I read A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as part of A Year of Feminist Classics.

Don’t read the book like I did though. That is to say, don’t go to Project Gutenberg, download the text, and read that. It’s tempting because it’s free. I discourage this not because it’s stealing from the author. No, I discourage this method because Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this book around 1790. In other words, because of the language and style of writing back then, I had know idea what she was talking about about 2/3 of the time. Sometimes it’s the archaic words, though those can be looked up. Sometimes it’s the context. Much of the text is a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom I haven’t read, for instance. And some of it is just obtuse. I counted fifteen clauses in one sentence.

Do yourself a favor and buy an annotated and footnoted edition. You’ll get a lot more out of it than I did out of this.

Originally, I planned to write something more detailed. Instead, I think I am going to just put in some reactions I had as I read through the text, with just a little bit of context for each.

Introduction. The male pursues, the female yields—this is the law of nature; and it does not appear to be suspended or abrogated in favour of woman. – Wollstonecraft makes lots of scientific pronouncements of fact that just aren’t so. I don’t think it’s unusual for the day and age. The scientific method didn’t become firmly established for another hundred years, was badly implemented often even then, and even intellectuals today get it wrong. Wollstonecraft invokes reason as the basis for modern thought, but reason and science aren’t exactly the same. To me, science should be the basis for knowledge and action, with reason as a supplement. Wollstonecraft’s reason is sometimes imperfect, but especially here it becomes awful because it is based on false premises. What’s more, and what stood out in this and a few other passages was that her false premises work against her ultimate aim, to secure rights for women. I don’t expect perfection from an early work of feminism (or even current ones), but it sure makes me cringe to see her blithely accept some of these things.

from every quarter, I have heard exclamations against masculine women, but where are they to be found? I love this bit. The internet did not spawn concern trolls.

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces Is that sarcasm? I sure hope so!

The Rights and Duties of Mankind Considered. Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness, must be estimated by the degree of reason, virtue, and knowledge, that distinguish the individual Wollstonecraft wants to base her vindication on first principles, which she considers to be reason, virtue, and knowledge. Certainly it’s a step up from divine revelation, but there’s a lot of fuzzy wiggle room in there, particularly with virtue. What one person considers to be virtuous is a sin to another. And shortly afterward, Wollstonecraft identifies a flaw in reason…

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed Yup. We still do. In our defense, I think this failing is common to humanity. But it’s particularly dangerous to classes of people that do not have power when those in power do this.

the regal power, in a few generations, introduces idiotism into the noble stem Wollstonecraft has a very anti-authoritarian bent. Through the book, she criticizes kings, men, the military, and parents as their mere exercising of authority makes them stupid. I wonder what level of authority she would have found acceptable.

The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed. Many are the causes … that contribute to enslave women by cramping their understandings and sharpening their senses. One, perhaps, that does more mischief than all the rest, is their disregard of order. Wollstonecraft is careful to lay the blame for this one women’s education, but her overall frustration with how much women hurt their own causes comes through. She rails over and over against the predominant view that men think and women feel, and that’s the way things are supposed to be.

Youth is the season for love in both sexes, but in those days of thoughtless enjoyment, provision should be made for the more important years of life, when reflection takes the place of sensation. This is another thread that runs throughout the work, that how women are taught to behave isn’t a good basis for a lasting companionship. Being flirty and pretty is good to attract the attention of a man, but it isn’t good to hold it. Wollstonecraft repeatedly praises the value of friendship and respect in marriage. I don’t exactly cotton to her notion that gallant love has little place after the initial attraction has passed, but she’s quite correct that people really need to have something to talk about to make them effective long term.

however convenient [gentleness] may be found in a companion, that companion will ever be considered as an inferior, and only inspire a vapid tenderness, which easily degenerates into contempt. I don’t have anything to say about this one. It just needs quoting.

Let [women's] faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale. One of Wollstonecraft’s arguments seems to be, paraphrased, What have you got to lose? If I’m wrong, women will still be at the place they are intellectually, and it won’t have been imposed on us by fiat. She makes this argument over and over in various ways.

The Same Subject Continued. That a girl, condemned to sit for hours together listening to the idle chat of weak nurses or to attend at her mother’s toiler, will endeavor to join the conversation is, indeed very natural; and that she will imitate her mother or aunts, and muse herself by adorning her lifeless doll, as they do in dressing her, poor innocent babe! is undoubtedly a most natural consequence. Just pointing out that supposedly differences in the sexes don’t occur in a vacuum, so that even the differences that appear early in life aren’t necessarily innate. It’s passages such as this that make me think that Wollstonecraft sometimes uses the word “education” in a broad context, though sometimes she also uses it to refer only to formal teaching.

Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman is Reduced by Various Causes. I lament that women are systematically degraded by receiving trivial attention, which men think it manly to pay attention to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. Again, just needed quoting.

if fear in girls, instead of being cherished, perhaps, created, were treated in the same manner as cowardice in boys, we should quickly see women with more dignified aspects. There are likely underlying emotional differences between women and men due to differences in hormones, but I’m of the firm belief that they are generally minor. I think nearly all of the emotional differences are the result of cultural inculcation.

many girls become the dupes of a sincere affectionate heart, and still more are, as it may emphatically be termed, ruined before they know the difference between virtue and vice: and thus prepared by their education for infamy, they become infamous. Wollstonecraft laments the pernicious effect of what is now commonly called slut-shaming, but being a person of her times, sees the remedy as better education to avoid being a slut, rather than not shaming people. In a later passage, Wollstonecraft seems to be expressing even more dismay at people’s lack of sexual virtue than even those at the time held. There’s a streak of feminism that’s based on a prudish morality. That’s not surprising given that Western society as a whole has been pretty prudish. Feminism, for all it’s radicalness, can’t completely get away from the society from which it comes. The branches that I identify with more will be the ones that celebrate sexuality. Perhaps that’s merely the male gaze in me, but I’ll live with it.

Animadversions on Some of the Writers Who Have Rendered Women Objects of Pity, Bordering on Contempt. As the conduct of a woman is subservient to the public opinion, her faith in matters of religion, should for that very reason, be subject to authority. Every daughter ought to be of the same religion as her mother, and every wife to be of the same religion as her husband … As they are not in a capacity to judge for themselves, they ought to abide by the decision of their fathers and husbands as confidently as by that of the church. What is to be the consequence, if the mother’s and husband’s opinion should chance not to agree? … Indeed, the husband may not have any religion to teach her though in such a situation she will be in great want of a support to her virtue, independent of worldly considerations. First, I had never heard the word “animadversion” before, and I love it. This chapter has Wollstonecraft doing what I’m doing here: quoting other writers on the woman’s place, and giving her comments. First up is Rousseau, who Wollstonecraft rightly calls out for his serious WTFery. If you are prone to religious bullshit, Rousseau’s advice is hideously dangerous to your eternal soul. Here you are going to heaven for your belief, and then you get married and your husband immediately consigns your soul to eternal damnation by making you believe sinful things. Of course, Wollstonecraft’s most dreaded fear is that the husband gives the woman no religion, which I should think would be an improvement over giving you one. Which also makes me wonder, was Deism as popular among Europe’s elite as it was among America’s around the same time?

true grace arises from some kind of independence of mind Quoting the section where she rips a Dr. Fordyce.

Modesty Comprehensively Considered and Not as a Sexual Virtue. What can be more disgusting than that impudent dross of gallantry, thought so manly, which makes many men stare insultingly at every female they meet? Is this respect for the sex? This loose behaviour shows such habitual depravity, such weakness of mind, that it is vain to expect much public or private virtue, till both men and women grow more modest — till men, curbing a sensual fondness for the sex, or and affectation of manly assurance, more properly speaking, impudence, treat each other with respect It would be hypocritical of me to rail against the male gaze because I do love to look at pretty women, but the woman does have a point.

On this account also, I object to [women being cloistered]. They were almost on a par with the double meanings, which shake the convivial table when the glass has circulated freely. But it vain to attempt to keep the heart pure, unless it is furnished with ideas. This is the passage I noted above, where it seems like Wollstonecraft is more prudish than those with whom she associates. They seem to have no problem with using double meanings in their dinner conversation, but it does upset our author.

Morality Undermined by Sexual Notions of the Importance of a Good Reputation. Although I agree with the gist of Wollstonecraft’s criticism that women bear the brunt of bad reputation effects, again her solution is to hold everyone to unreachable standards of sexual morality. Rather, I say, Good Reputation is Undermined by Sexual Notions of Morality. For the most part, people ought not to care about who people are fucking. That’s another time though.

Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise From the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society. But what have women to do in society? I may be asked, but to loiter with easy grace, surely you would not condemn them all to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer! No. Women might study the art of healing, and be physicians as well as nurse. And midwifery … They might also study politics … Business of various kinds, they might likewise pursue. Another set of things that just needed quoting.

Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship, instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers — in a word, better citiznes. Which reminds me I do need to point out that although some of Wollstonecraft’s complaints about sexual prejudice remain relevant today (we still often assume women aren’t good at math), her prescriptions wouldn’t work today. In fact they didn’t really have the effect she thought they would when they were enacted.. She thought educating women would turn them into paragons of virtue. All she had to do was look at educated men to realized that education does not make people behave righteously. It makes them smarter, and able to stand on their own, which are sufficient reason alone. Don’t expect better government or business when women and minorities finally make it to the head of the table in force. They are as fallible as the rest of us in the patriarchy.

On National Education No quote here. This is the meat of Wollstonecraft’s policy prescription. By and large it’s come to pass in Western society. She proposes a government paid for and run system of school that will educate everyone, rich and poor, male and female. She desires for them to be day schools. That is, not boarding schools. Wollstonecraft felt that the approach of vacations made boarding schools a bad choice for education. They would be co-educational; she felt that was the only way to get teachers to treat the sexes equally. That also would allow the students to cross pollinate and develop grand passions for the arts, or politics, or whatever. Whether public schools have had the effect of reducing inequality I’ll leave for the exercises.

Oddly, I made few marks in the last chapter. The only big one is the portion where Wollstonecraft inveighs against novels. These days, novels and the theater are considered cultural. Some day, perhaps, reality television will be considered in the same manner.

No links to other blogs. I read that A Year of Feminist Classics will do some roundup posts, so follow them to see what other people are saying about the tome. I’m going to move on to January’s second book, So Long a letter, by Mariama Bâ. January is going to be a very feminist month. I’m also going to be reading the recent Carl Brandon Parallax Award winning Distances by Vandana Singh. The back cover blurb appears to make it out to be about math.

Title: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft
Imprint / publisher: Project Gutenberg
Format: Electronic book
Length: approximately 120 p.
Publication date: September 2002

I wish I remembered where I saw this book recommended, because I really would like to thank the person who got me to put it on my to be read list. Devices & Desires is a history of contraception in America, covering the late 1800s until the early 1970s. The coverage focuses on the makers, proponents, and users of birth control, rather than the legal and political status. I haven’t done the independent research to know whether Tone’s tome is accurate (voluminous end notes notwithstanding). Because Tone wrote about both the warts and the virtues of the characters involved, I tend to credit her with completeness. And of course, it’s an interesting subject matter. Who doesn’t want to know more about the history of making sex more risk-free?

I have to warn potential readers of something though. Don’t read this book if you are squeamish. It’s not just that some of the early methods of contraception (camel dung!) are distasteful. There was quite a bit of quackery involved in selling and marketing birth control. Birth control was illegal for so long, and other restrictions remained in place long after the ban was lifted. We can’t regulate the content of items that aren’t within the realm of legal products. And so, we got Lysol as the leading form of contraception for decades. Lysol doesn’t even work as contraception but its makers sold it that way, and millions of American women inserted a caustic cleaning product into their vaginas in order to kill off sperm after sex. Then again if you are reading it here, you might as well read the book.

The biggest takeaway from the book is the trajectory of birth control from banned product to something controlled by medical professionals. Margaret Sanger embraced medical control of birth control for several reasons. It carved out an exception to the existing bans on contraception in place with the Comstock laws. Medical prescription also reduced the dangers from unregulated birth control. However, medicalized contraceptives means that those who need them aren’t in sole control of whether and when to use them. There’s got to be a doctor or nurse involved. Devices & Desires covers the history of how Sanger embraced the medical profession from initial radical revulsion.

The second main focus in the book is on those who made the devices. Condoms and diaphragms in the 19th century required very little to make. Some rubber and some chemicals and a place to put it together. Douches, although not particularly effect, could also be made cheaply. Combined with legal bans that kept larger legitimate companies from selling them, small proprietors could thrive. Many of the small proprietors were poor, immigrant, and frequently women. As birth control became more accepted, the smaller companies became bigger, or disappeared. Particularly interesting to read about was the story of the creation of the Pill, created by male scientists but funded and encouraged by philanthropic motivated women.

The last main thrust to draw from the book is the effect on people who have sex. Tone’s book covers the benefits to women primarily, but touches on men in a few cases as well. One of the big moves from illegality came as a result of World War I, where millions of men contracted venereal diseases. Pregnancy wasn’t considered by society to be morally acceptable to prevent, but disease was. It’s one of the many instances of disparate treatment of women that Devices & Desires highlights.

I do wish Devices & Desires covered the science more in depth. I don’t mean that this should have been a book about how contraception works. I mean the social science. What gets people to use contraception? Why did the idea of contraception as sin go by the wayside? From a history perspective, we can see the events that happened but not always the reasons why. After World War I where the military started providing condoms to soldiers, what was the mechanism by which they were accepted? I wish there was more sociology here than there was.

I noted this on Twitter: I think this is the best non-fiction book I’ve read in several years. Never dry, it was balanced, informative, and interesting.

Title: Devices & Desires: A History of Contraception in America
Author: Andrea Tone
Cover creator: Skouras Design
Imprint / publisher: Hill and Wang
Format: Hardcover
Length: 292 p.
Publication date: 2001
ISBN-10: 0-8090-3817-X

Driving is a classic example of game theory. I’m trying to guess what other people will do, and drive appropriately to that. But they in turn are trying to guess what I’ll do, and respond. There’s a lot of feedback. A driver must consider a lot of variables. The result is a chaotic yet passably functional mess.

Tom Vanderbilt is not a traffic engineer. Like Mary Roach, he’s just a person who writes about things he fancies. He researches a lot, but writes fairly shallowly. Consequently, Traffic covers a lot of ground. The book contains 91 pages of notes, compared to 286 pages of regular coverage.

What you’ll find in the book is a survey of traffic issues. Most of what Vanderbilt writes about concerns psychology of driving. Why more than half of drivers think they are better than average, for instance. Or people will more or less keep a constant margin of safety; increase safety on a road, and drivers will increase their speed. He also covers some economic aspects as well. Why and how congestion pricing works.

My favorite parts of the book describe successful traffic engineering innovations. Traffic circles over stop lights. Removing signs and curbs to slow people down. Sadly, there are too few of these and they don’t always work. A lot of the ones mentioned stop working as drivers adjust their behavior and the changes become expected.

While good, I’m somewhat dissatisfied after having finished. This isn’t Vanderbilt’s fault, just the nature of the subject covered. The overall effect from the book is simply to come away feeling awed at how complex traffic is. The causes and inputs to traffic congestion and safety are so many and so varied that there’s no hope for a layperson to understand it.

And that’s somewhat of a problem. While we have to leave it to experts to execute on details, experts really shouldn’t set priorities. There’s too much opportunity for such small groups to be co-opted. On the other hand, the public likes to think it knows enough to muck around in the details. (After reading the book, I really want the city of Seattle to convert the intersections in my neighborhood to traffic circles.) However, traffic is too complex for that, as Vanderbilt’s book makes abundantly clear.

And thus I come away feeling a little hopeless. Luckily, I live only two neighborhoods away from the downtown core of Seattle. I’m close enough that traffic really needn’t affect my day to day activities.

A few other blogged reviews:

• BikeCommuters.com
• Notes from the Driving Seat
• On the Move
• The Transportationist

Title: Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Author: Tom Vanderbilt
Cover creator: Barbara De Wilde (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Alfred A. Knopf / Random House
Format: Hardcover
Length: 402 p. (includes extensive notes and index)
Publication date: 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-26478-7

In the last decade there’s been a resurgence of militant¹ atheists writing popular books. I’ve read popular books by three of the most prominent ones: Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great), Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation), and now Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion). I’ve been looking forward to this latest one more than others because Dawkins background is grounded in science far more than either of the others. While Hitchens’ and Harris’ books focused on the harms caused by religion, Dawkins’ central topic is the effect of science on religion. In his view, the two are incompatible. Because he covers a lot of ground, I’m going to give a chapter by chapter review.

One thing to note up front is that I am an agnostic bordering on atheist. Where important, I list myself as skeptic. I want to see the evidence for any proposition. I don’t buy religious hokum, but I also don’t subscribe to things like acupuncture, tarot, or Airborne. Sometimes I’ll get in people’s faces about this stuff, sometimes I don’t want to fight the battles. But I also don’t believe in discriminating against people for these beliefs unless it affects their actions. For example, if a person doesn’t want to dispense Plan B because of their religious convictions then society ought to consider not having them in a position where delivering Plan B is a part of their responsibility. I am not going to feel attacked by Richard Dawkins and thus am not specifically looking to pick apart his arguments. On the other hand, some of his logic isn’t the soundest, and I will point that out.

In the introductory material, Dawkins’ makes clear who his audience is: people who are closet atheists, and atheists who might be more public about their atheism. He’s not seeking to convince believers, though he often tweaks them. Overall, Dawkins’ makes some good arguments that will help the borderline atheists change their beliefs. He’s become a role model for atheists, known and respected as a public intellectual force. The book was a key part of moving him into the zeitgeist, so it succeeded in that way.

Overall, Dawkins makes some pretty good arguments. Reading the book feels more like attending a public lecture than thinking about a considered argument. He meanders, heads off on tangents, and is often far wordier in his explanations than he needs to be. In the early parts, I really wished The God Delusion had a more ruthless editor to pare it down. In the later parts, Dawkins’ logic wasn’t as strong, he had less evidence, and then he took an unfortunate turn into making excuses for child abuse while using its victims to magnify his concerns about religion for children.

A Deeply Religious Non-Believer. Dawkins’ main themes in this chapter seem to be that scientists and rationalists don’t get much respect when they should, and that religious thought is given undue respect. He also establishes a baseline for what he’s talking about (and talking really seems to be the right word, more on that later) of what he means by religion and what he opposes. The idea that a supernatural god that created everything and continues to intervene in the physical world concerns his scientific faculties. He doesn’t oppose deism so much, though he doesn’t think it’s true. That’s the belief that a god set the universe in motion but hasn’t played in the sandbox since. He advocates a universe that contains no god. Unlike Hitchens who despised even eastern religions, Dawkins’ generally classifies them as philosophies that are acceptable where they do not posit supernatural systems (such as reincarnation).

He thinks the world gives weight to religious where similar secular or scientific ideas would not get the same preference. One example is that of drug use. If a person thinks taking hallucinogens is a good idea, it’s illegal. But if it’s part of a religious practice, it’s legal. The irrational reasoning is protected, but the rational use is not allowed.

The God Hypothesis. The god that Dawkins’ wants to attack he defines thusly: a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. His alternative is this: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution. He also decries one brand of agnosticism that turns the idea that the non-existence of god is something ultimately non-provable into the idea that god doesn’t exist is a 50/50 proposition. In his view, though not currently provable, the overwhelming evidence is that god most likely does not exist. Agnosticism of the it could be, might not be, we just don’t know variety is untenable.

Another idea that Dawkins’ attacks is that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, using a Steven Gould term. This is the idea that science concerns itself with how, and religion concerns itself with why. He writes that religion and science do not cover separate spheres. Religions make all sorts of claims about the universe that are testable, and thus can be proven or disproven with science. Strip all of those away, and there are no questions left that religion has any particular expertise at. Without the direct communication from god, religion has no better claim to moral teaching than a gardener does. I’ve often thought the same thing about this idea that science and religion cover the different areas, and it’s one of the reasons I’m an atheist. I’m glad Dawkins’ put it into words that this separation of powers is false. Dawkins’ writes that it’s mostly an attempt by religion to claim (ever smaller) places where it is supreme from the advancing of science.

Arguments for God’s Existence. Dawkins’ picks out a number of arguments for the existence of god, including most of the famous onces such as Pascal’s wager. Then he demolishes them logically. A major problem with them is that they are logical arguments that usually depend on definitions that fall apart under scrutiny. He thinks any proof should be testable, and none of them are. For instance, he eviscerates the God, liar, or madman proof by pointing out that there are many other choices, such as honestly mistaken. Or the proof from personal experience by pointing out that transcendent experiences are not limited to the religious. In fact, the mind can be deceived by many things (he gives an example of a concave mask that looks like it moves when it doesn’t). He doesn’t cover every supposedly proof, because there are many. Because none are testable, none serve as actual proof that god exists.

Why There Almost Certainly Is No God. Here’s where we get to the meat of The God Delusion. Evolution is almost certainly correct in the explanation of how life came to be, and came to be where it is now. There’s no room for god in it, except at the beginning. Taking it back to the beginning of life puts the argument in the realm of chemistry, physics, and cosmology.

The argument for god at that point is that the odds against life arising out of simple chemistry are staggeringly huge, so something must have tilted the lever in our favor. A billion to one against, perhaps. But given that there are a billion billion planets in the universe, even those awesomely bad odds would produce life on a billion planets.

Going back even further, the same principle could apply on a cosmological scale as well. Even though the cosmological constants seem tuned just right to produce life, the multiple universes theory explains that there could be billions and billions of universes that produced non-life, and we are merely in the one that had everything tuned just right. This is the weakest section of Dawkins’ reasoning that no god is needed to explain the universe. Multiple universes are extremely theoretical at this point and unproven. Dawkins’ argument is that since science covers other areas similarly there’s a decent chance this is also the case. This isn’t convincing. However, subtracting this portion leaves only the possibility of a deistic god, one who designed the universe and has no further interaction with it. That eliminates the god of nearly every religion in the world.

The Roots of Religion. Here Dawkins theorizes why evolution might select for religion despite it being irrational. He gives one possibility as group selection, but dismisses it as not convincing (though not disproved either). That’s the idea that a war-like religion enables a tribe to survive by making it easier for them to destroy other tribes. Dawkins’ thinks religion might be a by-product of something else, and specifically calls out a three-way classification of stances. The physical stance is seeing what something does and reacting to it. The design stance is a shortcut that lets people make guesses based on what something appears to be designed to do. The intentional stance is to assume what something intends to do, even if it doesn’t have actual intentions. These views of the world allow people to predict much more quickly what will happen and respond quickly, at the cost of sometimes being wrong. One of the costs of being wrong, he thinks, is that we are predisposed to assume intention underpinning the universe.

My biggest problem with this section, besides that it’s mostly conjecture, is that I’m not sure what use this information is. It’s already abundantly clear that humans believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. One need look no further than the Tea Party in the U.S. for evidence of that. That people believe wrong things doesn’t help me decide whether to abandon the concept of god.

The Roots of Morality: Why Are We Good? The argument goes that without god, humans have no source of morality. We’d just do whatever we want. Which isn’t exactly true. There are lots of basic precepts that are built into us from evolution that are designed for our survival. Don’t kill your neighbor lest his family kill you, and all that. Dawkins’ describes some experiments that have been done to see how people respond to various conundrums. Those experiments found that people from around the world reacted remarkably similarly. He believes that morality does just fine without a revealed code. Atheists do not commit crime at statistically different rates than believers.

The Good Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist. If the Bible were inerrant moral guidance, Christians’ would not pick and choose between the things they elect to follow. The kind of fundamentalist nutcase that truly follows everything in the bible is rare. We do not think it is moral to hand over women for raping to crowds at the door, but the Bible says that is perfectly acceptable. Since we must select some portions instead of others, how are we to do so in a godly manner? Dawkins’ logical conclusion is that the bible is an insufficient guide. It’s hard to argue that point.

What’s Wrong with Religion? Why Be So Hostile? This and the next chapter are where Dawkins’ logic falls apart. Moderate religions perpetuate the belief that belief is good. Even moderate belief thus allows an environment where evil belief is thought all right. This, all belief is bad and must be opposed strenuously. By that logic, science is horrible if any part of it is used for evil, like eugenics. While I generally think reminding people they believe some pretty strange stuff for no good reason is just fine, I plan to continue to scale my derision to the amount of harm a religion actually causes.

Childhood, Abuse and the Escape from Religion. Dawkins’ thinks is morally wrong to inculcate children with religious ideas, equating it with child abuse. In fact, he repeatedly stresses that getting children to believe in god is probably worse than sexual abuse.

the damage is arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.

Dawkins thinks he is qualified to dismiss sexual abuse because he was fondled once and no harm came of it, and because one woman who suffered more severe abuse wrote him and said she thought the idea of going to hell was worse abuse than what she experienced. In other places, he casts doubt on whether all this abuse really occurred anyway. Really. Way to step outside your area of expertise, Mr. Public Face of Atheism. Pisses me off.

Yes, I agree it’s bad form to imbue kids with religion. Really bad form even. But I have a hard time even bothering to listen because Dawkins’ started to do the comparing between them. In the same chapter he both minimizes what abusers have done and at the same time uses the horrific abuse visited on children in that way to argue that raising kids religiously is worse. You didn’t suffer that much, but if you did, what I went through as a religious kid was worse!

And with that, I end the review. I am not even going to cover the last chapter.

Title: The God Delusion
Author: Richard Dawkins
Imprint / publisher: Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin
Format: Paperback
Length: 463 p. (includes indices and notes)
Publication date: 2008
ISBN-10: 0-618-91824-8

Papal Sin is about far more than a few instances of bad behavior from a few popes. Anyone who’s done much reading on the Catholic church should be aware of quite a few instances of popes murdering, lying, thieving, etc. But are those actions in the past? Wills’ argument is that the very structure of the office of the pope requires it to lie and cover up, even if it’s not directly involved in wrong-doing in the last century or so.

As Wills lays them out, the book covers historical dishonesties, doctrinal dishonesties, one on the nature of honesty, and a theology of honesty. As a non-Christian and a layman, I found a different categorization of his themes more helpful. He begins with covering harm against others, then moves on to the lying to cover those up, followed by what Wills considers to be making shit up doctrinally. He then attributes this to an inability to admit when the church has been wrong, which is ultimately a concern with establishing a precedent that breaks the authority of the church hierarchy. The last chapters deal with some of the history and theology of lying withing the Catholic church.

That the catholic church as an organization has harmed people is pretty irrefutable. Some would argue that the church has done far more good than bad, but that’s not Wills’ concern. Much of his discussion centers on how the church handled the Nazi era and the Holocaust. He’s pretty clear that he thinks an argument could be made that the church did what it could under the circumstances. Irrespective of that, he thinks the church has no claim on being a victim of the Nazi’s in a real sense, nor that it should claim to have been a champion of the plight of the Jews. Hundreds of years of semi-official theology that the Jews killed Jesus as well as other anti-semitic propaganda means that the church cannot claim that moral high ground. He also castigates the church for allowing sexual abuse of minors to run rampant for years.

That the church has been wrong doctrinally isn’t quite so clear. My ex-Catholicism is going to show here. When your arguments all rest on a base as shaky as a scripture, just about anything can be deduced. Wills certainly cherry-picked historical pieces of Catholic doctrine to argue that current doctrines such as papal infallibility, prohibition of birth control, celibate priesthood, and even the priestly consecration of Communion bread have not been consistently promulgated and are likely false. Successfully? Couldn’t really say, but he pokes some pretty big holes.

Where Wills’ gets most interesting in the polemic is when he starts writing about the cover-up of the harm and suppression of doctrinal inconsistency. The book’s premise is that the lying is because the church can’t admit to having been wrong without calling bringing to the fore that it’s been wrong before. In other words, it would open a can of worms that could bring about the end of priestly control of the church. If the church admitted that evidence used to support the doctrine against birth control was false, then then it would be saying that all the people who’d been branded sinners for hundreds of years weren’t really sinners. So it makes up new rationales for prohibiting birth control and quietly stops arguing the old ones. The reasoning that this is the cause of much of the church’s flaws jibes with the evidence that Wills produces, but it’s by no means definitive proof.

The later chapters on the theology of lying were a lot of word and sentence parsing of biblical and church writings (much of it that of St. Augustine). Since I do not accept the bible as a basis for truth, I drawing any sort of conclusion about the nature of the world from it seems pretty pointless. The sections seem to me to be a call to the church to live lives of truth for the simple reason that it’s godly. If it were to have the effect, more power to it. Personally I don’t much care of someone is behaving godly or not, but I do care if someone is causing harm in the world.

As can be deduced from the last few paragraphs, Wills argued for reform of the church’s organization as a practicing Catholic (at least at the time), not as an outsider. Some folks will argue that he’s not really a Catholic since he doesn’t accept many Catholic teachings. It’s not my place to say who is and who isn’t a Catholic. That he considers himself Catholic though indicates to me te doesn’t want to see the faith destroyed, just the parts that he feels don’t flow from the true nature of Christianity.

Other blogged reviews:

• Dr Denis Says…
• Classical Bookworm

Title: Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit
Author: Garry Wills
Cover creator: Ashwini M. Jambotkar (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Doubleday / Random House
Format: Hardcover
Length: 312 p.
Publication date: June 2000
ISBN-10: 0-385-49410-6

Why am I reading a sex education book for teens? Two reasons: I loved the Midwest Teen Sex Show (M.T.S.S.), written by and starring Nikol Hasler, and I’ve been mentoring teens at a high school for the last five years. The Midwest Teen Sex Show was an incredibly funny and informative internet web show. They have’t had a new episode for over a year now. I believe they were attempting to make a pilot for Comedy Central. And the kids I’ve worked with have questions, lots of questions. Sex ed leaves a lot to be desired. I was hoping Sex: A Book for Teens would carry the M.T.S.S. humor over, and that it would really cover the questions teens wanted to know. And while it’s a solid book, Hasler’s writing failed to meet my expectations on both counts.

The guide is much better than anything I had when I was a teen, which was essentially nothing. I didn’t even get abstinence education. The school I went to told everyone how fertilization worked, and that was about it. I haven’t sat through any sex ed with the students I work with, so I don’t know how much better it is. But their questions are further along than mine were at that point so I expect they are getting better information than I had.

The M.T.S.S. humor is extremely zany, and often physical. They wouldn’t think twice about having a performer dress up in a giant condom. In Sex: A Book for Teens, the humor seems like the Tonight Show version, toned down and enamored of itself. About the only parts I thought really funny were the last question in the Q&A section at the end of each chapter. That question was always titled There Are No Stupid Questions—Except for This One. An example: I am really mad at my ex for breaking up with me and then still showing up whenever he wants some action. What is the best STI I can get quickly and give to him? An example of the standard humor is this advice for when folks score: It also means you can get out your foam I’m Number One! finger and wave it all around. Meh.

As for advice, it’s all good. And it goes way beyond the standard this-is-how-things-work information into stuff lots of parents and adults don’t want to talk about. It covers the topics it really should (though often times I think the focus is misplaced). It’s very accepting of homosexuality, for instance. It’s got real explanations of the risks of birth control failing. It constantly flogs Planned Parenthood as a good resource. The list of good stuff is quite lengthy.

But it leaves some pretty common issues barely touched. The section on losing one’s virginity doesn’t really answer the question How do I go about arranging it? It warns against doing it if the person isn’t ready (good). It warns of risks (good). It suggests knowing one’s body and that of the gender one wants to get busy with (good). But the guide leaves off questions like how do I bring this up with the other person?, where should we do it?, etc. One of the biggest misconceptions the kids seem to have (and I had too) was that sex wasn’t romantic if it was planned. Combine that with some taboos that say girls (and boys on occasion) aren’t proper if they seem interested in sex, and you get kids who just try to make it happen without real planning. The section on technique for straight kids mentions missionary position and suggest other positions but doesn’t name them or explain them. Nothing about using pillows to put someone in the right position, for instance. Masturbation for boys doesn’t cover cleanup.

A 181 page book can’t cover everything. It doesn’t have to cater to what I think is important. But the subjects I wrote about above, as well as others, came up over and over when I talked with students. The book answers a fair number of important questions, but leaves off a good chunk too. It’s worthwhile compared to what I had (nothing), but I don’t know how it compares to other teen sex advice books out there, since I’m not familiar with them. I really hope this is not the cream of the crop, cause it could be tons better.

Title: Sex: A Book for Teens
Author: Nikol Hasler
Imprint / publisher: Zest Books
Format: Paperback
Length: 181 p.
Publication date: May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-9819733-2-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-9819733-2-6

I received this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program in exchange for a review to be posted on LibraryThing. In accordance with my police on review copies, I will donate $12.20 (the price of the book on Amazon.com) to the A.L.S.A.

Why can’t Africa get its shit together? That’s a question I’ve had for a while. Economically many of it’s countries rank near the bottom of the scale. I don’t subscribe to the racist notion that Africans genetically are predisposed to this. It’s certainly possible that there’s a cultural reason for it, much like the U.S. has been culturally prone to electing jingo-istic right-wing politicians for the last half century. For instance, because of tribal differences, it’s difficult for an African country to agree on a political system. Though India made many inroads to solving that problem. But it’s certainly possible it’s behind Africa’s problems.

Is racism a factor? Yes. Centuries of slave raids and colonialism doesn’t leave Africa in a good position. But it doesn’t explain everything. India, China, Latin America, and other places have been subject to racism as well, and they are doing better than Africa. Perhaps less racism, or less enduring, however. Haiti, populated by African descendants, also sits near the bottom of most economic rankings. I do think European and American racism works in somewhat of a ranked fashion, so I’m sure it plays a part.

More likely there’s a big economic reason. Economics posits that people choose an option that makes the optimum allocation of resources for themselves. Of course, over the decades the profession has discovered lots of exceptions to that rule, but the general rule explains a lot of human behavior.

One economic explanation for Africa’s chronic problems is that being resource rich is a war and corruption magnet, and so saddles Africa with the likes of Mobuto Sese Seko and Samuel Doe. These despots steal the bulk of the money and leave their citizens in a worse position than ever. But Africa is not homogeneously resource rich, so there’s still something missing from the equation.

Another possible economic reason is the lack of the rule of law and functioning government prevents economic development. While certainly true, Africa has had 60 years to develop these systems. Failure to develop them is more likely a symptom though. Asia has done it. South America has too. So what’s the underlying economic reason?

Dambisa Moyo proposes in Dead Aid that the underlying economic reason is the abundance of unaccountable international aid is the key to Africa’s failure. She’s a Harvard and Oxford educated economist who’s worked on African issues for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs. She’s Zambian by birth as well, which I’m sure is a major reason why her critique of aid has gotten some traction where others have failed to get notice for similar criticisms.

Her argument says that aid works like easy resources, giving corrupt governments and businesses the opportunity and reason to steal the money, and crowds out other sources of economic growth as well. In other words, the developed world doesn’t make anyone truly accountable for the money, so of course it’s taken. To have aid work, at a minimum either we’d need to run the aid ourselves, or we have to have anti-corruption conditions and the spigot turned off when they aren’t met. Moyo doesn’t think the former is a good idea (paternalistic, among other things) and the latter isn’t credible.

In other words, not only is aid not helping, it’s actually the cause of Africa’s economic problems. I don’t know how to evaluate the claim. Aid certainly hasn’t moved Africa on a par with other regions. But it could be ameliorating a real underlying cause. Economics doesn’t often allow for controlled experiments that would solve that confusion. Aid certainly hasn’t all gone to waste, either.

Moyo proposes four alternative sources of financing for development. First, international bonds. Second, foreign direct investment. Third, international trade. And fourth, micro-loans, remittances, and other banking improvements tailored for the poor. If, in fact, aid is the underlying cause of Africa’s problems, these might have some hope of changing the game. But I am skeptical. First, that these methods won’t have the same problems that aid does. And second, that they don’t have their own problems. And lastly, even if they won’t cause the same problems, I see no incentive for the African powerful to switch, if indeed their money-grubbing ways are the mechanism through which aid fails.

International bonds would work according to Moyo because lenders wouldn’t lend money in a second round if they didn’t get their funds repaid in a first round. Aid continues to be sent even if earlier rounds are squandered. This proposal I don’t understand. Here’s why I don’t think it would work. A bond issue gets stolen by a corrupt leader. No one is willing to issue bonds to the country again, and we are back to the point where we are now: either people starve or we send aid.

Her second proposal is foreign direct investment (F.D.I.). In other words, foreign companies buying shares of projects in African countries. I think this has a better chance of success, but I don’t think it will really make much difference. In order to secure scarce opportunities, these companies will need to kick back to corrupt political leaders. There’s no guarantee that the benefits will accrue to citizens of an African country. Look at Nigeria, where foreign oil companies are causing far more damage environmentally than they are benefiting locals economically. And there’s also the problem of nationalization, where the government, for corrupt or not corrupt reasons, simply takes over a foreign companies ownership. Without strong legal protections, this can happen easily. Without addressing those problems, I don’t see F.D.I. being the driver of economic growth. But it has potential benefits and may be a piece of the solution.

The third proposal is increased international trade. Comparative advantage results in large surpluses than benefit the citizenry. I see this as the best opportunity. However, as Moyo notes, there are many barriers to this. The first world would need to drop punitive tariffs. There’s more incentive for African countries to reduce barriers to each other, but there are more jurisdictions involved and they have much smaller economies. It’ll be a lot of diplomatic work to get that established there, and the benefits aren’t huge for each one. But if first world countries get in the act, it could have a huge effect. If.

Lastly, Moyo pushing banking services for the poor. Micro-loans. Removing barriers to remittances. Forms of deposit accounts geared toward small depositors to get local money moving through the economy instead of being hidden under mattresses. Again, while this has great potential, it has high transaction costs. In other words, since individual deposits and loans are small, it takes a lot of them to make a difference. And that takes a lot of bankers to make it work, who cost money and take time.

Lastly, there’s the problem of making the switch to these new methods. Why would a corrupt leader pick a high cost bond with conditions over low cost aid that he can steal easily? Or give up control in F.D.I. when there’s low cost money in aid? And a non-corrupt government would be taking on a lot of risk to use high cost bonds for projects that don’t result in easy ways to pay them off. The only way the switch can happen is if aid is cut off on the other side. But that would entail an ugly period of transition, and it’s hard to watch people suffer in the mean time and do nothing. Moyo recognizes this to a certain extent. Her book’s intended audience (according to the last chapter) is actually the western world’s public. She thinks the only way to change the aid paradigm is by pressure from the West. Which seems pretty paternalistic to me, and that’s something she criticizes. But aside from that, the limit of our influence would be to cut off aid, if we could do that at all. We have little power with investors who would be needed to set up bonds, F.D.I. or micro-banking.

The short version of all this is I think Moyo might very well be on to something here. She’s not the first to make these proposals and I’m sure there’s some very serious study going on about them. But I don’t think her case is convincing, and definitely not convincing enough to make wholesale changes yet. Yet. I’m a big fan of controlled capitalism and using markets to steer the world to good ends. These very well could work, if someone works out the problems with them. You’ll need far more than a 150 page polemic to convince the people who need convincing.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Africa Can … End Poverty
• State of the Planet
• Zambian Economist
• Amy Reads
• Grumpy the Penguin

Title: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way For Africa
Author: Dambisa Moyo
Imprint / publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan
Format: Hardcover
Length: 154 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-10: 0-374-13956-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-13956-8

I think this is the first autobiography of an African I’ve read where the writer hasn’t spent significant amount of time in Europe or the United States. William Kamkwamba frames his story without much European affectation. Being young, he doesn’t write with the knowledge of where his life and choices took him; that remains in the future. His biography has much more immediacy and less remoteness than one can expect from an older and more experienced person. Although written in the past tense, it feels present tense.

William Kamkwamba is a 23 year old Malawian from a smallish village called Wimbe. Most residents are farmers, and barely above subsistence level. Due to a number of family setbacks, including a devastating famine that affected all of Malawi, Kamkwamba dropped out of his rural school. The family could no longer afford his tuition. But being a bright, inquisitive tinkerer, William pored through books on physics from a 3 bookshelf library. From that, he got the idea to build a windmill which could provide electricity to his family household. Built mostly from scrap bicycle, automobile, and tractor parts, the windmill went from powering a small bulb to wiring multiple rooms in the house. His eventual goal was to power a pump so that the family would not be subject to famines due to drought conditions.

Kamkwamba’s do-it-yourself tinkering mindset is what got him noticed, though it took some time. Malawian newspapers noticed at first. Then international bloggers picked it up. Then he was invited to talk at TED. Then a documentary about him was made. And then Bryan Mealer tracked him down to tell his story in this book.

The story isn’t just Kamkwamba’s windmill though. It covers his earliest memories up until his return to school as a result of his windmill notoriety. I found the stories in his early life much more interesting than the nuts and bolts of putting together a windmill. By the time the windmill story gets moving, Kamkwamba is somewhat on auto-pilot. His personality and drive has already been formed. The earlier parts actually do a pretty good job of showing why he has the drive he does. He becomes motivated by a desire to better his family’s situation. He has an earnestness that is very charming.

I have some concerns about the narrative after Kamkwamba achieves fame. He briefly describes a trip he took to the United States. It veers towards a Eddie Murphy Coming to America rube awed by the strange technologies of the white man kind of vibe. I wanted to both congratulate Kamkwamba on having made it while simultaneously tell him he’s better than merely wondering at the skyscrapers. Luckily, my impression of him from his presentation at the Seattle Public Library last fall didn’t leave me with the idea that he was overwhelmed, so maybe I’m reading more into that section than I should.

As painful as it is for me to write this, Charles Mudede also has a point about Kamkwamba. I write painful because normally Mudede’s navel gazing makes me cringe. And his city/country dichotomy is somewhat elitist. But I think he’s right about why Kamkwamba is getting first world attention: it fits in with the preconceptions of a white guy like me. One of the commenters makes the point much better than Mudede does:

Guys like the windmill guy always get the attention because it feeds into the totally narrow American view of who Africans are. … Africa is only about poor people living in the bush, with disease and misery all the time. That’s the view. And wow, looky there, at the simple windmill guy – aw, how heartwarming for all of us. Sniff, sniff. Africans like Dambisa Moyo (who none of you likely know), a successful economist and author from Zambia, you never hear about, do you? SHE’S not Africa for us. We just want warm and fuzzy stories about simple folk out in the bush making windmills. Cause it makes us feel good.

Reading around blogs on this book, the word inspiring comes up a lot. I do not think it means what these people think it means. Kamkwamba has a very feel good story, but if more than a couple of handful of people have built their own windmills because they read this book, I’d be highly surprised. Kamkwamba has certainly done some inspiring, particularly through encouraging people to donate to his pet charities. But I’m betting only a small fraction of people will actually be inspired to change things they actually do. Which is why I kind of agree with Mudede and the other commenters sentiments. This book feels good, but it isn’t particularly game changing.

That doesn’t take anything away from what Kamkwamba has done. He’s a smart kid who has overcome odds. And he’s got a huge amount of potential to become much more than a rural over-achiever. He didn’t just overcome odds. He also had a vision for his family and worked to achieve it. He wasn’t just looking to get ahead; he wanted to break the cycle. Both from the book and from his appearance, I get the feeling he’s destined for something more than being the simple guy who made good. I sure hope so. He may be a game changer.

Beyond Kamkwamba’s personal story, his book offers a look into life in Malawi, both economically and culturally. Kamkwamba doesn’t paper over things like belief in witchcraft or government corruption. The reader gets a first hand look at what something just above subsistence farming looks like first hand, what people do with their time, how school works, what town life is like, and more. These pieces of African life, while not particularly surprising, aren’t something with which I was familiar.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Amanda Wells at Wyld About Business
• My Heart’s In Accra

Title: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
Authors: William Kamkwamba; Bryan Mealer
Cover creator: Mary Schuck (designer/illustrator)
Imprint / publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins
Format: Hardcover
Length: 270 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-173032-0

There are two ideas in economics that have bothered me for a long time. The first, attributable to Adam Smith, is that an invisible hand guides capitalist markets to a socially optimal solution. The second is that markets, particularly the United States stock market, fully integrate all available information into the price of a security, which is the economically optimal price for that security. The latter, called the efficient market hypothesis, has dominated capitalist thinking in the U.S. for quite some time.

There are two underpinnings of capitalist economics. Scarcity and rationality. Goods are scarce, meaning we can’t use as much as we want of everything, whether it be time, money, air, food, entertainment, etc. We always have to make choices. The second is that people make their choices rationally; they act in their own best financial interest given all the information needed. I have no problem with scarcity. Rationality flies in the face of everything I’ve seen about people. And rationality is the underpinning of the two economic ideas above.

Adam Smith’s quote is actually referencing a pretty narrow piece of economics, not the broad Ayn Rand style statement about markets that so-called conservatives make it out to be. The classic refutation of that is the prisoner’s dilemma. Two actors in that case will, if they seek to maximize their own situation, cause the non-socially optimal solution to occur. But that’s hardly a general refutation. And in fact, I personally am convinced that the invisible hand is a good rule of thumb.

The efficient markets hypothesis in it’s rule of thumb format seems to me to be a good rule of thumb. Generally speaking, an individual cannot beat the market except through luck. But in it’s most strident form of taking into account all information, even non-public information, I call utter bullshit. But until now I didn’t have the background to say so.

The Myth of the Rational Market is an extensive history of the efficient market hypothesis, starting in the late 1800s and continuing all the way through 2008. It covers all the major players, explains the discoveries and theories that lead to the hypothesis, and explains how it came unraveled in the 1980s and beyond. As economics can be, sometimes it was a little hard to keep all the threads aligned in my head. Fox does a fairly admirable job of juggling them all, better than many economics texts I’ve read.

It’s rare for me to finish an economics book and feel better informed with information on issues that I actually discuss with friends. Okay, mostly I’m talking about wing-nut friends who like to post the market is always best tripe on Facebook or LiveJournal. Now I’ve got the evidence to say you’re an idiot.

And despite the book being flogged by a few people as about the financial market meltdown the last few years, it’s only tangentially related. It doesn’t hurt understanding of that crisis, but only the epilogue touches directly.

A few other blogged reviews:

• BoingBoing
• Steve Reads
• Concurring Opinions
• Wha’ Happen?

Title: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street
Author: Justin Fox
Imprint / publisher: HarperBusiness / HarperCollins
Format: Hardcover
Length: 382 p. (includes notes and index)
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-059899-0

I just got confirmation that my policy on review copies is paying off for me. If you read the blurb at the bottom of this entry, you’ll see that I am donating money to charity in lieu of payment for the book. When I started doing this last summer, it was to get me to consider better the opportunity cost of taking a review copy. In other words, if I’m only willing to read a book if I get it for free, then I probably shouldn’t read it. (Library books get paid for in time and effort.) And if the money spent feels like too much after having read it, that’s also a clue to the book’s value.

Land of the Lost Souls is not a bad book. A very decent read. But I’m looking at that $10.45 and thinking I’d rather have spent it on a different book. For why, read to the end.

Anyhow, Cadillac Man is a New York City homeless guy, living on the streets (mostly) since 1994. Occasionally he’s had a job and a place to stay, but those haven’t lasted too long. Throughout that time, Cadillac Man kept a journal. Then a literary/journalist type who was friendly with him saw the journals and pitched them to media outlets. There’s been a documentary on Cadillac Man and parts of the journals appeared in Esquire. And now this book.

I didn’t come away from the book with a lot of deep thoughts. It appears to be a decent look into the life of a homeless person, and it may dispel some preconceived notions a few will have about them. For instance, one of the chapters is a love story of sorts between two homeless people. But I suspect that it will also confirm some prejudices as well, based on one guy’s predilections. See, he doesn’t want to work unless he’s making bank! Those bums are just lazy! I don’t think it’s fair to generalize from one guy’s story. Cadillac Man, if his own writing can be believed, is actually pretty industrious, but it’s very much in a way that avoids steady work.

And I say appears and if [it] can be believed because I have no insight into homelessness beyond a stint here or there volunteering at soup kitchens and shelters in Seattle. I have no way to judge Cadillac Man’s veracity. I think any work of non-fiction should be judged against the truth, but all I have are my own prejudices to compare against. So I’m hesitant to make any general claims about the book being eye-opening or anything like that. The narrative makes little in the way of such claims, and I can’t extrapolate.

Unfortunately, I have one big criticism. Cadillac Man’s writing and life are somewhat repetitive. I can’t really blame him for that, but it makes for less than stellar reading. Life on the streets is tough and dirty and repetitive, and it’s similar for most homeless people. So you kind of have to expect it. In Cadillac Man’s case, it’s repeated descriptions of collecting recyclables for money, repeated scrambles for places to sleep at night, etc. After a while, my eyes glazed over at these parts.

And I’m fully aware that such criticism comes from a position of privilege. What bored me is, due to circumstance, the nuts and bolts of someone else’s life. I’m just not able to turn off completely the part of my brain that says I need to be captivated by the story. Morally speaking, it would be better if I could.

A couple other blogged reviews:

• GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life
• spacebeer

Title: Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets
Author: Cadillac Man
Cover creator: Amy C. King (designer) / Eugene Richards (photographer)
Imprint / publisher: Bloomsbury
Format: Paperback
Length: 283 p.
Publication date: March 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-689-0

I received Land of the Lost Souls from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program in exchange for a review to be posted on LibraryThing. In accordance with my policy on review copies, I’ve donated $10.45 (the price of the book on Amazon.com) to the A.L.S.A..