Book Review: Boys and Sex (2020). Peggy Orenstein.

After the success of Girls and Sex (2016), which I previously reviewed, and her experience researching and writing it, Orenstein decided it wasn’t either fair, or complete, to leave out the boys’ side of the story.   So she initiated a similar set of candid conversations with young high school and college boys, to find out how it felt to be a boy trying to navigate early sexuality in our society.  

Not surprisingly, she found out plenty about boys’ use of and experience with consuming large amounts of pornography online, but discovered that for many boys (as with the girls), watching porn was more an attempt to know what to expect and to do in sexual encounters than a real pleasure in itself.  

Orenstein also finds out more about the social pressure that boys feel in a wide variety of settings (especially college fraternities) to have a large number of sexual “conquests”, and to avoid sharing their emotions with partners, or getting involved in ongoing love relationships.   

In one particularly powerful section, she talks about the impact of colleges’ and the courts’ changing responses in the #METOO era in how they handle young men who have been abusive to women.  She talks about the often-difficult nature of defining and recognizing consent, particularly in alcohol-infused situations, and describes some of the ways now being developed to promote accountability and greater awareness in victimizers, in the hope of preventing a lifetime of these sorts of exploitative and destructive behaviors toward women by these men.

More so than in Girls and Sex, she also explores some of the experiences and attitudes of gay and trans boys and young men, as they try to establish their own sexual identities and comfort zones in the midst of the pressured, predominantly heterosexual young male environments and social scenes of school and college.

This companion book, like Girls and Sex, is a fascinating, thoughtful and well-researched look at what ails our current approach to raising our children to have healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors, and what we could do to make it better.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Letter to You (2021). Apple TV+.

Letter to You, the most recent Bruce Springsteen documentary, is about the four-day recording session with his beloved E-Street band which produced this same-named new album, his first rock album in seven years.  

Clips of recording studio performances are mixed with interviews, and reminisces by Bruce, the band members and other friends and family who were present.  Recommended.

Book Review: Life (2010). Keith Richards and James Fox.

Last month, I started a new tradition here at my blog: Rock and Roll Fridays!  Every fourth Friday of the month, I intend to share a review of at least one good artifact of rock music, including biographies, concert videos, and television specials.  It's Rock and Roll Friday again, so today I'm sharing my short review of Keith Richard's autobiography Life. 

I bought this 2010 rock star memoir by Richards (guitarist, singer, co-songwriter (with Mick Jagger), co-leader and founding member of the Rolling Stones) years ago, then never actually read it until much more recently (in 2020).  

 

I think I was reluctant to get into it, because Richards is pretty much the personification of the depraved, bad boy rock star in the popular imagination.  His drug use and addictions, frequent arrests, and outlaw persona are legendary; in fact, he writes that during the 1970s he consistently topped lists of "ten rock stars most likely to die this year".  But he didn't. 

 

And after reading his story, he turns out to be a much more complex, intelligent, thoughtful and even perhaps kind person than I had expected.  Of course, he's still outrageous, but he’s also a genuinely authentic and sympathetic character, who has a lot to say about the Rolling Stones, his relationships with Mick Jagger and the other band members, and their iconic music. 

 

He also delves deeply into his guitar playing techniques and songwriting, along with many of his legendary life experiences and relationships.  He recounts the many celebrities he's known, and partied and played music with, and shares other unexpected anecdotes from his long life and enduring career as one of the most notorious stars of the rock and roll era. 

 

I thought I wouldn't like this book, but I did.  "It's Only Rock and Roll, But I Like It!"  Recommended for rock music fans, and the celebrity-curious.

Book Review: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018). Anand Giridharadas.

This is a brilliant and thorough investigation of the ways in which the super-rich have appropriated the world of charitable giving as a means of feeling good about themselves, while further controlling society's options, by providing privately funded solutions and ways of thinking about social problems that never allow for real challenges to the underlying social order that benefits the wealthy.  

The author advocates for a more fair distribution of wealth, and emphasizes the importance of having representative democratic governments rather than self-appointed wealthy foundations decide how we should solve problems of poverty, climate change, disease and other major challenges to modern society.  

 

This is a perfect companion piece to Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, previously reviewed, in showing how even the "benevolent" and "generous" sides of plutocracy ultimately manipulate and distort policy, and serve the interests of the super-rich at the expense of everyone else.  Highly recommended.

Movie Review: One Night in Miami (2020). Amazon Prime.

This movie apparently is based on a true event, but with extensive dramatic license, since none of the participants have apparently shared their accounts of what happened (and both Malcolm X and Sam Cooke died shortly thereafter).  

In 1964, Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) won his first world heavyweight title in Miami, and had a nighttime get-together after the fight to celebrate with three other black men who were icons of the civil rights era:  NFL star running back Jim Brown, Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, and soul music superstar Sam Cooke.  

The movie, which resembles a stage play in its limited scenery and backdrops, features earnest discussion and arguments between the four young men about the competing pressures, temptations, duties and requirements of their roles as media stars, black male role models, political leaders for their people in the time of civil rights struggle, and individuals with their own personal dreams and aspirations. 

A very thoughtful dramatic exploration of those issues, in the historical context of the times.  Recommended.

Book Review: Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships (2010). Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha.

An interesting and controversial survey of the modern research and literature of human sexuality, that challenges the widely held belief that monogamy is the natural and normal state of human sex and relationships. 

Instead, the authors make the case that having multiple sex partners was the norm prior to the age of agriculture, and that human biology, including the differing sexual responses, capabilities, emotions and behaviors of men and women, can best be explained and understood as the evolutionary result of the promiscuous relationships which appear to have characterized hunter-gatherer societies for many hundreds of thousands of years.  

Several other excellent histories of humanity I’ve read recently suggest that the idea that any one type of sexual behavior, or any other kind of human behavior or organization, has been consistent throughout all societies during any period of our species evolution is nonsense, given the historical examples of all different types of arrangements and norms coexisting in different cultures, places and times. 

Still, the authors here have at least made a good case for “natural” states of sexuality and types of family relationships that are not necessarily the same as what we take for granted as “normal” today.  The book also makes the case for bonobos as our closest primate relatives, at least as far as sexual anatomy and social/sexual behaviors are concerned. 

It’s a thought-provoking read about one of humanity’s perennially most favorite topics!  Recommended.

Book Review: This Is Your Mind on Plants (2021). Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan has built a career and following as a writer by specializing in telling stories about food, and our relationship to it.  In past books, he has delved deeply into many aspects of food production: how food can be more sustainably grown, what foods are healthy for us, the problems with industrialized food and how it’s manufactured, interesting ethical discussions about meat as a food source, and the difference between eating meat that you’ve hunted versus meat grown under factory farm conditions.

 

In his past two books, he has branched out to writing about different kinds of natural things we eat and consume: namely, drugs.  His previous book, How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (2019), discussed the renewed interest by researchers and clinicians in psychedelic drugs as a tool for behavioral and psychological therapy, after the long post-1960s period during which psychedelics were considered anathema (and illegal) by the psycho-therapeutic community, as well as government and law enforcement.

 

In This is Your Mind on Plants, Pollan focuses on three different naturally-occurring drugs: opium, caffeine and mescaline.  The opium section is unusual, in that a portion of it was written by him a quarter century ago, but could not be published until recently because of his fear of falling afoul of law enforcement and politics during the “War on Drugs” period of the 1990s and early 2000s. 

 

This fear was the result of a strange factual and legal situation.  As Pollan explains, contrary to popular belief, many types of common poppy plants sold in America as lovely garden flowers do contain the essential pharmacological ingredient of opium, and yet the seeds are legal to sell and grow, but only if you don’t have provable knowledge of the ability to convert the flowers into a narcotic.  This paradox put him as a journalist writing about poppy cultivation (along with his readers) in a position where his personal cultivation of poppies could be considered illegal, due to his admitted knowledge that opium production was possible from his otherwise innocent and legally acquired garden plants.    

 

In addition to describing his perilous journey as an investigative journalist and amateur gardener decades ago in experimenting with poppy cultivation, Pollan tells some of the history of the misguided federal efforts to suppress opiates during the War on Drugs period, and shows how these suppression efforts backfired, while causing other collateral social damage.  He also reveals something of the history of poppies and opium use in the American colonies and early years of the United States, where during some periods opium (frequently consumed as a tea) was valued for its tranquilizing and pain-relieving qualities, while at the same time in some of those periods, alcohol was being actively discouraged or suppressed.     

 

In the section on caffeine, Pollan dives into the research on the effects of caffeine on individuals as well as on society, going back to its first introduction into Europe in the late middle ages, and continuing up to modern times.  As with his other book topics, he also adds a personal experimental element to the story, by going on a months-long “abstinence” program from caffeine, in order to try to determine what changes in his mind and body he experienced as he came off the effects of caffeine, lived for a period without it, and then eventually resumed his morning coffee habit. 

 

The section on mescaline covers many aspects of the history, cultivation and harvesting of mescaline from the cactus plants on which it grows, as well as the spiritual use of it by native peoples, and his own search to learn more about its traditional use, and to sample it in a traditional ceremonial context, without somehow wandering into a state of cultural expropriation of traditions and meanings that are not his own.

 

As usual, there is much to learn from Pollan about the natural world and the things that grow in it from which we derive meaning, sensations and sustenance.  His engaging writing style, historical and sociological perspectives and his own self-reflective personal journeys as he explores his interests and gives rein to his curiosities continue to make for enjoyable and educational reading.  Recommended.