Darryl Cunningham

This biography follows Vladimir Putin from his birth to sometime in 2021 (near the end, it's mentioned that this was being written while Alexei Navalny was still recovering from his 24-day hunger strike in prison).

As a graphic novel, this isn't particularly good. It's extremely text-heavy, with much of the artwork based on photographs from news articles and videos. Could this have been a short, text-only book? Probably. Still, the format makes it somewhat easier for folks (like me) who show more prefer to tackle their nonfiction in audio or graphic novel form to trick themselves into being less daunted by the content, so there's that.

This was not an easy read, and I could feel my hands shaking in anger during parts of it, particularly when I recalled the many instances of Trump praising Putin. This isn't something I'd recommend if you want to feel particularly positive about the next few years.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss.)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/smiteme/55090694078/in/dateposted/

As someone who's terminally online and follows the news pretty closely - especially since Trump 2.0 - much of what's in ELON MUSK: AMERICAN OLIGARCH didn't come as a surprise to me. Cunningham does good job of distilling Musk's childhood - including his gross family* - and rise to power into a few hundred illustrated pages. Sometimes I find text-heavy show more graphic novels to be a bit of a drag, but not so here.

By following Musk through his time at x.com/Paypal, then Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, Cunningham identifies some unifying themes, e.g. Musk's habit of buying companies and then taking credit for the innovations of others; making grand promises that he rarely fulfills; breaking things (and sometimes ruining and/or ending lives) with his childish impetuousness; and letting long-held, petty grudges drive his actions. And yet, thanks to a combination of white male privilege (including apartheid emerald mine money) and corporate welfare, Musk has amassed a fortune large enough to buy American elections. (Well, not all of them: AMERICAN OLIGARCH might have went to print before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, widely seen as a rebuke of billionaires mixing their money with our politics.)

While DOGE does get a cursory mention, I wish Cunningham had more thoroughly addressed what a complete an utter scam it was - how the "cuts" not only cost us money, but also (and very predictably) led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths globally, and were actually a pretext for stealing our data to both grow the surveillance state and overturn future elections.

Also, I'm a little bummed that this book wasn't a year later - then we'd have a final few pages about Musk's presence in the Epstein files, including an email sent on Christmas morning, 2012, asking if he has any ragers planned for the holidays: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OUKJb4W9tac

* Tbh, I think Maye Musk deserved more shade than she got. show less

Graphic novel, mostly two-tone with some in colour, biographies of the seven scientists, Antoine Lavoisier (the periodic table), Mary Anning (fossil finds), George Washington Carver (peanut man, crop rotation), Nikola Tesla (ac power), Alfred Wegener (continental drift), Joycelyn Bell Burnell (pulsars), and Fred Hoyle (stellar nucleosynthesis).
Quirky informative quick read. I particularly enjoyed reading about Fred Hoyle and his associations with other scientists arguing over the Big Bang. show more The book included not only the science but also some human aspects of the people, for example the flashes Tesla used to see before his eyes; the obstacle of being female Bell Burnell encountered; and how an Ealing film spurred the idea of a steady-state model of universe. show less

Vladimir Putin at heart is a gangster who would have been at home as a character on The Sopranos according to this biography. It's a laundry list of all the murders, false flag operations, political corruption, theft, conspiracies and wars it seems likely that Putin has masterminded in his life from KGB agent to Russian dictator.

The book is a little dry -- caption heavy with static art that mostly consists of floating heads -- but the litany of harm this man has done to the world is still show more stomach turning. In a dark coincidence, this book was basically published just as Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, so that chapter is missing. show less