Mini Reviews: Get Well Soon || Opening Skinner’s Box

Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues And The Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 336

Publication date: February 2017

In 1518, in a small town in France, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced herself to her death six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had died from the mysterious dancing plague. In late-nineteenth-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome—a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure. And in turn-of-the-century New York, an Irish cook caused two lethal outbreaks of typhoid fever, a case that transformed her into the notorious Typhoid Mary and led to historic medical breakthroughs.

Throughout time, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the plagues they've suffered from. Get Well Soon delivers the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues in human history, as well as stories of the heroic figures who fought to ease their suffering.

Likes: This book has a chapter about each of Earth’s deadliest plagues. The subject has the potential to be depressing, but it’s not! The author’s writing style is funny and upbeat. I could happily sit and read huge chunks of the book at once. It’s quickly paced and not dry at all. The author’s sense of humor made it an easy read. The humor is juvenile, which I appreciate. I’m not the most mature person.

I like that the book doesn’t only focus on death and disfigurement. After each plague, humanity learned more about diseases, the human body, and how we can prevent future plagues. The author talks about what modern humans can learn from historical diseases. The book’s main lessons: 1. Let journalists do their jobs. Burying evidence of a plague causes more problems than it solves. 2. Humans can accomplish great things when society puts healthcare before money. 3. Don’t be a jerk to sick people. A plague can’t be defeated if we’re judging everybody for what disease they have and how they caught it.

“I know that I am setting low standards for human behavior here, but it is astonishing that the townspeople agreed they should try to help her rather than burn her as a witch.” – Get Well Soon

Dislikes: If you already know a lot about historical plagues, you probably won’t learn anything new. Instead of looking at a few plagues in depth, the book has an overview of thirteen plagues. I’ve already read other books about bubonic plague, lobotomies, typhoid, and cholera, so there wasn’t anything new for me in those chapters.

Occasionally, I wished that the author was less present in the book. I like her sense of humor, but I don’t like when authors make moral judgments about historical figures. It’s mean. Those people are dead, so they can’t defend themselves. The author’s judgments about their motives might not be accurate. I think the book would have been stronger if the author sometimes kept her opinion to herself.

The Bottom Line: A quick, funny introduction to the diseases that ravaged Earth. If you’re interested in medical nonfiction, I recommend it.

Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments Of The Twentieth Century by Lauren Slater

Genre: Nonfiction

Pages: 274

Publication date: 2004

Beginning with B. F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.

Likes: I took a psychology class in high school and absolutely hated it. The lectures were mostly tedious, and the teacher was arrogant. However, the class did make me curious about psychological experiments. It led me to Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails and all of the follow-up studies that say Festinger’s conclusions are crap. I also read about Stanley Milgram and a few other well-known psychology pioneers. I guess my high school teacher inadvertently caused me to read the book I’m reviewing now. I blame him for everything I’m about to say.

If you don’t have a background in science, psychology experiments can be difficult to understand. I remember doing a lot of Googling while I read When Prophecy Fails and the follow-ups. Opening Skinner’s Box does a brilliant job of making the experiments accessible to non-doctors. The author describes the experiments, interprets the results, and explains why they’re important. The science in these essays is (usually) easy to understand. No Googling is required. I very much appreciated that.

Dislikes: I struggled with the writing style. When the author writes about science, this book is really good. I liked learning about the experiments, the scientists, and how they’re relevant to the modern world. Unfortunately, between the experiments, we’re forced to take turgid, overwritten excursions to the author’s imagination. She tells us how she “imagines” people and places look. She makes (mean) judgments about people’s thoughts and motivations. The flowery writing style was a constant distraction for me. I was cringing at over-the-top metaphors instead of paying attention to the author’s message.

Too much of the book is about the author. She gives her biased opinions on everything. She gets off-topic at times and talks about apple picking with her daughter or whatever. I eventually started skimming the author’s self-centered tangents.

The Bottom Line: The experiments are fascinating, but the purple prose and authorial intrusions distract readers from the science.