Category: Non Fiction (Page 3 of 10)

SPARE PARTS by Paul Craddock

April 5, 2022 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

Paul Craddock’s Spare Parts offers an original look at the history of medicine itself through the rich, compelling, and delightfully macabre story of transplant surgery from ancient times to the present day.

How did an architect help pioneer blood transfusion in the 1660’s?
Why did eighteenth-century dentists buy the live teeth of poor children?
And what role did a sausage skin and an enamel bath play in making kidney transplants a reality?

We think of transplant surgery as one of the medical wonders of the modern world. But transplant surgery is as ancient as the pyramids, with a history more surprising than we might expect. Paul Craddock takes us on a journey – from sixteenth-century skin grafting to contemporary stem cell transplants – uncovering stories of operations performed by unexpected people in unexpected places. Bringing together philosophy, science and cultural history, Spare Parts explores how transplant surgery constantly tested the boundaries between human, animal, and machine, and continues to do so today.
Witty, entertaining, and illuminating, Spare Parts shows us that the history – and future – of transplant surgery is tied up with questions about not only who we are, but also what we are, and what we might become.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC! The subtitle of this book is: The Story of Medicine through the History of Transplant Surgery. There is minimal gore (there are a few exceptions) and a great deal of history. The first chapter starts in the 1500’s and starts out with “Skin” and ends in the 1960’s with “Organs” and “Transplant Future”. The book also includes illustrations that add another dimension to the written word.

I always love when a book piques my interest so much that I Google the subject to learn more. SPARE PARTS does just that. One of the more…interesting… items was an old YouTube video of disembodied parts living outside the body of deceased dogs. The film was made in 1940 and is found under the title of “Experiments in the Revival of Organisms”. The highlight (?) of this film is a disembodied dog head reacting to stimuli as it is kept “alive” by an artificial heart and lungs. Not for the faint of heart.

I was totally unaware of the history behind transplants, so reading this book was quite intriguing. Apparently tooth transplants were all the rage in the late 1600’s, with poor children selling their teeth to be transplanted into the mouths of the wealthy. It was poignant to think that the only items of value that those poor children had were their teeth. The book makes note that they were quite eager to sell their dentition in order to make money so they could eat. I am not sure how satisfying meals were, having to consume their food with minimal or no teeth in their mouth.

The book also discusses blood transfusions between humans and animals, and kidney/heart/organ transplants. There is a great deal of history along with the author’s thoughts on the subjects. SPARE PARTS is written well, in a way that a reader with no medical background will understand. Those with a medical background will enjoy it as well, as the history aspect may add another layer to their knowledge.

I enjoyed reading SPARE PARTS so much, as it taught me more of the historical aspect of transplants and how the practice has evolved over the years. It is always amazing to read about how physicians practiced hundred of years ago, and what they thought about the workings of the human body.

If you are interested in learning more about the unusual history of transplant surgery I definitely recommend this book. Well written and quite interesting!

You can pick up your copy here.

Rare Birds by Natalie Scott

June 30, 2020 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

The ultimate lockdown reading, Rare Birds creatively tells the story of Holloway Prison’s first 100 years through the re-imagined voices of prisoners, staff and others connected to its history. Meticulously researched, the collection brings to life well-known voices such as Ruth Ellis, Sylvia Pankhurst and Edith Thompson, plus a host of lesser-known names, to tell Holloway’s rich and gripping story.

Thanks to the author for this review copy!

Prison walls seem to talk in RARE BIRDS, a book of poetry about those sentenced to time inside the notorious Holloway Prison. A multitude of characters share their laments with a chorus of voices. These voices come from suffragettes and thieves, pickpockets and murderers, and the author makes nearly all of them sound sympathetic. Some voices are particularly poignant, like the 10 year old pickpocket who marvels at being taught to write his name for the first time (pg.33), or the woman staring through the “hope-sized window” contemplating freedom (pg. 62).

Reading these poems about women fighting hard for the right to vote made me realize how far we have come, for this book brings to life their difficult journey. These voices deserved to be heard in their time, and Scott memorializes their struggle in an imaginative and touching way.

The author truly captures the essence of the prison and its inhabitants in her poems. It is as if she was intimately acquainted with each prisoner and gathered her poem from conversations with each one. Scott did comprehensive work with original documents (you can see which ones, along with a bibliography at the end of the book) to bring the inmates to life. Despite their criminal background (and it’s true some are worse than others) they are all painted in a sympathetic light, as I mentioned before. It is easy to hope that freedom comes quickly for them – even the ones on Death Row. There is a section of poems (pp.124-133) that come from the voices of the executioner, his wife, a prison officer, a juror, and finally the doomed prisoner herself, Ruth Ellis, who died by hanging on July 13^th, 1955. Each voice is different, yet they all contribute to the bigger picture – a prisoner on Death Row who is about to hang. (Ellis was the last woman executed in the United Kingdom; you can read about her here.)

RARE BIRDS is just that – a book of ethereal yet grounded poetry that forces you to think about the prison system and those caught in it. Some are unjustly imprisoned, while others commit unspeakable acts. Whatever the crime, Holloway Prison enveloped its inhabitants in cold bricks and mortar. Scott uses her words here to uncage these birds and immortalize them forever.

You can pick up your copy here.

The Unexpected Spy by Tracy Walder

March 24, 2020 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs.

When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she’d fly to the Middle East under an alias identity.

The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder’s tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists—men who swore they’d never speak to a woman—until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks.

Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate—and thus change the world.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martins Press for this review copy!

This is the story of how a sorority girl who was bullied at school found her calling working for the CIA. At a job fair at college, the author filled out a job application on a whim…and the rest is history. She started her job immediately after she graduated.

Shortly after starting work, Walder was promoted to The Vault, under kindly Director Tenet, who made her feel like a part of the team. She was respected by the other team members and everyone worked together well, thanks to Tenet. He was always doing thoughtful things, such as bringing Thanksgiving dinner to the Vault’s hardworking members.

A few months later, she was moved to Counterterrorism to work under Graham Andersson. This continued to bolster her confidence and erase the “loser” mindset she had, because she constantly received compliments and encouragement from her superiors. Some of the missions she worked on dealt with poison and other weapons of mass destruction. Despite being an introvert, she gave apresentation on a poisoning plot she and two other coworkers discovered. Due to their hard work, the people of interest were captured, and the poisoning plot was exposed and neutralized. The book continues with more stories like this, including some that highlight intelligence operatives that don’t work on Sunday, despite the terrorists that lurk nearby.

Walder remains positive, despite being minimalized by the men in other cultures. About 60% of the way through she meets some male counterparts after a bombing in Africa, and they are less than thrilled to be working with her. She remains professional and focused on the task at hand. This strength is one of her main characteristics – it shines through on almost every page. Her writing is full of her eagerness to fight the terrorists before they get a chance to perform their insidious tasks. She also writes about her feelings of personal failure regarding the March 11, 2004 bombing in Madrid. She wondered what scrap of information she had missed and felt personally responsible for all those dead and wounded. It was this final straw that cause her to fill out an application for the FBI and send it in. They accepted her immediately, and so Walder embarked on a new career. However, for the first time in her professional career she felt bullied during her training at Quantico. She kept moving forward and never let the constant criticism get her down – another display of her incredible mental strength.

Unfortunately, the FBI’s mentality was to pair her up with a more experienced partner and marginalize her, never making her the lead when they picked up criminals. She learned that she wasn’t the only female being discriminated against, but she kept going, hoping things would change. It didn’t, and she quit the FBI after working there only 15 months. Currently she is a history teacher at an all-girls school, her mission empowering and educating girls against the bullies and terrorists of the world. Walder puts as much determination into her teaching as she did in her career, and that is refreshing. She is a role model who still cares about eliminating hatred, embracing all walks of life, and giving girls their voice. I am glad that she chose to write her story to illuminate these causes! Her voice is clear and strong, the writing style will pull you in and make you laugh at times, while other times you will be incredulous, such as when you read about the mistreatment the FBI puts forth. It is also very interesting to be “behind the scenes” at the CIA, as much as they would allow. This unforgettable book would be great for any college age girl to read, for it may spark interest in a career such as Walder’s. Her experiences are powerful and empowering. You can get your own copy here.

The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman

March 10, 2020 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

Providing a cover for our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest-growing organ. We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is a habitat for a mesmerizingly complex world of micro-organisms and physical functions that are vital to our health and our survival. It is also a waste removal plant, a warning system for underlying disease and a dynamic immune barrier to infection. One of the first things people see about us, skin is crucial to our sense of identity, providing us with social significance and psychological meaning. And yet our skin and the fascinating way it functions is largely unknown to us.

In prose as lucid as his research underlying it is rigorous, blending in memorable stories from the past and from his own medical experience, Monty Lyman has written a revelatory book exploring our outer surface that will surprise and enlighten in equal measure. Through the lenses of science, sociology, and history—on topics as diverse as the mechanics and magic of touch (how much goes on in the simple act of taking keys out of a pocket and unlocking a door is astounding), the close connection between the skin and the gut, what happens instantly when one gets a paper cut, and how a midnight snack can lead to sunburn—Lyman leads us on a journey across our most underrated and unexplored organ and reveals how our skin is far stranger, more wondrous, and more complex than we have ever imagined.

Thanks to NetGalley for this review copy!

Our skin is our largest organ – a fact that is often overlooked. Author Monty Lyman strives to put our skin front and center in this book. Each chapter covers a different aspect of what a marvelous organ our external covering is, from scientific to religious. The author discusses tattoos, skin conditions such as psoriasis, and discrimination based on skin color.

I found the medical portions to be the most interesting; I learned more about lice than I ever planned to. Despite the jargon, this section of the book is easily comprehended, aided by drawings that illustrate the author’s point.

We also learn about how sunburn affects us, why itches are so maddening, and exactly how many microscopic parasites live on us, no matter how clean we are. Each chapter builds upon the previous ones, creating a thorough picture of our skin and why it is so amazingly unique.

Lyman uses anecdotes and history to supplement his writing. He also is unafraid to discuss uncomfortable topics such as racism and lepers, which I found refreshing. I learned a lot about the misinformation surrounding lepers, plus I enjoyed the philosophical leaning during the chapter on racism based on skin color. He even takes a detour into religion, noting that some beliefs require covering most of the skin, while others worship “skyclad” (naked). Despite our differences, our outer covering makes us the same, and you will understand that better once you finish THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF THE SKIN.

I have a new respect for my skin now that I have finished this book – I bet you will too! You can pick up your copy here.

Swim, Bike, Bonk by Will McGough

February 25, 2020 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

Just as George Plimpton had his proverbial cup of coffee in the NFL as the un-recruited and certainly unwanted fourth-string quarterback for the Detroit Lions, so, too, did Will McGough immerse himself in a sport he had no business trying. Like Plimpton, whose football folly turned into the bestselling Paper Lion, travel and outdoor writer McGough writes of his participation in, around, and over the course of the one of the world’s premier triathlons, the annual Ironman 70.3 in Tempe, Arizona.

McGough chronicles the Ironman’s history, his unorthodox training, the pageantry of the race weekend, and his attempt to finish the epic event. The narrative follows not just his race but also explores the cult and habits of the triathlete community, beginning with the first Ironman competition in Hawaii in 1978. This is a light-hearted, self-deprecating, and at times hilarious look at one man’s attempt to conquer the ultimate endurance sport, with a conclusion that will surprise and delight both dedicated triathletes as well as strangers to the sport.

Thanks to NetGalley for this review copy!

I’m going to say right off the bat that this book is not for the faint of heart. The author talks frankly about peeing and pooping himself during training/racing, as well as how his sex life is suffering during his 3 months of intense training. If you don’t mind the gory details, read on.

The premise behind SWIM, BIKE, BONK is simple – the author signs up for a triathlon. However, it’s not just any old triathlon: he chooses an Ironman race where you swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, then run a marathon (26.2 miles) immediately afterwards. In the beginning, he is very laissez-faire about his training, thinking that since he is young and in shape he won’t have any trouble. Everyone else around him speaks differently though. Eventually, he realizes that it won’t be that easy as his training miles mount up and he experiences the joy of a numb butt (and other parts) during a long bike ride.

The main part of the book consists of his training miles and his thoughts about same, interspersed with stories on buying just the right bike for the job, which Gatorade flavor is best, his fears about taking on too much, and how his endeavor is affecting his personal life. At times I skipped through some of the training miles because I wanted to get to the racing part to see what happened. Once the racing part started, he accurately captured the emotions and struggles of those involved. He writes about the bonk as he sees those experiencing it:

“With every step, another drop of life falls from their eyes”.

That is a great way to sum up how the bonk feels to a racer. I’ve only run in half marathons, but I have felt the bonk – and this book brings back memories of how it felt. There are some poignant emotions described at the end of the race, as well as afterwards. To finish a challenge such as this brings a wide range of feelings that can only really be understood by those who have done it. The author does his best to convey those feelings, however, and does a good job.

He also adds some thoughts about race volunteers (there was a failed lawsuit where they sued because they wanted to be paid) and how big the Ironman corporation really is. That part was surprising because I didn’t realize how fully corporate Ironman was. There is a lot of profit generated from these races.

SWIM, BIKE, BONK was a fun little read about one human’s desire to push himself to the limit. I think anyone who is interested in competing in the Ironman will love it, and those who run or bike competitively will also enjoy the author’s self-deprecating humor that shines through in most situations. As I mentioned, it’s not for the squeamish, but you can skip over those parts and still get the gist of the story. You can pick up your own copy here.

The Truth About Animals by Lucy Cooke

January 28, 2020 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

Mary Roach meets Bill Bryson in this “surefire summer winner” (Janet Maslin, New York Times), an uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal world

Humans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we’ve still got a long way to go. Whether we’re seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins “holding hands,” it’s hard for us not to project our own values–innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work–onto animals. So, you’ve probably never considered if moose get drunk, penguins cheat on their mates, or worker ants lay about. They do–and that’s just for starters. In The Truth About Animals, Lucy Cooke takes us on a worldwide journey to meet everyone from a Colombian hippo castrator to a Chinese panda porn peddler, all to lay bare the secret–and often hilarious–habits of the animal kingdom. Charming and at times downright weird, this modern bestiary is perfect for anyone who has ever suspected that virtue might be unnatural.

Thanks to NetGalley for this review copy!

This book reads like it was written by the love child of Charles Darwin and Mary Roach. There is humor, pathos, and animal facts aplenty. The author’s writing style is easy to read and captured my attention immediately. The love Cooke has for these beasties is obvious from the start. Hopefully, given the facts, others will learn to appreciate these maligned characters that occupy the animal world.

Each chapter is devoted (lovingly) to a misunderstood animal, where we find myths debunked through modern science. The reader will learn about sloths, bats, and hyenas, to name a few. The author will discuss how the animals were experimented on/studied over hundreds of years (Who knew that Aristotle was a proponent of spontaneous creation?) then we get to modern times, where myths are debunked and the many reasons to love these animals are revealed.

Some of the experiments detailed can be a bit gory, such as when, in the 18^th century, the Catholic priest Lazzaro Spallanzani practiced blinding bats to find out how they managed to find their way around in darkness. (He also coated them in varnish for another experiment, but I digress). Other tales are edifying and satisfying, such as:

It may sound suspiciously like bogus medieval folk medicine, but from the 1940s through the 1960s the world’s first reliable pregnancy test was a small, bug-eyed frog. When injected with a pregnant woman’s urine, the amphibian didn’t turn blue or display stripes, but it did squirt out eggs 8-12 hours later to confirm a positive result.

Cooke’s book is full of factoids like that one. How can you not love this book? You will learn, you will laugh, and you will be full of obscure information. That sounds like a winner to me.

Yes, you want your own copy and can pick it up here.

Jet Girl by Caroline Johnson

November 26, 2019 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

A fresh, unique insider’s view of what it’s like to be a woman aviator in today’s US Navy—from pedicures to parachutes.

Caroline Johnson was an unlikely aviation candidate. A tall blonde debutante from Colorado, she could have just as easily gone into fashion or filmmaking, and yet she went on to become an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Officer. She was one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011, and she was the first woman to drop bombs on ISIS.

Jet Girl tells the remarkable story of the women fighting at the forefront in a military system that allows them to reach the highest peaks, and yet is in many respects still a fraternity. Johnson offers an insider’s view on the fascinating, thrilling, dangerous and, at times, glamorous world of being a naval aviator.

This is a coming-of age story about a young college-aged girl who draws strength from a tight knit group of friends, called the Jet Girls, and struggles with all the ordinary problems of life: love, work, catty housewives, father figures, make-up, wardrobe, not to mention being put into harm’s way daily with terrorist groups such as ISIS and world powers such as Russia and Iran.

Some of the most memorable parts of the book are about real life in training, in the air and in combat—how do you deal with having to pee in a cockpit the size of a bumper car going 900 miles an hour?

Not just a memoir, this book also aims to change the conversation and to inspire and attract the next generation of men and women who are tempted to explore a life of adventure and service.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

This book is a generally well-written memoir about an F/A-18 Super Hornet Weapons System Officer, who happens to be a woman. The military information is just what you would expect: training, the mental game, and some unclassified deployment details. The part of the book that really hits home is the harassment and treatment Caroline gets from her own squads – the men that are supposed to be supporting her, while they expect her support as well. The Navy wives even vilify her and call her out for wearing a “too revealing” dress to a party.

I admire Caroline for putting up with all the slurs and backbiting gossip. It’s a shame that someone with such drive, talent and patriotism should be dealing with such petty bullshit. Most of her fellow recruits treat her normally; it’s the few bad apples as usual spoiling everything.

JET GIRL skips around from chapter to chapter, telling us Caroline’s story from first days in the Navy all the way up to being deployed in Iraq. The chapters do not proceed sequentially; once you realize that and are ok with the story skipping back and forth, the reading smooths out. The story turns a lot darker when Caroline shares her battle with depression with us. I cannot imagine staying in the Navy as long as she did, nor can I believe how badly she was treated despite excelling in her classes and as a pilot. Unfortunately, she decided to change careers to ultimately save her sanity, which I feel is the Navy’s great loss. She started to realize the stress that her body was under due to the strain of deployment even before her aircraft carrier had left the Persian Gulf. She began isolating herself once she got back to the States and was told by the flight doctor to “man up…and stop being a drama queen”.

At this point the story got very frustrating for me, as I felt Caroline’s pain and wanted to scream at all the men that this was a real issue and deserved the proper attention. I could not believe what she was writing – that she was not properly supported by her commanding officers and her squad. The rest of the book details her downward spiral and her “icing out” by her commanders and crew, along with her guilt and confusion about what she should do with her life – leave the Navy or try to stick it out.

The last section is an excellent example of what depression looks and feels like. Poor mental health carries such a stigma in this country and I am happy Caroline had the courage to bare her soul and share her story. Her message is important on many levels – her depression, the mistreatment she experienced, and her love for the Navy all come together in an illuminating and meaningful way. I can only hope that she has smoothed the way for other female Navy pilots with her no-holds-barred examples of how she was treated. Let’s see if the Navy can make the future better than its past.

You can pick up your copy here.

Stop Being Reasonable by Eleanor Gordon-Smith

October 22, 2019 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

What if you’re not who you think you are?
What if you don’t really know the people closest to you?
And what if your most deeply-held beliefs turn out to be…wrong?

In Stop Being Reasonable, philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells gripping true stories that show the limits of human reason. Susie realises her husband harbours a terrible secret, Dylan leaves the cult he’s been raised in since birth, Alex discovers he can no longer return to his former identity after impersonating someone else on reality TV. All of them radically alter their beliefs about the things that matter most.

What makes them change course? What does this say about our own beliefs? And, in an increasingly divided world, what does it teach us about how we might change the minds of others?
Inspiring, moving and perceptive, Stop Being Reasonable is a mind-changing exploration of the murky place where philosophy and real life meet.
‘I knew how piercingly smart Eleanor Gordon-Smith is, and what a curious and resolute interviewer. But I was unprepared for how entertainingly she writes! I read this with pleasure.’ — Ira Glass

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

STOP BEING REASONABLE is a dense little book filled with philosophical musings on varied subjects such as why guys catcall, how someone escaped a cult, and if a girl is telling the truth about being abused by her parents. Each chapter starts with a couple of lines from philosophy that sets the tone for the case study, such as this one from Blaise Pascal: People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

Those who have a background in philosophy will enjoy this book for the anecdotes that illustrate various ways of thinking. My experience with philosophy is minimal, so I am sure a great deal of the material is going over my head. The stories about the people were mildly interesting, just not wholly captivating for me. Perhaps I expected different handling of the subject. This does not detract from the writing itself, just a caveat to potential readers that this is a heavier read than normal.

The author has a background in debate as well, and her skills are apparent in the way she writes and presents her facts. A common theme to all the stories is: examine closely what you expect to be true, for things are not what they seem to be.

Want your own copy? You can pick it up here.

The Body by Bill Bryson

October 15, 2019 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Did you ever wonder how many times a day you blink? Or who invented the calorie and why we are so obsessed with counting them? These answers and a multitude of others can be found in THE BODY, a wonderfully wry book of facts and stories about, well, the body we occupy. Each chapter is devoted to one of the body’s systems (the gut, the nervous system, as well as sleep and the function of glands, etc) so as to build upon the last chapter’s information. Here’s an interesting factoid from the food chapter: fruits have been genetically manipulated to be sweeter than they were hundreds of years ago. The author purports that apples in Shakespeare’s day were no sweeter than today’s carrots.

I’m trying to decide whether Bryson’s droll wit or the abundance of information about our body is the best part of the book. You will end up learning things without even trying – there isn’t any deep scientific talk so you don’t need a degree in biology to easily read this book.

There isn’t a plot so much as a description of the body part, its function, and then facts and history about it. For example, in the chapter entitled “Gut” we learn how our digestive system works, then we learn about E. coli and other dangerous microbes, there is a bit about food safety, and then it’s 1822 and we are reading about an unfortunate accident that left a hole in a fur trapper’s stomach. This fur trapper eventually became something of a living experiment due to the injury (Google “Beaumont and St Martin” for more details if you wish).

This was an illuminating and droll read – one of the better books I have read this summer. Run, don’t walk to get your copy! You will be thoroughly enlightened and entertained, and even a bit grossed out – in a good way.

You can pick up your copy here.

A Death in the Rainforest by Don Kulick

September 24, 2019 / Kyle Wendy Skultety / 0 Comments

One of Time’s 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer

“A profoundly human story about a seemingly exotic and strange place that really isn’t so strange at all.” —Carl Hoffman, author of The Last Wild Men of Borneo

As a young anthropologist, Don Kulick went to the tiny village of Gapun in New Guinea to document the death of the native language, Tayap. He arrived knowing that you can’t study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, he returned again and again to document Tayap before it disappeared entirely, and he found himself inexorably drawn into their world, and implicated in their destiny. Kulick wanted to tell the story of Gapuners—one that went beyond the particulars and uses of their language—that took full stock of their vanishing culture. This book takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. But A Death in the Rainforest is also an illuminating look at the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe—and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village.

An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, A Death in the Rainforest takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

This is an easy read about the likeable members of a tribe in Papua, New Guinea. First of all, I have to give the author props for having the gumption to head into the darkest of rainforests (the only way to reach the village of Gapun is to traverse rivers and thick forests for hours) multiple times.

At first, the author’s statement that all Papuans not-so-secretly want to be white people was a bit off-putting. As I read further, I understood what he meant – they wanted to be successful, not necessarily turning their back on their race.

I also marveled at the author’s dedication to learning, then transcribing Tayap, the difficult language of Gapun. There are gender-related endings to words, which confused him in the beginning, but then he was able to create a large body of work describing the grammar and vocabulary of the Gapuners. Their language is slowly being replaced by one called Tok Pisin, which is a pidgin version of English. The lamentable reason for this loss of language is that the younger generations don’t wish to learn to speak Tayap – they feel that is for old people and choose to speak Tok Pisin instead. Once the elders of the tribe pass away, so will Tayap, preserved only in the author’s memory and his comprehensive body of work. That seems poignant to me; working so hard to preserve something that is vanishing before your very eyes. The fact that this language was confined to less than 500 humans at the time of writing is mind -boggling. Another poignant thought is that while these villagers were sharing their language with the author, they were also sharing the memories of their lives. As Kulick puts it: “Today, those recordings are all that remains of their stories, songs, and explanations”.

The author relates stories of his time in Gapun, complete with self-deprecating humor and details that will make you cringe (imagine eating grubs or maggots?) or make you smile ( an intrepid youngster dubs himself the “security” guarding the author and subsequently stays by his side zealously).

DEATH OF A LANGUAGE is a wonderfully written book that will make you think about many things -the loss of this language, the circle of life, and the strength of this anthropologist who devoted so much of his life to these villagers. You can pick up your copy here.