Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Burton, Alma, and Clea Burton. 2005. For They Shall Be Comforted. CFI.

Rating:
1

Summary:
Boring!!

The book is a collection of quotes from Mormon leaders, the scriptures, and some famous people.

Review:
I’m not sure I understand the point of this book. It isn’t really contributing anything new. I guess it is trying to bring together a bunch of thoughts on topics because it organizes the quotes topically, but it isn’t original and it isn’t really worth reading. You’re better off just reading the source material and not bothering with this collection. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it because it was just so boring. It jumps from one quote to the next and never really makes a point in the end. How do these kinds of books get published?

Stewart, Jon. 2005. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction. Allen Lane.

Rating:
10

Summary:
hilarious!

The book is a ‘historical’ and ‘political’ treatment of America as only the writers of The Daily Show could present it. The chapter titles are: Democracy Before America, The Founding of America, The President: King of Democracy, Congress: Quagmire of Freedom, The Judicial Branch: It Rules, Campaigns and Elections: America Changes the Sheets, The Media: Democracy’s Valiant Vulgarians, The Future of Democracy: Four Score and Seven Year from Now, The Rest of the World: International House of Horrors.

The book takes the format of a textbook, but in so doing mocks even the format of textbooks with margin highlights like, “Were You Aware?… A president is said to have a “mandate” if he wins office with more than 55 percent of the vote. If he wins with less than 51 percent, he is said “to not care about having a mandate.”

Review:
On a 10-point humor scale, this book really does score a 15. It is brilliantly written and formatted, with every detail considered in order to increase your reading pleasure.

I think the most impressive element of the comedy found in this book (and The Daily Show) is that in order to get why it’s funny, you have to be informed. The following quote is a good example. “Compared with American democracy, the Athenian version seems simplistic, naive, and gay. Transcripts of early Athenian policy debates reveal a populace moved more by eloquence and rationality than demagogues and fear-mongering. Thankfully, this type of humane governance wasn’t allowed to take root.” Unless you are familiar with Athenian democracy, the not-so-subtle criticism of American democracy does not come across as comedic. I believe this is the key to The Daily Show’s success; it does not pander to an uninformed audience with slapstick humor but rather requires its audience to ‘get’ why the jokes are funny.

Of course, the informed element of The Daily Show’s humor does not try to cut it alone. There is plenty of slapstick, sarcasm, irony, and debasement, especially of guests who are seemingly unaware of how they are being mocked. But the combination of these two forms of humor serve only to broaden the appeal, attracting a less-informed audience while simultaneously catering to the politically and civically engaged. This fine-balance between these two levels of comedy is like a 21st century incarnation of Monty Python, whose skits were also able to walk the fine line between crass humor and highbrow satire.

Not one paragraph of the book slips past unladen with enough jokes to leave you laughing for weeks. I can’t imagine how much time must have gone into this book. It is exquisitively entertaining. I highly recommend it. It will become a permanent addition to our coffee table, naked Supreme Court justices be damned!

Stevenson, Ph.D., Jay. 2005. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy, Third Edition. 3rd ed. Alpha.

Rating:
6

Review:
I originally bought this book because I was supposed to supplement a creative writing class I was teaching with an occasional exploration of philosophy. I thought the book might present philosophy at a beginner’s level that would make it interesting for my high school class. I never used it.

This is a decent book though. I’m a little hesitant to applaud the author and recommend the book to just anyone. First, the author. Jay Stevenson does have a PhD, but not in philosophy. That worries me. Sure, he may know quite a bit about philosophy, I’m sure there are a lot of people without degrees in philosophy that know a lot about it, but why would The Complete Idiot’s Guide people hire a non-PhD to write a book about philosophy when there are thousands of unemployed, professionally trained philosophers looking for work? Who knows. Maybe they thought Stevenson, whose credentials are in English, could do a better job getting his point across.

Second, why I wouldn’t recommend the book to just anyone. For two reasons. First, the writing is a little boring at times and for people that aren’t interested in philosophy, this book probably won’t suck you in and make you want to read it. Second, the philosophies are dumbed down almost to the point that it isn’t really worth reading about them. The book turns into a nicely packaged dictionary with fun little explanations rather than a treatise on philosophy. But, what should we expect, right? This is, after all, The Complete Idiot’s Guide. So, the book is boring and not a very detailed explanation of the philosophies that it attempts to discuss. However, for an introduction to someone that is interested but knows absolutely nothing, this book probably wouldn’t be too bad a place to get ideas of where to look for more information.

Overall, the book was semi-useful in exploring most philosophical perspectives but could have benefited from more depth in discussion of the philosophies and perhaps a history of philosophy (maybe even in some sort of graph-like form).

Bronson, Po. 2005. What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question. Ballantine Books.

Rating:
1

Summary:
The book is supposed to be Bronson’s findings after having interviewed hundreds of people about what they felt they should have done or did with their lives. But I didn’t really find this to be the case. What it seemed like to me was more a strange mixture of Bronson summarizing the lives of some of the people he interviewed and then adding his opinions about their situations.

Add to this mix Bronson’s self-adoration about being invited to a conference of business big whigs where he encouraged all of the CEOs present to make sure their employees liked their jobs (like that is going to happen) and Bronson’s ideas about childbirth and you have ‘What Should I Do With My Life?’

Review:
stereotypical motivation book, but worse!

I absolutely hated this book. This is definitely one instance where I am glad I listened to the CD version instead of reading the actual book because it was abridged and shortened the misery. The problems with this book are so monumental I can’t believe it was even published. Oh wait, yes I can, he’s on the board of directors of a publishing company – he can probably get anything published, including this drivel.

My biggest criticism of the book is that Bronson is falling back on the idealized notion that everyone can do what they want. This is such a ridiculous notion that I can’t even believe people are still claiming it’s possible. Does Bronson really think that someone desperately wants to be a garbage collector? I know the job of my dreams is to clean toilets. Come on! If everyone can have the job of their dreams, who is going to do the menial work like cleaning his office while he vacations in the Caribbean? This notion is often proclaimed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (this is the first reason I came to believe Bronson was a subtle Republican propagandist). Social democrats, on the other hand, recognize it’s impossible. Rather than encourage everyone to ‘make it big’, they try to help the little guy so he can at least eke out a bearable living.

My second biggest criticism is that there is absolutely no sense of organization to this book. This leads to a follow up criticism, which is that the thousands of other motivational books that say the exact same thing at least have an organization to them. Bronson’s book doesn’t present a coherent message and what can be understood of the message is no different from thousands of other books that just tell you to ‘be whatever you want to be’ (see criticism 1 above).

The longer I listened to this book, the more I questioned why Bronson was qualified to write this book. If I’m not mistaken, Bronson is a successful fiction writer who writes novels about the business world. Maybe in Bronson’s mind writing fiction equates to expertise in psychology and career counseling, but not in my world. And even though Bronson claims to have interviewed hundreds of people, I was thoroughly convinced by his inability to organize his ‘findings’ that he has no idea how to do social-scientific research. Fiction writer does not equal expert.

I think what we have here is another case of someone getting a little fame from his novels and POOF! the fame goes to his head. Bronson seems to think he knows everything, or at least his opinion is important enough that everyone should hear it. Bronson goes so far in his pipe dream that he even begins giving advice about having children. What makes his advice even worse is that the advice he gives really just echoes Dr. Laura, which is the second indication that Bronson is a closet Republican propagandist.

Overall, I don’t think anyone should be subjected to this incoherent claptrap. This is a poorly written book by a non-expert who is moonlighting as a Republican propagandist in between writing novels. I highly recommend any thinking person avoid this novel like you would an Al Qaeda training camp if you were George Bush, Jr. Absolutely terrible!!!

Note:
Beginning of chapter 1 Bronson talks about a letter from someone who knows you intimately and knows what you are supposed to do in life. It sounds strikingly similar to the Mormon Patriarchal blessing. Only interesting point he makes.

Crichton, Michael. 2005. State of Fear. Avon.

Rating:
8

Summary:
The book follows the stories of several individuals as they come to the realization that a group of violent environmentalists are attempting to create disasters in order to confirm that global warming is a serious threat in the popular consciousness. The public face of the more violent group is a Beverly Hills based environmental organization named NERF, which is run by an attorney named Nicholas Drake. While he isn’t the sole villain, he is the primary villainous character in the book.

The group that joins forces against Nick Drake and the other members of the violent environmentalist group is lead by Dr. Kenner, a professor at MIT and secret agent for the U.S. government. His sidekick, Sam Jiang (sic?), is a Tibetan soldier and scholar who is also the tech guru of the group. The other members of the group are all connected in one way or another with George Morton, an aging philanthropist, who begins the book as one of the primary supporters of NERF. After a visit from Professor Kenner, Morton decides his efforts and funds would be better spent working against NERF and ultimately trying to help the environment in other ways. His beautiful assistant, Sarah, also joins with the team, as does his personal lawyer, Peter Evans, who doubles as the main character of the book. A couple additional people get thrown into the mix later on, including Kenner’s niece and couple of movie actors.

The basic plot involves the Kenner-led group uncovering the environmental disasters the NERF associated group are trying to cook up and then foiling them. The disasters are designed to coincide with a public conference NERF is holding on rapid climate change that is supposed to highlight the dangers of global warming. In the process of preventing all of the disasters (there are four total), the group travels from California to Antarctica to the Southwestern U.S. and then to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In the process, Peter Evans, Sarah, and Morton all have near death experiences, including: being left for dead in an ice crevasse, being poisoned, shot, and even attacked by cannibals.

Ultimately the Kenner-led group foils NERF’s schemes, but not without considerable pain, bloodshed, and the loss of a famous actor to a cannibal feast.

Review:
The story detailed above is really just a framework that allows Crichton to rant about global warming. But the real beauty of this book is that he hasn’t signed on board with the rest of Hollywood’s celebrities and taken the “anti global warming” approach. Instead, Crichton drives home the point that global warming is a theory that has been co-opted by environmentalist groups and the media to induce a “state of fear” in the world. The goal of the theory, of course, is to allow those two groups to gain both power and money.

Crichton does a very good job detailing all of the problems with global warming as a theory and convincingly argues that, as the data currently stands, there is almost no support for the theory. He uses Dr. Kenner as a sotto voce, dropping his views and reading of the scientific literature thickly into the pages. In fact, the novel reads more like something Ayn Rand would write – with a very different purpose, of course – than a typical Crichton novel. Several of the “technical” dialogues wherein Kenner trounces the other members of the group in debates over global warming go on for pages (or minutes in my case).

I may have liked this book more than many people because I don’t hold fast to the arguments behind global warming. I recognize the harms of pollution and I certainly stand behind the reduction of pollutants in the atmosphere. But I was pretty much convinced before reading this book that the evidence for global warming was pretty sketchy to begin with and that advocates of global warming had not ruled alternative explanations, namely climate change cycles. The earth cycles through warm and cold periods and has for millions of years, well before humans came on the scene. How much of the recent climate change is due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is completely unknown and likely unknowable. So, because I was a skeptic of the theory to begin with, I found Crichton’s arguments compelling. Keep in mind that Crichton isn’t saying global warming isn’t taking place. He repeatedly says throughout the book that it just isn’t known at this point whether it is happening or not. That is clearly the safest and most well-reasoned position to take. And no, I don’t think Crichton is playing the “shill” for big business, even though he is undoubtedly a multi-millionaire. He is just being skeptical, even though the popular thing to do right now is side against big corporations regardless of the evidence to the contrary.

I particularly enjoyed Crichton’s postscript in which he answers the question that was on my mind throughout – he details his views on global warming. I was hoping he would do that and he did.

As far as the story goes, I liked it. But, like I said above, it’s very much an Ayn Randian type story – the story is really just the framework for the message and the message in this story, like Rand, is not hidden or even subtely disguised – it’s out in the open and laid bare for everyone to see it.

In conclusion, this isn’t the most entrancing novel Crichton has written, but it is clearly the most political. He doesn’t beat around the bush in conveying his message – by the end of the book it is pretty clear he is shotgunning the bush repeatedly. If you don’t come away from the book having had your perspective on global warming challenged, you obviously didn’t read the book.

(One final point, I didn’t realize it before, but Crichton is pretty clearly a libertarian atheist. Maybe he didn’t start out as such, but it’s pretty certain he is after reading this. I’m all for libertarian atheism, though I wouldn’t consider myself one – I still have too many socialistic tendencies.)

(Note: I listened to this book on my new IPod Nano! ;)