Brightly informative, giving readers a sturdy platform from which to conduct their own research and take personal...
National Book Critics Circle Award winner Biss (Notes from No Man’s Land, 2009) investigates the nature of vaccinations, from immunity as myth to the intricate web of the immune system.
The fears surrounding vaccines are not late-breaking news, as the author notes in this literate, rangy foray into the history and consequences of vaccination. In the 18th century—and frankly, little less today—it was understandable to associate vaccination with the work of witches: “The idea…that pus from a sick cow can be scraped into a wound on a person and make that person immune to a deadly disease is almost as hard to believe now as it was in 1796.” Indeed, the idea of poking yourself with a dose of virulent organisms to save yourself from them is not an intuitive leap. Biss ably tracks the progress of immunization: as metaphor—the protective impulse to make our children invulnerable (Achilles, Oedipus); as theory and science (the author provides a superb explanation of herd immunity: “when enough people are vaccinated with even a relatively ineffective vaccine, viruses have trouble moving from host to host and cease to spread”); as a cash cow for big pharma; and as a class issue—the notion of the innocent and the pure being violated by vaccinations, that “people without good living standards need vaccines, whereas vaccines would only clog up the more refined systems of middle-class and upper-class people.” Biss also administers a thoughtful, withering critique to more recent fears of vaccines—the toxins they carry, from mercury to formaldehyde, and accusations of their role in causing autism. The author keeps the debate lively and surprising, touching on Rachel Carson here and “Dr. Bob” there. She also includes her father’s wise counsel, which accommodates the many sides of the topic but arrives at a clear point of view: Vaccinate.
Brightly informative, giving readers a sturdy platform from which to conduct their own research and take personal responsibility.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55597-689-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
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A superb work that paints the resilient athlete as a fierce competitor and an unforgettable sportsman.
Heartfelt biography of a Texas football star whose life was cut short by cancer.
Inspired by interviews with coaches, teammates and friends and a 1971 autobiography, award-winning sportswriter Dent (Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football, 2007, etc.) tracks Freddie Joe Steinmark’s early years and burgeoning career with the Texas Longhorns. From his childhood in 1950s Denver, Colo., Steinmark’s interest in sports flourished, carefully groomed and profoundly encouraged by his father, a self-made athlete turned cop who’d sacrificed a professional baseball career to raise his son. “A small child with fragile bones” yet dubbed “a born winner” by early mentors, Steinmark’s diminutive stature proved a surprisingly suitable match for his steely, fearless determination on the field. Dent budgets his narrative wisely, proffering equal parts sports achievement and personal accomplishment in tracing his subject’s incremental ascent to greatness as he earned the admiration of fellow teammates like star quarterback Roger Behler. As the Longhorns’ “golden boy” key safety, the “155-pound peach-fuzz kid” exhibited drive and tireless perseverance on the gridiron, making him a respected letterman under Coach Darrell Royal. However, soon after a game-saving field performance, Steinmark suffered a crushing blow when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer that would eventually claim his life at 22. Dent also includes the story of Steinmark’s shyly romantic courtship of high-school sweetheart Linda Wheeler, an intensive love that endured throughout their tenure together at the University of Texas. The author also bolsters the biography with a fond foreword from current Texas head coach Mack Brown, who, to this day, continues to memorialize Steinmark’s legacy by bringing his photograph along to the team’s away-games.
A superb work that paints the resilient athlete as a fierce competitor and an unforgettable sportsman.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-65285-2
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
Snowden’s book likely won’t change the minds of his detractors, but he makes a strong case for his efforts.
The infamous National Security Agency contractor–turned–leaker and Russian exile presents his side of the story.
Snowden opens with an argument he carries throughout the narrative: that revealing secrets of the U.S. intelligence community was an act of civic service. “I used to work for the government,” he writes, “but now I work for the public.” He adds that making that distinction “got me into a bit of trouble at the office.” That’s an understatement. A second theme, equally ubiquitous, is that the U.S. government is a willing agent of “surveillance capitalism, and the end of the Internet as I knew it.” The creative web fell, replaced by behemoths like Facebook and Google, which keep track of users’ comings and goings, eventually knowing more than we do about ourselves and using that data as a commodity to buy and sell. Corporations lust for the commercial possibilities of targeted advertising and influence-peddling. As for governments, that data is something that on-the-ground spies could never hope to amass. Snowden insists that he did not release NSA and CIA secrets willy-nilly when he leaked his trove of pilfered information (“the number of documents that I disclosed directly to the public is zero”); instead, it went to journalists who he trusted would act as filters, revealing the newsworthy to the public. Most of those secrets remain unpublicized even as Snowden also insists that he held much material back. He is good at describing the culture of the intelligence community and especially its IT staff, who hold the keys to the kingdom, with access to data that is otherwise available only to a tiny echelon of top brass. The secrets are generally safe, he writes, only because “tech people rarely, if ever, have a sense of the broader applications and policy implications of the projects to which they’re assigned." He was an exception, and therein hangs most of his tale.
Snowden’s book likely won’t change the minds of his detractors, but he makes a strong case for his efforts.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-250-23723-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2019
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