414 Infectious Madness

by Harriet A. Washington, 2015

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: Read a book that demystifies a common mental illness.

I found this book on a whim and was drawn to it by its premise. What if all the diseases we considered to be faults of the mind are actually the result of infectious pathogens? How would that change our understanding of mental illness? Would that finally give some legitimacy to those who are maligned for being mentally unwell? How would this change the healthcare industry as well as our own individual perceptions? The idea is fascinating, especially since science has already proven some previously thought mental ailments to be symptoms of viral or bacterial infections—Washington notes right away that the disease of paresis, which is characterized by dementia and paralysis, is absent in the developed world, as it is not a psychological illness in and of itself but a symptom of late-stage syphilis, for which we now have an easy and readily available cure. Washington attempts to investigate what else might be cloaked under the stigma of mental illness and whose origins might be located in a treatable infection. While the idea is a bold and necessary one, the manner in which she reports her findings in this book is, well, less than convincing.

280 Hidden Figures

by Margot Lee Shetterly, 2017

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: A book by an AOC set in or about space.

Well, I’ll be the voice of dissent here and say that I really struggled with this book. I really wanted to like it and I’ve wanted to read it for quite a while, so much so that I put off seeing the movie so that I could enjoy the book more. I even saved it for the penultimate spot in my Read Harder Challenge tasks so that I would have something to look forward to. Yet, I had to push myself to get through it. I assumed that my interest in all things feminism and civil rights would outweigh my dislike of all things aviation, but it turns out that, despite being thrilled that the story of black women’s contributions to America’s aeronautical history was finally being told, I’m still the daughter of an Air Force engineer who was bored out of her mind when she was dragged to air show after air show. 

93 Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb

by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, 2012

I don’t remember where I ran across this book, but its title and subject matter immediately caught my eye. You see, I grew up at White Sands Missile Range, a place whose large territory encompasses the Trinity testing site. Nuclear weaponry is part of our specific narrative as New Mexicans and it’s as common to learn about this in history class as it is to learn about the presidents. I wouldn’t say nuclear science is a particular area of my interest, but the idea of the area’s history told in graphic form was something I hadn’t seen before and the WSMR school child in me just had to get her hands on it.

32 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Somehow I managed to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in psychology damn near 15 years ago, yet I’ve never read this seminal work by Oliver Sacks. Time to change that.

29 The Botany of Desire

I’m a pretty big fan of Michael Pollan’s writing, having read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I find that in this current environment where we jump to demonize any food processing and practically preach to those who shop anywhere other than farmers markets and buy anything other than local organic, Pollan is rather evenhanded. He is certainly a champion for the local/organic movement, but he understands that these other processes have their place and that socioeconomics play a heavy role in how we purchase our food. He’s much more realistic than many of the others in the field.

28 Einstein: His Life and Universe

I have never felt so much smarter and stupider, in equal parts, for reading a book.

For Book Riot’s read a biography task, I ambitiously chose Walter Isaacson’s tome Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007). It was in the spirit of the “Read Harder” challenge that I picked a book that I would not normally put forth the time and effort to read. Biographies are not my typical genre and physics is, well, I’m told I made my high school physics teacher cry, so there’s that. Perhaps part of me wanted to return to my days at the University of Chicago, pouring over erudite writings on which I had only the most tenuous of grasps. Those days were not fun, but they did leave me with the occasional masochistic desire to immerse myself in scholarly works and see how I make it through to the other end. I’d say this fit the bill nicely.