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Rippon delivers again with a moving and rigorous investigation of the science of autism, its history, and how the field has completely written out women. Rippon combines personal stories, historical sources, and scientific papers to interrogate how autism manifests differently in women and why they were originally ignored by the progenitors of the diagnosis, all the way down to female scientists who initially identified autism. Rippon doesn't shy away from the complexity of categorizing a plethora of phenomena under a single umbrella, and she directly considers the utility and harm of perpetuating that diagnosis. This book is also a master class in deeply considering how science, metrics, and data operate and how one needs to think systemically about these factors to do good science. Highly recommend

There's a lot of history to cover here, and Hwang sprints through antiquity before spending more time on eras where we have more historical data. I loved the analysis of the Three Kingdoms period, and the similar patterns one sees in early Japan are unmistakable. There's a lot of time spent on Korea's relationship with its neighbors and later the US, which provides excellent context for the state of the peninsula in the modern era. I do think this book could use a large expansion of the earlier chapters though. Still highly recommend

Today I read “A History of the Muslim World” by Michael Cook. This book is an absolute tome, but it’s written extremely well and provides a rigorous, academic, and engrossing dive into Muslim history. Cook goes on a methodical tour of the Muslim world, providing a historical overview of regions before their interaction with Islam, then reviewing and analyzing their history from that point until around 1800. Throughout Cook critical interrogates primary sources, being careful to point out when corroboration is weak. This is a big jump into Muslim history, but if you’re interested in the topic it’s a must read. Highly recommend

The chapters in this book on ancient Japan are fascinating - the archipelago was once attached via land bridge to Korea until extremely recently, and the analysis of Chinese reports that detail gender balanced leadership with copious tattoos (!) are enlightening. Post Nara period the history will be familiar to anyone familiar with Japanese history, although the sections on environmental changes in Japan are insightful. Highly recommend

The title of this book is an absolute banger, and the book itself more than lives up to that expectation. Starting with his own whistleblowing experience and progressing through some of bioethics' most important cases, Elliott shows how psychological, social, and institutional factors conspire to suppress action against unethical medical experimentation. There's ample skewering of the bioethics profession as well, with criticism centering on an overreliance on bureaucracy and formal processes despite their limited effectiveness. Much time is also spent on the personal toll whistleblowing takes. Be warned there are some extremely disturbing cases here, and Elliott doesn't shy away from the details. I do wish there was some examination of cases from non-Western countries, as cultural expectations form the heart of many problems examined here. Highly recommend