Treasure Hunting, Sort Of.

Kean, Sam.  The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary 

        Cities, and Mythical Creatures Lost to Time.  Washington, D.C.: National Geographic 

        Partners, 2026.  ISBN: 9781426223860

 

Do you enjoy armchair archeology?  If so, Sam Kean has a deal for you!  In The Museum of Lost Things, he provides the reader with a plethora of lost items to explore and 

 

After an introduction to set the stage of being in a literary museum, Sam Kean opens with a chapter on lost graves such as Alexander the Greats, Egyptian mausoleums, and a host of others.  Then the reader is escorted to a room filled with lost cities - Troy being the major focus.  After lost cities, we visit lost people with a examination of the Dorak-Yortan cultures of Anatolia in Turkey, Then there are the lost relics such as the scrolls discovered at Nag Hammadi (Egypt). Anyone up for deciphering lost languages - Linear B, hieroglyphics, and cuneiform.  Lost bones, especially the Peking Man bones, have their own room.  There is also a room for lost civilizations such as the Mohenjo-daro of India.  A whole room discussing lost knowledge caused by the destruction of libraries at Alexandria and elsewhere with an interesting discussion on who really destroyed the Library!  For the treasure hunters, there is a room for lost gold with Kankan Musa, the Lion of Mali highlighted.  Then there is the room of lost art with  Leonardo da Vinci and his many unfinished projects on display.  Out of  World War II comes a room of lost loot specifically the Amber Room from the Catherine Palace in Pushkin (Soviet Union).  The room for lost technology examines the finding of the Antikythera Device.  and the final room is host to lost species such as the coelacanth.and the ivory-billed woodpecker. Sam Kean finishes the book with an afterword discussing what future archeologists and geologists might find out about us from what we are leaving behind.  He also provides the reader with a list of his sources for those who want to delve deeper into various topics.

 

If you have read Sam Kean's books before, you know that he provides an easy reading book filled with tidbits of interesting information.  His Museum of Lost Things fits that mold perfectly!  

Guns and Why Americans are Crazy for Them

Gladwell, Malcolm.  The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic.  New York: 

         Little, Brown and Company, 2026.  ISBN: 9780316603782

 

 

Do you have an opinion regarding the amount of gun violence there is in the United States?  Do you have any idea on how the United States treated gun violence in the past?  Do you have opinions on the absurd gun laws on the books now and court rulings?  Malcolm Gladwell addresses these questions and more in The American Way of Killing!

 

Malcolm Gladwell opens the book with an interview of a Chicago ER doctor who had grown up in Chicago.  He had lost 15 close friends or family member to gun violence by the time he was 30 years old who has to teach 4th graders how to deal with gunshot wounds.  Gladwell then pivots to difference in murder rates in the United States versus Canada and Europe. He wants to figure out why the United States is such an outlier on gun violence.

 

Part One: Dishonest Conversations has three chapters.  "A Shooting Lesson" starts with the difference between crime and violence and the difference in what harm different guns do. "The Slave Owner's Lament" covers the motivation and writing style of the writers (principally James Madison) of the 2nd Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and the slippery slope the Supreme Court has been skirting in a number of cases.  "The Cornwell Effect" looks at the amount of practice ER and trauma surgeons get on gun shot wounds and how their skill disguises the damage that gun violence does to society.

 

Part Two: Misdiagnosis also has three chapters.  "The Quarrel Was About A Very Trivial Thing" discuses what we get wrong about why and how various crimes happen and how/why the U.S. justice approach does not work.  "Zero. Zero. It's Not Gonna Happen" discusses the number of police in U.S. cities versus European cities and how this plays out in relation to the amount of criminal cases solved.  "Becoming a Man" examines how emotional management training can play a part in crime reduction.

 

Part Three: Moral Absurdity has two chapters.  "Nobody Appears to Have Liked Sir John Knight" is a deep dive into The Sullivan Act and the legal hoops the Supreme Court jumped through to repeal it.  "The Footnote" is a look at the inequalities in regard to who dies from violence in the United States.

 

The epilogue - "Getting Outta Dodge" - is a rereading of how folks out West dealt with gun violence.  They banned the guns.  The epilogue is also a summarization of all the points made earlier in the book.

 

If you are interested in learning why the United States is such an outlier among civilized countries in regard to violence, pick up this book, read it, and share it!  

 

The State vs Information?

Siegel, Jacob.  The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control.  New York: Henry Holt, 

         2026.  ISBN: 9781250363121

 

So what is information?  And how is information related to personal knowledge?   To public knowledge and action?  To politics?   To government control?  These are the types of questions Jacob Siegel tries to answer in The Information State.

 

Jacob Siegel opens the books with a brief dive back into history - back to Aristotle and Plato, up through the Middle Ages and then settling in with the invention  printing press to discuss the growth of censorship and state intervention in the spread of information and opinion.  Starting with World War I and the Wilson administration Siegel gets down into the weeds in regard to the details of how the government involvement in information control grew through World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the War on Terror, and then ending with the birth and explosive growth of the World Wide Web and social media platforms.  Siegel also spends time on the opposition to government control that grew up in the same time period.  Unfortunately, the latter part of the book reveals a bias that slants his coverage of events and organizations.  

 

If you are looking for information on how we got into the present political/information conundrum, you could read this title. but, with caution.  As with all titles, remember to read with care and double check their sources!