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#5 Platform: The Influencing Machine
Jan. 29th, 2012 03:49 pmA graphic walkthrough for the media and its history.
Title: The Influencing Machine
Authors: Brooke Gladstone with Josh Neufeld
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Complaints about the media are pretty rife, in just about any time, it seems, along with a lot of misconceptions about how it's worked in the past. In this book, Gladstone sets out to try to address these problems with a historical overview of the topic, starting from the Mayans and the Romans, but mostly focusing on the US context through the years. Along the way, she goes through a good amount of history and historical figures (Jefferson definitely switched his views once he was in office, but still stayed in favor of a free press to the end), philosophers, and quotes from authors, journalists and poets about how they feel about the press. For a fairly short book, you come away feeling like you've picked up a lot on the topic.
Gladstone addresses a good amount about how people have felt about objectivity through the years, as compared to disclosure, discusses the different kinds of bias, talks about changes in how people have dealt with censorship, with covering wars, with changes in media, and other sorts of exciting topics. That was meant unsarcastically; I rather like discussions about media, so this was a good fit for me, but if you're not into the topic as a matter of general interest, this might still be a good book for you, and get you think about the topic.
I wasn't sure at the outset how well the graphic format would fit the discussion, but I've read a bunch of non-fiction comic setups through the years, and so I had an open mind about it. This actually was a nice hybrid; the pictures were crisp, well done, with the green tones making it feel somehow historic, and illustrated the point, or even carried it, sometimes, but there were also occasional pages of text to make the point where the pictures might have gotten in the way. In other words, the pictures and the words were both used quite judiciously.
On the whole, this was a really quite interesting book, if not super in depth, and a nice, fast and easy read. It's a worthy match for some of the other non-fiction comics I've read, like various books by Larry Gonick, for example, and I'm open to trying more of this sort of thing now.
Next up: Probably going to review the Magicians, before getting into the Magician King.
Title: The Influencing Machine
Authors: Brooke Gladstone with Josh Neufeld
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Complaints about the media are pretty rife, in just about any time, it seems, along with a lot of misconceptions about how it's worked in the past. In this book, Gladstone sets out to try to address these problems with a historical overview of the topic, starting from the Mayans and the Romans, but mostly focusing on the US context through the years. Along the way, she goes through a good amount of history and historical figures (Jefferson definitely switched his views once he was in office, but still stayed in favor of a free press to the end), philosophers, and quotes from authors, journalists and poets about how they feel about the press. For a fairly short book, you come away feeling like you've picked up a lot on the topic.
Gladstone addresses a good amount about how people have felt about objectivity through the years, as compared to disclosure, discusses the different kinds of bias, talks about changes in how people have dealt with censorship, with covering wars, with changes in media, and other sorts of exciting topics. That was meant unsarcastically; I rather like discussions about media, so this was a good fit for me, but if you're not into the topic as a matter of general interest, this might still be a good book for you, and get you think about the topic.
I wasn't sure at the outset how well the graphic format would fit the discussion, but I've read a bunch of non-fiction comic setups through the years, and so I had an open mind about it. This actually was a nice hybrid; the pictures were crisp, well done, with the green tones making it feel somehow historic, and illustrated the point, or even carried it, sometimes, but there were also occasional pages of text to make the point where the pictures might have gotten in the way. In other words, the pictures and the words were both used quite judiciously.
On the whole, this was a really quite interesting book, if not super in depth, and a nice, fast and easy read. It's a worthy match for some of the other non-fiction comics I've read, like various books by Larry Gonick, for example, and I'm open to trying more of this sort of thing now.
Next up: Probably going to review the Magicians, before getting into the Magician King.
