Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue

#762
Title: Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue
Author: William Stolzenburg
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Year: 2011
288 pages

It's hard to characterize a book about killing some animals in order to save others "enjoyable," but insofar as that's possible, this was a very enjoyable account of rat (pig, goat, fox, cat) eradication on islands whose native birds are threatened by introduced predators. Stolzenburg raises this moral dilemma but does not explore it as deeply as I'd have liked. I'm not opposed to ecosystem restoration, but would like to see both sides explored by anyone involved. Given that brodifacoum is not a humane poison, I would have liked to learn whether effective alternatives are under development.

Snakes are not featured as introduced predator-pests in this account, so see Sacks's The Island of the Colorblind to learn about brown tree snakes' predation of avifauna on Guam. A minor nitpick: The eponymous Rat Island is in the Aleutians, not at all the biome of the palm trees depicted on the fanciful cover illustration.

On the Line

#761
Title: On the Line
Author: Eric Ripert & Christine Muhlke
Publisher: Artisan
Year: 2008
Country: Andorra
240 pages

Andorra. Though what's missing is any mention of or reference to Andorra, where Ripert spent much of his childhood until age 15. While he credits Andorra as an influence, I don't know enough about Andorran cuisine to know how this childhood exposure affected his cooking.

This book is a blend of day in the life of/everything you always wanted to know about Le Bernardin, Ripert's highly-rated restaurant. There is also a reasonable amount of food porn photos (i.e., big, glossy photos of fish and fish-turned-to-food) plus food porn recipes ("Wow! Do people actually do that? You'd need to be so... dedicated"). I'm not a big seafood aficionado, and while I enjoy sushi and sashimi, let's just say that I am the intestinal canary in the coal mine when it comes to raw fish. I would enjoy and be willing to try many of these dishes as an amuse-bouche, but not as a main dish.

Burning Lights: A Unique Double Portrait of Russia

#760
Title: Burning Lights: A Unique Double Portrait of Russia
Author: Bella Chagall
Illustrator: Marc Chagall
Publisher: Schocken
Year: 1988
Country: Belarus
272 pages

Belarus. Bella Chagall was Marc Chagall's wife. This is a volume of her little tales of Jewish home and religious life, as seen by a young girl in a prosperous family. It's sweet, sometimes ethereal and sometimes almost hallucinatory. It would be a good introduction to European Jewish life in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many line drawings by Marc.

Botswana Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette

#759
Title: Botswana Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Etiquette
Author: Michael Main
Publisher: Kuperard
Year: 2010
168 pages

This provides a basic introduction for the traveler to Botswana. At first I had high hopes, as the author writes more frankly than some in this series. However, I quickly became tired of the note of condescension toward Batswana that permeates the cultural sections.

There was too little discussion of how male and female travelers should interact with Batswana (a complaint I have about the whole Culture Smart! series), nothing about LGBTQ travelers (homosexual acts are illegal), and too little on HIV considering that Botswana has the second-highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world. A few Setswana phrases are offered, but without stress or pronunciation notes.

From a production standpoint, the photos are in too dark a register and with too little distinction between tones, and there are multiple typos.

Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History

#758
Title: Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History
Author: George Crile III
Publisher: Grove
Year: 2003
560 pages

A fascinating overview of US involvement in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, revealing a history quite different from what one was told at the time. It reinforces the impressions that


1. Governments are full of scheming narcissists and manipulable incompetents.
2. Narcissists do what they want, for their own gain and egos.
3. If you get in the way of a narcissist or its government, you will be destroyed.
4. You may be destroyed for trivial reasons.
5. The law is for hoi polloi only.
6. Governments lie and act angry and shocked when held accountable for their ilegal acts.
7. All explanations of behavior are rationalizations for aggressive primate pissing and grabbing contests.

Cf. the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This book will inform you, but it won't make you want to spend more time with humans.

Make Room! Make Room!

#757
Title: Make Room! Make Room!
Author: Harry Harrison
Publisher: Berkley
Year: 1978
153 pages

Well, okay enough for what it was, but A) these lunkheads don't collect rainwater during a water shortage? and B) nothing about Soylent Green being people? Really? That's all movie script addenda? Boooo. Leaving aside the movie, it's not very good as a novel (though fine as a polemic, and there's good world-building). As a plot, it's pretty basic, with no real twists (or at least, none that are really worked). The ending is pretty anticlimactic. Harrison doesn't seem to have wrested much from his story elements.

Limassol

#756
Title: Limassol
Author: Yishai Sarid
Translator: Barbara Harshaw
Publisher: Europa
Year: 2010
160 pages

I liked reading this but found much of the action implausible. For example, I don't believe at all that the protagonist would be released rather than charged and jailed after helping a mass terrorist escape. There's more, but since that's the climax, I'll stick with it as the most unlikely part.