The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2 From The Bastille to Baghdad by Larry Gonick

The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part 2 From The Bastille to Baghdad by Larry Gonick

This book is the final book in a long running series of cartoon histories by Larry Gonick. I remember reading the first one when I was in high school. They made history very entertaining. The cartoons drawn by Larry Gonick did not leave out the juicy parts of history; intrigue, thievery, murder, affairs, and human foibles that were not often in the high school textbooks. The way he describes history leaves no group spared. He is out to expose humanity in all its glory from every corner of the globe.

I found the first half of the History of the Modern World to be better than the latter half of the book. Larry Gonick seems to do a better job with the older history. I think this is because he uses a lot of primary source material. History before World War I is less open to interpretation, partially because most of the people from that time period are dead. The second half of the book includes many people who are still alive.

There is a definite slant to the left in this book, especially in his coverage of the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. However, he does not spare any group when he writes about them. He writes about China, Indonesia, France, Austria, the United States, Nigeria, the Congo, Colombia, and places all over the globe. He attempts to skewer every group when he does his cartoons.

His description of the cold war is different than most. He describes it in a much larger historical perspective which springs from colonialism and earlier history. His take on Russia, China, and the United States is quite interesting. There is quite a bit on the rivalry between Mao and Stalin. Neither communism nor capitalism are spared for their philosophical background.

The subjects in this book are quite diverse, they cover the globe, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Japan, the end of the slave trade, Napoleon Bonaparte, Stalin, Nixon, World War II, the war in Afghanistan, and many other subjects are covered. He tends to focus on specific incidents where great personages are involved in conflict. This makes the story interesting. The book is meant to be an overview not in depth coverage.

The drawings are in black and white with a traditional panel layout. Many of the panels are annotated and there is a lot of dialogue between historical figures. This often includes historical quotes portrayed in a humorous manner. In addition to larger page layouts, he sometimes include smaller stretches of the panels covering a short incident during a historical time period at the bottom of the pages. Absolutely everything is backed up with an extensive bibliography which includes primary source material and classic historical texts.

There is also an extensive index. The cartooning is excellent. Between chapters he uses the device of a time machine and a professor to explain some of his decisions in cartooning each chapter. The Cartoon History of the Universe Part III won the Harvey Award for comics which is very prestigious in the comics industry. Larry Gonick has also written a wide variety of nonfiction cartoon books, The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, The Cartoon Guide to Sex, The Cartoon History of the United States, and many others. His website is at http://www.larrygonick.com/

Daily Thoughts 1/14/2010

Domenico Fetti, Archimedes Thoughtful 1620

Daily Thoughts 1/14/2010

I'm off today, I watched Terminator 3 Salvation on dvd which was relaxing. I also finished reading Choosing Civility.

I also registered for Book Expo America today.

Right now, I am reading The Cartoon History of the Modern World Part II: From the Bastille to Baghdad by Larry Gonick. Larry Gonick writes nonfiction cartoon books including The Cartoon History of the United States, The Cartoon Guide to Physics, The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry, and The Cartoon Guide to Sex. All of his books include indexes and complete bibliographies. I have read The Cartoon History of the Universe Part I, II, and III and enjoyed all of them.

Thes Cartoon History books include are very wide ranging and cover all the different parts of the world; Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North and South America. They are not politically correct and do not gloss over the darker aspects of history like the opium wars, the slave trade, the partitioning of Africa, and the various dalliances and quirks of world leaders. There are a lot of jokes and light humor throughout.

Cartoon History of the Universe And Link Dropping

Right now, I just finished looking at a book which I received as a present, The Cartoon History of the Universe III From The Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance by Larry Gonick. This is a long running "graphic novel" which is about history. What is nice about these cartoons is that they are very open ended and try be comprehensive on which people they cover. The section on Islam for example covers the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Eurasia like Turkey. The humor is slightly irreverent throughout the comic and draws you in well. The history seems to be accurate. The cartoon book has an extensive bibliography, a list of names from history, and an index. I remember reading the smaller comic books when I was a child of six years old. They were were my fathers comics.

Apparently, what I am doing is link dropping, which is the thruth. It has been a more effective strategy than using search engines. I got exactly two hits from Google Blog Search, one was for the book Un Lun Dun, the other was for the Wizard of the Crow. When I look at the free hit counter I am using from hitcounterguru, there is no activity from keywords, just forums and usenet groups. I would have to add my site to a spam style free search engine to get better results from keywords. I would rather be labelled a link dropper than a spammer. On that thought, I looked at the requirements for being listed in DMOZ, a nonprofit directory. One of the requirements is that you not have too many external links, so I think I'll pass with this one.





I was looking at the top ten keyword sets on searchenginewatch, it is quite funny. Almost everything is commercial, the word book or literature isn't even on the site list. Maybe if I talked about myspace.com, cnn, pizza hut, or yahoo 360, I would be on the list of interesting sites.





So I guess I must mention that I like CNN, it is the most read news site. I read it sometimes in the morning along with Yahoo News, something which isn't even mentioned. The only time I watch the news is when I am at the laundromat, I would much rather read it online just when it has come off the wire. If you wait even a single day, the news article gets objected to by some group or other and gets homogenized. It takes about a day from when something is released to the Associated Press to reach the print newspapers. This gives plenty of times for the editors to change the news so it doesn't offend anyone. We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media we have a homogenized media.





Now the second thing I should mention is myspace.com, it is a ubiquitous web site, one of the top ten in use in the United States. I was looking at the Philip Jose Farmer, http://www.pjfarmer.com/ website, one of the truly great science fiction writers, he has a http://www.myspace.com/pjfarmer link which has his personal information and links to him. Philip Jose Farmer is well worth reading. I was actually looking for what his signature looked like on the site.

Myspace.com is probably a site traffic magnet. Somehow, I think I'll take a pass. Although, I am wondering if I posted myself as an African Bull Elephant it might attract attention to this site in a kind of Barnum and Bailey style.
http://www.myspace.com/bullelephant

Now that I have added a link to an important Myspace site, I will further my keyword research by adding a string of the most used keywords in the Label for this Post.

I went and found some more blog search engines to add my site to: myblog2u.com, blogsearch.com, icerocket.com, boingboing.net, Read A Blog, Blog Pulse, and Blog Rolling.com. Boing Boing. net is a truly wonderful site with lots of strange things on it like collapsible paper rocket ships and other oddities. Cory Doctorow, the science fiction writer, is the main editor and poster for the site.

I also took some time to go back through search engine watch and find some more places to apply for a URL entry. These were MSN Live, Search King, and Best of the Web Blogs. I am not really that much of a technical person. Some places gave me the option of pinging my site to other blog search engines. I must have done it from three different places.

It is really up to the editors to decide whether they like what I wrote. This is a really unpredictable thing in my opinion. A lot of writers and editors are really quirky and interesting people. Every editor is looking for slightly different things depending on the guidelines which are presented to them by their employers.

Something you may consider if you are planning a book talk is to have an editor talk instead. Authors are very interested in hearing what it takes to get published, or how people choose which books to publish. Sometimes, if you are very lucky, you can get an editor who also has written a number of books.