Skimps on early days and non-European ways but lays out some groundwork for budding investigators.
How nabbing perps has gone from using “guesswork, gossip…and even ghosts” to DNA analysis.
Newquist stumbles out of the starting gate with a radically simplistic overview of the pre-modern development of laws and law enforcement (“much of the Western world was in chaos during a time known as the Middle Ages”) and misses or neglects to mention that the standard Henry Classification System for fingerprints was actually invented by Indian mathematicians. Once he gets to mid-18th-century London’s proto-police “Bow Street Runners,” however, he goes on to deliver a reasonably straightforward account of how tools and techniques from blood typing to ballistics became incorporated into today’s forensic science. Also, he balances nods to the positive contributions of prominent criminologists like Alphonse Bertillon and Frances Glessner Lee with a sharp critique of their colleague Francis Galton’s belief in eugenics. He takes closer looks at groundbreaking cases and how they were solved (or not), tucks in topical glossaries as well as directions for homespun activities like collecting fingerprints and analyzing blood spatters (the latter using, thankfully, paint or food coloring), and closes with looks at theoretical advances such as “molecular photofitting,” which involves leveraging DNA to create physical descriptions. In the mix of historical portraits, documents, and crime-scene photos, all of the human figures are White, though several on both sides of the law are women.
Skimps on early days and non-European ways but lays out some groundwork for budding investigators. (index, resource list) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-451-47646-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
A colorful but superficial ooze of anthropology, with a few drops of biology mixed in.
An irreverent if anemic survey of the red stuff’s roles in human culture, from Galen to the Twilight series.
The information is presented beneath drippy red borders and splattered with both jokey cartoon illustrations and graphic-novel style episodes featuring a hoodie-clad researcher who hooks up with a hot young vampire. Kyi’s report opens with a slashing overview of early medical theories about the circulatory system and closes with superficial speculations about why The Hunger Games and news stories about violent crimes are so popular. In between, it strings together generalities about blood rites in cultures from Matausa to our own Armed Forces and religions from Roman Catholicism to Santeria. The author also takes stabs at blood-based foods, the use of blood (particularly menstrual blood) in magic and modern forensic science, medical bloodletting, hereditary hemophilia in Europe’s ruling class, vampirism, and other topics in the same vein. But readers seeking at least a basic transfusion of information about blood’s physical functions or component elements will come away empty. Moreover, the trickle of specific facts doesn’t extend to, for instance, naming the site of a prehistoric sacrifice stone on which traces of gore have been found or even, despite repeated reference to blood types, actually identifying—much less discussing—them.
A colorful but superficial ooze of anthropology, with a few drops of biology mixed in. (further reading, sources, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: June 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-55451-385-7
Page Count: 126
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Far from comprehensive but visually arresting and, at times, provocative.
Stylized graphics rendered in saturated hues set this quick overview of body systems apart from the general run.
Arranged in tabbed and color-coded sections, the tour covers familiar ground but often from an unusual angle. The tally of human senses at the beginning, for instance, includes “proprioception” (physical multitasking), and ensuing chapters on the skeletal, circulatory and other systems are capped with a miscellany of body contents and products—from selected parasites and chemicals to farts and sweat. Likewise, descriptions of a dozen physical components of the “Brain Box” are followed by notes on more slippery mental functions like “Consciousness” and “Imagination.” The facts and observations gathered by Rogers are presented as labels or captions. They are interspersed on each spread with flat, eye-dazzling images designed by Grundy not with anatomical correctness in mind but to show processes or relationships at a glance. Thus, to show body parts most sensitive to touch, a silhouette figure sports an oversized hand and foot, plus Homer Simpson lips (though genitals are absent, which seems overcautious as an explicit section on reproduction follows a few pages later), and a stack of bathtubs illustrates the quantity of urine the average adult produces in an average lifetime (385 bathtubs’ worth). There is no backmatter.
Far from comprehensive but visually arresting and, at times, provocative. (Nonfiction. 11-13)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7123-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Big Picture/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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