Category Archives: Reviews

Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

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This book by economist Steven D. Levitt and New York Times writer Stephen J. Dubner was published in 2005, and I wish I hadn’t waited this long to read it. It describes how “experts” manipulate information to their advantage. Any person who intends to buy or sell a house or car or have a child educated should read this book.

The book is educational and interesting. There is a chapter titled “How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?”Stetson Kennedy is the hero. He had Klan bloodlines, but went against the Klan after the black woman who raised him was beaten and raped after accusing a white trolley driver of shortchanging her. “So Kennedy decided—as any foolhardy, fearless, slightly daft anti-bigot would—to go undercover and join the Ku Klux Klan,” Kennedy took the Klan oaths, and one was, “Do you further swear to do all in your power to increase the white birth rate?” Kennedy’s first attempts to damage the Klan by telling officials of meeting plans failed. He then had the brilliant idea of enlisting the Adventures of Superman show. Kennedy gave the show a list of the Klan’s childish passwords. The show had several episodes of Superman combating the Klan. Children, including those of Klan members, were soon wearing capes and shouting “secret passwords while chasing others wearing pillowcases in a game called “Superman Against the Klan.” Klansmen were embarrassed, meeting attendance plummeted, and new applications for membership dropped to zero.

The discussion of Norma McCorvey will undoubtedly disturb readers. The authors were criticized by the entire political spectrum for what they wrote. Ms. McCorvey had given up two children for adoption, and was once again pregnant. She wanted a legal abortion, and a court case calling her Jane Roe was filed. The child had been born by the time the Supreme Court issued the Roe v. Wade ruling. She became a pro-life activist, but the ruling in her case allowed millions of women to have legal abortions. There were 750,000 abortions in the first year after Roe v.Wade, and it was estimated that half of those children, if born, would have lived in poverty, and would have been at risk of being criminals. The rate of violent crimes dropped despite universal predictions the rates were going to escalate out of control.

There are several educational tales. A study of real estate agents selling their own homes showed those houses remained on the market an average of ten days longer than homes they were selling for others. Their homes also sold for three percent more. That allowed them to pocket about $9,000 more on a $300,000 home. They had no incentive to hold out longer to put another $135 their pocket with the normal sharing of realtor fees to wait for a better offer.

There is a detailed analysis of teachers and the incentives given when their students do well on standardized tests. Some teachers earn the incentives by doing a good job of teaching while others cheat by giving the students longer than allowed or even changing answers using the eraser on the standard number two pencil. Students who have good teachers continue to test well while those who had teachers who cheated have lower scores from carefully monitored tests.

The authors give a few adages to explain the book: “Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes. Experts…use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda. Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.”   

I can’t begin to describe all of the fascinating information derived by analyses of data described in the book. I’ve chosen the few samples given below.      

The amount of money spent is not the dominant factor in the outcome of elections. Americans spend more on chewing gum than on political campaigns.

The sales of car seats are more about successful marketing playing on the natural fear of parents than safety.

Baseball player Mark Grace said you aren’t trying if you aren’t cheating. Many people thought Grace had it right. Seven million children disappeared from the United States in 1987 after each child was required to have a Social Security number listed on income tax returns.

There is an interesting section describing how people attempt to attract attention on internet dating sites, and, not surprisingly, some of their self-descriptions are suspect. Less than one percent describes themselves as having “less than average looks.” It is also not surprising that “…men who say they want a long-term relationship do much better than men looking for an occasional lover. But women looking for an occasional lover do great.”

There is a detailed and disturbing discussion of crack cocaine dealers. Sudhir Venkatesh was sent by his graduate advisor into the Chicago ghettos to ask blacks a series of stupid questions about how they felt about being black. He miraculously survived and learned much about the dealers and their systems. The foot soldiers made on the average of $3.30/hour, and had a one in four chance of being killed during the four years he lived with them. They often asked Sid if he could perhaps get them a good job, such as working as a janitor at the University. The few people who made it to the higher ranks were very well paid, and all the foot soldiers took the risk for little pay on the outside chance they could make it to the higher status.

The final chapter of the book is about what effect on the names of kids on their lives. Two kids were named Winner and Loser, and the one named Loser became a respected New York policeman while the one named Winner spent most of his life in prison. Loser never hid from his name, although his friends typically called him “Lou.”  Beyond that, I was disinterested in this chapter.

The next to final chapter about what influences academic performance by school children is surprising. It isn’t surprising that the quality of teaching has the greatest influence. Other factors are counterintuitive. The statistics do not indicate taking kids to museums or reading to them is a positive. I think what the authors are missing is that the parents or grandparents taking the kids to a museum or reading to them is fun and rewarding for the parent or grandparent and the kid. I don’t care what the statistics show. We love the time with the grandkids. We doubt it hurts them that we relish our time with them, and don’t care that it doesn’t provide a statistically positive outcome for the grandchild.

Wormwood Forest, A Natural History of Chernobyl

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This book by Mary Mycio was given to me by a friend who told me I would love it. He was right. It describes the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 that scattered 20-40 tons of radioactive materials across large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The area is designated the “Zone of Alienation,” and 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled. There are over four million people still living in areas that are contaminated with at least one curie of cesium per square kilometer. The book has detailed information about the levels of contamination of the Zone and the effects on the animals, plants, insects, and fungus. Many sections are difficult to read because of the amount of technical information. However, I’m glad I read it.

The book begins with a quote from Revelation to explain the title. The quote is about a star called Wormwood that falls on the earth “…and the third part of the waters become wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.” Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the wormwood plant and Chernobyl is “…the Russianized version…”   The wormwood herb and other plants have thrived since the reactor disaster. There have been effects, such as pine trees that have grown into distorted shapes called “pine bushes.”

It was believed people would never be able to enter many areas contaminated by the disaster, but the author joined the fad of “atomic tourism” by obtaining permits to tour the Zone wearing her camouflage protective clothing and dosimeter. She writes she was shocked to discover the area “…has become Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing—at times unearthly—wilderness teeming with large animals…” There are large herds of wild boars, healthy populations of wolves and lynx because of the proliferation of their prey, wild horses, and a large variety of birds. The author observes that “…very little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl. What is known is that there are many, many more of them than before the disaster.

The book is undoubtedly controversial in many aspects. For example the author writes although plutonium is a heavy metal and therefore toxic, the myth that it is the “…deadliest substance known to man…” is not accurate. There are other toxins such as arsenic that win that distinction. I expect the effects on people and the various species described in the book will reinforce the opinions of those who oppose nuclear power and the general absence of longer term devastating effects will reinforce the opinions of those who are proponents. One of the author’s tour guides observed that there has not been mutant animals in the zone. He admitted when pressed that “Because with wild animals, mutants die.” Toads and frogs often develop malformations when exposed to toxins, but those are seen more often in the United States than in the Zone.

There were hundreds of children exposed to radioactive iodine who developed thyroid cancer. However, “… perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the disaster’s impact on people.” “Samosels,” or squatters, originally hid to prevent being evacuated from the Zone. They are dying at the expected ages despite being exposed to twice the maximum dose “allowed.” “Moreover, it seems impossible to tease the health effects of radiation out of the tangle of poverty, alcoholism, smoking, poor diet, and other factors that plague public health in the the places in the former Soviet Union that were unaffected by Chernobyl and that made life expectancy—especially among men—the lowest in Europe.” It is also observed the Samosels inhale “…too little plutonium to influence their dose.”

The “involuntary park” (a term coined by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling) appears to be proving wildlife will thrive after being made radioactive by cesium, iodine, strontium, and plutonium where there is little human activity. Touring the Zone converted the author from “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support—at least for giving a window of time for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels…” She describes how she believed life would be mutated if it managed to survive the holocaust, but Chernobyl showed her a different view. The ghost towns are a “…tragic testimony to the devastating effects of technology gone awry. But life in the Wormwood Forest was not only persevering, it was flourishing.”  Of course there were and are numerous media ventures to “…exploit Chernobyl’s inherent spookiness.”

There are interesting bits of historical background about the areas impacted by the disaster. For example, it is mentioned that Stalin’s forced collectivization created an artificial famine in the Ukraine that starved ten million people to death in 1932-1933. There are also bits that were fun to read. One example is that the ugly blob that formed after the reactor meltdown cooled is called the “elephant foot.” The authorities wanted to take a sample, so a machine gun was fired at the blob until a chip came off.

One of my favorite passages in the book was a discussion of the author attending a third grade class trip to the New York Hall of Science. There was a terrarium with a sign: “The Impact of Radiation on Rats.” There was nothing in the terrarium except plants, and author decided the radiation had made the rats invisible. Another passage tells a joke about a “babushka” selling apples labeled “Chernobyl.” A passerby notes that no one will buy apples from there and is told people will certainly buy them for their husband, wife, and mother-in-law.

I was interested in the author’s willingness to expose herself to the radiation levels during her tours. She writes she did not wear a cumulative dosimeter. She calculated an estimated exposure of a few hundred millirems, which isn’t much, but she judged her exposure to be “enough.”

Anyone interested in taking a tour of the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl should read this book. Approval for a visit is obtained by sending a fax to Chernobylinterinform.

I’m going to let the author have the final say with words written in her closing. “If a nuclear disaster really is …in your metaphoric backyard…it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”

Animal Farm

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This book by Eric Blair writing under the pseudonym of George Orwell is a departure from the usual non-fiction books reviewed at this web site. The book is even subtitled “A Fairy Story.” However, the story is based on the reality of the brutality of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Orwell had first-hand experience with the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky when he was serving as a foot soldier with Communist forces fighting the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat by a bullet during combat, but miraculously survived. He then narrowly escaped the Stalinist purge of his Trotsky infantry unit which resulted in execution or imprisonment of those who did not escape. A review of the book “Homage to Catalonia” was posted in May 2011 for those interested in the full story.

Russell Baker wrote a wonderful Preface for Animal Farm, and I intend to use that freely. Stalin had worked diligently to destroy every trace of Trotsky’s contribution to the Russian revolution, and that resulted in millions of people being executed or imprisoned in the Gulag where death was almost certain from the conditions of slave labor. The Stalinists drained the Spanish treasury of gold during this time, but weren’t satisfied with that. They insisted that their allies, including the Trotskyites and Anarchists helping them fight Franco’s Fascists, had to be vilified for supposed support of Franco. That led to the executions and imprisonment of thousands who had fought at the side of the Stalinists. Those actions paved the way for the eventual victory of Franco’s forces. Orwell was quite angry from what he had observed. He was alarmed that “decent people in the Western democracies had succumbed to a dangerously romantic view of the Russian revolution that blinded them to the Soviet reality.” He wrote Animal Farm to warn the world about the immorality of Stalinism. Continue reading →

Game Over, How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy

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This book by Stephen Leeb is the second recent review about the inevitability of an economic collapse. The review of the book posted last week predicts what will happen in the United States compared to what happened in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. That book provided little guidance other than encouraging stockpiling of food, medicine, and barter goods. There is advice in “Game Over” on how to be best prepared for predicted collapse caused by runaway inflation and shortages of commodities.“Growing numbers of the world’s 6.6 billion people are now actively seeking to equal Americans’ high consumption lifestyle…” There are limits to all commodities, and governments and central banks are not acting as if they have the restraint necessary to keep inflation under control.

Peak and decline of oil supplies and inadequacies of alternative energy production are likely to cause energy production to fail to keep up with the world’s appetite. Replacing carbon fuels with wind is impossible, because there isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and turbines. It is not yet clear whether solar cells produce a net gain in energy. Thin film photovoltaics require cadmium telluride, and there isn’t a wealth of that available in the world. Producing energy by converting corn into ethanol uses more energy than is gained and making fuel out of food when there is a shortage of food is, to be kind, idiotic.   Continue reading →

Reinventing Collapse, The Soviet Example and American Prospects

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This book by Dmitry Orlov predicts a U.S. economic collapse, and it is both interesting and often oddly entertaining. The author was born and grew up in Leningrad, but lived in the U.S. until the mid-seventies. He had several visits to the Soviet Union during the years that political system was preparing to collapse or after it had collapsed. He believes that the U.S. will only have the option of inflating to escape excessive debt or defaulting on obligations. “But the results are the same: a worthless national currency and unhappy international creditors unwilling to extend further credit.” That scenario leads to the need, if the author is correct or partially correct, for individuals to consider what they should do, or prepare to do, if there is a collapse of the U.S. economy.  I don’t agree with some of what is written (the risk from global warming, as one example) but I believe the book is worthwhile.

The descriptions of the visits to the Soviet Union are an example of how the author can take the edge off serious matters with clever writing. “The stores were largely empty (in the sense of being quite uncontaminated by consumer goods) and often closed.” He quickly learned a half-liter of vodka could be easily exchanged for ten liters of gasoline, “…giving vodka far greater effective energy density than rocket fuel.” People were willing to exchange items of great value for American jeans. This is an important point. When an economy collapses, it is important to have desirable items to barter for what is needed for survival. The author also warns that, “Access to actual physical resources and assets…and relationships, quickly becomes much more valuable than mere cash.” Continue reading →

The Nightingale’s Song

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This review was written by Steve Ray, and it is the first posting by a guest reviewer. I provide reviews of almost exclusively non-fiction books to help people decide whether they want to add them to their planned reading list. I’m hoping others will be interested in submitting reviews. I tend to fucus on history books with human interest. That said, the following is Steve’s review.

Robert Timberg, an award-winning Washington journalist, a 1964 Naval Academy graduate, and Marine veteran of Vietnam served as the Baltimore Sun’s White House correspondent during the Reagan years. He also held the position of Deputy Chief of the Baltimore Sun’s Washington bureau.

In “The Nightingale’s Song,” Timberg attempts to show how America is still haunted by the Vietnam War. Years have passed and administrations have changed, yet many actions and events have been affected by the experiences of those who served.

The book focuses on the lives of Annapolis graduates John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter, all who went on to individual notoriety in government service and public life. McCain to the United States Senate, Webb as a best-selling author and Secretary of the Navy, North best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, McFarlane as National Security Advisor and Poindexter from a “Whiz Kid” on Robert McNamara’s staff to his time as National Security Advisor. From early childhood days, experiences at Annapolis, personal experiences in Vietnam (be it as Marine platoon leaders or the excruciating agony of years in solitary confinement in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp), to careers in politics and government up through the Reagan White House years and Iran-Contra. The five major characters display vast differences in personality and style, but some remarkable similarities as well.

While the reader may be familiar, at least in a passing way, with much of the material presented, the book contains a wealth of information presented in a highly informative and entertaining way. Timberg writes, not in a dry historical research manner, but in the “tell it like it is, no nonsense” manner of a Marine combat lieutenant. As one reviewer commented, “Timberg writes like the former Marine he is. That’s not to say, he doesn’t write well; only that he can be brutally frank, wielding his pen like a combat knife.”

Timberg writes from a position of personal experience. As a graduate of the US Naval Academy and a Marine veteran of Vietnam, he is able to instill a strong sense of believability.

His research included personal interviews with more than 250 people, all of which he names in the book’s appendix. These interviews provide extensive insight into the book’s main characters…the growing-up years of childhood and family, the high school and pre-Annapolis years, Vietnam and the challenges, heartache and personal growth they experienced, and their eventual careers. He also lists an extensive bibliography and notes of sources used in each chapter.

The Nightingale’s Song reads as a novel. It includes such stories as while a midshipman, Oliver North defeated his classmate James Webb in an emotionally charged championship boxing match that is still talked about at Annapolis today. Two decades after that bout, North sat at the center of the Iran-Contra affair at the same time Jim Webb was named Secretary of the Navy. “Anything that happens to Ollie comes to my desk,” Webb sourly told acquaintances. The coolness existed on both sides. Memories of that boxing match apparently had not faded.

As the reader journeys through the lives of these men, he or she can’t help but wonder how these experiences influenced and shaped events in our nation’s history. From Iran-Contra to the building of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Did Oliver North’s tendency to do anything to make himself look better in the eyes of others, or his willingness to say anything whether true or not to put himself in the best possible light play a role in the Iran-Contra scandal?

Readers who enjoy politics, history and current events will find “The Nightingale’s Song” satisfying all those interests, and in a very entertaining and informative way. While the outcome of Vietnam and the Iran-Contra episode along with the public lives of these men are known to most Americans, this book provides a lot of other “I didn’t know that” moments. And those moments will make this book resonate with readers.