Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy by Nathan Hale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Sources: Okay, it was refreshing that Hale was honest about the use of secondary sources--even part of the book's charm. But his excuse just wasn't true:
Hale: These books are all secondary sources. Didn't you use any actual research documents, like newspapers and journals from the period?
Baby: No. The people at the library won't give us that stuff.
Hale: Why not?
Baby: Because we're babies!
Hale: Oh, right.
Baby: You need a college degree to get into the original documents.
Maybe the special collections libraries at universities are exclusive this way (not by possessing a degree, but by being enrolled), but most of the primary source documents anyone would ever need for Revolutionary War era research are available on the internet. To me this just seems lazy.
The comic relief gags to keep the narrative moving forward were corny yet entertaining. The drawings were crisp, realistic, and easy to look at. I like Hale's style. Hale cooperated with Chad Beckerman on the design, and acknowledged Matt Holm for some design tips.
The whole point of this is to be the lighter, engaging side of history so I was okay that it just glosses the high points of the plot while not delving into all the humanity. Leave that to another author and project.
The narrative history genre is great for presenting the broad outline of events and their connections in a memorable way.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment