Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz, read by Chloe Cannon

Summary from Goodreads: In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers–slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers–who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

I originally started Four Lost Cities with the digital galley, but had trouble trying to figure out pronunciation of cities and place names so switched over to the audiobook. That was much better.

This is a really interesting pop archaeology/history of four “lost” cities, moving roughly forward in time from pre-history Central Turkey, to turn-of-the-millennium Pompei, to 11th-12th century Cambodia, to pre-colonial Southern Illinois. It’s kind of interesting to consider how each of these cities was abandoned, some for the same reasons, some for different reasons, and then think about how our current cities grow and contract. 

Dear FTC: I started with the digital galley but then flipped to an audiobook borrowed from my library via Libby.

Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain on Purpose by Leigh Cowart

Summary from Goodreads: An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose–from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performers

Masochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.

At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better—a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer—they’re an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience?

By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain—a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

Hurts So Good is a really interesting exploration of the science and psychology of why humans put themselves through significant pain for pleasure. Cowart explores the obvious source of pain for pleasure – giving or receiving pain for sexual pleasure, including in her own s/m practices – but also ultramarathoners, ballet dancers, hot pepper eaters, Polar Bear plungers, etc. and then also looks at where the activities begin to tip over into self-harm (eating disorders, compulsive exercise, cutting). She interviews a lot of researchers on the cutting edge of pain research for each topic.

All the trigger warnings, given the above. Cowart is very frank about her own experience with eating disorders and self-harm (she was a serious ballet dancer) and does not pull her punches. The chapter where she discusses self-harm there is a lengthy content warning.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Summary from Goodreads: An engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that’s obsessed with sexual attraction, and what we can all learn about desire and identity by using an ace lens to see the world

What exactly is sexual attraction and what is it like to go through the world not experiencing it? What does asexuality reveal about consent, about compromise, about the structures of society? This exceedingly accessible guide to asexuality shows that the issues that aces face—confusion around sexual activity, the intersection of sexuality and identity, navigating different needs in relationships—are conflicts that all of us need to address as we move through the world.

Through interviews, cultural criticism, and memoir, ACE invites all readers to consider big-picture issues through the lens of asexuality, because every place that sexuality touches our world, asexuality does too.

Journalist Angela Chen uses her own journey of self-discovery as an asexual person to unpretentiously educate and vulnerably connect with readers, effortlessly weaving analysis of sexuality and societally imposed norms with interviews of ace people. Among those included are the woman who had blood tests done because she was convinced that “not wanting sex” was a sign of serious illness, and the man who grew up in an evangelical household and did everything “right,” only to realize after marriage that his experience of sexuality had never been the same as that of others. Also represented are disabled aces, aces of color, non-gender-conforming aces questioning whether their asexuality is a reaction against stereotypes, and aces who don’t want romantic relationships asking how our society can make room for them.

Ace is a very – VERY – well-researched, well-written, well-thought-out book that examines asexuality as an identity, how it intersects with other queer identities, with race, with disability, and how making space and understanding for asexuality can help everyone. Chen has interviewed many other aces to help flesh out this book with multiple experiences and viewpoints and, while you know it probably only scratches the surface of the variety of people who identify as ace, it makes the book very welcoming, that you’ll find space for yourself here if you need it. 

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

An impassioned and irreverent argument for dismantling our cultural narratives around pregnancy.
The U.S. has the worst rate of maternal deaths in the developed world, a rate that is increasing, even as infant mortality rates decrease. Meanwhile, the right-wing assault on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy has also escalated. We can already glimpse a reality where embryos and fetuses have more rights than the people gestating them, and even women who aren’t pregnant are seen first and foremost as potential incubators.

In Belabored, journalist Lyz Lenz lays bare the misogynistic logic of U.S. cultural narratives about pregnancy, tracing them back to our murky, potent cultural soup of myths, from the religious to the historical. In the present she details, with her trademark blend of wit, snark, and raw intimacy, how sexist assumptions inform our expectations for pregnant people, whether we’re policing them, asking them to make sacrifices with dubious or disproven benefits, or putting them up on a pedestal in an “Earth mother” role. Throughout, she reflects on her own experiences of being seen as alternately a vessel or a goddess–but hardly ever as herself–while carrying each of her two children.

Belabored is an urgent call for us to embrace new narratives around pregnancy and the choice whether or not to have children, emphasizing wholeness and agency, and to reflect those values in our laws, medicine, and interactions with each other.

Local author alert: Lyz Lenz lives up the road from me. Well, up the interstate. Welcome to Iowa. And I read a lot of her articles in the Gazette and other media. I really liked her previous book God Land so was looking forward to her examination of pregnancy and motherhood in America.

Belabored is really well-written. Lenz uses a combination of memoir and reportage to chronicle the many ways the deck is stacked against pregnant people in America. She covers the whole gestation, starting from perceived virginity or sexual availability of women through pregnancy and then post-pregnancy (the “fourth trimester”) as well as pregnancy loss. Lenz covered the historical aspects really well. She also made a real effort to cover racial disparities – Black women in American suffer from many times higher rates of complications and poor outcomes than white women – and LGBTQ+ issues in pregnancy and parenthood, since cis women are not the only uterus-owners who might carry a pregnancy (Lenz acknowledges the lack of inclusive language around pregnancy and motherhood as well).

Lenz’s own memoir of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is woven throughout this book, so the book is structured somewhat linearly around her own life. She’s given birth to two children, so writes from that experience, but also suffered a miscarriage and recounts how she is now working through the emotional fallout of a sexual assault in college. [Brief content warning: Lenz doesn’t pull her punches; if pregnancy loss, sexual assault, etc. are hard topics for you then make sure you take care of yourself while reading this book.] She tells her own story in a very powerful way. However, I thought that perhaps there could have been a stronger conclusion or presentation of issues facing pregnant people, parents, and etc to tie everything together. The research she did was very good, so her information is solid. (This might just be the scientist background talking.)

Belabored is out today!

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.

Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In this book, they bring that energy to their own friendship—its joys and its pitfalls.

An inspiring and entertaining testament to the power of society’s most underappreciated relationship, Big Friendship will invite you to think about how your own bonds are formed, challenged, and preserved. It is a call to value your friendships in all of their complexity. Actively choose them. And, sometimes, fight for them.

I was interested in Big Friendship because of “Call Your Girlfriend” (obviously) but also because Aminatou and Ann are pretty up-front about how their friendship almost died a slow, agonizing death. Their book is a nice combination of memoir and research into friendship, especially the “big” friendships. It’s not a quick read but a nice, steady chapter-at-a-time read. Ann and Aminatou are also the originators of “Shine Theory”, so it was interesting to see how it came about.

Big Friendship is out now!

Dear FTC: I bought my copy of this book because I forgot I had a digital galley. Oh well.

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch

Summary from Goodreads:
A linguistically informed look at how our digital world is transforming the English language.

Language is humanity’s most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What’s more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.

Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer “LOL” or “lol,” why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

Because Internet is essential reading for anyone who’s ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It’s the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that’s a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.

I saw Because Internet get good reviews when it came out but I just couldn’t get to it. Then surprise! Past me had apparently put the audiobook on hold via ICPL’s Libby and it came available last week. Conveniently, I was in need of an audiobook during commute time so I zipped right through it.

This is such a fun and informative book! McCulloch writes in a style that sits in a comfortable middle-space between layman and scientist which makes it a treat to learn about how informal writing on the Internet has changed and is still changing, from the old Usenet days up through present day LOLcat memes (just like I’m the dog’s-tail of GenX I am the dog’s-tail of the InternetOlds). The audiobook is read by the author and McCulloch makes it really fun, like listening to a cool professor lecture.

Dear FTC: I borrowed this book from my library’s Libby/Overdrive service.

American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal

Summary from Goodreads:
A comprehensive portrait of a uniquely American epidemic–devastating in its findings and damning in its conclusions
The opioid epidemic has been described as “one of the greatest mistakes of modern medicine.” But calling it a mistake is a generous rewriting of the history of greed, corruption, and indifference that pushed the US into consuming more than 80 percent of the world’s opioid painkillers.
Journeying through lives and communities wrecked by the epidemic, Chris McGreal reveals not only how Big Pharma hooked Americans on powerfully addictive drugs, but the corrupting of medicine and public institutions that let the opioid makers get away with it.
The starting point for McGreal’s deeply reported investigation is the miners promised that opioid painkillers would restore their wrecked bodies, but who became targets of “drug dealers in white coats.”
A few heroic physicians warned of impending disaster. But American Overdose exposes the powerful forces they were up against, including the pharmaceutical industry’s coopting of the Food and Drug Administration and Congress in the drive to push painkillers–resulting in the resurgence of heroin cartels in the American heartland. McGreal tells the story, in terms both broad and intimate, of people hit by a catastrophe they never saw coming. Years in the making, its ruinous consequences will stretch years into the future.

I haven’t read Dreamland or Dopesick yet (they’re on the TBR, I swear) but my first dive into books about the opioid crisis made me Very Angry. Like, gnaw-my-arm-off levels of frustration akin to reading Bad Blood angry.

The actual lack of empathy and compassion of not only Big Pharma representatives, lobbyists, and politicians, but the physicians and other healthcare workers….it is appalling. All the systems that are supposed to prevent problems like this failed us because Capitalism and Political Lobbying (like, WTF, do people not understand about Conflict of Interest???). Also, there was/is an extremely concerning disregard of actual science by scientists and physicians. “Oh, legitimate pain is a barrier to addiction” – did they not actually take biochemistry? None of these people should be allowed to practice science or medicine again.

The sad thing is that we really do lack actual, non-subjective methods of measuring pain and further research into how the body processes pain signals. Getting good research into those areas will help develop non-opioid treatment methods. But people would rather throw a pill at it instead of try something more labor-intensive like extended physical therapy or massage. Even if new treatments are developed it will be too late for tens of thousands of people who got hooked on opioids or died from overdoses or from taking tainted opioids.

McGreal also touched upon the privilege granted to those rural, white, blue-collar workers with legitimate pain caught up in the money-making schemes of unscrupulous, greedy “practitioners” and now addicted to powerful narcotics versus the hard-line taken by law enforcement regarding the crack cocaine epidemic affecting people of color in urban areas during the 1980s (who probably also had legitimate pain issues and little access to medication or ongoing quality medical care). He didn’t delve too deeply into racism or the disparities but did point them out to make plain the sympathy shown to one group and not the other.

A definite recommend for everyone.

Dear FTC: I borrowed a copy of this book from my store.

The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre

Summary from Goodreads:
An unprecedented history of a personality test devised in the 1940s by a mother and daughter, both homemakers, that has achieved cult-like status and is used in today’s most distinguished boardrooms, classrooms, and beyond.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It has been harnessed by Fortune 100 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language – of extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling – has inspired online dating platforms and BuzzFeed quizzes alike. And yet despite the test’s widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $500 million industry, struggle to account for its success – no less to validate its results. How did the Myers-Briggs test insinuate itself into our jobs, our relationships, our Internet, our lives?

First conceived in the 1920s by the mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a pair of aspiring novelists and devoted homemakers, the Myers-Briggs was designed to bring the gospel of Carl Jung to the masses. But it would take on a life of its own, reaching from the smoke-filled boardrooms of mid-century New York to Berkeley, California, where it was honed against some of the twentieth century’s greatest creative minds. It would travel across the world to London, Zurich, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Tokyo; to elementary schools, nunneries, wellness retreats, and the closed-door corporate training sessions of today.

Drawing from original reporting and never-before-published documents, The Personality Brokers examines nothing less than the definition of the self – our attempts to grasp, categorize, and quantify our personalities. Surprising and absorbing, the book, like the test at its heart, considers the timeless question: What makes you you?

Chances are, you’ve probably taken a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test – with all the questions that seem to have no answer (I’m an INTJ, hello). Have you ever been curious about the origins of a test that so many companies have come to rely on for team-building and sales success? In The Personality Brokers Emre has set herself the task of investigating the origins of this million-dollar industry. And it turns out that the current owners of the MBTI really don’t want anyone poking into the rigor of the indicator. In-teresting….

If you were ever a skeptic of personality testing then this book will confirm that belief. I had suspected that the MBTI was less than scientifically rigorous, but WOW is it not even valid over repeat testing. The author really pulled a lot of information together – even when she couldn’t gain access to Isabel Myers Briggs papers – to try and shed some light on this widespread (and lucrative) evaluation. The beginning of the book was a bit hard to get into but it picked up. Once you get through all the Jungian fan-worship it gets better.

The Personality Brokers is out today.

Dear FTC: I read a digital galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.