How Starbucks Saved My Life, Michael Gates Gill

This one is a bit of a feelgood tale, the story of a high-flying advertising executive born into the Manhattan upper class who is laid off at the peak of his career.  After attempting to run his own advertising consulting business, and not having much luck, he take s a job as a barrister at an uptown Starbucks store.  Shunned by acquaintances and colleagues from his past life, going through an affair and divorcing his wife, you’d think he’d be at his life’s  absolute low.  But the friendships he develops with his new workmates and the relationships he builds with his Starbucks clientele allow him to discover a new-found love of life and see traits in people that he would have never noticed as a pompous executive.  A quick read, he writes well, enjoyed this one…

Escape, Carolyn Jessop

I read Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven a few years ago and was absolutely dumbstruck by the existence and far-reaching control of a cult like the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) inside the United States borders.  Krakauer’s book was a great read; but Krakauer’s an outsider, Escape is the harrowing tale of one of the few women who have escaped from inside the FLDS and remained outside the cult, able to share the tale.  Jessop begins her story as a child in a polygamist family in Colorado City, a small town straddling the Arizona Utah border.  At a young age she’s forced into an arranged marriage as wife number three (or four, I can’t quite remember…) to one of the most powerful men in the FLDS.  She spent more than a decade in a life of servitude, forced to do without proper medical care and enduring some jaw-dropping physical and sexual abuse, until finally fleeing the cult with her eight children and authoring this book. 

Jessop’s story gained national attention in 2008 with the raid of the FLDS YFZ Ranch in Texas, during which more than 500 women and children were removed from the compound and placed into state custody.  The raid followed the 2006 arrest of the FLDS leader and prophet, Warren Jeffs, who is discussed at length in the book and who eventually made it on to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.  Following the publication of the book Jessop appeared on NBC’s Today Show and was even called to testify to congress of her first-hand knowledge of the FLDS.  Really and amazing book, I couldn’t put it down.

Sick, Jonathan Cohn

I was browsing around The Book Passage in Corte Madera with a Christmas gift voucher from my mum when I saw this book and grabbed it.  I read it on our recent trip to Banff and Lake Louise.  I’ve had a gnawing interest in the inefficiencies and shortfalls of America’s health care system for some time now, ever since I was a wet-behind-the-ears engineer at a startup in my early twenties: with news of an impending layoff, my colleagues, especially those with families, became far more worried about the possibility of losing their health care than becoming unemp0loyed.  For someone that’s grown up in a country with universal health care, this was a bit of a shock to me.

Sick is a non-fiction conglomeration of stories of American people and families that have somehow found themselves, for some reason or another, un- or under-insured.  Each chapter begins with a different account of a real-life insurance pitfall and then goes on to discuss the evolution of America’s health insurance system in the latter part of the chapter.  By the end of the book Cohn provides the reader with an informed insight into how the health care system morphed to its current state, why the inefficiencies exist, and some of the solutions other countries have used to address similar issues.  The real-life accounts don’t simply focus on low income or unemployed unfortunates, instead cover a range of social classes, from postgraduate-educated professionals to down-and-out factory workers.

While the author obviously has his own agenda in writing the book, which he keeps to himself until the final chapter, it quickly becomes obvious that finding yourself in America without enough health insurance really is a very scary prospect.  It was exactly what I was looking for: a clear and well-written explanation as to why the health insurance industry finds itself in its current befuddled state.  Some of the accounts of un- or under-insured citizens are absolutely jaw-dropping.  My colleagues had their concerns prioritized correctly all those years ago: being without health insurance in this country is far more worrisome than being without a job.

Whilst studying for his PhD. in sociology at the University of Chicago, Sudhir Venkateshchose to take a slightly different route to studying poverty in large American cities.  Instead of burying himself in books and census reports, Venkatesh ventured into the projects surrounding the university campus and befriended one of the leaders of the Black Kings, a infamous Chicago organized crime ring that, at the time, controlled a significant portion of crack trafficking in Chicago’s poor black neighborhoods.  The book is effectively a story version of the research Venkatesh conducted to form is PhD. dissertation, but is an almost Hollywood-like adventure through the annals of the gang underworld in the Chicago projects of the 90s. 

Venkatesh went on to become an acclaimed scholar of sociology, first at Harvard and then to Columbia University, where he is currently a professor.

Finding himself stranded and close to death after an attempted summit of K2 in the Karakoram range of the Himalayas, Greg Mortensen is nursed back to health by local Pakistani villagers who live at elevations where I think I’d probably find it hard to breathe, let alone reside.  As he leaves for his home in the States once rehabilitated, Mortensen makes a pact with the villagers to return with supplies and funding to build a bridge over a nearby ravine to end the separation from trade routes they’ve endured for centuries.  The project morphs into a bridge and a school, and the Central Asia Institute is born with the goal of bringing education to the children of the Karakoram, most of whom would have previously lived their lives as illiterate and secluded mountain dwellers.  Mortensen’s is quite an uplifting story, and was a little closer to home for me as he writes about his time in the States during each Pakistani winter, when he lives in Berkeley and San Francisco.  Interesting to read a different perspective on the Pakistani people when we live in a time where the media typically paints Pakistan linked to terrorism or war.  And also a diametrically different insight into the world of Islam than that presented as part of Infidel.

1001 Nights In Iraq, Shant Kenderian

A gift from my mother-in-law for my birthday, 1001 Nights In Iraq is quite a harrowing story of an Iraq-born Armenian American caught in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and Desert Storm, forced by Saddam to fight in the Iraqi army against his wishes.  A matter-of-fact account of Shant’s ordeal in the army, the book walks through his captivity by Americans during Desert Storm and the US military personnel he befriended during his time as a POW.  An insightful journey through the recent Middle Eastern conflicts from a novel view point.

Sperm Wars, Robin Baker

TB left this book at our house last year, thought we might find it an interesting read.  Each chapter begins with a fictional scene, some of which continue throughout different chapters of the book as multi-chapter stories.  Each scene is followed by a science-centric explanation of the human sexual behavior presented in the fictional episode.  Baker is a well-recognized expoert on human reproduction and biology and has had this and a number of his textbooks published in many languages.  From the disclaimer at the beginning of the edition that I read, I gathered that Baker has been the brunt of quite a bit of criticism amongst the scientific community for his interpretation of human sexual behavior presented in the book.  But if you keep in mind that the book is just that, one expert’s interpretation, it’s a fun read for sure.

When my wife was reading this I lost count of the number of times she paused to lean over and ask me, “Do you do that?” or, “Do men really think like that?” whilst she was paging through the book.  I often did the same when reading discussions concerning the fairer sex, truth be told!  From explaining the intricacies of the human reproductive systems (in a great deal more detail than it was explained to me as a teenager) to discussing motivations behind sexual predators and extra-marital affairs, this really was quite an enlightening read.  It can get a little repetitive at times, but it’s a quick read and worth a look.

Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Mum gave me this book a while back and I read it earlier this year, just forgot to put it on The Lemon…  I’d read about Ali once or twice in the media during her times as a politician in Holland, so I was aware before I started reading of the controversy she’d caused due to her outspoken criticism of the Islamic faith.  As the book discusses, once she was thrust into the public eye in the Netherlands she was forced to live under constant protection to avoid persecution from Muslims as a result of her public criticism of Islam.  The book chronicles Ali’s childhood in Africa, the trials and tribulations she endured growing up in Somalia, life in Saudi Arabia and eventual flight from an arranged marriage in Canada to the safe haven of Holland.  Once in Holland her involvement with politics and controversial opinions about the Islamic faith saw her gain enough notoriety to run for office and get elected to Dutch parliament.  She writes about her life and especially the Islamic faith with a lot of passion and casts Islam in a less than favorable light throughout the book; I tried to keep in mind whilst reading that the book was her opinion, an opinion that has been biased by a life of persecution and mistreatment at the hand of a select few who happen to be Muslim.  I’m no religious scholar, but I’m sure there’s another side to the faith that’s cast in such an unfavorable light by the popular media and books such as this.  Regardless, I enjoyed the book, another piece chronicling an amazing life…

Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

Jacqui Steele put me onto this book a while ago after I mentioned to her that Marching Powder is one of my favorite books of all time.  It sat on my nightstand for a while because the thing is so damn thick (almost 1000 pages), but once I started I just couldn’t put it down.

Shantaram is the story of an Australian convict who escaped from a maximum security prison in Victoria, managed to get hold of a forged New Zealand passport, and made his way to the slums of Bombay (Mumbai).  I don’t want to delve into the story too much, I’ll leave that up to you if you choose to read it, but I will say that for a non-fiction book it truly is an amazing story.  From living in the slums to running black market currency smuggling operations, taking part in the Afghani uprising against the Soviets to running guns for the Bombay mafia, the book kept me up late many a night wanting to read on.  I had to remind myself now and then that the author was an escaped convict and that in essence he was probably quite a shady character in real life, but the story really is fantastic (and I believe he’s since returned to Australia to serve the remainder of the sentence).  I’ve also read some news releases saying that there are plans to make a movie from the story with Johnny Depp playing Roberts.  No way it could be as good as the book, highly recommend this one…

Losing My Virginity, Sir Richard Branson

Another parting gift from TB when he left us last Christmas, thanks for a good read Big Fella.  This guy sure has lived the life, he really has done it all.  What comes across a number of times in the book, and Branno is the first to admit it, is that his fame and fortune is really due in a huge part to a lot of luck.  The number of times he’s put his livelihood on the line, whether it be the erly days of his magazine publishing ventures or more recently with his record stores and airlines, he just manages to keep coming out on top of some quite risky situations.  But, I have to give him credit, (Mark Rubenstein would probably say something about a billion people rolling a dice a thousand times and having someone roll 1000 sixes) he must have a considerable degree of business savvy to get where he is…  Definitely an enjoyable read, I’d like to read the uncut version; Branson touches on some of his more racy escapades throughout the book but keeps things G-rated for the most part, I have no doubt this guy’s seen it all.