Description
Starred Review. Since 1971 Gonick has been writing and drawing his highly entertaining Cartoon Guides, popularizing an extraordinary array of subjects, including genetics, physics, and even sex. Picking up where his most celebrated work, the multivolume Cartoon History of the Universe, left off, Gonick has now undertaken to cover the modern world. Though Europe is his focus, Gonick commendably devotes considerable attention and empathy to the native peoples of India and the Americas. He irreverently undercuts commonly accepted historical myths: for example, Gonick persuasively and humorously depicts Columbus as utterly hapless in dealing with other people, whether native Americans or his own crew. He also presents serious themes, tracing a history of religious intolerance and amoral quests for power and wealth, repeatedly resulting in mass slaughters. Gonick points to visionaries who saw beyond the prejudices of their times, focusing particularly on the Dutch Republic as a forerunner of American liberty. Gonick usually draws his figures in appealingly cartoony style, but will surprise readers with his occasional ventures into realism. Readers will be impressed by the scope of Gonick’s research, covering subjects from Shakespeare, Galileo and Machiavelli to the Reformation and the American Revolution. (Jan.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Grade 9 UpAn award-winning author presents a hilarious and informative survey of modern history. The book actually begins with an impressive 15-page distillation of pre-Columbian America; and while Europe and North America receive most of the attention, Gonick does include at least some highlights from other parts of the world. Covering such topics as the Protestant Reformation, the British defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Copernican model of the universe, and the American Revolution, he writes and draws with considerable wit and authority, and is obviously well versed in his subject. A good example of his cleverness appears at the book’s outset, where he summarizes our knowledge of the first Americans who “arrived 12-, 15-, or 30,000 years ago, by land or by sea, from Siberia or somewhere else. They killed all the mastodons, ground sloths, and saber-toothed tigers, or else the big animals died of climate change.” In the accompanying drawing, a man says to a serpent, “That much is almost certain.” It is even more certain that most readers will enjoy this fun-filled trek through time.Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
