An endearing and lighthearted look at the fate that awaits us all.
A lively examination of death.
There’s nothing like a bit of ground-up human to cure what ails you. Centuries ago, this is what some Europeans believed, buying “mummia”—powdered mummies—to stir into medicinal drinks or use as a salve. Egypt eventually banned the export of mummia in the 16th century, which led to a black market of fake mummies—“freshly dead bodies were doctored with pitch, dried in ovens, and wrapped in linen in an attempt to fool customers.” So writes Liak in an insightful exploration of death practices; she also illustrates the book. (A Chinese Singaporean artist, Liak designs book covers for Grand Central Publishing.) Packed with historical anecdotes accompanied by bright and playful images, this survey will delight readers young and old. For instance, in parts of the South Pacific, Liak writes, “it is believed that little bits of life leave our bodies throughout our lifetimes, such as when we fall asleep or get sick, so it may be said that we ‘die’ multiple times before finally passing on. For communities such as these, death is not an event but a gradual social process.” In 17th-to-19th century Wales, “sin-eaters” often attended funerals. The author writes, “They were often poor and desperate outcasts who were paid to consume bread and beer that had supposedly soaked up the evils of the deceased after being placed near the bodies for extended periods of time.” Liak shares snippets about cemeteries, phantoms, charnel houses, and mourning attire—in Ghana, close relatives of the deceased wear red; “if the deceased died of old age, white is worn to celebrate a life well lived.” Ghana knows how to put the “fun” in funerals, she observes. “Many coffins recall the deceased’s former professions. For example, fishermen are sometimes buried in fish-shaped coffins.” Now that’s a way to go.
An endearing and lighthearted look at the fate that awaits us all.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781797230047
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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