End of summer bookdump

Some more of what I’ve been reading recently…

How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Education from the World’s Greatest Chefs, edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Peter Meehan — Short essays by famous chefs. As with all such anthologies, some are heartwarming, several recount definitive or formative embarrassments, some are infuriatingly self-aggrandizing, and some just miss the point entirely.

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, by Dan Koeppel — So apparently the half of a banana I enjoy with my daily oatmeal faces extinction, with no viable replacement variety currently on the horizion. Depressing.

Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, by Ruth Reichl — I quite liked Garlic and Sapphires, Ms. Reichl’s memoir of her New York Times restaurant critiquing gig. I found this book, which recounts earlier events in her life, less enjoyable, largely because I found the narrator less engaging, likeable, or sympathetic.

Pint-sized Ireland: In Search of the Perfect Guinness, by Evan McHugh — I’m in one of my periodic tetotal phases, so the boozing part of this book was interesting, but in an almost academic sense. As an account of traveling through Ireland, this is a cracking good read.

The Cleaner, by Brett Battles — First book in a series about the guy who comes in after a situation and removes all traces (and remains) of that situation. A nice mix of action, paranoia, and intrigue.

The Sword-Edged Blond, by Alex Bledsoe — While this purports to be a blend of fantasy noir, it’s really more a staright-up fantasy with noirsh elements at the bookends. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the author definitely fails to follow through on the central conceit. Still, as pure fantasy, it works pretty well.

Jhegaala, by Steven Brust — A bit of a letdown after some recent strong (Issola, Dragon, Dzur) but even a so-so Vlad Taltos novel is still a delight.

On the other hand…

Now and Then, by Robert B. Parker — So remember the movie Heathers? Remember the interplay between the Winona Ryder character and her father (“Would somebody please tell me why I keep smoking these things?” “Because you’re an idiot.”)? Yeah, that’s how I feel about Spenser novels sometimes. Not that I’ll quit, just that the habit isn’t as enjoyable as it once was.

The Deceived, by Brett Battles — Sequel to The Cleaner. Solid.

What to Eat, by Marion Nestle — Graduate level Michael Pollan; an aisle-by-aisle and shelf-be-shelf analysis of the supermarket. Basically, we’re doomed. The array of food available and the economics and politics of its production and distribution are impossible to escape. The best we can really manage is to be as informed as we can as consumers, and make the choices we do make based on an understanding of what we’re putting in our bodies and where it comes from (as well as such uninformed, impulsive, indulgent, or habitual choices we care to make along the way).

The Saucier’s Apprentice: One Long Strange Trip Through the Great Cooking Schools of Europe, by Bob Spitz — “Great Cooking Schools” is a bit of a misnomer. Some of Mr. Spitz’s experiences come across as great, even life altering, but these transcendent experiences are more a matter of good fortune than design. His teachers range from dilettantes to martinets, along with a few rare good teachers. Few are great, or even necessarily good, chefs. The result is a journey to be envied for its ambition, if not necessarily emulated in its design or execution.

Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais — A solid outing featuring LA private detective Elvis Cole. A decent plot, aided by a lifting of the darkness that has hung over other recent outings.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars, by Joël Glenn Brenner — Basically, this is an economic history of Willy Wonka, if Willy Wonka were two people, one philanthropically minded and slightly complacent, the other a miserable bastard dedicated to growth and expansion for their own sake.

Florence of Arabia, by Christopher Buckley — The author of Thank You For Smoking and other social satires takes on women’s rights in the Middle East. This one cuts a little close to the bone to be as purely hilarious as some of his other books.

The Man Who Ate the World: In Search of the Perfect Dinner, by Jay Rayner — A London-based restaurant critic travels the world eating at renowned gourmet restaurants. The result is an exploration of excess, celebrity, indulgence, and the questions How much is too much? and What is the real value of world-class cuisine? The food? The experience? The prestige of being able to pay head-spinning prices? Again, this is not necessarily a journey for anyone to emulate, but Mr. Rayner tells his story engagingly. Plus, he gets to hang out with Mario Batali, which is something to envy.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I recently read Dan Koeppel’s Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. I’m currently reading David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America. Keen observer and pattern matcher that I am, I noticed the subtitle similarity between the two books.

The “That Changed…” or “and How it Changed…” trope is a remarkably common subtitle. It’s an easy way to lend weight or significance to any topic. Change can be revolutionary, tragic, transformative. It can happen in an instant, or be the accretion of years, even decades of events, relationships, and upheavals that altered the status quo. However it happens, and whatever it means, subtitled change on the cover tells the reader something about the assumptions or pretensions of the argument being made within.

Don’t believe me? A survey of a major online bookseller demonstrates just a few ways authors and publishers deploy change language:

21 events, people, or things that changed America

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How It Changed America, by Michael Eric Dyson

Blizzard!: The Storm That Changed America, by Jim Murphy

Boomer Nation: The Largest and Richest Generation Ever, and How It Changed America, by Steve Gillon and Nancy Singer Olaguera

Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America, by Frye Gaillard

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America, by Erik Larson

Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s: Three Men, Five Great Wines, and the Evening that Changed America, by Charles Cerami

The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever, by Os Guinness

The GI Bill: The Law That Changed America, by Milton Greenberg

Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship That Changed America, by Mark Perry

Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America, by Tom Stanton

Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America, by Les Standiford

The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, by Jason Shinder

The Promised Land: the Great Black Migration and How it Changed America, by Nicholas Lemann

Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America, by Edward Behr

Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America, by Kathleen Rooney

Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, by Craig Shirley

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, by John M. Barry

Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America, by Ken Tucker

September 11, 2001: The Day That Changed America, Jill C. Wheeler

The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, by David von Drehle

15 events, people or things that changed the world

100 Days in Photographs: Pivotal Events That Changed the World, by Nick Yapp, Douglas Brinkley, and Chris Johns

Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, by Dan Koeppel

Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansky

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941, by Ian Kershaw

The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team and How It Changed the World, by Jere Longman

Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive That Changed the World, by Jack Kelly

ICBM: The Making of the Weapon That Changed the World, by G. Harry Stine

Nothing On but the Radio: A Look Back at Radio in Canada and How It Changed the World, by Gil Murray

The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World, by Amir D. Aczel

Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, by David Maraniss

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain–and How it Changed the World, by Carl Zimmer

Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, by Walter Russell Mead and Richard C. Leone

Tea: The Drink That Changed the World, by Laura C. Martin

Thermopylae: The Battle That Changed the World, by Paul Cartledge

To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World, by Jeremy Harwood

What’s striking about these lists is that just as it rains on the just and the unjust alike, so weighty assumptions rest on subjects both worthy and unworthy. There can be no doubt that September 11, 2001 — to take an easy example — changed the United States. This is true in both immediate ways, and in ways that must await the judgement of history.

At the other end of the spectrum, it is hard to truly embrace the notion that a gangster film such as Scarface is culturally or socially transformative. It is a cultural touchstone for certain segments of its audience, some of whom work in the film industry, thereby giving them a venue to demonstrate and recapitulate this influence in other works. This is true of any piece of art, however, and there is no shortage of films from the same cinematic generation that have their own particular partisans, proponents, and parodists. Taken to the extreme, one could reasonably imagine some fan penning Weekend at Bernie’s: The Ultimate Buddy Movie and How it Changed America.

Change is easy to observe. It’s easy to track. It’s impossible to avoid. Change lies at the essence of the human condition. I know that sounds like something Captain Kirk would ponderously intone, but it’s no less true for its obviousness or ponderousness. The trick lies in determining what change is truly meaningful, what transformations are really transformative, and how to define objective significance. For the reader, this means looking past, or at least paying attention to, the implied elevation of this particular subtitle convention.

In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Seven words. Michael Pollan boils it all down to seven words. I’m not giving away his secret, since his maxim is right on the cover of the book.

With this simple formula, Mr. Pollan cuts right through the additives and filler in our contemporary (American/Western) diet, and gets right to the point. The best and most healthful foods for us to eat are actually, you know, food: minimally processed, vaguely resembling something originating in nature (or, when processed, processed from ingredients that vaguely resemble things originating in nature), standing on their own merits rather than on grandiose claims of being the secret — true and entire — of health and nutrition.

As I’ve been eating better lately anyway, I found this book resonant with my own experience, which is another way of saying Michael Pollan:preacher::Bart Modern:choir. But as with many things we come to in our own way, it’s often nice to have someone reflect back your experience in a way that connects to some larger context.

Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think, by Brian Wansink

An interesting, if flawed book. Mr. Wansink’s central thesis is that we aren’t aware of how much we eat, eat too much as a result, and gain weight as a result of this overeating. He discusses the mindless eating people do as the result of mindless habits (that extra dip into the candy dish, the impulsive purchase at the supermarket, the restaurant meal where we have no fixed sense of portion size or calorie count, misleading packaging that touts certain benefits [Low Fat!] and downplays other nutritional data [High Calorie!].

His book offers a prescription for ways to reengineer our habits to switch from mindlessly overeating a couple of hundred additional calories a day to mindlessly cutting those same couple of hundred daily calories. He maintains that over time, this mild calorie deficit will lead to gradual — and because it is habitual, sustainable, weight loss.

It’s a reasonable strategy, although personally, I’m a great believer in mindful rather than mindless action. There’s something I find personally satisfying about setting a goal for myself and working to achieve it. The mindless approach is a bit to passive for my taste. I also strongly disagree with how easily Dr. Wansink discounts exercise; essentially, he argues that exercise, being something that requires mindful action, is beyond the scope of what most people are willing and able to do. As a believer in a diet and fitness strategy that encompasses both eat less and move more, Dr. Wansink’s prescription ignores half the process.

As someone who works closely with food producers, purveyors, and marketers, Dr. Wansink is also too tolerant and forgiving of the role that marketing plays in influencing weight gain through mindlessness. He becomes an apologist for unfettered capitalism, arguing that fast food restaurants that market and sell high fat, high calorie foods don’t care whether their customers actually eat their entire order of fries, merely that they purchase them in the first place. The rest, Dr. Wansink implies, is a matter of consumer choice and personal responsibility.

Now I’m all for personal responsibility. It’s part of that whole commitment to mindfulness I mentioned. At the same time, Dr. Wansink engages in some unsubtle sleight of hand when he absolves industry of any role in these mindless behaviors. If he is correct — and I believe he is — that people navigate an environment of messaging that compels, fools, and otherwise influences consumption, then those who develop, propagate, and profit from these messages are complicit, if not entirely responsible, for some of the consequences of their success.