2026 read #39: Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 8 by Itaru Kinoshita.

Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 8 by Itaru Kinoshita

Research consultant: Shin-ichi Fujiwara

Translated by John Neal

193 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2026)

Read from July 30 to July 31

Rating: 3ish out of 5

Every six to ten months, it seems, I pick up a fresh installment of Dinosaur Sanctuary and have to reckon up how much the world, and in this case my private life, has deteriorated since the last volume. This time, in addition to the political and economic realities of the failing capitalist system in its far-right death throes, as of last week I’m newly out of a brief but intense relationship that failed precisely when it should have been hitting its stride. I had to break it off with him right after our first joyous visit. I’m reading this while fucking bummed.

All of this will be interesting to see scraped up in whatever MLM summary you might read about this series later. Fuck you specifically, person who uses the slop machine to read for you.

Anyway. As has become the norm in recent installments, the light workplace drama of Dinosaur Sanctuary overshadows its potential as dinosaur fiction. We spend more time with quarterly earnings reports, marketing strategies, and corporate synergies than we do with dinosaurs. I’m not invested in Enoshima Dinoland as a fictional entity, and the characters are too one-dimensional for me to care about them.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother keeping up with this series, but then we get storylines like Momo the constipated Camarasaurus, which remind me just a bit of the best parts of Dinosaur Summer. And then I conclude, sighing through my anhedonia, that maybe it’s worth coming back to Enoshima each time.

2026 read #29: To Katahdin by George T. Sewall.

To Katahdin: The 1876 Adventures of Four Young Men and a Boat by George T. Sewall

Introduction by Neil Rolde 

Afterword by Irvin C. “Buzz” Caverly, Jr.

122 pages

Originally published as newspaper series in 1870s; book edition published 2000

Read from May 4 to May 7

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Having lived in upstate New York for a couple years now, my partner R and I have developed a little tradition of visiting a local book barn each spring, soon after it opens for the season. This past weekend, R found this book in the regional history section. It’s a charmingly presented trip journal, complete with pen-and-ink illustrations that accompanied the original newspaper serial. Seemed like it would be a good use of $4.50!

The three well-to-do Sewall brothers, plus their cousin Ned Hunt, undertook a late summer lark with the goal of climbing Katahdin, by then familiar to tourists but still retaining the mystique of the North Woods frontier. Thanks to the reprint press’s subtitle, one is inevitably reminded of Three Men in a Boat, only without Jerome K. Jerome’s self-effacing irony and charm. At least the pencil drawings (done, presumably, by one of the Sewalls) add an occasional touch of immediacy.

The narrative itself is fine. It’s more descriptive than poetic, a travelogue of summer woods and waters, steamer wharfs and remote farms, blueberries and wilderness hotels, a dry but fascinating glimpse into a lost world. I want more books about the early development of American tourism, whether they be modern histories or contemporary accounts. This certainly checks that box.

Naturally, this being the 1870s, literally any time writer Sewall encounters a woman, he simply can’t resist adding some disparaging comment or other. Maybe Jerome K. Jerome did the same thing; it’s been long enough since I read Three Men that I truly don’t remember. But it certainly soured my enjoyment here. Likewise, the boys can’t catch a glimpse of a waterfowl without hastening to shoot at it. Absolutely no inkling of a conservation ethos here, just some college bros taking their turn on the frontier before it vanished.

2026 read #19: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 14 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

172 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2026)

Read from March 17 to March 18

Rating: 4 out of 5

Just like I said the last time I read an installment of Witch Hat Atelier, it’s been a hell of a bad ride since then. Only worse this time, what with World War III and everything.

This time, it’s been well over a year between volumes. As it should be, really—the manga industry enforces an exploitative and punishing schedule that degrades the quality of work in addition to burning out artists. I’m glad Shirahama has more time to craft her story, and her art, than the manga machine tends to permit. The line art and composition in Atelier remains exceptional and ambitious.

As a reader, though, it’s difficult to get back into the story after all this time away (and all the trauma we’ve had to live through these last fourteen months). A tertiary character’s heel turn lacks impact when I can’t remember who he is. The story doesn’t progress all that much, either. We get a ton of gorgeous, flowing art, but we end this volume basically where it began: attempting to defend the people of the city from the massive valence leech released I don’t know how many chapters ago.

Still, the art is absolutely wonderful. And we end on a lovely emotional beat between main character Coco and my personal favorite / self-insert, Agott. So I guess I’ll be generous with my grade, and I guess I’m still invested enough that I’ll wait however long for Volume 15.

2025 read #74: Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 7 by Itaru Kinoshita.

Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 7 by Itaru Kinoshita

Research consultant: Shin-ichi Fujiwara

Translated by John Neal

193 pages

Published 2025 (English translation published 2025)

Read September 30

Rating: 3 out of 5

Goddamn, but it’s been a tumultuous six months since I read the previous volume of Dinosaur Sanctuary.

This time around, I’m keeping my expectations low. Sanctuary is light workplace drama first, dinosaur fiction a distant second. That’s as true as ever in this installment. Still, we do get some good dino zookeeper interactions, like when Suzume has difficulties feeding a blind Deinonychus named Trom, or when she has an unexpectedly busy day in the Psittacosaurus petting zoo.

I haven’t quite located the sense of charm I felt in the early volumes, but odds are that’s the fault of the world we live in right now. I had a nice time reading it all the same.

2025 read #61: In the Presence of Dinosaurs by John Colagrande and Larry Felder.

In the Presence of Dinosaurs by John Colagrande and Larry Felder

Illustrated by Larry Felder

Foreword by Jack Horner

189 pages

Published 2000

Read from August 30 to September 3

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

One tiny blessing of being born when I was: my teenage years coincided with history’s biggest boom of dinosaur books. There were novels, most of them bad. Short stories in magazines, some of them good. And then there were the big, glossy, full-color illustrated books for adults. I spent substantial portions of the late 1990s reading through some outsize coffee-table book or other (Hunting Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs:A Global View, The Ultimate Dinosaur). Those were glorious times.

One of the very last tomes of that particular wave (that I’m aware of) was this one, which came out during my painful transition into adulthood. I picked up a copy at some point in the early 2000s, possibly back when my then-spouse and I would hang out at Borders every weekend, blowing untold amounts of money on stacks of books we would scarcely look afterward. I got rid of that copy in a subsequent move. It wasn’t until this summer that I found a cheap (if slightly battered) replacement.

Presence is organized into chapters by specific environments: rain forest, plains, coastline, and so on. Grounding dinosaurs into ecological context is something I’m interested in, both as a would-be scientist and as a novelist. So some twenty-ish years later, I’m finally taking the time to read it.

Felder’s artwork is outstanding. Finely detailed, almost photographically sharp, with the occasional startling chiaroscuro. In addition, this might be one of the earliest glossy art books to normalize feathered dinosaurs, which gives it some historical interest.

The written portions of the book are considerably less edifying. The text lacks flow, and is frequently repetitive, resulting in a dull read — even though not all that much information is presented. Clearly the art was expected to be the main draw.

Presence puts into perspective how much dinosaur paleontology has changed in the last quarter century. When I read a confident declaration that “Dinosaurs descended from partially aquatic ancestors,” it’s a reminder of just how long ago Y2K was, and also a prompt to take everything else here with a grain of salt. Perhaps not the most useful research I could be doing for my own books.

Also inspiring caution: fundamental errors, like dating the Morrison Formation to 220-200 million years ago, instead of its actual range of 156-146 million years ago. What do you mean that got through editors and typesetters without getting caught?

Still, the book’s focus on climate and cohesive ecosystems (rather than charismatic megafauna roving through a greenscreen void) is welcome, and perhaps a bit ahead of its time. And I can’t deny that it’s a little bit inspiring. Do I now want to write stories set in Late Triassic Arizona, Early Jurassic Connecticut, and Late Cretaceous Interior Seaway barrier islands? Absolutely!

2025 read #38: Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä.

Shattered Spear by Otava Heikkilä

55 pages

Published 2019

Read April 18

Rating: 4 out of 5

Back when I was lining up a future as an archaeologist, I planned to specialize in the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic in Southwest Asia. For a little while, at least, I lived and breathed the Natufian, the PPNA, and the PPNB. It’s a world that will always fascinate me.

This is a short standalone graphic novel that I learned about thanks to a sword & sorcery Discord server. It’s set in the Jordan River valley during Neolithic, and follows two women who encounter each other and form an attachment. The artwork is gorgeous, capturing the beauty and vastness of its setting as well as the character of its two leads. The storytelling is marvelously efficient, relating so much in such a brief space.

Absolutely worth a read.

2025 read #37: Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 8 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2019)

Read from April 14 to April 15

Rating: 3 out of 5

Here we are at my library’s last volume of Children of the Whales. Mostly I’ve read this series to shamelessly bulk up my book numbers, which is something I had said I would avoid doing this year. Ah well. At least it’s been enjoyable, even if it didn’t grab me the way Delicious in Dungeon or Witch Hat Atelier did.

When Umeda’s writing hits, it’s stunning. Emotional vulnerability, the importance of community, sacrifice to preserve said community, guilt and absolution, all powerful themes.

But a lot of that graceful mood of grief gets lost under the weight of Umeda’s worldbuilding. I’m just not invested enough for flashbacks to two or three generations previously. And every volume introduces new terms and concepts. It gets to feel like noise after a while. (Though I’m sure a lot of my attitude is modern day anhedonia. I mean, just look outside. The monsters are winning.)

2025 read #36: Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 7 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2016 (English translation 2018)

Read from April 12 to April 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

It’s difficult to write reviews of long-running manga when I read them back to back like this. I’m still interested enough to read through this series (or at least what my library has of it), but it’s starting to feel like background noise. (Most of that feeling is due to the state of my country, though, to be fair.)

This volume has a grab-bag quality. Each chapter is its own little standalone story, all of them contributing to an ever more elaborate tower of worldbuilding and backstory. Which is fine, I suppose, but it’s a lot of worldbuilding and backstory, so very much. The last chapter is a short story, published by itself years before, that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Children of the Whales aside from commentary on authoritarianism and Umeda’s fixation on jesters and large women.

In case you had any doubts about the series’ overarching point of view, we hop back to the original generation of exiles on Fálaina, who prove to be rebels against the totalitarian control of a government that sucks away its people’s emotions. Said government is the ancestor of the Apátheia pursuing the Mud Whale in the story’s present day.

Maybe that’s why I keep reading this series: it serves as a gentle, emotional refutation of the sociopathy of authoritarianism.

2025 read #35: Children of the Whales: Volume 6 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 6 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read April 12

Rating: 3 out of 5

After it is revealed that the nous of the Mud Whale consumes the lifespans of the marked in order to sustain itself on the sand sea, the unmarked decide to maintain the secret and steer the island toward a distant land, where perhaps they can abandon the Whale and extend the lives of those touched by magic. Along the way, this volume proceeds as a series of self-contained chapters, exploring strange locales and incidents of the voyage. But discontent brews among other factions on the island.

I should take a moment to praise the sumptuously detailed artwork Umeda uses to portray the use of magic or the empathic visions her characters experience. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

2025 read #34: Children of the Whales: Volume 5 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 5 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

194 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read from April 11 to April 12

Rating: 3 out of 5

After the bloodshed, grief, and pathos of Volume 4, Volume 5 opens with a wacky episode of comic relief, as Sir Rochalízo, the first non-hostile outsider the people of the Mud Whale have ever seen, happens to arrive at bath time, and the mayor greets him in the buff. It’s giving beach episode.

Rochalízo ends up being a colonial-minded dickhead. But his presence inadvertently creates a significant change for the inhabitants of Fálaina, as the Mud Whale reveals the ability to steer itself. We also learn why the Whale’s marked — the people able to use the magic called thymia— die so young.

After the chaotic action of the last installment, it was nice to have more of a low-stakes hangout vibe. I still don’t know how deep I will read into the series, but for now, it’s an enjoyable way to pad out my book numbers.

2025 read #33: Children of the Whales: Volume 4 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 4 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

193 pages

Published 2015 (English translation 2018)

Read April 11

Rating: 3 out of 5

It’s been about a month since I read Volume 3. Clearly that was enough time to leave me almost entirely lost when I picked up this installment. Umeda swerves between perspectives in a bloody action sequence as the apátheia, or harlequin soldiers, continue to raid the Mud Whale. Exposition gets doled out mid-battle. It’s difficult to make sense of it all.

The main vibe is one of intense, sometimes melodramatic emotion. Pretty much every character either dies in horrific, pointless violence, or survives to weep about them in the aftermath. It makes sense thematically. The central conflict is between the residents of the Mud Whale, who are free to feel their emotions, and the emotionally-drained apátheia, who view them with mingled disdain and disgust. The heightened emotional stakes are thus central to the story being told.

One could read any number of allegorical interpretations into this; in the contemporary world, it’s tempting to see it as empathetic, compassionate people hounded to the ends of the earth by the sociopathic adherents of patriarchal capitalism.

I think I’ll enjoy this series more if I read them closer together, and can keep better track of who any of these people are. I have four more volumes checked out from the library that I’ll likely use to pad out my reading numbers for this month. After that, our library doesn’t stock any of them, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue the series. It’s long, much longer than any other manga I’ve read.

2025 read #27: Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 6 by Itaru Kinoshita.

Dinosaur Sanctuary: Volume 6 by Itaru Kinoshita

Research consultant: Shin-ichi Fujiwara

Translated by John Neal

194 pages

Published 2024 (English translation published 2025)

Read from March 18 to March 19

Rating: 3 out of 5

Last time we visited Enoshima Dinoland, I was dealing with a family crisis, and was too depressed and demoralized to appreciate dinosaur theme park escapism. Since then, my country has lurched its way into full-blown fascism, and I’m probably too depressed and demoralized now to properly enjoy dinosaur theme park escapism.

In all honesty, I think the Dinosaur Sanctuary formula might be running out of juice, six volumes in. Which is impressive, considering the Jurassic Park franchise went downhill by book/movie number two. The mix of prehistoric zookeeping and light workplace drama remains charming, but each book is just more of the same, and at this point, even I, a lifelong dinosaur fanatic, am starting to feel satiated with this particular blend.

Part of my issue is with the characters. Even with the occasional dollop of backstory, the cast remains vaguely pleasant archetypes. I don’t feel more than a superficial connection to anyone beyond, perhaps, Suzume, our reader surrogate. It’s hard to invest in workplace drama without that attachment. And this volume felt especially light on dinosaurs, which only emphasizes how shallow the characters feel without them.

2025 read #25: Children of the Whales: Volume 3 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 3 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2014 (English translation published 2018)

Read March 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

Back at it again with Volume 3. (Hey, I checked out the first three tankōbon from my library, might as well speed right through them.) The Mud Whale safe for now from tampering, its residents spend this installment prepping and training against the return of the apátheia, or harlequin soldiers.

As so often seems to happen in these manga series (I’m looking at you, Frieren), Whales loosens up its tone and gravitas to indulge in more generic teen tropes, such as Lykos getting mobbed by some cool-girls we’ve never seen before in order to give her a makeover. It all absolutely makes sense in context, a sort of community bonding calm-before-the-storm to establish the characters and their home more fully.

All too soon comes the renewed attack from the enemy battleship Skyros. Much of this volume’s final third comprises battle sequences. Umeda’s artistic skill carries these sections. And of course the book ends in a cliffhanger, so I guess I’ll be off to the library at some point for the next few installments.

2025 read #24: Children of the Whales: Volume 2 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 2 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

192 pages

Published 2014 (English translation published 2018)

Read March 14

Rating: 3 out of 5

Rolling right along into Volume 2. The first tankōbon ended with a sudden massacre at the hands of some sociopathic harlequin soldiers, which certainly is a vibe. The sentimental melancholy of the first couple chapters still shows through from time to time, especially in some lovely artwork in Chapter 7, “This World Is Beautiful Because…” However, much of this volume was action, as our heroes realize the elders would rather sink the Whale than face a return of the harlequins, and must gather allies and fight there way into the bowels of the island to stop the elders.

A theme has emerged of embracing and understanding one’s own emotions, in opposition to the emotionless husks warring across the outside world. This, plus the artwork, has kept me sufficiently interested to keep going.

2025 read #23: Children of the Whales: Volume 1 by Abi Umeda.

Children of the Whales: Volume 1 by Abi Umeda

Translated by JN Productions

193 pages

Published 2013 (English translation published 2017)

Read March 14

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Still struggling to find manga that fills the Delicious in Dungeon / Witch Hat Atelier-shaped absence in my life, I happened upon this series in my library’s collection, and decided to give it a try.

Teenage Chakuro is the archivist for the people of the Mud Whale. Their entire society of some five hundred people scrounges a living on the back of the floating (possibly living) city, drifting through a seemingly boundless sea of sand that swallows anything else on its surface. Chakuro and his fellow Marked — users of emotion-fueled magic — live brief lives, rarely living beyond 30. The longer-lived Unmarked, who cannot wield magic, comprise the society’s leaders despite being much fewer in number. But the elders know more than they let on about the world beyond the Whale.

The worldbuilding is complex, and the pacing feels a bit off as a result, though Umeda never lets the exposition completely overwhelm the story. A melancholy urgency, an awareness of short lives and sudden death, suffuses Chakuro’s narration. Umeda’s artwork is gorgeous, particularly the establishing shots of the Mud Whale and the larger world around it.

Whales is no replacement for Delicious or Atelier, but it’s intriguing enough as its own thing. 

2025 read #5: Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 13 by Kamome Shirahama.

Witch Hat Atelier: Volume 13 by Kamome Shirahama

Translated by Stephen Kohler

180 pages

Published 2024 (English translation published 2025)

Read January 16

Rating: 4 out of 5

It’s been a hell of a bad ride since I finished the previous installment of Witch Hat Atelier back in September. Fuck.

It’s an adjustment to go from splurging through the series to being all caught up and having to wait months for the next translated tankōbon. The number of characters and tangle of plot lines in Atelier makes it especially difficult. I floundered at first to recall what was going on; when a new character (Richeh’s big brother) got introduced, I was confused, concerned that I’d completely forgotten someone important.

This is a solid installment, progressing the conflict between the principles of the Pointed Caps and their desire to help people. The way forward chosen by the characters — invent new spells! — seems a bit trite, but Shirahama’s artwork is stunning as always, whirling between characters and scenes with assurance and verve.

2025 read #4: Kids on Bikes: 2nd Edition by Jonathan Gilmour & Doug Levandowski.

Kids on Bikes: Strange Adventures in Small Towns, 2nd Edition by Jonathan Gilmour & Doug Levandowski

Includes “The Horror in the House on Hook Hill,” written and designed by Sen Foong-Lim and Alara Cameron

180 pages

Published 2023

Read from December 25, 2024 to January 7

Rating: n/a

The only game system books I’d read in their entirety before this were the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Player’s Handbook from the 5th edition of D&D. With Wizards of the Coast doing everything in their power to alienate their audience and burn years of goodwill to the ground, it’s time to learn some new systems!

Thanks to my partner R for gifting me this one. <3

What I like about this book: The wealth of thought that went into its discussions of how to play a mutually respectful game with others. I feel like the DMG and years of being the forever-DM taught me less than this book offered about the topics of table safety, collaborative storytelling, prompting players, backpedaling when the story goes places it shouldn’t, and ways to make failing a roll both interesting and an opportunity to move the game forward. Whatever system I use in the future, I appreciate having these role-play tools at hand.

What could have been better: Just like the Player’s Handbook, Kids on Bikes buried the rules of play within some sub-optimal formatting. I like the choice to foreground ethical gaming, but perhaps the core rules could be highlighted with an edge color for easy reference. More pertinently, the book explains what to do with a particular game condition before it defines the game condition, e.g. we get told we can spend Adversity Tokens several pages before we learn what they are or how we get them. It felt slightly disorganized.

I’m excited to (someday, hopefully) be able to play a Kids on Bikes game. This book also joins E.T., Stranger Things, The Goonies, Now and Then, Super 8, and a general cultural awareness of IT (which I haven’t read, or watched in full) on my meager list of inspirations for the kids-on-bikes novel I began writing this week.

2025 read #1: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: 1 by Kagiji Kumanomata.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: 1 by Kagiji Kumanomata

Translated by Tetsuichiro Miyaki

168 pages

Published 2016 (English translation published 2018)

Read from December 31, 2024 to January 1

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

In 2024, I read 157 books, the most I’ve ever read in one year as an adult. It was also the very first year I read at least ten books each calendar month. Many, possibly most, of the books I read were quick reads: manga, magazines, novellas, poetry collections. Some might sniff at that, but a record is a record, and who cares what others think? It’s not like anyone but plagiarism bots reads these reviews anyway.

Moving into 2025, I want to read more deliberately, instead of for big numbers. I want to read less overall, to free up time for writing. So naturally the first book of 2025 is… a volume of manga.

I learned about this series thanks to an ad in the back of a volume of Frieren. I’m always open to charming high fantasy manga, especially now that I’ve finished Delicious in Dungeon and I’m all caught up with Witch Hat Atelier. Sleepy Princess looked promising, an adorable tale of a kidnapped princess who, safe and bored inside a castle of monsters, goes to great lengths to get quality sleep. As a fellow princess-and-the-pea sleeper myself, I could relate. The manga pretty much delivers on that premise, and does so adequately. The way Princess Syalis hunts through the demon castle for her various bedding needs is pleasantly reminiscent of Delicious in Dungeon, if you replace food with sleep.

Unfortunately, at least in this initial volume, Princess lacks characterization, and the princess’s nocturnal side-quests quickly become repetitive. This slim tankōbon is packed with thirteen chapters, each of which is fairly self-contained. As a result, the story is episodic, and never develops much substance. I don’t think I’m intrigued enough to continue spending money on this series.

Also discouraging any investment: the binding error in this copy (most of chapters nine and ten are replaced with repeats of chapters four and five). Bad luck, or a shoddy press? I’m not shelling out more to find out.

2024 read #157: Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard.

Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World by Mary Beard

479 pages

Published 2023

Read from December 21 to December 25

Rating: 4 out of 5

The follow-up to Beard’s SPQR, Emperor is an examination of the office of Roman emperor, and the popular perceptions of the autocratic edifice, more than it is a biography of any particular caesar, or (worse still) a recitation of names and dates. This is Beard’s familiar approach, and a solid example why she’s one of the few popular historians I would trust to write a book on Rome. This is no “Big Man” history. As Beard writes in her prologue:

Working on the Roman empire for so long, I have come increasingly to detest autocracy as a political system, but to be more sympathetic, not just to its victims, but to all those caught up in it from bottom to top….

Accordingly, she works to populate the palace with glimpses of the women, slaves, laborers, functionaries, poets, doctors, diviners, entertainers, children, and the other essential-but-ignored foundations of the Roman state. The office of emperor is a lens, bending the apparatus of ancient society into our line of sight. Ancient propaganda regarding “good” and “bad” emperors is treated not as historical fact, but as a means of assessing attitudes and fears held by the elite (or, when we can access them, the ordinary people) toward the autocrats above them.

Beard’s thesis could be summed up with a line in chapter five: “Can we ever see a human being through the spin, the propaganda, the praise and denunciations?” It’s a salutary perspective, especially in our contemporary culture, where the loudest voices are paid shills for authority, and mediocre white men think about “the Roman Empire” multiple times a day.

Like the rest of us, Beard sounds more exhausted than she did in 2015. Emperor lacks some of the sparkle and dry wit of SPQR, but remains a thoroughly engrossing history, with something important to say about our own era of looming autocracy.

2024 read #147: A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils by Paul M. Barrett.

A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils by Paul M. Barrett

160 pages

Published 2024

Read from November 30 to December 1

Rating: 3 out of 5

Much like A History of Plants in Fifty Fossils, this is a coffee table book illustrated with photographs of the namesake fifty fossils, presenting a brief, glossy overview of dinosaur science. Unlike Plants, I went into Dinosaurs knowing quite a lot about the subject matter. The state of science publishing is dire, however, so I’ll take what I can get at this point. And I’ve been out of the loop with dinosaur science long enough that I might learn things even from a pop science book.

Considering the limitations of its structure, A History of Dinosaurs does a fair job at doling out beginner information: what defines dinosaurs, their evolutionary origins, their diversity and adaptations, and so on. The illustrations include paleo-reconstruction artwork as well as fossil photos, which was nice. While I do wish popular science books would return to trusting their audience instead of spoon-feeding them printed listicles, this one wasn’t a bad effort.