General.

NONFICTION

****

In Defense of Food

An Eater's Manifesto

By Michael Pollan

Keeping it simple.

In The Omnivore's Dilemma (**** SELECTION July/Aug 2006), Michael Pollan examined our food's origin in enlightening--and sometimes disturbing--detail. This follow-up argues that food is much more than the sum of its component parts and that Americans have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to their faddish food ways. For more than 30 years, "nutritionism," the rise of the industrial-food complex, and our own poor self-image have worsened many of the problems--heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension among them--plaguing a society that has forgotten how to eat. Pollan's mantra isn't the sort of voodoo that we've come to expect from our food gurus (even the "scientific" results the media feeds us are questionable, he proclaims), but just good advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

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Penguin. 256 pages. $21.95. ISBN: 1594201455

Boston Globe *****

"Pollan's accessible, meticulously researched book will be essential reading for anyone who takes food seriously. His manifesto may seem simple ... but adopting it wholeheartedly would create a revolution in our nation's eating habits." CHUCK LEDDY

Los Angeles Times ****

"Pollan subtitles his new book An Eater's Manifesto, but he's way too polite to tell us what to eat. Instead, he uses his familiar brand of carefully researched, common-sense journalism to persuade, providing guidelines and convincing arguments." SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS

New York Times ****

"[A] tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential. ... In this lively, invaluable book--which grew out of an essay Mr. Pollan wrote for The New York Times Magazine, for which he is a contributing writer--he assails some of the most fundamental tenets of nutritionism." JANET MASLIN

St. Petersburg Times ****

"In Defense of Food ... is about eating well. ... It's a smart, refreshing take on the traditional January topic: diet advice from a man who clearly loves to eat." COLETTE BANCROFT

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"It's not that hard if, like Pollan, you live in Berkeley, where Alice Waters is guide and guru, to shop carefully at farmers' markets and specialty stores, to spend more to get better stuff, to cook your meals, and to eat them slowly and at a table with good company. ... And, in the end, this thoughtful, entertaining and helpful book does wind up being a little more alarmist than Pollan pretends it is." CHARLES MATTHEWS

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ***

"When a book like this comes along, people tend to embrace it as the gospel truth--and in a lot of ways it is. ... Turns out the new story sounds a lot like the old." CHINA MILLMAN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Berkeley, California-based journalism professor and New York Times Magazine contributing writer Michael Pollan, whose previous work on the subject includes The Botany of Desire and the best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma, has placed himself at the forefront of food writing. He preaches a back-to-basics approach and a close questioning of the avalanche of information that has come out of our diet-obsessed society. Despite the accusations of a few critics as being a little alarmist, a little elitist, and a little obvious (not everyone has the access to or the resources to eat the food Pollan suggests), the book encourages a simple approach to eating that will strike a chord with readers weary of conflicting information and unrealistic weight-loss and wellness programs. So the message of the book and its well-written delivery can't be faulted. The question is, do we need to hear it all again?

****

The Geography of Bliss

One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

By Eric Weiner

The grass is always greener in the other hemisphere.

If you've always been skeptical that Disneyland really is "the happiest place on Earth," The Geography of Bliss may be the book for you. Weiner, who has spent most of his career as a peripatetic NPR correspondent, constructed an itinerary based on national rankings of subjective well-being from the World Database of Happiness. He visits several of the happiest places (Switzerland, Thailand, Iceland, and Bhutan, whose monarch has made Gross National Happiness a priority), a few of the more miserable places (Moldova and wealthy-but-weary Qatar), and several that just interest him (Great Britain, India, and Asheville, North Carolina--supposedly one of the happiest cities in America). Weiner illuminates these alternately cheery and dreary locales with data from the ever-expanding science of happiness, his personal observations, and interviews with the glum and glad alike.

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Twelve. 352 pages. $25.99. ISBN: 0446580260

Dallas Morning News ****

"[Weiner] doesn't really have a lot of concrete answers about happiness beyond the obvious ones of family and friends, but what he experiences and observes makes wonderful reading. There's something interesting on every page of this wise and witty book, and it will make you happy just reading it." ELIZABETH BENNETT

Washington Post ****

"Weiner does more than report on the lifestyles of the delighted and despondent. ... The real focus of his story is on the people he meets in cafes and on buses, the people who rent him rooms and give him directions, the people whose conversations, confessions and silences reveal the deep truths about their lands and lives." DANIEL GILBERT

Denver Post ****

"Although timid at emotional exploration and riddled with blind-spots, Weiner's writing holds your interest, even as he annoys you. He may remind some readers of the kind of guy you go on a date with, and you know the entire evening he is not the one and you probably aren't going to go home with him, but somehow you still don't want the evening to end." ELAINE MARGOLIN

San Francisco Chronicle ***

"Universals are uncovered, none of which are earth-shattering. Family: good. A sense of community: good. Sense of humor: also good. ... Never mind that different people are happy for different reasons; the darkness and coziness beloved by many Icelanders might be hell for a Californian, and the lack of thinking that Weiner uses to summarize Thailand's bliss would spell misery for someone who revels in discussing existentialism." KARLA STARR 

NY Times Book Review ***

"According to a recent study, Denmark's key to happiness is lowered expectations. With that in mind, readers will find pleasure, however fleeting, in these pages." PAMELA PAUL

CRITICAL SUMMARY

If there's one truth that emerged from reviewers' various takes on The Geography of Bliss, it's that happiness is subjective. Every critic seemed to find something that really irked him or her about this book: Weiner's persona seems affected, he indulges in "psychobabble," he remains aloof about himself, he comes across as an obnoxious reporter. Yet everyone seemed to enjoy his book, admiring Weiner's original approach to the subject, his balance of research and experience, and the characters that illustrate the lessons on happiness Weiner accumulates during his journeys. In short, all the critics' happiness was alike, but they were also all unhappy in their own way. (Sorry, Tolstoy.) FYI: Weiner lives in Miami, Florida.

SUPPLEMENTAL READING

HAPPINESS | RICHARD LAYARD (2005): **** May/June 2005 Based on years of research, including that of groundbreaking happiness expert and Nobel laureate Daniel Hahneman, Happiness reveals how societal pressures to make money, compete, and accrue possessions take a heavy toll on overall happiness.

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HAPPINESS | DARRIN M. MCMAHON (2006): **** May/June 2006: From the ancient Greco-Roman religions to Judaism and Christianity to the Enlightenment to the present day, McMahon consults great Western thinkers and presents an overview of the meanings of happiness over time.

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****

The Shock Doctrine

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

By Naomi Klein

Capitalism run amok.

Is it possible that capitalism wreaks more havoc than good? Journalist Naomi Klein, an antiglobalization activist, argues that Milton Friedman and the Chicago School's brand of neoliberal economics (free markets, privatization) thrives on natural disasters, foreign invasions, political upheavals, economic turmoil, and war, mostly in poorer areas. These catastrophes cripple economies, governments, and public institutions, allowing the private sector to rework a landscape--and to benefit from it. In the former Soviet Union, oligarchs bought the economy; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina transformed poor, black neighborhoods into neighborhoods ripe for white capital; in Thailand, the tsunami of December 2004 enabled developers to scoop up valuable beachfront property. No matter how injurious it is to these societies, disaster capitalism, Klein argues, just might be the new economy.

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Metropolitan Books. 558 pages. $28. ISBN: 0805079831

San Francisco Chronicle *****

"With a bold and brilliantly conceived thesis, skillfully and cogently threaded through more than 500 pages of trenchant writing, Klein may well have revealed the master narrative of our time. And because the pattern she exposes could govern our future as well, The Shock Doctrine could turn out to be among the most important books of the decade." WILLIAM S. KOWINSKI

NY Times Book Review ****

"Klein isn't an economist but a journalist, and she travels the world to find out firsthand what really happened on the ground during the privatization of Iraq, the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, the continuing Polish transition to capitalism and the years after the African National Congress took power in South Africa, when it failed to pursue the redistributionist policies enshrined in the Freedom Charter, its statement of core principles. These chapters are the least exciting parts of the book, but they are also the most convincing." JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ 

St. Petersburg Times ****

"Here is why this book, angry as it is, deserves a wide audience: It reminds that the purpose of government is to serve the most people as best it can. Under the shock doctrine, Klein argues, the opposite occurs: One class of people comes up with the plan, another does the fighting, and a third, way at the bottom, deals with the fallout." JOHN FREEMAN

Washington Post ****

"Klein's notion of disaster capitalism voraciously feeding on violent disruptions--the antithesis of the conventional wisdom that capitalism requires peace and tranquility to thrive--is a provocative one, partly vindicated by Halliburton's profit margins in Iraq. But it is also overstated, ascribing sinister motives to behavior generally prompted by more banal and benign (if sometimes wrongheaded) ideas." SHASHI THAROOR

New York Times **

"Ms. Klein exposes the hypocrisy behind those who promote free enterprise but accept autocratic regimes to carry it out, which makes her book a useful corrective to some of the uncritical celebrations of the spread of globalization since the collapse of the Soviet empire. But her argument constantly overreaches, because her goal is not really to tame capitalism so much as to taunt it." TOM REDBURN

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Naomi Klein offers an antidote to those who herald globalization as the great equalizer of nations. The author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Klein links disparate events throughout the 20th and 21st centuries--the collapse of the Soviet Union, the atrocities in Chile under Pinochet, the post-tsunami crises in Sri Lanka, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the invasion of Iraq--to reveal the two-faced nature of capitalism. Critics agreed that the book--accessible and impeccably researched--is an important contribution to the debate over globalization. Some were less taken with Klein's thesis, however. The Washington Post noted that Klein sees too many conspiracies instead of "the all-too-human pattern of chaos and confusion, good intentions and greed, playing out in the wake of catastrophes." Yet even Shashi Tharoor, a former UN Under-Secretary General, admitted Klein's great usefulness in helping us understand "the shape and direction of our current Age of Uncertainty."