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Jennifer Wright Books

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“It’s easy to forget that people from the past weren’t the two-dimensional black-and-white photos or line drawings you might encounter in some dry textbooks. They weren’t just gray-faced guys in top hats. They were living, breathing, joking, burping people, who could be happy or sad, funny or boring, cool or the lamest people you ever met in your life. They had no idea they were living in the past. They all thought they were living in the present.”

HumansHumanityHuman NatureThe Past
Book:Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
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“Whether plagues are managed quickly doesn't just depend on hardworking doctors and scientists. It depends on people who like to sleep in on weekends and watch movies and eat French fries and do the fantastic common things in life, which is to say, it depends on all of us. Whether a civilization fares well during a crisis has a great deal to do with how the ordinary, nonscientist citizen responds. A lot of the measures taken against plagues discussed in this book will seem stunningly obvious. You should not, for instance, decide diseased people are sinners and burn them at a literal or metaphorical stake, because it is both morally monstrous and entirely ineffective. But them a new plague crops up, and we make precisely the same mistakes we should have learned from three hundred years ago.”

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Book:Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
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“In my favourite picture of them, Oskar is reading a letter while Olga ties his tie for him. His tie matches her dress. Both of them look kind of preoccupied. You don't look at this picture, as you might with Bride of the Wind, and think "what an amazing love scene". But I do not think in a million years, Oskar and Alma would have had that easy, couply familiarity. I would also point you to another wonderful picture, in which Olga seems to be speaking animatedly and Oskar is watching her, smiling. These are normal things. They are not as exciting as stormy, passionate affairs. But they are no less meaningful for being normal. Ultimately, I think instead of being swept up in sex-doll-beheading fury, most people would choose sitting around and eating rice pudding with someone they love and who loves them in return.”

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Book:It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History
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“Remember how much it upset people when we were told that Pluto wasn't a planet anymore? I'm still mad about that. The only thing I knew for sure about space was "the order of all the planets" (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas), and then that one bit of knowledge was ripped away from me. What mnemonic do kids even use now? I'm aware there are reasons Pluto was demoted, but in my heart, I do not care what Neil deGrasse Tyson says. (Even though I know in my mind he's right, in my heart, I feel he's wrong.)”

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Author:Jennifer Wright
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