Skip.
This tongue-in-cheek look at the Illuminati leaves more questions than answers. Of course, that’s the way they like it.
Secret codes and cryptography are always fascinating, but Keenan’s examination of the supposedly current secret society is a jumble of information told in a sarcastic tone that falls flat. The book starts out well enough, with a brief discussion of the brain and a look at how humans are hard-wired to make connections between seemingly unrelated things, which leads to conspiracy theories. It also summarizes the creation of the original Order of the Illuminati and its Bavarian founder, Adam Weishaupt. From there, readers learn a little about the Templars, a little about the Freemasons, and a little about other secret societies. The book, like most good conspiracy theories, is quick to jump from interesting point to interesting point, but it’s light on evidence along the way. Statements are presented to the reader as facts, but there’s no way to know how Keenan came to these conclusions. For example, while discussing the New World Order, the book states that nearly 1/3 of American voters believe that the Order is “the global takeover by a secret government formed by the Illuminati and maybe aliens”; the part about the aliens is rescinded in the next paragraph, but there is no source for the part that is presented as fact. Keenan frequently alludes to “countless” websites, books, and videos but provides no backmatter for further reading or reference.
Skip. (Nonfiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8793-6
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care.
In 1977, the oil carrier Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into a formerly pristine Alaskan ocean inlet, killing millions of birds, animals, and fish. Despite a cleanup, crude oil is still there.
The Winters foretold the destructive powers of the atomic bomb allusively in The Secret Project (2017), leaving the actuality to the backmatter. They make no such accommodations to young audiences in this disturbing book. From the dark front cover, on which oily blobs conceal a seabird, to the rescuer’s sad face on the back, the mother-son team emphasizes the disaster. A relatively easy-to-read and poetically heightened text introduces the situation. Oil is pumped from the Earth “all day long, all night long, / day after day, year after year” in “what had been unspoiled land, home to Native people // and thousands of caribou.” The scale of extraction is huge: There’s “a giant pipeline” leading to “enormous ships.” Then, crash. Rivers of oil gush out over three full-bleed wordless pages. Subsequent scenes show rocks, seabirds, and sea otters covered with oil. Finally, 30 years later, animals have returned to a cheerful scene. “But if you lift a rock… // oil / seeps / up.” For an adult reader, this is heartbreaking. How much more difficult might this be for an animal-loving child?
Like oil itself, this is a book that needs to be handled with special care. (author’s note, further reading) (Informational picture book. 9-12)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3077-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Bial (A Handful of Dirt, p. 299, etc.) conjures up ghostly images of the Wild West with atmospheric photos of weathered clapboard and a tally of evocative names: Tombstone, Deadwood, Goldfield, Progress, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickock, the OK Corral. Tracing the life cycle of the estimated 30,000 ghost towns (nearly 1300 in Utah alone), he captures some echo of their bustling, rough-and-tumble past with passages from contemporary observers like Mark Twain: “If a man wanted a fight on his hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was appear in public in a white shirt or stove-pipe hat, and he would be accommodated.” Among shots of run-down mining works, dusty, deserted streets, and dark eaves silhouetted against evening skies, Bial intersperses 19th-century photos and prints for contrast, plus an occasional portrait of a grizzled modern resident. He suggests another sort of resident too: “At night that plaintive hoo-hoo may be an owl nesting in a nearby saguaro cactus—or the moaning of a restless ghost up in the graveyard.” Children seeking a sense of this partly mythic time and place in American history, or just a delicious shiver, will linger over his tribute. (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 9-11)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06557-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2001
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