A Suburban Tragedy

I'm sure the prolific writer Calvin Trillin is a familiar name for most of us. He is probably best known for his humorous articles and poems in The Nation and The New Yorker. His many pieces on the joys of food resulted in three books, and these are now combined in a single volume called The Tummy Trilogy – a must read for people who love to eat and love to laugh. He's also written wonderful memoirs, including ones about his father, his late wife Alice, and a touching book called Remembering Denny about a college classmate.

But there's another side to Trillin that I've always admired – he writes about murder. Over the years I've read many of these essays, and they really display his skills as a serious journalist. Years ago some of them were published in a book called Killings. In the March 3^rd issue of The New Yorker there's a new one called “The Color of Blood”. The subtitle of the article is “Race, memory and a killing in the suburbs”. In it Trillin describes a 2006 incident on Long Island in which a seventeen-year-old boy is killed. His writing is dispassionate, but I was moved by the descriptions of the effects of this incident on both families and the community itself. In a year when the emergence of an African-American presidential candidate might make you think that we are moving closer to being a color-blind society, this story is reminder of the racial divide that still exists and its tragic consequences. You can read the essay online at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_trillin

Economics for the rest of us

The only economics class that I ever took was the typical one of equations, graphs and a glossary of technical terms and abbreviations whose meanings and relevance were lost to me as soon as the class was over. Perhaps if I had taken Robert H. Frank’s introductory economics course at Cornell University the results would have been different. In his latest book The Economic Naturalist - In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas, Frank has put together a collection of one of his writing assignments: with a limit of 500 words, pose and answer an interesting question about an observed pattern of events or behavior using the economics principles of the course. To wit:

Why don’t more people wear Velcro shoes? (behavioral economics)
Why do women endure the discomfort of high heels? (divergence between individual and social interests)
Why are concerts so much cheaper if you purchase series tickets? (pricing strategies)
Why do we leave tips for some services and not for others? (wage patterns and employment practices)
Why are brown eggs more expensive that white ones? (supply and demand)
Why do stores post signs in their windows saying that guide dogs are permitted inside? (cost-benefit principle)
If a “cup” is supposed to be eight ounces, why is the smallest cup of coffee listed on the Starbucks menu a “Tall”, which contains 12 ounces? (discount hurdles)

You get the idea. This is a variation on the theme that I previously encountered in Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner: economics for the rest of us in bite-size pieces that relate to our everyday experiences and help us make sense of them. Economics need not be boring. When framed as a series of interesting questions, the answers can be equally fascinating.

Books That Stay With You #2

My husband and I have become devoted fans of books on CD. Five summers ago, as we drove to Minnesota, we listened to the recorded version of  The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara.  It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, which is why I was persuaded, despite my resistance and skepticism, to listen to this historical novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. Superb!  It's a recreation of the battle, over a period of four days, seen through the minds of  Generals Robert E. Lee,  Pickett, Longstreet and the Union Col. Chamberlain, a Bowdoin professor from Maine. It begins with the Confederacy winning but at the pinnacle of the story, a desperate charge from the South turns into a slaughter and Union soldiers win their first significant battle at great cost, creating the turning point in the Civil War.  The personalities, nobility and struggles of these true heroes was compelling, particularly the remarkable Col. Chamberlain. He was memorable for his wisdom, military skill, leadership and ability to inspire.  The book is not filled with too many logistical details or characters and is well crafted.  I still remember my anticipation and eagerness to hear each chapter as we traveled.  It is an excellent and compulsively readable book, or certainly one to listen to on a journey.  Famed Broadway singer/actor George Hearn was a wonderful reader, enhancing the characters so richly described in the writing. It did not hurt that his voice reminded me of the line once quoted about the actor Richard Burton. "He could read the telephone book and make it sound fascinating!" Consider fine books on CD's  on your next car trip.

The sixties-What happened?

We received two copies of Tom Brokaw’s “Boom! Voices of the Sixties” for Christmas. I think my friends and relatives thought we should read it. Boom refers to that rather large generation of babies born as World War II ended and are now referred to as the “baby boomers“. The book is about the 1960’s and all the phenomenal happenings of that decade. I lived through/experienced those times as did most of my friends. But, we all experienced the sixties from different vantage points, depending on what we were doing in our lives at that time. I found reading “Boom” a mesmerizing walk through history. All the things happened in that decade--- the assassinations of JFK, his brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Movement, the Free Speech Movement, the Feminist Movement, The Vietnam War, the Hippie era, and the Rock and Roll legends--- still play a major role in our lives today.

Tom Brokaw started as fledgling news reporter in the early sixties, and he uses the many contacts he has made over the last forty years to create a book that chronicles the happenings of the sixties. He uses the voices of people we know and some I had never heard of, who saw first hand the incredible things that happened and came to be in the sixties. There are stories of the Civil Rights leaders, the Vietnam soldiers, the MASH nurse, the son of a World War II veteran who made the decision to go to Canada, the writers, the leaders of the feminist movement, the political icons, the leaders of the free speech movement in Berkeley and many more. They give their own personal view of the sixties and it all comes together in a complex story that is our history. A question that comes to mind at the end of this completely engaging book is, “What did we learn from those turbulent times?” As Tom Brokaw states in his introduction, “The evidence is still coming in and the jury is still out-------and forty years later we don’t seem anywhere near being able to render a verdict.” Read “Boom!”, it’s a great, nostalgic, and enlightening walk through the sixties.