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A review by octavia_cade
Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries by Jonathan Eisen, Brian O'Leary
2.0
This is an America-centric collection of writings (various articles, patents, letters, etc.) from the 1990s that, while they are on the subject of this book, weren't written for this book. By which I mean Eisen hasn't rounded up a bunch of authors and asked them to write for Suppressed Inventions, rather it appears he has collated from existing sources. Nothing wrong with that! But I would have liked to see attribution - "first appeared in" and so forth. Because some of the contributions are decades older than the book, but there's no obvious acknowledgement of this. Clearly the chapters dealing with the space age are a little more current, but the bulk of the medical chapters are focused on the first half of the twentieth-century - and that is where they are left. I mean there's some interesting stuff there, but it's hindered by poor presentation. It really needed an editor to give historical context - alright, you've got a whole lot on Harry Hoxsey, even some stuff by him, but he's long dead. And frustrating as he must have found it to be stymied by the AMA in the 1930s, how are his ideas perceived when the book was written some 60 odd years later? Are his ideas achieving contemporary success, or has he been thoroughly debunked? I've no idea, but in this book he exists only in a historical bubble. This is a consistent problem all the way through, and it became more irritating the longer it went on. I'm not asking to be spoonfed, but I do expect an editor to do more than slap chapters together and hope for the best.
As for the content, some of it was more convincing than others. I am absolutely prepared to believe, for instance, that oil industries are doing their best to smother clean and/or renewable energy. I think that's fairly well established by now. I was surprised and impressed to find references to some well-known and reputable journals backing up some of the authors, but others were less convincing - papers submitted to journals (but not accepted or published) have no place in reference sections, and if you want to stop my eyes from rolling, please refrain from randomly capitalised conspiracy speak ("...VESTED INTERESTS, who are trying to prevent it use by means of such tactics as the FALSE ISSUE .... and even VIOLENCE against the inventors" p. 352). Frankly, if you want to get people to take you seriously you've got to encourage them by not, say, describing an advanced flying machine and then adding that the inventor claimed to hide said machine from the government in a secret Antarctic valley (p.338), because now I am sceptical of everything that person ever claimed to achieve, and am side-eyeing those that choose to believe him.
As for the content, some of it was more convincing than others. I am absolutely prepared to believe, for instance, that oil industries are doing their best to smother clean and/or renewable energy. I think that's fairly well established by now. I was surprised and impressed to find references to some well-known and reputable journals backing up some of the authors, but others were less convincing - papers submitted to journals (but not accepted or published) have no place in reference sections, and if you want to stop my eyes from rolling, please refrain from randomly capitalised conspiracy speak ("...VESTED INTERESTS, who are trying to prevent it use by means of such tactics as the FALSE ISSUE .... and even VIOLENCE against the inventors" p. 352). Frankly, if you want to get people to take you seriously you've got to encourage them by not, say, describing an advanced flying machine and then adding that the inventor claimed to hide said machine from the government in a secret Antarctic valley (p.338), because now I am sceptical of everything that person ever claimed to achieve, and am side-eyeing those that choose to believe him.