GREAT READS FOR HALLOWEEN

October is my favorite month.  It always has been, even when I lived in different parts of the country.  Of course, it's no coincidence that October means Halloween for me.  Scary stories, chocolate, costumes - what's not to love!  So, as the days grow shorter and cooler, here are some suggestions for the change in weather.  I'll read a creepy story any time of the year, but these titles make you want to curl up with a strange, mysterious or frightening book.

Steampunk!  An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
Edited by Kelly Link & Gavin Grant

This book from Candlewick Press is a collection of short stories with Steampunk-ish themes.  Each tale is by a different author who approach the genre a bit differently.  This makes the book a great way to discover new authors and ideas.  The only downside, really, is that if you really love a story or writer, it can be a bit of a tease.  It's kind of amazing to see how many imaginary worlds, just in touch with reality, are inspired by these writers.   Far less important but just as enjoyable are the small illustrations that adorn the pages and change with each story.

One of my favorite tales in the collection is The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor by Delia Sherman.  It marries beautifully the advanced mechanisms of the genre with a romantic ghost story.  I was also drawn to The Summer People which is set a surreal-yet-somehow-believable world of an Appalachia with small clockwork fairy-like creatures.  

Read samples and learn more: http://strangeandfascinating.com/

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Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
By Errol Morris

For the more academically-minded but still interested in a something illuminating, check out this handsome compilation of essays by Errol Morris.  While most items have been published elsewhere as serial entries, this brings them all together on large, well-designed pages with great reproductions of the photographs that are examined.

These series of articles investigate the veracity not only of photographs but also our perceptions of them.  Since the birth of the medium, there has been an association of truth with photograph.  Morris expounds on how the camera can lie through technical means like perspective and parallax as well as a choices made by the photographer.  

The best of the series is one called "Whose Father Was He?" in which he retraced an investigation around a photograph of three children found on the body of a Civil War solider.  

Reproduction of the photo

This photograph was reprinted in dozens of newspapers at the time, trying to identify the children.  Morris tracks the story with the determination of a bloodhound, all the while ruminating on why this particular story of tragedy to captured a nation.  

Other essays, while in depth, delve into the abstruse and seem distracted.  Indeed, every once in awhile Morris seems to be tooting his own horn rather than letting the photography and ideas lead him.

Read up on Morris and his other projects here:  http://errolmorris.com/

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Many thanks to the folks at Candlewick Press and The Penguin Press for the review copies.

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ALSO, watch for my upcoming review of MURDER ON THE FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGE: THE FIRST VICTORIAN RAILWAY KILLING by Kate Colquhoun.  It goes live 10/21.

REVIEW: POX - AN AMERICAN HISTORY by Michael Willrich

I remember when I asked my mom about the round, dappled scar on her upper arm.  She said it was from a vaccination as a child.  I didn't have one.  All of my shots were just that - shots.  No scars, no lasting pain.  After a small sting, a bandaid and a sticker, it was mostly forgotten.  I could return to the playground and earn a real scrape.

Author Michael Willrich explores a not-so-distant past when smallpox was a scourge among the industrialized American population.  It was either a deadly or a horribly disfiguring disease that traveled easier between victims.  In a time when public health and sanitation were coming to the forefront, smallpox was a key battleground for health officers and politicians alike.  

It might seem an unlikely subject for an entire book, yet it is incredibly riveting.  Not only does it explore the medical tendencies of the virus, but how germ theory, diagnostic practices and treatments evolved around this virulent illness.  Willrich describes smallpox eradication from a colonialist perspective with the American possession of Puerto Rico and the Philippines as well as the widespread use in armies as early as the American Revolution.  The history of vaccination (including the etymology) and early 20th century medicine versus "snake-oil" peddlers, are also scrutinized.  The very first pharmaceutical companies (some still in business today) sprung up around the surge in vaccinations.  (In fact, the Barnes Foundation, featured in The Art of the Steal, was set-up by Albert Barnes, who made his fortune by inventing a mild silver nitrate solution, marketed as Argyrol. His collection of art remains unparalleled.)

Possibly most relevant to today's readers is the anti-vaccination movement which was as prevalent as the disease itself.  These activists objected to compulsory vaccination on the grounds of personal liberty and religious freedom, but based their arguments largely on unsafe vaccine and secondary infections that were fairly common.  This controversy is not unlike those surrounding childhood vaccinations by parents who either believe in a natural immune system, or contend vaccines cause autism (this has since been proven untrue and the study that suggested it has been debunked as falsified).


Yet despite advances in modern science, there is a psychological skepticism that lingers in the American psyche.  Willrich thoroughly and perceptively pieces together a history that drew class and ethnic lines, despite the disease's inability to recognize such superficial differences.  It is far more than a book about a virus.  It provides perspective about where we have come from -- and possibly where we are headed.
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ISBN 9781594202865 | 400 pages | 31 Mar 2011 | The Penguin Press | 6.14 x 9.25in | 18 - AND UP


Thanks to the folks at Penguin Press for the review copy.

Author photo

Hear Michael Willrich on NPR.