What are you reading now - and then

Jeremy Black, A Brief History of America (Robinson, 2024).

History books these days are either 900 page monsters, or bite-sized. Lots of ‘History of x in 100’ something.

i find this an interesting but unsatisfactory book, trying to cram in too much into a readable minus 300 pages. Black is more concerned than most with the grim fate of America’s First Nations, whom he calls Indians- well ok, and at least better than Thomas Jefferson, who thought them ‘savages’ and treated them as such.

It is interesting that whereas in Central and Southern America before Columbus there were organised, centralised imperial systems - Maya, Inca, Aztec are obvious examples- nothing comparable emerged in North America, Europeans arrived but did not remain, for as is pointed out, the success of later colonisation was based on numbers of people with the military means to defend/attack in a populated land they did not own, with the creation of trading networks within the new territories but, crucially, linked to the old, in Europe.

This is a conflict driven account, so at times I wanted a more positive image of American achievements which do appear, but in the rushed style of lists. This as I say, makes for unsatisfactory reading, or it could just be too much for one book.

William Pao, Breakthrough: the Quest for Life-Changing Medicines (Oneworld, 2024)

If you are not sure if RF Kennedy is an idiot who should be nowhere near health policy, this book will explain why. Pao does use the terminology of the science of immunology but does also explain it in simple language so it should not be beyond the scope of most readers. The chapters concern Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a chapter each on two cancers -non-smoking related lung cancer, and breast cancer. Other chapters concerns HIV, Sickle-Cell Disease and Beta Thalassaemia, and Covid. What Pao describes is how science understands these illnesses, and how it develops strategies to either eliminate them, or reduce them to manageable conditions.
On the way, an army of laboratory technicians, innovative scientists, experimentalists, and politicians enable the breakthrough's that have saved, and improved people's lives. There are no conspiracies here, no diabolical accounts of 'Big Pharma' turning humans into laboratory animals for commercial gain, rather an objective account of 'how we fixed it'.

It is one of those accounts which, though not shaped exclusively by Americans, nevertheless should make Americans proud of what the country has achieved in medical science, something that a certain person would do well to acknowledge, if he had the skill and desire to do so.