My reviews of books in reverse chronological order (i.e. most-recent-first) of date-of-review (which is not necessarily the same as the date-read).
Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 1 August 2001
White Teeth is about the angst of the immigrant: living in what seems like perpetual limbo between two worlds, trying hard to hold on and let go at the same time, and, perhaps most difficult, watching your children grow up in ways you do not want them to.
That said, the story is faintly reminescent of the magical realism of Garica Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude: events reach across many generations to affect the lives of the characters, seemingly mysterious friends send letters with prophetic sub-texts, and almost everything that happens is connected in some strange way that defies explanation.
In addition to the immigrant experience, the story is also about the clash of cultures: between young and old, the scientific and the religious, the progressive and the conservative, and how this heady mix of conflict comes to a head at a genetic experiment designed to grow mice whose DNA has been altered.
A superb, funny, entertaining read from an extremely talented young author.
Title: The Cooperative Gene
Author: Mark Ridley
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 29 July 2001
The Ridley brothers are a couple of Brits who, between them, have written some of the most delightful, entertaining, and educational books on evolution and genetics.
The Cooperative Gene is Mark Ridley's analysis of the nature of life and complex life, not only as we find it today on Earth, but also of the underlying bases of what complex life elsewhere in the Universe might look like.
Ridley starts off with arguing for the basic premises that life itself is not difficult (and would originate, as it seems to have done on Earth, almost as soon as it becomes chemically possible), but that complex life (which he provisionally defines as life with more genes) is likely to be extremely rare, since it took so much longer to evolve on Earth.
Ridley next identifies the most important factor that limits genetic complexity: error. Error in the underlying chemicals, error in duplication, error in copying, and error caused due to mutation. Life has evolved a number of mechanisms to compensate and correct for these types of errors: changing the underlying chemicals from RNA to DNA to enzyme-assisted DNA, evolving error-detecting and error-correcting enzymes, and (yes, ladies and gentlemen) sex.
The second part of the book is all about sex. Ridley explores one of the currently popular theories about the origin of sex: namely, that it is a mechanism for combining the genes of two individuals to mix-and-match the undamaged genes of each and build an error-free offspring from them.
However, sex is, from the point-of-view of genes, an extremely messy, conflict-ridden, and complicated process (just as it is at pretty-much every other level, haha). Ridley discusses all of the mechanisms that cells have evolved to work-around the complexities of sex.
One of the most intriguing ideas that Ridley explores is the difference between sex and gender: the former is the union of genetic material from different individuals, while the latter is the dimorphism (into male/female) of the individuals that are involved in sex. Ridley argues that sex may be a universal aspect of all complex life, but that gender as found on Earth may be no more than a consequence of the eukaryotic cell which had to evolve something like gender to prevent conflict between the mitochondria of the two individuals participating in sex.
Ridley concludes the book with speculations on how human life itself may increase in complexity, and how other life elsewhere may evolve to levels of complexity far greater than on Earth.
This is one of the best books I have read this year.
Title: Supreme Injustice
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 27 July 2001
Who says lawyers are boring? Alan Dershowitz in Supreme Injustice is (to borrow a phrase from P.G.Wodehouse) about as boring as a vulture worrying carrion: brutal, bloody, and ripping apart the putrefying entrails with single-minded zeal; just the thing to cater to my abattoir fetish for verbal butchery.
As you might expect, Supreme Injustice is about Bush v. Gore. Dershowitz starts with a whirlwind tour of the events leading up to the fateful US Supreme Court decision: counts and recounts, hand counts and foot counts, butterfly ballots and sudanic neighbors who are in the family way, before explaining the two legal principles used by the court in stopping the hand count in Florida, namely:
Dershowitz rips apart both arguments saying that their use in this case, and esp. in a non-precedent setting, special-case manner, stinks of jurisprudential incompetence.
But the real fun begins with Chapter 3, where Dershowitz shows how this decision was completely at odds with everything the majority justices had ever argued in their previous rulings. Bush v. Gore according to Dershowitz is a uniquely criminal decision, and no academic justification can absolve the majority justices of the accusation of corruption.
Finally, Dershowitz places Bush v. Gore in historical context, as the culmination of the swinging pendulum of judicial activism that might have started in the modern era with Roe v. Wade.
This is an extremely entertaining book to read, but I suspect that only those who disagree with Bush v. Gore will ever want to even touch it. After all, in a country where 50 million morons voted for a mega-moron, quibbling over the legality of 500 votes is hardly likely to convince anyone.
Title: If You're So Smart
Author: Donald N. McCloskey
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 24 July 2001
I am usually leery of reading books with the word narrative in the subtitle (this one goes by The Narrative of Economic Expertise). Such books usually reek in the stench of post-modernist rot.
However, McCloskey manages, for the most part, to stay away from deconstructive crapola and makes some good points.
He analyses economics from the point of view of the field's metaphors (models) and narratives (stories). Metaphors and narratives have a rhetorical purpose---to convince an audience of the point of view of the authors.
Understanding the rhetorical basis for metaphors and narratives makes us, says McCloskey, better consumers of information and advice provided by even the so-called experts. That is the subject of the chapter titled If You're So Smart, Why Ain't You Rich----a superb exposition of the principle of TINSTAAFL.
The book is quite short and make a good read.
Title: Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction
Author: Arthur Wiggins, Charles Wynn
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 16 July 2001
This is not a book about quantum mechanics (leaping or otherwise). Instead, this is a book about science and pseudo-science, written in simple language, and best suited for parents to read with their young children.
As Einstein once said, common sense is the set of prejudices accquired by the age of 18. Instead of trying to undo the depravity of the mind after the onset of adulthood, it is best to teach children from the youngest ages that there is nothing that lies beyond the inexorable explanatory power of science.
Title: Nickel and Dimed
Author: Barbara Ehrenreich
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 14 July 2001
What a woman!!
Between 1998 and 2000, for a few weeks at a time, Barabara Ehrenreich went undercover, as it were, to test the proposition that welfare reform and the dot.com boom of the times combined would allow a person to make a decent living in the unskilled service work sector.
She gave up her home, family, and friends, took up the cheapest lodgings she could find, went through help-wanted ads, and worked, at various times, as a: waitress, housekeeper, nursing assistant, Wal-Mart store "associate"; often more than one job at a time.
Everywhere she went, Ehrenreich found that it was almost impossible to make a living working for minimum wage: the killer is housing costs. Added to that are transportation and medical costs, which seem to break the bank of almost all of the people she worked with during her study.
The book is a superb account of plight of the poor in one of the richest countries of the world, written with great empathy, wry humor, and having a far greater relevance to the subject than most tomes on economics or sociology.
This is a not-to-be-missed book.
Title: The Fat of the Land
Author: Michael Fumento
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 12 July 2001
As Peter Schickele so memorably observed, apart from pet books, the yin-yang combination of cookbooks and diet books form the staple triumvirate of American book consumption. So, suggests the good professor, one would make a killing publishing Cooking Cats and Dog Diets. Hahaha.
It is only in American grocery stores can one see lard-tubs at the checkout counter with chocolate-fudge brownies, Haagen-Daz icecream, and Diet Pepsi in their carts.
Fumento's book is a combination of (1) reporting on the science of weight-loss research, and (2) skewering of the nonsense promulgated in diet fads. Both are done in an extremely entertaining, funny manner.
Fumento starts off with the basic thermodynamic theorem:
Too many calories consumed - too little exercise = fat
and covers the range of instant diets that seem to pervade bookstores, pointing out why none of them work.
Sadly, the simple message "eat less, exercise more, and over a long period of time (many months to years) you will lose weight" seems incompatible with the consumption habits of Americans. Hence the so-called fat acceptance movement. Blech!!
Title: Survivor
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Category: Fiction
Review written: 9 July 2001
Survivor is yet another brilliant, dark satire on society. The story is narrated by Tender Branson, a refugee of the Creedish Christian cult (all of whose members supposedly commit suicide, a la their illustrious Branch-Davidian, Jonestownian, Heaven's-Gateian predecessor cult-cretins), who himself becomes a televangelist peddling the miracle predictions of his clairvoyant girlfriend Fertility Hollis (yes, the sly satire in the names carries on throughout the book).
The book starts off with chapter 47, page 289, and steadily counts down as Tender recounts his sad tale for the rest of the world.
Palahniuk ain't no T.C.Boyle, but he is certainly good enough to deserve praise for writing some of the blackest comedies around.
Title: Fuzzy Math
Author: Paul Krugman
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 6 July 2001
Krugman's disgust for Dubya is immense, unconcealed, and entirely justified.
In this delightful little dim-sum of a book (128 short pages; readable in a couple of hours), Krugman gives the reader an extremely clear exposition of the working of the US federal government in the context of the economy, the way Social Security and Medicare are structured, the nature of the income and payroll tax systems, all leading up to a devastating critique of the lies and obfuscations promulgated by the Dubya team in pushing through their tax plan.
Buy this book and carry a copy with you at all times; you never know when you might run into someone who goes ga-ga over Dubya. The book is too small to bash them over the head with, but you can certainly stuff it down their throats if they don't listen to its superb arguments.
I think we readers should be glad to have someone like Krugman who, despite being a member of the dismal science whose practitioners are well-known for producing impenetrable prose, is able to write with a clarity and acerbic wit that would make H.L.Mencken proud.
Do not, absolutely do not, miss this gem.
Title: The Bit and the Pendulum
Author: Tom Siegfried
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 3 July 2001
Long-time friends of mine know about my recommendation for reading Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind: rip out the first 30 pages and the last 30 pages (they are crap), and read the rest of the book as a superb introduction to modern physics, mathematics, and computation.
I have to give the converse recommendation for Tom Siegfried's Bit and the Pendulum. The first 30 and last 30 pages are all that is good reading in this book. Siegfried is a journalist trying to simplify and popularize some very complex ideas, and he does a bad job of it.
For example, I find it annoying to read statements like "a classical computer cannot simulate a quantum system", when the statement should really be "a classical computer cannot efficiently simulate a quantum system". The elision may seem trivial but it changes a true statement into shit.
The subject of the book is (ostensibly) the role of metaphor in modern science. In my view, there are 3 kinds of links between real entities and computational entities:
The book seems to be about the third link, but rambles all over the place, confusing it with the other two kinds of links.
Siegfried also confuses the relation between computation and information. To a computer scientist, anyone who does not understand the difference between algorithms and data is a moron.
The book is full of fanciful interpreations of the term information without addressing what I believe to the fundamental question: is the Universe digital (in which case the metaphor of computation is more than a metaphor) or is it continuous (in which case we already have the correct model of reality, i.e. mathematical equations that have been in use for more than 3 centuries).
Given this confusion, all of the discussion in the book about complexity, chaos, quantum interpretations, relativity, consciousness, protein biology, are just page fillers.
This book may be good reading for an intelligent 12 year old to pique their interest in science, but that's about it.
Title: Scentsational Sex
Author: Alan R. Hirsch
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 2 July 2001
What in the world is someone like me doing reading books with words like sex in the title? Yes, gentle reader, I realize it is quite pathetic, but think of it as my preparation for anticipated use in the distant future (if ever such a thing comes to pass); but there is another reason I specify later on.
Scentsational Sex opens with a fairly good exposition of the physiology of olfaction. Hirsch talks about the standard stuff one has come to expect in books on smell: how the sense of smell bypasses higher cortical neural pathways and goes directly to the limbic system (thus making the sense of smell (and taste) less rational and more emotional), how pheromones may be involved in the unconscious mediation of physiological function (the most famous example being the synchronization of the menstrual cycles of women living together), and so on.
Hirsch then goes on to describe the experiments carried out by his research group on the smells that cause the physical symptoms of arousal in men and women. Apart from the fact that lavender, vanilla, licorice, and pumpkin pie all seems to show up again and again in these studies, I was left with the feeling of wanting to read the edition of this book that would come out 20 years hence. Each finding leads to more questions than it answers, and left me feeling quite unsatisfied about the state of knowledge on the sense of smell.
The last third of the book is a pile of junk about massage oils, mood candles, and perfume.
There is one good thing about books like these. I hope they will be the foundation of research that finally allows humans to consciously control their reactions to smell and taste (the two lower, primitive senses) as well as they can control their reaction to sight and sound (the two higher, evolved senses). Then we can be free of the rampant irrationality that seems to pervade people's lives and relationships.
Until then, hold your noses tight when going out on a date, or else you will let your woefully unqualified, reptilian, limbic system rather than your superbly qualified, rational, higher cortex do your mate-selection for you.
Title: Invisible Monsters
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Category: Fiction
Review written: 29 June 2001
What would be the world be like if everyone spoke and acted their deepest, darkest thoughts and desires, without the intervening filters of propriety and euphemism? It would be like a Chuck Palahniuk novel, with its raw, heady mix of realism and unrealism.
Invisible Monsters is narrated by a promising fashion model who is disfigured in an accident. She is befriended by Brandy Alexander, who teaches the narrator to reinvent herself. And not unlike Fight Club's narrator and Tyler Durden (and at the same time, unlike them), there is a strange bond that links Brandy and the narrator.
As the narrative moves back and forth through time and space, we slowly learn more about these sorry characters, and the story engenders its stream of shocks that make The Crying Game look like tame.
A superb, fast-paced read.
Title: Balsamic Dreams
Author: Joe Queenan
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 24 June 2001
David Brooks, meet Joe Queenan. Joe Queenan, meet David Brooks.
While Brooks identifies and excoriates the demographic of Bobos, Queenan aims his guns at a subset of bobos, namely Baboos (Baby Boomers), whom he identifies as the narcicisstically self-absorbed, conspicuously consumptive, failed liberals born between 1943 and 1960.
Queenan's prose is devastatingly brutal. Not a single fault or blemish of the Boomers is spared. From their music, to their clothes, to their children's names, the Boomer chic is analyzed, dissected, and hung out to dry in this extremely funny book.
Read it along with Bobos in Paradise.
Title: Crypto
Author: Steven Levy
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 24 June 2001
How does one write a book on modern cryptography without conveying any useful information. One could not achieve this goal better than Steven Levy did with this piece of crapola called Crypto.
Levy displays all the symptoms of the American disease of historico-biography, to wit, the disgusting need to over-dramatize any event or set of events by suggesting that all that happened was an inevitable consequence, a moral imperative, of the personalities invovled.
Crypto is supposed to be the story of modern cryptography, but we are subjected to endless details about the personal politics, food habits, car preferences, and who-was-fucking-whom-when-they-made-their-discovery stories.
Levy tries to suggest that all advances in public-key cryptosystems were due to the free-ranging, libertarian tendencies of its public inventors (Whitfield Diffie, in particular), but he refutes his own statements by citing the case of military/intelligence researchers in both England and the US who discovered all of the results much earlier. Obviously, the antithetical politics of those working for the military had no role to play in their discoveries, but Diffie's discoveries are nothing but the rebellion of the body politick working out its distrust of the big spooks.
The real reasons for the development of public-key and other modern cryptosystems: namely, solid mathematics based on almost 2000 years of logical infrastructure, cooperation and peer-review, and hard work by those who implemented the theoretical models in software, are barely mentioned.
Skip this insulting piece of shit, unless you want to wipe your butt with its pages.
Title: Running after Antelope
Author: Scott Carrier
Category: Non-fiction
Title: Fraud
Author: David Rakoff
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 22 June 2001
Two for the price of one, a double review!!
This American Life has been a remarkable showcase of talent; not only people like David Sedaris or Sandra Tsing Loh who were quite famous much before their TAL days, but newer faces like the two authors of today's review: Scott Carrier and David Rakoff. Except for the consonantal disaster, the radio show has had a long line of successes.
Carrier's book Running after Antelope is a collection of short-short essaylets about various topics, with the enduring thread of chasing, literally, after antelope in the desert flats of Utah. Carrier and his brother have always been fascinated by stories of Native American tribes that would hunt antelope without weapons, simply by running them down to exhaustion.
The rest of the essays are vaguely disturbing. They invoke a feeling of uneasiness and fear, but any attempt on my part to analyze these feelings further, or pin them down ends in failure. Carrier's superb description of how he was hired out to track and test schizophrenics is one such story. The writing transcends deep into the psyche to show the darker side of humanity, all the while reminding us that there is a very thin line between the us and the them: a feeling of there but for the grace of [...].
Rakoff, on the other hand, is a complete comedian. Fraud had me rolling with laughter all through---the satire is brutal and non-stop. While one feels pity and sympathy for Carrier's people, we want Rakoff's morons to suffer more because they just seem to deserve every bit of it.
And, of course, Rakoff---he's Canadian!!
One more thing. Many of the pieces in these books have been performed on TAL. The books thus make for much better enjoyment if one imagines Carrier's quiet monotone, and Rakoff's liquid lisping as one reads the text.
Read them together, back-to-back, interleaved, multi-threaded, whatever. But do read these two books---they are not to be missed.
Title: Borderlands of Science
Author: Michael Shermer
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 22 June 2001
Michael Shermer has written the same book three times, and unlike Sgt.Pepper, I have to admit that it just ain't getting better all the time.
Shermer is a professional skeptic, and does a masterful job of debunking nonsense. However, he also has aspirations to being a philosopher of science---his books start off with debunking and then move to describing how and why science is different from nonsense. This is where Shermer fails miserably.
Borderlands promises to be an exposition of scientific ideas that are not yet mainstream but may yet attain that status. However, the rest of the book has no discussion of any borderlands ideas at all.
We are instead treated to bullshit about birth order effects on personality and scientific creativity, punctuated equilibrium and unwarranted Gould-hagiography, and incessant biographical details about the lives of scientists. I fail to see what any of this has to do with borderlands science, or about what distinguishes science from nonsense.
Don't waste any time with this book. Instead, read Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, if you want a taste of good, old-fashioned debunking (which, as I said, Shermer is really good at).
Title: Self-Help Nation
Author: Tom Tiede
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
Tiede does a superb job of butchering the disgusting world of self-help books. He aims his barbs at both the authors of these examples of psychological perversions, as well as those who consume this bilge.
Tiede also made me reach for my dictionary almost every few pages---something that does not happen often.
I only wish Tiede had stuck to incessant satire; instead, he closes each chapter with his own words of wisdom on the issues he discusses. While his opinions are not standard self-help prose, they do interrupt the flow of sarcasm.
A fast, fun, hilarious read. Read the book and give a copy to someone you know who may be addicted to self-help books.
Title: Fast Food Nation
Author: Eric Schlosser
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
Fast Food Nation is an almost documentary-like description (I do not like to use the word expose, for reasons stated below) of the fast-food industry in the US.
Schlosser starts off with the genesis of fast-food in California, and the debt that hamburgers, fries, and milkshake owe to the American obsession with cars!!
He then methodically documents the various aspects of the industry as it exists today: marketing, labor practices, farming and butchering, health aspects, flavoring, and global evolution.
While Schlosser does not seem to go out of his way to indict the industry, the book does not present a favorable view of fast-food or those who produce it.
Unlike many foaming-at-the-mouth-natural-food-is-better zealots, Schlosser handles the topic of fast-food flavoring and aromas, to choose one example, very well. As he takes pains to point out, the fact that a banana smell comes from actual bananas or from a synthetically manufactured, pure ester, is immaterial because it is the same chemical that gives the banana smell and taste in both cases. To call one flavoring natural (and hence good) and the other artificial (and hence bad) is stupid (and typical of morons who do not understand science).
This book is a slow, methodical read---nothing particularly exciting or sensational. But it is a useful read anyway.
Title: Toward Rational Exuberance
Author: B. Mark Smith
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
Have US markets become more rational over time? The academic debate between the efficient-markets school and the behaviorist school rages on.
Toward Rational Exuberance is, however, a stupid book that fails to either explain or clarify the issues.
First, Mark Smith spends 90% of the book talking about the personalities involved in stock price manipulations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While these accounts may make for interesting reading, they shed no light whatsoever on the topic of market rationality and informational efficiency.
Second, Smith offers no definitions of terms like efficient, rational, or risk, which makes the remaining 10% of the book equally useless.
I continue to be amazed at how the fascinating subject of the workings of financial markets, and the economic modeling of investors has been so badly screwed up by author after author.
The only exceptions seem to be Peter Bernstein's two classics: Against the Gods and Capital Ideas.
Skip this book (and go back and read Bernstein).
Title: The Death of Vishnu
Author: Manil Suri
Category: Fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
Manil Suri describes life in a Bombay apartment complex, using a vagrant squatter named Vishnu as the focal point of the story.
Since I know what this involves, I found it enjoyable reading about all of the familiar elements of life in a big city in modern India.
Those who do not know much about Indian society, culture, mythology, or politics, may be baffled by the book, or may perhaps find analogies with aspects of the life they are familair with. After all, this is one of the properties of good fiction.
This book is good, light-reading fare.
Title: If Americans Really Understood the Income Tax
Author: John O. Fox
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
The second great certainty of life is also probably the more vexing of the two.
Philosophers, political and social commentators, and economists have all had much to say about the subject of taxation: what is the purpose of taxation, who should (or should not) be taxed, how much does each person pay in taxes, and last, but not least, what inefficiencies (i.e. behaviors engaged in by people solely for the purposes of avoiding taxes even to the detriment of other productive advantages) does taxation cause.
John Fox (wisely) tackles only a small subset of the issues with taxation:
Fox's basic thesis is that a fair tax policy would (1) broaden the tax base by disallowing all forms of deductions, itemizations, and special provisions, and (2) maintaining a mildly progressive and lower (in absolute values) tax rates for everyone.
Think about what this means: No more tax deductions for mortgage payments or for state/local taxes, and no more differing tax rates for (long-term) capital gains vs. dividends, among many other things.
Fox starts from the economists' perspective that income is whatever increases one's economic ability to consume. Such a broad definition of income necessarily disallows special provisions, differential treatments, or deductions for any income from any source. Fox argues that such a definition is fair and that this would expose much more income to taxation than currently exists in the US.
Fox next argues that both an overall revenue-neutral, as well as an individually taxation-neutral (for almost all except the extremely wealthy), tax policy can be implemented on this broad income base by lowering tax rates (from their present values).
Fox finally argues that mildly progressive rates do not violate principles of fairness, and may in fact, implement them better than non-progressive tax schemes.
The book also discusses alternatives to the income tax system---for example, value-added or pure consumption taxes, pointing out exactly how these systems are similar (and different), and the various revenue, implementation, and fairness ramifications of the alternatives.
This is a wonderful, must-read book for everyone who has ever sat face-to-face with a 1040.
Title: Republic.com
Author: Cass Sunstein
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 18 June 2001
The Internet promises, and certainly does seem to have the potential to live up to the promise of, delivering to each consumer only such news, discussion, and information, as matches the interests of the specific person.
Cass Sunstein argues in Republic.com that this power will have unfavorable consequences for a democratic society.
The primary argument Sunstein provides is philosophical, but he supports some of his points through empirical studies. The argument (unfairly) summarized is that exposure to views and ideas that are not only not interesting to us, but are in fact opposed to one's opinions is essential for the proper functioning of a democracy since this is the primary means by which citizens can become educated participants in society and politics.
Conversely, the freedom to eliminate everything that one does not agree with leads to satisfied consumers but bad citizens. Sunstein does an excellent job of exploring the differences between being a consumer and being a citizen, and why conflicts between these two roles should, in many cases, be resolved in the direction of better citizenship (much to the chagrin of laissez-faire libertarians, no doubt).
This is a brief, but well-written exposition of issues that should lead the reader to explore their own ideas about society, individualism, markets, and politics, rather than offer a solution to any immediate problem.
A very good read.
Title: "I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby!"
Author: Bill Sloan
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 15 June 2001
All those capital letters and quotation marks in the title are in the original.
Bill Sloan has worked in the tabloid industry for many years and has done a superb job of documenting the birth, evolution, and what now seems to be the decline of these supermarket checkout rags.
Most people younger than a certain age think of tabloids as nothing but the stuff found at supermarket checkout counters with wild, sensational headlines (much like the "wild hog" that at the "baby").
I was surprised to learn that tabloids in the US first came into being during the (in)famous yellow journalism wars between Willian Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The tabloids were the purveyors of disgusting and depraved tastelessness, pornography, sensationalism, and celebrity gossip during the 1950s. But following the lead of the National Enquirer, the tabloids started to "clean up" their act to get into supermarkets, which led to their evolution into the now-familiar fixtures at the local grocery store.
The 1990s have seen the out-tabloiding of the tabloids by mainstream magazines. One has Bill/Monica and Diana/Dodi to thank for it. People, Time, and Newsweek are today indistinguishable from the traditional tabloids.
The book also has entertaining descriptions of the various publishers of the tabloids and their wars on one another.
An excellent read.
Title: A Year in Van Nuys
Author: Sandra Tsing Loh
Category: Fiction
Review written: 15 June 2001
Bridget Jones is an example of a stupid, neurotic woman whose unending quest for happiness and fulfilment is documented over the course of a year.
Sandra Tsing Loh covers similar territory with the story of Sandra (who may or may not be loosely based on herself), an aspiring writer/TV personality who lives in Van Nuys. Where Bridget Jones is pathetic and stupid, Loh is far more astringent with her remarks and cynicism.
However, about 3/4ths of the way through, the pace gives out and we are back in familiar Bridget Jones land, and the book ends is a disgusting display of happiness and self-congratulation.
How much more wonderful it would have been if A Year in Van Nuys had been consistently anti-Bridget all the way through, creating a study in contrast.
Skip this book.
Title: Bobos in Paradise
Author: David Brooks
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 25 May 2001
A bobo is a bohemian bourgeoise (or maybe it is the other way around): a person who combines the sensibilities of both the bohemian and the bourgeoise in a manner that was previously thought not possible.
This book is one of the best social commentaries on the way we have become as a society. I was roaring with laughter all through the book.
Plenty of ersatz kultur kritiks (Thomas Frank being a recent example) have written tomes of turgid and constipated prose on the same phenomena and have failed miserably at their task. Bobos in Paradise is the same thing done right.
This is an extremely funny, witty, insightful book filled with wicked, brutal humor. As P.G.Wodehouse so deliciously put it, it "(prefers) the rapier of sarcasm to the bludgeon of abuse". Dave Barry might, just might, have written a funnier account, but he would have had to work really really hard at it.
Do not miss it.
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