some ways, was a rude awakening. There were a lot of things I didn’t know before reading it that was detailed here. For example, how Stalin and Hitler learned from each other in the 1930s, even occasionally collaborating and carefully staying out of each other’s ways. Stalin’s antisemitism nearly rivaled Hitler’s, and some of his baser policies and actions in that regard are covered as well. Stalin’s various propaganda campaigns are covered here, as well as their purpose. Stalin’s puppet governments in Finland, his gambit with Poland, and various other important political moments are detailed, as well as Churchill and Stalin’s conference when Churchill offered Stalin a good chunk of the Balkans, and the Yalta conference, and many other important political moments.
The United States and allied involvement in World War II is covered quite extensively, and McMeekin doesn’t paint everyone in the best light, though I quickly learned I enjoyed having the veneer polished off some of these larger-than-life historical figures. How a lot of the things that happened during World War II ended up playing out after the dust settled, including some policy decisions across the board that lead to the Cold War was absolutely fascinating. History is not a vacuum, and I really appreciated McMeekin’s ability to connect the dots and show just how the dominos fell. The author comes across as strictly anti-communist, but he has done his research, and he has a very balanced way of presenting historical figures and events in a light that feels both justified and not overly favorable or cruel. Balance, perhaps, is one thing a lot of books on this particular topic, featuring these particular men, lacks, and I think McMeekin did an amazing job here.
Mostly what I took away from reading this book was how much Stalin was doing without anyone noticing, or if they noticed, they sort of whistled and turned their back on him in an “Oh, don’t look at Stalin, just let him do his thing” kind of way. There was just so much going on in Stalin’s political office that is never really covered by many of the popular World War II books. From setting up puppet governments to allying himself with the right people and then using those alliances to his gains, to the lying and the falsifying information, to the manipulations, the gambles, and more. Stalin was playing the long game. He was at the center of all of it, and due to various political and propaganda reasons, we just don’t see that much of this side of the war in the West.
If nothing else, this book underscored my belief that Stalin was perhaps one of the most powerful, adept manipulators in modern history. The guy just knew how to work people.
McMeekin comes to a few very interesting, and I’d say controversial conclusions. First, he determines that World War II was probably one of the few historical wars that were absolutely justified and had to happen. That, I think, is inarguable. Secondly, however, he determines the results of the war weren’t exactly as clear-cut as we seem to think they are. If the war was fought to save Eastern Europe, it failed. If the war in Asia was over Manchuria, Stalin ended up gaining territory. If the war was to save Western Europe, it could have likely been achieved with negotiations and a lower death toll. In the end, no matter how you cut it, for at least a while, Stalin was the man behind the curtain, manipulating events, and ultimately, McMeekin argues, he came out the victor. ...more
I don’t know a whole lot about medicine in the Middle Ages. I’ve read a lot of nonfiction books about various plagues that swept through numerous regions during the time period we would define as “Middle Ages” but aside from that, and information gleaned in those books, I don’t know much. However, I want to know more. I find myself, when I read books set in this time period, often wondering how exactly people survived. When I saw Medicine in the Middle Ages, I knew it was a book I had to read, and so I jumped on it.
The first thing I was concerned about is accessibility. Anyone who reads a good amount of nonfiction knows that sometimes authors probably think they are being accessible to the every reader, but in the end they are anything but. I didn’t want a book that read like a textbook, and I knew with my limited medical background, I’d need something I could easily sink into and understand, and I will say I found all of that here. Medicine in the Middle Ages might have a somewhat dry title, but the text inside the book is anything but. Cummings does a fantastic job weaving together history and scientific understanding to give readers a well-rounded overview of the topic, of the beliefs in that day and age, where they came from, and how they influenced medical understanding.
Cummings spends the first part of the book talking more about how life was lived in the Middle Ages, rather than discussing medicine itself. This part of the book fascinated me, and I discovered pretty early on that it was essential to start the book out this way. You have to understand how people lived to be able to fully appreciate how they interacted with the world when something like a plague swept through. Once this foundation is laid, however, the author immerses herself in her subject matter. Due to the fact that we have some firm foundation upon which to explore this topic, thanks to the first chunk of the book, the information about medicine meant more to me, because I had context with which to address it.
The Middle Ages itself is a period of time spanning about 1,000 years, and things change in that amount of time. Cummings spans the era, touching on important moments and historical events, giving some of them an intimate study while glossing over ones that might not be, perhaps, as important to the reader’s general understanding. The Black Death, an infamous plague that wiped out a good chunk of Europe’s population, is covered in detail, and though I have read numerous books on the subject already, I did learn some new things here. She also does not shy away from matters like childbirth, hospitals, and insane asylums, which were things I was really hoping to find in this book, and aren’t very often covered in other books detailing matters in this time period.
Context was something I appreciated throughout. Cummings doesn’t just throw readers into the mire, she leads them through. We read about these events from a 21st century standpoint, which is often why I think, “How on earth did anyone survive back then?” We don’t often read about these things from the standpoint of someone living there, at that time. Cummings has a way of peeling back the layers between us and them, and showing readers not just what people practiced in the way of medicine, but why they did it, and their current understanding of what they were doing and why. This allows readers to better grasp what they got right, and what they got wrong, and how well (or poorly) they were doing based on the information they had at the time. From women’s healthcare to war wounds to plagues, each aspect is covered compassionately, and with an obvious understanding for not just why people did what they did, but their understanding of what they were doing as well.
Ultimately, I learned a lot more from this book than I expected, and not all of it was about medicine. Due to Cumming’s knack for weaving history and science together into such a smooth narrative, I learned a lot of things about history that I didn’t know already as well. In fact, I went into this book with a general sense of curiosity, and left it with a list as long as my arm of things to google and learn more about. That’s always the sign of a good nonfiction book, in my estimation. They don’t just inform the reader, but they make the reader want to know more, and that’s what this did. Perhaps if I did have one drawback, it’s that this book isn’t terribly long. Clocking in at just under 200 pages, there isn’t a lot of room here for the author to cover topics in extensive detail, and so you might just want to make a list of things to further research, as some of the topics covered felt more like vignettes.
Accessibly written with a knack for context and an ability to present complex topics in easily digestible bites, Medicine in the Middle Ages was a fascinating read. I highly recommend it to any nonfiction reader who enjoys books that seamlessly blend science and history. ...more
“Around the world, a woman's body is still very much a battlefield and hundreds of thousands of women bear the invisible wounds of war.”
I read a lot of different stuff when I’m cooking plot points for the books I’m writing. This was one that flew across my radar a few weeks ago, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was a book I absolutely had to read. I also knew it would be brutal, and difficult to get through, and I was not wrong. This might be one of the most important books I have ever read, but it is also one of the most harrowing, and one of the only books I’ve had to put down and walk away from before I could continue reading it.
Christina Lamb is a well-known journalist and author. She worked on I Am Malala and few other big-name projects. She has spent much of her professional life in war zones, reporting on crises and the like, and in this book she openly talks about her motivations for writing about this topic, as well as the emotional fatigue she dealt with while interviewing, researching, and writing. Both of these things prevented the narrative from every straying into the dusty, scholarly halls that some books of this nature wander down. Lamb’s personal interest, and the emotional toll it took, was clear throughout the book. Due to that, her narrative was personal, and it was probably that personal element that made it feel all the more jarring as I read.
“Rape is the only crime in which society is more likely to stigmatize the victim than punish the perpetrator.”
Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, is one of the most important books I have ever read, and it’s right up there with The Unwomanly Face of War and the Rape of Nanking in how difficult it was for me to get through, emotionally. Through the eyes of women in numerous parts of the world, readers are taken on a tour de force of war, and the often unmentioned and extremely high toll women pay for the battles men often fight. Rape used as a weapon, and then the social fallout from being a woman who was raped is what you'll read about, and yet it is the human perseverance and personal agony that really stuck to my ribs.
Rather than focusing on one area, each chapter (sometimes a few chapters) focus on a different region of the world, a different conflict, and different women, but the core of the stories told, regardless of location and regardless of the person interviewed, are the same. It is heartbreaking, and soul crushing, and impossible to look away from. This is a story that spans borders, and nationality. It’s a female story, and one historically rarely told. While men play at war, it has been the women who have suffered, voices muted, overlooked and relegated to the shadows.
Here, Lamb interviews Yazidi women, Boko Haram survivors and families of the missing, women who survived mass rape in Bangladesh, survivors of the Rwanda genocide, survivors of the Rohingya genetic cleansing, survivors of rape camps in the Bosnian War, and many more. She does not glorify the details, but neither does she deny them or gloss over them. With incredible care and respect for both the dead and the survived, she tells their unvarnished stories, never once glossing over the emotional, psychological, or physical tolls these women have paid.
“Rape is as much of a weapon of war as the machete, club, or Kalashnikov.”
What surprised me, perhaps, was the fact that she did not stop with the women who have undergone these personal traumas, but rather there are a few sections where she talks to the next generation as well, people who were born of these events, children whose birth parents are known by the ominous moniker of “the disappeared.” Born in horrible conditions, and then given to the jailers, the captors, those who were highly placed to be raised as their own children, their actual parentage erased from the records and from memory. Lamb details the plight of the families to try to find their missing members, and the struggle of the survived to, in some way, pick up the pieces of their lives.
Trauma leaves its mark, and it spans generations. In these stories, Lamb does not just discuss what happened to the women during these fraught, impossible times, but also to the children, to those who survived. The story of survival is often as brutal and heartrending as the war, the rapes, the abuse itself. There are no happy endings, or at least, there are very few. The war for some might end, but it seems as though it continues relentlessly on, carving a niche out of each woman's life, every day it is lived. An echo, a palimpsest of pain. In some places, the story is more hopeful than others, but the thread of misery is woven throughout.
“You meet these women, here in the city, or go out to the village, to Taba, and meet them and they seem normal. But I think when they go home and close their doors at night, there is a space inside them which no one can break into, no matter what you do.”
Ultimately, I feel like whatever I write about this book isn’t going to be enough, and I honestly can’t quite find the worlds to tell you just how powerful, important, and painful Our Bodies, Their Battlefields truly is. In the annals of history, it’s the stories about men we read more than those about women, but women are always present. We have been relegated to the margins, to the shadows, to the corners where the deepest wounds are often invisible, and the pain and blood is easy to overlook. Here, Christina Lamb gives voice to the voiceless, to those throughout history who have stood as battlefields, unrecognized and silent.
One of the most powerful books I have ever read. I firmly believe this needs to be mandatory reading. ...more
It’s hard for me to put into words how much I loved reading this one. That really is all you need to know about it right there. Part history, part love letter to books, The Gilded Page really has everything I’ve ever wanted to read right here in one very neat, very well formatted, very well written package.
Wellesley takes readers on a journey through history, exploring some remarkable manuscripts and what various clues left in them says about the authors of said historical gems. Detailing how the manuscript is discovered is only half the fun, but she takes a microscopic look at the clues left in the manuscript, echoes of history, and explains what they say about not just those who wrote it, but the time period itself.
These details are often tantalizing in the extreme, telling readers just enough, without ever going overboard on weighty infodumps loaded with scholarly jargon. The Gilded Page never stops being a passionate book about books. Replete with valuable information, I never felt like I was being hit over the head with important facts, but rather led by the author through a twisting, turning maze of history and discovery, and insights provided by the clues left behind. In a strange way, reading this book made me feel like I was part of the process of discovery, and that made everything I learned feel that much more personal.
Perhaps what surprised me the most about The Gilded Page was how accessible it was. I’ve tried to read books about medieval manuscripts before, but I often get weighed down by jargon, by things I feel like I should understand before going into the book. I’ve had a really hard time trying to find an entry-level nonfiction book that is both interesting and not held back by all the things I should already know.
I was almost surprised, in fact, by how accessible Wellesley kept this book. Discussing history through a lens of both discovery and insinuation based on clues, and information scholars already have, The Gilded Page took me by the hand and led me through the winding corridor of knowledge that I have previously found too burdened by meaning for my blood, and helped me understand what I was reading. Wellesley gave me information that is applicable, in a way that made it matter. This book gave me a fantastic overview of medieval manuscripts without making me feel like I should have at least taken on university level course first.
It’s not just the books she picks apart that kept me rooted in place, but how she used them as a jumping off point to often explore the world they came from, the time period, the people, and things that might have happened to the books along the way to the modern era. Editing is touched on, and how later editors perhaps modified the original author’s intent. Why some books were preserved and others weren’t. Who wrote the book, who sold it, why it was both written and sold is often as interesting as the manuscript itself.
There is a lot of information we just don’t know about this time period, and some of what I learned was surprising. For example, how many women were involved in the manuscripts discussed here was unexpected. I also was surprised by many of the details about the art itself, from the tools used, the inks, the papers, and the like. Again, part of the reason why this was so impactful to me was because it was written in a way I understood, by an author who knew how to not just lecture about a topic but connect with her reader.
Some of the books Wellesley covers are well known, and some less so. Instead of focusing solely on the books themselves, she takes a wider approach to all of them, and manages to show how time and place possibly influenced content. How tools of the trade changed over the years, and then tells stories of the things that likely happened around the manuscript that impacted how it was lost/found/damaged/disappeared/etc.
Wellesley keeps her voice and passion throughout and peppers the book with interesting and often humorous stories. From Henry VIII scribbling in the margins of a psalter, to medieval poets writing odes to genitalia, The Gilded Page keeps a certain remarkable wit about it which is balanced perfectly on the edge of the author’s obvious passion.
In the end, The Gilded Page was a book that was nearly impossible to put down. I read it in a few days, and then spent a few more days doing research to learn more about any number of the things I read about. Still, I find myself sitting here thinking, “Maybe I should re-read that book…”. It’s history the way it was meant to be written, engaging, fascinating, and informative, this book is one of those unforgettable marriages of passion and knowledge that sucked me in and refused to let me go.
I have put off writing this review for a while because I’m not even really sure how to start it. There is a lot I could say, and a lot I want to say, and I know I won’t be able to say any of it here. This book left me with some very heavy thoughts, and it’s taken some time to process it. It’s horrifying, thought provoking, and uncomfortable, but also really important.
What amazed me, perhaps more than almost anything else, is just how much information Darren Byler packed into 150 pages. Perhaps it is because I am an editor of speculative fiction books, which are known for being absolutely massive, but 150 pages is almost nothing to me these days. I was honestly a little disappointed by the size of the book until I started reading it and realized that the small page count in no way means a lack of content, or an overview (my two concerns with shorter nonfiction books). What is included here has been carefully chosen for maximum impact and the substantial information it provides. 150 pages doesn’t leave a lot of room for extrapolation or navel-gazing on the author’s part. Here, we get a book with all the fat trimmed off.
In the Camps starts with a bang. A student from the University of Washington went home to visit family, and ended up accidentally straying outside of the zone she was allowed to be in. She was caught on camera, and subsequently arrested by a host of police officers, and then sent to the camps where primarily Uyghers, Hui, and Kazakhs are taken for “re-education”. From this point, Byler takes readers on a whirlwind journey of these camps, where many people are arrested under the shadowy umbrella of “pre-crimes”, and shows readers how technology is used to target certain populations.
Byler has interviewed numerous people to write this book, all of them free and safe when he interviews them. Through their eye-witness accounts, slowly the picture of the police state, the technological overlords, and life in the camps becomes painfully clear. While there are obvious advantages to technology, for those in the ethnic and cultural groups being suppressed, technology is a weapon, and I felt the slice of that blade keenly as I read this book.
It starts, as most things do, with surveillance. In Xinjiang, all individuals who belong to suspect ethnic groups are brought in for a “health check”. At this health check, pictures, iris scans, DNA samples, fingerprints and the like are taken by authorities. But it doesn’t stop there. Cell phones are procured, and information on them downloaded, including pictures and address books, social media interactions are monitored and the like. It all goes into a massive database where all this information is kept and can be extracted by those with access in less than a second. If, for example, someone is caught on camera straying from their neighborhood, and their face is pinged in the database, they will, like the woman at the start of this review, be arrested on the grounds of “pre-criminal activity.”
Chinese state authorities have circulated lists detailing signs of “Islamic extremism” with things on them as mundane as having religious content on their phone or downloading WhatsApp. These lists function as a sort of vague umbrella which can be used to justify almost any arrest of any individual. The ultimate goal here is, of course, to break these ethnic groups free from their identities and make them truly Chinese.
Then, they are brought to the camps, where they are forced to share beds, sit in re-education classes where they learn patriotic songs, and must speak in Mandarin Chinese, a language many do not know. Numerous cameras in each cell records their every movement. Beatings happen regularly and often without reason. They are allowed to shower once a week. Food is given, but the amounts of it are small, so hunger is rampant. The lights in the cells never turn off, which makes sleeping difficult. If prisoners are released, they are sent to their own neighborhood, where neighbors spy on them and monitor their activity. Added to that, anyone can be re-arrested at any time for any reason, so while they might be free from the camps, they are never truly "free" again.
From this point, Byler goes up the chain a bit, and by doing this, it quickly becomes clear that everyone is operating on fear, an epidemic of it. If the minders of these prisoners aren’t appropriately enthusiastic about their duties, then they will be forced to undergo the same treatment as the prisoners they are overseeing, a fate none of them want. Furthermore, they can’t quit, because if they do, they will end up in re-education camps as well. That fear doesn’t stop there. Up the chain it goes, with everyone required to show proper enthusiasm and patriotic zeal, lest they end up in the camps as well. Added to that, everyone is watching and reporting on everyone else, so trust is low, and anxiety is both toxic and high.
This is not the first communist system I've read about that functions on an epidemic of fear, where everyone is suspect, and everyone also functions as both spy and informer when needed.
Factories have been set up to take advantage of the labor provided by those in the camps. When journalists ask questions or ask to tour the area, the prisoners are told what to say and how to act. Thus, the journalists and human rights workers are shown, basically, the best side of things that the government can put forward. In some ways, it reminded me a bit of the North Korean border towns. Empty, save for the people assigned to work in them, keeping them clean and well-maintained, so everyone looking in can see how idealistic life is there.
Byler talks to a lot of people, all of whom have been part of the camp system and were either released or escaped. He also talks to authorities and chases the roots of this system down to 2014, in a campaign to end terrorism, and shows how things have evolved from that point.
In the Camps was haunting intersection of technology and politics. Reading this felt like was stepping into an Orwellian nightmare. Part horrifying, part futuristic hellscape, this book, while short, is mighty....more
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