Throwback Thursday TBR

In this post, I’m going to take advantage of “throwback Thursday” to talk about two non-fiction books from my “To Be Read” pile that I finished a while back, but continue to think about.

The first is Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus (2012) by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy.

I’m a sucker for a book that helps me learn about something I’d never considered before, and this book ticks all the boxes.

I never knew that it was Louis Pasteur who discovered that rabies was a virus, and I never thought about just how prevalent and devastating the deadly virus itself must have been.

Quite frankly, I’d only ever thought about it in connection to Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I’m a bit annoyed with myself that I didn’t think it through even further.

What was also appealing to me about Wasik & Murphy’s treatment of the subject was the extent to which they thought about the literary representation and resonance of rabies:

Could it have been the cause of Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death?

Is it the underlying source for our stories of werewolves? Of vampires?

There’s a lot of food for thought in Rabid, and I can’t help but think that I’ll probably reread it again someday.

In that spirit, the second book from my “throwback” TBR list is The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (2010) by Deborah Blum.

It’s also available as an episode of PBS’s American Experience.

I’ve actually read this book twice, in part because I love the structure of it.

Each chapter is organized around a particular poison that was widely available—and often used in over-the-counter products— in the first decades of the 20th century.

It examines how forensic medicine was established and evolved in the era of Prohibition, when poisoning became a widespread problem (due to the selling of bootleg liquor) in NYC.

Having studied how Prohibition led to the rise of the mob, it’s was… nice? … to see that it led to something positive—namely, the study of forensics.

But the fact that this only happened because a lot of people died means that I can’t quite see Prohibition and its advocates as anything other than… ridiculous.

To me, it’s yet another example of what happens when people with inflexible religious convictions (and who are usually living in sparsely populated rural areas) decide to impose a political agenda on everyone else, without really thinking through the potential consequences.

All that side, however, Blum’s book is, in my opinion, interesting and worth (re)reading.

I realize that both of my posts this week involved books (a post-occupational hazard for a retired literature professor), but have no fear: next week I’ll be serving up some Sopranos “gabagool” along with a healthy dose of fiber.

Thank you for reading—see you next week!