'Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them' by Jennifer Wright

Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If your favorite podcast is Sawbones, this book is for you.

This is the first book I've read by Wright, but I really enjoyed her writing style and authorial voice. She belongs to the Roxane Gay school of feminist scholarship that has a sense of humor but puts up with no bullshit. Beginning with the Antonine Plague (probably of smallpox) that killed between 10 and 18 million ancient Romans during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Wright examines how societies reacted each time a mass illness raged through them.

In a predictable historical pattern, individuals have two reactions to plagues: To take advantage (often by selling bogus cures) and to genuinely try to ease suffering. There's a bit of good news in there: Namely, that there's never been a mass illness without individuals reacting with compassion and trying their best to help, even if the cause of the illness was not yet understood. For every bad reaction (like some of the crap that happened to Typhoid Mary), there were people like Father Damien (of Molokai fame) who risked their own lives in the service of others.

Some of humanity's previous plagues were caused by diseases that are curable now. Tuberculosis was the bane of the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, but can now be eliminated with antibiotics. So, too, can syphilis, although knowing this doesn't do much to help the victims of the infamous Tuskegee experiments whose lives were lost or irreparably altered by their unethical doctors withholding the cure from them. (Shame, America. Shame.)

Other plagues could still kill us today. The bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages is still with us. About a dozen Americans get it every year. We could drive ourselves to anxiety thinking about the "Spanish" (actually American) flu spread by service members quartered close together to wage the Great War. Influenza is still one of our deadliest infections and still has no cure.

But worrying us about plagues that will happen in the future isn't Wright's purpose. She's more interested in documenting the ways we've always reacted when our friends, family members, neighbors, and ourselves fall ill in large numbers. Are children cared for or abandoned? Do we spread deadly misinformation, focus on what facts we can glean, or expend our energy on compassion? This book combines sociology, psychology, and medical history.

The most recent plague examined is that of polio*, which terrified Americans through the middle of the 20th century when it could be cured. Wright chose to focus on those epidemics in which the key players are historical ones. In her epilogue, she mentions the AIDS epidemic of the late 1970s and 1980s. She chose not to write about it because it's still within living memory to a much greater extent than polio. I can appreciate that decision. Having lived through the 1980s, I can understand why it's tough to be objective about the lack of government response to the deaths of so many innocent people. (And all victims of disease are innocent - microbes are not a moral judgment).

If you read this book, you'll learn some interesting historical facts. You'll be impressed by the heroes of history who did their best to respond with compassionate care. You'll be saddened by a few less-than-desirable aspects of human behavior. And hopefully, if you ever find yourself caught in a plague, you'll be a little bit wiser. I'll do my best to try to err on the side of compassion. While also remembering that personal protective gear exists.

I borrowed this audiobook from my local library using the Libby app and was not obligated in any way to review it.

*Upon reflection, the encephalitis lethargica epidemic may come after the polio chapter.

'Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History' by David Aaronovitch

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

David Aaronovitch is a British journalist. The central theme of his book is that conspiracy theories often come about when a large group of people has suffered an emotional loss. The conspiracy theory provides a narrative that makes the loss more palatable, more understandable.

While Aaronovitch sympathizes with the psychological aspects of conspiracy theorizing, he also emphasizes the real-life consequences when large groups believe things that are factually inaccurate. The chapters of his book provide several historical examples of this. The most dramatic may be how the demonstrable fraud of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion influenced a century of virulent anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust. When conspiracy theory is linked with scapegoating, there's a good possibility that people will die as a result.

Please note that Aaronovitch's analysis of conspiracy theories has neither a liberal nor a conservative bias. In his historical survey, what he sees is that neither side of the political spectrum is more prone than the other to believing in dark forces at work behind the scenes. What matters more is not the political bent of the theorizer but whether they feel disempowered and at a loss at the historical moment of the theorizing.

For example, the liberal/progressive side of the United States felt it was under attack and at a loss with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963. As of the writing of this book, approximately half of Americans believed in some kind of conspiracy theory regarding the president's assassination. Aaronovitch brought up a historical fact rarely mentioned in Kennedy conspiracy circles: That Lee Harvey Oswald had tried to assassinate another politician previously, although his shot missed and no one was hurt. The note Oswald wrote to his wife Marina confessing this deed, in case he didn't return home, is still extant. Since this fact is inconvenient to "Oswald was framed" theories, it's rarely brought up in conspiracy circles.

Omitting inconvenient facts is a common characteristic of conspiracy theories, Aaronovitch argues. He mentions the glaring inconsistencies and outright untruths in the popular documentary Loose Change, which alleges U.S. government conspiracy in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Another popular conspiracy theory in which popular narratives bend and twist the facts to fit the narrative is the suicide of Clinton White House aide Vincent Foster. Conspiracists, Aaronovitch demonstrates, take off-hand, non-professional, and uninformed statements made by those loosely attached to the incident, such as statements made by first responders, as if they were gospel truth.

This is called the Historian's Fallacy: The tendency to believe that a witness, having experienced an event that later turned out to have historical significance, must experience the event in the way that a historian would describe it. In reality, by definition, the witness can only know what they experienced at the time. They can't have foreknowledge of facts that will only become widely known after the event has been studied and investigations conducted. To expect a witness's offhand statement to be 100% accurate at the moment the witness is involved in an ongoing event is to fight the nature of reality itself.

And yet we see this all the time on YouTube. A tragic event such as a mass shooting (unfortunately common in the U.S.) happens and a witness, who may be a first responder, a child, or a person with no formal training in law enforcement, ballistics, etc. makes an offhand remark about the number of shooters, the number of gunshots, etc., and the conspiracy-minded YouTube video creator takes this statement as if it must be accurate. This is then conflated into the theory that there must be a cover-up of the "real" version of events that "they" don't want you to know.

If you've spent any time on YouTube at all, you probably know how common, and often disturbing, this is. It has led to lawsuits, in fact. Grieving relatives don't like being called liars or having non-experts with no connection to the event claiming that their dead relative is, in fact, a "crisis actor" who only pretended to be murdered so that Group X could try to get Law Z passed.

The fact is, for human societies to operate properly, there has to be a certain amount of agreement on what does and what does not constitute reality. Facts must be properly vetted and opinions must be grounded in facts that can withstand rigorous scrutiny. Otherwise we each live in our own fantasy worlds and none of those fantasies are compatible with each other.

This book was published in 2008, but even though it's a decade old, a thoughtful reader could easily apply what Aaronovitch lays out in his book to the U.S. election of 2016. In fact, he addresses the loss of power experienced by white American males as they perceive their world being threatened by advances made by women and by men of color. An antidote to the harmful scapegoating effect, Aaronovitch suggests, is for these men to gain the emotional literacy they would need to deal with their feelings as feelings, rather than externalizing them in a way that can have devastating consequences for the lives of the groups they see as the enemy.

I purchased a used copy of this book from Better World Books with my own funds and was not, in any way, obliged to review it.

#CurrentlyReading (and Dreaming of) 'Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder' by Claudia Kalb

Goodreads Summary: "Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives readers a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture. From Marilyn Monroe's borderline personality disorder to Charles Darwin's anxiety, Kalb provides compelling insight into a broad range of maladies, using historical records and interviews with leading mental health experts, biographers, sociologists, and other specialists. Packed with intriguing revelations, this smart narrative brings a new perspective to one of the hottest new topics in today's cultural conversation."

I got this book free, in exchange for an honest review, from Amazon.com's Vine program. To be perfectly honest, I chose it based on a misunderstanding. It has a chapter on Charles DARWIN, but I thought there was a chapter on Charles DICKENS. Oliver Sacks wrote in Hallucinations that Dickens had "a haunted mind" and I've been meaning to find out why.

Still, maybe it's just because I was a psychology major, but I could barely put this book down. I went to bed at 10 last night, but I stayed awake reading past 11:30.

Right before I woke up this morning, I was dreaming of a version of Romeo and Juliet, in which instead of members of warring families, the issue between the couple was that she was an "ordinary" American teenager. She was 18-19 years old, like Diana Spencer was when she got engaged to Prince Charles. Princess Diana has a chapter in Andy Warhol; she was famously a victim of bulimia nervosa.

The "Romeo" in my dream was Hugh Jackman. His rather condescending, sort of Fitzwilliam Darcy-esque dialogue made reference to the fact that he was a famous, wealthy Australian used to having servants bring him alcoholic drinks, and she didn't have money, name recognition, or staff.

(A bit of Christian Grey/Ana Steele got in there, too. I'm now on disc 15 of the 16-disc audiobook Grey. The Shakespearean bit is, no doubt, because the First Folio exhibit just opened at the University of Notre Dame, next to my birthplace of South Bend, Indiana. I intend to go visit the Folio this month.)

The plot in this dream-version of the play had to do with Hugh and his love interest finding Ron Weasley, because apparently it was also a version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling isn't featured in Kalb's book, but the author has also been candid about her personal mental illness. She's a sufferer of major depressive illness, which informed her depiction of the Dementors in Harry and Ron's world.

I guess even after I put the book up and went to bed, my brain didn't want to stop reading. I wonder if my brain was clever enough to dream in accurate iambic pentameter?

#Nonfiction #Psychology 'Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil' by Paul Bloom

I majored in psychology in college, and I'm still fascinated by the science of how the human mind works. For that reason, I decided to read Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil.

The author, Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom, states in the preface that some of his inspiration for this work combining developmental and evolutionary psychology with moral philosophy was a book by Adam Smith which Bloom had studied in Edinburgh. Smith is more widely known for An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (often shortened to The Wealth of Nations), but the volume that concerned Bloom was The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. 

In his 1749 work, Smith claimed human beings were born with a sense of morality. Bloom also brings in Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1787, "The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of [a hu]man as his [or her] leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree."

Bloom goes on to demonstrate, using evidence gleaned from various scientific studies, that psychologists tend to favor the view that some of what we call morality is inborn to human beings. The first chapter deals explicitly with what "morality" might mean in human beings who are less than two years old. Subsequent chapters branch out into what morality means in adults, because we have to understand what kinds of behaviors we're talking about when we try to define what moral behavior is. 

Overall, Bloom's evidence suggests the moral picture of the human species is a fairly optimistic one. Human beings do seem to be wired to be empathetic and helpful to one another, even when acts of kindness do not immediately reward us. Interestingly, Bloom also cites evidence of empathetic behavior in non-human animals. Even rats hate to see other rats suffering.

Even though the title is a bit of a misdirect, since the entire construction doesn't deal exclusively with infant morality, the research itself is fascinating. Not only that, but Bloom has organized it into chapters that are clear, intuitive, and readable. I don't think one would need to be a psychology major to understand this book. Like Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye the Science Guy, Bloom has the gift of translating scientific concepts into everyday language.  

About the Author: Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. He is the author or editor of six books, including the acclaimed How Pleasure Works. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching, and his scientific and popular articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Nature, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Science, Slate, The Best American Science Writing, and many other publications. He lives in New Haven with his wife [Karen Wynn, also a professor of psychology at Yale] and two sons. Visit his website at paulbloomatyale.com and follow him on Twitter at @paulbloomatyale.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Appropriately, this WIP Wednesday falls on All Souls Day

Hopping by from the Thanks For the Books Blog Hop? See the giveaway post here.

Are you an author with a current work-in-progress? Would you like to tease your work on a future WIP Wednesday? If so, please e-mail Erin O'Riordan: erinoriordan (at) sbcglobal (dot) net

Ernest Shulman: A great upsurge in research on causes and prevention of suicide occurred during the last forty or more years, in many European countries, North America, Japan, and elsewhere, accompanied by several academic journals and numerous books. Millions of dollars and hundreds of commissions have been devoted to this cause, along with hundreds of hot-lines, organizations, and movements linking loved ones left behind by those suiciding, as well as other groups with common interests. Yet suicide rates worldwide have scarcely budged.

An established researcher, Ernest Shulman, with a Ph.D. in psychology, is preparing a book -- Thirty Famous Suicides -- using an original approach designed to equip laypeople with an understanding of suicide and what they can do to prevent it in those they care about. It features the analysis of the life stories of famous suicidal people who did or did not kill themselves. The book innovates by delineating the six stages in the lifetime suicidal pathways that end in self-inflicted death. One of the early stages is the development of pathological narcissism ("It must be my way or no way") and a later stage detailing resistance to suicide. Other stages follow accepted but previously unintegrated concepts. No other work on the causes or prevention of suicide deals comprehensively with these concepts.

Erin O'Riordan: While participating in the CoffinHop, I came across the website of David Ewald, whose book is called He Who Shall Remain Shameless. It's a rather remarkable speculative fiction concept, about a man who communicates with the spirits of dead. Some of the spirit characters are based on real people, some of whom died by their own hands. They include Andrew Kehoe, a Michigan farmer who used explosives to kill more than 40 people, including schoolchildren, along with his wife and himself, and Christine Chubbock, a 29-year-old news reporter in Florida who shot herself live on the air. I find the concept of Ewald's collection of linked short stories both disturbing and fascinating.

"Exploring the Animal/Autism Connection" by Sandra J. Gerencher

Children with disabilities are my inspiration. It's real life. It's what goes on every day. The people in my life inspire me such as my adopted son with autism and my special education students at school. I was once told my son, Terry, would never speak in full sentences. Yet he speaks to our dog, Chance, as if he can understand him.

We don't know what's going on inside an autistic child's brain, but there's something different in my son’s thought processes when he’s talking to the dog. When I stand outside his room, I hear him asking the dog, “Are you hungry? Do you want to play?” It helps him cope with some of the issues he's dealing with.

I think animals can sense the good in people. He is more animated with the dog. They play together constantly. When Terry misbehaves I tell him, ”Chance is sad.” Then I ask, "What would Chance want you to do?" He always wants to make Chance happy. When I put it in terms of the dog, he responds right away.

My goal is to make children aware that there are kids with special needs. Kids nowadays aren't exposed to people with disabilities. Being naturally inquisitive, they need to be taught why others are different. As an educator and mother, if I've accomplished that goal with one child, then that more than satisfies me.

***



Sandra J. Gerencher is the author of the children’s book Second Chance: How Adoption Saved a Boy with Autism & His Shelter Dog. (Read an excerpt here. A PBS Kids Recommended title.)

Gerencher is a special education teacher in Pennsylvania's Bangor Area public school system. Over the past 20 years she has worked with children and adults with special needs in such areas as counseling, Behavior Specialist Consultation, behavioral research, crisis intervention and abuse therapy. Sandra graduated from Lehigh University with a M.Ed. in Special Education (2004) and from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia with an M.S. in Counseling Psychology (1999).

Memoirs From the Asylum, a disturbing but powerful read

Chances are, you have a family member or an acquaintance who's been affected by a major mental illness. For many people, mental illnesses are very treatable. They will either recover or learn to manage their episodes of illness. For others, a mental illness does not respond to treatment and living in a therapeutic setting becomes an option. Of those whose illness leads to hospitalization, some are lucky enough to be able to afford private care. For others, there's the state hospital.

As Alice famously said to the Cheshire Cat, "I don't want to go among mad people," and any examination of the lives and thoughts of those living in the state hospital will not be a walk in the garden. Although 'Memoirs From the Asylum' by Kenneth Weene is fictional, those of us who have mentally ill friends and relatives or who have worked in mental health care settings will find it unsettlingly real.

Readers will no doubt find this book fascinating. It's like what medieval Christians used to call "the abominable fancy:" the saved glimpsing the suffering of those in Hell. The trouble is, as Weene's book makes clear, the line between the "sane" and the "insane" is a fine one. The "insane" are institutionalized by their own volition, but can declare "the vacation's over" and walk out to rejoin society at any moment. The staff are just as capable of abnormal thoughts and irrational behavior as the patients. It reminds me of a joke from an early season of 'The Simpsons,' when Homer found himself committed and asked the doctors how they could tell who was sane and who was insane. Simple, they tell him: everyone who's insane has his/her hand stamped "INSANE."

'Memoirs From the Asylum' is, at times, funny, sometimes unsettling, but largely tragic. It's a powerful book, but one worth reading. It's a plea for compassion and a disorganized rant as careening as the Jimi Hendrix solos that a patient named Jamul endlessly plays on his invisible guitar.

Funny thing about that: thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the Navy record of the real Jimi Hendrix is now public, and it reveals he was once thought to have a mental illness. The real Hendrix seemed to be unable to concentrate on any work other than writing songs and playing his guitar! Perhaps Jamul was a misunderstood genius. Within the pages of 'Memoirs of the Asylum,' anything is possible.

This book is available from Amazon.