CCDemsBookClub

Book Group - Cheshire County Democrats

2009-10-29T11:12:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,

We had a good turnout last night and a very good discussion of $20 Per Gallon, by Christopher Steiner. Thank you Cyndy for that recommendation.

For next month, we will be reading The Punishment of Virtue: Walking the Frontline of the War on Terror with a Woman Who Has Made it Her Home, by Sarah Chayes. We are going to meet on Tuesday night, December 1, 6:30 PM in the Foodcourt at Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope you can join us.

Linda Cates

From Publishers Weekly

"Afghanistan only uncovers itself with intimacy, and intimacy takes time," writes Chayes, a skilled but increasingly frustrated journalist, whose determination "to grasp the underlying pattern" during and after the toppling of the Taliban in late 2001 chafes against her editors' post-9/11 comfort zone. With keen sympathy for Afghanistan's indomitable people, Chayes eventually swaps NPR and its four-and-a-half-minute slots for an NGO, becoming "field director" of Afghans for Civil Society, spearheaded by Qayum Karzai, the president's brother. ACS's humanitarian work, which includes rebuilding a bombed-out village, brings Chayes into direct conflict with the warlords with whom U.S. policy remains disastrously entangled. This is the point of her engrossing narrative, which begins in Pakistan, inside the U.S.-backed Afghan resistance pushing northward to Kandahar, and is framed by the 2005 murder of police chief Zabit Akrem, a key ally in the fight against Kandahar's corrupt warlord-governor. Throughout, Chayes relies on exceptional access and a felicitous prose style, though she sacrifices some momentum to cover several centuries of Afghanistan's turbulent past in an account that adds little to those by Ahmed Rashid and others. However, her hands-on experience as a deeply immersed reporter and activist gives her lucid analysis and prescriptions a practical scope and persuasive authority

October: $20.00 Per Gallon

2009-10-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

For October, we are reading $20.00 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better, by Christopher Steiner. We will meet on Wednesday evening, October 28th, 6:30 PM at the Food Court at Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope to see you then.

Linda Cates

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. According to Steiner, senior staff reporter at Forbes magazine, surging fuel prices will transform Americans' daily lives almost beyond recognition. With traditional energy sources disappearing and global demand soaring, the U.S. will confront gas prices rocketing to $6, $8, $14 and beyond—prices that will compel sweeping changes in everything from urban planning to food production. He reveals the consequences of each incremental hike in gas prices: at $8 per gallon, air travel will essentially vanish; at $14 a gallon, Wal-Mart stores will become empty "ghost boxes"; when gas hits $16 a gallon, sushi will become an extravagance only for the extremely wealthy. While many changes will come at tremendous social and economic cost, Steiner envisions a better future, where human ingenuity will spur greater efficiency and less waste. Although it's unlikely all the author's predictions will come true—he goes so far as to forecast the order in which airlines will go out of business—the surprising snapshots of the future (where rising gas prices might revitalize Detroit) make for vivid and compelling reading.

2009-10-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Linda Cates

2008-09-24T10:12:00.001-07:00

We had an excellent meeting last week. Seven of us met to discuss The Tipping Point. Now if we can just "tip" New Hampshire blue... For October we will be reading The Omnivore's Dilema: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Polan. We will meet on a Tuesday this month, on October 14th, the day after Columbus Day Weekend, at 6:30 PM, at the Food Court in Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope that you can join us. Linda From Publishers Weekly Reviewed by Pamela Kaufman.Pollan examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota. Pamela Kaufman is executive editor at Food & Wine magazine.

2008-08-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone, A small group of us had an enjoyable discussion Wednesday night of They Went Whistling by Barbara Holland. The book is full of amusing comments to discuss, e.g. "Career, it turns out, keep women in line more effectively than policemen or repressive husbands," or "Nothing is more effective than politics for neutralizing your opinions and toning down your wayward ways". For September, we are reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell. We will meet on Wednesday evening, September 10, at 6:30 PM in the Food Court at Colony Mill Marketplace. The Tipping Point has been on the New York Times Best Sellers List for 206 weeks. We decided it was time to read it. Here's a quote from the book, "The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." I hope you can join us in September to discuss this interesting book. We also decided to plan a month ahead, and for October we will be reading, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Polan. Date to be determined. Linda

2008-06-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone, The Book Group met last week and had a good discussion about Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Tracy Kidder. We liked the book, the author, and the main characters. It's an inspiring story. I know that some of you who couldn't make it to the meeting, read the book and enjoyed it. I hope everyonone will get a chance to read it and be inspired. We always try to read something light for the summer. For July we will be reading They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways and Renagades, by Barbara Holland. We will meet on Wednesday evening, July 30th, 6:30 PM, in the Food Court at Colony Mill Marketplace. I hope to see you then. Linda Cates Amazon.com describes the book as follows: They Went Whistling is Barbara Holland's account of history's outstanding, and largely forgotten, females. The women revealed within these pages were driven by passion--for religion, humanity, adventure, politics, and knowledge--that couldn't be curtailed by convention. They were witty, defiant, and, more often than not, beautiful. Shamefully, most of us are unfamiliar with their accomplishments. Holland brings such faces as Joan of Arc, Daisy Bates, Stagecoach Mary, and Mary "Mother" Jones into the same light as Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia, Billy the Kid, and Frederick Engels. These women lived fascinating lives. Often it is not their virtuousness that is prized, but their gall and utter disregard for living within societal lines.