Sunday, September 19, 2021

The Poison Squad - Deborah Blum

You know the French saying "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same)? This nonfiction book is a case in point. Subtitled "One Chemist's Single-minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" this book shows that the current issues our entire planet seems to be having with a small group of wealthy people doing everything in their power, including deliberately inflicting harm on people, so they can get even richer, is an apparently eternal conflict. That it seems to play out day after day after day, year after year after year, century after century after century, is, frankly, infuriating and disgusting. 

When we apply Mr. Rogers' wonderful "look for the helpers" principle we find people like the subject of this book, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who spent decades fighting for basic food safety legislation. Of course, he was fought tooth and nail by the creeps that profit on literally poisoning humans to make a buck, and their idiotic arguments were pretty much exactly the same idiotic arguments these creeps make today to get away with their numerous misdeeds. I'm just glad that we have had (and still have) people like Dr. Wiley on the side of what's right. 

Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau - Michael Zapata

This book can best be described as a "mindflip." It's another book that I am not sure what to think of. I liked the premise but it's one of those books that would most likely benefit from multiple readings to really see and grasp the connections the author has set up. There are a lot of disparate elements that sort of come together and sort of don't. Fans of speculative sci-fi type books might love it.