June 18, 2013 · 9:17 am

Berkeley scientist questions safety of bottled water

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A review of Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water, by Peter H. Gleick

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

Put down that bottle of water, please, take a deep breath, and listen up. It’ll only take a few minutes, and when I’m done, you may never pick up a bottle of water again.

“Bottled water? This is a problem?” Yes, to Berkeley scientist Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the world-renowned Pacific Institute, “bottled water is a symptom of a larger set of issues: the long-term decay of our public water systems, inequitable access to safe water around the world, our susceptibility to advertising and marketing, and a society trained from birth to buy, consume, and throw away. . . Suburban shoppers in America lug cases of plastic water bottle from the grocery store back to homes supplied with unlimited piped potable water in a sad and unintentional parody of the labor of girls and women in Africa, who spend countless backbreaking hours carrying containers of filthy water from distant contaminated sources to homes with no water at all.”

Bottling water on a large scale is a relatively new phenomenon. “In the late 1970s,” Gleick writes, “around 350 million gallons of bottled water were sold in the United States — almost entirely sparkling mineral water and large bottles to supply office water coolers. . . In 2008, nearly 9 billion [author's emphasis] gallons of bottled water were packaged and sold in the United States and five times this amount was sold around the world.” That’s a 25-fold increase in three decades, and “Americans now drink more bottled water than milk or beer.” (Betcha didn’t know that, did you? I sure didn’t!) Now, “data on beverage consumption reveals that on average, each of us is actually drinking around 36 gallons per year less tap water.”

Gleick notes that “when we do actually look, we find evidence that there are potentially serious quality problems with bottled water. . . [However], [t]he system for testing and monitoring the quality of bottled water is so flawed that we simply have no comprehensive assessment of actual bottled water quality.”

So, why hasn’t somebody done something about this? It turns out that the FDA is the culprit. Bottled water falls within the FDA’s purview. Gleick cites a study by the Government Accountability Office to the effect that “while the FDA does very few actual inspections of water bottlers, the few they conducted between 2000 and 2008 found problems a remarkable 35 percent of the time. Even this warning sign led to ‘little enforcement action.’”

OK, maybe you feel bottled water tastes better than water from the tap. But you’re probably fooling yourself. As Gleick reports, “test after test shows the same things: people think they don’t like tap water, but they do. Or they think they can distinguish the taste of their favorite bottled water, but they can’t.” Just check out “bottled water taste test” on YouTube, if you don’t believe this.

Here, then, are the Top Ten Reasons Not to Drink Bottled Water:

10. Tap water is free, and bottled water isn’t.

9. The quality of tap water is rigorously regulated, and bottled water’s isn’t.

8. Discarded plastic water bottles end up in landfills or on roadsides by the billions. For example, “Berkeley (population 114,000) sends around six tons of PET [the plastic used in water bottles] a week to plastics recyclers — much of it used water bottles.”

7. Large scale water-bottlers sometimes drain aquifers and cause wells to run dry in communities where their plants are located.

6. Large corporations such as Nestle (Pure Life), Coca-Cola (Dasani), and PepsiCo (Aquafina) own the major bottled water brands and suck in massive profits, making them even larger.

5. Most bottled waters are marketed in a misleading way. For examples, “Yosemite” brand water is actually municipal tap water from Los Angeles.

4. “Making the plastic for a liter bottle of water actually takes three or four more liters of water itself.”

3. If you live in California “and buy Fiji Water, the energy cost of transporting the water to you is equal to the energy embodied in the plastic bottle itself.” If it’s Evian water instead, the energy expended is even greater.

2. The total energy cost of bottled water, including the materials used, the production process, and the transportation, “is a thousand times larger than the energy required to procure, process, treat, and deliver tap water.”

1. Smart restaurateurs like Alice Waters are starting to ban bottled water on their tables. And who are you going to believe if you won’t believe Alice?

So, are you ready now to reconsider the balance between the convenience of bottled water and the safety of tap water? Chances are the water from your tap is a much better bet. That’s certainly the case where I live in Berkeley.

Our own personal considerations aside, Gleick draws policy implications from his study of bottled water. He advocates five major reforms: state-of-the-art tap water systems; smarter water regulations; truthful labeling; consumer protection; and lower environmental impact.

If you’ve heard of Peter Gleick, it may be because you came across his name when he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant — or perhaps in connection with global warming, international development, national security, California’s water resources, or something else to do with water. Gleick, editor of the biennial sourcebook The World’s Water for many years, is widely acknowledged to be the world’s leading authority on that subject. However unfortunately, it’s a little more likely you heard Gleick’s name during the flurry of news awhile back — his true “15 minutes of fame” — that a group of right-wing climate change-deniers had caught him masquerading as a supporter on their website. That nasty little brouhaha soon boiled over, and sensible people — I count myself as one — never thought it amounted to much, anyway. 

So, what now? Are you going to finish that bottle of water, drink up any others you’ve still got around the house, and switch to using the tap? No? Think about it!

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June 13, 2013 · 10:29 am

John Carre’s latest is brilliant

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A review of A Delicate Truth, by John LeCarre

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

On the cover of A Delicate Truth, Gibraltar looms like the vast bulk of reality weighing down on the idealism and sense of duty that preoccupy the novel’s protagonist, as they do in so many of the works of John Le Carre. Gibraltar itself does play a key role here as the site of an incident that brings together a motley cast of hapless souls: the upstanding senior officer and the bent but bumbling junior Minister he answers to; the Minister’s fast-track Private Secretary and his jaded mentor; the upper-crust opportunist, his right-wing American bedfellows, and the British Special Forces soldiers made pawns in their machinations. This unlikely assortment of 21st century humanity is thrown together in what can most fairly be described as one glorious clusterf***.

The incident in question is a joint UK-US anti-terrorism operation in Gibraltar engineered under the tightest secrecy by the Minister and his shady partner-in-crime, financed by Texas-based evangelical Christian activists, and executed under cover of darkness by a combined force of handpicked British Special Forces and mercenaries in the employ of a mysterious American defense contractor. Our hero, Toby Bell, Private Secretary to the Minister but kept in the dark by him, learns that the whole thing went south. As the story slowly emerges when Toby is compelled to follow the breadcrumbs to the truth, he is thrown together with the now-retired diplomat who was attached to the mission and the diplomat’s daughter, a comely physician ministering to the poor in London’s East End. Toby’s rush to the truth through the minefields of institutionalized compromise is fraught with mystery, terror, pain, suspense, and the inklings of romance. Yes, A Delicate Truth is, in fact, one glorious tale, proof that John Le Carre at 81 still writes with the extraordinary skill he treated us to in the 1960s.

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June 11, 2013 · 9:06 am

Surprised by the news about NSA surveillance? Read this book!

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A review of Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

Note: This review first appeared here on September 11, 2011 (yes, 9/11/11). In view of the recent news about the NSA’s Prism program and other widespread and long-standing efforts to amass personal information about the American public, I’m posting it again. This superb book deserves a far wider audience than it received in 2011.

If you treasure your freedom as an American . . . if you’re concerned about how the U.S. Government spends your tax money . . . or if you simply want to understand how our country is managed . . . you owe it to yourself to read this brilliant book. Alternately mind-boggling and blood-curdling, Top Secret America is the most impressive piece of investigative journalism I’ve read in years. Dana Priest and Bill Arkin have written a book that, in a rational world, would usher in an orgy of housecleaning through the far reaches of the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and every other department, agency, or office that pretends to be involved in strengthening our national security.

Even then — even if we somehow reined in the known alphabet agencies — we would only be scratching the surface. Here’s Priest writing about the work of her co-author: ”After two years of investigating, Arkin had come up with a jaw-dropping 1,074 federal government organizations and nearly two thousand private companies involved with programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in at least 17,000 locations across the United States — all of them working at the top secret classification level.” There is an additional three thousand “state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions.”

Perhaps there’s one saving grace in this brouhaha of activity. Priest again: ”Post 9/11, government agencies annually published some 50,000 separate serialized intelligence reports under 1,500 titles, the classified equivalent of newspapers, magazines, and journals. Some were distributed daily; others came out once a week, monthly, or annually.” There is so much “information” generated by the counterterrorism establishment that senior managers frequently ignore it all and instead ask their aides to talk to people to find out what’s really meaningful.

Don’t be mollified by the belief that all this activity is carried out by designated intelligence agencies. The nation’s warriors have their own alphabet-soup of agencies, departments, and units devoted to the same ends. The Pentagon created a major new entity called the Northern Command headed by a four-star general (the military’s highest rank) to protect the “homeland.” However, the Northern Command has no troops of its own and, to take any action, must ask permission from the leaders of each state’s National Guard and other agencies on whom it depends for personnel.

Priest and Arkin clearly take a dim view of all this:

  • Many, if not all, of the Federal Government’s most closely guarded secrets are vulnerable to theft through simple file-sharing software installed on 20 million computers.
  • The Director of National Intelligence, a new position created in 2004 to coordinate the work of the 16 major U.S. intellgence agencies, possesses no power to do so and is frequently ignored by them. But his staff numbers in the thousands, and they hold forth from a new, 500,000-square foot office building.
  • The degree of duplication in the national security world is chilling. “Each large organization [engaged in counterterrorism] started its own training centers, supply depots, and transportation infrastructure. Each agency and subagency manned its own unit for hiding the identities of undercover employees and for creating cover names and addresses for them and for their most sensitive projects. Each ecosystem developed a set of regional and local offices.”
  • Duplication of effort runs so deep that there are three separate lists of “High Value Targets,” one each for the CIA, the Pentagon, and the super-secret Joint Special Operations Command (the people who killed Bin Laden). And “at least thirty-four major federal agencies and military commands, operating in sixteen U.S. cities, tracked the money flow to and from terrorist networks.”

The depth and quality of Priest and Arkin’s research is unexcelled, and their writing is brisk and easy to read. The book benefits from the straightforward, first-person approach Priest adopted. It’s written largely from her point of view, with Arkin’s contributions as a researcher noted in the third person.

Dana Priest has reported for the Washington Post for more than 20 years. She won the George Polk Award in 2005 for reporting on secret CIA detention facilities and the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for uncovering black sites prisons. Her exposure of the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital helped the Washington Post win another Pulitzer in 2007. She deserves another Pulitzer for this illuminating book.

Bill Arkin served in U.S. Army intelligence in 1974 to 1978 and had worked as a consultant, political commentator, blogger, activist, and researcher for a number of progressive organizations before teaming up with Priest to write the widely-acclaimed series of Washington Post articles on which this book was based.

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June 6, 2013 · 10:14 am

Does history repeat itself? A Cambridge University historian’s study of the causes of World War I

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A review of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, by Christopher Clark

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Six little boys tussle in a sandbox, pushing and shoving, sometimes openly, sometimes when none of the others are looking. One of them, a runt, is getting the worst of it, but he’s a vicious little guy and manages to hold his own within his own tiny corner of the sandbox. The biggest boys exert the least effort but command the most space. They all look confident, but secretly they’re terrified of one another, leading them to combine forces in a constantly shifting pattern of partnerships to fend off the others.

This is the image that comes to mind of Europe in the summer of 1914 from reading Christopher Clark’s new inquiry into how the First World War came to be. Naturally, Professor Clark had something much more grown-up in mind when he wrote the book. After all, he is a Fellow at St. Catherine’s College at the University of Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. in History, and we all know that a Cambridge Don would never indulge in such belittling imagery.

In all fairness, to put the event in proper perspective, “The conflict that began that summer mobilized 65 million troops, claimed three empires [Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian], 20 million military and civilian deaths, and 21 million wounded. The horrors of Europe’s twentieth century were born of this catastrophe.”

With The Sleepwalkers, Clark muscles into the seemingly endless debate about why and how all this came to pass. Not that anybody on the street is talking about this stuff, of course. But among modern European historians these questions pass for excitement, and no wonder: the Great War is generally taken as the climax of the well-ordered Victorian Era that launched the human race with a lurch into the 20th Century. The origins of the cataclysm that upended tens of millions of lives are variously found in Prussian militarism, the colliding interests of European empires, the arms race, the profit motive among arms merchants, and other cross-border phenomena, but Professor Clark apparently will have none of this. He’s a practitioner of that brand of history that finds truth in the quotidian details of human interaction — in short, in the day-to-day decisions of living, breathing human beings tossed together in a crisis that nobody foresaw.

In the first of its three parts, The Sleepwalkers thus explores the political environment, highlighting the major players in each of the contending nations — Serbia, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Germany, France, and England — in the years running up to 1914. Part II takes a broader look at the Continent, discussing the interplay of the leading states in the closing years of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th. In outline, the stable alliances of the late 1880s had given way to a bipolar system by 1907, with the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and (loosely) Italy facing off against the interlocking fortunes of Russia, France, and Great Britain. Clark asserts that “[t]he polarization of Europe’s geopolitical system was a crucial precondition for the war that broke out in 1914.” Then, in Part III, Clark delves deeply into the day-by-day, sometimes hour-by-hour, decisions of the leading players from June 28, when Gavrilo Princip shot to death the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife, until the early days of August, when all the chips had fallen into place and war was declared on all fronts.

In Clark’s view, “1914 is less remote from us — less illegible — now than it was in the 1980s. Since the end of the Cold War, a system of bipolar stability has made way for a more complex and unpredictable array of forces, including declining empires and rising powers — a state of affairs that invites comparison with the Europe of 1914.” Although Clark makes it easy to see history repeating itself in small ways — for example, the genocidal course pursued by Serbia in the 1990s was little different from its behavior in the decades leading up to 1914 — it’s difficult to see the parallels to most of today’s international crises. Surely, Professor Clark wouldn’t pretend that the U.S. invasion of Iraq — one of the seminal events of our times and perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in American history — was anything but the result of hubris and colossal miscalculation on the part of an ideology-driven clique within the U.S. government.

Disagreements aside, however, The Sleepwalkers is an outstanding piece of work.  Professor Clark’s knowledge of the period he writes about is both broad and deep, and he writes with grace and verve that’s highly unusual in academic circles.

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June 4, 2013 · 9:05 am

My 21 favorite mystery and thriller writers

Over the course of the past three and a half years, I’ve reviewed well over 100 mysteries and thrillers. A great many of these novels were written by well-established authors with long lists of widely read books to their names. In every case of the 21 writers listed below, I’ve read several of their books (some of them before I launched this blog in January 2010). 

If 21 seems a large number of “favorite” writers, consider all the names you won’t find on this list. Those include several — Ross McDonald, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler, for example — whom I last read years ago. Also excluded are the potboilers and slapdash works by the likes of James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Crais, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Tony Hillerman, Val McDermid, and Robert B. Parker. I read most of these when younger and am happy to leave them behind. 

What follows here is a list of links to my reviews of individual mysteries or thrillers by the 21 prolific authors I most enjoy. The list is in alphabetical order by the authors’ last names.

The Midnight House, by Alex Berenson

Berenson is a former New York Times reporter who writes beautifully researched stories about soldier-spy John Wells, featuring plots centered on contemporary military and foreign policy issues.

The Drop, by Michael Connelly

Most of Connelly’s 30 novels to date center on the life and work of Los Angeles Police Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. 

Now May You Weep, by Deborah Crombie

Crombie, a Texan who spends extended periods in Great Britain, has written 15 English detective novels that read as though she was born and bred in England.

The Trinty Six, by Charles Cumming

A Briton who has written superior six spy novels, Cumming is often mentioned as a spiritual heir to John Le Carre.

Buried Secrets, by Joseph Finder

Finder is the American author of 11 beautifully crafted thrillers. So far, just two of his novels feature Nick Heller in what appears to be the beginning of a series.

Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst

Since 1976, Furst has written 16 historical spy novels, most of them set in Europe between 1933 and 1944. Furst’s work recreates the mood and atmosphere of the Continent in that era like few others.

Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George

An American, George has written 18 complex and well-written novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley (plus four other novels).

Long Time Coming, by Robert Goddard

Goddard is an English novelist whose two dozen excellent novels are typically set in rural towns, with the origins of their plots found decades in the past.

The Racketeer, by John Grisham

Most of Grisham’s 26 crime novels are set in the American South and involve lawyers and legal shenanigans. He has also written 7 other books since he began writing full-time in 1989.

John Le Carre

Though I wasn’t impressed with Le Carre’s recent novel, Our Kind of Traitor, I can’t help but include him in this list. I’m now immersed in his latest work, A Delicate Truth, which strikes me as on a par with his earlier, much praised novels. (To be reviewed soon.)

The Man From Beijing, by Henning Mankell

A Swede, Mankell’s 11 Kurt Wallander crime stories are dark, complex, and often politically tinged novels that reflect his experience as a long-time progressive activist. He has also written 25 other books.

The Leopard: A Harry Hole Novel, by Jo Nesbo

Nesbo, a Norwegian, has written 10 complexly plotted mystery novels about the troubled Detective Harry Hole as well as 8 other novels.

Breakdown, by Sara Paretsky

All but two of Paretsky’s 17 novels feature private detective V. I. (Victoria) Warshawski, who tackles Chicago’s corrupt establishment without compunction.

The Cut, by George Pelecanos

Pelecanos, best known for his writing on the HBO series “The Wire,” is the author of 21 novels, most of them gritty detective stories set on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Silken Prey, by John Sandford

Sandford has written 23 crime novels with the word “Prey” in their titles, all featuring Lucas Davenport, an independently wealthy senior investigator for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Sandford has written 13 additional novels, 7 of them featuring Virgil Flowers, a colorful member of Davenport’s team.

Criminal, by Karin Slaughter

Of Slaughter’s 17 books, 14 are haunting crime stories set in Georgia about the lives of a set of interrelated characters in Atlanta and fictional Grant County.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, by Alexander McCall Smith

Smith’s 14 adult novels (so far) about the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana, comprise just one of many series in a list of works that’s almost too numerous to count. The man must turn them all out through automatic writing in his sleep!

Three Stations: An Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith

The 8 fascinating novels in Smith’s Arkady Renko series about the Soviet, later Russian crime investigator are among a total of 27 he’s written under several pseudonyms.

Victory Square, by Olen Steinhauer

Steinhauer, an American who has spent extensive periods in Eastern Europe, is the author of a brilliant five-book series about the members of the murder squad in the capital of a fictional country in that region. More recently, the young author has written three thrillers about an American spy and his fictional agency.

Harbor Nocturne, by Joseph Wambaugh

A former Los Angeles police officer, Wambaugh has written 16 novels and 5 nonfiction accounts about crime and crimefighters since 1971. Nearly all his novels are police procedurals set in L.A., bringing the authentic experience on the streets to life.

Get Real, by Donald E. Westlake

Writing under his own name as well as 16 pseudonyms, Westlake produced a total of 111 novels from 1959 until his death in 2008, nearly all of them set in New York City, two of them published posthumously. My favorites are the many humorous caper tales about the sardonic master criminal, John Dortmunder.

In addition to these 21 writers, I’ve read excellent mysteries and thrillers by 12 other authors whose output is more limited either because they’re young and just beginning their careers, they write primarily in other genres, or, in at least the case of Stieg Larsson, they’re dead. 

Among the younger writers here that show special promise are Gillian Flynn, Tana French, and Tom Rob Smith.  

Following are links to my reviews of individual novels by these 12 authors. 

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

Disciple of the Dog, by R. Scott Bakker

A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell

Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

Faithful Place, by Tana French

So Much Pretty, by Cara Hoffman

The Silent Oligarch, by Chris Morgan Jones

Shaman Pass: A Nathan Active Mystery, by Stan Jones

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson

The Ghosts of Belfast, by Stuart Neville

Primitive by Mark Nykanen

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith

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May 30, 2013 · 8:02 am

A thoughtful, action-packed crime story that explores the boundaries of morality

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A review of Live by Night, by Dennis Lehane

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

“Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were placed in a tub of cement. Twelve gunmen stood waiting until they got far enough out to sea to throw him overboard.”

Thus opens Live by Night. It is 1926, years before this flash-forward. Joe is 20. Though his father, Thomas, is a senior police commander, Joe has been a practicing criminal since the age of 13, and he’s very good at it. He’s also easy to like. The novel follows him from his days as a small-time crook through his involvement in first one Boston gang, then another, to his rise as the crime boss of the Gulf Coast answering only to “the boys” (Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky) in New York. The action shifts from Boston to Tampa to Havana, dwelling on his involvement with an engaging young prostitute named Emma Gould to his marriage later in life to a brilliant and beautiful Afro-Cuban woman named Graciela. The story is written with a sure hand: action-packed, full of surprise shifts and revelations, and populated with credible characters, including not just the bosses but the spear-carriers, too.

In The Given Day; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Shutter Island, the literary phenomenon Dennis Lehane laid bare the dark underbelly of Boston society, peopling his novels with complex and conflicted characters and finding the good in bad people and the bad in good. Live by Night, his recent, Edgar Award-winning novel, picks up the tale of the talented Coughlin clan where The Given Day left them, following son Joe, who featured in the earlier tale as a young boy.

Live by Night is crowded with smart, thoughtful gangsters with whom Joe finds himself on the losing side more than once despite his obvious intelligence. Joe is tested in more ways than one, struggling with his Catholic upbringing as he rejects the existence of God and Heaven (“You didn’t die and go to a better place; this was the better place because you weren’t dead.”) and pondering whether he can be certain of anything except his own, elusive certainty. “Things weren’t ever what they were supposed to be; they were what they were, and that was the simple truth of it, a truth that didn’t change just because you wanted it to.”

The title of this superior crime story is shorthand for the environment in which Joe and his counterparts carry out their trade. As Emma tells him, “We’re not God’s children, we’re not fairy-tale people in a book about true love. We live by night and dance fast so the grass can’t grow under our feet. That’s our creed.”

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May 28, 2013 · 9:05 am

My top 20 nonfiction picks

For nearly three-and-a-half years now, I’ve been posting book reviews in this blog, typically twice a week. For my own benefit as well as yours, I like to look back every so often at the books I’ve read and think about what I’ve learned from them. What follows below is a list of the 20 nonfiction books (out of more than 100 I read) that have added the most to my understanding of the world. They’re arranged in no particular order: I can’t imagine trying to pick the best of this lot!

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, by Lawrence Wright

The definitive study of the belief system known as Scientology, with an emphasis on its human rights violations and the Hollywood celebrities it has gathered into its “prison of belief.”

Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, by Peter Janney

Revelations galore from newly unearthed evidence about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his last years in the White House.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt

The seminal role of a long-forgotten  ancient Greek poet and philosopher on the thinking of the geniuses who shaped the Renaissance and on the course of history that followed.

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

Recent history and current events through the distorting lens of geopolitics, which views Planet Earth, and the machinations and foibles of earthly leaders, from a very different perspective than is found in most history books.

Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, by Arthur Herman

The astonishing story of America’s rearmament in World War II, with a focus on the two larger-than-life personalities who made it happen through sheer force of will: William Knudsen and Henry J. Kaiser.

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben McIntyre

The stranger-than-fiction story of the British double agents whose brilliant work in Europe played a pivotal role in the success of the Normandy Invasion.

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan

A comprehensive and well-informed view of the world of social enterprise and the extraordinary individuals who stand out in a field that attracts brilliant and inspired people by the carload.

The Self-Made Myth, and the Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, by Brian Miller and Mike Lapham

An in-depth refutation of the myth of rugged individualism, lionized by Ayn Rand’s novels and enshrined in conservative and libertarian ideology for four decades.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander

How the War on Drugs, and the institutionalized racism that undergirds it, has weakened American society and fostered a new underclass dominated by young men of color.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

A first-hand account of three years in a slum neighborhood in one of the biggest cities in the world, focusing on the hopes and challenges of two local families.

Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World’s Greatest Business Case for Compassion, by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy

A beautifully-written account of the history of a nonprofit South Indian eye hospital that has pioneered a revolutionary approach to eye-care which has brought relief to millions of poor people worldwide.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

An unvarnished biography of the design and marketing genius who built  Apple and gained a place in business history alongside Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Sam Walton.

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin

The troubling story of the institutionalization of a new military-intelligence complex triggered by 9/11 and accelerated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson

The long-overlooked story of FDR’s ambassador to Nazi Germany and his frustrated efforts to turn U.S. policy against Hitler in the face of horrific violence against Jews in Germany and anti-Semitism in the State Department.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

An oncologist’s critical study of the diseases lumped together under the label of cancer and of humanity’s halting efforts to arrest and cure them.

Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff

A fresh new take on one of history’s most powerful and fascinating women, long caricatured in popular fiction and history books alike.

The Devil’s Casino: Friendship, Betrayal, and the High Stakes Games Played Inside Lehman Brothers, by Vicky Ward

An illuminating tale of the people who set off the Great Recession, bringing to light the greed, self-delusion, and miscalculation that came so close to collapsing the world economy in 2008.

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It, by Richard. A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake

A profoundly troubling look at the rapid rise of cyber warfare and the existential threat it poses to American civilization, written by the top counterterrorism official in both the Clinton and Bush Administrations.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

Based on ten years of dogged research, a science journalist’s deeply moving account of the African-American woman whose cancerous cells seeded six decades of medical discoveries.

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May 23, 2013 · 8:57 am

Operators’ manual for the people of Lake Woebegone and other shy persons

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A review of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain

@@@@@ (5 out of 5)

If you’re the sort of person who gravitates to the sidelines at parties, shuns speaking opportunities and the spotlight in general, and wonders how gregarious people ever got to be that way, this book was written for you. And, as it turns out, not just for me, too, but also for between one-third and one-half of the American population.

Here’s Susan Cain framing her subject: “Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality — the ‘north and south of temperament,’ as one scientist puts it — is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Our place on this continuum influences our choice of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them.” And, of course, lots more.

The popular misconception of introversion in America is that it’s “somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.” By contrast, extroversion has become what Cain calls the “Extrovert Ideal” in U.S. society, making the rest of us feel somehow guilty when we don’t measure up. Cain takes on this misguided notion with a vengeance. In Quiet, she demonstrates how each of these two personality types has its own advantages and disadvantages. She makes a clear case for including a balance of the two types in any organization, the extroverts to push the limits and the introverts to hold them back from hurtling over the edge.

The terms introvert and extrovert were popularized by Carl Jung in an influential book published nearly a century ago (1921). “Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves.” In Quiet, Cain details the many ways in which the two personality types differ in the ways they work, play, invest, love, and perform just about any other function common to Americans in the here and now.

The distinction between the two types isn’t hard and fast. For example,
“[i]ntroverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while they wish they were home in their pajamas. . .  Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating.” Introverts listen more than they talk. Extroverts talk more than they listen. Still, the contrast isn’t complete: these are tendencies exhibiting strong statistical correlations with distinct patterns of chemical interaction in the brain . They’re not universal guides to behavior.

Cain places contemporary views of introversion and extroversion in historical context. A century ago, during what she terms the “Culture of Character,” Abraham Lincoln was placed atop the pedestal of virtue. Today? Tony Robbins represents the ideal in the Culture of Personality. (Tony Robbins?! You’ve got to read the book.)

Quiet is endlessly fascinating, with lengthy passages and sometimes chapters devoted to Robbins, Harvard Business School, Dale Carnegie, Rosa Parks, open-plan offices, Steve Wozniak, and other icons, fads, and trends of today’s America. Throughout, the author presents the detailed findings of research in “personality psychology,” as the relevant field is called. She cites the jargon but explains everything in clear, straightforward prose.

If you want to gain insight into who you are and why you act the way you do, read this book. It’s a pleasure.

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May 22, 2013 · 12:57 pm

If you’re a fundraiser, or know someone who is, I’ve got good news for you

A completely revised Third Edition of my best-selling book on fundraising, How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters, will be available soon. By special arrangement with the publisher, Wiley, I’ve received an exclusive 30%-off pre-publication discount.

Click here to order your copy now. Wiley will ship it to you on or about June 17, the day the book becomes available online and in bookstores.

Here’s how to get that 30% off: First, click here. After you enter your shipping information and create a password, you come to a screen that says “Promotion Code” at the top. You enter the code WARW3 in the box on the right-hand side of that page and hit Apply to take 30% off the total.

In all immodesty, every fundraiser who deals with individual donors needs a copy of this essential book.

How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters is in use as a textbook in college and graduate courses in fundraising and is used as a training tool in many nonprofit organizations and fundraising agencies. There are dog-eared copies on fundraisers’ shelves throughout the nonprofit sector—but they’re all out of date now. This Third Edition is completed revised and updated to equip you with the tools you need to flourish today in the 21st-century fundraising environment. I’ve even given the book a new title—How to Write Successful Fundraising Appeals—to reflect the new integrated fundraising reality.

This amazing offer is good only until the book reaches bookstores on June 17. Why do I call it amazing? Because Amazon.com has discounted the book only 11%—just one-third as much.

Click here to order your copy now and get ready for the new key to fundraising success: integrated fundraising.

Thanks for listening.

Cheers,

Mal

P.S. If the links above don’t work for you, please copy the following address into your browser:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118543661.html

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May 21, 2013 · 8:51 am

Politics in Minnesota: Murder, scandal, and psychopaths at play

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A review of Silken Prey, by John Sandford

@@@@ (4 out of 5)

Here’s Lucas Davenport again, that brilliant, multimillionaire, Porsche-driving cop, a friend of the governor, who takes on the most difficult criminal cases in the state as the top agent in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. This time around, Lucas is caught up in a murder case that’s somehow tied to the U.S. Senate campaign between the loony right-wing incumbent and the beautiful young billionaire psychopath who markets herself as a liberal Democrat. In other words, this is not the Minnesota we met in Fargo. It is, in fact, perilously close to the real state of the state. It’s no accident that Sandford’s suspenseful novel brims over with so much unrealized potential for satire. That’s just Minnesota. (Or, for that matter, just about any state in the Union.)

Here’s the skinny: A disgusting collection of child porn has shown up on the Senator’s personal computer, and the media is now merrily lynching him. Soon afterwards, an unscrupulous Democratic campaign trickster named Tubbs has gone missing, and foul play is suspected. Among the possibilities that occur to Davenport are (1) Tubbs planted the porn to torpedo the Senator’s campaign and was killed by whoever had hired him to do it, quite possibly the psychopathic Democratic challenger; (2) Tubbs was murdered by someone he was blackmailing, or simply on general principles for being such an odious character; or (3) Tubbs has gone on an extended bender, which he’s done before. Since the possible political repercussions of Tubbs’ disappearance are obvious, and evidence indicates that a bender is highly unlikely, the governor has asked Lucas to investigate. As Lucas ponders the possibilities, he learns that the source of the porn was, astonishingly, the Minneapolis Police Department. Soon, other complications ensue — and Lucas finds his life on the line as he pursues this case to the very top of the political heap.

Silken Prey is the 23rd novel in Sandford’s eminently satisfying Prey series, which revolves around the life and work of Lucas Davenport. Other characters in the series have spawned novels of their own — a total of 13 more books. Previously, I’ve reviewed several of Sandford’s works: Stolen Prey, Storm Prey, and Phantom Prey, plus Shock Wave and  Mad River, featuring investigator Virgil Flowers. Sandford writes with a sure hand, imbuing his characters with the sort of contradictory values and behavior that label them as fully human. Their foibles and foolishness give rise to humor, more often than not, softening the violence that characterizes all his books.

Sandford, now 69, was a Pulitzer-winning journalist before 1989, when he turned to full-time fiction writing. Sandford is a pseudonym for John Roswell Camp.

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