Close Calls by Michael P. Spradlin

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Fascinating information about our country’s past presidents!
Thanks to NetGalley And Bloomsbury Publishing for the opportunity to read and review Close Calls by Michael P. Spradlin.
A collection of short stories describes how eleven of past United States presidents escaped “from the brink of death”. The book begins with the threats to George Washington and continues throughout the centuries to the first President Bush. It seems that we learn about the assassinations only but never the attempts that aren’t successful or the other dangers presidents have been in. I never realized that JFK almost died in a boat crash while serving during World War II just as I hadn’t realized how many death threats President Lincoln received. Fascinating information and snippets of facts sprinkled throughout the book make it an interesting nonfiction read. 5 stars!

Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds by Ian Wright

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Fascinating Facts!
Thanks to Granta Books, The Experiment and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World by Ian Wright.
Sections include people and populations, politics, power, and religion, culture and customs, friends and enemies, geography, history, national identity, crime and punishment, and nature. This book is full of maps, of course, but also trivia. The author has created maps for just about everything you can possibly think of, such as what countries drive on the wrong side of the road, generate nuclear power, population comparisons and some I’ve never thought of or known about, like which countries use a comma or point to separate decimals. I had no idea that anyone used commas as a decimal separator. The map of countries showing McDonald’s is jaw-dropping since McDonald’s restaurants are almost everywhere in the world! Longest place names fascinated me as well as the map showing Vikings’ raids and settlements. The weirdest map to me is of the world’s time zones which zig-zags everywhere. Brilliant Maps promises to be an interesting book and it delivers, 5 stars!

 

Fake News: Separating Truth from Fiction

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Useful and necessary guide to sorting through what’s real and what isn’t!
Thanks to Lerner Publishing Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Fake News: Separating Truth From Fiction by Michael Miller!
This helpful guide to fake news and what to watch out for covers the basics and more! Explanations and descriptions of real news and fake news help us to see that fictional information can be harmful and how to tell what’s real from what isn’t real. Fake news isn’t a new idea created from social media; it dates back to Ancient Rome. Propaganda is a way to spread false information and fake news and it was well used by Hitler during World War II. To keep your intake of information on the real side, there are certain things you can watch out for, such as exaggerated claims, misspellings in URLs and only using a single source for information. Snopes is a great site for checking questionable news posts and PolitiFact is available to check political news for truthfulness. Everyone can help the spread of fake news by checking for reliability and trustworthiness of posts before sharing. 5 stars for this beneficial guide to fake news!