Nonfiction Book Reviews

Okay, all of you germophobes, you can’t leave yet!! Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends by Mary Ruebush is especially important reading for the Clorox Sanitizing Wipes/Purell gel sanitizer type people, which germophobes usually are.  Yeah, you know who you are.

Why Dirt is Good was written by a doctor who is a microbiology and immunology instructor at Kaplan Medical and has taught about immunology, infectious disease, and pathology in medical schools for 30+ years.  So she isn’t some quack who is spouting of her own ideas of what she thinks we ought to do - she has years and years of experience backing her (and her admittedly insane ideas).

So here’s the book in a nutshell:

Our immune system is like anything else - it gets better and stronger the more it is used.  An immune system has to learn how to fight off bugs, and it has to do it regularly to stay in good shape (just like an Olympic gold medalist couldn’t take off an entire year from training and then still compete in an event.)  When a child is not exposed to dirt and germs at a young age, then the immune system doesn’t learn how to fight the viruses and bacteria, and the child will actually be more prone to illnesses when they get older than a child who was exposed to a lot of dirt n’ germs.

In other words, those parents who are clean freaks who sterilize everything that goes into their child’s mouth in order to “keep them from getting sick” is setting that child up for a lifetime of sickness.  Ironic, is it not?

But having said that, this doesn’t mean that the author was advocating that you have your child never wash their hands or send your child outside with specific instructions to eat a cup of dirt every day, but she was saying that you as the parent should not freak out when your child does the things that children do (eat mud pies, eat food dropped on the floor, share their food with others, etc).  Don’t sterilize the binky/pacifier every time it drops on the ground.  Wipe it off on your pants and plug it back in!  Your child will thank you later.

Ruebush also spent a lot of time talking about the anti-bacterial and anti-microbial hand sanitizers that you see all over the place.  She said something that probably won’t be trumpeted in the next Purell ad you see on TV: These sanitizers work really well in the laboratory but have shown virtually zero effect in real life.

From page 111:

The primary ingredient in the hundreds of liquid antibacterial soaps on the market today is triclosan.  In much higher concentrations, triclosan is used in hospital settings - by surgeons scrubbing before an operation, for example.  At those concentrations and in that setting, triclosan kills bacteria across the board.  At the much lower concentrations in soap made for the consumer use (usually 0.15 percent), the amount of triclosan is just right for creating resistance to it.

What the story there is: Bacteria and viruses are some of the best organisms at evolving out of anything residing on this planet.  They can literally evolve within a couple of hours.  You cannot possibly keep ahead of them by producing a new anti-bacterial in the lab every time something evolves.

And the bacteria do it by adapting to the agents trying to kill them.  There is the phrase, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” right?  Well, that phrase is absolutely applicable to bacteria.  When you use a low level anti-bacteria on bacteria, it kills off the weak strains of bacteria and leaves the more advanced and potentially deadlier bacteria alive, and now resistant to whatever it was that you used to try to kill it.  The more you use anti-bacterial soap, the more deadly the bacteria gets, and the less effective that soap is.

Seriously, it’s just frustrating isn’t it?

To find out lots more than you ever really wanted to know about bacteria and viruses, you need to read Why Dirt is Good.  It opened my eyes to a lot of things that I had thought I had known but now know is false.

Well, now for the negatives.  The margins are huge, and the book is short (roughly 170 pages without counting the glossary at the back) so there really isn’t much to it.  At times, it felt like an overblown magazine article, where the author just tried to take a topic and stretch it out as far as possible.  There were some things that were repeated too much in my ever so humble opinion.

If they had shrunk the margins down to normal size, resized the dimensions of the book itself into the “normal” (and bigger) size for a book, and had taken out all of the repeated stuff, this would have been a very short book indeed.

Does that mean that I don’t think it’s worth it to buy?  At retail ($19.95) probably not.  But if you can find it on discount, then I’d go for it.  There really is a lot packed into these pages, much more than what I’ve covered above.  Or just do like I did and check it out of the library.

I give Why Dirt is Good: 5 Ways to Make Germs Your Friends 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re a germophobe who uses every sanitizing product under the sun, then run, don’t walk, to the bookstore and buy it.  Or order it online.  It will change your way of thinking, guaranteed.

Hava

I saw Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross one day while doing check-in.  Since I am a big fan of Google (I use Gmail for my email service - Gmail ROCKS! - and faithfully use only Google to search the internet) I thought it would be interesting to learn more about this company that has played such a large role in my online life.

Overall, Planet Google was interesting.  It didn’t quite progress the way I thought it would - I thought it would start at the beginning, with the history of the co-founders, and then progressing linearly through time up to the point of publication.

Instead, it had very little personal history about the co-founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and instead of progressing forward through time, the book was organized around ideas that Google has experimented with, from Google Earth to Gmail to YouTube.  Each chapter focused on an idea, or focused on the competition Google has faced from Microsoft and Yahoo.

It made for a very quick read (I sat down after work tonight and finished the whole book in one sitting - about 2.5 hours or so) and I think that reading it so quickly made me realize something that would have otherwise been lost reading it over the course of a week or a month: Randal Stross repeated himself several times throughout the book, almost as if he had written each section separately, and then at the end combined it all into one book.

There were a couple of instances where he would explain a concept in-depth in one chapter, and then explain that same concept again a chapter or two later (in much less detail, but still, there was more explanation the second time around than was needed, for sure.)  If I had taken 6 weeks to read the book, I never would have noticed this.

Despite these shortcomings, I enjoyed it, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the fundamentals of Google than I did before I read it.  I use Facebook regularly, so I was really surprised to learn about the rivalry between Facebook and Google.  I had no clue before I read Planet Google.  Nor did I know that Microsoft has some monetary stake in Facebook, or that Microsoft and Google are rivals (I don’t pay much attention to rivalry between tech companies, what can I say?)

But while there were events or happenings that the author covered in great detail (like YouTube, and more specifically, making YouTube monetarily solvent) there were other Google-related items that the book did not touch on at all, or only mentioned once or twice in passing, like Blogspot and Google AdSense.  Those are both huge parts to the Google world, and yet they garnered zero attention by Stross.

I think that is one of the book’s biggest downfalls - it tended to be fairly superficial.  I feel like he skimmed through a lot, but then repeated other things (how is YouTube going to make money?) too much.

There were events that the author referred to as being a “huge deal” and I had no clue they had even happened, let alone was affected by it happening.  I think there has been more than one technology bubble - for someone wrapped up in the Google world, perhaps these things were a huge deal, but to the rest of us, it was negligible at best.

Planet Google would obviously would not appeal to someone not interested in the tech world - this is not a book I could recommend to just anyone in off the street.  But for the right person, I think this would make for a fascinating read.  Since I fall into that group of people interested in both technology and the story behind the companies that shape our world today (I really need to read a book about Microsoft!) I give it 4.25 stars out of 5.

Havs

I had to read His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy by Susan Ray Schmidt after I found out that it was written a sister wife of the author of Shattered Dreams (in other words, they were both married to the same man, Verlan LeBaron.)  Irene Spencer had had a lot to say about Susan in her book (mainly, that she was Verlan’s favorite wife, and why was she always being treated so special?) and I wanted to see it from Susan’s perspective.

I’m glad I did - it was definitely one of the better written polygamy books.  I enjoyed it a lot more than Irene’s book, simply because Susan didn’t spend half of the book complaining about how she wasn’t “getting any,” like Irene did.  Susan was definitely unhappy with Verlan most of the time, but she didn’t wallow in it, and I was grateful for that.

I also felt like this book was a lot more exciting and gave a better understanding of that time period when it came to polygamy, because Susan talks quite a bit about her brother-in-law, Ervil LeBaron, a famous polygamist that had his own brother killed, along with some of his wives, children, and other people he thought deserved to die.   Irene said in her book that she specifically didn’t talk about Ervil because she didn’t want him to overwhelm her story, but because of that, I felt as if a large chunk of important information was left out.  Susan’s story was much more complete.

But not only was it more complete, but Susan’s writing style was better.  When she was a child, the writing was more simplistic, and the reasoning she did was more simplistic too.  As she grows up, the book becomes more in-depth, and you can see her change and mature before your eyes.  I felt that really added to the book.

If you’re interested in a follow-up after finishing His Favorite Wife, you’ll want to check out this website, where Susan does a question and answer session with readers.  Make sure to read the comments too - she and her daughter write out responses there also.  It was very interesting to see that Susan and Irene are good friends even to this day - I would think that would be very difficult, but I guess they’ve had years to get past all of the baggage that would have come with this lifestyle.

Tangent: While researching on the internet, I found out that Susan is living in the same city I am, here in Idaho.  What an incredibly small world this is!!  I wonder if she has ever come down to the library and I’ve met her and simply didn’t know it…I’ll have to keep my eyes open for her.

Well, out of the four polygamy books that I’ve read (Shattered Dreams, Stolen Innocence, Escape, and now His Favorite Wife) the tally is two Christians, one (maybe) Mormon (still not sure about that one), and one atheist.  As I’ve read these books, I’ve wondered what the majority of ex-FLDS believers become - if they do tend to go towards Christianity or another religion (or none at all).  I’m sure that no formal study has ever been done, so I guess I’ll just have to keep wondering…

Anyway, if you’re interested in polygamy in the 1960’s and 70’s, then you’ll definitely want to pick His Favorite Wife up.  It gives an eye-opening insight to what it is truly like to be a polygamist wife (and there is pretty much nothing good about it).  If you’re wanting an up-to-date picture of polygamy and what’s happening now, you’ll want to check out Stolen Innocence instead.

I give His Favorite Wife 4.25 out of 5 stars.  I’ll be keeping my eyes open for Susan around town!

Havs

Note: Joel Glenn Brenner is a woman, and there should be a umlaut above the “e” in her first name, although I don’t have a clue of how to produce one of those on my keyboard. Just so you weren’t too confused by me referring to a “Joel” as a girl…

I was checking a patron out at the front desk when I saw The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner in the stack. Intrigued, I put the book on hold as soon as the patron walked out the door.

When the patron returned it, I eagerly started reading and boy am I glad that I did.  I will never look at the candy aisle at the store the same.  Before reading this book, I was rather clueless about the chocolate world, and in fact, if asked, I would have said that Hershey and Mars had merged together and were the same company now.  (Don’t ask me why I thought that, but that’s what I believed.)

Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried.  There is an intense rivalry between Hershey and Mars, akin to the one between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and actually, Hershey and Mars don’t play well together.  At all.  But that isn’t always how it was: In the beginning, Hershey helped Mars get started, and provided all of the chocolate for Mars for years.

Then to get even more bizarre, I found out what M&M stands for.  If you ask a Mars worker, they’ll tell you, “The owner liked his name Mars so much, he used it twice!” ie, it’s Mars & Mars.  Although it’s a good line, it’s not true, and in fact the second M stands for Murrie, the last name of the president of Hershey.

I told you it was bizarre.

This book was fascinating for me - I love to learn, I love chocolate, and Ms. Brenner is very adept at weaving in interesting tidbits and making it read more like a novel than a dry economics book on how these two companies came to be where they are.  She is a former newspaper reporter for the Washington Post, and it shows - she has a great writing style.

Here are some of the more interesting tidbits:

• The secrecy is so strict at Mars that when their machinery breaks down and they have to hire an outside company to come fix it, they meet the mechanic at the door, blindfold him, walk him through the plant to the machine, take off the blindfold, let him do his job, then blindfold him again to walk him back out. All very politely, of course.
• Because Mars is a privately held company, they are not required to reveal anything about anyone to anybody they don’t want to.  If you call Mars and ask for the name of the president of the company, the secretary will say very politely, “We don’t give out that information” and click! hang up the phone on you.
• The men who started each company (Hershey and Mars) struggled an incredible amount before becoming successful.  Both of them lost their shirts multiple times before finally making it.  The author goes through the story of each man quite in-depth, and I felt like I was reading the biography of each man, along with the general story of the companies themselves.
• After the death of founder Milton Hershey, the Hershey company was mismanaged so badly that they started to sink, and quickly.   A small example of the problem: they kept track of what they were selling by counting the cases - they sold X amount of 6 packs, Y amount of 12 packs.  A 6 pack of what, they didn’t know.  They didn’t differentiate between a Hershey bar and a Kit Kat bar.  They simply knew that all together, they had sold X amount of 6 packs.  Which is an insane way of doing business.  This has changed since then.
• Mars sells very little peanut butter candy because the owners hate peanut butter. I don’t blame them (I hate peanut butter too!) but I do think that it’s a strange reason to make a financial decision.  Then again, not having to explain their decisions to anyone isone of the biggest reasons they have stayed a privately owned company.
• The Hershey company is the sole supporter of one of the largest and richest orphanages in the world.  Philanthropy was one of the guiding principles of Mr. Hershey’s life, although his dream of a Utopia didn’t play out like he wanted it to.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to ruin the book by saying too much.  I will say this: If someone had sat down and tried to come up with two completely different stories of how a chocolate company came into being, they couldn’t have done better than the two stories you hear here.  Mars and Hershey are diametrically opposite in every way except for the fact that both companies make chocolate.  It really was a great story.

I also enjoyed the fact that Brenner focuses on more than just Hershey and Mars - she also interviews and talks about other candy companies in the US and around the world.  It gives you a great perspective on the candy world.

The only part that I didn’t like is that I felt that Brenner tended to go on and on about uninteresting things at certain points of the book, stuff that a good editor would have chopped out.  It was definitely longer than it needed to be, and I found myself skimming a few times.

Overall, I think it’s worth 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re interested in economics or are a chocolate lover, you’ve got to check this book out.  I promise you, trying to pick out a candy bar at the grocery store will become a whole different experience after having read it.

Hava

I picked up The Complete Guide to Attics and Basements by Black and Decker because we were looking at finishing off the attic in our home.  We own a Craftsman-style home built in the 1920’s, and we thought that it would be an easy way to add on square footage.

Well, I’m so glad I picked this book up because it’s saved us a whole lot of time and money.  We found out from reading it that converting our attic isn’t possible.  After reading the requirements for the ceiling height in bedrooms, we crawled up into our attic and measured.  We barely hit 7 feet at the ridgeline, and according to this book, your ceiling has to be at least 7′6″ over 50% of the floor. We don’t hit 7′6″ anywhere, let alone over 50% of the floor, darn it.

We were going to hire someone to come in and look at our attic to give us some ideas on how to best finish it off, and I’m sure such a trip would’ve cost us several hundred dollars.  That’s obviously not going to happen now.  Apparently, reading books really can pay off, literally!

Even though this book spelled the end of one of our plans, I still enjoyed it.  I was very grateful that it was clear, easy to understand, well laid out, with lots of illustrations and examples.  I enjoyed the first section, where there were lots of pictures to give me fun ideas, and then the second section, where there were step-by-step instructions on how to do a wide variety of projects, from adding drywall to your basement walls to installing baseboard heaters.It is focused more on giving you a broad overview of the process and ideas rather than a manual with intricate instructions.

 I would suggest checking it out of the library before buying it, just to make sure it’s got what you need, and it aimed at your level of expertise and expectations.  But if what you’re looking for is ideas and some concrete tips on how to convert your attic or basement, you couldn’t go wrong with The Complete Guide to Attics and Basements.

I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.Havs

PS If you’re on the hunt for books about remodeling, make sure to check out my review of Affordable Remodel by Fernando Pages Ruiz.  That was another great remodeling book. (You can probably tell I’ve been focusing on remodeling a lot lately!  That’s part of the joy of buying an older home…)

In honor of my starting college this week to get my associates degree in Library Science, I decided to review The Romance of Libraries by Madeleine Lefebvre. It was a book that caught my eye while searching the (library!) shelves - a nice pink, cheery color.  And who could resist a book about libraries and love?

I wasn’t disappointed - it was a fun book filled with stories about couples who met and fell in love in, at, or around the library.  Compiled by Madeleine Lefebvre, they are all true stories and some are quite heartfelt. Most of the romances profiled worked out, but a couple did not.

All of them somehow related to the library, whether it was where they met, where one of the people worked, or where they got engaged.  There were even a few marriages conducted in a library.  (I am so jealous…)

If you want a light book to read, and you enjoy sweet stories about people falling in love, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book.  Although libraries and books are definitely a part of the book, they don’t overwhelm it so don’t feel like you have to be a library aficionado to read it.  You might find yourself down at the public library more often though (never a bad thing).

Like all compiled stories about the same subject, the stories seemed to run together after a while, and there wasn’t really much depth to any of them (since the stories were an average of two paragraphs long).  This just meant that it’s a book you could easily pick up and put down at any time, and probably one you’d want to read in short bursts rather than all at once.

Overall, I give The Romance of Libraries 4.25 stars out of 5.

Havs

Before I get started on today’s book review, I just wanted to give a special thanks to a fellow Today.com blogger, Michael Nolan at Frugal Living Tip of the Day.  He was kind enough to make a new header for this blog, free of charge, and I now have a header that matches the subject of my blog, instead of a generic one.  I’ve already had compliments on it!  So many thanks to Michael, and for my readers, if you’re wanting to find a great site full of frugal tips, Michael’s is well written, and well done.  Be sure to head on over there.

So on to my book review: I originally checked out A.J. Jacob’s book, The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World from the library and gave it to my father to read. I figured if anyone would understand and love the quest to read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from beginning to end, it would be my dad. I didn’t read the book myself though.

Then I checked out The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible and it came home to sit on my shelf of books-I’m-going-to-read-someday. (And no, I don’t think the similarities in the subtitles are a coincidence…)

My sister came over, saw the book, thought it looked interesting, and checked it out of the library herself (my copy of the book eventually being returned unread). She really liked it, and told me I needed to read it. So I checked it out again. Returned it unread again.

The fourteenth time’s a charm - I finally read it. Funny thing was, as soon as I started reading, I was thoroughly engrossed in the story. He has an engaging writing style - easy to read, with lots of quirky humor and strange obsessions to round out his personality. Obviously, if he’s willing to read a 32-volume set of encyclopedias, or live an entire year as Biblically as possible (up to and including eating locusts, even if they were chocolate covered) then you know he’s not your average Joe.

My sister and I discussed the book and came to the conclusion: This book is great for raising questions in your mind; not so great at answering them. Why did God say that you can’t wear clothing of mixed fibers (such a blend of cotton and linen)? Or that you can’t touch a woman while she’s having her period? Or that you’re supposed to blow a horn at the beginning of each month?

I know that Christians don’t follow these rules now, but why were they put in place originally? What do these rules do for the human race?

A.J. does try to find answers to some of these questions, although more often than not, he doesn’t succeed. He is focusing on these questions because the majority of the book focuses on the Old Testament (A.J.’s family is lapsed Jewish, although A.J. is agnostic himself). He does spend several months on the New Testament, however.

He discusses a lot of red-hot social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and also things like literalism (the idea that everything in the Bible is 100% true, vs the idea that some of it and/or all of it is an allegory), and creationism (the idea that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, and that God did create the Earth in a mere six days).

Although he pretty much always comes down on the side of a more liberal point-of-view on these issues, it isn’t in an antagonistic fashion, and I don’t think too many people would get mad over his conclusions (they may not agree, but I don’t think they’d get angry at him for how he phrased his viewpoint).

He isn’t all serious - he tells some great stories that had me laughing.  He lives in New York City, and relates the following story about trying to buy some Bibles from a Christian store:

He shows me tables covered with Bibles of all shapes, sizes, and linguistic slants - from the plain-spoken English of the Good News Bible to the majestic cadence of the Jerusalem Bible.

He points out one Bible I might want. It’s designed to look exactly like a Seventeen magazine: An attractive (if long-sleeved) model graces the front, next to cover lines like “What’s Your Spiritual IQ?” Open it up and you’ll find sidebars such as “Rebecca the Control Freak.”

“This one’s good if you’re on the subway and are too embarrassed to be seen reading the Bible,” says Chris. “Because no one will ever know it’s a Bible.” It’s an odd and poignant selling point. You know you’re in a secular city when it’s considered more acceptable for a grown man to read a teen girl’s magazine than the Bible. ~ Page 9 of The Year of Living Biblically

Too true.

Overall, I thought it was an interesting look at one of the most influential books of all time, and I think that although The Year of Living Biblically may not be for everybody, it was well worth the read for me. I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Now I’m going to have to go read The Know-It-All…

Havs

A while back, I read and reviewed WordPress for Dummies, and at the end of it, I mentioned I was going to review Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, 3rd Edition by Peter Kent. Well, today is that day.

I had my library order the copy in for me (which is why it took me so long to get it read and reviewed), but it was worth the wait.  There was quite a bit of information in the book that I had never heard before, but even worse, I found out that some of the “SEO tricks” I had been taught before were flat-out wrong.

I have a habit of turning up the bottom of a page when I read something I think is worthwhile and that I might end up quoting later in my review of the book.  It’s easier for me than to sit with a notepad and pen and take notes while reading.

But with SEO for Dummies, there was so much new information that I needed to process that I ended the book with 19 folded-down pages, a new record for me.  Since this is a library book, I can’t keep it as a reference book, so I’m going to end up going back through and taking notes anyway.  So much for being lazy…

Now for the negatives: Peter Kent (at least in this book) has a rather confusing writing style.  He tends to say a bunch of things as if they are good thing, then finish the section by saying you “never want to do that.”  This left me confused - did I not want to do the last thing?  Or all the things?  And if I didn’t want to do those things, then why was he talking about them in a positive light?

Perhaps I’m just slower than most (Brothers, that was not an invitation to make wisecracks) so maybe he was only confusing to me.  But I felt like his writing style could’ve used editorial help.

He also tended to repeat things.  A lot.  Like the fact that when someone uses JavaScript to create links between websites, the search bots can’t read those links, and thus the website doesn’t get “credit” for the link in the search engine’s eyes.  (If that was Greek to you, read the book - he explains all of that quite nicely).

The first time I read that, I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” so I marked the page.  The second and third time, I thought, “Hmm…Didn’t I already read that?” By the fifth time, I was becoming mightily unimpressed with his ability to repeat the information as if it was new to the reader all over again.  By the seventh time, I was sure he was simply trying to pad his word count (and the book does clock in at 408 pages.  This is no small book).

I shouldn’t bellyache too much, because overall, it was a great book on SEO techniques.  There’s a lot of guesswork that goes into SEO work - after all, Google’s not going to announce how it ranks websites, or every web master out there is going to tailor their website to fit those specifications exactly, and then all searches do is return pages of advertisements.

So in that kind of environment of guesswork and to-the-best-of-my-knowledge theories, there tends to be a lot of flat-out wrong information on the web when it comes to SEO techniques.   Peter Kent does do a good job of clarifying a lot of that.

If you’re serious about creating a website that will rank well and bring in a lot of visitors from search engines, you’ll want to read this book.  It’s not a book for a complete newbie (some topics are too complicated for even Dummies books to make completely Dummy Compatible) but if you’ve spent some time online, working on websites and/or blogging, and you’re wanting to take your site to the next level, this would be the book to read.

I give SEO for Dummies 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava

A while ago, I read some posts put up by a blogger, Michael Yon, on his website, Michael Yon Online.  I thoroughly enjoyed his posts and so when a gentleman came into the library with fliers advertising Michael Yon’s new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, I was excited to request that the book be ordered for our library.

I just finished reading it - I read it over the course of two days because I simply couldn’t put it down.  I’m kind of at a loss for words on how to describe the book, so I’ll start with the easy part: A little background about Michael Yon.

He’s a former Green Beret turned journalist/photographer.  He has spent more time embedded with US combat troops in Iraq than any other journalist in the world.  He is completely independent - he does not work for any news organization and is not paid by anyone.  He is equally critical of both the Republicans and Democrats, and he doesn’t pull any punches.  His picture of a soldier carrying a wounded little girl has become iconic (it’s the front cover of his book).

Now for my critiques of the book: It is composed of different “dispatches” (his name for blog posts) that he had written while in Iraq.  They are not connected and do not flow well.  They are not prominently dated, and he jumps around from year to year with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Basically, the book tries to be chronological, but fails miserably.  Also, if you were a dedicated reader of his website, you really don’t need to buy his book (other than if you want the info in a printed and bound form for some reason).  A good editor should have come along and straightened the flow and timeline out, but didn’t.

Speaking of good editing, you can tell that Michael Yon is photographer first, writer second. He’ll change the subject halfway through a paragraph, and never go back to the original subject, leaving the reader confused.  He also had some typos in here that bugged me (again, good editing.  Who worked on this project??)

All of that aside though, the book itself was excellent.  Case in point: When I read a book, I’ll fold down the corners of the book to mark a page that I think I might want to quote in my review of the book.  I try to find a couple of different sections that might be good to quote, so I have a nice variety to choose from in the end when I finally write up the review.

With Moment of Truth in Iraq, I realized that I was folding down every 10th page or so.  I basically just wanted to take the entire book and post it, because it was that good.  I cried a little, I laughed a little, I thought a whoooooole bunch.  Some of these stories that he reports are just amazing, and it’s hard for me to not tell you guys all of the best ones!

I finally decided on the following quote, because although it doesn’t encapsulate the exciting, nail-biting parts of the book, it does show his unique stance on the political point of view of this war:

All news organizations, from the newbie blogger to the New York Times, from right-wing talk radio to NPR, from CNN to Fox, all ultimately depend upon the financial support of their audiences.  So readers and listeners and viewers should not be surprised when media organizations tell them what they want to hear. 

Happy news for the Left was that US soldiers were demoralized and the war was being lost.  Happy news for the Right was that there was no insurgency, then no civil war; we always had enough troops, and we were winning hands-down, except for the left-wing lunatics who were trying to unravel it all. 

They say heroin addicts are happy too, when they are out of touch with reality. ~Moment of Truth in Iraq, page 214

Like I said, he really doesn’t pull any punches. He doesn’t try to make America look all good, or all bad.  He talks about the mistakes we made, and how we’re learning from them.  He talks about how Iraq is doing better now than ever before, and that the war is ours to win or lose.  It is an extremely thought-provoking book for people on both sides of the aisle.

This is one of those cases where the meat of the book is excellent enough that the drawbacks can be overlooked.  I highly recommend this book to everyone, Left or Right, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian.  I wish that every man and woman in America took the time to read this book, but especially the reporters for the mainstream media.  Perhaps they can take notes on how to really report on a war.

In the end, I have to give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.  With some editing help, it could have easily garnered 5 stars - it was that good.  Maybe next time Michael will contact me to help him out.

Hava

PS FYI, he’s put the first chapter up on his site - you have to download it as a PDF file.  That’s a great way to see if it’s something you would enjoy reading.

I originally read about Jill Price and her amazing memory in a National Geographic article while on break at the library. I was immediately fascinated by her story: Here was a woman who could remember every single thing that has happened to her since the age of 14, and can remember quite a bit of what has happened since the age of 2.

This was especially intriguing to me because I have been cursed with a worse memory than most.  I have watched movies with my husband (mind you, we’ve only known each other for a little under seven years), we’ll enjoy them so we go buy them for our collection, and then I’ll pick up that same movie at Blockbuster and say to my husband, “Hey, this looks like a good movie.  We should rent it.”

I’m sure that at first, my husband thought I was joking.  I really wasn’t.  I can watch entire movies and then not remember them one whit a year later.  I can even rewatch that same movie with my husband, and by the end, still not have a glimmer of recognition, a moment of, “Oh yeah, I do remember this.”  Nope, nada.

Unfortunately, this lack of memory doesn’t contain itself to just movies, but instead extends into all parts of my life.  I won’t remember names, faces, places, people or things that I have said or did.  This tends to make me honest, since I won’t remember later what I told someone, truth or otherwise.

So when I heard that the focus of the National Geographic article had written a book, I immediately went online and put the book on hold for me at the library. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science by Jill Price and Bart Davis definitely made for a quick (2 hours from start to finish) and very interesting read.

It was a glimpse into the life of a person who literally cannot forget.  She can remember the day of the week and what she did that day for every single date that the scientists asked her.  Do you remember what you were doing on April 23, 1998?  Me either.

Jill Price could.  She could list out where she went, who she talked to, and if she had heard about any large tragic events happened in the world that day, she would also to tell you about that.  And it isn’t just that she remembers, she can relive everything - how she felt, what she wore, what the weather was like.

The downside is not only she can do this on demand (when someone asks her to) but she also does it automatically, all day every day.  She described that it’s like having a split screen in your head, where one side of the screen is what’s happening right then and there, but the other side is a home movie of your life on random shuffle.  She will jump from childhood to adulthood to the teenage years without rhyme or reason.  She does not relive her life in order and does not have control over what she remembers.

This gift (or curse, depending on how you look at it) has nearly wrecked her life several times.  While other people are able to forgive and forget, she can’t.  She remembers every spiteful, mean thing that anyone has ever told her, and worse, can remember every spiteful mean thing she’s ever told anyone else.  Imagine living and reliving your teenage years for the rest of your life.  That definitely would be something I’d opt out of.

Overall, it was fascinating, but for me, it would be hard to get along with her on a day-to-day basis.  She says multiple times in the book that she was hard to live with, and I believe her.  I can’t explain this part without typing out the whole book, but believe me when I say that she has a hard time with the emotional and relationship aspect of life - how to generalize from an experience, learn from it, and move on.

I have to give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re interested in how memory works, this probably wouldn’t be your best bet, since it focuses more on her life, but there is some info on that, and her life does make for a great test study on memory.  They’re hoping to study her brain and learn better how memory works, something she’s all for, and for that, I’m really grateful.

And hey, maybe someday science will come up with a way for me to remember what movies I’ve watched.

Hava

I read Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray before I got married, so it’s been at least seven years ago, and I remember liking it. After I reviewed The Five Love Languages, I decided to reread Men are from Mars and see which of the two I thought was more helpful.

Turns out that to me, both of them are equally as helpful but in completely different ways.

In The Five Love Languages, the emphasis is on doing the right things to make your spouse happy. If your spouse was someone who appreciated Acts of Service, and you went out and bought a $100 flower arrangement for her, you’re only going to puzzle your spouse who will wonder why you can find the time to buy extravagant flowers bouquets that are going to die, but not enough time to mow the lawn.

So knowing which love language each spouse speaks is very important but that really only pertains to the “keeping your spouse happy” part of the relationship, and doesn’t speak to the communication portion of your marriage.

Example: Clothes shopping together.  If your wife asks your opinion on the shirt she just tried on, knowing that she likes the lawn mowed instead of flower bouquets isn’t going to do you any good (as you’ll quickly find out when you inform her that the shirt makes her look fat.  My advice: Back away slowly.)

To help the masses understand marital communication better, Men are from Mars presents a very simple idea: Men do not think like women, and women do not think like men.  In fact, the thought processes and the emotional needs are so different, the two sexes might as well be from two different planets (hence the name.)

The two sexes even speak two different languages, and John Gray was kind enough to provide a “translation guide” as a part of the book.  A man can use this guide when a woman is speaking so that he can understand what she would be saying, if she was speaking Martian.  And vice-versa.

For me, I enjoyed reading the book, and yes, I did see a lot of myself in the pages.  I constantly found myself saying, “Yes, that is so true!” or “Has this guy been following me around?  How does he know all of this stuff about me?”

Having said all that, I think John Gray’s success has rather gone to his head.  Perhaps this is a personal quirk, but when an author spends almost the entire introduction talking about how amazing his book is, and how much every person who reads it is going to love it, it tends to drive me a little crazy.  Let the book speak for itself - if it’s good, I’ll see that myself.  I don’t need the author (hardly a fount of unbiased opinion) telling me so.

I’ve seen other people suggest to skip the first section, so I’m not alone in my feelings.  In this case, don’t judge the book by its cover, or its introduction.

He also tends to talk about men and women in their most extreme conditions - the typical testosterone male, the typical emotional female, and although I think there is a lot of truth in what he says, I don’t think everything he says can be taken as gospel truth.  But that’s what happens when you try to write a book that tries to apply to every human being on the planet - you’re not going to end up with a perfect fit every time.  So take what you need and leave the rest.

Overall, I give Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus 4.25 out of 5 stars.   If you find yourself constantly scratching your head, wondering why you and your spouse are at loggerheads, pick this book up and see if it can work its magic on you.

Hava

Photo Credit: MBarton837

Escape by Carolyn Jessop was a very difficult and depressing book for me.  I picked it up because of course, polygamy has been all over the news lately - even Oprah did a show on polygamy where she invited polygamists to come onto her show and share their side of the story.  There’s also been a plethora of polygamy books released - Shattered Dreams (which I already did a review of), His Favorite Wife, and a brand-new one called Stolen Innocence.

I’ve only read the two books, so I can only compare between them, but I have to say: Carolyn Jessop’s Escape had a very different take on polygamy than Shattered Dreams, although I supposed that’s to be expected.   The author of Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer) is quite a bit older than Carolyn and her story took place before Warren Jeffs came in and took over, so her version of the sect was much more tame and normal than what happened to Carolyn.  And then of course you’ve also got two very different personalities.  All polygamists don’t think the same, just like all Catholics don’t have the same temperaments.   Some people may feel like if they’ve read one book on a subject, they’ve read them all, but in this case, that’s definitely not true.

I enjoyed reading Escape more - it starts out with a bang, on the night that Carolyn flees with her children and goes to Utah.  It’s fast paced and your heart starts racing just from reading.  Will she get out in time?  Is she going to get caught?  You can feel the tension rolling off Carolyn in waves.  Unlike Shattered that suffered from a real lack of editorial insight, Escape has great pacing and a good timeline to it.

My only real qualm with Escape was along the same lines as the problem I had with Not Without My Daughter - Carolyn has a real bitterness to her attitude and writing.  I didn’t expect her to be all smiles and sunshine about it, but even when something good or funny was happening, I still got this feeling that there is pure anger in her towards the polygamy cult and the experience itself.  I walked away with the gut feeling that Carolyn is going to be healing from this experience for a very long time, as opposed to Irene who I felt healed and forgave faster and easier.

And perhaps I’m way off, who knows, but that was the vibe I got from the books.

Overall, it was a supremely depressing but needed look at the polygamist life.  The Great Escape for Carolyn happened in 2003, so it isn’t as if this is an outdated book and things like this simply aren’t happening anymore.  Instead, she gives a fairly current snapshop into the lives of polygamists - I don’t think I’ll ever see a news story on polygamy quite the same again.

I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava

I remembered vaguely hearing about Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody when I spotted the book doing check-in at the library. Some lady got stuck in Iran and couldn’t leave was about all I could recall. So I checked the book out and brought it home - it sounded like an interesting plotline, and hopefully worth the read. I didn’t realize at the time that there had been a movie made from the book, nor have I watched the movie since, so if any of my readers out there have watched it, please pipe up - I want to hear what you thought about it.

As for the book, it was captivating. I was immediately drawn into the story and could hardly put it down. She reveals the backstory piece by piece throughout the book instead of hitting you all at once with it, so I kept wanting to read further, because there were certain things that she did that made no sense to me. She would hint at the reason, but then draw back and not actually state it. Then she’d do it again 50 pages later.  Arrgh!  Although it drove me crazy, it definitely kept my attention.

But as the backstory began to fall into place, her actions started to started to make sense (finally!) and I was by that point completely hooked. I had to know what happened next!

For those of you who haven’t read the book/watched the movie, it’s basically about how Betty marries Moody (that’s his nickname) who is from Iran.  She’d met him here in America when he was treating her as a patient - he was a doctor and apparently very Americanized, or so she thought.  Backstory, backstory, backstory (hey, if Betty made me wait, I’m going to make you wait, LOL!!!), they get married, backstory, backstory, and finally they end up in Iran on a trip, visiting his family. He completely changes his personality, and he ends up trapping her in Iran.

This trip happens in 1984, and in 1984 in Iran, a woman could be killed for using birth control without her husband’s permission.  She could also be killed for a host of other things (as Betty found out). Back then, women had zero rights - they were to be used and treated as the man saw fit. It was written into their constitution that way (as Betty also found out).  So if her husband didn’t want her to leave, there was no official way for her to get out.  She was stuck.

Betty tried to find a way to escape illegally, but every person who offered her help told her, “I can get you out, but you’ll have to leave your child.” Which is where the title of the book came from, because Betty told them all the same thing: “Not without my daughter.” She would not leave her little girl behind.

I don’t want to say anymore for fear of ruining the book, so I’ll leave the plotline there. I did want to say that there was one thing about the book that bothered me, and that was that Betty comes across as quite a snot at times, especially at the beginning. To me, his family not liking her didn’t exactly come as a surprise. She spends a lot of time bashing living conditions and food preparation, and I can just see her in my mind, looking down her nose at these “backward natives,” as she saw them.

I know it would have been hard to live through, but when you’re in Rome, sometimes you’ve got to do as the Romans do, not just sit in judgment of them and hold yourself as superior. That’s just manners.  So she kinda drove me nuts at points in the book.

Other than that quibble, I quite enjoyed the book, and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting a little more background into the Iranian government and people. Things have changed a lot in Iran in 24 years (not enough, but still, some progress) - but it’s worth the read, despite its age.

I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava

Money for Nothing: One Man’s Journey Through the Dark Side of Lottery Millions by Edward Ugel was not about a guy winning the lottery, as I had originally thought it was.  Instead, Mr. Ugel worked in the lump-sum business: Basically, if someone was receiving an annuity payment over the course of 20 years because of winning the lottery, he would buy them out upfront and give a lump settlement to them, all for a fee, of course.  He made very good money, but it was an extremely competitive business and some of the tactics he used to find and sign up lottery winners was, to put it nicely, cutthroat.  He never broke any laws, but he did use some amazing salesmanship to “get ‘er done.”

It’s a fast-paced read - I finished the 235-page novel in just one day - and overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit.  There were several things that detracted from the novel though: First, the author didn’t shy away from using swear words.  If this were a movie, it would be rated PG-13 just for the language.  Yeah, sure, cutthroat salesmen probably weren’t worried about whether their language was clean or not, and I realize that it’s realistic this way, but still, I’m not a fan of swear words, and that did bother me.  Second, the author tended to tell stories within stories, and jump back and forth through time without explaining what he was doing.  The book is not organized chronologically, and he would refer to his wife, then fiancée, then child being born, then suddenly she’s his fiancée again.  I never quite knew where in time we were at.  And he’d also start telling a story, then start another story, go back to the first story, start a third story, then finally finish the first one.  For a speedreader like me, that was hard to keep up with.

It was worth jumping through time though, because the stories were absolutely fascinating.  I kept thinking to myself, “Why aren’t any of these people smart about the money?  Why do they blow through the money so quickly?” And then of course the requisite, “If I won millions in a lottery, I would be smart about it.” Which I believed all the way until I got to the end of the book, where Mr Ugel made the following statement:

“If you were handed a thousand dollars, if you won it out of the blue, what would you do with it? No lying.  Yeah, I’d blow it too.  Now, if you were made to dig a ditch or paint a house, or do any job for a day or two in order to receive that same money, what would you do with it then? Exactly. Me too.  Bills are bills.

“Earned money is more valuable than found money because it is more valued.” Page 207, Money for Nothing

Touché, Mr Ugel.

Anyway, if you don’t mind a PG-13 book because of language and gambling (no sexual scenes, murder, or drugs in it anywhere, just swearing, drinking, and gambling) then you’ll be fine with this book.  And if you’re wanting to know more about the gambling industry, lottery winners, and the lump-sum business, then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book.  I learned some pretty interesting facts, like the idea that lotteries help fund education is a bunch of bull, which took me by surprise because I live in a lottery state and I am constantly watching ads on TV about how lotteries help our schools prosper, blah blah.  Turns out that is a complete lie.  The government, lie about money?  Never.  I know, I know, shocking.

I give Money for Nothing 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Havs

Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out by Marci Shimoff is one of the better self-help books that I’ve read (although, I’ll confess, I really haven’t read that many). She’s down to earth, funny, and self-deprecating.  She even uses cartoons, which my husband thought was just about the coolest thing ever.  My only real complaint with the book was the fact that Marci is linked to The Secret, a book I made no bones about not liking in my review of The Secret Revealed.  And yes, there is some stuff in Happy for No Reason that is draws off the philosophy of The Secret, which I could have done without, but there was less in there than I had worried there would be.  I just tried to skim past and ignore it when it came up.

Almost from the beginning, I found myself nodding in agreement with her.  It was amazing how many bad habits I had, that I never really thought about.  I am definitely a “I’ll-Be-Happy-When” person - I’m always saying that!  “I’ll be happy when we get a new washer and dryer” or “I’ll be happy when school is out for the summer” or “I’ll be happy when we go on vacation.”  Yet when those things happened, I never was really happy.  I was excited for a day or two, sure, but then I went back to normal.  Normal, of course, being me thinking yet more of the “I’ll-Be-Happy-When” thoughts.  It was a never-ending cycle, but I couldn’t figure out why.  Marci explained it all amazingly well, and I’ve been trying, since I finished the book, to correct those thoughts when I have them.  It’s been hard - it’s a lifetime habit I’m trying to break.

And if you’re struggling with depression, then you’ll really enjoy this book, because unlike many of the books out there that tell you how to deal with your depression, this one is written by someone who has actually been there, done that.  Marci Shimoff was not born with her “happiness gauge” set on high - just the opposite, in fact.   She talks about always looking at the bad side of situations, and most people will find themselves relating to what she’s saying.  Speaking of depression, there is a blog here at Today.com that talks about dealing with depression - Life After Depression might be a good blog to check out if depression is something you or a loved one deals with.

If you’re on the market for a good self-help book (even if it has a smidge too much of The Secret in it) you definitely should pick up Happy for No Reason.  It just might change how you think.

4.25 out of 5 stars.

Havs