Drift: by Rachel Maddow

Rachel brings us a clear, well-documented account of how our military has expanded and changed since WWII. She takes us from the entry into Vietnam, through Johnson's and Reagan's presidencies, and on through to Iraq, Pakistan, and beyond. She shows us how each step was taken that led to where we are now. And where are we?

A president can wage war now without bothering the rest of us. Fewer than 1% of US citizens are in the military, and as a rule we tend not to care about modern-day mercenaries: the employees of Brown, Kellogg, & Root, Halliburton, and Blackwater by whatever its current name is. At this time the private companies are putting more boots on the ground than is the US military. Because of sloppy or nonexistent oversight, these companies are costing us far more than just the cost overruns: they have wiped out our image in many companies, where they behave as ungovernable bullies - and in fact they are.

The privatization of war has consequences beyond even this, however. We can spend our way into and out of wars and keep going on about our business. We see no difference in our day to day lives. We don't pay for these wars in sacrifice or any other way. And therefore we have become numb to what they really are.

Years ago I remember reading an economics textbook. I remember little of it, but I remember this point: you can't have a successful economy manufacturing destruction. You have to build, not destroy. It is hard for any of us "regular folks" to comprehend the deficit we've created by waging these wars, and even harder to comprehend that payment will have to be made. In fact, it appears that collection has started. Our economy has been in the tank for a while now. It isn't just because of inflated housing.

I don't read many "political" books. I'm not a political junkie, although like many I hold strong views. This may be why I personally like Rachel so much. She does the work! And she explains it really really well. She rarely gets it wrong because she's passionate about facts. I came away from this book understanding how our constitution got to be irrelevant, how our standing army gradually and then exponentially increased, how we started farming out the work, even how we built up our nuclear arsenal, and even after the end of the cold war how we keep building it.

At the end Rachel offers us a checklist of what we need to do to get back on track. I believe that every member of congress and the president and his advisers all need to read this book and pay attention. I think it's possible that many of them are so caught up in day to day politics that they have lost the thread. It's here, it's clear, and we all need to pay attention.

I can't leave it there. Rachel brings to this tale all of her usual wit, which helps when we try to swallow.

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

An extraordinary book about the dust storms on the High Plains in the 1930s. This book takes us into the lives of several people who made up the "nesters" - farmers, along with cowboys, ranchers, doctors, teachers, and newspapermen. We follow the history of the plains from the early twenties, when land was free or cheap and hopes were high, when government policy fed the ambitions of the settlers, on into the 1930s and the worst of the storms.

It is clear from our present perspective that the horrors of the "dust bowl" were man-made. It took a few years and some gutsy thinking people to get that message out during the worst of it and to start the process that would lead to some recovery. Not that these plains have ever fully recovered.

Of particular interest are the extraordinary details. What the storms did to people, animals, buildings, and what happened on the rare occasions when it actually rained. While in the air (which was most of the time) the dust created such static electricity that people were afraid to touch each other. The touch could knock them across a room. The electricity shorted out engines and started fires. The dust destroyed just about everything it touched, killing the natural animal and plant population while bringing in insects that thrived on what was left. Millions of acres of land were left sterile, while the swarms of dust moved into the cities, over other parts of the country, and into the ocean. The storms even reached New York City and Washington, D.C. on occasion.

How the government responded is another fascinating tale, featuring a president who couldn't think of anything to do - Hoover - followed by one who did everything possible - Roosevelt. It's possible that the biggest hero of the time was the person who took on a new governmental position under Roosevelt, Hugh Bennett, and came up with ways to hold the soil down. He didn't stop there, of course. He took his mission to the loners who made up the plains settlers and convinced them that they had to work together to fight this thing.

The story is devastating and often heart-breaking. And so very readable.

Reading Lolita in Tehran. By Azar Nafisi

There was a faded receipt left in the book, a few pages from the beginning. I couldn't read it all, but read this much: it was purchased new from a shop in San Francisco on August 16, 2004. The buyer paid $12.08 for it. Somehow the book found its way from SF to Jackson, New Jersey and eventually to me. It may be that I am the first to have actually read it.

I read about this book in various places when it first came out. It got good reviews yet I wasn't at all sure that I wanted to read it, although right now I am not sure why not. But when I had the chance to check it out I took it. Obviously it was not high on my list or I would have read it before now.

 The author is a professor of English literature, originally from Iran. She left with her family for the U.S. when she was 13 and returned thirteen years later. She arrived at a tumultuous time in Iran, during the time that Iran was changed to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, hard-line religious fundamentalist.

While Nafisi was teaching at the University of Tehran, the laws gradually tightened around the populace, especially the women. While men were permitted to have more than one wife, including several "temporary" wives, women were required to be covered whenever in public, be accompanied by a male relative in many places, and whenever a couple had a child and then split up, the child automatically was given to the male.Women could not wear makeup or allow their hair to be seen.

And that was the least of it. There were arrests, imprisonment, and executions every day. A woman could be arrested for being too attractive, and what awaited her in prison can be imagined. One way that Nafisi found to deal with the restrictions was through English literature, possibly her greatest love. She taught classes on the great English writers, including Nabokov, Bellow, Austen, and others. She tried to reach her students through fiction, conveying how a fictional story can make you think and even break down prejudices and preconceptions.

Her students were not used to frank discussion and offering their own opinions.Some of them were "revolutionaries", dedicated to the current regime and distrustful of the characters in fiction, especially where morals were concerned. Nafisi refused to bow to the preferences of this type student by blacking out words like "sex", that might offend them. She insisted that fiction must be taken for what it is, and for where it comes from, and cannot be modified to suit one's religious beliefs. It became increasingly more difficult to teach during these times, with interruptions, bombings, students leaving for demonstrations or to join the army, and eventually Nafisi left the university.

Some years later, in 1995, she quietly formed a small class that met in her home, comprised of only women who were specifically invited to attend. These were young women who had showed a real interest (even passion) in literature and a mind capable of getting something from it. These weekly meetings became more than a class; they also revealed much about the students as well as about Nafisi herself. It was here that they discussed Nabokov's Lolita, among other masterworks. And related them to present-day Iran and the lives of women there. Nafisi is compelled to teach. She used this book as a means to reach us as well, to demonstrate what it means to discuss a work of literature. Thus we find out how she read Lolita, and Austen, and others.

Her view of Lolita is that it is the story of a dreadful pedophile who uses and destroys a 12-year-old girl. She feels for the girl, and not at all for Humbert Humbert. Her views are so damning that I was disturbed by them. I read Lolita several years ago and thought it was amazing. I had not expected to like the story of a middle-aged man with a 12-year-old girl. I was amazed that I developed sympathy for Humbert, even while I could not condone what he was doing. I also felt that Lolita was not a simple victim, but a strong character in her own right. That, of course, does not make it right that Humbert should have taken advantage of her. Still, to me, it makes the story remarkable in a different way from how Nafisi saw it. After reading her treatise on the subject I thought maybe I should read it again, but I didn't look forward to it (I rarely reread even my favorite books). My decision was to order a copy of the audio book. I will be able to listen to it while out and about and think while driving.

An interesting and rather odd part of this tale is the part of "the magician". Nafisi refers to this man this way, not because he performs typical tricks, but because he has a gift for helping others with their lives. Not a therapist but an insightful man who gives of himself while never wanting anything in return. Somehow Nafisi learns of him and during a bleak time in her life she calls him up and asks to see him. Thus forms a bond, at least on her side. The magician always is polite and kind. Offers a rare treat - chocolates - and tea, and listens. Makes comments. Helps her to see herself differently, and ultimately helps her develop "a plan". This is the type person I suspect most of us would dearly love to have in our lives: someone who just listens to us, knows us, understands us. There is nothing we want more than to be understood. Did he really exist? Nafisi poses the question later, but of course we aren't meant to take it seriously.

The story gives us an inside view of Iran during those difficult years (not that today life is a picnic there, but it is improving in some ways), into the effect of forced religious law (often having the effect of driving people away from their beliefs rather than the contrary), into the intimate lives of young muslim women, not allowed to express love except for their country's leader. The story also gives us insight into serious reading, really dissecting and thinking about great literature. I expect it would be a pleasure to be in classes like these, for those of us who value well-written words. It's a valuable book for these reasons. But I didn't love it. I couldn't get close to Nafisi. I felt she was pouring it on at times, telling rather than showing, and even making excuses for her lack of action during the revolutionary times. More than once, though, she points out that "we are responsible" for putting these people in office. But I wonder. How much power does one really have in a situation where dissent can lead to death? For whatever reason I did not warm to her. I also was confused by her way of jumping back and forth in time. Near the end she refers to the several years the group met at her house, yet it was only two years. I had to track down the dates to put it together. In spite of my misgivings I still came away with a new way of seeing, and that is what makes a good book.

Cheever: A Life. By Blake Bailey

I have read many of Cheever's short stories and I may have read a book or two as well - but am not sure about that. His stories are usually engaging and sometimes brilliant, but I did form the opinion that he was a misogynist. In his stories he always seems to be creating unsympathetic women, and men who are caught in their webs. I was curious about his own life. And it all became clear here. He did have problems with women. He also had severe long-term problems with alcohol. He appeared to have been self-absorbed, selfish, often thoughtless. Yet many thought of him as kind and fun to be around as well.

He was hard-working but had trouble keeping the wolves from the door. Selling short stories, of course, is rarely if ever as lucrative as selling a novel. Thus he worked hard on the few books that he did write. It took him many years for the first one, and every one was very difficult for him. He excelled at writing the short stories but not so much at the novels. Some writers are just made to create the little jewels, which honestly would be enough in this case.

One theme that was in much of his work, if not always immediately apparent, was his frustration with his sexual orientation. He was bisexual but did not admit it, and even when having sex with another man he would not admit how many such affairs he'd had over the years. I suspect that he told the same lies to himself, to be fair. Learning about this part of him illuminates a great deal that may have seemed incomprehensible in his work. Certainly I am just as much an admirer as I was before. I never hold a writer's flaws or predilections against him.

I do hope that this biography is bringing a whole new set of readers to Cheever. 

An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken

A writer of fiction, Elizabeth McCracken found herself in France in an old house in the country, pregnant. She and her husband like to visit different places when not required to be home. Thus the French country. The two of them arranged for a midwife and had access to a hospital about 40 minutes away. All checkups went well, until the last one, when there appeared to be something amiss.

The baby was stillborn.

This book is the story of that baby, the months before and after, the way Elizabeth and her husband coped with the loss. It is written simply and freely, from the heart. Yet, although she says she did very little editing, she seemed to have a sense of how to tell the story. We know from the start that the baby dies, but we know no more about it until well into the story.

What we learn goes beyond the grief. We learn how a tragedy can be associated with a place to such an extent that the place is forever ruined. We learn that it is important to say something to the grieving parents, not to ignore the grief.

We learned, in this case, that McCracken does not want to forget the happy days, months, before the birth, even though she never wants to see those places again. It's important to remember.

McCracken wrote the book, she says, so that she does not have to keep telling the story, so that she does not have to answer the question, "Is this your first child?" It hurts to keep explaining, "No, the first was stillborn". Better that acquaintances already know.

A simply-written memoir that manages to sidestep the maudlin yet lets us in on the fullness of a mother's pain. 

Whitewash, by Joseph Keon

In this book-length indictment of the use of cow’s milk for human consumption, Keon leaves no stone unturned. Exhaustively, he offers us information on why cow’s milk is not good for humans, either children or adults; on contamination of milk products; on how the calcium in milk does not do a body good, in fact it weakens bones; on the association of dairy products with a myriad of human diseases; on the environmental effects of dairy farming (and a brief synopsis of the agonies of being a milk cow); and finally, on how to give up dairy products and lead a healthier life.

There is much good here, and I recommend having this book on your reference shelf. However, be careful with how you use the information. Keon is generally careful about making connections between dairy consumption and human health, for example, by saying milk “may” cause this or that disease or have an effect on it, when he is not certain that studies have made the connection conclusive.  At times, though, the sources he cites are not credible. For example, he makes connections between dairy consumption, vaccines, and autism, citing various studies by Andrew Wakefield that have since been discredited. He should have known of this discrediting and either found other, better sources (I am not aware there are any) or mentioned the cloud hanging over Dr. Wakefield. 

He also sometimes uses second- or third-hand information. For example, a reference to a Consumer Reports statement comes from an article in a newspaper rather than directly from Consumer Reports.  

To his credit, most sources are direct. Also to his credit, Keon does an admirable job describing the mechanisms by which our bodies handle different food products or contaminants. To me the descriptions sounded believable. However, Keon is not a doctor or scientist. He is a “wellness expert, nutrition and fitness expert”. Frankly, these are not titles that inspire confidence in me. There are no governmental standards for what a nutritionist or fitness expert must learn, and the various “wellness experts” around town are all self-described. This does not mean that a non-professional cannot write a good book about milk. He’s clearly knowledgable and understands a great deal about the human body, but the few issues raised above suggest to me that he would have done well to coordinate the writing of this book with a medical doctor or appropriate scientist. 

The book contains a wealth of supplementary information, from the cited sources to a separate “recommended reading” section. It therefore rates a place on any health-conscious person’s reference shelf.

The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway

This is a remarkable little book. And "little" it really isn't. I started reading it thinking I'd just get it out of the way and maybe learn a little on the way. But it really captivated me and I learned a great deal more than I expected.

Years ago I read The Fatal Shore, about the founding of Australia. For years I carried around the unfair assessment of Australia that a colony founded with prisoners and cruel prison wardens, a country where the native population was wiped out and the British rule prevailed, was not a country I liked. It's funny, considering the parallels to my own country.

Over time, though, I got over it. It's another country with its own identity, secrets, wonders. Perhaps this memoir would give me a different perspective.

Jill begins life in the bush. She is born in 1934 in the back country of Australia to an ambitious and hard-working family, with two older brothers, a determined father, and a hard-working, intensely capable mother. Her mother oversees the running of the house on the sheep ranch, keeping everything shining and running and developing a thriving garden, full of vegetables and beautiful flowers.

Initially the sheep ranch is successful and improvements are gradually made. Jill becomes a hardworking child who likes working on the vast ranch with her father and his workers. Having been born on the ranch she does not realize how the ranch, the open spaces, the incredible quiet were unique in Australia. She accepts the requirement that she not cry, that she be stoic in the face of adversity. At the same time she is well aware that she is loved by both parents and valued fully. At this point I thought, "a functional family!" Yes, difficult times, hard times, but love and caring and support.

But then times change. A drought takes over the land, throwing the family and all other similar families into turmoil, distress, near-ruin. Sheep die and the smell of rotting bodies takes over Jill's memories of the land. In time she is more than ready to leave Coorain, the ranch. A terrible incident leads to the family moving to Sydney to ride it out.

Once settled in a small house in Sydney, Jill is sent to a private school that emphasises academics yet also accepts many children formerly from the bush. Quiet and reserved, she has a hard time initially fitting in but eventually her hard work and determination win her a solid place and a chance for a university education.

Jill enters the University of Sydney. She has always excelled at working hard and in spite of some setbacks continues to do so here. She becomes a true academic, a scholar in the history of Australia.

It is during her time here that Jill starts to make connections in her life. She starts to see a wider world and puts things in place that had not occurred to her before. She recognizes the second-place status women held at the time and for the first time sees the role aborigines have been forced to play for so long. She breaks away from her lifelong worldview - that of a colonial beholden to Britain. She has been raised to speak and behave more as a British citizen than an Australian. As she discovers more about her land, its citizens, and writers both Australian and not, Jill realizes that her beloved land is rarely recognized in its own right, for itself.

In addition to realizing where Australia fits in the world, Jill explores the role of women and other disenfranchised persons. She rises in the academic world, but constantly feels a pull from her mother. Her mother, the capable, strong, personable woman who handled everything in the bush, had become increasingly dependent on her daughter and less capable of caring for herself. Jill, for her part, felt suffocated and incapable of continuing to live with her mother.

The book is in large part an exploration of the relationship between the two. It is so much more, ultimately, yet this relationship is at the heart of it.

I found it a fascinating, deep, emotional account that explores one life but also the life of a country I did not know much about at all.

Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich

It has been something of a theme in the last few of Ehrenreich's books that the middle- and lower-classes get to carry the cross. When bad things happen, it's their fault,whether the bad things happen to them or to somebody else. In Bait and Switch, Ehrenreich specifically targets the coaches and seminars aimed at newly-unemployed white collar workers, telling them how to change their looks and attitudes, and asks "what's wrong with this picture?"

In Bright-Sided, she takes this theme farther. She investigates the actual positive-thinking industry itself, from its presumed origins to the present day, and points to the links between this near-magical-thinking method and the recent economic disasters. A significant case in point was George W. Bush, who hated to hear anything "negative". If we believe all is right with the world then good things will come to us.

Ehrenreich traces the origins of the positive-thinking movement to a reaction to doomsday Calvinist training back in the early days of this country. She picks out a few examples of preachers of different sorts, most particularly Mary Baker Eddy, who rejected the common fatalistic teachings of the day and proposed that all we need is there for the taking if we simply let it in.

While she makes several references to Harriet Beecher Stowe and two of her siblings, she does not, oddly, mention Henry Ward Beecher, another brother, who essentially led the movement away from Calvinism to an early version of today's feel-good religions. He became what was probably the first religious megastar, even accompanied by the scandals that seem to go along with this position. (Take a look at The Most Famous Man in America - and here I note that I am related to the Beechers, just for disclosure.) Somehow Ehrenreich misses Beecher, but she doesn't miss the bigger picture.

From here she moves into the twentieth century and to such luminaries as Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking), Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich), Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People). She looks at the new crop, from Martin Seligman to the co-authors of The Secret to many others.

While the now-huge industry of positive thinking, including motivational speakers, seminars and workshops, books, DVDs and more, relies in large part on the contention that positive thinking actually works, Ehrenreich plunges daggers into that balloon. She dissects the claims that the method is backed by science and finds that the emperor has no clothes.

So what? So what if millions spend their money needlessly on shoddy science? It wouldn't be the first time. The reason for Ehrenreich's anger, which starts at the very beginning of the book with anger at the exhortations of others to see her diagnosis of breast cancer as a positive thing and her chances at beating it as dependent on her attitude, is that this focus on wispy, intuitional, ungrounded methods pulls the rug out from under sounder disciplines and actions. Thus the rise of the corporations at the expense of everyone under the top levels. Thus the damage to our economy, to our housing stability, to our position in the world, and to our own ability to do anything about any of it.

Positive thinking, in other words, is a negative thing. We need to stay not in the negative but in the real world. Base our decisions on sound reasoning and experience. See what is happening clearly, take the blinders off. Get angry if it makes sense.

As usual, the book is simply written, easy to read, and contains many pages of notes and references, allowing one to take it further.

I like that Ehrenreich faced this one down directly, but I want more. I may need to dip more into the heavier texts. We'll see. 

There Is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Greene

Greene brings home the AIDS epidemic in Ethiopia in this book, by making it personal. She doesn't spare us the statistics, which are too large to be comprehensible, but she intertwines the numbers with the names. A small sample of names, drawn mostly from the orphanage created by one woman, Haregewoin Teferra.

Haregewoin is already on the wrong side of middle age when she loses her grown daughter, one of only two. She has known grief before, with the loss of her husband, and the loss of her daughter drags her down to an unrecognizable state. So when she is approached by a Catholic organization to take in and foster a couple of AIDS orphans, she initially can't see why she would do such a thing. But then she realizes that the priest is handing her a lifeline, bringing more children into her life when she desperately needs them. From then, she can't say no.

She takes children into her little compound, comprised of a small brick house and some metal shipping containers, surrounded by a wall. A day hardly passes when there isn't somebody at the door with another child. And Haregewoin has enough love for them all. For she is that rare person who loves deeply, who touches everyone with that love. For some time she survives with help from her other daughter Suzie (sending part of her paycheck), from donations from other friends, and from whatever she can dig up. When she is approached by an organization to adopt out some of her children, she moves into a different stage financially.

She begins to obtain more funding and more children, and is able to secure better accommodations. But money continues to cause her distress and soon the number of children has become so large that she no longer recognizes each by name. Through this detailed description of Haregewoin's life and work with orphans we learn that "even saints aren't saints", that having a passion for children is not enough.

We learn, too, how it is that millions in Africa have simply been written off because drug companies are unwilling to allow them access to effective AIDS drugs at reasonable cost and how politicians unfortunately back the drug companies. In other words, the AIDS crisis in Africa is as much a tale of greed as anything else.

Surprisingly, at least to me, it appears that the genesis of AIDS and its later spread have had nothing to do with sex. There is a lot of information in this book. There is also a touching story of one woman, along with brief stories of many of the orphans she saved. It is therefore highly readable and a way to bring some perspective to a problem so huge our minds can't comprehend it.

My Lobotomy: A Memoir, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming

I expected to like this book. I have done a great deal of reading about mental illness and the horrors that pass as cures, including lobotomy. Seeing lobotomy from the patient’s perspective is a rarity.

The story is certainly compelling. The telling of it is not. I suspect that a combination of the natural talents of Howard Dully and his co-writer, along with the effects of the lobotomy, is why the book is not all it could be. The book is unnecessarily repetitious, which takes away a lot of its power. Much of it is also infused with an adolescent point of view. I had the disturbing feeling that Howard Dully is a 50-something teenager. Or perhaps now a young adult.

I have heard that alcoholics tend to be stuck chronologically where they first became alcoholics. So if they were teens, that’s where they stay until such time as they burst free of the addiction, insofar as one can. It seems to me that the same might be said for this particular lobotomy. It was performed on Howard as a 12-year-old and his thoughts and actions for years afterwards mirror the feelings and impressions of a 12-year-old.

I became impatient with the explanations. Howard, as a young teen in Agnews, the mental hospital, did not know when he would get out. His reaction, therefore, was to “have fun”. Because he did not know nor was he able to control his future, he felt his only option was to have fun. This attitude, along with the lack of any real training for the real world, is what got him into trouble year after year. It also was the reason I had trouble liking Howard as I listened to this CD version of the book.

He recognizes, late in the book, that it was the lack of preparation for work or life outside that got him in trouble so often. Is this a common experience for people in similar situations? Those who are young and placed in mental institutions for a relatively short time? It seems an astounding lack of foresight on the part of the caretakers. How can you expect somebody to do well on the outside without the necessary skills? Even in prison inmates get an opportunity to train for some work.

The part of the book that is especially disturbing is the treatment of Howard by his stepmother Lou. The unfortunate combination of a distant father (emotionally), who does not share significant information or thoughts with his son, and a distrusting, disapproving stepmother who singled Howard out, was bound to have a significant effect on Howard’s behavior as a young child. He was beaten daily by either or both parents, he was not told of his real mother’s death when it happened (she just “left”), and it seemed to make no difference what he did. It makes sense that he acted out, that he rebelled, he made good on what his parents accused him of. When Lou took it upon herself to press for the lobotomy, Howard had nobody in his corner.

As I listened to the CDs I was also affected by the manner in which the book was read. It is not read by Howard, but by a skilled reader, who reads an attitude into the words. I was not fond of the way he read it and wondered if I would feel differently about the book if I had read the paper version. Therefore, I sought out information online, and especially looked for the NPR program featuring Howard. It was easy to find: NPR program

In this radio program we get to hear Howard narrate and talk to lobotomy experts and others affected by lobotomy. We get to hear the real Howard speak. His voice has almost a monotone quality to it, which is something I might expect of a person who has undergone a lobotomy. When he is emotionally caught up we can tell by the hesitation and difficulty speaking, so his delivery is not actually “flat”. I wonder if I would have liked the book better if it had been actually read by Howard. I think it’s possible, because it would have felt more real.

I am glad I had the opportunity to listen to this book, which I had not even heard of before I saw it on the list of books in a virtual book box through bookcrossing. It gave me a lot to think about. I do wish it had been more skillfully written, yet it is hard to see how it could have been done without changing the character of Howard Dully.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell loves studies and statistics. He hunts down the lesser-known and bends them to his will - in a good way!

In this book, Gladwell takes on the myth of the self-made man (or woman). He treks down various roads: the roads of birth dates, birth years, cultural backgrounds, and especially the road of opportunities. He finds connections between these elements and the potential for success in different fields. He shows how in hockey and several other sports, the month of birth is critical to the person's access to special opportunities that can lead to success. He follows airline pilots in different countries and shows how the cultural background of each can affect the number of accidents involving the pilots.

He takes us to the life of 13-year-old Bill Gates and shows how Gates was uniquely positioned to reach the pinnacle of power he now has.

In essence, he shows us how individual success is actually the success of a community, of circumstance, of the luck of birth far more than it is of a person simply working hard - but notes that working hard is always at the heart of it nevertheless.

What's more important is that when we understand these elements we can effect changes so that these opportunities are available to a greater number of persons. We might even find hints here for the raising of our children.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver et al

Barbara Kingsolver is not a bad sort. I have enjoyed her novels in large part because of the connections the characters have with the land. And in this nonfiction work she offers useful information and a point of view that, for the most part, I share. Yet I had trouble getting through the book. It lived with me literally for months because I would pick it up, read a page or two, put it down again and reach for another book. I have no idea how many dozens (literally) of books I read at the same time.

The book is all about the Kingsolver-Hopp family going local. The four of them upped and left their western home for their farm in the country, specifically in Virginia, to spend a year being “locavores” - eating local food, most of it grown by themselves. It was an industrious effort. Nobody can accuse this family of being lazy. Yet by their own account it was not only rewarding financially, gastronomically and nutritionally, but it was fun.

Kingsolver offers us tidbits about dozens of kinds of vegetables and fruits, fiction and fact, and serves it up with more than a soupcon of self-deprecating humor. She also brings us into the land of harvesting animals, which is primarily where we part company. I learned a great deal about pumpkins, tomatoes, basil, canning, freezing, drying, and more, and I am determined to make a few changes based on what I learned. I also read bits about world hunger, the hidden costs of transporting foods, the meaning of fair trade, the expansion of farmers’ markets in this country, mostly written by Hopp. Virtually all of these global bits I already knew, but I had not considered one aspect of choosing what to import: how much water is used to produce it. Similarly the intertwined notes by Camille Kingsolver, which mainly offered the perspective of a young aware woman.

Some readers have called this family “rich white folks playing at farming” and it’s hard to deny that this is the case. They were not farming for a living, and they had other occupations. Kingsolver herself had to retreat to the computer to make notes about everything that was going on in her farming world in preparation for this book. It is quite fashionable to write about trying this or trying that for 30 days or 60 or for a year. I have been trying to think of what hook I could get hold of so I can do the same thing, frankly. To her credit, I do not think she was aware of the trendiness of this occupation. When the year was over she discovered that while the family was blissfully pulling weeds and tending turkey hens, many others were embarking on “locavore months”, for example.

I think, though, that Kingsolver offers a reasonable response to this type complaint. She kept detailed records of costs and was therefore able to prove that living off the land is indeed less expensive - assuming you have access to the land - than living from the grocery store. As for how much land, you might be surprised at how little is really required. She was easily able to make the case that eating organically is better for your health as well as the planet. More importantly, she makes a good point that you do not have to have your own farm to eat locally - at least in most of the populated parts of this country. There are farmers’ markets most of us can get to, the various public assistance programs, like WIC (women, infants, children) can be used at farmers’ markets, and we can make better use of what is nearby. Some people can grow some of their own vegetables in pots in a patio, if that’s all there is available. It isn’t impossible for most of us to live more locally than we do and enjoy it more.

Enjoying it more is only part of the point, of course. Kingsolver is not a fan of factory farming of animals or conventional farming of vegetables and fruit. She asks that we look at where our food is grown, if the people who grow it are compensated adequately and if harmful chemicals are used in its production. In the case of animals she tells us that when her family had the choice of CAFO (confined animal ) meat or no meat they chose to go vegetarian, as much because of the treatment of the animals as for the unhealthy nature of the meat itself. Again and again she drills into the reader the reasons we should think hard about our food sources.

I couldn’t agree more that current agricultural practices in this country leave in their wake clouds of noxious pesticides, damaged soil, polluted water and air, and ultimately inferior products in taste and nutritional value. The Omnivore’s Dilemma made me aware too that the practice of growing corn and soybeans results in fields lying fallow for months, adding to the waste and contributing to the loss of topsoil. The practice of trekking food across the country or even across the world adds to the environmental cost of the food and leaves us to wonder who raised and harvested that food and what costs do they pay to bring us cheap food, in addition to the questions about the food itself.

In other words, for the most part Kingsolver is preaching to a member of the choir here. I seek out organic produce at local farmers’ markets, I cook most of my meals myself, I buy fair-trade products from other countries (when local alternatives are not available). I am aware of the costs of eating Big Ag. I am not sure how this book affects those who have not been giving these concerns much thought - I do hope the effect is mainly positive. There is an overarching preachiness beneath the veneer of humor that may well turn people off, but based on the largely positive reviews I suspect most are not turned off by that tone.

My main concern with the book is the way Kingsolver discusses the animals. And my complaint is that she does not give this matter the kind of dedicated study that she gives to the vegetable sections. She short-changes the subject in favor of promoting her own prejudices.

Kingsolver argues on behalf of what has come to be known as “happy meat”. Animals raised in a pleasant environment and killed in a way that inflicts as little pain as possible, mentally and psychically (yes, I said psychically). I can’t argue that the home-grown concept is not better than factory farming, for the animals as well as the people. What I can, and do argue, is that all of the reasons Kingsolver trots out to make her case in favor of eating meat at all are weak and fall to the ground under the slightest scrutiny. As this review is long enough already I will refrain from repeating my point-by-point argument on this subject, but you can read it on this blog.

I give credit to Kingsolver for her resolve to let her turkeys mate and reproduce naturally. She resisted the incubators and the artificial insemination, learning in the process that nobody, virtually nobody, in farming today actually lets the turkeys mate naturally. She wasn’t at all sure the breed she had would succeed at it. What interested me was that she made the claim that her turkeys, being older than a few months, were among the oldest in this country. She also hunted for information on mating in agricultural books of the 1950s. I wondered about the wild turkeys. I can see scores of these wonderful birds a short distance from where I live and I am betting that 1) they know how to mate and 2) they live long, happy lives in the wild. Kingsolver’s deliberate ignorance of the wild versions of the animals she breeds raised questions to me. Admittedly, a turkey bred for factory farms and 4H clubs, bred for artificial insemination, may not be terrific at mating, but even the poorest mom is likely to have derived its technique from the same source as its wild cousins.

I recommend this book to those who can stomach the offhand cruelty inherent in this family’s use of animals - which is most of this country (but not all countries). I have come away with a few new ideas I intend to implement: I will take up drying fruits and veggies, I will consider the implications of water use in food I buy that is not local, I will do more breadmaking myself, I will even consider canning. I am not gifted in the growing department so I will not commit to growing my food for a year or even a month.

I will reiterate my animal complaint: many people share Kingsolver’s attitude toward animals. I am not accusing them of anything - I was one of them for over half of my life. What disturbs me in Kingsolver is that she did the research and should know better. Or rather, that she thinks she did the research but she didn’t, really. She misrepresents vegans, cows, chickens, and meat production in general, primarily because of her own built-in prejudice.

Redemption, by Nathan J. Winograd

The primary message of this book is that animal shelters and humane organizations in the U.S. have lost their way. They have become killers of animals. The author takes an approach to the killing that I had never considered, that the shelters themselves are responsible for the killing, not the general public.

Winograd indicts the leaders of several major animal protection societies, including those that have never maintained shelters of their own, because these societies set standards and make pronouncements that support the killing. The reasons these leaders have not embraced “no-kill” are varied but do not stand up to scrutiny. Over the years leaders of shelters and humane organizations have resisted change to the status quo to protect the profits of veterinarians and breeders, because they don’t want to accept responsibility for their previous wrongheadedness, because they “have always done it this way”, because they simply don’t believe true no-kill is possible. Along the way they have forgotten why they were formed - for the protection of animals.

Early in the book he notes that the head of the SPCA in San Mateo, CA went public with the killing of animals. She chose to show the killing on television. To many, including the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) this was a courageous act. I happen to agree with this position in one respect: I believe that whenever our society condones the killing of people or other animals such killing should be in our face. We should know about it, no mistake. When such acts are hidden from the public people can forget it happens and convince themselves they have nothing to do with it. A friend of mine, for example, tells herself that the meat she eats comes from cows who died of old age. Such fabrications may make people feel better but they certainly do not advance any animal cause.

So I believe when animal shelters kill they should do so openly so that we can see our failure. I have been persuaded, however, by Winograd, that the failure is not ours alone. Winograd's objection to the publicized killings is that it appeared to condone the killing, to suggest that it is inevitable, and that the citizens, not the shelter, are ultimately responsible.

I honestly believe that the intent of the shelter leaders who performed these executions live was to raise awareness, in the hope that the actions would bring about behavioral change in the public. The error in their ways was in ignoring the part the shelters themselves play. Blaming us instead. By doing so they not only attacked the very people who would be their most likely supporters, financially and otherwise, but they managed to give some of us a sense of guilt that it is impossible to overcome alone. I have lived for years with the sense that I have not done enough to save the animals in shelters, yet I have believed that only a change in attitude by the public could possibly make a difference. I did not see a way that I could bring about that change, except on an individual level, and that never seems to be enough.

Winograd says that the shelters have been blaming the citizens for what they consider to be the overpopulation of companion animals and what they consider the necessary killing of many healthy animals while in fact the shelters themselves deserve the blame. My personal position is that the killing is a shared responsibility. However, the examples of a few committed shelters make it clear that shelters can end the killing without needing to rely on some vague time in the future when "the public" becomes "more responsible". Shelters can end it right now. Even in parts of the country where the public is supposedly too ignorant or poor to get their animals neutered or to provide veterinary care to them.

The further I got into the book the more I came around to Winograd's position. And the more I came to the sickening conclusion that the organizations that are supposed to be protecting our animals are not only needlessly killing them, but are at the same time attacking those shelters that have indeed achieved a real no-kill status. It is this resistance that forms the core of the message, because the means are available to make this a no-kill country. Now. Virtually overnight.

Paramount to understanding why this can be done is knowing that in fact that pet overpopulation is a myth. This simple fact, illustrated in this book, knocks all other arguments on their heads.

Winograd's method, which he calls the No-Kill Equation, includes several actions that any shelter can take:

* Neuter all animals that enter the shelter except those that are incurably and painfully ill and must be euthanized for that reason.
* Support and even operate Trap-Neuter-Release programs for feral cats in the community.
* Use volunteers to socialize and foster animals to make them more readily adoptable and to create additional space in the shelter.
* Provide medical care and isolation as needed for sick animals
* Use the media to bring the animals and their needs to the public
* Expand shelter hours and offer off-site adoptions to meet the needs of the public
* Allow animal protection groups to take healthy animals for adoption at their shelters or off-site adoptions
* Get rid of employees who can’t get with the program and bring in those who can.

Winograd currently accepts the killing of dogs that are considered irretrievably vicious, because to date there are not enough sanctuaries for these dogs. I have difficulty with this position because these are innocent dogs who deserve to live. They may not be suitable companion animals but there are not a lot of them (by his own calculations) and I suspect there are enough sanctuaries who can accommodate them. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary always finds a way to keep animals alive, including those with behavior problems. This one issue is a type of quibble, though, in the face of the astonishing success Winograd outlines here.

In the cases Winograd outlines in this book, media attention on the activities of true no-kill shelters (those that are not selective in the animals they take in) quickly brought in the money needed to undertake all of the above actions, and eventually the aggressive actions reduced the number of animals brought into the shelters. It's a win-win all around. But it only works, Winograd reminds us again and again, if the shelter is absolutely committed. His three-step program:

* Stop the killing
* Stop the killing
* Stop the killing

Unless shelter directors and staff are fully committed to stopping the killing it will go on. It is unfortunate that at this time it takes special directors to achieve no-kill status, but even this situation can and likely will change. Winograd sees a change in the public perception of animal shelters based on greater visibility, and accordingly the public will no longer accept the standard operating procedures that are so common today.

I don't feel as hopeless now. I know what tools can be used at the shelters and I know I can demand that these tools be used.

Every shelter should have this book. Every governing board that regulates these shelters should read this book. And every humane society leadership should read this book. And honestly pay attention to it.

book rating: 10 out of 10

Possible Side Effects, by Augusten Burroughs

Burroughs reads his own book in this CD edition.

I think listening to the author affects my perception of the work, and that perception is not, perhaps, as good as it might otherwise be.

Burroughs is an experienced reader, yet his technique is odd. His phrasing is out of sync with the meaning of the sentences, as he breaks where one would not normally break, emphasizes words probably not emphasized in speech. It is as if he is reading someone else's work, and for the first time.

The other book of his that I listened to was Wolf at the Table, and there is a significant difference between the two, both in the way the stories are told and in the way they are read. Wolf is the unadorned truth. No humor in it at all. It is the story of Burroughs' relationship with his father, who was a man who liked to play games with his son's head and who had little regard for the feelings or sensitivities of others. His father was a monster, and that book makes that very clear.

By contrast, Possible Side Effects is a series of stories of Burroughs' life, taken out of sequence and at times embellished as needed for comedic effect. There certainly is overlap, as they are both based on his own memories, but Side Effects is humor, even though at times a bit edgy humor.

Burroughs' reading of Wolf at the Table is unrelentingly somber, dark, and so meticulously spoken that it is as if Burroughs cannot let go of a single word without clinging to it first. I found his reading hard to take. His reading of Side Effects is lighter, even though it clearly comes from the same place. It is easier to take because he does not seem to dwell on words the same way, doesn't stretch them out until they nearly spring back. Yet the phrasing is similar, the stopping in odd places, the overall almost flat tone. In both cases he takes on the voices of other characters at times and his speech patterns and accents are very much alike in these cases, in the two books. It struck me, though, that in the case of Side Effects he does not actually speak the way these characters would have. It's disconcerting.

The stories range from all-out funny to near-yucky to creepy, frankly, and reveal inner torments underneath the humor. In these stories Burroughs talks frankly about his own physical ailments as well as mental aberrations. The stories tend to be about excess, about going too far. The times Burroughs strikes out against his parents or grandparents he does so in ways we associate with out of control juveniles. He throws the worst epithets at his hated grandmother. He single-handedly covers his childhood kitchen in flour, pots, pans, butter, meat from the freezer, and heaven knows what else. The very excess of it all is perhaps what makes it funny - as well as edgy. And it makes us wonder what it's like to be inside that head. Maybe that's why I keep coming back for more.

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

I was in elementary school when this classic was published, several years after Kerouac finished the first draft. That first draft was one long scroll (120 feet long, all one paragraph, all taped together so Kerouac could type without stopping to change paper), which has only recently been printed in its entirety. The version that Kerouac saw in print, though, is what Matt Dillon reads on this CD edition. I had not read it before and I was pleased to find it in time to listen to it on a short road trip of my own.

This official version was edited to remove the more sexually explicit passages, but it still reveals Kerouac's comfort with minorities and subcultures, an unusual position at the time.

On the Road conjures up visions of a free and easy lifestyle, rich in drugs, women, song, and adventure. Many others have gone on the road since Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady, perhaps inspired by his tale. If so, I am not entirely sure why.

Yes, the road trips - there are several of them in this tale - do involve drugs, women, song, adventure. Certainly Kerouac appears to enjoy many of these adventures. But that enjoyment at times seems forced, as if he feels he should paint it all with a broad brush of crazy good times. Leaking through and finding a stronger voice as the trips go on is Jack's real goal: to find a woman to love, to marry, to settle down, to be a responsible adult. What also comes through in spite of some fairly wild exploits is his fundamental humanity, his compassion for others. I couldn't help liking him, in contrast to some of his friends.

It's easy to see how this lengthy confessional journey led to "gonzo journalism", a more personal point of view, and to today's public blogs.

Matt Dillon recorded the tale in a voice that seems to be not impressed with itself. It's almost flat, uninterested, trying to get the story out there and letting it fall where it may. By contrast, whenever Dillon speaks as Cassady ("Dean Moriarty" in this edition) he affects a voice that has years of drinking and playing around in it. While the voice is at times hilarious, I found it difficult to connect that raw voice to a very young man. It seemed at least forty years old to me. At times I wanted more from the Kerouac voice and perhaps a bit less from Cassady's.

The Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs

A friend made me a copy of the CD version of this book. She thought it was hilarious (as apparently do many others, based on the Amazon ratings). I warned her that I might not enjoy it, given my reaction to Jacobs' first book (The Know-it-all). On the other hand, I am able to overcome preconceptions. I also don't turn down free books, whether or not I think I'll like them.

I listened to it while I was in my car, driving here and there alone. I think books-on-CD are wonderful companions on long rides. And short ones.

I won't keep you in suspense. I didn't like it.

Let's start with the premise: A.J., who somewhat calls himself Jewish, decides to take on the bible, both testaments, plus various side documents, and to live according to the scripture as closely as possible. He admits at the outset that one reason for his quest is to write a book about the experience. He says the other reason is that he has been, at best, agnostic all his life, and he wanted to find out for himself if there is anything in that book that speaks to him. Essentially, he purports to want to become a better person and wonders if the bible might help him in that quest.

To my mind, the "story" about becoming a better, more spiritual person by living by the bible is the plot of the forthcoming book. It is really all about the book. It's clear from the start that he is not about to take any of it seriously, although from time to time he will stop to reflect and try to share his insights with us. Such as they are.

There is a lot of material there to work with, to be sure. Think of the strange commandments (there are a lot more than ten, he finds out right away by poring over the entire book and listing them all), like not wearing anything made of both linen and...what is it again? Cotton? I can't remember. Some kinds of mixed fabrics, anyway. And the requirement to grow a beard but never trim it. How about this one: build a special kind of hut every year and live inside it for a specified period. The bible is truly rich with strange, unexplainable rules, followed by almost nobody.

A few people do follow some of these rules. Different groups of people, different rules, generally. A.J. hunts some of them down and learns from them. What does he learn? Nothing, actually, except that the bible says to do it so you do it. Some tell him there is an explanation for every rule, that all can be explained. Others say no, all cannot be explained, there is no explanation, but that doesn't mean you don't do them. They are still important.

Still others veer to the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Most modern churches are in this camp. Although they would have to admit that they look past some spirits or interpret the hell out of them (literally). There is no doubt that every religion picks and chooses what to follow and what not to follow, regardless of how "literal" the religion is.

Some of the information A.J. finds out, by consulting with his religious advisors and hunting down strange cults and the odd relative, is quite interesting. In every case, though, the story is about A.J. Here I am with this group of crazy dancers and I'm dancing and I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience. Here I am with this other group of people who are buying chickens and handing them to a chicken-killer to kill, in some kind of effort to save my soul. Here I am dealing with my wife, who is trying to get pregnant, who is going through in-vitro fertilization, and look what a great husband I am, or I am not. Here I am dealing with the death of a neighbor, look at how much I am feeling.

At least one religious guy tells A.J. it isn't about becoming a better person. It's about serving God. That one sets A.J. back a bit. He actually thinks about it. But he's soon back up on that horse because that's the one he rode in on.

This version of the book, the CD version, is read by A.J. himself. If I had any doubts about his sincerity they are smashed to bits just by his tone. That is, if I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt just listening to him speak makes it impossible. I have tried to pinpoint what it is about his voice that puts me on edge. Here's the closest I can come to narrowing it down:

You are in a class. The teacher tells you to read some parts of a book written by someone else. You don't want to appear soft or sentimental so when you get to deeper thoughts or feelings you read them in a tone that is almost mocking. That's what we get here.

It's a book about one person making a silly commitment to follow the bible nearly literally so he can write about it in a somewhat funny way.

The Obesity Myth, by Paul Campos

“I have a glandular problem,” sneers the unattractive, heavy, odoriferous mother of a serial killer in the television series Bones.

Here you have a rather typical, if overdone, version of a fat person as shown on television or in the movies. If she's fat there is something fundamentally wrong with her. She's unlikeable, she smells, she blames a condition or others for her fat. She's morally bankrupt.

A more sympathetic version is Bridget Jones as played by Renee Zellweger in the movie Bridget Jones's Diary. She's a little “thick”. I don't think “heavy” or “fat” apply here. In fact, the actress gained weight to play the part but she is still an average weight in this movie – just fat in comparison to other movie actresses. But the story here is a cinderella one in which the glam guy goes for her even though she's fat. Which she isn't, really, but let's play along.

Fat people don't get the title roles except in unusual circumstances, like Cracker (British version, with Robbie Coltrane, incredible actor) and Murder One (another terrific show in which the lead, the charismatic Daniel Benzali, is a mite chubby (and bald)). Fat people don't get asked on dates, except by so-called BBW-lovers. Fat people don't get promoted. And fat people are the butt of major jokes, some of which are full-length movies.

The cultural disgust with large persons is grounded in myths about what large people represent. The disgust isn't because thin people are concerned that fat people are unhealthy. However, the medical community has jumped wholeheartedly on that bandwagon. A day doesn't go by when we don't see an article somewhere that points out the “fact” that because they are fatter, this generation is going to die sooner than their parents.

In the Obesity Myth, Paul Campos sets the record straight. And does so with a passion often absent from medical nonfiction, along with a healthy dose of humor.

Early on, though, he makes a note in passing that he was fat and now he's not, and he'll explain later. He makes the comment to underline the fact that he knows what it is to be fat. I appreciate that but at the same time I found myself wondering as I made my way through, just what will he reveal about himself later? Is he going to reveal some sort of super diet after all??

Fortunately, he does redeem himself later, through his honesty and insight into himself. He can write passionately about the pain and frustration with the diet industry because he is, as much as any of the rest of us who obsess about weight, a victim. Even knowing the facts does not change what we want for ourselves. It turns out that this personal section, for me, is the best part of the book, because it brings it home.

But first, what are those facts? Campos tells us more than once (and a good thing, too; some facts bear repeating):

* It is healthier (from a mortality standpoint) to be 75 pounds overweight than 5 pounds underweight, if you are moderately active. Moderately active translates to four or five brisk 1/2-hour walks per week. I have read elsewhere that the difference is two hours of moderate exercise per week, which is comparable.
* Two persons of the same weight and height can respond to the same food in entirely different ways. In one experiment, 16 persons were “overfed” by 1,000 calories per day, six days a week, for eight weeks. Their activities and food intake were strictly controlled. Their caloric burning capacity was measured. The experimenters discovered a huge range in energy expenditure: from 0 calories to 692. In other words, some subjects burned 692 more calories per day than others, while engaging in similar physical activities and eating the same amount and type of food.
* Dieting is the problem, not the solution. Persons who go on calorie-restricted diets lose weight, then regain it, and gain more. The more often they diet the more they ultimately gain. There are few exceptions. (The exceptions are interesting and a little scary; read more about them in this book.) Although many feel virtuous when dieting, feeling hungry is not good for your body.
* There is no difference in mortality between persons of average weight and persons of higher weight in terms of overall health, when you control for levels of activity and type of food they eat. Shockingly, even the standard claims that fat persons are more likely to develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes are not supported by the facts. The association between fat and heart disease actually is a connection between those who have gone on calorie-restricted diets and heart problems. Those at the same weights who never dieted do not exhibit these heart problems.

Weight itself is not a problem for mortality. If there is no “healthy weight”, then (thin persons can be unhealthier than fat ones, for instance), there can be no “overweight”. The only time weight is a factor is when it is so extreme that it makes the person essentially immobile.

Why then do so many of us believe fat people are unhealthy? We can all point to relatives who lived long and satisfied lives in spite of being large. We all know many thin persons who are unhealthy. It is true that being fat usually limits our ability to move as well as we'd like, take part in some activities we might otherwise enjoy. Why – admit it – are you thinking right now that I am making excuses for myself??

I struggle with that last. As a vegan I know that I am seen as an example of a group of people who eat differently than most other Americans. I feel an obligation to be seen as healthy and well, and I know that to many I do not appear to be, mainly because I'm fat.

Campos phrases it differently. He answers the charge, “You are giving people permission to be fat” with the countercharge: “As opposed to what: not giving people permission to be fat?” and then points out just how well that approach has worked in the last 100 years. It is just that approach that has taken us here, ironically. Stigmatize, attack, accuse people of being lazy, immoral, dirty, ignorant, lacking in willpower, and what happens? Eventually they believe it. In spite of evidence to the contrary, often evidence anyone can see. And it is incredibly difficult to change the way you think about yourself when you've had so much help over the years.

There are no absolute answers here, no roadmap to a brighter future. The forces that have brought us to this place are larger than we are. Campos does help us see beyond “common knowledge” and suggests that we replace myth with reality. We need more books of this caliber on this subject.

The China Study, by T. Colin Campbell

The title and subtitle are misleading. Although the so-called "China Study" forms the basis for the conclusions in this book, the book goes well beyond that one study. This is also not a diet book. This book is about the connection between food and disease, more specifically about how animal protein affects our health negatively. The subtitle does not overstate the case when it refers to the book's research as having "startling implications".

Campbell has been on the forefront of thought and research about nutrition since the start of his career. His origin in a farm family, where he learned that meat and more meat is good for everyone and where drinking milk was a way of life, makes his position in this book all the more remarkable. In spite of his long-held beliefs in the health value of animal protein he kept his eyes and mind open and discovered and conducted study after study that linked animal-food diets with cancer, heart disease, and a large number of other diseases. When he naively brought his discoveries to the institutions where he worked, hoping for the go-ahead to do more and to get the word out, he was quietly shoved aside.

This book, therefore, goes beyond telling us the results, telling us to eat a plant-based diet to avoid or help stabilize heart disease, diabetes, cancer, auto-immune diseases, and more. In it we learn of many of the specific studies that convinced him that eating primarily animal proteins is bad for your health. Not just bad for heart or diabetes patients, but bad for everyone. He explains the effects of genes, how some diseases (auto-immune) cause the body to attack itself, and even describes the specific mechanism that causes our bodies to use animal proteins in a way that can harm us.

Campbell also explains the political and medical climate. We've heard it before and here it is again: Industry controls government institutions as well as educational and medical institutions. Industry has the money and uses it wisely to change results and recommendations, to water down any suggestion that the standard American diet is not what it should be.

It isn't a weight-loss book, but if you follow it and you have a weight problem your problem could be solved. As I am fat myself I know there are other forces that make it very difficult for us, cravings that are far stronger than unfat people have ever felt. There is no doubt, in any case, that following this "diet" - which is a simple list of what to eat and what not, without any portion sizes (just "eat as much as you want" and "eat less" recommendations) - will make anyone healthier.

The claims made in this book are radical. Make no mistake. If followed, the American diet would make a huge swing and animal agriculture would be on its way out. Yet it isn't nearly as difficult to follow these recommendations as many think. One of the primary reasons doctors don't like to ask their patients to make radical changes is that they believe their patients will give up, that it will be too hard. But based on my own experience as well as some cited in the book, going in the plant direction opens up whole worlds that meat-eaters rarely explore. Instead of reducing our choices, this change increases them. It is also a way to never be hungry again. Diets that make people hungry may seem good for the soul but they aren't good for the body.

For proof of these claims that is as definitive as it is possible to get, read the book. It will probably change your life and it may save it.

Eleni, by Nicholas Gage

An extraordinary blend of investigative reporting and imagination, originally printed in 1983. Nicholas Gage, who emigrated at the age of nine to America from Greece in 1949, was haunted by his mother's death. His mother, Eleni, was tried and executed in his little mountain village in 1948, by communist guerrillas, who controlled the village during the civil war there.

Gage wanted to know who was really responsible for his mother's death. True to his heritage, as an adult he set out to revenge her death, but his background in investigative journalism led him to seek out the truth first.

In this massive tale, over 600 pages in the cheap paperback edition I bought, Gage begins at the beginning and relentlessly takes us on every road, into every conversation, through the relatively good times and into the horrific, that holds a part of his mother. He sketches her early years and marriage, giving us a glimpse of her husband Christo, who sought his fortune in the United States, returning periodically to be with his wife but who believed it better to keep her in Greece, living the "old ways" while he lived the new. From 1940, when the communist and fascist guerrilla groups were gaining ground in Greece, until her death in 1948, Eleni lived a life of increasing hardship. She had come from a family of privilege and her husband had sent her money for her support while he was gone, but in 1940 the mail was cut off and she no longer had any support or any word from him.

Life in the mountain village of Lia was hardly a cakewalk in the best of times. The culture demanded that women follow strict standards of dress and behavior, much as fundamentalist Muslim women do now. Women were raised to obey the men in their lives, to make no decisions on their own.

It was just this fact that eventually led to Eleni's death. When she first had a chance to get out of Lia she did not take it because her husband, in his last letter to her, had said the guerrillas were their friends and they would not hurt her. She could not disobey him. Later, though, she saw that her fate and that of her children demanded that she make a different decision.

She engineered an escape, revealing a raw courage that belied her cultural background. Other women who joined the escape band were less secure, unsure of what to do or how to manage without direct orders from men. Eleni was unable to join the group ultimately, but gave her children directions to avoid detection by guerrillas when they slipped away. The escape shocked the village and the guerrilla government decided somebody had to pay.

Gage doesn't spare many details. His story reads like fiction, with characters, words, and thoughts fleshed out. Intermittently he inserts first-person narratives, reminding us that it isn't fiction. The blend reminds me a bit of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Mailer's The Executioner's Song, but Gage has a more personal relationship with his main character and this relationship is what drives the tale. The quality of the re-creation isn't as literary as the other two works but it's far beyond hackwork.

While the story is clearly about Eleni it also gives us a good picture of life in the mountain villages in Greece at the time. It also helped me to see how a civil war like this one can pit neighbor against neighbor, with horrifying consequences. Yet at the heart of it I was surprised to find that most of the villagers did not succumb to greed when it would have been easy, did not choose to speak against others to gain privileges for themselves. Certainly some did these things, but their characters had been evident before the guerrillas moved in. It is easy to become irritated at the superstitions, the cultural norms, the ignorance at the heart of village life. Yet the innate strength of many of the same people is impressive. Perhaps living in a village where everyone knows everyone else's secrets does make for stronger bonds.

Knowing the end ahead of time made the reading hard-going for me at times. I had nightmares two nights in a row, about executions. I couldn't wait to get through the details, details, details, and past the death itself. When it came it didn't hit me like a fist in my stomach as I had anticipated. I was relieved. An extra treat for me, having made it that far, was the wrapping up, the resolution of Gage's hunt for revenge. Riveting reading, all the way through.

How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D.

A terrific book. Groopman takes on the task of figuring out how doctors make decisions about treatment. He finds that the majority of medical mistakes come from certain types of thinking patterns that doctors fall into. He offers simple suggestions to both doctor and patient to help the doctors break out of these patterns in particular cases.

Patients and doctors can benefit most by understanding the "three As", as they were termed by one reader:

• anchoring

• attribution

• availability

"Anchoring" is seizing on a set of symptoms, making a snap diagnosis and not looking further

"Attribution" is making assumptions about a patient because of certain patient attributes - old, young, complainer, whatever. In an episode of House the patient was a hugely obese man who insisted that the doctors look past his weight for what was wrong with him. Turns out he was right; the diagnosis was bad but had nothing to do with his weight.

"Availability" is the tendency to remember, in a flash, similar cases and assign the present case to the same group. For example, if the doctor has been treating a number of people with abdominal pains and they all had acid reflux he might jump to that assumption in a similar case because the diagnosis is "available" - frequently used, easy to call on.

I am sure I haven't described these as well as I could. What is critical for patients is to ask some meaningful questions when they feel the diagnosis may not be right for some reason. Here are the questions Dr. Groopman suggests:

"What else could it be?" - this question can break the physician away from a snap diagnosis.

"Could two things be going on at once?" In other words, might there be two problems instead of one?

"Is there anything in my history or the tests that seem to be at odds with the diagnosis?" Sometimes doctors see symptoms that "don't fit" but simply label them "atypical". This question brings those symptoms to the front.

I want to give a copy of this book to the doctor I have seen a few times, the doctor I am starting to consider my primary physician. I think all doctors should read it, and in the case of my doctor I suspect he actually would. It's a great resource, written compassionately and clearly, that does not condemn doctors; instead it can help them be better than they are.