Mishehu’s Reviews > Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science > Status Update

"At the same time, they elicited fears that we might calculate everything and ourselves to death without emerging from all the data-mining any wiser in the end." And...: Drink!

She didn't just write "...poke the bear of our imagination," did she. (Checks the book.) Yes, she did. So much lousy phrase-turning. So many insipid observations. (Note: I've decided that Goodreads progress check-ins will serve as a kind of reader self-therapy in the days ahead; anything to get me through this...)

I never do these mid-read check-ins, but I'm so disappointed in this one so far that I feel compelled to sound the alarm. Just finished the intro. Reads like it was written by a precocious high school student. Professional historian of science? Seriously!?

I can't believe what a completely mediocre piece of writing this is so far. Princeton University Press? Seriously? I have the sinking feeling the jacket blurbs are pure hyperbole (friends or former teachers of the author perhaps?). I can only hope the book improves as Canales plumbs the depths of her topic. But I'm not holding my breath. Such an unpromising start. Really shocking.