We all know by now that plastic bottles are filling landfills and supposedly drinking bottled water is evil. Of course, drinking Odwalla juices is merely outrageously expensive instead of evil, for reasons that have more to do with perceptions of evil than with the differences between a juice bottle and a water bottle. And of course, we know that a bottle of water, when production and transport and disposal are counted, uses roughly enough petroleum to fill that bottle a quarter of the way to the top (and a bottle of juice?). And finally, we know that the real looming crisis in America (and Australia and many other developed yet arid parts of the world) is not so much energy, but running out of water. So if all that’s old news, what’s the new news? The new news is that Elizabeth Royte has written an entire book about bottled water. If Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It is as good as the New York Times review of it, it’s probably a surprisingly interesting read.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Review of Michael Beschloss, Presidential Courage

I had high expectations of Michael Beschloss’ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, but must say that I was disappointed. I had expected stirring narratives of cases where presidents stuck to their guns in the face of criticism and opposition. That’s more or less what’s here, but still, I found the book more like a snack than a meal. Beschloss is a commentator for the Lehrer News Hour on PBS and for NBC News. Now, those aren’t necessarily great credentials for a historian — the most famous news broadcast historians, like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose are best known in academic circles not for their ground-breaking research, but for their plagiarism. Outside of academia, though, they’re known for books that are fun to read. I expected more or less the same from Beschloss, but somehow he didn’t deliver.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

The last couple of days, I’ve been listening to the radio and there has been a lot of reporting on the space shuttle taking a module to the space station: the launch, the arrival of the astronauts, the mission. Every time I hear something like this, I feel cheated. In 1969, when I was six years old and Neil Armstrong made one small step for man, one giant step for mankind, it seemed pretty obvious that we would all be visiting the Moon for vacation by the year 2000. Arthur C. Clarke, the author of Space Odyssey: 2001, said a few years back when we landed the rover on Mars that, back in 1969, he would never have believed that in 2001 we would land a toaster-sized unmanned rover on Mars and consider it a technological and scientific triumph.
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Popularity: 9% [?]

Every so often I come across a book that makes it onto my “must read” list. It’s been a while, but William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things is one of those books. For people unfamiliar with McDonough’s work, he is an environmentalist, architect and designer who has designed a factory for Herman Miller, is designing housing in China, and has consulted with Ford, Nike, Dell and others. He has also designed products like eco-friendly textiles and McDonough wants us to fundamentally rethink the way we make things and what we think it means to be environmentally responsible.
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Popularity: 12% [?]

In the summer of 1959 there occurred a series of events which demonstrated our national ignorance in a shameful and nearly fatal manner. Briefly, the United States threatened intervention in a foreign country for reasons which, it turned out, had no basis in fact… Our Secretary of State called the situation grave; our ambassador to the U.N. called for world action; our press carried scare headlines; our senior naval officer implied armed intervention and was seconded by ranking Congressmen, including the Chairman of the National Committee of the Republican Party, which was then in power (p. 12-13)…. In the eyes of the world, the United States looked very foolish at best, and very dangerous at worst (p. 28)…. We have thrown away our good will and political strength by an ignorance which led to false confidence and corruption. We have clumsily alienated potential supporters by neglecting them for a few “pets” and have repelled others by maladroitness (p. 30).

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Popularity: 14% [?]

Generally, I find that career advice books fall into one of two categories. One set deals with tactics and present the career question in terms of “Landing Your Dream Job”. I find this category particularly annoying because I don’t dream of jobs and, if I did, it would be a nightmare. I dream of leisure. The second category deals with strategy. This is the What Color is Your Parachute category and deals with the question in terms of “How to Figure Out What Your Dream Job Is.” Po Bronson’s book hints that it will offer something new and pays lip service to the idea that it is, in fact, offering something new. Instead, it’s a rather annoying set of vignettes of various people, mostly a lot like Bronson himself, who have struggled with the career question.

I normally don’t write reviews of books or movies that I’m going to pan. (more…)

Popularity: 7% [?]

No, that’s not a quote from The Ranter’s close friends Dubya or Rummy. That’s from David Maraniss’ book They Marched Into Sunlight (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Maraniss follows two parallel stories, that of a battle in Vietnam and that of a student protest in Madison, Wisconsin. The two stories converge on October 19, 1967, when they appear side by side on the front page of the paper. For Maraniss, that was the beginning of the real slide in public opinion in favor of the war. Why bring this up now? Because the administration’s assessment of the situation in Vietnam in 1967 appears chillingly like the current administration’s assessment of Iraq today.
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Popularity: 11% [?]