Nonfiction Book Reviews

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For my honors class in college, a speaker came in and talked to the class about something you don’t normally hear about much: Slavery right here and now, in the year 2009.

Unfortunately, I missed class that day, so I didn’t get to hear him speak. As make-up work for missing the class, I was assigned a video to watch on this global pandemic. I have posted the video below for all of you to watch.

WARNING: This video will make you sick to your stomach, not so much because of the graphic pictures in the video (although there is a little of that) but because of the realization that all of this has been happening, and you have done nothing to stop it.  At just over 5 minutes, it is well worth your time to watch.

After watching that video, I wanted to know what I could do. I also wanted to find more information on the subject, since this was literally the first time I had heard about this. Slavery? Here in America? C’mon, what are you talking about? Slavery was abolished! President Lincoln? Emancipation Proclamation? Doesn’t any of that ring a bell?

Yeah, that was me. I was shocked and disturbed to the tips of my toes that this was still happening today. I went to Amazon to see if I could find a book with more information on modern-day human slavery, and I found Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade - and How We Can Fight It by David Batstone.  I just finished reading it today.  Batstone is the head of a website, Not For Sale Campaign, and now does tours around the United States speaking about human trafficking.

The book Not for Sale was an eye-opening look at all the forms of human slavery, from women being forced to serve as sex slaves in a brothel, to whole families being locked inside of a rice factory for years, to children being forced to fight as soldiers in rebel armies in Africa.  There doesn’t seem to be a corner of the world that is not affected in some shape or form by this.

The book did have some ADD tendencies to it, however.  The author would start out a chapter talking about sex slavery in Asian countries, and throughout the chapter would jump from the story of someone who was forced into slavery, to a person who is fighting it as an abolitionist however they can (by providing aid to those who escape, by helping people escape, by providing legal representation to those who escaped, etc), and then on to the general landscape of the problem - why it is thriving, what has made it hard to fight, etc.

Each new section within the chapter meant a jump to a new point of view on the problem, and he regularly jumped back and forth between the different point of views until wrapping up the chapter (usually) with the escape and freedom of the slave.

When I first started reading, I thought, “Who is this?  What is he talking about?  What happened to the person whose story he just left?”  After I read through several chapters and got more used to this writing style, it didn’t bother me as much, but I still cannot say it’s my favorite writing style, and I wish he had done it differently.

Despite this minor flaw, the book was still excellent.  If you want a broad overview of the worldwide problem of human trafficking, then this is the book for you.  If you are outraged by the video above and you want more information and you especially want to know what you can do to make a difference, then you need to read this book.  This is an excellent introduction into the world of slavery, and will help you better understand the global dynamics of it.

At the end of the book, he has a listing of the various agencies fighting this problem along with their websites so you can find a group nearby that you can join to help fight this.  Don’t think this problem exists in your backyard?  Check out Slavery Map, where you can search the globe and see where the various incidents have happened.  I had two in my state alone.

There are books that make you laugh, there are books that teach you stuff.  There are books that broaden your horizons.  But Not For Sale will change your life.  Buy it today.  After you’re done reading, pass it on to a friend or neighbor, and encourage them to continue passing it on when they’re done.  The more we know about this problem, the better we can fight it.  Knowledge is everything.

If you don’t see it, then you aren’t looking for it.
~ modern slavery in a nutshell

Havs

PS My hometown is going to get a visit from David Batstone and his entourage very soon.  If any of you who are reading this are from my hometown and want more information, call me or send me an email and I’ll gladly give you the info.  I’d love to post it here but for privacy reasons will not.

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

Note: This is a follow-up post to “And the Worst Patron Ever Award Goes to…” so be sure to read that if you haven’t already.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, which really isn’t surprising considering last night.  I just wasn’t in the mood to go to work and deal with more patrons, but honestly, you can’t call in ‘grumpy’ and not go to work, ya know what I mean?  So I went to work anyway, but was not my normal cheerful self when I got there.

The director of the library asked me, first thing in the morning, how I was doing and I spilled my guts.  I don’t normally tell her everything that’s happening with me - when a boss is asking you how you’re doing, they don’t actually want to know, FYI.  They’re just being polite. So I don’t normally give them a rundown of my day, or an update on school or what have you - I just say “Great!” and go on my merry way.

But this time, it had to do with work, so I told her a summary of what happened (minus a certain finger action, in case you were wondering).  And she told me that I shouldn’t have stayed on the phone.  Apparently, if a patron is insane like that, and doesn’t actually want to resolve the problem but is instead just using me as a verbal punching bag, I don’t have to put up with it.  I should have just told her firmly but calmly that she needs to speak to a manager or the director of the library, and to please call back tomorrow in order to do that, goodbye, and hang up.

I was most excited to hear that.  I had actually thought about saying something like that when I was on the phone with The Worst Patron Ever last night, but I thought, “She’s already mad - what if I do that and then she tells my boss on me, and I get in trouble for doing that?”  So I decided to stay on the phone until she decided to hang up.

Then when I told the director that the patron had swore at me, she genuflected and said, “Oh no!  You definitely should have hung up on her then.  You absolutely do not ever need to deal with a patron who swears at you.  Just say, ‘I cannot talk to you when you are talking like this - call back when you are calmer’ and hang up.  Be polite, but be firm.  Do not put up with that.”

Oh. 

Well, better late then never, right?  I guess I’ll know for the next time a patron decides to go a little insane on me.

By time my shift ended at noon, I was in a better mood.  I am blessed that my natural personality is to be happy and upbeat.  I just had to work my way through the anger and frustration first, so I could get on with life.  I am doing much better now, thank heavens.

And since I am happier, I thought it would be fun to post a YouTube video that my father sent along to me, about the spirit of Christmas, and of giving.  Although it’s a little late now, I promise, this video is still definitely worth watching. Thanks Dad!

Enjoy!