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.

Movie Review: Bombshell (2017). Kanopy.

This is an unusual and revelatory documentary about Hedy LaMarr, the beautiful movie star from Europe who became a Hollywood legend in the 1940s and 1950s.  Her story is remarkable, because she turned out to be so much deeper, smarter and more talented than her two-dimensional image as a female sex symbol and celebrity gossip topic would have suggested. 

As a young immigrant actress from Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, she was driven to help the American war effort, and did so, by leading war bond drives where she helped raise millions of dollars for the war.  

But her real interest was inventing.  In the early 1940s, working with an inventing partner, she came up with an innovation which was intended to help solve a technical problem relating to torpedo guidance systems, for which she was awarded a U.S. patent, although it was never used during the war. 

Later, though, researchers and engineers came upon her idea of "frequency skipping"-- rapidly changing the frequency of a radio signal to prevent jamming and monitoring -- and applied it to many of the electronic and communications technologies that are now foundational to our modern world.  The profits from her invention are now in the many billions of dollars, although she never saw any of it, because her patent had expired by the time others wanted to use it.  

A surprising and overdue appreciation of a brilliant and complicated woman, who struggled throughout her life to be recognized as something more than just another pretty face.  Highly recommended.   

TV Review: All Things Great and Small (2022). PBS, Seasons 1-2.

This series has been described as the "most soothing TV entertainment" out there.  It's not all that exciting, but it's a warmhearted series about decent, "salt of the earth" Yorkshire country people, living in a small rural English town in an earlier and simpler time.  

 

At the center of the story is a kindly young Scottish veterinarian learning his trade, while also learning about love, family and friendship.  

 

This is a remake of a popular English series from decades ago, which went to six or seven seasons.  Note:  the first two seasons of this series take place in 1937 and 1938.  The onset of World War II is coming next season (Season 3).  Recommended.

Movie Review: Finding You (2021). Amazon Prime.

A young woman goes to Ireland for a "study abroad" break before retrying her violin audition for a music conservatory in New York.  While there, despite her resistance and skepticism, she falls for a young action-film movie star trapped in his celebrity bubble. 

 

In the meantime, she is also mentored and taught about life and music by an old drunken Irish fiddle player, and becomes involved in straightening out a family tragedy for an angry elderly woman (Vanessa Redgrave).  

 

It's all fairly contrived, but still sweet and entertaining.  Recommended, if you like rom-coms and coming of age stories.  

Book Review: The Gathering Wind: Hurricane Sandy, the Sailing Ship Bounty, and a Courageous Rescue at Sea (2013). Gregory Freeman.

An in-depth account of how the famous tall ship "HMS Bounty", which was built in the 1960s for the "Mutiny on the Bounty" movie of that era (with Marlon Brando), found itself right in the middle of Hurricane Sandy in the Atlantic, and what happened to the ship and its crew.   

It includes a history of the ship itself, and its various travails and maintenance issues over the ship's life, along with a balanced portrayal of the captain and crew that inexplicably ended up right in the middle of Hurricane Sandy, where they had to face the terrible storm and the ship's last hours and sinking.  

It also covers the heroic Coast Guard air rescue operation that saved all but two of the crew members, and the legal trials and aftermath of the disaster.  A howling good sea story for the modern age, with old wooden sailing ships, helicopters and C-130s, brave sailors, determined Coast Guard rescuers and an epic storm. Recommended.