The story of Google that matters for most people is how it affects their daily lives (searching, web browsing, mobile phones, mapping/navigation, email, calendaring, YouTube, news, etc.) but I appreciate that Levy’s book focuses on the personalities and processes driving the evolution of what is arguably one of the most transformative corporate and technological entities of our time.

It can be easy to forget that behind some of the game-changing products and services produced by the company, there were real people thinking through issues of privacy, dealing with cross-cultural considerations and navigating interpersonal dynamics all while trying to make a living and find a sustainable business model.  They had/have desks, meetings, slide shows to give, families to care for, water-cooler conversations to have, and Levy does a great job capturing and re-telling those stories from the days of “two guys in a garage” all the way through the present days of life as an international corporation.  This is not always done with the most critical eye – those with concerns about Google’s operations or policies may be put off by the extent to which this book is an homage – but on the whole I think Levy is fair in calling out the moments when individual Google employees or the company as a whole screws up, and placing those in the context of Google’s good intentions.

A few themes in what Levy’s book revealed about “the Google way”:

1. “Ready, fire, aim” – Google does the bold, innovative or creative thing first, then (for better or worse) readjusts, re-calibrates, rethinks it later
2. When it comes to figuring out “what works,” studying data and using a scientific approach is more important than intuition or speculation.  Despite their many successes with this strategy, Google experienced failures when a data set wasn’t complete, e.g. when it doesn’t include the preferences, fears, doubts and hopes that are trapped in people’s heads or hearts.
3. Especially in its startup years, Google tried to only hire “A” people; engineers, researchers and thinkers who were either the best in a field of study (or headed that direction), who were driven by the excitement of discovery instead of money, and who could internalize the big picture goals of a project and then go make it a reality.  In their hiring they screened for intelligence, applicable knowledge, experience and adaptability, and as a result, they operate more like a research university than a traditional corporation.  Bureaucracy, office politics and administrative overhead seemingly emerged only with reluctant concessions to what was absolutely necessary to function at a larger scale.
4. If you want innovation in your organization, it’s important to create an environment where challenging accepted ways of doing things is not only permissible, but normal at all levels of authority and leadership.
5. It’s good to introduce questions of morality into the day-to-day operations of your organization.  At the same time, the more people you have, the harder it is to maintain integrity around living out a given set of moral values.

Google’s history is particularly of interest to me in that the company was started within a year or so of the company I co-founded, Summersault.  We were in a dorm room instead of a garage, and our goal was making great websites, not letting others search them more effectively.  There are not just a few differences between Summersault and Google today – billions and billions of dollars more in annual revenue, tens of thousands more employees, a private jet here, a self-driving car there, etc. – but I don’t think its too conceited to say that we started our company in the same spirit Google did, trying to help people make the most of the web…they just did it on a much bigger scale.

I was recruited by Google several years ago, to be a part of the team that keeps the company’s software application infrastructure up and running.  I really enjoyed my conversations with their staff about what it would mean to work there, and it was exciting to think about being a part of something so technically interesting and so global in scope.  In the end I knew that my passion and focus remained with what I’d started here in Richmond and so I declined to continue in the interview process, but In The Plex only reinforces what a great adventure that alternate path through life could have been.

It seems safe to say that most people underestimate the significance of what Google is and does.  Steven Levy’s book is a great read, and a great insight into how this one company has transformed the Internet age.

Today, I’m over it. (Especially with an exciting recent announcement from Morrisson-Reeves Library here in Richmond – more on that below.)

Not that I don’t still treasure the sensory experience of reading a real book, and not that I don’t still feel a little guilty doing my part to nudge us toward the end of an era every time I pick up my Kindle.  But a few things happend to push me past my reluctance about using e-books and e-readers:

1. I noticed other friends who I thought of as equally or more committed to the authenticity of reading an actual book starting to sing the praises of e-readers, the Kindle in particular.  They raved about the simplicity and flexibility of the Kindle experience, the lighter physical load to carry, the sleep-mate-friendly light built into the case, the wide range of selections available…it was too much for a gadget lover too ignore.
2. I kept encountering books I wanted to read, but that I didn’t want taking up the physical space in my life via a spot on the bookshelf or, worse, packed away in boxes.   Borrowing from a library or a friend can accomodate that to some degree, but there were still enough times where I wanted to just buy a book and have it to start reading when I wanted for as long as I wanted.
3. I found a refurbished Kindle for under $100.  At that price point it was pretty difficult to pass up trying it out, knowing they have good resale value in the worst case scenario.

I’ve had my Kindle 3 for over three months now, and I’m really enjoying it.

There are plenty of other in-depth reviews about the device, but I’ll say my general experience is that it’s been the closest thing to reading a paper book without actually reading a paper book.

The screen doesn’t look or feel like a screen, it feels like a page of a book, even after many hours on the eyes in a variety of lighting conditions.  The “workflow” of reading – browse for book, find book, buy book, start reading book, turn pages, finish book – is largely unchanged from a traditional book-reading experience.  The device barely does anything else, and so I’m not distracted by temptations of online research, checking my e-mail or seeing what the latest headlines are (I would not buy one of the newer Kindle tablets/multi-purpose touch devices for that reason alone).  The battery life is phenomenal – measured in weeks – and I’m driven to make it last longer by keeping the Wi-Fi turned off, further reducing any sense of being “connected.”  And if there are books where I really want the physical copy for whatever reason, I still have that option…for now.

The end result is that I’ve been reading more than I usually do, reading different kinds of stuff from what I might normally decide is worth having in book form, and cheesy as it may sound, really rediscovering the joy of immersing myself in a good book.

For now at least, e-books are not that much cheaper than “the real thing,” to buy new, which is why when I first got my Kindle I created an account on BookLending.com.  Within a day of posting a request to borrow a new release I’d been eyeing, a total stranger had loaned me their copy, saving me a few bucks.  Amazon has also recently recognized the desire for e-book borrowing in launching their Kindle Owners Lending Library for Prime members; I just finished reading The Hunger Games borrowed through it.  They also have the Kindle Daily Deal program, where for a 24-hour period they significantly discount the price of a particular e-book; I’ve bought a few books for $0.99 that I might not have gotten at $14.99.

Perhaps most exciting is that the e-book borrowing experience has come to my local library.  This weekend, Morrisson-Reeves Library announced the availability of e-book lending through their website, as a part of their use (along with other Indiana libraries) of OverDrive‘s digital lending services.

I was able to browse a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction e-books, and within minutes I had a copy of a book that perfectly fit in the “might borrow it from a library but probably wouldn’t buy it” category (George W. Bush’s Decision Points).

Jenie Lahmann, PR Coordinator at Morrisson-Reeves, said in a press release, “it is easy to use the service and best of all its free to use it with your library card. Also, no late fines for items you download.”  From the number of titles where all of the available electronic copies have already been checked out, it looks like this service will be a popular one among Indiana e-reader users.  For those who don’t have such a device, libraries like MRL are also exploring having some on hand to check out for patron use, in the same manner that they make computer labs available for accessing online information.

E-readers and e-books, and lending services like MRL’s, open up all sorts of new possibilities for educational use in homeschooling or in the school system, workforce training and professional development, and self-publishing.  I realize that a number of folks have been on that bandwagon for a while now, but I do think it was only recently that the quality, price and selection of e-readers and e-books made them accessible and reasonable for the masses.

I’m obviously enjoying my Kindle reading experience.  What’s your take on e-readers and e-books?

Culture

Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
Finally, Mitnick gets to tell his side of the story when it comes to his adventures in computer cracking and social engineering.  Though his writing style isn’t particularly compelling and his personal meditations on the interpersonal aspects of his adventures are a bit awkward, the details of how he pulled off some pretty technologically impressive (albeit illegal and sometimes destructive) hacks – and how law enforcement responded – make for compelling reading on their own.  As someone who spent a fair number of hours in my childhood trying to deconstruct how the phone system and the emerging world of BBSes and Internet nodes worked, Mitnick’s book is a great visit to the past and a reminder that humans continue to be the weakest link in all computer security.

What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay
Partly a book about how our society views waste of all kinds from all sources, from our individual person to our households to our cities, and what we do with waste based on those views.  Partly a book about the ethical, intellectual and spiritual challenges that come with seeing a truth about how the world works, and then deciding what to do with/about that truth.  As with other Jensen books I’ve read, the experience of following his train of thought is at once uncomfortable and enlightening, and always takes me to new places in my own consideration of “the meaning of life,” even when I disagree with some of the thinking that got me there.

The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg (partial)
Chock full of data and economic analysis that refutes conventional wisdom about the state of the world economy.  Heinberg basically says (as he has in other books and settings) that in the face of rising energy and food prices, debt levels, and disastrous choices about our relationship with the surrounding environment, growth as we’ve known it can’t continue (not “it shouldn’t” but “it’s not physically possible”).  Especially as I work on economic issues here in my own town, his discussions around the point that there are no new jobs, just jobs moved around from one place to another, were particularly poignant.  But Heinberg as always does a good job of painting a picture of a version of humanity that can see “progress” without depending on “growth.”

Novels

Daemon by Daniel Suarez
One of the best high-tech thriller novels I’ve read.  A mix of Neal Stephenson, Stephen King and Tom Clancy.  A cautionary tale about the power we give to the organizations and corporations (and individuals) who manage our electronic identities, and some imaginative examples of possible abuse.  And like the best tech thrillers, the technology references are realistic and accurate, paying respect to the hackers and hobbyists who can spot a fabricated plot device or an oversimplified explanation of how hacking an unsecured Wifi signal works a mile away.  Don’t let your housemates read it if they’re skeptical of your home automation efforts (you’ll see why), but I couldn’t put it down.

The Associate by John Grisham
A lawyer gets into an interesting and sometimes dangerous situation involving powerful corporations and other people he’s not quite sure he can trust, and requires creative legal maneuvering and the confronting of his personal demons to get out of it alive.  Yes, it’s the plot line of most every other Grisham novel, and yes, it was once again an entertaining read.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Such a good novel! Well-written, exciting, immersive, touching, real.  I had recently forgotten what it felt like to read a book where you start to care deeply about the characters and what happens to them, and where even when the situations or places or time period feel far away, the human dynamics and choices that are described bring insight and understanding about what it means to be alive.  Haven’t seen the movie, don’t know if I want to replace the rich imagery in my head with the Hollywood version.

The Apostle by Brad Thor (partial)
Political intrigue.  War and terrorists.  Secret operatives and daring missions.  Blah blah blah.  Maybe I didn’t give this enough of a chance and Mr. Thor seems to have found a winning formula for bestsellers, but I found it shallow, plastic-y and unreadable, even for vacation reading, and finally gave up after a few hundred pages.

Business & Politics

Campaign Boot Camp by Christine Pelosi
Politics the Wellstone Way by Wellstone Action! and edited by Bill Lofy
Two hands-on, how-to books for those who want to be engaged in the political process, especially candidates.  While in many cases I was pleased to see that I’ve often been doing “the right things” in my own first venture into running for elected office, it was helpful to have these two contributions to the conversations I’m having with my volunteers and supporters.  The Pelosi book was perhaps more basic conceptual information while the Wellstone book was more of a practical guide to getting certain campaign things done, with examples and templates to help.

First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Extensively researched and well written reflections on what “great managers” do differently from all other kinds of managers.  I took a lot of notes on this one, and am working my way through implementing the valuable advice I found for my own company, but it would be a useful read for anyone in a position of leading a team.

The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
A quick read on how to reward and engage members of a team.  Not ground-breaking, but well researched and full of good ideas.  Complements some other works by the same authors that I hope to check out soon.

It’s Okay to Be The Boss by Bruce Tulgan
Tulgan calls out what I think is a real problem – leaders who don’t actually lead – but then proceeds to write what I found to be a fairly surface-level look at when and why it happens and what to do about it.  He seemed intent on appearing to be in opposition to most kinds of conventional management wisdom (or even some of the more modern refinement of said wisdom, see above), but in the end just ends up presenting the same kinds of advice in slightly different ways and, I’m sorry to say, with much less attention to the power dynamics and humanity of management-employee relationships.  Not recommended.

What have you been reading this summer?

Game Change
by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Published in 2010, Game Change recounts the stories of the 2008 Presidential election with a behind-the-scenes perspective unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. The book reads like a novel (think Joe Klein’s Primary Colors or even a John Grisham work) and is simply fascinating to take in.  Chapter after chapter paint a nuanced picture of what Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, John McCain and other candidates were experiencing from the time they decided to run until the election itself – it’s a narrative that the media simply couldn’t have assembled along the way.  Knowing of the extensive research and interviewing that the authors did to assemble it together made it all the more impressive.

Though largely retrospective in nature, much of it remains relevant today as we try to understand how John Edwards` campaign could have made it as far as it did (and how surprisingly successful they were at denying to themselves the truth about his character and actions along the way), just how unprepared Sarah Palin was or is to be in any kind of position of national leadership, and how hard politicians have to work to overcome or work around the personal turmoil that being a candidate can bring.

I admit that as a current candidate for local office, some of this reading was personal escapism – no matter what challenges I might face in my campaign, at least I don’t have to fly, drive and walk back and forth across the country for months and years.  But I think the book would be a page-turner for anyone who enjoys following national politics, or wants a more complete understanding of what goes into running for President.

Rework
by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is a series of short and easily digestible chapters with common sense advice on how to succeed in business.  That particular topic – business advice – has surely been beaten to death by other publications over the years, so I was a little wary of Yet Another Business Book when a friend gave me a copy to check out.

It turned out to be the best single collection of business advice I’ve ever read.

It’s important to say again that it’s pretty common sense stuff, but that comes with the corollary observation that the traditional mainstream answers to the question of “how business should be done” are generally NOT helpful or good common sense, and that makes this book a bit of a revolutionary writing.

With advice like “don’t have meetings just to have meetings” and “get a good night’s sleep” and “fire the workaholics” and “don’t label everything ASAP – of course everyone wants things done as soon as they can be done,” it’s hard to resist the urge to smack one’s forehead over and over again while reading, if one has ever worked in a traditional corporate culture.  But make no mistake – this is not a cheesy, impractical and oversimplified “chicken soup for the business soul.”  Authors Fried and Hansson write from experiences of success and failure that are real and complex and always evolving.  They’ve been there and done that, and they have lots of good stories from others who have done the same.  Their approach is one that acknowledges the realities of business while balancing the humanity and emotional layers of what it means for a group of people to collaborate on something together – a rarity in business books, I think.

If I can think of any resource that, were it available 15 years ago when I was working with my business partner and then first employees to start our own business, and during all the management decisions I’ve made since, would have saved me lots of time, hand-wringing and self-doubt, Rework is it.  For that reason alone, I think anyone starting or running a small business today should read this book, especially those that traffic in information or technology (some pieces of the book don’t translate so well to more traditional brick and mortar business models).  There’s no substitute for direct experience and I don’t regret my own, but this book will be a head start and/or affirming encouragement to those who want to run a business well.

Confessions of a Public Speaker
by Scott Berkun

I’m fascinated by the art and science of interpersonal communication, and as I continue to develop my own profile and technique as a public speaker, I’m enjoying reading the advice of others who have been doing it for a while.

Scott Berkun’s book is much more than a how-to book, though.  It’s part telling of a personal journey – Berkun took a leap of faith to become a full time writer and speaker, and you can tell he’s still riding a wave of amazement that it’s working – part lesson in cultural anthropology and biology (asking questions like “why do we get butterflies in our stomach before a public talk?” and “what audience dynamics in a room lead to the most enjoyable sessions?”), and yes, part advice about the mechanics and logistics of giving a public talk.

Perhaps it’s just that my own sense of humor seems to match up to with Berkun’s really well, or maybe it was the no-frills, common sense approach to a topic that’s either over-analyzed or hyped up and mystified by other writers, but I found Confessions to be very enjoyable and refreshing.

It also made me realize, unfortunately, just how many ineffective presentations and public talks I see on a regular basis,  even by those who are held up as great public speakers. It isn’t always that the speakers themselves are executing their talks poorly (but sometimes it is), it’s often that some of the many other factors Berkun identifies as critical in successful public speaking haven’t been given any regard.  The size, layout, and decor of the room.  The time the speaker has given them self to practice and get setup.  The way that Q&A sessions are conducted.  The way feedback is obtained and used.  These are things I’ve thought about before (and even blogged about), but I’ve never seen such a useful distillation of the issues at stake.  In each case, Berkun makes a simple, straightforward argument for why these things matter, and offers his experience in how to do them well.

I highly recommend Confessions of a Public Speaker to anyone interested in public speaking and effective communications in group settings.

Sex at Dawn
by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá

Sex at Dawn is an honest and thorough exploration of the history of human sexuality, and what that means for how we understand our sexuality today.  Written by some folks who have clearly done their research, it’s part anthropological study and part cultural critique, and it’s got plenty of witty humor sprinkled throughout.

Let’s be honest, it’s easy to take the history and meaning of sexuality for granted in a society that throws images and talk of it in our faces left and right – “surely things have just always been done this way, right?”  And there’s so much pressure to understand, have and be good at sex while also maintaining an extremely nonchalant approach to being a sexual being.  But whatever you think you know about why and how people have sex, why monogamy is held up as a moral imperative in modern culture, and how other cultures and species around the world treat sex and sexuality, you should be prepared to be challenged and entertained by this journey through human behavior.  I certainly was!

This was a quick and fun read, but it didn’t have a whole lot of substance or insight to it.  The book tells the stories of teams of people who have come together to do something really creative and “great” in one setting or another: the early years of Apple Computer, Xerox PARC, the 1992 Clinton election campaign, Lockheed’s Skunk Works, Black Mountain College, Disney’s animation studios, etc.  The book returns often to a few themes about what it means to organize genius, but the lesson in the end is that you need the right mix of personalities with visionaries, hard workers, salespeople, skilled creative people, etc. to do great things.  If you’re looking for a how-to manual or a prescriptive approach to building great teams, you’ll be disappointed by this book, but if you enjoy understanding some of the details and styles of leadership that made particular teams of people work and not work, then Organizing Genius is a good collection to make your way through.

After reading Bamford’s Body of Secrets a few years ago, I was sure I’d read everything I would ever want to know about the history and inner-workings of the National Security Agency (NSA).  But whereas Body of Secrets was mostly a history with some tales of spycraft and geo-political maneuvering that felt a bit distant, The Shadow Factory is a very modern look at what the U.S.’s largest intelligence agency can do well, what it does poorly, and what that means for the individuals and nation states alike.

As someone who likes to geek out over the details of particular technologies (yes, even when that tech is ultimately used for evil purposes), The Shadow Factory provides a reasonable dose of engineering details.  If you’re interested to understand how far the federal government will go to, say, tap into a fiber optic cable that they don’t have permission to tap into, you may have a hard time keeping your jaw off the floor with the examples here.  The other recurring theme (and, by “recurring” I mean repeated to the point of making you wonder if the book’s editor was awake) is the constant ethical and legal question of how far is too far when it comes to spying and intelligence gathering (and the trillions of dollars spent to make it happen) for the sake of preventing acts of terrorism.  The book generally comes out on the side of those who would suggest too many personal freedoms and privacy rights have been eroded, but it definitely moves past any black and white thinking on the matter.

If you made it this far, let me finish this review by noting again for the record that you should assume every single email, website visit, phone call, and other electronic communication you participate in is being monitored and reviewed by someone in some government agency somewhere.  The Shadow Factory makes it clear that there are many powerful people in the world who feel safer that way.

Breakpoint is a work of cyberwar fiction from Richard Clarke that comes across as a thinly veiled attempt to portray what he sees “in real life” as some troubling parts of what’s ahead when it comes to our culture’s reliance on networked technologies, genetic and biological engineering, and consolidating of power and wealth in the hands of the few. Think “super-human military soldiers whose special suits are connected to the Internet and then hacked by someone who makes the suits go bonkers” type stuff.

The cool part about this is that Clarke spent a good chunk of his life serving at the highest levels of the U.S. federal government and with a realistic awareness of what kinds of technical and political challenges we face, so even a fictionalized narrative about some of that has a sense of realism to it that you can’t find in other novels.  The bad part about this is that Clarke is not a very good fiction writer; the book was riddled with flat, canned characters, spelling and grammar mistakes, and plot developments that just didn’t make any sense. In the end, it was a fine brain-candy beach book, but don’t expect to be moved or drawn into the world Clarke imagines.

In the meantime, as a distraction, here are some things you might want to click on and check out:

1. Is it possible that all this political rage is not actually about healthcare?
2. I enjoyed the documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” which takes a look at the MPAA’s system of assigning maturity ratings to films, and how it affects the production, distribution and success of movies in the U.S.  The themes were that (A) a small group of anonymous and inaccessible people have significant influence in deciding what becomes a part of our culture, (B) anything that depicts the sexual empowerment or fulfillment of women is dangerous or obscene, and (C) anything that isn’t 100% pro-military, pro-war is dangerous or obscene.

   I know these themes will be shocking to you, so just take a minute and catch your breath.

3. There’s a new federal policy that says cycling and other forms of non-motorized transportation should be treated as equal to motorized transportation when we plan our cities and streets.  Yay! But apparently, this is going to lead to economic catastrophe.  RUN FOR–er, uh, I mean DRIVE FOR YOUR LIVES!!
4. Have you tried playing Glenn Beck Bingo?  It’s a great party game.
5. I really hope none of the commenters on my review of Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth” were among the militant vegans who assaulted her at a recent speaking engagement.  Um, you’re doing it wrong.

There now, you almost forgot about my blogging transgressions, didn’t you?

Book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz: a great little book, a quick read full of wisdom that seems like it should just be common sense.  To find happiness, be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best.

Book, Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor: moving reflections on a life devoted to ministry and service, and the unexpected twists and turns in how that was manifested.  As someone who has vacillated widely in my relationship with organized religion over time, much of it rang true for me.

Books in progress or coming up soon: The River Why by David James Duncan (thanks Derric), The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron (thanks Artie), The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield (thanks Bob).

Magazine, Men’s Health: I was somehow subscribed to this magazine through some purchase or survey I took, and when I track down who it was, I’ll let them know that they’ll never get another dollar or opinion from me (so far I’ve traced the path through three agencies, waiting on a call back from the third).  As you might guess, the magazine presents ridiculous ideals of what an actual healthy man is like, objectifies women into puzzles to be solved so that they’ll be more available for servicing men, and encourages rampant consumerism as the true path to personal happiness.  Umm, no thanks.

Live Performance, Second City in Chicago.  I’ve seen this Saturday Night Live feeder troupe do their thing in the past and it’s been really, really funny.  When I went again recently, the material was not funny, the actors were not in to it, and the show dragged on.  Lest you think it was just me, one of the longest jokes in the performance centered around a man describing for several minutes in graphic detail the brutal rape of a woman his character met at a bar; apparently it was supposed to be funny because it was edgy, but it was actually just wrong.

Live Performance, Cats: What the hell was Andrew Lloyd-Webber smoking when he created that?  And oh, there was some good singing and dancing and stuff.

Television, Glee: I shook my head in disbelief when my co-workers described the premise to me, but I ended up watching it anyway.  It’s part high school drama a la “Friday Night Lights,” part Auto-Tuned musical production, part ridiculously contrived sitcom.  I’m worried that, like the dreadful mess that was Prison Break, the show’s creators never really expected it to take off, and therefore have no idea where they’re taking the story or character development, and so they inject artificial plot twists to delay the season finale so they have the off-season to make something better up.  I can’t say I recommend it on the whole, but the interesting renditions and mash-ups of the musical numbers are pretty impressive nonetheless.

Television, V: I love a good “the aliens have come to destroy us” sci-fi drama, and it’s harder to resist when the story is couched in the hopes, fears, technologies and personalities of the present day.  V (for Visitors) has done a reasonable job of creating just that, but it seems like they’ve unleashed their entire bag of tricks in the first few episodes, so (like Glee) it’s hard to imagine a sustaining storyline and character development.  The hardcore fans of the original show must be really ticked off, and having been a fan of her work in Lost, it’s too bad to see Elizabeth Mitchell compelled to say such campy lines.  I will give maybe one or two more episodes of my time, and then I will go back to watching old Star Trek: TNG episodes, because it was never campy.

Movie, 51 Birch Street: a really neat documentary that anyone who’s ever thought about life, love, family, relationships or marriage would probably enjoy at some level.  It was a helpful reminder for me that even the marriages of my parents and grandparents and their peers, which may seem to me frozen as unquestionably pure during unquestionably better times, were probably actually more complicated than that.  It’s also a great story about never quite knowing what your moment in the spotlight will look like.

Anything you’d like to suggest?

In short, if you think about what you eat, how it got to you, and the issues of nutrition, morality, politics and spirituality come with it, it is paramount that you encounter what The Vegetarian Myth has to offer.

My full review continues:

Keith‘s central point is that in order for you to live, something else has to die.  While it may seem like a simple enough statement, it may become pretty controversial pretty quickly, especially if you’ve tried to build your diet (or any part of your life, for that matter) around the avoidance of killing other creatures for food or otherwise.  She essentially says that not only are the practices of vegetarians and vegans misguided in their effort to help us lead a more sustainable and just life, they actually often propagate a harmful cultural story about food and the relationship we have to it.  By necessity, I won’t even try to support those statements in this review, as the whole substance of the book is about doing that meticulously; please don’t ask me to summarize her thinking for you.

Given how much being a veg*n becomes a matter of identity for so many, Keith acknowledges right off that these assertions are painful ones to make, let alone to hear and receive.  The potentially biting nature of her premise can only be alleviated by her willingness to explore it so thoroughly and sympathetically, and to share about the close relationship she has to the subject matter.   She tells her personal story of being a long-time vegan, and how she journeyed from an approach to diet that inherently required malnutrition and delusion to one that led to health and awakening.  She knows what’s it’s like to question the foundation of the choices we make about food because she’s been doing it rigorously and relentlessly for much of her life:

I know what you want to be true, vegetarians.  You want to open the circle of concern to everything sentient.  With all your hearts, you want us humans to be meant for cellulose or seeds or berries or anything that you believe can’t feel pain.  And I’m telling you the truth: it doesn’t work.  What you are made of — bones, blood, brain, heart — needs animals.  This is not the universe you wanted.  But it’s the way the world, always alive and always hungry, works.  You can try to live on those other things — the cellulose you can’t digest, the seeds that fight back, the berries and their sugar.  If you’re like me, you’ll do it until you’re half dead.  If you’re smarter than me, you’ll learn.  You want to open that circle, but in fact there’s no way out of it. We’re all of us, seeded and feathered, rooted and furred, already in it.   (p. 243)

Despite her empathy, Keith is still ruthless in her exploration of modern thinking on food.  She tackles, chapter by chapter, all the reasons that one might have for being a vegetarian or vegan: moral, political, nutritional.  She turns the writing of food scholars like Peter Singer, Frances Moore Lappe and Jim Merkel on its head, calling out the flaws in the thinking and research that is so often held up to support commonly held viewpoints around veg*n lifestyles.  She does make extensive use of other recently trending writings by authors like Michael Pollan, whose books The Omnivore’s Dilema, The Botany of Desire, and In Defense of Food provide a great conceptual framework for Keith’s particular messages.

Of course, the question that naturally arises when one encounters material “attacking” a given approach to make the world a better place is “well, what does she suggest we do instead?”  It’s important to note that Keith is not at all suggesting we stand down from the calls issued by the veg*n communities and many other kinds of concerned citizens about stopping the horrors of CAFOs and industrial agriculture, and the book is not just a permission slip to eat meat without consideration of how it came to be dead on your plate.  To the contrary, she asserts that she wants an even more full accounting of our thinking about food production and the values, morals and assumptions that are behind it – an accounting that goes beyond turning to soy, or raw foodism, or other kinds of well-intentioned alternatives to a carnivorous diet.  As she notes in her concluding chapter, Keith doesn’t just want an alternative to mainstream thinking on food, she wants us to build a new approach that is self-consciously opposed to the dominator culture that fuels that thinking.

Despite my request above to avoid trying to summarize Keith’s work, I will provide a few of the questions she suggest you ask in considering what you eat (p. 248):

1. Does this food build or destroy topsoil?
2. Does it use only ambient sun and rainfall, or does it require fossil soil, fossil fuel, fossil water, and drained wetlands, damaged rivers?
3. Could you walk to where it grows, or does it come to you on a path slick with petroleum?

She also offers three strong recommendations for those interested in personal solutions:

1. Refrain from having children
2. Stop driving a car
3. Grow your own food

(I list these here in hopes that they make you want to understand more about why those questions and recommendations are relevant; again, please don’t take them out of the context of the larger book, or ask me to defend them here.)

If I can offer any criticism of The Vegetarian Myth at all, it’s that the book is so dense with information, and Keith often takes such a significant amount of time to make a point from multiple perspectives and with multiple supporting arguments, facts, etc. that it almost becomes overwhelming.  I fully understand the necessity of this approach given the resistance her arguments are sure to encounter, but it makes the book unsuitable as a starting point or introduction to these issues for someone who is not already exploring them in some form, or for whom there isn’t already some deep cracks in their own previously solid thinking about their veg*n lifestyle.  (In fact, I’m sure many vegetarians and vegans will be insulted by her statements and find her condescending, despite her great care to note, “hey, I was just like you once.”)  I don’t think Keith intends the book as said introduction, so maybe that’s just a fair warning to readers of this review, instead of anything wrong with her text.  But, at the risk of over-simplifying what is definitely not a simple topic, perhaps a future project could include a version of Keith’s book that can get the core assertions and arguments across in a shorter form, with pointers back to the full book and related resources for those wanting to know more.

For me personally, The Vegetarian Myth was a great unpacking of a phrase that I heard Daniel Quinn use many years ago to describe the practice of those who choose not to eat meat: “Kingdomism.”  In other words, discriminating against one kingdom of beings in the taxonomy of life in favor of another.  Lierre Keith does an excellent job of making the case that by practicing such discrimination, we deprive ourselves of and disconnect ourselves from the cycles of life in which we were designed to participate.  Some of the ideas were not new to me, but I’m still figuring out what this means for my own diet and food politics, as it was just this past January that I started trying to eat less meat, a project that has withered as I’ve turned the pages of this book.  And as with every experience that transforms our thinking, I’m left somewhat disoriented and full of questions, but also set on a new and exciting path of exploration and challenge.  As Keith kindly inscribed in my copy of The Vegetarian Myth, “First the Fight and then the Feast.”

(I linked to the Amazon.com product page for the book above, but if you buy it from Lierre Keith directly, she gets the most compensation, and you have the opportunity for a personalized inscription too!  If you’re in Richmond, you’re welcome to borrow my copy.  You can read the first 14 pages of the book online.)

Updated, from the comments: I should add that I find this book important and useful because of the important questions it raises and the challenges it offers, not because I can personally endorse every conclusion made. By no means have I followed all the primary research, and there are certainly people out there who offer the possibility that much of it is incorrect or misleading.  -Chris

Updated 8/3: In a private e-mail exchange after this review appeared, Keith noted that “many reviewers are focusing on my suggested personal actions, when I tried to be so clear that there are NO personal solutions. What we need is a serious political resistance movement–that’s the *only* solution. We need huge institutional change, and have been sold a useless bill of goods by both corporate America and liberalism as to the efficacy of personal consumer and lifestyle choices.“

Our culture likes to take the old and repackage it as the new so it’s more exciting and engaging. I don’t have any problem with that per se – there can be something creative and innovative in finding different ways to present ideas, world-views, ways of living so that they’re more accessible to more people. We all go through different kinds of personal discovery about what we’re capable of, so why not have a “new movement” that helps support and nurture that for folks who are in that place right now?

This is what I thought I was being pitched when I got an invitation to subscribe to Ready Made magazine, which presents itself as “the only do-it-yourself (DIY)/lifestyle magazine for young people. It entertains and informs through DIY projects for fast-evolving lifestyles.” It sounded like a good support resource for learning more about self-sufficient living. I showed the invite to Anna Lisa and we both agreed that it looked like it would be useful, AND that we were excited such a publication existed at all. But when the first issue arrived, it only took me a few hours before I knew we’d be canceling the subscription. Here’s why:

Despite a couple of useful articles, the issue of Ready Made that we received (Oct/Nov 2008) seemed to be a thinly veiled handbook for excelling in the consumerist, image-obsessed culture of which the DIY movement (as I understand it) is inherently critical.

The publication itself is very glossy and polished, full of flashy ads and artwork, airbrushed models, and beautiful photos that set the bar super high for even the most dedicated do-it-yourselfer. It feels like an issue of “Teen Better Homes and Gardens,” not a rag that is all about making the most of sufficiency in resources. I can see how this style would engage a younger audience used to the glitz, and I won’t begrudge them their success if indeed the approach works, but I found it to be an unfortunate mental disconnect between the message and the presentation.

The DIY projects that they cover range from the somewhat practical (various pumpkin recipes, how to give an effective presentation, building a loft bed, storing your bicycle on the ceiling) to fun and quirky (various pet furniture, bamboo drum brushes) to the outright gratuitous (designer miniaturist models?). And in the end, many articles were just an introduction to more products you can buy…a $54 cushion to hold your produce on your kitchen counter-top, a $179 work table, a $200 gadget holder. And that’s in addition to the various free-standing ads for cars, beauty products, alcohol and bottled water.

Again, I’m not saying this kind of publication won’t be interesting or useful to someone out there…it’s just about expectations. If I’d picked up a standard home improvement magazine and seen some of this stuff I would have been thrilled about it, but when I was expecting a publication to capture the DIY ethic and got Ready Made instead, I was disappointed. I have enough troubling or misleading marketing images hitting me every day that I don’t need to pay for a subscription to a magazine that unnecessarily glamorizes the otherwise moderately useful bits of information.

Ready Made magazine might be a great introduction to the concept and practice of DIY for a high-school or college-aged person who is otherwise thoroughly engrossed in the culture of “when you need something or something breaks, you go shopping.” But for someone who’s already used to doing it themselves, I’d suggest you skip the magazine subscription, use their online project archive as needed, and move on to other, more authentic DIY resources instead.

• Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA’s Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda by Wallace, Melton and Schleshinger
  Fascinating, scary, and geeky. With great diagrams and photographs explaining how spy devices were constructed and worked, and with interesting stories about various successes and failures, all told from the perspective of the “techs” working behind the scenes to support operations. For someone interested in geopolitical history, technology, security issues and government secrecy, it was a must read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Warning: the book minimizes any discussion of the ethical/moral/legal implications of the spycraft, and the human toll takes a backseat to the geekery.

• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
  Important, thorough, and ineffective. Dawkins tries to cover every possible angle of every possible argument that there is no God, declaring that “we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” But while his rambling logic may be sound and his stance bold, it eventually comes off as obnoxious and overly hostile to be useful to anyone except another militant atheist. He also doesn’t address versions of God that still may appear supernatural, but that don’t ascribe otherness, intelligent designer status to God, e.g. animism, pantheism (though in other interviews, he says he has no problem with those versions). The question “can science give meaning to existence?” is core. I did find I tend to agree with Dawkins that the Universe doesn’t owe us meaning, and that we can give our own lives meaning through what we create, or we can let the meaning of life come from how we understand/study/interpret/live out our existence.
• Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil by Michael C. Ruppert
  Rambling, depressing, and comprehensive. Still not done with all 617 pages, but I’m pretty sure what I’ll find in the rest – more of Ruppert’s dramatic and exhaustively researched connecting of peak oil and energy issues, climate change, the CIA, the Presidency, the planning and execution of 9/11, PNAC, the drug trade, PROMIS, the Saudi Royal Family, economic policy, international politics, surveillance and civil liberties issues, government corruption, and personal failures. The book is not well organized and at times is flat out incoherent, but still has a lot of good original research in it. More important are the correlations that Ruppert makes between all of the above topics over the last few decades, and the horrifying conclusions that can be drawn if even some of them are accurate. It’s a tour de force in assessing the sad state of our civilization, but nothing will keep it from being characterized by most as a total wackjob’s self-indulgent conspiracy theories. Those seeking truth AND clarity must look elsewhere.

If you’ve read any of these and have additional thoughts, please share. Or, if you are also a consumer of the written word, let me know what’s in your reading list these days.