Super Tiny, Super Big

Smash! : Exploring the Mysteries of the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider by Sara Latta
Minneapolis : Graphic Universe, [2017]
72 p. : chiefly ill. ; 24 cm.

This little comic book is more of an hors d'oeuvre than an entree, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Weighing in at a mere 72 pages, and managing to convey the amazing science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) without getting bogged down in its wild complexities, Latta has managed to create a work that should whet the reader's appetite to know more.   It did mine!

Though the story-line is a bit corny (a little youngish for high school) the science is admirable.  In one part of the book, in the space of just a couple pages she manages to cover most of the basics of the standard model: the six "flavors" of quarks,  six kinds of leptons, the four fundamental forces and the bosons associated with them - and, of course, the most famous triumph of the LHC, the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

It's nice to have a brief, very accessible book to recommend to a student who is not deep into advanced science, and yet wants to know about particle physics.  If you know such a student, Smash! might be just what they need.

Comic Wonders

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.
xiv, 410 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 25 cm.

This is an amazing book of history, culture, and biography.  Jill Lepore has used her research into the origins of the Wonder Woman comic character to present a rich history of US feminism, bohemianism, pop culture and alternative lifestyles.

Lepore's history has at it's heart, the creator of Wonder Woman, William Marston - scholar, psychologist, pro-feminist, huckster, man of secrets and passions.  The book begins with the early US feminist struggles for suffrage and birth control and brings the story up to the present.  We find out in the course of the book that the people involved in Wonder Woman's origins include the famous feminist, Margaret Sanger - and that Marston has legitimate claims to the invention of the "lie detector."

The book is a personal history of Marston the two women who lived with him most of their lives and who had children with him, a history of the phenomenal rise of comic books in the US [and the "moral" backlash against them], a glimpse into the period of WWI, WWII, and - of course - a history of the the US feminist movement in the 20th century.  There is a lot in this well-researched book.

I'd recommend this book for any student interested in the history of comic books, interested in the women's rights movement in the US, or interested in 20th century US history and culture. The main drawback for this book is that it's kind of long for a high school history book - but with it's index, it would serve well for any research projects.