Books I read on vacation (and still am)

Thanks to recommendations from bloggers, I took three books on vacation with me, plus I bought one while I was in WA:

• Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy by Jeffrey Feldman, which was recommended by Quaker Dave.

I wanted to leave this book for my daughter AE to read in Seattle, so I steeled myself from highlighting with yellow, which I usually do, much to her disgust. I actually took notes on this book in a little blue spiral notebook. So here are a few quotes:

"18th Century German military historian Carl von Calusewitz wrote, 'War is politics pursued by other means.'" (59)

"At the beginning of the 20th Century, Teddy Roosevelt broke the iron grip that industrial barons held over the rest of America; a few decades later, Franklin Roosevelt broke the grip of banking barons. In those waves of progressive reforms, a new era was ushered in whereby government stood between citizens and the private interests that sought to exploit." (71)

". . .the Bush administration chose to switch the public debate to the logic of hidden threats by arguing that Al Qaeda was not a network of individuals linked through a chain of responsibility, but an evil force lurking beneath the surface of all nations hostile to American interests. . . . so the logic of hidden threats leads to a radical form of government sponsored secret violence based on the idea that only a hidden cure can defeat a hidden threat." (168-169)

"Constant talk of murder, treason, gunshots and terrorism whip up the emotions and pulls people's attention away from analytical thinking. Public engagement becomes passive observation, participants become audiences, and conversation becomes entertainment. As John Dewey observed, sensationalism shuts down our curiosity about the relationship between things by overwhelming us with a focus on raw, isolated, and shocking events." (177)

• When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin, which was suggested by Yolanda.

This was the book I read on the flights to Seattle. It was easy reading, touching, and I even cried a few times. The story is about a little girl who needs a heart transplant and the man who can save her who is emotionally wounded from his own losses in life. I don't read much fiction anymore, so this was a good one for the plane ride.

• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan, which was the one I bought at Fred Meyers in Bellingham and had been mentioned by a Corpus Christi friend and also KA, daughter AE's partner.

This book is the most personally monumental one that I've read recently. Learning how corn production, sponsored by the government, infiltrates all our food and lives is still reverberating in my mind.

"When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat. Since 1977 an American's average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent." (102)

"Most researchers trace America's rising rates of obesity to the 1970's. This was, of course, the same decade that America embraced a cheap-food farm policy and began dismantling forty years of programs designed to prevent overproduction." (102-103)

"Yet since the cleverest thing to do with a bushel of corn is to refine it into 33 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)." (103)

"That at least is what we're doing with about 530 million bushels of the annual corn harvest--turning it into 17.5 billion pounds of high-fructose corn syrup. Considering that the human animal did not taste this particular food until 1980, for HFCS to have become the leading source of sweetness in our diet stands as a notable achievement on the part of the corn-refining industry, not to mention this remarkable plant." (103)

Learning (again) how farms, even "organic" ones are run, is disheartening. Hope is given with people like Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in VA--go read about this amazing family and place!

• The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet, which was reviewed by Sherry.

This is the only book I haven't finished reading. It's a very thick book and reminds me of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, which is still only half-read at my house. (Daughter AE told me every person in America should read this book after she read it. Ironically, it was given to her by our Canadian cousin, but then Naomi Klein is a Canadian news reporter.) Both are heavily documented with much historical evidence. However, Sherry found it much easier to read; I suggest you go and read her review!