Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front

There’s been a lot of discussion in the last decade on how effective Nazi strategy really was. History books still promote the myth of the Polish cavalry charging German tanks, and that is all that the story is; a myth and nothing more. The Polish army did an excellent job at fighting the Germans, and according to this book, they really did a job on the Germans when they entered Warsaw. They fired on the German troops from windows and rooftops. The Germans only won the battle by shelling the city with artillery.

In the chapter The Purpose of the Russian Campaign, we see how Germany’s food situation was nowhere near as strong as Hitler claimed. Common sense would tell us that Germany’s farms could never feed a huge expeditionary army, and getting the food all the way to the Eastern Front would drain the railroads. But according to this book, Germany’s farms couldn’t even support the natives! One of the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine was to steal the food; it would feed the German hordes pushing into Asia and weaken the Soviet state. But did Hitler’s economists remember what happened when the French army invaded Russia? Did they wonder what would happen if the farmers burned their fields and retreated? Stalin did in fact evacuate thousands from Crimea, Latvia, and Lithuania, not to mention the factories that he ordered dismantled and hauled into Siberia. Hitler’s army invaded a food desert.

In France the German army had no better success. Sure, they pushed into the country with minimal resistance, but what did they expect to do once they were in there? The French resistance did an excellent job at killing German officers, and the Dutch resistance poisoned the German food stores. With the army pinned down in Stalingrad, trapped in Italy, and wasting its air power over Britain, how would the German troops in France be resupplied? According to this book, Hitler invaded France partly to plunder the artwork. We know that Herman Goering loved art, and we know that he looted museums all over Europe, of that there’s no doubt. But if Hitler wanted the valuables for the money, that wouldn’t work either. He’d flood the market with art and antiques and the price would go down. Furthermore, if the Jews of Europe had all their money confiscated, that means there were less people available to buy them. With all the gold being looted (including from the Death Camp victims’ teeth) the price would have gone down to nothing.

In short order, Hitler’s policies caused prices to plummet, then skyrocket. How would the people have been fed if all the farm workers were fighting a war? How would they have imported food if they were at war with the world? What use would gold have been if there was a surplus? You can’t eat gold, and farms can’t produce when there’s nobody to plow, plant, and harvest.

Sometimes I wonder if Hitler and his cronies were truant on the day their class learned about Napoleon.

Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez's Irreverent Apparition

The title of this book is so perfect it’s almost cliché. One look at Alma Lopez’ icon-themed artwork, and the word “controversy” rolls right off your tongue. She’s not the first to have create artwork influenced by, evoking, or even making a parody of religion. Didn’t Yo Mama’s last Supper bring out the ire of New York’s mayor in 1999? Didn’t the play Corpus Christi (about a gay Jesus) generate angry responses? Let’s see what this book has to say.

A chapter is devoted to The Virgin of Guadalupe, an apparition that appears frequently in Chicano art, décor, jewelry, and a strong influence on the artist. I guess she is to Mexican Americans in California and Texas what the Hamza is to Arabs and the silhouette of Jerusalem is to Jewish people (we call it dugmah.) Therefore, we can say that the image of this saint has already been commercialized. But is it honored? Does the appearance of the iconic image on store shelved and tattoos amount to desecration? Do you honor a saint by painting her image on your car, then shouting curses in anger when you get cut off? If so, maybe Lopez’ bare-wasted painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe shows more dignity than other uses.

This book has many great and laudable qualities. First, it doesn’t “wax poetic” or try to sound overly intellectual, just strict reporting of events. Secondly, the plain tone of the writing allows for balanced and unbiased reporting; it gives equal weight to both the artist and her critics, without passing judgment on either. The author respects the fact that the icons are important to some people, and Lopez’ artwork isn’t something they’re accustomed to.

The cover artwork, Lopez’ Our Lady of Controversy II (2008) made me think about sexism in art. If you go into the Louvre, the Royal Academy, or the Metropolitan Museum, so many of the paintings are of nude women. Yet few of the artists are woman. Aside from Barbara Kruger, Kiki Smith, Frida Kahlo perhaps, women artists don’t get much attention in major museums. The women who do get there work shown were mostly born after 1930, and the earlier ones (with the exception of Mary Cassat and Grandma Moses) don’t get much attention.

When you look at Our Lady of Controversy II, is it possible that there’s some truth to it? The woman is muscular, dark skinned, and wears boxing gloves, her pose is defensive, as is her facial expression. Her body is exposed, except for her breasts and genitalia, covered by flowers. She wears a boxer’s robe with an Aztec motif. Is there anything truly wrong with this image? Think hard, when you see the images of the VOG (I’m using an abbreviation from now on) she’s always slim and light skinned, but is that how all women look? Lopez’ use of an Aztec themed garment on the figure could be seen as  pagan, but at the same time, couldn’t the fascination with icons have pagan origins? As for the Virgin’s bare legs and belly button, isn’t there already a certain degree of sexism in Christian imagery? For some reason, a whole lot of Christian martyrs are women, so does that teach us that women are expected to die for religion? If so, a few bare attributes probably wouldn’t hurt.

On a positive note, the museums that were founded after 1990 are more open to displaying women artists, or even controversial themes. With all the new museums springing up on the Bowery (NYC) and other newly gentrified neighborhoods, I bet there will be more. I remember back in the 1990’s, when Lisa Yuskavage’s candy-colored paintings and sculptures of her cartoonishly well-endowed women were selling for thousands. A sizeable chunk of her audience were women connoisseurs, so perhaps the museums will be aiming for a different audience?

Flash From The Bowery

Today’s historians study tattoo art with great fascination, and it’s only become an intellectual curiosity in the past 20 years. Why not until that point, I don’t know, but I do remember that by the late 90’s there was greater interest in it. Perhaps there’s something fascinating about the kind of artwork that one would have permanently drawn on himself? Tattoos were worn mostly by sailors, and the designs were usually the same, but the question is why.

Flash From The Bowery is a book of original tattoo stencils from the Black Eye Barbershop on the Bowery and Chatham Square, the same tattoo parlor where the electric tattoo gun was invented. It was on The Bowery where you’d find all the tattoo parlors, the same street where Norman Rockwell got the idea for his painting of the tattooist inking out the sailor’s ex-girlfriends. It was a sleazy block, full of bars, flophouses, and what would eventually become CBGB’s. The designs in this book were the “archive” of Black Eye’s resident artist, and when he died in the 1950’s, an employee saved what he could of their supplies. The designs ended up in the hands of Cliff White, a modern day tattooist. But the designs themselves date back much earlier. In those days you couldn’t go to a Barnes & Noble bookstore and buy a full-color coffee table book of tattoos. The artists would trace or photograph the existing tattoos of their customers, and in exchange give them a discount on a new one.

The only problem is the history of the actual designs. I would love to know the origins of the flowers, skulls, dice, scantily clad women. By Cliff White’s account, most of the customers were sailors (hence the large number of ship tattoos) or circus employees. If there were foreign sailors getting tattoos done at Black Eye’s, then I wonder if the American, British, and European designs were markedly different. I saw a photo of some French criminals who were detained at Ellis Island in the 1900’s, and they had tattoos of women, boxers, snakes, the usual art. I’m going to guess that the cards & dice motif might indicate willingness to take risk, while the half-naked women were reminders of home. If you’re at sea for a few months, and there are no women on board, perhaps the tattoo satisfies your erotic needs? The skulls could be descended from the memento mori (“remember, one day you will die”) of classical artwork, evoking a reminder of mortality. Paintings with this motto in mind usually placed a flower next to the skull, symbolizing life & death. Perhaps that explains why flowers were so popular in tattooing? Racism is also evident by the tattoos showing stabbed Chinese heads. Though the author assumes this was from the “Yellow Peril,” I believe it is from the US Navy campaign in China in the 1920’s (seen in the film The Sand Pebbles.)

You can include tattoos in the study of US history, and there’s plenty in there to compare the changes in American habits. Back in the 1950’s, tattoos were the kind of thing the wearer kept hidden, but nowadays they’re commonplace. It used to be considered low-class for women to have tattoos, but now I see “respectable” women with all kinds of ink-Japanese koi, scarabs, boyfriends’ names, even old fashioned sailor tattoos (in better quality than the originals.) Perhaps it has a lot to do with women’s rights? I can just imagine a high school student in the 1960’s showing up to school with a visible shoulder tattoo, the principal would’ve thrown a fit. Now, the principal can’t do anything about it. For teenagers, a tattoo has become a symbol that (at least in their own opinion) they’re all grown up.

365 Free Motion Quilting Designs by Leah Day

I’m not a quilter myself and I flunked textiles class back in 8^th grade. But quilting has been a great tradition in the USA, and our country was founded by great craftsmen. I applaud anyone in this country who can make the things they use in the home, and with the country’s factories shutting down, it’s great to see Americans who can make as well as buy.

Day’s designs are of the “filler” type, meaning the stitching has to be dense. The patterns are continuous, which means that the thread does not stop anywhere until it ends at the end of the quilt. There are simple patterns in this book, as well as some more complicated ones for the more advanced artist.

A quick look at her website tells me that she’s from Arkansas, her father had a woodshop, she dropped out of college to avoid debt (smart move) and did freelance sewing for a garment company. Piecework’s a bitch, I won’t argue with that one, but it’s the only alternative to outsourcing production to some third world country where they pay fifty cents an hour. Fed up, she started sewing her own stuff and now runs her own quilting classes.

Hopefully, Leah Day’s work will get wider attention, maybe a licensing deal. And if her quilts end up being mass-produced, I hope they’ll be made here in the USA, not in Pakistan.

Indoor Salad by Ginger Booth

Read carefully; this is NOT a book about preparing food, it’s about hydroponic farming in the home. Though hydroponic growing has gotten more attention since 2008, it’s been around far longer. Israeli farmers were using hydroponics in the 1960’s, not because they were ecologically conscious, but (a) they had to conserve water, and (b) they had to grow vegetables in sand. But unlike the massive hydroponic operations in Disney World or the Brooklyn Grange, this book is not about survival or profit. It’s about indoor hydroponics for personal use, and Ms. Booth keeps that in mind with regard to the budget.

The first thing hashed out by the author is that lettuce grows fastest, followed by cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplants. She begins with plants, followed by the lights, growing mediums (pumice, vermiculite, etc.) and projects that are easy to start. Everything rests on using the cheapest equipment; dome lamps, fluorescent bulbs, cardboard, tinfoil, and plastic cups for pots. This book does not encourage nor promote the $30 Topsy-Turvy tomato planter you see on TV. I tried using them back in 2009, and I promise you, they’re a waste of money and a waste of water!

Still, I would be cautious about indoor growing. The combination of fertilizer and uncirculated air can encourage salmonella to grow, and you don’t want to eat that! North facing windows give poor sunlight, making it hard to start seeds indoors. Grow lights can run you up a rather large electricity bill, more so if you use a fan to circulate the air. But if you’re just trying to start seeds indoors before planting them outside, then the use of a small fluorescent light won’t cost you much, and her tinfoil set up won’t cost you anything. I’ll give this book accolades for the economics alone.

Intermediate Public Economics

Economic study has always been the basis of civilization. Without it, we’d probably still get what we want (didn’t the early hominids manage to feed themselves?) but it would be impossible for governments to regulate commerce. This fine book on economic theory is primarily on the role that economics play in government function and vice versa, particularly on regulations. As a former social studies teacher, I’ve always told my students that civilization begins with money, not religion. If you want proof, look at the cities of Sumer; they didn’t build walls out of mud brick because it was sacred, they did it because they had no stone! Beginning with the section on analyzing policies, we’re directed from the Laissez Faire theory on to tax setting and globalization.

One of the best things about this book are the small details, the things most would consider footnotes. One such detail is the ATM, now commonplace worldwide. You might wonder what could possibly be the significance of such a thing in serious economic study, but it is of great importance. ATM’s are a way for banks to lure in customers, with the offer that one can use his banking card anywhere. The incentive for the bank is that it can charge a fee for withdrawals, offsetting the interest on accounts (and losses do to defaulted loans.) The bank can even charge fees to pay whatever tax the country charges.

Government intervention, another major issue in economics (or nuisance, if you’re a follower of Thomas Sowell) is discussed heavily here and well documented. We’re provided with a study of the different types of intervention, such as direct analysis and non-government ratings. The book doesn’t go into detail about specific ones, but I know of one, the famous Moody’s Bond Rating. My former boss at Oppenheimer (during a failed attempt to become a stockbroker) preferred Moody’s over any government-sponsored study. As time went on so did I, keeping in mind my own advice to my students on how it’s profit that builds civilization. But there are some positive measures taken by governments, such as anti-poverty efforts, including welfare. Using a chart of taxes in Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy, it charts poverty levels to that of the USA.

My only fault with this great book is that there are few strong cases studies, which I always like to see in the texts. I would have liked to see some of these wonderful theories in action, both in the USA and abroad. I also have one small fault with the comparison of European welfare and US poverty. The European states with successful welfare programs are relatively small and homogenous, as were those of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. But keep in mind that these countries had nowhere near the massive defense budget of the USA, so they could spend a greater percentage of tax revenue on welfare. There’s not enough study on how a country’s size dictates economic policy, nor is the issue of geography given much weight. Britain, Ireland, Taiwan, and Japan are island nations, and it’s easy for them to restrict imports and immigration. Italy and South Korea are peninsular, so they have only a small border with their neighbors. 

The Benefits of Marijuana by Joan Bello

The USA has a long history of solving problems by banning things, and it always makes the problem worse. In the 1920’s, it was alcohol, then in the 1950’s it was rock n’ roll (how else can you explain massive outbreaks of juvenile delinquency?) and mini skirts. After that, it was porno. In some states, it was snowboarding. Then it was tattooing. Now there’s a city in New Jersey that banned sagging pants. Some folks just never learn.

Marijuana is the subject of one of the longest bans on anything in the USA, and according to this book, the ban stems from a “comfort zone.” It seems that conservatives aren’t sure what would happen after it’s legalized, so they retreat to their corner and keep it illegal. They ignore the fact that the negative reports were greatly exaggerated and that the serious studies were highly positive.

Joan Bello’s book on this subject is extensive and thorough. She covers all the health benefits of marijuana, including its use as a replacement for alcohol. If the alcoholic is already depressed and drinks to forget his/her trouble, then they’re not going to just stop drinking outright. I agree that you need to be realistic about addiction, and sometimes you need to replace one addiction with another. Then of course there are the benefits of the herb when undergoing chemotherapy.

My only problems with the book are the writing style and the lack of case studies, except for a few stories about personal experiences. I also found the story about her son a little disturbing; she claims to have given marijuana to her son when he was six or eleven, and I would questions giving ANY intoxicant to a child of that age. I agree that marijuana is less risky than prescription drugs, but I would be wary of taking a child off anti-seizure medication in favor of marijuana.

The Moon Is Bread

I’m not going to go down the cliché highway by calling this a “culture clash” kind of story, but that’s what this is. An Ethiopian Jew ends up in Israel, falls for a British Jew, and their ways don’t jive. But it’s still an exciting story.

Abren (or Zafan, because in Ethiopia they have honorific names) survives the worst things in order to get to Israel in 1984, then finds himself living in concrete. Like all Ethiopian Jews that came to Israel at the time, he’s housed in an “absorption center” with apartments, communal dining areas, recreation areas, etc. Now that’s not to call it dingy, or even Spartan. The place is safe, clean, the food is good, they’re treated with respect, but it’s not home. In Ethiopia there was no nuclear family; everyone lived together. Now the families have their own apartments, but they’re not being taught the language or getting help finding jobs. Depression sets in.

I’m going to guess that while the Ethiopian Jews didn’t expect “a land flowing with milk and honey” (although there is in fact plenty of cheap milk and honey) they did expect assistance. They were used to a society where you could expect to be given room & board by whatever family you had. But in Israel, you were on you own. The Israelis expected that the new “olim” would go out and find jobs, move out of the absorption centers, and into their own apartments. That’s not what these people were used to. They were also faced with a problem that the Yemenites had back in the 1950’s, in that their customs were not recognized. The Chief Rabbi demanded that the Ethiopians convert to “proper” Judaism, and the Ethiopians said “who are you to say what is proper, we’ve been following the Torah for over a thousand years!”

On a positive note, there are many funny scenes in the book, and most are about food. Abren and another Ethiopian are walking while eating falafel (a big no-no back home, you don’t eat while walking) and two boys say “you like it here in Israel, there is lots of food, yes?” He and his friend start laughing because back in Ethiopia, those boys would’ve been fed a massive meal if they’d showed up. Hospitality is very important in traditional societies. The diet is different as well, because Ethiopian cuisine is mostly meat, dairy, and bread, while Israelis want a whole Middle Eastern smorgasbord of salads, rice, beans, couscous, eggs, meats, cheeses, etc. He serves his British girlfriend a salad and says “back home, this is what we fed to cattle!”

One of the main differences between the Ethiopian Jew and the British Jew in this book is the way they view hospitality. In Ethiopia you’re expected to open your home to whatever relatives show up, and don’t expect them to call you in advance! Saying “darn, now’s not a good time, I got company” isn’t acceptable. If your second cousin whom you haven’t seen in 20 years shows up, you have to put him up. The same thing happens in the book Migrations Of The Heart, where the African-American woman can’t adjust to Nigerian life. She wants her husband to spend more money on her and their son, and he’s like “my nephew needs schoolbooks, refusing to help would be unforgivable.”

This is one of many great books about African versus European customs. It ranks alongside Season of Migration to the North, An African in Greenland, We Won’t Budge, Ayah, and Migrations of the Heart.

The Donation of Constantine by Simon LeVay

You can tell the author is a bit of a comedian. It begins with a starving city falling to the invaders, and they bring out the governor of the city, alive. What does he do? He commands that the invaders leave! The sardonically humorous barbarian invader listens politely, then kills the governor.

The Donation of Constantine is a fine work of historical fiction. Much of it consists of dialogue between characters, some fictional, some real life. It portrays Pope Stephen II as a conflicted individual, often wondering if he is of any value with regard to his office as head of the church. My only problem with this book is that those who are unfamiliar with the topic of the Byzantine Empire may find this book confusing. Unfortunately, there isn’t much written about the Byzantine Empire with regards to the middle ages, while there was a whole lot going on in Catholic Europe. 

Gilgamesh by Bernarda Bryson

The story of Gilgamesh is certainly a strange one. He’s the king of a Mesopotamian city, who refuses to advances of a goddess or priestess, kills the mythical beasts sent by the gods to punish him for his insolence, and comes across a wild man named Enkidu out in the woods. As for Enkidu, he’s a wild man who acts as a foil to the more civilized Gilgamesh, even though they become best of friends.

Regardless of the legend, Bernarda Bryson’s version is wonderful. She write the story very simply, without too many long words to complicate things and bore the reader. Since the original story was written in Sumerian cuneiform, it doesn’t make much sense to write the English translation with Shakespearean levels of prose, and this version is perfect for kids. The illustrations are wonderful too. They follow the style of the original clay tablets on which the legend was documented, without all the over-the-top bombardment of a lot of today’s children’s books.

Tools Are Made, Born Are Hands

Jim Wills’ book on wood-fired bread is more than a cookbook. I begins with the history and technology of wood-fired ovens, with photos of the ancient ovens uncovered in Pompeii. Following the history of the bread oven are step-by-step examples, like Portuguese bread, French bread, and pizza. My favorite recipe was the Molino Caputo Tipo pizza, which has a relatively simple dough, only needs to be kneaded once. He give the recipe for a simple tomato sauce, then recommends lifting the edges to make a “rim” so the sauce doesn’t run off. He also recommends imported Italian flour, which has more elasticity than American flour and won’t “spring back” after you roll it. My only problem is that he doesn’t say much about the use of cheese. However, he more than makes up for it in his guide to preparing the dough.

Instructions for building wood-fired ovens are given too, but I won’t go into that. It would change the purpose of this review from fragrant hunger-inducing bread to Bob Villa “build it yourself” territory which deserves its own book (come on now, what kind of self-respecting backyard handyman can live without his own brick pizza oven?) and would take up too much room. For all you doomsday preppers out there, this book will come in handy when the truckers call a strike and the “fresh” rolls from the bread factory don’t arrive at the local A&P. He also goes into the scientific part, and explains, with photos, how a proper brick oven uses a limited amount of wood and conserves heat. This would have to have been the case with the ancient ovens in Pompeii, because firewood was valuable in Italy.

I’ve been baking my own bread now for about 4 years, and I got all my recipes online. But if I’d had this book, it would’ve been a lot easier and a bit more fun. It’s not that I’m looking to have my own “Bread Boss” reality TV show, it’s just that the bread in my neighborhood stinks (or costs $4 a loaf) and I have no choice but to make my own. The best bread I’ve had in this city came from Caputo’s in Brooklyn, and since I can’t cycle 8 miles in each direction just for a loaf of bread, this book will suffice.

So get yourself some bricks and cement, build yourself an oven, and bake your own. Ignore modern technology, the Romans were baking bread long before electricity, and their ovens survived the destruction of Mount Vesuvius. Occasionally, archeologists find that the actual loaves of bread survived too!

The Mindful Attraction Plan by Athol Kay

“Money can be anything you want it to be,” says Athol Kay in his book about relationships. It can create a sense of security and put you at ease. Lack of money isn’t good, but debt, he says, is worse.

Kay puts everything into colors; green means “go,” yellow means “push harder or quit,” and red means “stop altogether.” One example of a relationship problem is the “uneven” one, where one partner is hotter than the other. If the woman is a perfect 10 and they guy is a 6, then the woman can snap her fingers and expect to get what she wants. If not, she just dumps that guy for another one that will kowtow to her. Rude? Sure. But tell me, what kind of woman wouldn’t do that if she were totally hot? It’s the same thing if the guy has movie star looks and the woman doesn’t. It’ll be a “my way or the highway” kind of relationship, and there’s always the chance that the better looking one will think “I can do better.” Color code? Yellow! This is the point where you change or stop.

I’ll give this book high marks because, because it’s funny. Why is it funny? It brings to light the kind of relationship problems that are funny because they are ridiculous. If the women outnumber the men by 4 to 1, then the women are going to be desperate. Take for example the strange (and often humorous) phenomena of Ukrainian women marrying fat ugly American guys. There are more women than men in that country, so competition for dates is fierce. If a guy can pick and choose freely, what is he going to pick? Probably the sexiest blue-eyed blonde. But in a place like Anchorage, Alaska, it’s the other way around. The men outnumber the women, so the fattest, ugliest woman can sit back can sit back, and tell the guys “line up with your wallets out.” If a Ukrainian woman ends up in Anchorage, chances are she’ll have the time of her life.

Some of the topics in this book are similar to Steve Harvey’s relationship guide “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.” He stresses avoiding men who have too much choice, and lowering certain standards, like salary and height requirements (6”3 and $100,000 a year really shrinks the dating pool.)

How to Change Your Drinking

I’ve reviewed books about addiction and recovery, but this is the first one I read that’s 100% practical. The author, Kenneth Anderson, doesn’t squirm away from methods that might seem too radical, such as marijuana maintenance as a replacement for alcohol. Damage control, pacing yourself, dealing with friends who drink, they’re all covered here. There’s also a section on hangover cures in different lands, and most of them involve salt; kimchee in Korea, borscht in Russia, pickled cabbage in China.

My favorite part of the book was the chapter on risk assessment. The author provides charts that the reader can fill in to determine how much risk there is in his drinking. The risks can include drunk dialing, drunk driving, cooking fires, operating machinery while drunk, shooting a firearm while drunk. In the next column, you plot your method of prevention. Will you leave the car at home? Leave the cell phone at home? Limit yourself to one drink? If you need to refuse a drink and the host insists, do you say you’re in recovery, on a diet, doctor’s orders, or get up and leave?

Anderson doesn’t ignore the facts. He know that breaking a habit is a massive undertaking, no matter how much you want to quit.

Cold Case Christianity

J. Warner Wallace, ex-cop and lifelong atheist, uses his detective skills to puzzle out the truth (or lack of it) in the story of Jesus. First off, did Jesus die on the cross or was he just comatose? If so, that would explain his empty tomb. When stabbed on the cross, blood flowed, yet according to this detective, blood flow slows at the point of death. But would the guards have allowed him off the cross if he were still alive? Why is he not portrayed with purple skin, like other dead people? When portrayed in the resurrection, he doesn’t look wounded. If the crucifixion was as brutal as described, survival would’ve been impossible.

Wallace devotes a chapter to the “witness” problem. Two eyewitnesses in a murder case can have different accounts based on their previous experiences. A 23 year old and a 38 year old will focus on different things in the same scene, such as details in appearance. A younger witness might notice facial expressions, while the elder might focus on clothing. This may not seem relevant, but keep in mind that in the Gospels the accounts of Jesus are all different. Thomas was skeptical about Jesus coming back after death, and Judas’ account would be suspect. Yet the Gospels of Thomas and Judas were lost until 1945, when they were unearthed in Egypt (the infamous Nag Hamadi library.) The Gospel of Thomas focuses more on Jesus’ actual words, and makes no mention of the resurrection.

I applaud Wallace’s efforts in using his detective skills to solve the mystery of Jesus, yet there are shortcomings. If Jesus was a Jew, why did he give Simon the Greek name “Peter,” which comes from the Greek “Petrus” meaning “rock?” As for Thomas, his name comes from the Greek “Dydmus” meaning “twin,” so who was he a twin of? Bartholomew comes from the Aramaic “Bar Talmay,” and could this be the same as “Ptolemy?” If so, was Bartholomew an Egyptian and not a Jew? As for Jesus, his appearance in artwork is open to debate. If Jesus looked so distinctive, why did Judas have to kiss him to identify him? If Saint Paul decried long hair on men, why would Jesus wear his hair like that? Why is he portrayed without his beard in early Christian mosaics? In the Roman catacombs, why is Jesus portrayed like the god Apollo?

I’m not going to give too much of this book away, but it is definitely a fun book to read, especially if you’re into detective stories.

Sous Vide Series: Help For The Busy Cook and Beginning Sous Vide Recipes

Jason Logsdon does for slow cooking what Julia Child did for French cooking; he makes it simpler for the intimidated American, and for the American skeptic, he makes it practical. Like Julia Child he’s not looking to train chefs, but to give the average home cook a greater variety of cuisine.

In Beginning Sous Vide he stresses prep work, such as preheating the oven, proper marinades, seasonings, and temperatures. For example, in the corned beef and cabbage recipe he uses a sous vide pouch for slow-cooking the meat over 24-48 hours. The cabbage is simply boiled in the stock, because cabbage cooks fast. As with most sous vide recipes the meat takes a long time to cook, but the benefit is that it won’t dry out.

In Help For The Busy Cook, Logsdon extends his instruction to other cuts of meat like steaks and lamb. There’s a lot you can get away with in these recipes, because sous vide allows you to use dry store-bought spices rather than fresh ones. Since the meats are cooked slow, there are fewer last-minute troubles to be expected. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family, I remember my mother throwing brisket cubes, hard boiled eggs, barley, beans, and potatoes into the Crock Pot and letting is turn to mush overnight. The stew was called “cholent” and it was a cheap way to feed the massive number of guests we often had on Saturdays. If we had to serve good cuts of meat, the meal would’ve cost us hundreds of dollars and necessitated a massive load of cooking.

As for the salads, you make those at the last minute. And don’t add dressing until you’re ready to bring it out. Otherwise it gets greasy.

A Foreign Kingdom

It’s hard to imagine America’s model religious group being so despised. The cover of this book portrays the Mormons as hookah-smoking Arabs with scantily clad harems, despite the Mormons’ policy of no alcohol and no smokes. There was anti-Mormon sentiment in the 1800’s, but the Mormons were largely unaffected by it. Since they lived in Utah, which was half a continent away from Washington, there wasn’t much that the Federal government would do.

Christina Talbot has written this extensively researched and thorough work as a history of the USA’s attitude towards the Mormons in the 1800’s. She portrays them as undermining sexist attitudes of the time by allowing women to have more of a say in community affairs. She also postulates that polygamy was the result of a gender imbalance; there were more women than men in the community, so competition for husbands was fierce. Without polygamy, the women would have to settle for less decent men.

In the cover cartoon, we see that divorce was also an issue. At the time, men couldn’t divorce their wives if the marriage was unhappy, so the norm was to cheat (or get a hooker and give your wife an STD.) Harper’s weekly had a cartoon that portrayed women migrating to the USA as cooks and maids, which was the norm for women who travelled to the USA alone. But what about educated women who wanted careers and families at the same time? It didn’t work that way; a woman couldn’t have a career and a family of her own. It just didn’t work that way. Most women who had careers (usually teachers or nurses) ended up as old maids.

Mr. Unavailable and the Fallback Girl

Natalie Lue says that women who end up with workaholics and commitment phobics are simply desperate. Desperation on the part of the woman is what leads to her ending up with bad men, and that’s where “Mr. Unavailable” comes in. She divides it into 11 categories of relationships, each progressively worse. First comes the casual one, where both avoid commitment, aka “mutually beneficial” or “friends with benefits.” Then you have the “boomerang” relationship, where one leaves and returns constantly, and the other keeps taking him/her back. Next come the “affairs” where they both cheat on each other, often out of rebellion, and right on down to abusive relationships.

The solution here is simple. Worry more about yourself than pleasing others. Start by trying to make yourself happy before you think about making your significant other happy, and as I expected Lue to say, ditch the alcohol. If you can’t find the man you want, change your expectations.

Similar issues were covered in Bernie Mac’s book “Act Like a Woman, Think Like a Man.” He says “if you make $100,000 a year, does he have to make that kind of money?” As for looks, he says “does he have to be a six feet tall?” Much of the problem discussed in both books has to do with excessively high standards. If you can’t accept a man who has less education and makes less money, then you’re limiting the eligibility pool.

What HIT Me?

Genny Masterman says that Histamine Intolerance is a collection of reactions to food. Unlike allergies, which usually cause rashes, this syndrome can lead to migraines and general feeling of discomfort. The author places the source of trouble on foods like cheese, wine, vinegar, and salamis. Her reason is simple; these foods rely on fermentation, and that creates bacteria and the chemicals they generate.

Masterman suggests throwing away anything that’s been in the refrigerator too long. That way the food will not ferment and trigger your histamine intolerance. Poultry should be bought fresh and cooked soon. Meat you can leave in the refrigerator longer because it decays slower, but when eating cured meat, you may have a problem.

It seems that much of the histamine problem has to do with all the other health issues that plague Americans, British, and Europeans today. We’ve come to rely on processed foods that are full of sodium, and that doesn’t help, regardless of your health. Things like cheese and bread are staples, and since they rely on fermentation in some way or another, it can be a problem.

Dark Matter

The art world is not what it was back in 2000. The author of this book blames it on the internet ruining everyone’s desire to get out and see things. Real estate values don’t help either when it comes to art. In the chapter Glut, Overproduction, and Redundancy he portrays Soho as a former artist colony with dirt cheap rents, forced to change thanks to a rise in the value of Manhattan’s buildings. In the 1990’s the art galleries moved to Chelsea, and by 1997 it was already getting expensive. No artist can live there now!

Studio space has migrated away to Brooklyn, so the actual artist studios are no longer anywhere near the physical art world. It’s the same thing with Europe; a lot of the work in the Venice Biennial is made in Berlin. London had artists working in run-down neighborhoods too, and there it was even more extreme. Here in the USA we had Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Morgan, Chase, Cooper, Hewitt, Pratt, Whitney, Ford, and Dupont sponsoring all the museums. But in Britain you didn’t have all the millionaires with their museums, so the artists had to hustle even more. The average British artist took the cheapest rent he could, so you had artists and musicians working in London’s East India docks long before it became “The Docklands.” Nowadays there’s no way an artist could afford to work on the waterfront. Same thing with Notting Hill.

But there is hope. Groups like “Not an Alternative” are using abandoned buildings, and there’s the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space in the East Village. In the last decade, art seems to have moved from a display-for-profit approach to an activist approach, and perhaps that’s just as good. You can’t use art to mock big business if your sponsor is a big business. That’s like biting the hand that feeds you. Back in the Great Depression, there were still wealthy industrialists who sponsored artists despite the lack of revenue. But today, it’s over. The biggest spenders have lost everything. Even the well-endowed museums have lost their savings. Perhaps in this decade, the art will truly come from within, not motivated by money?

Dying Sahara

In 1991 I did a school project on the Sahel (the edge of the Sahara) which at the time was being deforested. Thanks to an information packet from Save The Children, I learned about a Taureg who was trying to learn modern ways in order to save his tribe. He may not have had any education, but he had foresight; he knew the grazing lands were disappearing, and their goats were there main source of wealth. The man’s name was El Mahloud, and I often wonder what became of him.

Since 2007, the Niger government has been killing the Toureg, who at the time were mostly unarmed. Starting in the 1990’s, Algeria’s Baath regime was fighting Islamist rebels in the south, and after that ended, there was a population explosion, grazing lands became scarce, and you had conflict. One important thing to remember about African conflict is that the borders never took into account the tribes that lived within them. When the nomadic peoples were stopped from crossing the borders, they ended up in conflict over where to graze their animals. At first, nobody cared. Then the mining companies found minerals in the desert, and that brought them into conflict with the people living there. Finally, the Al-Queda started courting the Toureg, and all hell broke loose.

The Sahara might never have become a divisive area if nobody were drilling for oil. But with oil prices rising, any place with oil looks attractive, and no corrupt government will refuse mining and drilling rights. In a country like Niger, all that the oil company has to do is say “get rid of those local tribes for me”, and the army will happily oblige. They’ll use soldiers from a different tribe, so nobody will feel guilty. But the Toureg know the terrain better than others, so they’re able to make quick raids. With Al-Queda supplying them with firearms and vehicles, their efforts can multiply.

Dying Sahara doesn’t say it outright, but a lot of the blame falls on the army. In Africa (as in most of the developing nations) the officers are pampered playboys, and the soldiers are underpaid peasants. Everyone’s making money through bribes or looting, and the soldiers aren’t motivated to meet the enemy head-on. Niger’s army has one officer who went to a US military school, but that’s it. Against Al-Queda backed rebels, Niger’s army probably has little hope.

Confessions of a Scholarship Winner

Let’s face it, college is expensive. You’ve got tuition, room & Board, books, and for the average American 18 year old, throw in stereos, laptops, iPads, and eating out. It’s like being a high school kid with total freedom and no supervision. But how do you pay for it?

Kristina Ellis has written this book about paying for college on her own. She lost her father at an early age, but also started working at an early age. When she was 14 her mother told her “I can’t pay for you to go to college, you’ll have to pay for it yourself.” At least she had the warning four years in advance. She outlines the different ways to pay-financial aid, scholarships, loans. The problem is that the big ticket colleges like NYU and Ivy League have high costs and low aid. Smaller ones have lower cost and higher aid. As for grades, Ellis wasn’t top-drawer, so getting a $100,000 scholarship was unlikely. But there were lots of small ones. The schools also want to see motivation, so extra-curricular activities are important for the resume.

There are some faults with this book. First off, I don’t know for sure how much of this is true. Her mother may have given her some money, because unless you’re on full scholarship, you’ll have to pay a few things out of pocket. Secondly, if this book were written by an economist, then the advice would probably be to attend a local junior college and commute from home. Perhaps you’d be advised to get a two year degree in nursing or paralegal studies, work for a year, then complete the four year degree. It’s certainly cheaper than taking out a loan. As for the loans, too many students are dazzled by big, prestigious colleges, and with their huge price tags, there’s no choice but to borrow. You get tempted by big dreams, and when it’s all over you wake up with a hangover. Getting a two year nursing degree and going straight to work might be the better option. It’s not cool, but you won’t spend your life paying back a debt.

Maybe it’s like Josephine Baker once said, “the only way to make your dream come true is to wake up from it.”

Goodbye to All That

Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today, and unlike the song New York, New York, I don’t mean leaving for the city, but leaving the city! Goodbye to All That is a rare treat; writers who pull up the stakes and leave New York. We all love the “bright lights, big city” theme of The Devil Wears Prada, where a starry-eyed yokel gets swamped by the arts-food-fashion culture of the place. But here it’s the other way around; the hip New York writers get sick of the city, pack their bags, and leave. They abandon the Big Apple for cute small towns, hip college towns, New England fishing towns, and sad to say, some boring subdivisions too. But all is not lost. A lot of them move back.

Mira Ptacin is one example; she and her husband leave because it’s too expensive and they can’t stand the crowds, or the noise, or bureaucracy, or the high rents, or the rudeness, or the distractions. If your list of gripes is that big, well then you’re not cut out to live here. The part where she says “you shouldn’t interpret direct and efficient communication as rudeness,” reminds me of the last time I was in Vermont. I got weird looks from everyone, but hey, New Yorkers talk fast, what can I do? If you think my speech sounds terse, you should see the Italians in the East Bronx.

But seriously, folks, this woman’s from Maine, which isn’t known for lightning-fast speech and the “come on, move” attitude of the New York sidewalk.  It’s no surprise that after five years she calls it quits, moves back to Maine, and loves it there.  But that doesn’t mean they all leave permanently. Melissa Febos (author of Whip Smart) moves to a college town for her job, but it doesn’t have all the excitement of the city. In her case, breaking up with her girlfriend is the spur to move back, because she has no other connection to the town. Living in the city can also distract you from personal troubles; you don’t think about your problems as much while walking down a noisy street. Since most New Yorkers have tiny apartments, we’re less likely to stay indoors much, and without cars, we have no choice but to walk.

There’s always been this feeling in the USA, that to be a writer you have to move to New York, and only New York, not Boston, Philadelphia, or San Francisco, they just don’t seem to have the writer’s reputation (though Chicago does, sort of.)  Then again, maybe that’s not true; Stephen King didn’t write in New York, neither did Hunter Thompson, Robert. E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft (except a stint in Brooklyn which he didn’t like), Pat Conroy, William Falkner or John Grisham (hey, this list is getting long) and none of their works have anything to do with New York (with the exception of Lovecraft’s Red Hook Horror.) Oh, and don’t forget M.R. Kingston, author of The Yearling, because somehow I don’t think she could’ve written about the Florida swamps if she lived in Greenwich Village!  Maybe leaving the city isn’t so bad for a writer?

But this collection of essays, it’s something that we don’t see often. Few would write about leaving the city, because it doesn’t happen much. Traditionally, New Yorkers left the city if they felt they couldn’t raise kids here, which is exactly what happened to my parents in the late 1970’s. But the writers who contributed to this book don’t all have kids, so there are other reasons for the moves. Like I mentioned before, some left because of high rents, others left because they just weren’t meant for city life.

Maybe this book is indicative of the average American. Unlike the English nobility, with their “family estates,” Americans change addresses all the time, therefore leaving the city may not be such a radical step. So have a go at this hip collection of essays from Seal Press, and watch these women writers bid a tearful farewell to the city that never sleeps. Like the song goes, if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.

How to Survive 2012

If the core stops spinning, as this book predicts, we won’t have some $6billion machine to drill its way to the center of the earth and set off a bomb that will start the “earth engine” again. The $6billion drill won’t be built in six weeks, and unlike in the movie, there won’t be a hot pocket and twinky guzzling computer geek to hack the planet. If anybody would hack the planet, there wouldn’t be any need for the $6billion machine.

You want proof of an impending catastrophe? The author quotes Native American lore of the Great Flood. You want natural evidence? River sediment has been found on mountaintops. We know that when the Ice Age ended, the melting glaciers brought floods. When we had changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, we got super-powerful lightening. What else could’ve baked the dinosaur footprints rock-hard?

We’ve had massive catastrophes before, like the Black Death which killed half of Europe and Asia. Not only did it leave cities and towns empty, but it caused a massive drop in the price of goods worldwide. There was, however, a benefit to the Black Death; according to Simon Schama’s History of Britain, the sudden death of the nobility allowed peasants to buy land dirt cheap, and it was the beginning of Britain’s new upper class! For the Jews of Germany, it didn’t turn out so well. The plague-proof Jews (they were the only ones who bathed once a week) were accused of causing the plague and persecution got worse.

In 1783, volcanic gases killed all the livestock in Iceland, and there was no more beef for the blondes. Grass died, trees died, crops died, and as you guessed, it, no food! At least the fish survived (hello Cod Wars) until the same thing happened again in 1902 in Martinique. This time around, everyone died from the gas, and all the buildings were destroyed. The only guy to survive was a criminal awaiting execution in his bunker-like cell.

The best thing about this book is that Patrick Geryl uses lots of practical suggestions, no far out stuff. He talks about how unsinkable boats mean life or death in a flood. Well do any of you remember New Orleans in 2005? The NY Times warned of this in 2002, but did anybody listen? How many homeowners in that city had inflatable rubber rafts? You have to be crazy to live in a flood zone if you’re not prepared. Look what happed to New York City and the New Jersey coast in 2012?

Ever since the NYC Blackout of 2003, I’ve always kept flashlight and batteries handy. I have non-perishable food stored in a waterproof container. I live in a neighborhood that’s high above sea level. I won’t be ready for a zombie invasion, but it’s a start.

The Myth of Liberal Ascendency

G. William Domhoff’s The Myth of Liberal Ascendency is a book about how businesses play a huge role in US policy. The idea of businesses controlling a nation is nothing new, and there are many other books on the topic. This book, however, is weak in its writing, with endless citations of US government committees, and there are no case studies to be seen. It is not an interesting read, nor is it informative or thought-provoking.

Chapter Two of this book is an endless list of taxes in the 20^th century, with no information on the public response. On page 25 Domhoff says that it was corporate leaders who wanted Roosevelt to regulate the stock market, but this isn’t necessarily true, nor does the author cite the source. He continues to cite every single committee, law, commission, and investigative board, without giving any names of the people involved. I would like to at least know the names of the Senators and Congressmen who were on these committees, and it wouldn’t hurt to give stronger background on the events that led up to these laws the author mentions.  When he discusses the relationship between the labor unions, the industries, and the government, he cites no names or cases here either. This disappointed me, because I wanted to know more about how the US government dealt with unions in the war industries. There must have been some kind of arrangement, because the merchant marine, shipyards, and aircraft plants could not have afforded a strike. But there’s no mention of this.

On page 77, Domhoff says that the Federal Housing Authority started an 800,000 unit affordable housing program, but it was used to expand commercial real estate. If this is true, then where did it happen? Who was involved? The author does not even give the who-what-when-where-how-why that elementary school students are told to put in their current events homework! Furthermore, he mentions nothing about Levittown in this chapter, and that would definitely have been a great example of the business-government relationship in post-WW2 USA. William Levitt must have had some arrangement with the government concerning the licenses, building permits, and sewer lines, plus he had to have arranged something with the banks to cover the mortgages. Since he had no known disputes with the labor unions, he must’ve had an arrangement with them too.

I would not recommend this book for anyone. It has no value to anyone studying business, history, economics, government, or public policy. There is little practical evidence (names, places, specific cases) to prove the author’s point. If you are interested in how businesses and the government work together and/or control each other, I recommend Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal.

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolfe

Years ago, a parent came into my classroom and handed out fliers for his missing kid. Now this guy was big and intimidating, and he was clearly very angry, so I thought to myself “okay, he’s pissed off that his kid’s run away.” Not unreasonable, it can be stressful tracking down a runaway. But if he really wanted to find the boy, why did he give me such a blurry photo?

Tobias Wolfe’s memoir was no surprise to me. I can’t even say “shocked but not surprised” but I was neither shocked nor surprised. I’ve seen families where the father is an abusive drill sergeant and the mother is completely spineless. The kids always end up angry, sometimes getting into mischief. But This Boy’s Life takes place in the early 60’s, and not only was Tobias (he calls himself “Jack” in his youth) dealing with a brute stepfather and coward of a mother, but he was also dealing with a lack of rights. It was an era when a man wouldn’t get jail time for beating his stepson and stealing the kid’s money.

The plot isn’t complicated; parents split, father keeps the older brother, mother takes “Jack” to Utah, then Washington State, hooks up with a brute named Dwight, things get rough. But there’s no self-indulgence here, no self-pity or “I had a horrible life” attitude. I expect that after living a life where you can’t rely on adult authority figures, you learn to do more on your own. And he definitely does a lot on his own; paper routes, work, forging his report card so he can get into boarding school. He does it all by himself. When he finds out that his stepfather has stolen his money, he makes one last dash to get revenge; he sneaks back into the house, steals Dwight’s guns, and pawns them. This had to be the best part of the book.

Back when I was 13, I was in a bible study class and we got to the part where the Jews say “let’s go back to Egypt, I miss the food, I miss the melons, I miss the onions.” The teacher said to us “we learn a lesson here, don’t dream of the past, it was never as good as you remember.” When I disagreed, he said “Ben, we didn’t have to lock our doors when I was your age, because we had nothing to steal!” As for this book, maybe the message is “the past sucks” and we shouldn’t look back? Perhaps this book is an anti-tribute to the Eisenhower-Kennedy era? It certainly makes life in the 50’s and 60’s look horrible; women had no rights, kids had no rights, men controlled the family finances, kids had no advocates, nobody ever believed a kid who said he was being abused.

This is why I never believed Michael Jackson when he said “I was robbed of my childhood.” I would say “childhood sucks Michael, you didn’t miss anything!”

The Poor Among Us by Ralph Da Costa Nunez

There used to be a weird law in New York City; no person of the Hebrew faith could take charity from a Christian, they could only be a burden to their own people. Peter Stuyvesant made that law in the Colonial era, because he didn’t want Spanish Jewish refugees from Brazil coming in (he didn’t like any other minority, for that matter) and becoming parasites (New Amsterdam had its share of layabouts.) Few Jews complained, they did okay without Christian handouts. But keep in mind that that Jewish people, in any city worldwide, have a network of mutual support and benevolent societies. A lot of people do not.

Ralph Da Costa Nunez, a Columbia University professor, has written The Poor Among Us as a history book about New York City, but specifically about how we take care of the poor. He divides it into general eras; the Colonial days, the industrial age, post US Civil War, the progressive era, the Depression, post WW2, and so on. With each age in our history, he shows how poverty reflected the economics of the time. Take for instance in the 1700’s, it was the churches that were empowered to remove children from their families. There were poor families, of that there’s no doubt, but there were not as many. Irish immigration hadn’t yet swamped the city, and even after it did, there were still jobs. Today there’s NYCHA, homeless shelters, and food stamps, but in the 1700’s, it was unheard of. Where would the colony have gotten the money to pay for it?

In the chapter on Catholic and Jewish charities, I could see another comparison between the ages. The Jewish and Catholic orphan societies weren’t based on altruism as much as avoiding embarrassment. The established Jews and Irish didn’t want the new arrivals to create an image of backwardness, so they said “we’ll pay for their education,” and the effort altogether worked. The kids got regular classes, plus job training, and it worked so well because there were jobs for printers, shoemakers, dressmakers, tailors, etc. But today, it won’t work. The industries are gone, and shoes and dresses are made in China. Take for example the animator Ralph Bakshi; he went to the High School of Art and Design, learned cartooning, and got a job in animation. But today animation is computerized, and there are fewer jobs in the field. That high school served a purpose in that it supplied people for jobs in commercial art, but that’s no longer the case. There’s less demand now for commercial illustrators.

This book is well-researched, and I applaud the massive number of primary sources that he managed to locate. I also appreciate how he doesn’t blame the government or racism for everything. Most of the blame falls on economics, and when government is blamed, it’s usually for lack of foresight. New York City never considered what would happen if the jobs vanished from the garment district, nor did they consider the effect of rising heating costs. For the last decade the city never considered the effect of a power outage in the Metro North railway and….oh wait, they had a power shutdown in 2013! People couldn’t get to work. But didn’t we have a transit strike in 2005? Right before Christmas? Do I recall huge traffic snarls that made the Queens-Manhattan drive a two hours slog?

I don’t necessarily agree with those fanatics who say we should “prepare for doomsday,” but I do think we need to be ready for a transit strike, garbage strike, school bus driver strike, rising fuel cost, etc. All these things will come down hard on the families that already struggle. Then again, politicians never really learn from mistakes, now do they?

Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Getting Started

This book isn’t so much about cooking as it is about chemistry. The author begins by defending the use of artificial ingredients, and extolling their benefits in culinary art. Though I’ll never be president of the store-bought sauce fan club, I agree that there is something good about them. First off, some of them do taste mighty good. Secondly, even in the fanciest restaurants, I bet the chef uses them under the table. Thirdly, as the author makes very clear, xanthium gum is in fact a plant extract. So I wouldn’t go crazy in calling the ingredients “artificial.”

Logsdon proceeds to give detailed instructions for making the “artificial” ingredients, thought they’re not really artificial since you’ll be making them by hand. He covers, gels, foams, emulsification, and even a recipe for a caviar made from chili peppers! But for those of you looking for something simple, there’s a recipe for making marshmallows. They won’t look exactly like the ones you buy in the store, because they’re not made by machine. But they’ll still taste like marshmallows.

Regardless of the health aspect, the foods covered here are far healthier than anything you buy in the store. None of the recipes in this book involve preservatives.

White Girl Bleed A Lot

Colin Flaherty has done an excellent job in this chronicle of racial violence. He cites cases in most US cities, involving theft, assault, murder, and witness intimidation, but the main concern of this book is mass assault. For the past several years we’ve had innumerable instances where dozens of black teenagers rampage through shopping malls, train stations, and parks, beating and robbing people at random. We know it from the news media as the “knockdown game” and it’s becoming a serious problem in the USA.

The main concern of the author is that race plays a huge part in this. He believes that since 95% of the gang assaults are the work of black teens, it must be the result of either corrupt and lazy black leaders, or race-conscious reporters. He gives an example in Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia and his reaction to these mass assaults. First he openly criticized the attackers, then the next time round he changed his attitude. Flaherty accuses him of being afraid to criticize his own people, either out of resentment, or because he’s afraid of pissing off his angry low-class constituents. The news media Flaherty also accuses in this problem, citing them as being more concerned with appearing liberal (unless you’re tuning into Sean Hannity) in order to avoid accusations of racism, than in reporting honestly.

There is, however, a positive window of hope. He devotes a chapter titled “Granny Get Your Gun” to people who fight back. In states like Florida, Michigan, and Texas, there have been citizens who shot their attackers and saved themselves. In another state, some boys approached an old man and said “we want your wallet.” His response? He took off his glasses, said “well you can’t have it” and fought back. I think this man may have saved the lives of those boys, because risk-takers don’t learn until their luck runs out. His punches to their faces may keep them out of jail. There’s also (not mentioned in the book) the Hasidic private security patrols in Brooklyn, formed after the Crown Heights riots in 1991. Fed up with the lack of police protection, the locals started their own. This was 20 years before the so-called knockdown game became a catchword, but assaults just like it were commonplace. When black boys did it to each other, it was because they were being stupid angry kids. When black boys did it to Hasidic Jews, it was definitely racially motivated.

I have to wonder myself if the “knockdown game” is the result of racial hatred, or simply the result of people tolerating bad behavior from the lower classes. Black communities have been dealing with gang assaults for years, and nobody panicked. Most shooting victims in the inner cities are black and/or Hispanic, and I rarely hear of white people being randomly shot in their own neighborhoods. But it does seem that there is an increase in the number of black boys and girls mobbing and beating whites. If it’s not about race and/or class, could it be the result of weak law enforcement? I fear that both are possibilities.

Ten years ago, Britain had a problem like this; it was called “happy slap,” where teens would randomly hit strangers (or all ages and races) and film it with their cellphone cameras. There were headlines in the paper “Happy Slap Them Straight to Jail” after one such incident caused an old lady to fall, hit her head, and have a stroke. Most of the “slappers” were white kids, and my theory is that the British legal system tolerates crap from lower class people. Their idea is “well that’s how they behave and that’s what we expect from them.”

Back when I was a kid, we had a boy in my school who was always fighting with everyone, very confrontational and angry. My mother’s response was “he’s unhappy, and he doesn’t have all the good things you have, and a mature person doesn’t start up with him.” What she really meant was “he’s from the lower classes, that’s how they behave, the principal doesn’t want to discipline him because he feels sorry for him, and it’ll be too much trouble for me to do anything, so just tough it out.” To this day I consider my mother a coward.

I give kudos to Flaherty for taking the American liberals to task over the return of racial violence. Newspapers in NYC are now omitting the race of the perpetrators when they report crime, and they’re doing it because they’re afraid to be accused of race. My only criticism of Flaherty is that he doesn’t place enough blame on weak law enforcement, lazy judges, or cowardly business people. I say weak law enforcement it a problem, because if the police can’t respond quickly to one assault, how will they respond to a gang of 80? I say lazy judges, because too many of them give short sentences for major assaults, rather than giving the teen 100 hours of community service and making him do it on weekends and school holidays. I blame cowardly business people who won’t even try to throw out disruptive customers, not because they’re afraid for their safety, but because they’re afraid of lawsuits.

I blame President Obama for a lot of this. He’s the nation’s top cop, and if you disagree, look at the constitution of the USA. It says his job is to “carry out the laws, enforce the laws, oversee defense and security of the nation, and oversee Federal property.” But Obama hasn’t been carrying out the law. He did nothing about the Black Panthers in Philadelphia who stood outside the polling stations armed with nightsticks. He did nothing about Mormon Polygamists who traffic underage girls across state lines. He’s done nothing about marijuana growers in the national parks, cross-border drug dealing, foreclosure abuse, or food stamp fraud. If the president won’t do his law-enforcement duties, what does that tell young people?

Back in September 2013, a gang of bikers chased a driver, dragged him from his car, and beat him while his wife and child looked on in horror. Now what race were the bikers? That’s right, they were black (with one Italian American thrown in.) Even the Hell’s Angels wouldn’t have done anything remotely like this. But if I were the driver of that car, I would’ve panicked and run over the entire gang. Fear is a powerful weapon, it tells you when you’re in danger, and when you’re in danger you may have to fight back.

Food, Family, and the Friars

First off, let me admit my mistake. I thought “Friars” had to do with the Friars Club in Manhattan (who knows, maybe dirty jokes about food?) but it refers to the St. Joseph monastery in Harlem. The author, Gino Barbaro, runs a restaurant in Mahopac and taught a cooking class to the Franciscan postulants. This book is a collection of the recipes he taught them, and it’s a surprisingly entertaining read.

The first thing author mentions is the list of knives. Then come the temperatures for cooking beef, fish, lamb, and chicken. After that he lists the herbs, cheese, and beans. You might wonder what’s so special about that? Well he makes it as blunt as it gets. Most cookbook authors drone on and on with too many descriptions, but this chef keeps it brief, so you can progress quickly. It was funny, looking at the list of beans, because I never really stopped to think about the properties of each one (I just throw them together) and the same thing goes for the sauces. As for the Italian food in this book, it’s not the greasy, salty stuff you’d expect from the cheap Sicilian restaurant at the local mall. He stresses using fresh ingredients, making your own stocks and sauces, and keeping the food at the right temperatures.

After a while I realized why Barbaro keeps everything simple. When you’re teaching basic cooking skills to people who have no clue, you need to start with simple exercises. It’s just like a book on how to build model planes or paper mache, you need brief descriptions of the materials, a few starter projects, and then you move on to more complicated ones.

There is one minor fault I have in this book. Other than the short intro from the head of the order, it doesn’t say much about the Friars that he was teaching. I would’ve welcomed a few anecdotes about these guys, perhaps the screw-ups they made when they started? It would make for some funny stories. 

Illustrated Bible Survey

The bible has a lot more to offer than face value. Unfortunately, the King James version doesn’t offer much in the way of commentary or explanation. Illustrated Bible Survey does a brilliant job at explaining the events of the bible and the morals they contain, using contemporary photos of the bible lands.

When studying the scriptures, it pays to note how a massive change occurs after the book of Exodus. Where the Israelites were once advancing constantly, they now appear to “take things easier.” The reason is that since they were no longer enslaved, but at the same time not preoccupied with conquering, they had more time to dwell on their purpose in life. In the chapter on Deuteronomy, it describes Moses as moving away from the adulation of the Lord’s miracles to the obligations of the people. The three books after Exodus are not in the chronological order like Genesis and Exodus. They focus more on philosophy.

Maps, photos, and archeological evidence are all part of this book, which should make it more attractive to young readers. It’s a great thing to read, for both children and adults who want to study the sacred texts in greater depth. However, it is lacking somewhat. The Hebrew commentary by Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak (aka Rashi) has a bit more in the way of explanation, such as the reason the Lord allowed Joseph to be sold into slavery (I’m not going to reveal that one here.) One of the problems with this book is the size, which is quite large. In the next edition, it might do better as two volumes, one each for the Old and New Testament.