Breast cancer has recently been "discovered" as a major health risk, for which something must be done. This book provides a lot of facts to counteract the mountains of general nonsense on this issue.
The author asserts, with lots of scientific backup, that up to 70% of breast cancers are caused by PCBs and other toxic chemicals that are in our air, water and soil. The major cancer charities focus their attention much more on treatment than prevention. Treatment is important, but it involves painful treatments, which sometimes do more harm than good. They require expensive, high profit drugs usually created by the same coropration that produce the chemicals that caused the cancer.
Government agencies, like the FDA, seem to have forgotten that their function is to regulate industry, not coddle it. Bureaucrats are looking for a cushy job after they leave government, so the last thing they are going to do is make life difficult for the providers of such jobs, even if the law requires it. If you're a major corporation, the FDA will go out of its way to make life easy, but if you're a little guy selling a drug or process that is unpatentable, prepare to be treated, by the same FDA, like you're handing out heroin pills to children.
The author also gives a very detailed answer to the question What Can I Do? The first answer is continued political pressure to shut down the polluters and to get government agencies to actually regulate the major corporations. The second answer is an improved diet; this book includes a special section on foods and vitamins that can help in the fight against cancer, and those that should be avoided.
This is an amazing book. It is full of facts, not hype, and is clearly written without going overboard. This is a more-than-must-read, not just for cancer patients, but for everyone.
Sister to the Rain, Melisa Michaels, ROC Books, 1998 Rosie Lavine and her partner, Shannon, are a pair of human private investigators. They are hired by an elf named Finandiel to discover the source of an unknown something troubling a mixed-race artist's colony in the California hills. It seems like a simple case: find out who, or what, is scaring the children, stealing bits and pieces from the other residents, and
playing elven music before dawn. Rosie, who has had dealings with elves in the past, moves into the colony, and starts nosing around. She finds a lot of possibilities, but nothing solid. The stakes are raised when one of the human residents is killed under strange cirumstances. Gary, the teenage son of one of the artists, is a thoroughly dislikable person who rides a loud dirt bike through the forest. Elves have more sensitive hearing than humans, so the constant noise could have driven one of the elves to murder. The stakes are raised even higher when Shannon, in the colony to assist Rosie, is attacked in the forest late at night, and nearly joins Gary. Rosie also gets the idea that the disturbances may have something to do with internal elf politics back home. This story is good, and quite readable, but, ultimately, I found it to be nothing special. I can give a rating of only pretty good.
The Common Good, Noam Chomsky, Odonian Press, 1998 Here is a new group of interviews with "arguably the most important intellectual alive" (New York Times) conducted by David Barsamian. The subjects run the gamut, from the aerospace industry to the Zapatistas. According to Chomsky, America is a business-run, huckster society whose primary value is deceit. A major purpose of military procurement and production is to subsidize private corporations. In other parts of the world, politicians don't have to fight over who is tougher on crime, they just figure out what to do about it. German industry has been treating America like a Third World country, with our low wages, poor benefits and states competing against each other to bribe foreign firms to relocate. The US has publicly agreed
with the position that the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel was illegal, but privately has given Israel permission to do what it wants. For most people, the words "new Noam Chomsky" are enough to get them to buy this book. For everyone else, this book is short, easy to read, fascinating, and highly recommended.
The Aztec Love God, Tony Diaz, Fiction Collective 2, 1998
The Games of Night, Stig Dagerman, Quartet Books, 1947
Love Ruins Everything, Karen X. Tulchinsky, Press Gang Publishers, 1998
Give Them Stones, Mary Beckett, Perennial Library (Harper and Row), 1987
Censored 1998: The News That Didn't Make the News, Peter Phillips and Project
Censored, Seven Stories Press, 1998
253: The Print Remix, Geoff Ryman, St. Martin's Griffin, 1998
A.D., Saab Lofton, III Publishing, 1995
How To Impress Anybody About Anything, Leslie Hamilton and Brandon Toropov,
Carol Publishing Group, 1998
How to Accommodate Men, Marilyn Krysl, Coffee House Press, 1998
This is the first-person story of Tiofilo Duarte, a high school student who has mastered the
art of assumed identities and getting fake IDs. He is also something of a local comedy club
veteran (despite the fact that he is underage) as The Aztec Love God.
One day, he meets an older white comedian named Jester who wants Tio to join his act.
The only problem is that Tio would have to perform Latino stereotypes. He gets involved
with Jester's girlfriend, a stripper named Farah. At her place of employment, Tio runs into
his high school principal, engaging her services. The relationship between the two men
could be considered one of mutual loathing.
Did I mention that Tio's father spent what would have been Tio's college tuition money to
buy and live in the actual house used in the show Leave It To Beaver?
Tio also has a girlfriend named Rosie who pushes him very hard toward marriage, even
before he graduates from high school (if he graduates), to the point of putting a ring on lay-
away and telling both sets of parents they are getting married very soon.
This is an excellent, even wonderful, book by a name to remember. I was very
impressed.
Stig Dagerman was considered the most talented young writer in late 1940s Swedish
literature. His career was brief, but mighty, producing four novels, several plays, a book
of travel reportage, and this collection of short stories. His career ended by suicide in 1954,
after suffering a long-term case of something like writer's block.
These stories generally take place in rural Sweden. One story is about a taciturn forester
having an affair with the schoolmaster's wife. Another story is about children at a bathing
resort being pushed to do dangerous things, like diving off cliffs, to catch coins thrown by
tourists. A boy and his mother surprise his grandfather by recording a poem written by the
boy onto a gramaphone record; the grandfather is not impressed. God visits Isaac Newton.
A man with a reputation (deserved) for being a drunkard comes home for his father's
funeral, and resents the family's expectations that he'll embarass everyone by being drunk
at the funeral.
Like his career, Dagerman's writing is short and to the point. These tales have a darker sort
of feel to them, like Strindberg or Kafka (to which they have been compared). If you can
find this book, definitely check it out.
Nomi Rabinovitch is a Jewish lesbian from Toronto currently living and working in San
Francisco. One day, Sapphire, her lover for the previous three years, breaks up with her,
and Nomi is crushed. She crashes for a while on a friend's couch, and has a few dates
which don't turn into anything. Sapphire suddenly wants to get back together, then, just as
suddenly, doesn't want to get back together. While Nomi ponders her future, her mother,
still living in Toronto, tells Nomi that she is remarrying and that Nomi's attendance at the
wedding is expected.She meets cousin Henry, also gay and suffering from AIDS, victim of
a gay-bashing attack.
Henry and Roger, his lover, have met a man named Albert from New York who has spent
years researching the theory that AIDS was created by the US government and given to
gays through bogus hepatitis vaccinations. Albert thinks They are trying to silence him,
leading to the thought Henry's attack may not have been simply random violence.
Meanwhile, Nomi runs into, and falls for, an old friend named Julie Sakamoto. When
Nomi was younger, she had a major crush on Julie, and finds, to her delight, that the
feeling is very mutual.
Don't skip this because of the subject matter. Enjoy it because it's emotional, real, funny
and a wonderful piece of writing about life in the 90s.
Here is the story of an average woman growing up in Ireland. Martha Murtagh is sent, as
an adolescent, to live with a couple of aunts in the country, to escape the possible horrors
of living in World War II era Belfast. She is grudgingly accepted by the aunts, having to do
all the chores and sleep on a camp bed in the kitchen.
The war ends, but Martha is forced to stay in the country, because her family has yet to
send for her. This leads to the thought that maybe she has been abandoned. A few years
later, Martha marries a man named Dermot and moves into a small row house in Belfast.
Four sons follow quickly. Dermot works occasionally, so money is always a problem, but
Martha learns how to bake bread, and makes some money selling it to the neighborhood
women.
Always in the background is the fear and uncertainty associated with the growing
Catholic/Protestant divide that has characterized life in 20th century northern Ireland.
This is a short novel, but it's mighty. Beckett does an excellent job throughout, from the
descriptions of family life in Belfast to the lyrical style to the the tale of the strength of one
person amidst an ocean of despair. Here is a graceful and well-done story.
This is a yearly chronicle of news stories that never made it to the mainstream media. For
regular consumers of mainstream news, one might think that little of not happened in 1997
aside from Marv Albert, O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods and Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford.
They would be very wrong.
Among the subjects covered in this book: personal care and cosmetic products may be
carcinogenic, exposing the global surveillance system, evidence is mounting of the dangers
of fluoridation - with little benefit for your teeth, toxins and environmental pollution are
contributing to human aggression in society, profits before people delays release of a new
AIDS drug, and the number 1 censord story of 1997: the Clinton Administration is
aggressively promoting US arms sales worldwide.
Censored is a good one-word reason why few, or none, of these stories were seen on the
TV news or in the newspaper. Most American media are owned by a dozen (or fewer)
corporations, much more interested in profit margins than in telling the public what it needs
to know.
This book also contains hundreds of names and addresses of alternative organizations that
deal with these issues on a daily basis.
Terms like important, vital, highly recommended and must read all apply to this book.
Multiple copies of Censored 1998 belong in every newsroom in America.
A London subway train consists of seven cars, with 36 seats each. If all seats are filled,
with nobody standing, then each train holds 253 people (including the driver). This novel
profiles the occupants of one such train during an average journey between two stops
(approximately a seven-minute trip). Each description is a mini short story, and looks at
what the person is wearing, and what they're thinking or feeling during the trip, and each
story consists of exactly 253 words. Along with some helpful advertisements interspersed
throughout, that's the book.
This is quite unlike any story I have ever read. In a way, it's very user friendly, because
there's no having to remember what happened 50 or 100 pages ago. The reader can pick
and choose which parts to read. For those looking for something completely different in
their reading, check this out.
In the year 2030 A.D., America is run mostly by the White Aryan Resistance, with
several Midwest ststes given to the Nation of Islam to run as they see fit. Set in Chicago,
it's a land where music, films and books are forbidden, where the Fruit of Islam, a sort of
internal secret police, constantly patrols the streets looking for anyone not acting properly
Black Muslim-ish.
After being fired fom his job as a rewriter of history, Elijah Isiah, a husband and father
who never cared for "the system", meets the underground, a group of people who save
what they can of late 20th century culture, and who must stay mobile or face death at the
hands of the authorities. Elijah also learns that his real name is Fred Hampton Rush, and
that, as a boy, he was left behind at the airport as his family fled during a mad exodus of
people out of what is now called the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in North America.
Fred's growing rebellion catches up with him, and he is arrested for sedition. Expecting a
death sentence, he is put into suspended animation as a medical experiment and not found
for 380 years.
America has become a Libertarian Socialist Democracy where blacks and whites live
together in harmony. Fred finds, to his shock, that Elisha, his son, was the person who led
the fight to overthrow the old system and replace it with the new system. Fred is shown
around 25th century Chicago by Huey Newton Rush, a direct descendant, who works in
the practically extinct profession of peace officer. But all is not well in Utopia. The hatreds
and fears of the past have not totally departed.
This is quite a thought-provoking book. A person could quibble with things like the
political and philosophical speeches sometimes going on for too long. This book is not
exactly easy to find in the local chain bookstore; that's a shame, because it's more than
worth the search.
This is a book of instant knowledge, or at least enough knowledge to make the reader
sound like an intellectual at parties or Jeopardy marathons. It gives short, easy to read, on-
the-level summaries on subjects like quantum physics, the Cold War, exotic drinks,
Homer's Odyssey, jazz, philosophy, zen Buddhism, fine wines, Einstein's Theory of
Relativity and the Roman Empire, to name just a few.
For each subject, the authors provide some famous quotes or witty things to say, again to
make the reader sound like an expert. Also included are things to say when you want to
change the subject, and things to avoid saying or doing to keep from looking like an
idiot.
One might think that subjects like gems, the Civil War, American history, Newtonian
physics, palmistry and religion can not be adequately explained in just a few pages. They
would be wrong; the authors do an excellent job.
For those people who want to sound like a Jeopardy champion in public, this is the book.
For those who would just like the basics on an esoteric subject of interest, this is the
book.
This group of contemporary short stories are united around the themes of war and division,
whether between families, lovers, or inhabitants of the same country, and the ways that
connections are re-established.
Several stories are set in the middle of the civil war in Sri Lanka, including one where an
American journalist flirts with a Tamil lieutenant and comes to understand and love him. A
medieval lesbian nun is given ChristÕs true vision, from Christ himself. A woman suspects
a young girl of trying to seduce her husband. When the two women meet in a restaurant
bathroom, the wife identifies with the lost feeling that comes from being beautiful. The title
story is about a woman who, through small, anonymous compassionate gestures, makes
herself indispensable to her husband and her boss, though neither of the men realize
it.
This book is really good. The stories in it are sad and hopeful, thought-provoking and very
easy to read. Here is a first-rate collection of stories.
