Bill Bryson's African Diary

#810
Title: Bill Bryson's African Diary
Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Broadway
Year: 2002
64 pages

Sadly, this begs the question, "So what?" Michael Dorris, faced with the same offer/task, did a beautiful job in Rooms in the House of Stone: The "Thistle" Series of Essays, which managed to be small, brief, but filled with useful observations and understated but sincere sentiment. Bryson's account comes off more like notes about a little junket. It gives very little sense of Africa, perhaps because it tells rather than shows. As other reviewers have noted, the humor seems insulting at times. Poor Bill has to fly in a small plane. How about the people who don't even get to walk because they're in refugee camps? He could have gotten away with this if there was more to connect the reader to the Africans he interacts with, but there's little of that, and not that much about what CARE does, either. It reminds me of de Botton's A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, another sponsored gig that is info-light and seems constrained by the necessity of praising one's benefactor.

The City and the City

#809
Title: The City and the City
Author: China Miéville
Publisher: Del Rey
Year: 2009
312 pages

Audiobook.

So I was teaching a big lecture class on human trafficking today and a student made an observation about walking around in one's life and seeing but not seeing other people. I asked, "How many of you have read Miéville's The City and the City? Not a one raised a hand. I am almost recovered from my shock. 170 university students and none had read this? It's enough to make a person wish she still taught literature.

Yes, I see 9/11 in it. Yes, I see Borges. Yes, I think of Robbe-Grillet's Topology of a Phantom City. Yes, I see an okay detective story. But what I most see, and what carries this, is the enormous sparkle of its world-building, and how the world(s) created resonate with our lived experience of not seeing poverty, not seeing crime, not seeing other cultures, not seeing women, the ways we share a sidewalk while pretending we don't interact with each other. Plot aside, I found this novel playful and great sociocultural and linguistic fun. More, please.

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good

#808
Title: The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
Author: David J. Linden
Publisher: Viking
Year:2011
240 pages

Audiobook.

A nice pop-but-somewhat-technical book on dopamine. I found it easy to follow, but it is neurochemically focused and probably requires some familiarity with brain function.

The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

#807
Title: The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
Author: Barbara W. Tuchman
Publisher: Knopf
Year: 1984
447 pages

Audiobook.

In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Tuchman follows details of individuals' lives to paint a portrait of the 14th century. In The March of Folly, she tells four tales--the destruction of Troy, the fall of the Vatican, the loss of the American colonies, and the war in Vietnam--to illustrate "folly"--governments or leadership groups that subvert their own interests despite evidence and warnings that they're not acting in their own best interests. It's an interesting question, though Tuchman ultimately succeeds in underscoring it more successfully than answering it. Her examples are spelled out and useful in promoting discussion. If I take anything from it, it's that "checks and balances" is a fiction.

The level of detail is dense and hard to follow, at least in an audiobook, but I didn't find that I needed to absorb and retain all of it. Tuchman brings the text back around to her question every few pages, so as in A Distant Mirror, the wash of data supports but isn't central to following the thesis. At times, this can result in a sense of plodding along through facts in order to get to the discussion. The Vietnam section was longer than the others, probably due to its recency (and, perhaps, it was the impetus for the inquiry), and so becomes more bogged down in details.

Given current political and governmental behaviors, this book has lost none of its relevance.

Know Your Poisonous Plants: Poisonous Plants Found in Field and Garden

#806
Title: Know Your Poisonous Plants: Poisonous Plants Found in Field and Garden
Author: Wilma Roberts James
Publisher: Naturegraph Publishers
Year: 1973
99 pages

This useful handbook of the early 1970's features useful descriptions and line drawings of poisonous plants, most of which can be found in my yard, though I swear I didn't landscape with this in mind. I take some exception to the inclusion of marijuana, which though psychoactive does not cause rashes, convulsions, or death as do so many plants. (Please note that there is no marijuana in my garden.)

My used copy was helpfully annotated by the previous owner, generally in regard to livestock, e.g., for poisonous hemlock, "giVE CNS STIMULENT (DO PRAM) TANNIC ACId (i.e. INSTANT TEA) HELP PRECIPITATE OUT MERK VET MAN NO HELP" and for larkspur, "TREATMENT: DO NOT EXCITE RELIEVE BLOAT". These cures and anodynes please me at least as much as the handbook.

The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa

#805
Title: The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa
Author: Helen Epstein
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2007/2008
352 pages

One of the better HIV books I've read recently. Epstein writes well and although this is information-heavy, it moves right along and I was sorry when I finished.

Epstein's focus is on infrastructure misunderstandings about African HIV transmission and faulty prevention and intervention strategies based on incorrect assumptions. She updates the reader on relatively new theories of HIV's origins and early spread (including a very clear explanation of how passaging strengthens a virus). She answers the important questions that were not addressed in Togarasei et al.'s The Faith Sector and HIV/AIDS in Botswana: Responses and Challenges, which are What did sexual partnerships look like prior to the arrival of Christianity, and does that affect HIV transmission patterns? Her answers are that in many of the areas currently hardest hit by HIV, polygamy/polyandry was socially acceptable, and that concurrent long-term partnerships may spread HIV more effectively than serial monogamy. If that's hard to picture, she's included a flip book. Really. It's the only scientific treatise I've ever seen with a flip book, and it's quite effective.

The last couple of chapters are less-well integrated and read more like articles. The last chapter ends abruptly and disappointingly. I would have liked at least a summary of the book's main recommendations.

The Brummstein

#804
Title: The Brummstein
Author: Peter Adolphsen
Translator: Charlotte Barslund
Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Year: 2003/2011
80 pages

Ebook.

"All around them, chemistry carried out its destructive business...." A strange but engaging novella presented more or less in the language of a monograph on a scientific peculiarity, though the putative author knows more than he would have for complete verisimilitude. A useful structural comparator is Brooks's People of the Book, though here the point seems to be that human concerns and history are ephemeral and trivial, perhaps the opposite of Brooks's theme.