Citizen Reader

The problems with "more for less."

I have been reading Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture,* by Ellen Ruppel Shell, for a hundred years.

Okay, not really. But it was starting to feel like it. Make no mistake: that's not because it was a bad book. It's because it was a really good book. It was everything nonfiction should be: interesting, detailed, well-researched, and thorough. It was also as depressing as hell.

Shell describes the American (and to some extent, world) love affair with "cheap," and how our identification with consumer culture, rather than working class or production culture, is leading to a breakdown in many of our social and business systems. She does so systematically, discussing the history of discount stores and pricing in America (starting way before Wal-Mart), and she does so convincingly, examining all aspects of the "cheap" worldview such as pricing strategies and global trade imbalances. She covers a variety of retailers and products, from IKEA to our food supply. Really, it's an incredible book.

She's also upfront about how much we all enjoy bargains,** and how that might have to change if we really want to improve working conditions and wages and lifestyles worldwide. Honestly? There's so many and interesting and sad things to quote in this book, I wouldn't even know where to start. Oh, wait, I did stick in a couple of bookmarks; heres one paragraph I found interesting, from a labor scholar Shell interviewed:

"'Corporate giants have become our heroes,' he continued. 'We are so focused on the dream of wealth that we identify with billionaires, with whom we have nothing in common. Where fifty years ago we had labor identity that pit workers against management, today we have a system that pits worker against worker. And that includes workers in the United States against workers in the developing world.'" (p. 203.)

The book's also jam-packed with scary statistics about how much the overall price of food has dropped since 1970--and what that says about what we're eating--as well as numbers showing how real wages for the majority of Americans have mostly gone down, especially in the face of out-of-control health care costs.

It's a sobering book. Make some time to read it, and then read it. I think it will make you wonder just a bit about where bargain prices come from and how much they actually cost us.

*Please do click on this link, and read the review of this book listed there from The Washington Post. Now THAT is a review--and is right on. Although I liked this book, it did have its shortcomings. Reading that review highlights how my little blurbs here are not really "reviews" but are instead light "opinion pieces."

**I recognize this. The other day I was excited to find pork chops on sale for 2 for $2. I love pork chops, so I snapped some up, but when I think about it...how is that even possible? And this coming from a person who will not shop at Wal-Mart and mostly tries to avoid shopping at all. So the desire for cheap really is in all of us.

Dude, if you think zoos are okay, you've lost most of your credibility with me.

After all my complaining about it, I still ended up reading a lot of Jonathan Safran Foer's nonfiction manifesto Eating Animals.

It really wasn't for me. First off, Foer explains one of the larger reasons why he decided to investigate America's food supply (and factory farming specifically), as:

"Unexpected impulses struck when I found out I was going to be a father. I began tidying up the house, replacing long-dead lightbulbs, wiping windows, and filing papers. I had my glasses adjusted, bought a dozen pairs of white socks, installed a roof rack on top of the car and a 'dog/cargo divider' in the back, had my first physical in half a decade...and decided to write a book about eating animals..."

And, a few pages later:

"As my son began life and I began this book, it seemed that almost everything he did revolved around eating. He was nursing, or sleeping after nursing, or getting cranky before nursing, or getting rid of the milk he had nursed. As I finish this book, he is able to carry on quite sophisticated conversations, and increasingly the food he eats is digested together with stories we tell. Feeding my chld is not like feeding myself: it matters more." (p. 11.)

Brother. Yes, I know your life changes completely when you have children, blah blah blah, but it's never been my favorite reason for authors to write their books. For one thing it always seems like kind of a prick move to me--maybe you could think about the state of the world before it becomes important to you because you now have children to worry about? Maybe even if you don't have kids you should be thinking about some of these things? Anyway. That's a small, very personal quibble.

It's not that I disagree with Foer, really. I don't think factory farming is right either. I didn't enjoy reading the chapter about how the chicken you buy in the supermarket is "water-cooled" after it is processed, which means it cools in what industry insiders refer to as its own "fecal soup." It's just that most of his arguments fall flat with me. I was particularly annoyed when he talked about taking his son to zoos and thinking about animals--as I think zoos are maybe as cruel to animals as factory farming is (except zoo animals aren't put out of their misery by premature deaths, but are rather kept alive to be gawked at in their tiny little cages).

It's also telling to me that my favorite part of the book was the part not actually written by Foer, but rather by a person who works in the chicken industry (whom Foer quotes):

"It's a different world from the one I grew up in. The price of food hasn't increased in the past thirty years. In relation to all other expenses, the price of protein stayed put...

People have no idea where food comes from anymore. It's not synthetic, it's not created in a lab, it actually has to be grown. What I hate is when consumers act as if farmers want these things, when it's consumers who tell farmers what to grow. They've wanted cheap food. We've grown it. If they want cage-free eggs, they have to pay a lot more money for them. Period." (p. 96.)

I want to read a book written by THAT guy. He seems to have a better grip on reality than Foer.

In all? There's at least two books out there that are MUCH better than this one: Mark Bittman's Food Matters, and Catherine Friend's The Compassionate Carnivore. I would highly suggest reading either one (or both!) of those books instead.

Substance over style.

You may know this already, but I am constitutionally unable to pass up any book about New York City without reading it, even when it turns out I'm not that crazy about it. I am addicted to books on the subject.

The latest book I picked up to feed my addiction was Sam Roberts's Only in New York: An Exploration of the World's Most Fascinating, Frustrating, and Irrepressible City. It's a compilation of podcasts, in written form, that Roberts (who is the Urban Affairs correspondent for The New York Times) originally published on that newspaper's website.

There's nothing wrong with Roberts's writing, and his observations and research about New York City seems comprehensively done. It's just that these pieces don't, for lack of a better term, sparkle. Although I read the whole thing, this was not my favorite book about the city. Consider a piece on Manhattan's cemeteries:

"It's tough enough to find a place to buy or rent if you want to live in Manhattan temporarily. It's even harder if you're planning to remain permanently. Sure, people are dying to live here. Not the other way around, though...

I was reminded of that history the other day when former mayer Ed Koch told me he wanted to be buried in Manhattan. After he dies...But Manhattan's burial grounds have run out of room." (p. 100.)

Now that's kind of interesting stuff. And the writing is fine. But yet...I'd still say there's tons of books about New York I'd offer instead of this one. Randy Kennedy's Subwayland. Helene Hanff's Letter from New York. Even Melissa Plaut's Hack: How I Stopped Worrying about What To Do With My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab gives a better sense of the city. Do consider this one if you too are addicted to tales of the city. Otherwise, give it a miss.

What'll you have?

I had a wonderful time this weekend, reading the book Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress, by Candacy A. Taylor.

It's a slim but meaty book featuring interviews with waitress "lifers"--waitresses the author sought out who have made working in coffee shops and diners their life's work. In between the interviews the author offers historical and sociological tidbits about the waiting life, including chapters on tricks of the trade, regular customers, and tips. It's also beautifully illustrated, with multiple photographs.*

I enjoyed the interviews and the different women** the author spoke to, particularly as I have a bit of history with the career myself (although I was one of the part-timers just doing the job for cash that these old-timers scoff at as mere flashes in the pan). But I was particularly amused by author's history of how women came to be the staffers of choice for diners during World War II. She cites a 1941 article from The Diner magazine, which lists the reasons why women make superior diner staff:

"1. Women will work for less pay. 2. Women won't stay out late drinking and call in sick the next day. 3. Women belong around food. 4. Women will work harder than men. 5. Women are always happy. 6. Women are more efficient workers. 7. Women are more honest than men--they don't steal. 8. Women can talk and work at the same time. 9. Women clean diners better than men. 10. Women are cleaner than men. 11. The customers like women better. 12. Customers don't swear in front of women." (pg. 18.)

Now, I don't know that I agree with much of that list, but I was charmed by numbers 4,6, and 8. It took me back to my own restaurant days.

This is a great book. Although I'm just glad it was published by someone (in this case, the Cornell University Press), this is the sort of book that should be published by a mainstream trade publisher, and which should become a bestseller. If there were any justice in the world, anyway, that's the way it would be.

*Why aren't all adult nonfiction books illustrated? It would be so much more interesting.

**The frank nature of the interviews reminded me, in the best possible way, of the superlative title The Oxford Project.

Letting it all wash over.

My apologies for the continued quiet (cue crickets) here at Citizen Reader. This is a very novel situation for me; normally I am apologizing for things I've said, not for things I HAVEN'T said.

I have been back to reading, but I have not felt compelled to write about any of the reading I'm doing. That doesn't mean I'm not thinking about the blog, though. For instance, I am currently indexing a book titled In the Shadow of the Moon, by Francis French and Colin Burgess, about the space missions leading up to the moon landing. In one chapter, one of the astronauts muses about a spacewalk he took when his colleagues told him just to relax for a couple of minutes while they peformed experiments, and he used the time to observe the Earth and just let the entire experience wash over him. (How cool is that, by the way?) So, although I am not doing anything as cool as hanging out of a spacecraft in Earth orbit, I have been just letting a variety of readings and books wash over me.

This may not seem like a big distinction, but it is very different to read without formulating thoughts for "publication"*. I started this site in May 2008, and since then a lot of my reading has been enjoyed for itself, but has also been undertaken with an eye to what I thought about the reading, or how I would review it. That changes the reading experience, a little bit. I would like to ask some of the members of the dwindling field of book criticism if they feel writing about books for a living has significantly changed how they read.

So what's been washing over? Well, while still selfishly keeping most of my reactions to myself, I can nutshell the week in review:

I really enjoyed Chuck Klosterman's essay collection Eating the Dinosaur. I don't love him, love him, but I rarely find Klosterman dull, and I appreciate that. His concluding essay on Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) is a work of beauty, ruminating on technology, society, and how "not all crazy people are brilliant, but almost all brilliant people are crazy." See? You may not agree with it, but that's not a dull thought.

A wonderful friend sent me the gorgeous illustrated history book New York 400, which is a history of the greatest city in the world. (I think it just barely edges out, in my personal list of top cities, Montreal and London.) I have been starting each morning this week by plugging in the tree lights (yes, I am resisting taking down the tree), having my fiber cereal (still not as exciting as Pop Tarts, but what's an old lady to do?) and reading this gorgeous book and looking at the pictures. Thank you, my generous benefactress (you know who you are).

While reading for indexing is not really the same as reading for fun, I would highly recommend French and Burgess's history title In the Shadow of the Moon. If you wait for the new edition being published this year by the University of Nebraska Press, you can also use its new index, created by yours truly!

I also plowed through Louise Rennison's British YA chick lit novel Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me? It's the last title in her Georgia Nicolson series, and it was worth the wait. Not only do I want to be British, I want to be a hilarious British teen like Georgia Nicolson. (I have in fact adopted one of her phrases, which makes Mr. CR nuts: when it's cold outside, I say "Brrr! Nippy noodles."

I also had the good fortune to be assigned to review the collection The Best American Magazine Writing of 2009 for Library Journal, and not to ruin the suspense of my review, but it's fantastic. The profile of David Foster Wallace (by Sam Lipsky) made me cry, and Chris Jones's feature "The Things That Carried Him," about the preparation for burial of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2007, pissed me off. (My opinion is: it's very nice that the army treats the bodies of deceased soldiers with respect, and carefully polishes the buttons on the uniforms of even the soldiers who are being cremated. But wouldn't the soldiers be better served if the higher-ups took a little more care with their bodies BEFORE they got killed? I ask you.) Any book that can elicit both of my personalities (Mr. CR's famous assessment of me is: "you have two moods: angry and weepy.") is, I think, a book worth reading.

So there you have it. Carefully unformed thoughts from a careless but highly enjoyed reading schedule. I think 2010 is going to be even more disorganized for me than last year, and I'm looking forward to it. Happy New Year to all of you!

*This is a blog, so we can't take it as seriously as things that are actually published. But I have to justify the time I spend here somehow, as it is not time when I am being an active salary-producing American citizen, so I call it a "publication" to kid myself.

Book Menage Day 4: The Wrap-up.

Welcome to Day 4 of our Book Menage! I just want to take a moment and thank everyone who has popped into the comments so far; I have found this to be a particularly fascinating discussion and I'm rather glad we went with the true crime subject matter, even though they're not typically easy books to read.

I think we've already covered a lot of ground, so a few easy questions today.

1. What were your favorite and least favorite parts of each of these books? Would you suggest either to other readers, and if so, why?

2. Do you think you'll ever read another true crime book, ever again?

  3. You know that I always have to ask about covers. How did you feel about the covers of these books? (The Horn book has different covers in hardcover and paperback; the paperback cover is the one I've posted before--look below and you'll find it and the Geary cover--and I'll post the hardcover jacket with this post.

I have emailed some of our questions to both of the authors, but it's a hard time to be making a living as a writer (or artist) so I'm not sure either one will have time to answer. Please do check back, though; if they reply I'll post their answers here.

Well, I'm with you in theory, but that's about it.

I was amused by the jacket copy on Charles Pierce's Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free:

"The culture wars are over. The idiots have won. This pisses Pierce off immensely. Like all cynics, he's secretly a romantic at heart, and his disbelieving anger is fueled by the knowledge that America doesn't have to be this way. Like an Old Testament prophet (albeit an agnostic, funny one), Pierce lets loose on the foibles of society in the secret hope that, somehow, being smart will stop being a stigma and idiots will once again be pitied and not celebrated. But don't get your hopes up."

Pierce is a journalist and appears regularly on NPR; he can write and his prose is reasonably entertaining. But I'll admit I never got past the first chapter, in which his chief evidence that idiots are taking over is a line from a New York Times article about intelligent design, in which the reporter wrote that the ID movement "have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive."*

Really. That's the sentence he holds up as the shining example of the ridiculousness of the idiocy in our society.

Nothing against Pierce, but if that's the best he can do, I'm not impressed. I might suggest that a greater break with reality is evident in the phrase "keep government out of my Medicare," which I actually saw people say on the news last week. I think a bigger problem is that very few people could probably tell you what the theory of evolution actually is, or how it differs from intelligent design; and that another large chunk of the population simply hates the New York Times on principle because they think it is elitist or too smart. But that's just me.

In all, don't bother with this book. Pick up Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War instead--it's a million times more interesting and provides a nice mix of empathy and frustration, which Pierce's book totally misses.

*Authors always lose me when they start pointing out that only idiots would ever have any questions about evolution. I find the entire debate deeply uninteresting (I've never really understood why it's even a debate, frankly, since one of the major religious tenets seems to be that if you believe in God, you believe God can do anything, so why couldn't God set evolution in motion?), but I always think it's hilarious when anybody holds up a belief in evolution as the gold standard of intelligence. Richard Dawkins falls firmly into that camp too, and you know what? He's boring too. Maybe boringness and the tendency to sound like an asshole evolved along with the need to make everyone accept evolution as gospel** truth in writers of this sort.

**Pun intended.

The pleasures and sorrows of Alain de Botton.

I have always rather enjoyed books by Alain de Botton. I really enjoyed Status Anxiety, although I'm hard-pressed to remember anything about it, now that I think of it, and I also liked The Art of Travel. Truth be told, though, I think I enjoy his subjects and the formats of his books more than I actually enjoy his style; Status Anxiety was about how we all try to keep up with each other in what we own and the affluence we project; it also included a number of photographs which served to break up de Botton's sometimes dense text.

The same goes for his most recent book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. I read it over the last weekend and found it quite enjoyable, although once again the inclusion of photographs really helped it along. In the book he examines a number of different professions, but he doesn't so much investigate them as he ruminates on them, and sometimes from afar.* (In a chapter seemingly about transmission engineering, electricity, and the structure and construction of electric line pylons, he describes the work from the somewhat removed vantage point of walking along a trail of pylons across southeast England with a pylon installer and enthusiast, describing less the actual process of pylon installation than the willingness of human beings to ignore such fundamentally basic and important structures in their lives and surroundings.)

I don't know that this is an author I'd like to have a conversation with (he seems a bit prickly sometimes**) and sometimes I did get the feeling he's in love with the sound of his own voice, as when he describes his experiences at an aviation conference:

"At the stand of the world's second-largest engine manufacturer, I spent some minutes observing an unusually attractive young saleswoman with shoulder-length chestnut hair, dressed in a beige suit, who was biting the nail of her left index finger and crossing her slender legs whilst leaning against a large fan blade. She was not the first of her type I had seen that day, but something about her appearance left me thoughtful. I had until then believed that the vendors' frequent and deliberate reliance on feminine appeal was merely a vulgar stratagem intended to win over airline executives, through an implicit suggestion that a purchase might bring them closer to intimacy with a sales agent. Now I began to see the matter differently: it seemed obvious that no order, however lucrative, would actually render these women available to buyers, so their presence on the stands took on a more poignant and commercially effective dimension. Their real function was to serve as a reminder of the unavailability of beauty to an overwhelmingly male, middle-aged and harried-looking base of customers..."

I just don't know about all that. And it seemed to take a long time for de Botton to say. But overall? The subject matter and the photographs still won the day; the chapter on accountancy was a wonder to behold, and I simply love all books about work, the way only someone who really tries to avoid work at all costs can.

*Except for his chapter on tuna fishing, which is alarmingly in-depth. If you like tuna (and by this I mean, like having it in a sandwich) and you want to keep on liking tuna, I would suggest not reading the tuna chapter.

**Although I was a bit tickled that he told a reviewer who gave this book a less than sparkling review "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make." There he was able to get something said with remarkable economy of words! Reviewers of course have the right to actually review books, and authors have the right to respond, so his prickliness doesn't really bother me here.

Methland: Part two.

If you read the review and comments from yesterday, you'll see that Robert raised some questions about Nick Reding's book Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, and several people noted that they themselves had picked up on Reding's geographical and other errors.

This makes me very sad, because I actually thought Reding's book had some merit as a readable book on an ugly subject.* As Robert already covered, it is an investigation into meth addiction, production, and trafficking, as seen through the lens of its effects on small towns in the Midwest (and one small town, Oelwein, Iowa, in particular). Robert is also right in pointing out that the book is haphazardly organized. And yet...I did not and do not dislike this author. I think he made an effort to get out and talk to some people about this problem (I know I'm not seeking out meth-heads to talk to in bars, nor would I want to), and I think he's a new writer who's not quite sure how to construct a book yet. I can not excuse his geographical mistakes, although I feel part of the blame there rests squarely with the publisher (Bloomsbury USA), who should take some responsibility for fact-checking.

What I did find interesting about this book was Reding's description of how meth works (let me nutshell it: not only does it manipulate dopamine release and re-uptake to provide an incredible and long-lasting high, it also destroys the neurotransmiters in your brain, making it harder or impossible to ever get a natural high from anything else ever again--evil) as well as his history of how similar drugs were first made and prescribed for depression and to help people keep working. In particular, he speculates that meth is a "working-class drug" simply because so many working class people found that it allowed them to work double-shifts in factories, without the need for sleep, food, or even bathroom breaks. Again: evil.

So there you have it. Can you trust a book in which several glaring errors have been uncovered? Can you overlook a book that is a bit rocky in its execution in order to learn about an important but sad topic? If you can answer yes to those questions, I would still say you should go ahead and read this book. I do think it would work well as a companion read to Richard Longworth's Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism (which is also published by Bloomsbury, so I hope it is not as riddled with errors).

*This is small potatoes, but I also think its cover is perfect, both as a photograph and for the book's subject matter. Next time you're in a bookstore take a closer look at it. It gets the beauty and the loneliness exactly right.

Methland: Guest review, and other assorted thoughts.

Today I'm very pleased to offer a guest review of Nick Reding's Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, by my friend Robert Brown. This is partly because I am lazy today, and I'm really not sure what to say about this book. But it is primarily because Robert has written a better review than I ever could. Somebody please give Robert a job reviewing books, would you? I have his contact information. Here goes:

"Meth is a chemical developed a century ago, and with a long history of acceptable use, in the US and around the world. It makes one a kind of invincible robot laborer. Tough times and narrowing options in the rural midwest US opened the door for the explosion of meth onto the national scene, laying waste to the traditional values of the region.

Reding follows the trail of meth's slow, steady spread throughout the country, interviewing politicians, scientists, federal agents, police, and a meth-head or two to get at the truth. What he uncovers is disturbing and bleak. What he attempts to do is to use meth as a tool for understanding the plight of the individual during our current globalized society. Most of the book is given to analysis of the agricultural upheavals of the last quarter century and the decline of organized labor in a distributed labor market. Reding also covers the effects of the pharmaceutical industry's lobbying of the US congress, and courageously opens the immigration can of worms. This gives the book a larger frame, but compromises its depth.

I bought this book because I've been wondering about what meth has been up to the last year or so. I haven't heard much about it, and that makes me nervous. I remember when speed was just a joke, and I hoped for a clearer understanding of how uppers became crank. I now have that understanding, and I'm not sure I'm better off with it.

Methland is not a light read, nor an uplifting one. Reding tries to end on a high note, stressing the small-scale success of the mayor of the town of Oelwein Iowa and his allies in rehabilitating both the material circumstances of the town, and the collective spirit of the townspeople. He shows how one meth addict is trying against his own will to be a good father and stay clean.

The overwhelming feeling engendered by the book, however, is one of weary resignation. Meth is here, and it isn't going away, and the people who now control the supply and delivery of the drug are unpleasant. Things are probably going to get worse: third-world worse.

Part of the reason Reding's attempt to ameliorate the dread his investigation induces fails is that he doesn't believe it himself. His interpretation of events speaks volumes about his own convictions regarding the future, and I happen to find his interpretation and his convictions convincing. The other reason is because Reding's research seems spotty, or perhaps most of his research didn't find its way into the book. He didn't dig as hard as he could have, perhaps. Where are the interviews with a variety of addicts, or regular citizens? How does meth affect the "heartland?" What is the "heartland?" Who are all these people? Reding provides a few perspectives, but not a wide enough spectrum to make an impression.

Methland is an informative book, but it is too brief and too shallow a study to provide anything definitive or lasting. The people we meet are interesting, but we don't meet enough people. The anecdotes and interviews and studies are compelling, and the book is full of insight, some of it all too plausible. But it seems haphazardly organized, and rushed from initial material through final draft. Still, I recommend the book to anyone who wants to understand how uppers became crank."

Thank you, Robert. Actually, reading his review made me re-evaluate this book; more on that tomorrow.

Sometimes you just have to re-read a book.

While I wait for all my new library holds (placed after reading yesterday's great suggestions; THANKS ALL!) to come in, I have decided to give up on new materials for the time being and re-read a book that I loved last year: Martin Millar's Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me.* I actually brought it back home for Mr. CR to read, but until he gets around to it, I'm loving it all over again on the second pass. There is a very certain pleasure to be had in re-reading a book, that is entirely distinct from loving a book on an initial read. Sure, you still love the prose of it, and the story, and even though the surprise is gone, there's something about re-recognizing your favorite bits, a settled feeling it gives you in your tummy to think "Yes, this is it, exactly, I love this." I liken it a little bit to the best parts of being married, without all those troublesome marriage bits of having to fight over whose family you're going to visit at holidays.

In nonfiction news, I came across this title in Booklist magazine the other day (I wasn't reading Booklist for fun; as they only run "positive reviews," I think they're the most boring review source on the planet, but it is good for keeping up with new titles): Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Undermines America. Now that is a title I can get behind, even if its author is Barbara Ehrenreich, of whom I am not really a fan. In other new nonfiction book news: Michael Lewis is publishing a title called The Big Short: Inside the Doomday Machine in November (hm, Amazon says Feb 2010), and William Langewiesche has Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson (about the plane crash in the Hudson River earlier this year).

In other book news, Brandon will be hosting a book club discussion of Dante's Inferno this autumn. Now, if that doesn't get me out of my reading funk, nothing will! (Although I will probably go right back in my reading funk when all the Dan Brown and Oprah book hysteria hits next week. Yeah, yeah, I'm just supposed to be glad people are reading. Whatever.) Have a good weekend, all.

*After reading a bit this morning, I wandered over to this computer to get to work, and write this blog post. Decided to listen to a little Zeppelin on YouTube while doing so, and then check out how Martin Millar is these days. And lo and behold, his post today is about listening to a little Zeppelin, and how it cheered him. You're awesome, Martin. I feel cheered too. Thank you.

Holiday! (Imagine Madonna singing it.)

I love Labor Day weekend. Let's explore the many ways it is awesome: 1. it heralds the beginning of fall, my favorite season; 2. no family get-togethers, therefore, no fights about which family get-together to attend; 3. it's a holiday that doesn't celebrate war; and 4. it celebrates labor, of which I am a fan. (Just because I'm not good at laboring doesn't mean I think it's a bad idea.)

So, forthwith, a list of some of my favorite books about work:

1. Gil Reavill's Aftermath, Inc., in which the author joined a group of workers who clean up death scenes and accidents (particularly those which involve any kind of biohazard). Not for the faint of heart, but a good rollicking read nonetheless.

2. Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code. Hands down one of the most interesting and illuminate books I've ever read about computer programming. I still don't understand it but I have a better understanding of what I don't understand.

3. Ted Conover'sNewjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Good lord, I hope I'm never convicted of anything. I couldn't handle being a prison guard, much less being IN prison.

4. William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea. It is William Langewiesche, writing about modern-day pirates. Ask no questions, just read.

5. Stacy Horn's The Restless Sleep; discussed at length earlier this week but an unbelievable look at those who work around murder victims, particularly cold case investigators. Read this one and you'll be halfway there for our next Book Menage!

6. John McPhee's Uncommon Carriers, in which he makes trucking and the profession of trucking fascinating.

7. John Bowe's Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. Well, it's about work, unfortunately the work isn't really voluntary. I quoted this one to my poor mother again just the other day: I continue to be floored by Bowe's brilliant, and brilliantly simple assertion that (I'm paraphrasing, but this is fairly close) "the system isn't broken--the system is working exactly the way the system was set up to work." Holy Christ. Think on that one for a few minutes.

and

8. The Working Stiff's Manifesto, by Iain Levison. I don't agree with this author's rather casual attitude toward stealing from one's employer (although I'm no innocent--I still have and use the apron I was provided with as a Country Kitchen waitress--and I'm not giving it back!), but it's still a great book.

Happy Labor Day, all. Now go take a load off.

Facebook, heebies, etc.: Part two.

So yesterday we talked about the subject of Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. After reading it I have decided I am going to stay as far away from Facebook as possible, but let's face it, I am not really the target audience for Facebook. If human beings have a "social gene," mine is either highly inactive or gone missing.

But today the question is, how does this book work as a book? And, more particularly, how does it work as a nonfiction book? Well, let's examine that. Here's an excerpt from Mezrich's Author's Note:

"There are a number of different--and even contentious--opinions about some of the events that took place...I re-created the scenes in the book based on the information I uncovered from documents and interviews, and my best judgment as to what version most closely fits the documentary record."

Okay, well, that's all pretty par for the course. Sounds like a lot of nonfiction at this point.

"I have tried to keep the chronology as close to exact as possible. In some instances, details of settings and descriptions have been changed or imagined, and identifying details of certain people altered to protect their privacy."

Okay, I guess I'm still with you. the "details of settings and descriptions have been changed or imagined" is starting to make me a little nervous, but I would imagine if I closely examined a lot of the nonfiction I read I would have to start questioning the details of setting. But then the note just keeps going on and on:

"Some of the conversations recounted in this book took place over long periods of time, in multiple locations, and thus some conversations and scenes were re-created and compressed. Rather than spread these conversations out, I sometimes set these scenes in likely settings."

For some reason the setting of scenes in "likely settings" is the tipping point on this one for me. Basically what we have here is a disclaimer that hey, I've pretty much changed everything, although it's all based on interviews. (And, Venta, to answer your question from the comments yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg, the primary character in the book and the founder of Facebook, never agreed to be interviewed for this book.) I'm not sure how I feel about all of this. For one thing, there is no arguing that this is effective, fast-paced, highly readable nonfiction. (It's 250 pages long but can be read in a couple of sittings.) But does that mean it's good nonfiction? That's a harder one to call, I think.

So there's my qualified review. For subject alone, this is a book you have to read. I myself have never really demanded that my nonfiction be "all true"--I read and enjoy too many memoirs to expect that--and I think even when people investigate things it's impossible to get at the truth (as I believe most people lie about everything pretty much all day long--and not always in a bad way, really), so I can't give Mezrich too hard a time.*

I also don't think it's Mezrich's fault that Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed, which I think is one of the most telling parts of the whole book, offered before the narrative even begins. This is a man who has made millions of dollars off of individuals wanting to share everything they can about themselves online, and who think he's a hero for making that possible. He didn't agree to being interviewed because he didn't have to. He can do anything he wants with very little fear that anyone will think less of him for it, and he'll make use of that. That one fact seems to lend as much credence to Mezrich's narrative arc--that Zuckerberg will do what he wants, when he wants, and anyone who isn't CEO of Facebook can just suck it--than any amount of research or more "pure" nonfiction writing would have provided.

*Mezrich has gotten in trouble for this before; claims have been made that much of his bestselling book Bringing Down the House was fabricated. I know I should be more upset about this, but all I can really say is, I'm not all that surprised. If you're a stickler for a bit more accuracy in reporting, skip this guy and head for some William Langewiesche, or really anyone whose author's note disclaimers are less than two pages long.

"They just wanted to meet some girls..."

Is everyone on Facebook? You may not want to be anymore if you read Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook (further sutitled A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal).

A couple of things. This is a slim book, but there's two definite areas to cover here, so bear with me. First, there is the subject of the book, which is, of course, the founding of the social networking site Facebook by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg (who "came up" with the concept and did the programming) and Eduardo Saverin (who provided the seed money for the company's initial founding). All I can say after reading this one is, I have seen the future, and it is being run by the computer programmers (or, more particularly, the hackers), and that is a scary thought. Not because they're bad people. (In fact, they have reputations as being quite nerdy people, which you'd think would make me love them, and kind of does, in the same way I have a soft spot for engineers.) No, I'll admit I fear computer programmers* because I so completely don't understand what they do. And, here's the tricky parts: how they can do it so big, and they can do it so fast. Facebook grew from one college campus's worth of users to millions of users--all dumping their personal information into its servers--within a few months. There's something creepy about that.

And then let's consider why the company was formed. I don't actually know how much of this story is factual (please refer to the second part of this review), but if it actually started the way Mezrich describes it starting, that's kind of creepy too. I found it particularly hilarious that the call-out quote on the back of the book is "they just wanted to meet some girls." But here's the story as it starts on page 43:

"Maybe somewhere inside of Mark's thoughts, he knew that blaming it all on a girl who had rejected him wasn't exactly fair. How were this one girl's actions different from the way most girls had treated Mark throughout high school and college?...He was going to create something that would give him back some of that control, show all of them what he could do...

Maybe he grinned as he scanned through the pictures [from a Harvard online "facebook"] that were now spread across the screen of his desktop. Certainly, he recognized some of the guys, and even a few of the girls--but most of them were probably strangers to him, even though he'd passed them in the dining hall or on his way to his classes. He was probably a complete stranger to them, too; some of the girls, for sure, had gone out of their way to ignore him.

[from Mark's online blog, quoted in the text] 'I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.'"

Sorry for the choppy nature of those quotes, but you do get the idea, right? Zuckerberg first created something called Facemash at Harvard not so much because he wanted to meet girls, but because he was pissed and wanted to get back at them by rating them next to farm animals (although he eventually he classed it up a step and went with asking visitors to his new site simply to rank Harvard girls against one another). And then he created that site...by hacking into the university's online (not public, mind you) and individual picture/facebook collections (evidently Harvard is divided into "houses" that each have their own networks) and downloading everyone's photos.

You think a guy like that, who is now CEO of a company that Microsoft once valued at over 15 billion dollars, is going to have any qualms about doing anything he wants with your personal information? I guess people like Facebook. But it gives me the heebies. The guy who created it gives me the heebies. All the programmers who work for him who create major new software "enhancements"--like video-sharing--over the course of TWENTY-FOUR HOURS (which Facebook has done) give me the heebies. Is all of this really worth putting your photo out there so people you didn't really like all that much in high school can find you?

Hmm, I was going to do both halves of this review today, but I think I have already gone on too long, and am heebied out. Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

*The irony of typing this in a program provided for me by programmers, who have made it possible for Luddite idiots like me to shoot my mouth off online, is not lost on me.

Books about Books Week: Slightly sidetracked.

I had a completely different topic in mind for today, but last night I spent some time on Stacy Horn's blog, and today I'm feeling more like writing about her.

If you'll remember, I am a huge fan of Stacy Horn, whose latest book is titled Unbelievable. I actually loved her two previous books a bit more, though: The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad and Waiting for My Cats to Die: A Morbid Memoir.

The reasons to love Stacy Horn are legion: she is a fantastic writer. She is beautiful. (I'm shallow, I'll admit it.) She loves kitties, and animals in general. She loves TV. She feeds the birds on the porch of her apartment. She lives in New York City, and regularly posts pictures of things she loves, whether it's other people's apartments or beautiful serving dishes. And she says things like this:

"Richard Dawkins: Yeah, Not a Good Idea.

I just read on Cosmic Variance that Richard Dawkins is wondering aloud if ridicule as a way to deal with people who believe in God is enough.  'I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt.'

Ridicule and humiliation generate one thing (mostly):  anger. And that anger will either be directed inward or outward.  Neither is a good thing. After spending a few years studying unsolved murder in New York, I can also add that for some the only way to restore their self-esteem is to kill someone. (Murder is often about shame, it turns out.) For the bulk of humanity however, shame will result in some smaller, quieter form of destruction, and rarely constructive change.  'Nobody likes to be laughed at,' Dawkins points out. And you think the result might be a quick switch to the position of the tormenter?  I suppose for a sad few it might, but that isn’t a true change of thinking or understanding is it?"

Oh, Stacy. (Can I call you Stacy? I hope I can. I love her too much to call her Ms. Horn.) She also points out that it is very hard to sell books. So I think what I'm tempted to do (besides beg all of you to read her books, her blog, and to either buy or suggest your library buy copies of her books) is propose her True Crime book, The Restless Sleep, as our next Book Menage book,* paired with a Rick Geary historical crime graphic novel. What does everyone say?

*I don't know that that will help her a lot, as that book looks out of print, but maybe if you grow to love her as I have you'll have to rush right out and buy all her books new.

How is that going to work?

I have two big questions about Jean Hatzfeld's latest book, The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda after the Genocide. Number one is a basic question about the premise of the book: In 2003, the Rwandan government started releasing Hutu prisoners who had confessed to and been convicted of numerous murders of their Tutsi neighbors in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. I ask you: how is that going to work? My second question is more basic, and it's about Jean Hatzfeld: how does he stand continuing to write these books?

This is the third in a series of Hatzfeld's books, originally written in French (and translated beautifully by Linda Coverdale). The first book was Machete Season, and was an oral history of the Hutus who did the killing. In the second, Life Laid Bare, Hatzfeld spoke with Tutsi survivors. In this book, he speaks with both Hutu and Tutsi residents of Rwanda, many of whom are now struggling to live as neighbors, side by side with Hutus who hunted them (for the Tutsis) or with the Tutsis they couldn't catch and kill (for the Hutus).

I don't know if it's because it was the first book I read on this subject, or because it was the best, but Machete Season blew me away. That was a book that actually changed my view, not of the world, but of myself. When I recognized, in the Hutus' stories of why they picked up machetes and started murdering Tutsis, that part of why they did it was because farming was a ridiculously hard way to make a living and they coveted what their neighbors had, I could understand what they were saying. When they further explained how they had been hearing bad things about Tutsis all their lives, and how they hated them, I could get that too. Everyone, at some time, I think, has felt some sort of overwhelming disgust or dislike for their fellow humans and often, specific humans at that. I know we like to think, secure here in America with our clean water and our working sewage systems and our grocery stores full of food, that we would never commit atrocities. But couldn't we? If those grocery stores and water and everything else went away, wouldn't we?

I won't say it wasn't a depressing thought. But it changed how I thought about many other things in my life, and about myself. I'm not saying we're all killers at heart. What I am saying is that I don't think any of us are sure what we are truly capable of, especially in horrifying and lawless and threatening circumstances. That is a powerful thing to realize, and it makes you a little less likely to make blanket statements which start with "I would never..."

I can't say that this book gave me that experience, but it's a must-read anyhow. How will these people live together? Granted, I didn't know how it was going to work to keep all the Hutus locked up, either, but to let them all live together again? How can you be a neighbor to someone who once chased you with a machete through a forest, where the only way you could survive in a group was by employing the "antelope's strategy" of scattering out? (Hence the book's title.) I don't know. To his credit, I don't think Jean Hatzfeld knows, either, and he doesn't have much to say about it, as in this book he largely tells the story in the words of those people who he interviews. It's oral history at its finest, and saddest. If you can stand it, you should read it.

It's the little things.

Earlier this week my friend Robert opined in the comments here that it's the little things that make you happiest. I have thought of this comment all week, and Robert, you are totally correct. Because yesterday I found this:

"Movie Title: The Men Who Stare at Goats. Release Date: November 6. Starring: Ewan McGregor."*

I actually had to stop reading and typing and shake my arms in the air like toddlers do when they get over-excited when I read that. I don't know if I've ever reviewed it here, but Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare at Goats is one of the best nonfiction books EVAH.** It's all about journalist Ronson's journey to track down everything that is weird and horrible about the military, and then write it up in such a way that the reader doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. You know those creepy guys who you suspect get into the military just to someday be able to cause pain to their enemies, particularly weird psychological and brainwashing type pain? Ronson goes and finds those guys and talks to them. Amazing. And he's British, so he does it with a certain amount of bitter flair that an American just couldn't pull off.

And the Ewan McGregor part? That's just icing on the cake. I cannot WAIT until November 6...and in the meantime, I'm going to read The Men Who Stare at Goats again. I would highly recommend you do the same.

Have a good weekend, all.

*Further down the page I also learned that Michael Lewis's superlative book The Blind Side is also coming out in movie form later this fall. Awesome.

**This is also one of my all-time favorite book covers. It seems to me to sum up all that is ridiculous about men and guns.

Ah, relics, they always make for good reading.

You know you have slightly strange tastes in nonfiction when you see a book about saints' relics and you think, "Ooh, goody!" And you further know you've probably read too much nonfiction when you think, "I wonder if it will be as good as the other relic book I read?"*

I was very, very excited to find Peter Manseau's book Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead in my library catalog. Not only because I find the idea of saints' relics (purported remnants of saints' bodies and other holy items--like pieces of the cross Jesus was crucified on--that are honored and venerated within various religions, including Catholicism and Buddhism) fascinating, but also because I love, love, LOVE Peter Manseau. (His memoir Vows, about his parents, a former nun and priest, and his childhood spent trying to understand their and his relationship with the Catholic Church, was hands-down one of the best memoirs I've ever read.)

This book finds Manseau traveling around to various holy sites, including Jerusalem and Goa, a city in India where the remains of Saint Francis Xavier are kept, and investigating such relics as the foreskin of Jesus (you heard me) and the burnt bones of Saint Joan. He strikes just exactly the right tone throughout; he is respectful without being obsequious, skeptical without being rude. He is, above all, fascinated by and thoughtful about his topic. This is what he has to say about Francis Xavier, who was an unenthusiastic missionary (at best) to India, although that is where his remains are today: "In death Francis Xavier had joined the lives of a people and a place where he had never wanted to remain. These children, born in the country he scorned, educated in a school that bears his name, have lived their lives in his shadow, but now they run in front of his church, casting their own." (p. 52.)

When I really love nonfiction I fall into very distinct feelings when reading it. Some nonfiction is exciting; some is inspiring, some makes me very angry; but my very favorite titles make me feel settled and thoughtful and peaceful. You know what I mean, about different feelings that books give you? This book makes me feel settled and peaceful, and it's wonderful. Right on, Peter Manseau.

*The other relic book was Anneli Rufus's Magnificent Corpses: Searching through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand, and Other Relics from the Saints, which was also excellent. More personal in some ways, sharper in some ways, less historical and even-toned in others, but still brilliant.

And people wonder why I don't like doctors.

Yes, I know doctors are there to help you. I know when you need an operation or someone to clear an airway and jam a breathing tube down your throat, you have to go to doctors. That doesn't mean I have to like them.

It probably doesn't help that I keep reading books like Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height (by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove). The title and subtitle there don't leave a whole lot to the imagination; basically it's a book about how doctors and others in the medical profession have "treated" people whose final heights will fall outside the bounds of what they consider "normal." Told chronologically, the story first focuses on girls whose parents feared they were growing too tall (and would grow themselves right out of the marriage market--this was in the 1940s and 1950s) and who were given hormones to speed up their puberty and stop their growing. It then moves pretty smoothly into the discovery that human growth hormone could be extracted from human pituitary glands, and how that hormone was used to treat all sorts of children who seemed too short.

 

That's a very quick nutshell synopsis of the book; if you're interested in the subject, you should definitely pick it up, because the authors do a good job of telling a very detailed and complex medical story. (At times it was actually a little too detailed, and because I had been working on the book for a while and just wanted to finish it, I'll admit I did start skipping a few pages here and there.) But I can hit the salient points, and try to give an indication of why I found this book so, so interesting, and why it may be worth some of your reading time:

1. Jesus God, I don't know if they're still this way, but doctors in the 1950s and 60s certainly seemed a bit carefree about just injecting patients with any old thing to see how they'd react. That's how you got girls whose mothers worried they'd be over six feet tall receiving DES, a synthetic hormone with a chemical structure similar to that of DDT, and which was also used to prevent miscarriages (but which may have actually caused miscarriages).

2. When the doctors aren't the problem, parents are. There is much discussion in this book about kids who didn't want treatments--especially girls who weren't in a big hurry for puberty and boys who didn't feel particularly bad about being short--and the parents who pushed their doctors to prescribe "treatments" anyway.

3. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book is how hormones used to be collected from the pituitary glands of cadavers, and how nobody really thought that was a problem--until, ahem, kids that had been treated with those pituitary hormones started dying from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (also known as the mad cow disease that affects humans). Would that be worth an inch or so of extra height? Nor is this story exclusively about America; the authors also discuss similar cases from Australia, France, and Great Britain.

4. The science of height prediction is unscientific in the extreme. Basically, your doctor has about as good a chance of predicting your kid's eventual height as the weatherperson has of predicting the weather a month from now.

5. Here's a surprise: pharmaceutical companies who are still selling growth hormones keep working to expand their markets, and are trying to make "shortness" a disease that qualifies for insurance coverage.

If you've got the stomach for it, it's a really interesting read. It's not a perfect book; sometimes it's a little dry, but all in all it's an eye-opener. I'll let the authors sum it up; this is what they have to say on the back cover: "In the end, short stature is a multibillion-dollar business that is still growing like a weed."

Disappointment, NPR style.

Books-on-tape versions of NPR programs are always really popular in my library system, so I've been waiting months to receive a copy of NPR Funniest Driveway Moments on CD. When it finally came in, I was pumped. I love listening to comedy routines on tape.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I found out that these sixteen (or so) tracks were mainly of NPR commentators interviewing comedians about comedy.* I'm not saying it was a dull listen, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I thought it would. Comedians spoken with include Dame Edna, Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, and Larry David, so they did break out the heavy hitters for this collection.

There were, however, two very bright moments. One was David Sedaris's track, which was indeed Sedaris reading one of his essays (which is rather what I thought the whole collection was going to be). He talks about his experiences with health care in France, where he had a ton of dental work done for a mere $40, and once went to the emergency room, where all of his care cost a total of $100. He further points out that if he had been a French citizen, he would have been reimbursed for those costs, and that no one ever asked him if he was insured or how he would be paying before they cared for him. (Ahem--how do they make THAT work? That's the system we need.) He concluded his essay by asking his male nurse for an ashtray--which was brought and which he used--and how that was the moment when he realized there was no real reason to ever return to the United States. 

The other bright spot, if you can call it that, is a quote from a 1983 interview with Richard Pryor, in which he replied to a question about the obscenities in his routines by saying, "You know what's obscene to me? The president of the United States stands on television and tells people that we are helping to fight communism in South America by killing the people. I would never do that."

What I have learned from this is that I have got to go find some Richard Pryor routines on CD, somewhere.

*Also? Sometimes the commentators sound like they're forcing their laughter, and I found that very annoying. I don't think they were forcing it, but it didn't sound quite right.