George O'Connor

Part of what makes this series so awesome is all the extras: bibliography, easter eggs, annotations, a family tree, but also, comments on how he made the decisions he did about which version of which story to tell. Not everyone is fascinated by process, but for educational purposes, reflecting on how stories are told is important. It's useful to the kid who might consider a career as a writer of some kind, as well as to those interested in scholarship of almost any kind: literature, history, show more religion, anthropology. Surely one of the first questions facing any creator is "What would I do differently?" One can simply attempt to copy what one likes, but the more you know about how it is done, the farther along you can jump. If I had my way every book would come with just as much documentation as the creators can include. White space is a valid choice, but blank pages just sitting there because that's how books are assembled: no thanks!

Library copy show less

I don't know if I've ever read a non-fiction comic like this before, and I have to say: it was a really good way to keep me interested in the topic. There was one section in the middle especially that I don't think I would have kept reading if this book was written in traditional prose format. It was just too dark (appropriate, since it was largely about dark money in campaign finance) and depressing—but the comic format kept me reading where prose would not.

It does get a bit heavy-handed show more in places, and I haven't yet done any additional research to determine if I feel this was appropriate to the reality, or extreme. If it's all true and unembellished, then the state of our government is even more depressing than I had realized.

Luckily, there is a section at the end that focus on what we can do next. I think ending this book without some action items and steps to fix it would have left me feeling sad and upset, but ending with a chapter that summarizes the next steps touched on in previous chapters—and expanding them, as well as adding new things—ends the book on a positive note with at least a touch of hope. I also really appreciate the list of sources cited, and the index. I wasn't expecting that, given the comic format, but it's going to be really helpful when I revisit some of the ideas and action items listed here. show less

One of those books you read to make yourself mad and sad as you try to convince yourself to finally get off your fat ass and act. The author is open about his biases and makes reasonable cases for his diagnoses and solutions. He might even be able to sway some folks who aren't too deeply embedded in Trumpism, though probably not.

At times the Koch Brothers stuff, based on the book Dark Money, sounds as wild as the George Soros/Bill Gates conspiracy theories always being tossed around by show more conservatives on social media and Fox News reader comments. I should probably read that book.

This book works best when it offers concrete solutions to election reform, though it seemed contradictory to move away from "winner takes all" elections at the local and state level with ranked choice and proportional representation while pushing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for presidential elections.

Anyway, interesting ideas are offered in an introductory way, but will require additional research to fully get behind.

Regardless, I'm behind voting Trump out of office in November and reforming the mess we've gotten into. show less

George O'Connor wraps up his wonderful series about the gods of Greek mythology with a solid entry about the origin of the god of wine and disorder. Dionysos has an LGBTQIA+ spin, raised as a girl and as a boy and later having male and female lovers. He's also a populist demigod, gathering followers with wine and trying to wave of success to a full seat on Mount Olympus.

It's interesting to pick out elements common to the Gilgamesh epic and Christianity and find the through-line or continuity show more to some of humanity's beliefs. show less