Take a photo of a barcode or cover
meadowbat 's review for:
Unfamiliar Fishes
by Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell is a geeky amateur historian who loves to plumb the depths of centuries past and pull out quirky facts. She holds them up and says, “Can you believe how hilarious this is? How outrageous?” And because she’s on NPR, we say, “Wow, yeah.” That’s probably a little too harsh—-I’m a history geek with no credentials myself, and I love it when someone does the grunt work of reading original sources and writes it up in a fun, comprehendible way. I appreciated Vowell’s unapologetically contemporary worldview—-of course we’re going to giggle and think it’s kind of awesome that traditional Hawaiians had a special hula praising their rulers’ genitals. I also appreciated her guarded fondness for the stuffy but sincere missionaries who sailed to Hawaii in the 1820s. Her sympathies are ultimately with the oppressed, but she knows oppressors are people too (especially when they endure mastectomies without anesthesia in one painfully memorable scene).
But for all its potential, this book lacks a real thesis and reads as a cobbled together history with a few anecdotes about her nephew thrown in. Colin Dickey’s Cranioklepty, which examines Europe’s transition from saint-hunting religiosity to science and pseudo-science through the strange history of skull stealing, is a better example of what the historical creative nonfiction genre can do. If you’re a fellow almost-fan of Unfamiliar Fishes, I encourage you to check it out.
But for all its potential, this book lacks a real thesis and reads as a cobbled together history with a few anecdotes about her nephew thrown in. Colin Dickey’s Cranioklepty, which examines Europe’s transition from saint-hunting religiosity to science and pseudo-science through the strange history of skull stealing, is a better example of what the historical creative nonfiction genre can do. If you’re a fellow almost-fan of Unfamiliar Fishes, I encourage you to check it out.