forestofglory

Today I found a really cool graphic essay about restoration and wilderness its called Knowing Prairies.

As you might remember I've studied ecology and environmental history and am pretty interested in how people think about wilderness. I thought this comic was a great introduction to the topic. It is not long only about five pages so check it out if that interests you.

So this book is about spinning, weaving and women's lives in pre-historic up to early-classical Europe. It is very readable but I found myself wish for just a bit more detail on a lot of things. The author uses traditional ages: stone age, bronze age, Iron age -- which I think are problematic because they imply tech advance is linear. Barber uses a wide variety of methods, including linguistic reconstruction; the study of physical objects such as: a artifacts used to make fabric, actual bits of a fabric and string that have been preserved, depictions of clothing and depictions of making fabric; and the study of written works including Mesopotamian letters for weaver wives to their trader husbands. There is lot of good stuff here. Over all a very pleasant read.


[*] The full title is: Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is the kind of that is easy to read for a little bit and then put down (which what I did) but everytime I picked it up I found out something new and interesting.

The book's thesis is that changes in Jewish eating laws have reflexed and often reinforced changes in how Jews have seen themselves in relation to non-Jews and other groups of Jews. Kraemer draws many symbolic parallels between dietary changes and a social changes.

One tantalizing idea that wasn't followed up as much as I'd have liked was interaction between gender and Kosher laws. Kraemer mentions that women generally had less access to religious training (in many times and places they couldn't read Hebrew for example) and that this might have caused women to be extra strict about the laws, but this point isn't dwelt on for long. I think that since women did most of the cooking that their views on keeping kosher deserve more pages.

I liked this book for combining subjects that interest me, for being well written and very readable, for being full of interesting facts. I enjoyed how the book used many sources including archeology, written Jewish law and other historical sources. I thought the book did a good job at painting an engaging picture of a very small part of Jewish history.

This book is really hard to explain, it is about ecological modeling, and how science and knowledge making are embedded in society, and the best ways to approach understanding complexity. I found it to be a really good and interesting book. I personally enjoy looking at complex situations and issues and trying to tease out connections, and have some experience with ecological modeling, so I am part of Unruly Complexity's target audience.

The the first section of the books discuses ecological models -- in this case models of how ecological complexity interacts with stability of communities. Taylor criticizes existing takes on this problem for not thinking about how complexity arises. The next section talks about ecological modelers and their social context. It discuses how what counts as knowledge is constructed, and how scientist values interact with their work. The third and final section is the hardest to sum up. The section is titled Engaging Reflectively and talks about how scientists can be more aware of their social setting ect, and thus do a better job.

One of the major themes of the book is that complexity is hard to study, and that modeling complexity as a contained system has many problems. However if you want to study ecology or society, and/or the interactions between the two the you will be stuck with unruly complexity. While I think the book offers some ways to look at this complexity I wish it provided more tools.

I really liked how this book looked at complexity and how it is studied. The book gave me a lot to think about.

This book is the story of Henrietta Lacks' family. Henrietta died in 1951 of cervical cancer, but before she died cells from her tumor where taken and used to make the 1st immortal human cell culture. Her cells where used in many many medical advances and are still used in research today. Her family knew nothing about this until the 70's. They are poor and black, and though money has been made buying and selling Henrietta's cells, and form patients the cells help make possible, the none of the Lacks can afford health insurance.

Skloot does provide some science background and explain how the HeLa cell line was used, but she primary focuses on the Lacks family, telling many stories about her interactions with them. I sometimes had trouble empathizing with their lack of education and confusion about science. However I liked how the book used specific people to bring up large unsolved ethical issues.

I feel like it took me a really long time to read this book. I guess after my book group, reading a non-fiction book in more then a week or two seems like forever. I'm just not quite that motivated on my own.

Savoring the Past was full of interesting information. I love details about what people eat (both in history and in fiction) and this book defiantly had that. There is even a recipe section in the back (which I wish was little bit more integrated with the rest of the text -- maybe just some more notes about the context). The author relies mostly on the written record and so focuses on the foods of the upper-classes as no one wrote about what the peasants where eating.

The author is also a cook and has tried many of the recipes and often talks about what she thinks of the food as a eater. I like this perspective very much, and think that it enlivens the text.

Still it would help the reader to have a basic knowledge of French history and cooking terms, as these are sometimes referenced without explanation.

I borrowed this book form my brother who is the historian in the family. I thought this book was very well done, lots of quotes form ordinary people that really give you a feel for everyday life during the war. Overall this was a good read. There where many bits that made me go "How can people be so awful" but there where also times when people showed compassion. Still the over all balance was definitely towards people being racist. I think it is important that we acknowledge this kind of thing, so I'm glad I know more about it. I recommend the book, if you are interested in this type of thing.

I read this book because I like the author's other book/ (Very quick review in this post) I liked this one just as much if not more then the last one.

The book is about the Domestic Science movement around 1900. This was a group of women reformers who thought that house work was important and should be treated "rationally". At the same time the movement though that women should remain in the the domestic sphere. They advocated for women to be educated so they could be better housewives.

The book also featured many things I would rather not eat called salads. I do not believe mayonnaise and marshmallows should be part of the same dish.

So I found the subject material of the book fascinating, though I'm not convinced by the author's arguments that these women and responsible for the general blandness of American food. (Though they did praise that disgusting substance know as American cheese) Still I think there is lot more going on in that story -- including mechanization and various corporate ploys.

So I very much enjoyed the subject matter of this book, and found it very informative, but didn't find the author's arguments about "what it all means" that convincing.