3 Books, 5 Minutes

Jim: Book discussion time. And participating are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and me; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz; and Wally of The Daily Jot. Plus, joining us to discuss the first book is Trina. Trina's Mike's mother and she's also just started the newest site in the community, Trina's Kitchen. Last week, we had hoped to have a book discussion but time ran out. One of the books we'd wanted to discuss was a book by Francis Moore Lappe but with C.I. operating from out of town this weekend and the rest of us utilizing the library we wouldn't be able to provide an excerpt. Hopefully, we'll pick that book up at a later date but what we can do is discuss Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. Trina, why don't you provide some information on the book?

Trina: This is landmark book that stays in print and that's a goal most authors of cook books probably have but few achieve. The recipes in the book are strong enough to keep it in print; however, there's also what I consider a reporting section where Frances Moore Lappe addresses issues that are now more accepted but were shocking to some at the time. The combination makes the book a very important one.

Jess: Well said. I'll note first off that for this book, you'll hear from a limited number of us because it wasn't on our reading lists this weekend. Besides Trina, Elaine, Rebecca, Kat, C.I. and I have read it. One thing that surprised me when Mike and I would talk was that, when food came up, we actually had a lot in common. I am a vegetarian. And we were raised that way in my family. Mike goes to bed dreaming about hamburgers.

Mike: True!

Jess: And yet we like a lot of the same food. That's because this book was used by both of our families. The recipes in this are ones for great food. It's not flavorless food.

Trina: That's correct. If I had said, even before Mike was born, "Gather round the table everyone for our vegetarian dinner," I think the table would have been empty. There's nothing wrong with steamed vegetables but this isn't a book about how to steam vegetables. These are recipes that produce very tasty dishes.

Jess: And there are some great recipes for breads.

Trina: There are. Those take a bit more work because you have to allow the yeast to rise but there are breads, there are soups, there are desserts.

Kat: And there's the reporting section you spoke of earlier. That was groundbreaking work. In many ways, it still is groundbreaking even if you're familiar with the topics.

Rebecca: Like the amount of things involved in producing beef, for instance.

C.I.: Disclosure, I know Frances Moore Lappe. So no one feels there's a conflict of interest, I'll just note that this book is regularly updated. So if you read an early version, it's always worth checking to determine whether or not there's been an updated edition. One point, regarding food, that she makes in later editions is that protein combining is much easier than originally thought. That has to do with the fact that there has been more research into the field and, I'd argue, that research came about from the work of Frances Moore Lappe and others.

Elaine: Right. It is possible to exist on a vegetarian diet and not suffer any nutritional problems or deficiencies. I didn't read the book for the recipes. I got it as a gift from C.I. one year and I read it for the section detailing the costs to the enivornment of our American diet.
She covers a number of issues like top soil and water and, while I'm sure this is a great cookbook, it's also quite a bit more.

Kat: Right. This is a cool book. I didn't grow up playing video games and that probably shows when I have company over. We'll have music on the stereo or the radio on and I have mags and books all over the long coffee table. People will pick those up and we'll have some amazing discussions. This is a book you can leave on your coffee table because it will provide some amazing discussions.

Rebecca: I've got the excerpt. This is from page 92 of the twentieth anniversary edition.

Most Americans assume that our farm exports go to feed the hungry world. Few appreciate that most of these exports go to other industrial countries, and overall, two-thirds of all of our agricultural exports go to feed livestock. As noted earlier, U.S. farm exports have doubled in just one decade. Much of that spectacular increase is due to feed grain exports, which have leaped fourfold.
The United States has done its part to create a world of hamburger and wheat bread lovers, even in cultures that have thrived for centuries on rice, soy, and fish. From its beginnings in the 1950s, U.S. food aid was officially viewed as a tool for developing commercial markets. American officials understood that food aid could be a foot in the door for converting a nation's taste and food system to dependence on the United States, first on "aid" food, then on commercial exports. The strategy has worked: among the largest importers of U.S. grain are countries, like South Korea and Taiwan, that not long ago were major recipients of food aid.

Trina: It really is more than what some people would think of when they think of a cookbook.

Jim: So highly recommended by those who have read it and for those who haven't, including me, reason enough to pick it up. Trina, you are welcome to stay with us for the rest of the discussion.

Trina: I appreciate the offer but I'm not the night owl that all of you are. Thank you for including me and I hope this edition comes off more smoothly than the work required for some.

Jim: Thank you for joining us. We have two other books to discuss. We were hoping to pick up the books from last time but hadn't counted on the fact that everyone was using their libraries. That's a great thing. We also tend to count on C.I. to be able to run to the bookshelves and pull down a copy and C.I.'s on the road this weekend. Trina's joining us gave us three books to discuss and also allowed us to discuss a book by Frances Moore Lappe which a number of e-mails came in on this week, expressing disappointment that we hadn't discussed the book. Ty, set up our next book.

Ty: The voices of history go far beyond what a president or fat cat said. One historian who's made it his life's work to put the people back into their own history is Howard Zinn. The People Speak came out to celebrate the fact that Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States had sold over a million copies. To celebrate this achievement, a reading was staged. This book contains the sections from the readings and is called The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known.

Mike: Some people aren't readers. Hopefully people coming here are. But if someone's reading this and thinking, "I'm not going to pick up a book," well, you don't have to. You can enjoy hearing or watching this by checking out Democracy Now!'s "Readings From Howard Zinn's 'Voices of a People's History of the United States'" and still be informed.


Cedric: I want to note something from pages 65 to 67, where Martin Luther King Jr. is addressing the topic of the war. Here is one section of that:

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefirelds physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with a wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death [sustained applause].
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world.

Dona: That's a powerful quote. And we've got about over five minutes to do two books so let's focus on comments from those who didn't pariticpate with discussing the first book. Cedric, you picked that excerpt because?

Cedric: It applies to where we are right now.

Betty: Which is the thing about Howard Zinn as a historian, the events he covers are done in a way that has meaning. You're not reading along and just thinking, "Oh, that's how it was in the old days." You're reading and identifying with the people, you're realizing that's the great thing about Zinn's work, you finish it realizing that you matter, that people have always mattered. They struggle and they strive and maybe their work achieves something in their immediate lives but it helps the next generation.

Ty: If they're aware of it.

Betty: I agree with you but that's why I used "the next generation" and not "future generations." The next generation would be more likely to be aware of the recent events, recent for them. They grew up during the period. It's the later generations that get robbed of the knowledge.

Ty: Okay, I see what you're saying and agree with you. Good point. And it goes to why historians like Howard Zinn are important, they give you the gift of your history.

Cedric: Absolutely. There's never been a Zinn book that I haven't finished and thought, "I never knew that." And then followed that with, "Why wasn't I ever taught that?"

Jim: And Dona's indicating we need to move on to the last book because we're running behind schedule. Wally set up the book for us.

Wally: The third and final book is Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler's War Is A Racket. This book came out during the Depression is about sixty-six pages of text. It's billed as anti-war classic.

Mike: This is really good read. It's an argument of who profits and who loses in war, who gets rich and who gets maimed. Like with Howard Zinn's book, reading it, you'll be making comparisons to today.

Wally: It's about the war machine that needs more money and more lives.

Betty: Like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

Wally: This is a really good book to read. It's a strong argument and it's brief so even the busiest person should be able to make time for it.

Jim: And that's going to be the last word on that book. Next week we'll be discussing a few other books including Robert Parry's Trick Or Treason which a large number of readers recommended in the last two weeks. Due to the fact that so many are recommending it for a book discussion, it's going to leap ahead on the list. Also, we'll attempt to clue you in on at least one book scheduled to be discussed for the following week at the request of reader Brandy.