The Alienist Recap

Historical fiction is her favorite genre. she is fascinated by history but sometimes non fiction history books are somewhat dry. as a writer she appreciates weaving a fictional storyline into historical events. It makes learning more interesting to her. she was especially fascinated by the authors description of living conditions at the turn of the century in New York City. Having grown up in the western united states she had no idea how difficult it was to live without water and in squalor. She read this book before she had been to New York City. Since then she has been there three times and have a richer understanding of the history of that amazing city. She knows that I am interested in forensics she thought that I would appreciate reading about the birth of forensics and find a deeper meaning than just the storyline. She hoped that I would go into the history an learn about the things that fascinated her.

The Alienist: Part Two

The rest of the book was quite gory and slightly interesting. After starting the investigation for the serial killer several other young boys had become victims. They had all been killed in the same brutal way as Giorgio. This led to further investigation to find out who was doing this to young boys and why. The search team started having meetings at Kreizler's apartment to figure out how they would capture this killer. They had figured out that it had to have been a man doing all of this because of the intensity of the crimes.

After researching previous killers they come across a man named John Beecham who fit the killer's profile perfectly. Sara and John, two people working on the investigation decide to look for Beecham in the United States Bureau of Census records and learn that he as worked as an enumerator. They then find one of his past addresses and go to visit the area. They discover that Beecham's old room still remains untouched and discover a mutilated and dead cat in his bedroom. This let them know that they were on the right track. That night the team thinks that Beecham must now work as either a bill collector or a process server and think of a list of organizations where her might be working.

Later in the week, Sara finds a clue and learns that Beecham has been working as a debt collector. The address that the firm provides is recent and everyone makes their way to investigate. When they arrive they realize that the place has been vacant for a few days but Beecham left behind some clues to where he might commit his next murder. He left a jar of eye balls from his victims, a map of the water system in New York, and a box containing the remains of a human heart. When John and Sara return to the headquarters they find a large sack outside the door with the murdered body of John's friend inside of it.

They take the clues they they found in Beecham's room and traced him to one spot and killed him. They performed an autopsy on Beecham but they find no physical brain degeneration and this helps to confirm Kreizler's theory of context. The book ends with them having dinner at Delmonico's.

The Alienist: Part One

The book that my mom chose for me was The Alienist by Caleb Carr which is narrated by John Moore, a crime reporter for The New York Times. The beginning chapter takes place on the day that Theodore Roosevelt is buried. After the funeral, Moore has dinner with the famous alienist, Laszlo Kreizler. During dinner they start to remember all their times with Roosevelt but focus on one moment during spring of 1896 where they put in effort to capture a serial killer in Manhattan. The book is mostly Moore talking about the happenings and how they had affect on later history.

Further into the book Moore is at his grandmother's and early in the morning around two in the morning he is woken up by one of Kreizler's servants banging on the door. Stevie, the servant, takes Moore to the scene of the crime. When Moore saw what had happened to the victim, he was horrified. The victim was Giorgio Santorelli, a 13-year old boy who has prostituted himself by dressing as a girl. His wrists are tied behind his back and he was left on his knees with his face pressed against the ground. His eyes were gouged out, his right hand was chopped off, his genitalia are cut off and stuffed into his mouth, he has massive gashes across his whole body, and his bottom is carved up. The policeman at the scene makes it clear that murders of such victims are usually ignored.

The Great Influenza- Recap

When I talked with my dad about this book we both seemed to find it to be very interesting with the way the influenza really took over the world, in a sense. However, he liked how it was written as more of a story because it gave you more of an image to think about while reading while I thought that the stories that were told really took away from the facts and made it more difficult to read. We also thought that it was interesting how the author decided to talk about if something along the lines of the 1918 influenza came back today how unprepared we would be and how history would repeat itself with how many people struggled and died during that time.

The Great Influenza- Part Two

The second half of this book was much like the first. It talked a lot about the research that everyone was doing to try to cure this flu and help stop so many people from dying.

The very last pages of the book were the most interesting parts, warning us about how unprepared we are today, if an influenza similar to the one in 1918 returned. For example, most of the flu vaccines are made outside of the United States; in an emergency, it's unlikely that the foreign suppliers would be able to share their drugs. And since treatments today are, in general, more effective, there is less room in a hospital for a massive epidemic.

Overall, I thought the book could have used some editing. There is way too much detail in places, to many repetitive examples, and too much "filler" language in the writing style. John M. Barry chose to write the book in more of a "story telling" way when I prefer to read more of the straight facts. Besides that, I learned a lot about medical history which is something I'm really interested in.

The Great Influenza- Part One

The first book I chose to read was The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry. I chose to break the book in half and write about each half.

I found the first half of the book to be very repetitive. It began with several universities being mentioned that partake in research of the great influenza. Throughout the next several chapters John informs you about the symptoms of the flu and how it was commonly mistaken for a regular cold.

This pandemic was present during World War I. From September 1917 to March 1918, before the influenza epidemic struck, pneumonia struck down 30,784 soldiers on American soil. It killed 5,741 of them.

In the first part we were also introduced to William Henry Welch, the single most powerful individual in the history of American medicine and John D. Rockefeller Jr who, with Welch, created the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now known as Rockefeller University in New York, New York), arguably the best scientific research institutions in the world.

I predict the second half of this book to be much like the first; full of information about how the flu was affecting the war and everyone else in the world.

Book Interview #2

I chose to interview my dad for my second influential person to interview. He is always listening to books on his iphone and also has a great taste in literature. When I went to talk to him and ask what books he would recommend me reading, he pulled up his itunes list and looked through every book he has. This included books about hiking, food, and everything in-between.

The Great Influenza was the book that I chose to read from him. It is all about the flu pandemic in the early 1900s which is really interesting to me. I really want to go into the medical field so I take every opportunity to learn something new within that field. I am really excited to read this book and follow up with my dad afterwards to see what he thought about it and compare.

Book Interview #1

My mom loves to read and belongs to a book club so I knew that she would have a list of a ton of amazing books that she would like to me read. During our conversation she mainly focused on one book that she really remembered being interesting to her. She couldn't remember the name of the book but could remember that it was about some murder that took place during the turn of the century in New York.

Being into forensics I thought that this book would be good for me. After a while of researching we learned that the book was called The Alienist and went to to the store to get the book right away. I am really excited to read this book because of what it's about and I know that my mom would only recommend a book if she really thought that I would be interested in it.