What We Ask Google by Simon Rogers

WHAT WE ASK GOOGLE by Simon Rogers is subtitled “A Surprisingly Hopeful History of Humankind.” Rogers, Google’s data editor, does tend to adopt a more positive perspective in recounting examples of questions sent to Google. In particular, he points to patterns – whether daily (like getting a baby to sleep at 2am) or more seasonally (search for “comfort food” in October and other recipe requests around Thanksgiving and December holidays). Many of his comments are extolling the Google Trends dataset; being curious, I tired looking at Google Trends, but most of the current queries were related to sports scores or another aspect of popular culture. Publishers Weekly called WHAT WE ASK GOOGLE “a fun if shallow tour of the modern world’s most burning questions.” That is a fair assessment, but there are some surprising anecdotes and memorable graphs included in WHAT WE ASK GOOGLE. For example, Rogers says that half of the top “how to learn …” searches in the US are about language and the most often translated word across all languages is “beautiful.” In another chapter, he notes that “one in every twenty Google searches is for health-related information.” And he stresses repeatedly how search seems to show our need to help others, such as in the chapter on grief where people ask what to say to someone who is grieving. There is an opportunity to dig deeper: a little over fifteen percent of the text is devoted to notes and sources.

The Power of Geography by Tim Marshall

THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY by Tim Marshall (most recently The Age of Walls) is another entry in his series on the politics of place. In this latest text, Marshall discusses “Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World.” In THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY he looks to the future and focuses on regions as disparate as Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Spain. As with Australia, Marshall provides a bit of history (e.g., penal colony; world’s sixth largest country), notes some ongoing challenges (e.g., climate change means increased risk of heat waves, droughts, and forest fires; plus rising sea levels), and diplomatic issues (e.g., proximity to China; difficulty defending such a long coastline and potential for further cyberattacks). His section on Space is likely to be of high interest to our students. There, he stresses the need for cooperation and in other chapters also discusses political ramifications for areas like Iran, Greece, Turkey and the Sahel which stretches across a dozen countries in northern Africa. THE POWER OF GEOGRAPHY received a starred review from Booklist. Written and published in 2021, it failed to address the war in Ukraine, something which I vividly remember being predicted at a lecture I attended at Stanford University roughly a decade ago. Marshall, though, has analyzed that ongoing tension in a previous books (Prisoners of Geography has a chapter on Russia) and in more recent articles like this one in New Statesman. 

Girlhood by Masuma Ahuja

Today is International Women’s Day and that prompted me to post a review for GIRLHOOD: TEENS AROUND THE WORLD IN THEIR OWN VOICES by Masuma Ahuja. The voices range from Alejandra who is 17 in Argentina to Viona, 15, in Kenya. In between are teen girls from India, Iraq, Mongolia, South Africa, Sweden and more for a total of 30 girls from 27 countries. As Ahuja says in her afterward, “I thought about how rarely we get to see the world through girl’s eyes … about what life looks like for us and for everyone else.” This collection of diary entries, quotes, photographs and other images includes a roughly 7 to 8 page scrapbook-like “collage portrait” of each participant. Award-winning journalist Ahuja adds context and analysis of news stories to each, rounding out the pictures of these lives. She includes some shocking statistics like “about 130 million girls between the ages of 6 and 17 are not in school” and “one in five girls around the world marries before the age of 18.” The book is recommended for those in middle school and early high school and I wish it would be on the shelves everywhere. The opportunities to reflect on common themes – finding identity and pursuing dreams, separating from parents, developing friendships and struggling to fit in – deserve the time and space that is often not allocated to girls and their issues.  It would be fascinating for advisories (homerooms) to read and share these stories as well as to use them for a model to create their own. Somewhat similar stories for older teens was created a few years ago when The New York Times’ Jessica Bennett shared “What 18 Looks Like Around the World” with the #ThisIs18 project.  Coincidentally, The New York Times posted today “Teens on a Year That Changed Everything” – an absolutely stunning commentary on the last 12 months from a teenage perspective.