Review of Everything Is Tuberculosis, by John Green

Everything Is Tuberculosis

The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green

Crash Course Books (Penguin Random House), 2025. 198 pages.
Review written June 9, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review

I am a fan of John Green’s turning to writing nonfiction. He thinks long and hard about so many aspects of his topic. The catch is that it’s hard to decide where to put this review. History? It’s full of that, but I put most adult History nonfiction in “True Stories” – which it also has. Musings? There’s plenty of thinking about what tuberculosis means to us humans and how things got that way. But I think I’ll settle for “Current Issues” – because ultimately the whole book shows us that we can choose to fight tuberculosis – or let it mutate and get more drug resistant and increase the number of people it kills every year.

I was a little bit familiar with the problem of drug-resistant tuberculosis spreading in poor communities because of having read Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, an amazing book that John Green refers to multiple times. This book is in that tradition – but honestly more readable and digestible. My theory is that John Green being a young adult novelist first is how that happened. The result is a compelling history of tuberculosis and humans’ relationship with it in a book that never lags.

John Green goes back in history – tuberculosis has plagued humans for thousands of years and has killed more people than any other disease – and shows us how attitudes toward the disease have changed, and tells us about the quest for a cure. Along the way, he interweaves the story of Henry, a teen in Sierra Leone who had been suffering from tuberculosis for years.

And yes, the story of tuberculosis is the story of prejudice. In years before the cure, many believed that non-white people didn’t get tuberculosis.

In Europe and the U.S., most white doctors believed that phthisis – as it was inherited by those with great sensitivity and intelligence – could only affect white people, and it was sometimes known as “The White Man’s Plague.” One American doctor, for instance, called it, “a disease of the master race not of the slave race.”. . .

Acknowledging that consumption was common among enslaved, colonized, and marginalized people would have undermined not just a theory of disease, but also the project of colonialism itself.

Now, though, tuberculosis is much more of a problem where there is poverty. Inflated drug prices keep poorer countries from using the most effective medication – which results in more drug resistant strains of tuberculosis, and may one day be everyone’s undoing.

My summary, though, isn’t nearly as interesting as John Green’s narratives, showing how everything is interrelated, and how tuberculosis has affected every aspect of human civilization. In the present, millions still die from tuberculosis every year – even though we have effective cures. This book explores all the sides of why that happens and gives us ideas for helping to stop it and eradicate TB once and for all.

johngreenbooks.com
tbfighters.org
youtube.com/@Tuberculosis-l1jSurvivorHenry

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/everything_is_tuberculosis.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of March Sisters, by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley

March Sisters

On Life, Death, and Little Women

by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley

Library of America, 2019. 182 pages.
Review written November 2, 2021, from a library book
Starred Review

This book is a collection of four essays by four distinguished authors about Little Women. Each author focused on a different one of the March sisters. Kate Bolick wrote “Meg’s Frock Shock”; Jenny Zhang wrote “Does Genius Burn, Jo?”; Carmen Maria Machado wrote “A Dear and Nothing Else”; and Jane Smiley wrote “I am Your ‘Prudent Amy.’”

I loved this collection. Mind you, I read Little Women enough times in my youth to understand every single reference, no matter how obscure. Every single quote brought recognition. I’ve read a lot about Louisa May Alcott’s family and knew about the originals of each sister as well.

So for someone well-steeped in everything about Little Women, this book was a delight – delving deeply into psychological ramifications of details in the text, complete with references to the essay authors’ lives as well as references to Louisa May Alcott’s life.

Honestly? I’d never given this much thought to the other sisters – I was all about Jo. I was fascinated and captivated to think about the lives presented here with adult eyes, and through the lenses of the essayists.

I must recommend this book to my own sister. (One Christmas the two of us received an entire set of Louisa May Alcott’s books, split between us.) Anyone who has ever read and loved Little Women, take note!

loa.org

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/march_sisters.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou

Logicomix

An Epic Search for Truth

by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou
art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna

Bloomsbury, 2009. 344 pages.
Review written May 12, 2025, from a library book.

Logicomix is a graphic novel fictionalized biography of Bertram Russell – but complete with a detailed explanation of the quest for a logically consistent foundation of mathematics – culminating in Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem.

As an undergraduate math major and a graduate student in math, I had a general idea of all this, and reading it now, I appreciated the specifics and the introduction to the people (all white men) who worked on those foundations. Something about having it all laid out in a graphic novel helped me understand the people and their quest and the interactions.

The story isn’t necessarily a pretty one. Russell had four wives, and the first one was given a “rest cure” after she realized he was falling in love with his best friend’s wife. I’m not sure I appreciated all the talk of mathematicians, or at least logicians, being prone to insanity, nor the dismissal of the children of logicians who had schizophrenia. But these were real people’s lives and that shows they didn’t clean it up for the twenty-first century.

So I do think those who will find the book most interesting are those who are interested in the quest for a provable foundation of mathematics – and how that quest was stymied. But I am one of those people, and I enjoyed this book.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/logicomix.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of This Here Flesh, by Cole Arthur Riley

This Here Flesh

Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us

by Cole Arthur Riley

Convergent Books, 2022. 203 pages.
Review written May 13, 2025, from my own copy, ordered via amazon.com.
Starred Review

I feel at a bit of a loss to describe this book. I read it a chapter at a time as part of my devotional times, and noted lots of passages to post on my Sonderquotes blog, and finished each chapter inspired and uplifted. But I’m not sure I can adequately describe what you’ll find here.

I like to call this kind of book “Musings,” and these are Christian musings mixed with family stories and questions and thoughts about life.

Let me copy sections from her Preface, in hope this will give you the flavor of this contemplative book. I’m just going to show you a few pieces – but I hope it will pull you in to read the entire book.

My spirituality has always been given to contemplation, even before anyone articulated for me exactly what “the contemplative” was. I was not raised in an overtly religious home; my spiritual formation now comes to me in memories – not creeds or doctrine, but the air we breathed, stories, myth, and a kind of attentiveness. From a young age, my siblings and I were allowed to travel deep into our interior worlds to become aware of ourselves, our loves, our beliefs. And still, my father demanded an unflinching awareness of our exterior worlds. Where is home from here? What was the waitress’s name? Where do we look when we’re walking? If a single phrase could be considered the mantra of our family, it would be Pay attention….

I used to think that Christian contemplation was reserved for white men who leave copies of C. S. Lewis’s letters strewn about and know a great deal about coffee and beard oils. If this is you, there is room for you here. But I am interested in reclaiming a contemplation that is not exclusive to whiteness, intellectualism, ableism, or mere hobby. And as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people. To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones. It is a shadow of true contemplative life, and it would do violence to my Black-woman soul….

And as we pay attention, we make a home out of paradox, not just in what we believe but also in the very act of living itself. Stillness that we would move. Silence that we would speak. I believe this to be a spirituality our world – overtaken with dislocation, noise, and unrest – so desperately needs….

This is a book of contemplative storytelling. The pages you hold are where the stories that have formed me across generations meet our common practice of beholding the divine. Feel now, they are wet with tears. Look how they glisten like my skin in sun, and they bear the grooves of many scars. As you cradle these pages, it is my sincere hope that they might serve as conduits for mystery, liberation, and the very face of God.

Yes, that’s what you’ll find here – contemplative storytelling. Cole Arthur Riley tells stories of her family and weaves them through with contemplation – and it all shines with light.

colearthurriley.com
convergentbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/this_here_flesh.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Desegregation in Northern Virginia Libraries, by Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne S. LaPierre

Desegregation in Northern Virginia Libraries

by Chris Barbuschak and Suzanne S. LaPierre

History Press, 2023. 206 pages.
Review written April 30, 2025, from my own copy, signed by the authors.
Starred Review

First, I owe my friends, authors Chris and Suzanne, a big apology. I attended their book launch in 2023 and got a signed copy – but I didn’t get it read until 2025. My excuse was that I was on the Morris Award committee in 2023, reading only debut young adult books – but that’s not a very good excuse in 2025! On top of that, Suzanne is the very most faithful advocate for my reviews, always liking my review posts on Facebook. So anyway, let me tell you about their wonderful book!

Yes, of course I’m biased. Chris and Suzanne both work in the Virginia Room at the City of Fairfax Regional Library branch of Fairfax County Public Library, where I worked as Youth Services Manager before I got my current position as Youth Materials Selector. I often got to spend an hour or two at the Virginia Room desk as needed – and came to appreciate their expertise and skills as researchers.

This book shows meticulous research, uncovering the history of segregation in Northern Virginia libraries, both explicit and implicit, and the brave Black activists who made desegregation happen even when a Supreme Court ruling wasn’t enough.

The book happened because one of the Fairfax County Library Board trustees, Dr. Sujatha Hamptom, challenged the established answer that FCPL had been open to everyone since its founding in 1939. Chris and Suzanne were asked to dig deeper and did the deep research in local archives that led to this book. I loved the way in their book launch they told stories of the individuals who stood up for everyone’s right to read – with legal challenges, sit-ins, and the like.

The book looks at six different Northern Virginia library systems, at notable cases elsewhere in Virginia, and at service in Washington, D. C. Even though Virginia passed a law in 1946 that libraries had to provide service to all residents – most jurisdictions still tried to meet that with separate services. And each jurisdiction had to fight for their rights in their own neighborhoods. And even when libraries were officially desegregated, there was still some time before Black people felt welcome enough to visit formerly white-only facilities.

The beautiful part of this book is how many different individuals took steps to make a difference in their own communities – and how in the long run, they succeeded, despite some individual setbacks. That’s a heartening message to read about today, when the idea that folks should be free to read what they want is being newly threatened. It’s good to read about the ordinary people who were heroes in the past by standing up for their own rights to library access.

historypress.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/desegregation_in_northern_virginia_libraries.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of How We Learn to Be Brave, by Mariann Edgar Budde

How We Learn to Be Brave

Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

by Mariann Edgar Budde

Avery (Penguin Random House), 2023. 201 pages.
Review written April 7, 2025, from my own copy, ordered via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Mariann Edgar Budde is the Episcopal Bishop of Washington who asked Trump to his face in an inaugural service to have mercy on people. When I was commenting on that, one of my friends asked if I’d read her book – written after she spoke out about Trump’s photo op in front of her church during the Black Lives Matter protests. So I ordered a copy right away.

In the Introduction, she talks about a moment during the BLM protests when she was inspired by the words of Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

As he spoke, the weight I had been carrying all week fell off my shoulders, and in that moment, I knew my place in the larger struggle for justice. I heard myself say to God and to the universe, “I want to be among the coalition of the faithful. I want to be among those working for the change we need now.” That’s the decision with which I need to align my life every day. It wasn’t a new thought for me, but I felt it in a new way. It won’t always burn in my heart the way it did that week, but I don’t want to forget it. Like everyone else, I need grace, courage, and perseverance to be true to my decisive moment after the passion fades.

The theme of the book is decisive moments, and how we can make brave choices during decisive moments.

The chapters take us through “Deciding to Go,” “Deciding to Stay,” Deciding to Start,” “Accepting What You Do Not Choose,” “Stepping Up to the Plate,” “The Inevitable Letdown,” and “The Hidden Virtue of Perseverance.” So you see, we get all aspects of bravery beyond any big public decisions, and I like the way it builds to day-to-day work of keeping on. She illustrates the book with her own journey that eventually took her to Washington, D. C.

Some of our decisive moments require action; others, acceptance. Some are dramatic and there for all the world to see; others are internal, known only to the self and to God. Ultimately, what I want to communicate in these pages is that heroic possibilities lie within each of us; that the inexplicable, unmerited experience of God’s power working through us is real; and that we matter in the realization of all that is good and noble and true. We can learn to be brave.

And of course this book is all the more applicable during a second Trump term. May we as Christians rise to the moment.

Here’s how she ends the book:

My prayer is that, by grace, we all will be emboldened to lean into the wisdom, strength, power, and grace that come to us, whenever we find ourselves at a decisive moment. May you and I dare to believe that we are where we are meant to be when that moment comes, doing the work that is ours to do, fully present to our lives. For it is in this work that we learn to be brave.

mariannbudde.com
penguinrandomhouse.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/how_we_learn_to_be_brave.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Much Ado About Numbers, by Rob Eastaway

Much Ado About Numbers

Shakespeare’s Mathematical Life and Times

by Rob Eastaway

The Experiment, 2024. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Allen & Unwin, 2024. 215 pages.
Review written January 13, 2025, from a book sent to me by the publisher.
2025 Mathical Book Prize Honor Book, High School

This is a book about math in Shakespeare’s life and writings, with all its interesting trivia.

I perhaps read the book too quickly. Trying to get through it, some of the facts seemed indeed trivial – but read as interesting tidbits, it’s quite a collection that makes you realize how much mathematics has changed in over three hundred years. I do think that folks obsessed with Shakespeare would get a bit more out of it than someone like me who’s obsessed with math – but at the same time, I hadn’t realized how Shakespeare lived just when the use of Arabic numerals – and the number zero – were becoming popular.

And math in the time of Shakespeare ended up having many side topics – words used for counting and measuring (“full fathom five,” “threescore and ten,” etc), games popular at the time, a list of how English shillings and crowns and other coins worked, navigation and maps, music, musical scales, and meter, astronomy, the colors of the rainbow, and even the Francis Bacon code which people try to use to show that he was the actual author of Shakespeare’s works.

I’ll confess, the book goes into a bit more detail than I really cared about. But this would be a fantastic reference for an author trying to write about Elizabethan times or fun for any Shakespearean enthusiast. Who knew that there was so much math in Shakespeare’s writings?

robeastaway.com
theexperimentpublishing.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/much_ado_about_numbers.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of Strength for My Path, by Maureen E. Wise

Strength for My Path

52 Devotions from the Hiking Trail

by Maureen E. Wise

BroadStreet, 2024. 176 pages.
Review written March 24, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Full disclosure: Maureen Wise introduced herself to me online after finding my Sondermusings Substack and Sonderjourneys blog, saying we seem to have a lot of views in common. I love finding kindred spirits online! Then she offered to introduce me to her agent – and her agent enthusiastically read the full manuscript of my Psalms book and told me she enjoyed reading it but couldn’t represent me because it was too similar to a book by one of her existing clients, and it wouldn’t be fair to her. But anyway, I’m always interested in books by kindred spirits – so I’d already ordered myself a copy of this book, and yes, was predisposed to like it. But liking it is not at all a stretch.

It’s a book of devotions – so it’s an encouraging way to start your morning – and they all relate to hiking in some way. For example, “The Washed-Out Path” is about how Jesus is with us when our life feels in need of repair. “An Unexpected Storm on the Trail” encourages you to think about God’s perspective when your plans go awry. “What God Sees in Canal Paths” talks about how old abandoned canal paths have been turned into hiking trails – and God recognizes that we are valuable and worthy of care and protection. “Not Only the Destination But Also the Journey” has a rather obvious life application beyond enjoying your hike not just for the panoramic vista at the end.

Every devotion takes up two small pages, followed by a page with a prayer and a “Nature Connection” – Background facts about the topic of the day – and super interesting wide-ranging tidbits are included here.

I have to also give a shout-out to the book’s design. It’s got a soft and flexible suede-like cover, a ribbon bookmark attached, and a small trim size that makes you want to tuck it in a backpack and bring it on a hiking journey. I am a hiking dabbler – I love hiking, but prefer day trips so short that I can carry everything I need in my pockets. I do look for short hikes when I go on vacation, and this book got me wanting to hit the trail.

And of course the highlight is the devotions. I enjoyed this daily reminder to connect with nature – and to connect what I see in nature with God. To give you a taste, here’s a bit from the first devotion, “Jesus Valued Time in Nature”:

Follow Jesus’ lead and pray in wild places too. We don’t have to meet God only in set-aside places such as churches, Bible study meetings, Sunday school, and prayer rooms. While these places and times are sacred and important, we can connect with God anywhere. He is everywhere, after all. By intentionally choosing outdoor spaces to pray and be with God, we can also connect with creation and reflect on faith topics in a different way. Away from distractions and our human-made structures, immersed in the beauty of creation, we can find a deeper intimacy with the Creator.

And this book made me want to go out and do just that.

maureenwisebooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/strength_for_my_path.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of The Joy Document, by Jennifer McGaha

The Joy Document

Creating a Midlife of Surprise and Delight

by Jennifer McGaha

Broadleaf Books, 2024. 196 pages.
Review written February 28, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com

When I saw the book The Joy Document, it was just after I had finished going through Champagne for the Soul, by Mike Mason, with my church small group. I’d previously gone through it in probably 2017 with a different small group – and it’s still my favorite book for small group study. It’s all about Joy – with 90 meditations for 90 days of looking for Joy, including a Bible verse about Joy on each day. Reading and discussing the book got my group noticing and talking about our Joys each week.

So when I saw The Joy Document, I thought, Wonderful! It’s a secular version of Champagne for the Soul! But I’m afraid it wasn’t that. So my expectations limited my appreciation a little bit.

What is it? Well, it’s also about noticing things in an ordinary life that surprise, delight, or intrigue you. The book is a collection of short essays – the kind I like to call “musings” about ordinary things. Yes, they left me smiling. And yes, I appreciate her practice of looking a little deeper at the details of life, finding her way to wonder.

And I think my favorite part was the list at the back of questions to ask in order to make your own Joy Document.

In fact, that helps me put my finger on what might be the difference between the two books. In Mike Mason’s book, every short entry, besides being about his experiences, was also about how the reader can apply the ideas. In this book, we got all fifty musings – and then at the end were ideas for applying the thoughts from the rest of the book.

But for both, the underlying thought is this: There are many reasons for Joy out there, if we will open our eyes to them.

And this book, too, helped me do just that.

jennifermcgaha.com
broadleafbooks.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/joy_document.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?

Review of That Librarian, by Amanda Jones

That Librarian

The Fight Against Book Banning in America

by Amanda Jones

Bloomsbury, 2024. 269 pages.
Review written February 22, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

That Librarian is Amanda Jones’ own story about speaking up against censorship in a meeting of her local public library board – and then relentlessly being hounded and harassed online afterward. She is a middle school librarian herself, and has won multiple awards for her work. And that fueled the flame of defamation, slander, and even death threats – the bullies said that because she’s against book bans, that makes her a purveyor of pornography to children.

I’d like to think that this is a problem mainly in red states. And, yes, the county where I work as a librarian consistently votes blue. But in view of things that have happened in the first month of the new administration, I have to take seriously this paragraph from page 5 of Project 2025:

Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual
liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

No, I don’t believe in giving pornography to children, and neither does Amanda Jones. But they’re defining pornography as any book that acknowledges that transgender people exist. Anything that portrays same-sex couples as having loving relationships. And if you allow those books – books that resonate with citizens in our communities, books about the loving families that reside there, books that help the marginalized feel seen – the bullies label you as a sex offender – which is what they did to Amanda Jones.

Her original speech at the library board meeting didn’t mention any specific books, nor were any mentioned by the library board – but because she spoke up against book banning, she was accused of being a danger to children and wanting to put books about sex into the hands of children. This about someone who has devoted her life to serving children.

Amanda made the difficult choice to sue the main instigators for defamation. The initial case was dismissed on the grounds that she’s a “public figure,” which seems silly, since she spoke in that meeting as a parent and as a member of the community. And I just looked up on google, and after two appeals, the Louisiana Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s decision, so her case will go forward. She’s not even suing them for damages. All she’s asking for is $1 and an apology – because you don’t get to make up lies about someone and try to destroy their life.

So all that is good news, and this book gives visibility to the more and more pervasive problem of people trying to restrict their public library’s collections to only books that they think are okay. Yes, there are books in the public library that I wouldn’t give to my own children when they were young. But that doesn’t mean I should keep your children from reading them. Here’s how Amanda Jones puts it:

Freedom and parental rights are a rallying cry, but the same people who say this are trying to take away the rights of young adult readers, their parents, and others. The people who say they are for small government are pushing governmental control over what we the people have access to, and not just children. We should ALL want the freedom to read what we want to read and have access to reading materials from a variety of viewpoints. Protecting our libraries is exactly how we do that. The attack on librarians and libraries is shameful and something everyone should fear. Once they destroy our libraries and schools, what will be next? Where will it end? We must continue to speak up. That’s all we can really do. We must stand up for what is right and good, regardless of what is said about us. The book banners, the people who attacked me for daring to disagree with them, wanted to silence me. I didn’t let them. I did the opposite. For the past year, I have agreed to almost every interview requested of me to help spread the word across the nation about what is happening in our libraries and to librarians. It has been exhausting, but necessary. I will continue to speak out when asked. We have to not just for the sake of libraries but for real freedom. Everyone who can needs to speak out on behalfof those who cannot. People who are rational need to take a stand against the irrational. We must do so with grace and truth, never stooping to the tactics the pro-censors use. We are the real patriots.

I do highly recommend this book to everyone to help understand those who are attacking public libraries and our first amendment rights. There’s a chapter at the end about what you can do in your own community to support your own libraries.

Thank you, Amanda Jones, for speaking up for the freedom to read!

No one on the right side of history has ever been on the side of censorship and hiding books.

bloomsbury.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/that_librarian.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

What did you think of this book?