Halley’s Comet

As noted in the review, much of the background for understanding Edmond Halley and his comety calculations came from two very enjoyable books: Julie Wakefield’s Halley’s Quest, about Halley’s time as a ship captain and explorer, and John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin’s Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley, and the Birth of Science. I learned of Fred Whipple’s “dirty snowball” theory of comets from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. More information on responses to the 1910 apparition of the comet can be found in Chris Riddell’s 2012 Guardian article “Apocalypse Postponed?” (It’s only ever postponed, that Apocalypse.)

Our Capacity for Wonder

I’m indebted to Matthew J. Bruccoli’s book about F. Scott Fitzgerald, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, and also to Nancy Mitford’s Zelda, about Zelda Fitzgerald. I learned a lot about Armed Services Editions from a 2015 article in Mental Floss magazine called “How WWII Saved The Great Gatsby from Obscurity.” I was able to stay in the Plaza Hotel due to the largesse of Fox 2000, a filmmaking enterprise that no longer exists. “The Crack-Up” was initially published in Esquire magazine in 1936 and is now available online. Various manuscripts for The Great Gatsby are available online through Princeton University’s library, and it’s fascinating to see what changed (and what didn’t) among the revisions. The David Denby quote comes from a review published in the New Yorker on May 13, 2013.

Lascaux Cave Paintings

I first learned of these paintings and the story of our separation from them in Werner Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I learned more from Judith Thurman’s essay “First Impressions,” in the June 16, 2008, issue of the New Yorker. Simon Coencas recorded an oral history for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is available online at its website. Coencas’s quote about the “little gang” came from a 2016 interview with the AFP. The Barbara Ehrenreich essay “The Humanoid Stain” was first published in The Baffler in November 2019. The Lascaux website, at archeologie.culture.fr, was especially helpful, and included references to hand stencils at Lascaux. I learned of Genevieve von Petzinger’s work from a 2016 New Scientist article by Alison George called “Code Hidden in Stone Age Art May Be the Root of Human Writing.”Last, I would not have been able to write this review without Thierry Félix’s work to preserve both the cave and the stories of those who discovered it.

Scratch ’n’ Sniff Stickers

The Helen Keller quote about smell is from her wonderful book The World I Live In. The Baltimore Gas and Electric debacle is described in an AP News story from September 4, 1987.

When I was in middle school, one of my teachers took me aside after class one day. She knew that I had been struggling academically as well as socially, and she went out of her way to tell me that she liked something I’d written. She also said to me, “You’re going to be okay, you know. Not in the short run . . .” and then she paused before saying, “And also not in the long run, I guess. But in the medium run.” This moment of kindness stayed with me, and helped hold me together in tough days, and I don’t know if this book would exist without it. I have forgotten this teacher’s name, as I have forgotten almost everything, but I am so grateful to her.