Jonathan Hennessey
Author of The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
Works by Jonathan Hennessey
Alexander Hamilton: The Graphic History of an American Founding Father (2017) — Author — 164 copies, 4 reviews
The Comic Book Story of Beer: The World's Favorite Beverage from 7000 BC to Today's Craft Brewing Revolution (2015) — Author — 154 copies, 5 reviews
The Comic Book Story of Video Games: The Incredible History of the Electronic Gaming Revolution (2017) — Author — 122 copies, 7 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Hennessey, Jonathan
- Birthdate
- 1971
- Gender
- male
- Short biography
- Jonathan Hennessey is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. His muse is American History.
Jonathan became a "born again" devotee of history during a cross country bicycle trip in 1995, when he and a friend found themselves inadvertently tracing a route of important John Brown sites such as Harper's Ferry, WV, Sharpsburg, MD, and North Elba, NY. He thought he'd had a workable Civil War education up until that point. But just a nickel's worth of further research uncovered how little he really understood. He does not expect to be able to complete his education in this lifetime.
Jonathan is howlingly untalented at drawing yet swoons in the presence of great illustration. His only hope to work in the graphic novel format was to find some way to make someone who could actually draw perform reasonably close to his bidding. He is a longtime collaborator with Aaron McConnell
In addition to writing, Hennessey has worked in production and development in the film and television industry. He has appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show and guest-blogged for the National Constitution Society. Jonathan was born on a U.S. Army base in Massachusetts, grew up in New England, and currently lives with his wife and family in California. [adapted from Amazon.com Author Page, retrieved 10/20/2014] - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
The Comic Book Story of Video Games: The Incredible History of the Electronic Gaming Revolution by Jonathan Hennessey
A lot of interesting facts and stories are to be had here, but one must excavate them from the cruddy art and writing in this borderline one-star book. A stronger editorial hand was needed to address the huge problems with structure, consistency, pacing and quality.
My favorite moments of awfulness:
* The author cites Moore's law frequently throughout the book but never fully defines it.
* The author writes, "What in shorthand we refer to as 'the Sixties' was a complicated time. Urges to show more simplify and reduce them to a thumbnail sketch ought to be resisted," as an introduction to his simplified thumbnail sketch of the Sixties.
* The author decides to refer to all video game programmers and hardware engineers as hackers for a few dozen pages as he declares, "The technology was conceived and intended only for military, scientific, government, and industry use. So video games are themselves a 'hack!'"
* In a book with 99.9% original art, the artist recycles two panels for completely inexplicable reasons. See the angry woman in a car on pages 33 and 40 and the unnamed video game character (?) on pages 64 and 66.
* After spending about 160 pages covering 60 years, the last 20 years are dismissed in a mere ten pages. I guess there haven't been a lot of advances in video games since 2000 beyond Minecraft and Angry Birds. Go figure. show less
My favorite moments of awfulness:
* The author cites Moore's law frequently throughout the book but never fully defines it.
* The author writes, "What in shorthand we refer to as 'the Sixties' was a complicated time. Urges to show more simplify and reduce them to a thumbnail sketch ought to be resisted," as an introduction to his simplified thumbnail sketch of the Sixties.
* The author decides to refer to all video game programmers and hardware engineers as hackers for a few dozen pages as he declares, "The technology was conceived and intended only for military, scientific, government, and industry use. So video games are themselves a 'hack!'"
* In a book with 99.9% original art, the artist recycles two panels for completely inexplicable reasons. See the angry woman in a car on pages 33 and 40 and the unnamed video game character (?) on pages 64 and 66.
* After spending about 160 pages covering 60 years, the last 20 years are dismissed in a mere ten pages. I guess there haven't been a lot of advances in video games since 2000 beyond Minecraft and Angry Birds. Go figure. show less
The Comic Book Story of Beer: The World's Favorite Beverage from 7000 BC to Today's Craft Brewing Revolution by Jonathan Hennessey
Many thanks to NetGalley and Ten Speed Press for a digital Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for my review.
Don't let the fun comics format lull you into thinking this is simply a light romp about drinking beer. Sure, that may be where it starts, but it is so much more. This is a history book, complete with footnotes and references (a few are in the book, but the full list of chapter notes can be found on their website) and an index! Not only will you be entertained, you will be educated. This show more is a history class you wish you had in college. Like a good brewery tour, you will learn about the process of making beer, though an even more detailed account. But that's only the beginning.
My favorite way to study history is take a topic and follow it over time and throughout a geographic area, noting its cultural, religious, and economic impact. Beer makes a good such focal point because it has been around (in one form or another) for millennia, and is drunk the world over. (Also, I'm a big fan, and can be rather beer-snobish.) "Around the globe, people consume more beer than coffee, wine, and even Coca-cola."
Yet, the industry as we know it today, is vastly different than it has been over time. "For nearly all of human history, brewing and serving beer has been an almost exclusively female enterprise!" In ancient Summaria, the goddess of beer, Ninkasi, was worshiped for bringing this sweet nectar to the people. Only a few centuries ago, "Beer made a decided emergence from the kitchen. Brewing became a male business that generated manly profits. In large part, women were squeezed out. Ninkasi would have wept. The death knell had sounded for the millennia-old tradition of Alewives and Brewsters."
The basic ingredients of beer today have been the same for centuries, but the addition of hops was no less than revolutionary. The preservative qualities meant that consumption did not need to happen within a week or so, but the drink could be stored for longer times, and therefore shipped beyond the immediate brewing area. A current beer trend is to play with the flavors, varieties, and intensity ("an arms race with hops"), but hops is frequently an acquired taste. In fact, "for most of beer's history, adding hops would have been about as common and acceptable as using, say, asparagus, as a flavoring." (For those with allergies, beer without hops can be found, though you may need to do some searching.)
The second half of the book focuses on the US. Even the pilgrims were fans of beer, but the country (officially) went dry during prohibition. During that time, alcohol manufacturers had to find other products to produce ("some breweries turned to making ice cream”), but the smaller companies weren’t able to last. After prohibition was repealed -- during your next argument over who may claim the Greatest President title, keep in mind that "newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt proposed to immediately reauthorize the manufacture and sale of beer” -- the largest surviving breweries got even bigger, and began to compete within a narrow flavor profile. “The desires of American drinkers led them to the same sort of product: inoffensive, mass-produced blonde, light-bodied, 'drinkable' lagers with little or no cumulative bitterness.” American Lagers are often snubbed by today’s craft beer drinkers, yet “remains the most widely consumed beers brewed in the world.” It may be no coincidence that it pairs well with "hot dogs, peanuts, and cracker jacks.” (And, perhaps, apple pie?)
Despite this being the vast majority of beer consumed today, there have always been those on the fringes who seek something different, something unusual. Even during the mid-1400s -- when Bavarian purity laws began to require that beer could be made with nothing other than water, barley, hops (and yeast) -- there were “home brewers [who] experimented with a variety of ingredients." Today’s craft beer movement was born “in reaction to American Lager's ubiquity,” and has exponentially increased the number of producers. Post prohibition, but before home brewing was again legal in the US, “American breweries fell to an all-time low of just 44 breweries." Just 36 years later, “there are over 3,200 breweries in the U.S. And more than 2,000 are reported to be in planning!” Craft-beer drinkers may be in the minority, but, along with modern home brewers, we are driving an expansion of the market. “Brewers discovered that some American drinkers were willing to pay top dollar for handmade, flavorful, premium beer,” a fact which has led to us creating “a wider diversity of beers than any other nation in the world.”
Since I working in a library where there is an amazing collection of reading material available at no charge (not counting late fees), I rarely buy books. But I enjoyed this book so much, it is one of my exceptions for this year. I picked up my own copy at a local bookstore so I could bring it to show off at Bier Klasse and loan to friends. (I may even buy copies as gifts.)
Read this book with your favorite brew (perhaps one mentioned in the story), and with your next beer, raise your glass to Ninkasi! show less
Don't let the fun comics format lull you into thinking this is simply a light romp about drinking beer. Sure, that may be where it starts, but it is so much more. This is a history book, complete with footnotes and references (a few are in the book, but the full list of chapter notes can be found on their website) and an index! Not only will you be entertained, you will be educated. This show more is a history class you wish you had in college. Like a good brewery tour, you will learn about the process of making beer, though an even more detailed account. But that's only the beginning.
My favorite way to study history is take a topic and follow it over time and throughout a geographic area, noting its cultural, religious, and economic impact. Beer makes a good such focal point because it has been around (in one form or another) for millennia, and is drunk the world over. (Also, I'm a big fan, and can be rather beer-snobish.) "Around the globe, people consume more beer than coffee, wine, and even Coca-cola."
Yet, the industry as we know it today, is vastly different than it has been over time. "For nearly all of human history, brewing and serving beer has been an almost exclusively female enterprise!" In ancient Summaria, the goddess of beer, Ninkasi, was worshiped for bringing this sweet nectar to the people. Only a few centuries ago, "Beer made a decided emergence from the kitchen. Brewing became a male business that generated manly profits. In large part, women were squeezed out. Ninkasi would have wept. The death knell had sounded for the millennia-old tradition of Alewives and Brewsters."
The basic ingredients of beer today have been the same for centuries, but the addition of hops was no less than revolutionary. The preservative qualities meant that consumption did not need to happen within a week or so, but the drink could be stored for longer times, and therefore shipped beyond the immediate brewing area. A current beer trend is to play with the flavors, varieties, and intensity ("an arms race with hops"), but hops is frequently an acquired taste. In fact, "for most of beer's history, adding hops would have been about as common and acceptable as using, say, asparagus, as a flavoring." (For those with allergies, beer without hops can be found, though you may need to do some searching.)
The second half of the book focuses on the US. Even the pilgrims were fans of beer, but the country (officially) went dry during prohibition. During that time, alcohol manufacturers had to find other products to produce ("some breweries turned to making ice cream”), but the smaller companies weren’t able to last. After prohibition was repealed -- during your next argument over who may claim the Greatest President title, keep in mind that "newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt proposed to immediately reauthorize the manufacture and sale of beer” -- the largest surviving breweries got even bigger, and began to compete within a narrow flavor profile. “The desires of American drinkers led them to the same sort of product: inoffensive, mass-produced blonde, light-bodied, 'drinkable' lagers with little or no cumulative bitterness.” American Lagers are often snubbed by today’s craft beer drinkers, yet “remains the most widely consumed beers brewed in the world.” It may be no coincidence that it pairs well with "hot dogs, peanuts, and cracker jacks.” (And, perhaps, apple pie?)
Despite this being the vast majority of beer consumed today, there have always been those on the fringes who seek something different, something unusual. Even during the mid-1400s -- when Bavarian purity laws began to require that beer could be made with nothing other than water, barley, hops (and yeast) -- there were “home brewers [who] experimented with a variety of ingredients." Today’s craft beer movement was born “in reaction to American Lager's ubiquity,” and has exponentially increased the number of producers. Post prohibition, but before home brewing was again legal in the US, “American breweries fell to an all-time low of just 44 breweries." Just 36 years later, “there are over 3,200 breweries in the U.S. And more than 2,000 are reported to be in planning!” Craft-beer drinkers may be in the minority, but, along with modern home brewers, we are driving an expansion of the market. “Brewers discovered that some American drinkers were willing to pay top dollar for handmade, flavorful, premium beer,” a fact which has led to us creating “a wider diversity of beers than any other nation in the world.”
Since I working in a library where there is an amazing collection of reading material available at no charge (not counting late fees), I rarely buy books. But I enjoyed this book so much, it is one of my exceptions for this year. I picked up my own copy at a local bookstore so I could bring it to show off at Bier Klasse and loan to friends. (I may even buy copies as gifts.)
Read this book with your favorite brew (perhaps one mentioned in the story), and with your next beer, raise your glass to Ninkasi! show less
Wow. This was a very informative book. To honor the subject of this book, I'd crack a cold one every time I'd crack this book open. The format of graphic novel enhanced the storytelling; I don't always think a book needs to be a graphic novel, but the illustration of a story certainly brings a poetic -- and at times, dramatic -- angle. I did not see the poetic punch coming until the very end, but it landed, nonetheless. Would you believe me if I admitted that I cried reading a book about show more beer? Probably, since we're friends on GoodReads and it isn't below me to cry (despite my insistence that "I don't often cry") and so you know I read weird shit like a comic book about beer or a history book about color. Anyway. Totally great book. show less
I have not seen the Hamilton musical but have heard good things about it. It seems like half the country is talking about Hamilton. When I saw this graphic history of his life, I figured it was time to learn about Hamilton.
I enjoy reading graphic novels and nonfiction. I find that the drawings usually add to the text. I enjoyed the artwork here, although at times I felt that all the people in the book looked angry. Several times they seemed to be glaring at me from the page.
My favorite part show more of the book was Alexander's childhood. Very interesting, and my heart broke for the way he was treated by his relatives. He really pulled himself out of a bad situation. I was very impressed by his dedication to getting an education and bettering himself.
I learned a lot about history that I didn't know before. Getting the story behind the facts is really interesting and makes history come alive. Towards the end of the book, the facts were flying fast and furious, and it was hard to keep up with all of them. I would have liked more explanations and more of a "storyline." I think the reason I was so drawn to the first half was there was more of a narrative, and I felt for the people. The last half of the book was presented so matter of factly that it was hard to feel anything for them. Some of the humanity was lost.
I received a free review copy from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion. show less
I enjoy reading graphic novels and nonfiction. I find that the drawings usually add to the text. I enjoyed the artwork here, although at times I felt that all the people in the book looked angry. Several times they seemed to be glaring at me from the page.
My favorite part show more of the book was Alexander's childhood. Very interesting, and my heart broke for the way he was treated by his relatives. He really pulled himself out of a bad situation. I was very impressed by his dedication to getting an education and bettering himself.
I learned a lot about history that I didn't know before. Getting the story behind the facts is really interesting and makes history come alive. Towards the end of the book, the facts were flying fast and furious, and it was hard to keep up with all of them. I would have liked more explanations and more of a "storyline." I think the reason I was so drawn to the first half was there was more of a narrative, and I felt for the people. The last half of the book was presented so matter of factly that it was hard to feel anything for them. Some of the humanity was lost.
I received a free review copy from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest opinion. show less
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