Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex: An Expose of Kingdom Fungi by David Moore.

No, it's not an exciting romance or adventure thriller but a nonfiction book about fungi by a mycologist from The University of Manchester.  It's an easy, short (152pp), often humorous read that will get you thinking about fungi and maybe a little more interested in them.  I've loved mushrooms for a long time.  I used to collect boletus up at the lake in summer and was thrilled with all the mushrooms at UC Santa Cruz.  Moore doesn't just talk about mushrooms but about molds like penicillin and other members of the kingdom, about its very long history, and about fungi as offering a solution for many of our problems today.  Fungi are the ultimate cleaner uppers, the decayers, so that they should be looked to for bioremediation, rather than the bacteria. 

Storm from the East by Milton Viorst

This is the audiobook that George W. Bush should have listened to! It gives the history of the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century and covers the colonial era of Great Britain and France. After listening to these six CDs I understand why the Arabs dislike the West so much, including the United States. We haven't supported their secular nationalism, which has gotten them nowhere. So it is no wonder that they have embraced a religious nationalism. If more Americans knew the history of the Middle East, they would be more understanding of the Arab rage.

Estrella Distante by Roberto Bolaño

It looks like this Chile Relleno blog is going to be books rather than cooking!
This is our first book on CD in Spanish from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (we had listened to a couple many years ago from the Stark Listening Center at Pitt). Maybe the blog name is appropriate since the author is Chilean. It's a short book (only 5 discs, 5.25 hours) and rather confusing at the beginning without a clear plot. The last chapter, where they introduce Detective Romero becomes much more interesting, particularly for the dialog. The reader, Walter Krochmal, was very good at Romero's Chilean accent (the ones without the esses).

The Elephant and the Dragon : The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us

Yet another book review. We listened to the Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith, a reporter for Forbes Magazine, as an audiobook during our commute. Although it was published in 2007 before the financial crisis caused by the subprime lending fiasco, most of the data is still useful. Meredith covers the recent economic and political histories of India and China to explain why the two countries have developed so differently, why India is the back office while China is the factory to the world. It was really amazing to listen to how rapidly China changed and is catching up with the rest of the world. Because it was able to, the Chinese government put a huge amount of money into infrastructure (roads, factories, power supply). The democratic and bureaucratic Indian government is way behind China in this respect. However, because India has a huge population of children, Meredith sees that there is a real possibility for immense economic growth in India if jobs can be provided for these up and coming workers. It's a good book for learning a lot about these two countries and how they will continue to challenge the economies of the West.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

I also just finished Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham, who is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University so I hope that means he isn't some quack. The thesis of the book, which I find very interesting and very plausible, is that it was the use of fire to cook food that led to the development of the human species, allowing them time away from chewing. He emphasizes that digestion of raw foods is quite time and energy consuming and that raw foods cannot provide the calories that cooked food does. Cooking makes both plant and animal foods more digestible. Because humans did not have to have large jaws and guts for digesting raw foods, our mouths, teeth and intestines became smaller, while our brain capacity increased. It's a good thesis and explains why we have an obesity epidemic today: we are naturally attracted to refined foods.