Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones

#790
Title: Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones
Author: Greg Campbell
Publisher: Basic
Year: 2004
280 pages

A bit on the hard-drinking, crazy journalist side for my taste, though the evidence of this style is more subdued than is often the case. As an explanatory text on blood diamonds (a.k.a. conflict diamonds), it does a very good job of following the money, exposing both corrupt and ineffective systems, and describing the trafficking/enslavement and mutilation or execution of disenfranchised and disempowered people. In this regard, it helps answer some questions about why some African countries have failed to thrive in the post-colonial period, instead becoming embroiled in civil strife.

Many gory parts--not for the faint of heart.

Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery

#789
Title: Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery
Author: Samuel Cotton
Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing
Country: Mauritania
Year: 1999
192 pages

I'll need to do some more reading, but this looks like a book to teach with. Cotton, a journalist and graduate student, flew to Senegal and Mauritania to substantiate reports of ongoing chattel slavery of black Africans to Muslim/Arab Africans. I think Bales's Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy will be a good and more recent follow-up.

Shimmer

#788
Title: Shimmer
Author: Eric Barnes
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Year: 2009
288 pages

Ebook.

I confess that I covertly read this on my phone when I was supposed to be paying attention. It is also the first book I've read on a phone.

Shimmer has reasonably smooth writing and the plot progresses at a good pace. The tone is pleasant despite the protagonist's stress. It is essentially a black box novel in which the box is never opened for the reader; instead, a certain amount of deus ex machina resolves the conflict.

The Faith Sector and HIV/AIDS in Botswana: Responses and Challenges

#787
Title: The Faith Sector and HIV/AIDS in Botswana: Responses and Challenges
Editors: Lovemore Togarasei, Sana K. Mmolai, & Fidelis Nkomazana
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Year: 2011
260 pages

An uneven professional anthology, but the unevenness was fascinating in and of itself, since it illustrated both organizational and linguistic differences between academic cultures. Several chapters were excellent, including one on evangelical churches and another on traditional healers' responses to HIV.

Because the majority of religions in Botswana are Christian-based (or Christian-based syncretic), there is little variation in the espoused definitions of sin (even if what constitutes a sin varies slightly). One chapter is from a Muslim perspective, and while better written than some, seemed more dogmatic. It was one of only two chapters, I think, to mention homosexual transmission, and I'm not sure that any discussed IV drug use (though iatrogenic transmission was). The only reference to substances I recall was about disinhibition, not about routes of transmission. This provides a very interesting cognitive dissonance for the reader of US-produced popular press materials on HIV, which historically have focused on men who have sex with men and IV drug users.

I'm looking forward to learning about which faith-based prevention and intervention strategies have worked in this country.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

   #786
Title: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Pantheon
Year: 2008
256 pages


Audiobook.

My bone to pick with this popular stats/probability text is that Mlodinow indulges in the same sloppy examples and logic that marred so many of my math and science classes. If you're going to talk probability, stick with dice. As a nerd from the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, I completely understand the difficulty of generating random numbers on your scientific calculator because the one guy who made polyhedral dice wasn't feeling well and there wasn't a dodecahedral die to be had in all the land. Believe me, nothing pleases me more than an extended discussion of the normal distribution. And I'm happy to hear about Bayesian analysis and its place in the science of probability. False positives in HIV testing? Bring it on. But please, don't confuse the issue with examples about humans and their behavior. To put it another way: Any example that you're going to have to keep qualifying by removing variables isn't a good example. All athletes don't have equal abilities. All of management isn't luck of the draw. The freewheeling omission of factors such as capacity, motivation, and personality doom these examples and muddy rather than clarify the concepts. Mlodinow further obscures his points with anecdotes about writing his child's paper and getting only a 93. What a shocker! In a move repeated throughout the book, Mlodinow confuses two variables. An instructor is not only making a judgement about the excellence of an essay in and of itself, if even at all. In my experience, it's more likely that the instructor is also, or entirely, evaluating whether the student followed instructions for presentation, content, and organization. That's not the same thing. By the way, if I ever catch Mr. Mlodnow's child turning in a paper written by his father for one of my classes, they will find that I regard this less as entertainment and more as a matter for the academic conduct office.

The Innocents Abroad

#785
 Title: The Innocents Abroad
Author: Mark Twain
Publisher: Modern Library
Year: 1869/2007
560 pages

I gave up on the audiobook about 3/4 in. The narrator's voice has an annoying combination of atonal hoarseness and nasalness that never stopped bothering me.

I enjoy Twain's use of language and dry humor, but had not yet read his travelogues. Since they predate his famous novels, it's interesting to see his early style, which is less assured than it would become but still confident.

I'd characterize this narrative as less racist than xenophobic, though Twain is clearly sometimes truly unhappy and at other times exaggerating for comedic effect. Sometimes the object he's aiming for is to poke fun at the American tourist's narrowness of thought and ethnocentrism.

In the context of the first real pleasure cruise (a side-wheel steamboat, if memory serves), Twain and companions were remarkably adventurous, defying quarantine, for example, and scrambling for hours at night over crumbly Greek hills and through dog-patrolled vineyards in order to see the Parthenon.

Having visited many of Twain's destinations (and many of that number by ship), I thoroughly enjoyed his observations, whether or not I agreed about places, peoples, or cultural quirks.

Aya (Aya #1)

#784
Title: Aya (Aya #1)
Author: Marguerite Abouet
Illustrator: Clément Oubrerie
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly Publications
Year: 2007
105 pages

An enjoyable graphic novel that follows Aya, a teen in Ivory Coast, and her friends. It has an initial light feel that becomes more grim, as well as less-overt representation of problematic societal themes, such as corruption and the commodification of women. The teens are realistically portrayed, the action moves alone, and the graphics are colorful and have a lot of motion. I tend to prefer graphic novels that have the same author/illustrator, but this was a pleasing example of a collaboration. I'd like to read the others in this series as well.