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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.
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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