A review by library_brandy
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and Other Writings by Nellie Bly

4.0

A lot of this is fascinating--investigative journalism from the late nineteen century! But the title story killed my momentum. Nellie's journey around the world is complicated--I hesitate to call her racist, because she is a product of her time, but that time was pretty racist, so there we go. The only culture she didn't speak disparagingly of was the Japanese, and even while she enjoyed her time there she's viewing the people as zoo exhibits rather than actual people with lives and customs. She overlooks her enormous privilege and exhibits a lot of self-serving bias--the good things are due to her hard work and determination; bad things are due to weather and other circumstances.

This collection is edited from full pieces and it's possible I'm missing some context, but there are always problematic time that come up when you read things that happened in less enlightened times. I'm sure someone may read this a century-plus from now and wonder just what i was thinking.