Tag Archives: Sociology
Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men by Leonard Sax
If you’re a parent, go get this book and start reading NOW. Even if you don’t have a son. While you’re ordering, make sure to also include Leonard Sax’s latest, Girls on the Edge, another life-changing read. If you’re a parent, truly, you owe it to your kids and yourself to read these two books.
I still marvel at the fact that once you get that child home (via whatever method makes you a parent – whether stork, planes, trains, or automobiles), no offspring ever arrives with a manual! As if we are just supposed to know what to do! With recurring regularity, most of the parents I know (including me!) seem confused, overwhelmed, frustrated, even speechless at our very own children. We face challenges we probably never imagined (of a type our parents certainly never dealt with) … which is why we need the good Doc Sax to help us meet these 21st-century challenges with some promising 21st-century solutions. Trust me: if nothing else, you will recognize your children (and many of their friends and classmates) in these pages … and as you close that final page, you also will have some solid plans for making better choices, providing more affective guidance.
If you need an immediate marker as to how boys are changing, here’s an opening statistic to ponder: in 1949, 70% of college undergraduates in the U.S. were male; in 2006 (just before this book hit shelves), the male student population had dropped to 42%. Not that college is the end-all marker to personal achievement. Indeed, too many of today’s teenagers go off in search of sheepskins without any other reason than the fact that a college diploma is expected of them. Sax even offers a section on why choosing a trade might be better for some young men … but then I’m getting ahead of myself.
So here’s an overview of Sax’s main points:
- Today’s highly competitive school environment is vastly different from what it was a few decades ago; overemphasis on rote academics starting in kindergarten is especially difficult for most 5-year-old boys who, if nothing else, naturally find sitting still for extended periods of time virtually impossible.
- Video games – especially the violent ones – can and will rot the brain (my words, not the good doc’s).
- ADHD is mostly an affluent, white, male condition. ADHD medications help anyone to focus, regardless of whether or not the person actually has ADHD. When juvenile rats are given stimulant medications like ADHD drugs, they grow up to be lazy adults.
- With all the environmental toxins flowing into the Potomac, male smallmouth bass are becoming feminized – male fish are making sperm instead of eggs. Those same toxins – including BPA, pthalates, PVC, pesticides, fertilizers found in everyday products like toys, plastic containers, water bottles – are consumed regularly, and have devastating effects on boys and girls.
- Failure to Launch is not just the name of a silly film – it’s also an epidemic affecting far too many boys and young men today.
- Boys need a community of men – not peers, not other teenage boys, and not the media – as role models. The transition from childhood to adulthood truly ‘takes a village.’
Concerned? Shocked? Feeling desperate? Be assured: Sax also offers strategies for changing both behavior and your child’s environment. Single-sex schools might work for some, turning off the electronics will help many, getting accurate diagnoses will save many more.
The final stories of valiant Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a mid-19th century mostly- footnoted-only Civil War hero, and John Nicholas, a teenage boy whose transformative story from “pillhead”/pusher to student class president is “happening right now,” are inspiring examples of turnaround determination. The “healthy world” that all parents want for their children go beyond having enough food and clothing. “It means our daughters and sons living lives that are meaningful and fulfilled.” Indeed, Sax wants nothing more than to keep solving, keep evolving, and especially to keep communicating.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
That it has taken me months to write this specific post is NOT an indicator in any way that this book was not informative, entertaining, useful, and often just downright fun. I also ‘read’ most of it via iPod, which I’d also highly recommend because writer John Medina has one of those contagious about-to-laugh voices that actually squeaks when he gets really excited about something, or starts reading a little too fast. He’s a stitch to listen to, I promise.
I have to digress for just a second: I keep hearing those young ‘uns out there talking about their “synching” capabilities between their various mobile devices – ‘oh, I had a few minutes waiting in line, so I read the book on my phone, and when I got back on my e-reader, I picked up right where I left off’-sort of thing. I don’t know if it will ever be possible, but would be soooo great to somehow synch between where you are in the audible version with an e-reader (which I admit I only use under great duress) or even a page number for the actual book (say, by edition?). Surely, there’s an app for that …?
Maybe the reason this post is taking so long is because I’m just not ready to let it go. So much more to “Repeat to remember” and “Remember to repeat” – which also happen to be Rules #5 and #6. That and I haven’t been able to follow Rule #7: “Sleep well, think well.” I dunno … in my old age, those long-lasting zzzzs are suddenly rather elusive, and I completely admit that my brain is very adversely affected! Plus, no matter what I tell my husband when I want him to pick up the kids and unload the dishwasher, humans are just not wired to be multitaskers, as Medina explains in Rule #4 “We don’t pay attention to boring things.” He also has all the stats that prove pulling out your cell phone while driving, by the way, is worse than getting behind the wheel drunk!
The one rule that I absolutely have been diligent about is #1: “Exercise boosts brain power.” That I started this book immediately after I finished Born to Run proved to be serendipitous timing indeed. Our brains were built for walking 12 miles a day; Medina’s got all the research to make that statement utterly convincing, too. So, in attempting to train for the Leadville 100 before I hit 50 (no snickering allowed!) or die trying anyway, I’m doing my requisite 12 miles and more daily. All that exercise is supposed to halve my risk of dementia, as well, but so far, that ain’t working for me just yet. What was I saying? Uhm … maybe a few more miles?
Brain Rules is definitely one of those books to thumb through regularly. That said, the associated website is so full of bite-size summaries and helpful tutorials that might you might think twice about buying (and/or downloading) the whole book. Having done both, I’d say that would be a mistake. Sure, you can find all the quick stats and easy reminders of his major points online, but what you’ll miss are some powerful stories, especially some real gems from Medina’s life that involve memories of how his mother fueled his unstoppable curiosity in glorious ways.
I don’t remember all the numbers (not like the real Rain Man Kim Peek whose unique brain makes an appearance in Brain Rules – and makes for a fabulous tall tale!), but I can certainly feel Medina’s awe and admiration for his amazing mother. So while Rules probably wasn’t meant to be a parenting book, Medina’s Mom was certainly one inspiring teacher!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2008 Continue reading
Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls – Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins by Leonard Sax
If you’re a parent (or a parental figure) to a girl (even if that girl is still an infant!), you MUST read this book. Which means you can stop reading this post here. Go get the book already … I actually bought it twice – as an audible.com download and then the hardback so I could quote accurately from it! – and worth every double penny for sure.
If you need further convincing, please read on …
Leonard Sax – who has all the relevant and expected PhD/MD/Phi Beta Kappa/MIT/UPenn credentials backing up his good name – knows how to share memorable stories, meanwhile teaching you a very important thing or two and more.
In addition to running a family practice outside of Washington, DC for almost two decades, Sax also wandered the globe researching the lives of girls facing 21st-century challenges, trying to navigate their often bewildering 21st-century lives. He devotes the first half of Girls on the Edge closely examining what he defines are the four most damaging factors facing girls:
- Sexual identity: “Sexuality is good, but sexualization is bad.” Too-early sexualization has pushed girls to flaunt their young bodies long before they are emotionally or physically ready to explore their own sexuality. As one frustrated parents commented about a Halloween costume search, she’d “‘never heard of a boy who wanted to dress up like a Chippendale’s dancer,’” and yet stereotypical French maid costumes complete with fishnet stockings are being marketed to 9- and-10-year-olds!
- The Cyberbubble: Facebook, cells phones, texting, cyberbullying, sexting. And 500 ‘friends’ on the internet does not mean your daughter can hold a face-to-face conversation.
- Obsessions: Looks, brains, muscles. Too much of any good thing becomes detrimental.
- Environmental toxins: BPA, pthalates, PETE, BGH – why girls are starting puberty at younger ages than ever before.
For parents today, the playing field is vastly different from what it was even in the last couple of decades. In our Web 2.0 brave new world, Sax offers practical, achievable, what he calls “21st-century solutions” that will help feed our daughters’ minds, bodies, and even their souls. All-girls’ classrooms and/or schools, healthy sports without early specialization, and a sense of spirituality (in whatever form that works for your family) are some of the few suggestions that will help our daughters grow into strong healthy women.
Sax’s final message resonates most and lingers longest: In the style of Michael Pollan who summarized his own book, In Defense of Food, in three short sentences (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”), Sax does the same with Girls … Have friends. Not too many. Mostly females. [Sax certainly reconfirms yet again my own boundless gratitude for my special sangha of strong women friends!]
“Parenting is an art, not a science,” Sax reminds . Even as he provides great advice (with all the right research to back him up), Sax is also wise (and humble enough) to tell you that what might work this year may no longer be the right solution a year later. Girls, parents, all of us, continue changing … hopefully evolving into stronger, kinder, happier beings moving further and further away from that precipice …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines by William T. Vollmann
Vollmann (Imperial; Europe Central), who has tackled an astonishing array of subjects in fiction and nonfiction, here explores female beauty – its creation and consumption– with a spotlight on highly stylized traditional Japanese Noh theater. Because male actors wearing strictly codified masks perform all Noh roles, men, ironically, are both the creators and purveyors of female beauty. From Noh, Vollmann explores other far-flung performances of feminine beauty, including revered geisha, L.A. transvestites, a porn model, Andrew Wyeth’s Helga paintings, and legendary Norse women and even dons his own cross-gendered mask with the help of a makeup artist. While Vollmann’s sprawling tome clearly contains committed research, it is a flawed hodgepodge of indulgent musings (or a “string-ball of idle thoughts,” as he calls it).
Verdict: Describing himself as “Deaf, dumb and illiterate in Japanese,” Vollmann also admits, “This book cannot pretend to give anyone a working knowledge of Noh.” Readers might instead try Japanese Nō Dramas, translated by Royall Tyler, or, for Japanese perspectives on beauty, the works of Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata.
Review: “Theater,” Library Journal, March 1, 2010
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Japanese, Nonethnic-specific
Watch This Space: Designing, Defending and Sharing Public Spaces by Hadley Dyer, illustrated by Marc Ngui
Coming from a family of urban planners and architects (Pops was head of urban planning graduate department at major university, baby bro is mega-award winning architect and professor at Harvard’s GSD, middle bro used to make all his ex-girlfriend’s architecture models when he got tired of computers – shhhh!) made me appreciate this lively, sassy, youth-empowering new title oh so much!
“You don’t have to buy something or pay an entry fee to be in a public space. You don’t need to be a member or explain why you’re there. Public spaces exist so everyone can use them. All you have to do is show up.” Could it be any more simple? And these public spaces need to be protected, especially for youth who need a place to just … “hang out.”
Author Hadley Dyer explains how “teens don’t have private places to call their own.” At home, parents make the decisions about who comes over, what kids can do. At school, teachers rule. But in public spaces, kids can be together to just do nothing. “Yet something is happening when you spend time in public spaces,” Dyer insists. “You’re figuring out how to get along with people, without adult interference. You’re sorting out who you are and how you fit in. You’re becoming part of a community.”
With Dyer’s chatty, welcoming narrative and Marc Ngui‘s entertaining drawings and layouts, Watch This Space covers the earliest public forums to the latest virtual social spaces, to sharing public spaces with everyone of all ages and backgrounds (not just your friends), to ultimately designing your own great public space.
Along the way, you’ll learn some fabulously fun facts … like why agoraphobia means a fear of public or open spaces, why we’re still watching gory gladiator deaths, what the Serengeti and Old Quebec’s Historic District have in common, how you can take walking tours of major cities without even leaving your desk, why suburbs are more dangerous than crowded cities, the #1 killer of under-18s, what you might expect to pay if you get caught smuggling gum into Singapore, why the no jyuku sha community in Osaka, Japan prefers the great outdoors, where the largest skateboarding park can be found, and just so much more, more, more.
The book debuts next week. Order a copy, then go to your favorite public space and share that copy with lots of others … if you don’t use it, you could lose it!
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Today begins Black History Month … a month devoted every year to the African American experience. In case you’re wondering, historian Carter G. Woodson, considered the “Father of Black History,” pioneered the concept of “Negro History Week” in 1926, which fell in the second week of February to celebrate the birthdays of two pivotal figures in African American history, Abraham Lincoln (12th) and Frederick Douglass (14th). Fifty years later, in 1976, that week became a whole month in the U.S., renamed Black History Month. In 1995, our northern neighbors also followed suit and officially recognized February as Black History Month. And, across the Pond, our British brethren have officially designated October for Black History Month commemorations.
So … back to books … if you read ONE book this month, let it be Black Like Me. Ironically, it’s written by a white man, I realize … but truly, this half-century old, eye-opening, gut-wrenching treatise on the African American experience still has the power to shock and inspire you.
In late October 1959, Texas journalist John Howard Griffin – a self-described “specialist in race issues [who] really knew nothing of the Negro’s real problems” – decided to become “a Negro in the Deep South.” With the help of a reluctant dermatologist, he literally transformed himself into a dark-skinned person and ‘passed’ as a black man through the deep American South.
He kept a detailed diary of his experiences, and his story became nightmarish classic legend, splashed all over the newspapers, magazines, and television by the end of his experiment. Black Like Me quickly became an international bestseller and has never been out of print since its 1961 debut. His epilogue, added in 1975, gives a chilling account of the dangerous hostility he and his family survived after his experiences became public.
While I have read excerpts at various points during my education, I had never read the book in entirety until recently. I couldn’t put it down. I can’t recommend it adamantly, absolutely enough.
“The Negro. The South. These are details. The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands,” Griffin writes in his preface. “It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested.” You do not want to believe Griffin’s experiences – solely because of the transformation of his skin color. Your mind can’t fathom how human beings can treat other human beings with that level of disregard, disrespect, and just downright evil.
Most disturbing of all, you can’t believe how familiar Griffin’s experiences still are today. As our too-wise young daughter said two years ago after learning about the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings, and segregation during a difficult school year, ” … but Mommy, things still haven’t changed enough … James Byrd’s murder was during my lifetime.” Out of the mouth of tween-aged babes …
Read. Learn. Rage. Then do your best – small, medium, major ways, anything you can do – and change the world for the better.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 1961, 1996 (35th anniversary edition with Griffin’s epilogue and an afterword by Robert Bonazzi) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, African American
Doing Time by Kazuichi Hanawa, translated by Shizuka Shimoyama and Elizabeth Tiernan
What does a manga artist do when he lands in jail as severe punishment for a minor offense? For Kazuichi Hanawa, an established artist known for his fantasy volumes set in the Middle Ages, reality shockingly became a tiny cell for three years in the mid-1990s. His crime was a firearms violation, the result of a growing interest in collecting model guns. His reaction was to create a stark account of his incarcerated experience.
In a three-way interview at the book’s beginning, manga reviewer Yukihiro Abe remarks to Hanawa, “The way this book has turned out it looks like he went to do some research for three years.” Hanawa’s reaction is agreeably analytical: “For a long time I’d been interested in knowing what the world behind bars was like … And since I was there, I was able to experience life in the big cage for myself.”
With the exception of a few short panels that vividly (and not without humor) capture his suffering over nicotine withdrawal, the majority of Doing Time remains surprisingly detached. Hanawa matter-of-factly notes the abundance of tasty food, grumbles at the uncomfortable design of the cell’s toilet, smiles over a moment of natural sunlight … but for a man who has suddenly lost his basic freedom, he remains mostly muted. He records his daily routine with memorable detail, always marked by regular meals and necessary bathroom breaks. He shrewdly captures the expressions and habits of some of his inmates, sharing the conversations that keep them all sane (enough) to get through their monotonous days.
For such a life-changing, shocking event as landing in jail, Hanawa presents a controlled study on all aspects of incarcerated life, from scheduled baths to number of allowed books “for study,” to differing side dishes, and even television viewing allowances. For us who hope to always stay on the outside, to glean such information secondhand is certainly always the better alternative!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2005 (United Kingdom, United States) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Memoir, .Translation, Japanese
Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney
Just before the last election, legendary former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca, then 82, wanted so much for Americans to take full advantage of the 15th Amendment ["The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," in case you needed a refresher], he wrote an entire book (with a little help) to prod voters to the polls on November 4, 2008, and make a difference. Almost a full year after the new Obama Administration took office, I strapped on that iPod (which Iacocca gripes about with today’s youth tuning out, but really, it’s an old age issue for me because my diminishing eyeballs get too tired to read the small print) and listened to Iacocca himself rant, rave, and reminisce. And, yes, I thoroughly enjoyed all six-plus hours of his angry-old-man-kindly-old-grandfather schtick. The one thing I might have wished for would be a ‘one-year-after’ epilogue, but perhaps I ask for too much …
Iacocca with his potty-mouthed-tell-it-like-it-is attitude hooks you in immediately … what’s not to love about such straight talk: “Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is your outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course.’ Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!”
And one year later, throw the bums, we did … so someone was definitely listening. Famous for having given the baby-boomers the Mustang while at Ford (from which he readily admits he was fired) to then giving said boomers the mini-van when they grew up and had families while at Chrysler (which he saved from virtual obscurity, only to watch broken-heartedly as it was subsumed by Daimler-Benz), Iacocca begins his treatise with all the reasons the old administration had to go. Even though you might not glean anything new as the problems were so ubiquitous, Part 1 is still worth a few good chuckles to hear it all again. From leaders (or lack thereof), Iacocca moves to “Where have all our friends gone?,” free-versing about how the U.S. has burned quite a few international bridges, not the least of which is a humorous spin on the whole ‘freedom’ fries fiasco on the Hill.
He tackles contemporary capitalism in Part 3, drawing on his personal experiences as one of the most powerful CEOs in history, sharing life lessons in leadership (and knowing when you’re not fit to run for the White House). In the fourth and final section, Iacocca is perhaps at his most honest and unguarded, using his own history – his immigrant parents’ influences, his mentors’ wisdom, his personal relationships (he takes his grandkids out to lunch regularly and really listens) – as examples of how he chose to “DO something.”
And he’s certainly done plenty, from funding patriotic endeavors like The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation (he regrets not taking his kids there when they were younger as his parents took him and his sister in their youth), to finding a cure for diabetes through his eponymous Iacocca Foundation (his beloved first wife died of the disease), to educating future generations of leaders from all over the world at Lehigh University’s Iacocca Institute (where food is always something dependable to bond over!), to feeding hungry children all over the world with Nourish the Children. This year, Iacocca turns 85 … and surely is showing no signs of slowing down … he’ll keep doing. We just need to join in.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2007, 2008 (audio) Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Half the Sky is a remarkable, life-changing book. It should be required reading for all adults (and more mature young adults), but especially for us overprivileged, lucky-solely-by-chance-of-birth citizens of the West. If there is ONE book you read this new year, let it be this one.
Using a Chinese proverb attributed to Mao – “Women hold up half the sky” – Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (the first married couple to win a Pulitzer; WuDunn was the first Asian American to garner a Pulitzer while Kristof has since won a second) seek to rescue women and girls worldwide by “focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence, including honor killings and mass rapes; and maternal mortality, which still needlessly claims one woman a minute.”
Most of us are probably at least vaguely aware of the gender inequalities throughout the world. But laid out in this book in black and white, the numbers are beyond staggering: “…more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.” And lest you think slavery is a thing of the past: ” … far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into the slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries.”
What Kristof and WuDunn miraculously accomplish here is to move beyond the mind-numbing numbers and present you with individual stories that will haunt and inspire you. Reading the experiences of actual women who have suffered unbearable atrocities will make you gasp, and hopefully shock you into real action. Balanced with the specific stories of child prostitutes in Cambodia and India, victims of gang-rape in Pakistan and the Congo, abandoned women in too many places left to die from pregnancy complications, are the phenomenal accounts of women who fought back and reclaimed their lives. Additionally, Kristof and WuDunn weave in the successful experiences of individuals and organizations that have empowered and rescued women throughout the world. From a working woman in New York whose $27 a month provides small miracles for a single mother on the other side of the world, to a wealthy donor whose funding changed the future of an entire village, Half the Sky is not about victimization, but about taking concrete steps to create substantial change.
Kristof and WuDunn’s personal mission is clearly stated up front: “We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking womens’ power as economic catalyst.” By book’s end, Kristof and WuDunn offer “Four Steps You Can Take in the Next Ten Minutes” filled with near-instant ways you can make a difference. “This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you’ll just open your heart and join in.” How can you possibly just sit by?
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Four years ago (could say five, actually, as we just entered 2010 – already!), University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt and noted journalist Stephen Dubner debuted with Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. That first duo-effort quickly became a mega-bestseller and spawned the popular blog of the same name, housed on the New York Times site where Dubner was an editor and writer until 1999 (and still writes a monthly “Freakonomics” column with Levitt for NYT Magazine).
The recent follow-up, SuperFreakonomics, proved a near-instant bestseller … hubby and friends swore I didn’t need to have read the first to enjoy the latest, which definitely proved true. And as I often do things backwards, SuperFreak has absolutely inspired me to read the original Freak one of these days (soon). One small confessional concession, however … no one does BIG-LIFE-concepts-reduced-to-remarkably-digestible-and-downright-entertaining-tidbits better than Malcolm Gladwell, so while SuperFreak was undoubtedly worth the seven-plus hours of iPod commitment (Dubner even sounds a wee bit like Gladwell), I remain a Gladwell-devotee first.
So what makes SuperFreak super? Read even a few chapters and you’ll have some of the best (and impressive) additions to your cocktail conversation arsenal. Let me offer just a few prime examples … family reunions are a major boon for prostitutes in Chicago (stay clear of the windy city when planning your own family’s next get-together!), friends don’t let friends walk home drunk, the seat belt that comes already installed in your car works just as well as that complicated bulky thing you invested in to protect your precious small children, getting doctors to just wash their hands is one of the biggest challenges in hospitals (take note for when you might land in one next!), and if you teach monkeys the concept of money, they’ll be buying a lot more than treats … when it comes to prostitution, our nearest animal relatives show disturbing similarities to our (very) flawed human race!
Levitt and Dubner expertly combine careful research by countless experts and their convincingly relevant statistics to create a real-life-economics-for-dummies treatise perfect for today’s attention-deficit intellectuals looking for knowledgeable shortcuts. They’ve done all the work for you … now all you have to do is just read (or even easier, just listen).
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Nonfiction, Nonethnic-specific
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