How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World by Steven Johnson - ESSENTIAL

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How We Got To Now: Six Innovations That Made The Modern World by Steven Johnson, 152 pages. NON-FICTION. Viking (Penguin), 2018. $20

Language: G (0 swears); Mature Content: PG; Violence: G.

BUYING ADVISORY: EL, MS, HS - ESSENTIAL 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

This book is a young reader adaptation from a New York Times bestseller and covers the discoveries and innovations surrounding glass, cold, sound, cleanliness, time, and light. Each chapter covers one of these topics and includes a comprehensive history with the logistical details embedded in the timeline. The chapters also contain a number of photographs and illustrations. There are a lot of attention grabbing anecdotes in each section.  

My entire family loved this book. We jumped around the book, each taking a turn picking a topic, and learned a lot in the process. One of the anecdotes that we have retold to other people we read in the chapter on light and it tell the story of how whale oil was used to make cheaper candles. To get the oil, or spermaceti, they had to send a small person, often a child, inside the body of the whale to scoop out gallon after gallon of the substance. Gross. This would be a fun informational text to read aloud in a science, history, or English classroom.        


Jen Wecker, HS English Teacher
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