lirazel | (no subject)

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Last night I started a book called Phantom Plague: How Tuberculosis Shaped History by Vidya Krishnan, and I was really excited about it. It kind of started out from a weird angle (T.B. as an influence on Dracula and Anglophone concepts of vampirism), but lots of serious books start out with something a little left of center as a hook. I was fine with that.

And then I got like 6% in and read a sentence and blinked at it and blinked again and it still said what I thought it said. In talking about puerperal fever, it said that Jane Seymour died after giving birth to "Princess Elizabeth."

Now, I don't care a thing about the Tudors, so this is not a HOW DARE SOMEONE NOT KNOW THIS reaction. I don't think it's at all odd that a person, especially from outside the UK, isn't quite clear on which wife of Henry VIII gave birth to which of his children. Or even that the writer of the book might assume (incorrectly) that they know it and just write it without checking it. Such mistakes are easily made.

But I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that this sentence had a footnote to a source. And that source does not say what the sentence said. (The source was correct about Jane Seymour giving birth to Edward VI). And the source was biography.com!

Excuse me, but who was doing basic fact-checking on this book? How did the editors let something like that slide? And also--am I the only one who doesn't think that biography.com is a very good source? (I could be wrong about this last--perhaps it's perfectly acceptable?)

Needless to say, I was feeling stirrings of skepticism about the book itself, so I decided to look at the other sources in the footnotes. And I was Unimpressed.

I did some more investigating and discovered that the author is a journalist who focuses on healthcare in India. It seems that the second half of the book is reflective of her years of experience watching how TB is and is not treated in that country and the immense suffering there. I am very willing to believe that she is a reliable source for that kind of writing. And it is important!

But I do not think she has any business writing the first half of this book which alleges to be a history of TB and its affect on humanity. She clearly doesn't have the training (either medical or historical) to do so, I am not crazy about the sources she draws on (most of which are, like, blogs and news articles and stuff), and the couple of chapters I read were less than illuminating about anything other than the fact that TB has impacted literature.

I am now very annoyed that this is not a book about the history of TB because I want to read a history of TB. And I am also annoyed on behalf of this journalist that her editor/publisher didn't say, "Just focus on the stuff you're an authority on--the experiences of contemporary TB patients in India." That would have made for a strong book, imo. Maybe I will go back and read the second part of this book at some point since I know nothing about TB in India and I think there's probably a ton that's worthwhile in that half of the book.

But right now I am annoyed enough that this book is not what I wanted it to be that I'm setting it aside. And asking for recs of your favorite works of popular-but-respectable social histories of specific things.

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No. Just no.

I feel like my annoyance is partly my own fault, because I should have looked into the writer's credentials before I started it. Someone with a medical background in contagious diseases or a historian of medicine are pretty much the only people who have business writing a book about the history of TB. But I guess I just figured that indeed that was who had written this book?

Nah. I think people who are "just" science journalists or in science communication can write fine books on specific diseases and their histories. See no issue there, they have the tools. I also think some people who are neither of those can do just fine.

But that book. No. Just no.

Ugh. My favorite books on medical history are Stephen Johnson's The Ghost Map, about cholera epidemiology in mid-19th century London, and Alfred Crosby's America's Forgotten Pandemic, about the 1918 Flu and the way it was treated. If you want a decent book on TB in particular, I liked Thomas Goetz's The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis, but had some quibbles about the Doyle framing.

Oh, yeah, The Ghost Map is so interesting! I haven't read the other two, though--thanks for the recs!

I liked The Ghost Map as well--forgotten about that one.

This seems particularly egregious even for a pop history/sci book.

Yeah. I can't remember the last time that a single sentence made me just entirely lose faith in a book like that.

That would throw me completely out of it. And it's pretty inexcusable in a published book, IMHO. However, I am fairly regularly shocked at how much stupid stuff is published.... In a related note, an acquaintance was rewriting a club information web page for our dog breed club and it was full of lack of correct terminology and/or information. When I said, "Um.... you can't write all this stuff in what is meant to be providing information for people," she just responded that she worked for a senator and was used to writing things that she knew nothing about. She found it funny that I wouldn't sign off on the page until it was corrected.

When I said, "Um.... you can't write all this stuff in what is meant to be providing information for people," she just responded that she worked for a senator and was used to writing things that she knew nothing about. She found it funny that I wouldn't sign off on the page until it was corrected.

Oh my GOSH.

I know. Explains a lot about the state of our government, doesn't it?

I'm so depressed.

That is such a specific and weird combo for a book, and there are shorter books from journalist types all the time, which makes it even bizarre.

I did read a history of Ebola when I was in high school that was well done as I recall, but I can't really rec a book on Ebola outbreaks during the ACTUAL PLAGUE TIMES.

...if I think of any later, will let you know, but my Goodreads history shelf might be a good place to trawl for that?

Yeah, I don't understand why the book is structured the way it is. It just seems poorly designed.

I did read a history of Ebola when I was in high school that was well done as I recall, but I can't really rec a book on Ebola outbreaks during the ACTUAL PLAGUE TIMES.

Lol

There are no longer real editors or fact-checkers, even at major publishers, at least that's what I've been told.

I thought John Barry's The Great Influenza was well-written and entertaining. Being neither a historian nor an epidemiologist, I cannot vouch for its accuracy.

There are no longer real editors or fact-checkers, even at major publishers, at least that's what I've been told.

This makes me want to cry.

Thanks for the rec!

WOW that is horrifyingly bad fact-checking. Yikes.

I just went through my nonfiction tag and was surprised to discover how few books I read within the genre of "social histories of specific things"! I'm far more likely to read biographies or memoirs, if I'm going for nonfiction. Here's a couple that I thoroughly enjoyed though:

- The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh, by David Damrosch
- T. rex and the Crater of Doom, by Walter Alvarez

Oooh! Both of those sound so interesting! Thank you!

relevant to your interests (though not a book)

Oooh! Thank you!

Major publishers just do not fact check. They simply don't, and there have been a number of minor hubbubs over similarly stupid errors in the last few years. Argh!

I'm sure everyone and their uncle has told you to read Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, the social history of cancer treatment, which truly is that good. (His book on the gene I felt a little more 'eh' about but is also just packed with information.) I also really enjoy Peter Godfrey-Smith on the mind and consciousness: both his octopus-centric book Other Minds and his slightly less octopus-centric book Metazoa hit that spot for me. You've likely seen the little circle of people who read M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead after I reviewed it several months ago -- social history of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony -- and I still highly recommend it! I also reviewed and recommend Virginia Postrel's The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World. Edmund de Waal's The White Road, a social history of porcelain, is SO. GOOD. Back to the biosciences, Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life is sort of on the edge -- it's a biography, and also about Stanford University, but it really truly did convince me that fish don't exist and was a fascinating window into taxonomy.

Major publishers just do not fact check.

This infuriates me. I am frothing at the mouth.

Thank you thank you for the recs! So many good ones there! Including several that I had on my to-read list but had forgotten about (especially the Shostakovitch one!)

ooh yes I forgot to rec the Shostakovich one but that one was SO good too!

I don't know about good popular histories on it, but The White Death by Thomas Dormany is pretty good for TB - it's not a popular history as such, but it's also not dry academic stuff, either, and includes a lot of the relationship between TB & literature (& culture) & literary people who died of TB (and their descriptions of it) & I found it v useful. (It certainly seemed reliable enough - nothing raised any immediately flags, although obv am not medical nor a professional historian either).

I enjoyed The Arsenic Century (largely about how Victorians kept poisoning themselves) & right now my mind is blanking on any other popular histories, although I know the kind of thing you mean & they're very cool when done right. And not getting basic facts wrong. (If someone's not spotted something that is that simple to double check at any point during writing, editing and proofing, that's pretty bad.)

Oh excellent! That's exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much!

Yay!

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