A. Volk

Rambling view of morality and atheism, May 16 2013

Frans de Waal is clearly an expert on primates (chimps and bonobos in particular). That's where he should have stayed in this book. Unfortunately, it's a wandering, rambling, often flawed look at morality and atheism that is clearly hindered by de Waal's personal grudges against prominent atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchins. The subtitle of the book is "in search of humanism among the primates." That defines about 25-33% of the book, and it's clearly the best part. When we hear stories (mostly anecdotal, but some experimental) about how our primate cousins display a shockingly advanced degree of morality and even, potentially, supernatural beliefs, it makes… Read more

Fun, but not very deep story, May 3 2013

This story probably would have been more gripping when it was written in the 1980s and the Cold War was still on. The absence of the Soviet Bear tames the story significantly for modern readers, but it's still a fun book. The essence of the story is an American military test pilot is shot down by the Soviets so they can capture him and pick his brain about the new planes he's flying. Unfortunately for them, he quickly escapes and seeks to get back to America the only way he knows how- by the route of his aboriginal ancestors crossing the Bering Sea. Being a Native American who was raised in the Western mountains Major Mack (yes, it's kind of a silly name) has the skills, aptitude, and… Read more

An inspiring book for those who want to cook, May 2 2013

This book has a basic message- cook more from raw products. I greatly enjoyed Pollan's earlier book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and got this one with the hope. They are indeed quite similar in that they espouse small-scale approaches to food. In the Omnivore's Dilemma he looked at the impact of our food choices relative to how they are made (e.g., factory farming of livestock). Here he looks at the impact of our decision to cook those foods versus to have someone else cook them for us. Which food companies are only too happy to do.

It's a basic fact of economics that the more processing… Read more