I am admitting defeat.

I have tried at least 4 times to get through The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food by Josh Schonwald. In theory, it’s the sort of book I should love. I am interesting in food and gardening and how the growing population of the planet will be fed over the coming years. I am also an unashamed foodie — I buy organic vegetables, free range meat and avoid farm-raised fish. I am intrigued by new cooking techniques. I figured this book would be a very fast read for me.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The information is good — Schonwald interviews scientists, farmers, and various types of food engineers. He traveled, visiting farms and factories and fisheries. He knows his stuff, but he can’t seem to make it interesting. He just could not keep me reading.

I thought maybe the problem was starting with “The Bagged Salad Revolution.” I mean, I love a good salad, and I love finding new and interesting greens at the farmer’s market, but I don’t find the history of radicchio in the United States all that interesting. Much of what these chapters said seemed basic to me: you’ve got people who want to buy salad in a plastic bag that will stay fresh in their refrigerator for a month, and you’ve got people who want to buy fresh greens every weekend at the farm stand and would rather eat weeds than iceberg lettuce. No real drama there.

The problem was the same in each chapter I tried. We’ve all known professors like Josh, the ones who clearly know their stuff, but can’t seem to get you engaged in their lectures. This felt more like a lecture and less like an interesting narrative. I’m sorry that I can’t say anything more positive. I was really hoping to love this book.

My copy of The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Sometimes, a book comes along for review at just the right time. I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know by Kate White comes along just as I am doing going through a bit of personal career evaluation, so there are definitely tips and tricks in this book I can use.

I like the structure of the book. It’s broken down in three chunks related to success: how to get it, how to go big with it, and how to savor it. Each chapter has bullet points, breaking down key concepts. Makes it a very fast read and easy to remember the most important bits of information, and there are plenty of important bits. As I’m considering what’s next for me in my career, contemplating job hunting for the first time in a decade or making a big change within my company, it’s helpful to think back and look at what I can do differently this time around.

Author Kate White is a magazine editor. She’s also an author (of course), a mom and an accomplished career woman. But Cosmopolitan magazine has different requirements than most of us do in our jobs. For most of the companies where I might interview with, a designer handbag isn’t going to make the interview go more smoothly (especially since White’s definition of “designer” is somewhat north of my classic Coach and Kate Spade bags). But her dress-for-success tips are still handy. I can see mistakes I’ve made in the past in “9 Things You Should Never Do in a New Job” that I won’t make next time around. And although a lot of her suggestions revolve around the sort of corporate environment she’s used to (lots of meetings, very project-oriented) they are good general guidelines that can be applied almost anywhere.

“Know What They Know About You” should be required reading for all job-hunters. I make a real effort to keep my LinkedIn page up to date, to make sure this website (which is not a paid site but still represents me out in the world) is timely and professional. I do not have a Facebook account (second-to-last person on the planet, I know), in part because I don’t like mixing personal and professional. Take down the ski bunny pics, the “Best Songs for When You’re Stoned” playlist, and be cautious with the political links on your site. Think of everything you post from an employer’s POV, at least at the height of your job hunt.

The final section, on savoring your success, is also really important. Lots of women could use some advice on how to enjoy their success once they have it. How do you handle the craziness that comes with landing the big job? What happens when your dream job makes you miserable? How do you drain the swamp when you’re busy slaying alligators?

That last question really made me think about my job. Basically, the idea is that if you set out to drain the swamp, you may have to slay a few alligators…but don’t get so caught up in slaying alligators that you forget why you waded in in the first place. While you are fielding calls and handling projects, don’t forget the big picture, the thing that you are really working towards. Do not let your big goals slip through the cracks.

I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know is a fun read full of great information. We may not all be working at Glamour, but we all need to present our very best selves at work if we want to get ahead. Why not take some tips from someone who has been so successful?

My copy of I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know is an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

Oh! Don’t forget to check out my review of Kate White’s fiction! I reviewed So Pretty It Hurts back in April.

One thing I was reminded of while reading this book: I really need a new pair of classic black pumps.

First of all, Women from the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us by Rachelle Bergstein is really a book about women’s shoes. There are mentions of men’s shoes, but not many — let’s face it, men’s shoes are boring. Most of this book is about women’s shoes and how they evolved and what influenced them.

There is a lot of interesting information in this book about modern shoes. If you’re looking for ancient shoes, for the history of foot-binding, look somewhere else. This little book starts with “Ferragamo and the Wartime Wedge (1900-1938)” and runs through Sex and the City (“Shoes and the Single Girl (1998-2008)”). Lots of detail about how certain styles evolved and how shoes go in and out of style, along with some interesting bits of shoe lore.

I love shoes! Sadly, my work requires mostly sensible shoes now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t drool over the latest styles (although I cannot wait for the hooker-platform fad to pass — can’t happen soon enough). I enjoyed getting a bit of insight into what was fashionable and what was controversial in different generations (who would have thought of ballet flats as rebellious?). I also didn’t know that shoes were actually rationed during the war:

“As it was, the ration stipulated not only how many shoes consumers could buy but also what kind of shoes the footwear industry was permitted to produce going forward…For women, the shoe ration instantly outlawed flourishes which had become the quintessence of a varied shoe collection.”

The American government even limited the colors that could be used in shoe production to 4 — black, white, town brown and army russet. Heel heights were regulated and so were the height of boots.

Bergstein covers the rise of Birkenstocks, the influence of the movies on shoes (and vice versa) and Girl Power, Saturday Night Fever and the battle between Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo. What she doesn’t do is provide a single photograph! Unless photos were added in the finished version (mine was an uncorrected proof), I think it’s a huge gap. I mean, you can describe the shoes in The Who’s rock opera, Tommy:

“To cement the Local Lad’s top dog status, [Elton] John wore the entertainment industry’s most vertiginous pair of shoes; inspired by the cherry red 1460 Doc Martens popular with London youth at the time, these boots were specially fastened out of fiberglass by Scott Bader, the Northamptonshire chemical firm, and measured a towering four feet, six and a half inches high.”

But doesn’t this help get the idea across:

It certainly helps the reader to imagine the shoes! A big missing piece of the puzzle in the book, which can’t really be overcome by the line drawings at the start of each chapter. Also, you can get away with using “vertiginous” once, if you use it correctly (it doesn’t just mean tall), but six times? Now you’re just showing off, and not in a good way.

All in all, an interesting and enjoyable book, if not too deep into history. My copy of Women from the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

This Will Make You Smarter is a challenging book that leaves you with a lot to think about. The essays are short — some  shorter than a single page — that cover interesting scientific concepts, new and old ideas to help us think about the world.

The founder and publisher of the online science salon, Edge.org, John Brockman, does  a great job editing this collection, turning more than 100 essays on a wide range of topics into a coherent manuscript that works its way across the spectrum. You start out talking about one concept and smoothly work your way into another — it definitely kept me interested in topics that could potentially be pretty dry.

There are too many important concepts to cover them all, but there were a few that I found really interesting.  First, there was an interesting article by Douglas Rushkoff* called “Technologies Have Biases.” This passage was thought-provoking:

“We are free to use any car we like to get to work — gasoline, diesel, electric or hydrogen-powered — and this sense of choice blinds us to the fundamental bias of the automobile toward distance, commuting, suburbs and energy consumption.”

And that’s true — we buy a hybrid because it’s “greener” and we are pro-environment, but the very fact of buying a car shows a preference that we don’t even think about.

I also found “The Focusing Illusion” by Daniel Kahneman** a fascinating idea:

“Marketers exploit the focusing illusion. When people are induced to believe that they ‘must have’ a good, they greatly exaggerate the difference that good will make to the quality of their life.”

Think about that and apply it to our current political climate. When politicians convince us that a particular issue is important, no matter what the issue, we attach an unreasonable importance to specific laws or measures related to that issue, and the difference they will make in the government. It has given me a different slant on the political commercials I have seen.

There are also a number of essays on risk and uncertainty, and just how bad humans are at understanding risk and dealing with it. The chance that we might be killed in a terrorist attack is almost infinitesimal, but we have spent a huge amount of money, time and effort protecting ourselves against the threat. On the other hand, we are far more likely to die in our car on the way to the grocery store, and yet many people don’t even bother with seat belts or regular brake checks.

All in all, this was a terrific, thought-provoking read that can be applied to so many aspects of modern life. I think that anyone who picks this up is going to find topics that interest them and cause them to rethink their usual assumptions. I would love to buy a copy for all of the teachers I know and challenge them to use some of these concepts in their classrooms! (There is a great essay on the importance of understanding which concepts are easy to teach and which ones are harder to grasp — they could start with that.) I will definitely be passing this on to some thoughtful friends.

My copy of This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking was an Advanced Reader copy, provided free of charge.

* Douglas Rushkoff, Media theorist, documentary writer and author, Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commandments for the Digital Age

**Daniel Kahneman, Professor Emeritus of psychology and public affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University; recipient, 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France is proof that a book can be both heart-breaking and uplifting. It is the the story of the woman behind the French resistance to the Nazis, women who worked in secret, died in secret, and were mostly unheralded for their work. But most importantly, it is the story of their friendship, their camaraderie, and how it quite literally saved their lives.

The story really has 3 parts: the resistance, the camps and the aftermath. It begins in June, 1940, with the German takeover of Paris. It was fairly quiet, the fighting already over and the Nazis simply coming in to take possession of the city. The political climate was charged with controversy — Marshal Petain’s Vichy government more concerned with collaboration and pandering than liberation, a vigorous Communist faction that was strongly opposed to collaboration, and the majority of the French people caught between.

This isn’t history that I’m terribly familiar with, only in a very general way, and the stories and anecdotes about life under occupation were interesting and enlightening. The Germans lived like princes in the best houses, with the best food, while the Parisians stood in ration lines and stuffed their coats with newspaper to keep warm. That’s an excellent way to stir up resentment and resistance, and the existing Communist party — already used to protesting and keeping a low profile — gave it structure.

These women were involved in all sorts of resistance activities. They acted as couriers, sometimes leaving small children at home while they bicycled across the country, carrying money, weapons and anti-German tracts and newsletters. The punishments, if they were caught, could be severe, but at least in the beginning, no one suspected that pretty young women could be political activists and they took advantage of that. They dressed up, they flirted with the German officers, and they flew below the radar for a very long time.

Their bravery was born in part of naivete. They simply could not fathom that the Germans would imprison or execute them. They expected to be arrested, to be interrogated, to be held for short periods of time, but they seemed certain that no one would imprison a mother with young children — who would do such a thing? So while I commend their bravery, I sometimes cringed at their foolishness.

Eventually, they were rounded up, a result of intensive efforts by the German police and the French collaborators. They made their way through a series of more and more serious incarcerations and increasingly dismal conditions, before being shipped off to Poland, to the fort at Romainville, and eventually to Auschwitz. they would eventually become known as Le Convoi des 31,000. There were 230 women from all walks of life: students, chemists, writers and housewives; schoolgirls, an opera singer, a dentist. Only 49 would survive.

What you see most clearly is that this was not survival of the fittest; this was survival of the most cohesive. their friendship literally saved their lives. In Auschwitz, the weakest were pulled out of lines and executed. The women of Le Convoi protected their wick and injured. They pooled their food. The risked their lives to keep the others safe. They conspired to steal food and medication, at great personal risk. They found hiding places for the injured, to keep them out of the sight of the Nazis. They kept each other’s spirits high and provided what comfort they could, in conditions most people cannot imagine.

They came home to a mixed welcome, not unlike our returning Vietnam vets, years later. The country had changed and they had changed. People did not really want to hear about their suffering — they wanted to forget and get on with their lives. And when Charles de Gaulle and the French government celebrated the heroes of the resistance, the women were mostly forgotten…but they never forgot each other.

I can’t easily express how moved I was by this book. Women form friendships differently than men, I think, and we nurture them in different ways. Quite simply, without their friends, these women would have died. They lived because they had friends to rely on, and they placed tremendous importance on the group surviving to tell their story. Selfishness and looking out for number one would have meant certain death.

Countless times throughout the book, the women sing to lift their spirits and to show their resistance. The Marsellaise, the French national anthem, is sung so many times in the book that I caught myself humming it as I read. So I thought I would end this with the perfect example of the power of this song, a scene from the 1942 film, Casablanca.

My copy of A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge

The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime alternately entertained, educated and enraged me. I love that authors Jason Turbow and Michael Duca were not afraid to name names. They told some great stories about some of the great rivalries in baseball — not just between teams, but between players. They explain the rules — the unwritten codes that players learn in the dugout and in the clubhouse. Some of these rules are black and white — everybody joins a fight. Some of the rules are so vague that even the players can’t agree on the specifics. But everybody knows there are rules…and there are consequences for breaking them.

“I can break it down into three simple things,” said Bob Brenly, who followed a nine-year big-league career by managing the Arizona Diamondbacks to a world championship in 2001. “Respect your teammates, respect your opponents, and respect the game.”

That sounds simple, doesn’t it? Most players learn by screwing up: they do something stupid — like showboat a little on a home run — and one of their guys gets hit with a pitch. Later, in the clubhouse, they get a little schooling from the other guys and the traditions are passed on. There are even clubhouse police (Chapter 23) and kangaroo courts to help rule on minor infractions. But for the most part, younger players learn by watching the older players, taking their cues from the veterans about how to behave on the field, in the clubhouse, and in front of the media.

I was amused by the rules that even the players can’t decide on — running up the score, for example. It only seems sporting that if you are massacring the other team, you stop playing quite so aggressively in the later innings, to avoid embarrassing them. But how much of a lead is enough and how early is late in the game? What constitutes aggressive play – bunting? Stealing a base? How much celebration is too much?

There are some fabulous stories in this book. The story about how Satchel Paige came to call teammate Buck O’Neill “Nancy” is a classic. There was also the story about Tommy Lasorda’s grudge against Buster Maynard. In 1949, playing in the Single-A South Atlantic League, Lasorda threw a series of inside pitches that knocked Maynard on his behind — and Maynard had no idea why! He got his explanation after the game: 7 years earlier, when Lasorda had been just 15 years old and a huge Giants fan, he’d asked Maynard for an autograph and been ignored by his hero. It took him a few years, but Lasorda got his revenge.

Revenge is one aspect of the book that troubled me. I understood the rules about protecting your players (you hit one of my guys, I’ll hit one of yours), I understood the rules about hard slides and hard tags and when they are appropriate, but I have an issue with sending a fastball straight for a guy’s head, just because you’re mad that he bunted on you or frustrated because you gave up a home run. That ball is potentially lethal in a pitcher’s hands and they ought to know it (shortstop Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Naps was killed by pitch, thrown by Yankees pitcher Carl Mays). There are many stories in the book about players who suffered career-ending or career-altering injuries as a result of these pitches. Satchel Paige taught Nolan Ryan about “one of the best pitches” in baseball: the bow-tie pitch. You throw it right across their Adam’s apple — right where they wear their bow tie. I found myself angry and horrified listening, which is not what I expected at all when I started this book.

I enjoyed The Baseball Codes, even when it made me angry. It’s a terrific story about the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on around the diamond. I loved getting a closer look. As for those ambiguous rules, there are a few I’m highly in favor of. For example, I completely agree that running up the score on an opposing team is downright rude and teams should never, ever do that. Of course, I was watching the day the Cleveland Indians came back from a 12-4 deficit to beat the Seattle Mariners 15-14 in 11 innings…and I’m a die-hard Indians fan.

I borrowed my copy of The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America’s Pastime from the good folks at the Kent Free Library, and returned it to them right on time.

True or False:
1. The safest seats on an airplane are at the back.
2. If you fall into a frozen lake, you have only 3 minutes to escape the water.
3. In prisoner-of-war camps in Vietnam, optimists lived longer than anyone else.

Who lives and who dies in a crisis? Do you have what it takes to be one of the passengers who walks out of the jungle after a plane crash or who keeps their cool and remembers how to work a compass when you get lost in the woods? And if you don’t (or can’t) can you learn? There are lots of books on survival tips and I have read more than a few of them. The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood takes familiar territory and still turns it into a very interesting read.

I love books on survival. Doesn’t matter whether they are fiction or non-fiction: travel/adventure books about explorers deep in the wild, post-apocalyptic stories about the survivors of great disaster, non-fiction accounts of great rescues. I’ve read more than one book that claims to tell me how I can survive the zombie apocalypse, or on an ice-bound ship in the Anarctic, or in the deepest jungles of unexplored continents. Reality check: those are probably things I will never face — at least, I hope not. But I fly a lot. A LOT. Usually 2 or 3 trips per month for work (6 separate flights last month). So when a book says it can give me tips on how to survive an plane crash, I’m turning to that section first. I love exit row seats and nothing is going to come between me and that escape slide.

Sherwood’s tips are generally pretty good. That stuff about the safest seats being in the back of the plane? I think the airlines came up with that to sell bad seats. The best rule of thumb: sit on an aisle within 5 rows of the exit. That’s doable in most cases. Count the rows between you and the exit, so you can find your way out, even if it’s dark and smoky and chaotic. Don’t drink before you fly and don’t sleep during take-off and landing — all easy enough advice to follow. One of the keys to survival is being aware of your situation, knowing where you are and what’s going on around you. If taking a minute to count the rows and checking under my seat for the life vest will help, I can do that.

I have to say that I disagree with him about paying attention to the safety announcements. Watching the flight attendant may be polite, but I already know how to buckle my seat belt. I know that in the event of an emergency, aisle path lighting will guide me to the nearest exit, which may be behind me. I know that even though my mask may not fully inflate, oxygen will still be flowing. But that’s just my opinion.

Sherwood has done his research. I loved the descriptions of US Marine Corps Survival School that he attended. Surviving the SWIMMER (Shallow Water Initial Memory Mechanical Exit Release trainer) and the SWET (hallow Water Egress Trainer) – basically, big dunking machines designed to teach pilots how to get out of their helicopters during unscheduled water landings. I would love to try out the FAA’s workshop on surviving plane crashes. He talked with people who collect body odor (“What Does Fear Smell Like?”), doctors who study the science of luck (“Why Good Things Always Happen to the Same People”), even a researcher who thinks that people with initials that spell negative things (“Are Your Initials Killing You?). The author’s initials are BS — that must have been fun on the playground. I don’t know that I have a lot of faith in all of that science (my initials? really?), but I have no doubt that there are a lot of things that impact your chances for survival. The Survivor’s Club covers luck, faith, attitude, adversity and the will to live.

There’s even an opportunity to learn more about your own survival skills. Log in to the SurvivorProfiler and take the Survivor IQ test. The test breaks down profiles into several broad categories. (I’m a Thinker, not a Fighter or a Believer.) Of course, no one ever really knows how they will react in a crisis; Sherwood talks about his own experiences and how he measured up. But it always helps to be prepared. If you’ve thought ahead of time about what might happen and how you should react, you’ve got a better chance of making the right decision when it’s crunch time. And since you will (hopefully) never experience jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, why not read about it in the safety of your living room?

The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life is an interesting, engaging read, full of real-life stories and tales of survival and adversity. It’s a good mix of tips, true stories and hope — I always find stories about people who have survived to be full of hope.

By the way — the answers to my first 3 questions? All false. The safest seats are near the exits, you can survive a surprisingly long time in cold water and, sadly, the optimists were the first to go.

My copy of The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Lifeb by Ben Sherwood was provided by the LibraryThing Early Reviewer’s program.

Julius Fromm was born in Russia in 1883; when he was 10 years old, his parents left Russia for Berlin. At the time, Berlin offered the hope of more economic opportunity and a better life. Fromm grew up feeling like a German, and a patriotic one at that. It all came to crushing end when Hitler came to power, because Fromm and his family — patriotic though they might be — were Jews.

Fromms: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis by Götz Aly and Michael Sontheimer is a detailed account of how Julius Fromm built a condom empire during the sexually permissive-period after World War I. His name became synonymous with condoms in Europe, much the way Kleenex or Xerox became household names. But his wealth and status could not protect him or his family when the Nazis came to power.

Julius Fromm (born Israel Fromm) started his business empire rolling and selling cigarettes. It was an easy enterprise for an immigrant family — it required very little investment, no equipment, and everyone in the family could pitch in. The business sustained the family when Fromm’s father died, leaving a widow and 6 children, but he had higher ambitions. In 1912 he began taking evening courses in chemistry and eventually hit upon the idea of making condoms.

And this is really the crux of this little book. If Julius Fromm had made kitchen chairs or spatulas or alarm clocks, there wouldn’t be much of a story. What makes this an intriguing read is the little bit of naughtiness the story takes from the nature of Fromm’s business. (Heaven knows, I found the phrase of “condom empire” amusing.) The book wouldn’t really get off the ground without that. In that day and age, I can’t imagine being the daughter of the man whose name was famous for such a product, and the stories about his difficulties with advertising his product show that, in some ways, things haven’t really changed. After all, there are still restrictions on how condoms can be advertised, which is crazy in a day when we are dealing with AIDs, teenage pregnancy and other issues of sexual health.

There is some interesting history on the development of condoms and the processes used to manufacture them on both small and large scales. Fromm’s knack for business extended to factories and business practices — his buildings and safety procedures were on the cutting edge at that time.

For readers interested in the history of Nazi Germany and the treatment of Jews during that period, there is a lot to learn in this small volume. The authors, Gotz Aly and Michael Sontheimer, provide an extremely detailed account of how Fromm’s business fell victim to National Socialist policies. Even though he was extremely wealthy, backed by banks and other businessmen and able to pull some strings, Fromm was eventually forced to sell his business for a pittance to a hand-selected German buyer, even though other buyers were standing by with better offers. He and his family were hounded out of their home, and stripped of their possessions. The accounts are chilling. Policies and procedures were in place to make sure that everything of value was stripped from Jews who had been good German citizens and turned over to “pure” Germans with the right political connections. It’s a part of the history I had only heard in the most general terms, and I found it frightening. It’s easy to see how the wheels of bureaucracy could crush an entire people under them, if we don’t keep tabs on our government.

My copy of Fromms: How Julius Fromm’s Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis was a review copy, provided free of charge. It’s a quick, fascinating read for those interested in this shameful part of history.

Have you ever wished that you knew a little more about football?  You’re watching with friends, everyone is yelling about the lousy blocking or the zone defense and you wish you knew what they were talking about?  Or maybe you wish your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse could get as excited about the pass coverage as you are?  This may be just the book you need.  A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football will teach new fans and old a little more about the game so many of us love.  The author, Mark Oristano, spent thirty years working for/with the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Oilers.  Along the way, he picked up a lot of helpful information:

When you’ve finished, you won’t be able to immediately spot “Cover Two” or know which receiver broke his route off too soon or whether the ref made the right call when he signalled intentional grounding.  But you will understand, for example, why first-down plays are the most important play of any offensive drive.

I am a pretty avid football fan.  As I write this, I am watching the Giants/Cardinal on Sunday Night Football.  I just spent a couple of hours with my friend, Jen, watching football in an Irish pub in New York (the bartender at Connolly’s Pub is a doll and a very good sport).  I understand the rules of the game.  When the official signals a penalty, I know what the call is, even if I can’t hear it.  I have my own theories about football – everything from the prevent defense to those teal legwarmers the Dolphins are wearing this season.  I still learned things from this book, and I think that most casual fans will find a lot of useful information in these pages.

A Sportcaster’s Guide to Watching Football is a small volume – less than 150 pages. Stocking stuffer size, really.  But I don’t know that I have ever read such a clear explanation of the various positions and how they relate to one another.  I now know the difference between the left tackle and the left guard, in terms of what they are expected to do.

In coach speak, the QB, RB [running back], TE [tight end] and WR [wide receiver] positions are called “skill positions” because they require a high degree of athleticism.  The G [guard], T [tackle], and C [center] positions are called “strength positions” because they require the ability to lift up a Buick.

Oristano has some great stories to tell about people he met and games that he saw.  He got to watch a lot of great players – Earl Campbell, Roger Staubach, Troy Aikmann, Emmit Smith and Michael Irvin.  His “Time Outs” are some of my favorite parts of the book.  (I have to say that his “Cool Things to Say During the Game” really aren’t.)  He gives a new football fan all the information they need to know in order to understand what they see on the field, without condescending to his readers.    He covers the basic rules of the game, the offense and defense, the positions and the penalties, all with the mindset that you will enjoy the game more if you understand it, but you do not have to be ready to coach the home team next Sunday.

I think most readers will find that the book expands their basic knowledge in a lot of areas.  Statistics, the two-minute drill, defensive formations – there is information that will be of interest to most casual fans.  I learned a lot – even a couple of things that I can pull out the next time we’re talking football trivia:

One of the least-known rules in the NFL, one even lots of TV announcers don’t know, is that after you make a fair catch on a punt, and the time on the game clock expires during the play, you can chose to extend the period for one more play, but only for a field goal attempt.  It’s very, very rare.  I’ve only seen it used one time in over forty years.

Okay, that may not be very helpful on most gamedays, but it is kind of cool to know.  You’ll find more trivia and stories on the book’s website, and the books is available from Amazon.com. You can pick it up as a teaching aid for the non-football-fan in your life, or as a fun stocking stuffer for the fan who would like to know just a little more.  It’s a quick read, but I found it to be a lot of fun.

My copy of A Sportscaster’s Guide to Watching Football was provided free of charge for review. This review was originally posted on October 27, 2009 on When Falls the Coliseum.

Who better to talk about celebrities than Dr. Drew? For more than 25 years he has co-hosted Loveline on the radio and, for 4 years, on MTV. On VH1, he produces and hosts Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and Sober House. He is definitely an expert on celebrity behavior, and this book is full of anecdotes and descriptions of the famous and the famous-for-being-famous. But where most of see spoiled, self-centered celebrities acting like brats, Dr. Drew sees damaged, suffering people. It’s an entirely different take on the bad behavior of our favorite stars, as well as a look at what it might be doing to us and to our children.

In Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, and narcissism is usually defined as self-love or egotism. But the point of the story is that Narcissus didn’t recognize his reflection as himself; a true narcissist, according to Dr. Drew, “is dissociated from his or her true self; he feels haunted by chronic feelings of loneliness, emptiness and self-loathing and seeks to replace that disconnection with a sense of worth and importance fueled by others.” Using that definition, it seems obvious that narcissists would seek out the spotlight — not out of self-love, but as a way to fill the emptiness, a way to soak up the attention and approval they need as reassurance.

“The mirror of celebrity reinforces every narcissist’s belief that a world of constant admiring attention is possible: All you need to do is act sexy, play the diva, demand privileges and party with abandon.”

In the days of the studio system, stars were pampered and protected, their image was carefully constructed, the reporters played by the rules, and bad behavior was hidden or punished. Today, instead of hiding it, stars and wanna-be stars use provocative behavior to get the attention of the press and an image can be as easily built on an illicit sex tape and a drug addiction as on an Academy Award. After all, the internet is full of blogs and gossip sites, where readers flock for the latest pregnancy rumors, rehab respites and celebrity crotch-shots. For a narcissist, the old adage rings true: any publicity is good publicity. As long as people are talking about them, they don’t care what those people are saying.

The book also addresses the reality tv phenomenon: what makes people sign up for that sort of public humiliation and what makes us watch it. That chapter actually made me feel a little dirty; it’s one thing to laugh at someone playing the fool, but when you begin to see the desperation behind their actions, you feel less like laughing.

The authors seem most concerned about the effect this has on “the most vulnerable audience”: teens and young adults. We are more connected to our favorite stars than ever before; where once they existed only in the glossy pages of magazines, now we see them in supermarket tabloids and follow them on Twitter. As young people feel they have “friended’ their favorite celebrities, they also begin to copy their behavior. And that mimicry becomes its own sort of celebrity on shows like My Super Sweet Sixteen. The book outlines steps that parents can take to protect their kids and undo some of the damage.

Over a 2-year period, Dr. Drew and Dr. Young surveyed celebrities who appeared on Loveline with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). Several stars agreed to have their survey results published; Dr. Drew’s score falls right in the middle of the pack…and he has the same NPI score as adult film star Ron Jeremy. Throughout the book, Dr. Drew’s intimacy with the stars keeps the text from getting dry. Points are illustrated with stories we are all familiar with. In a few years, those stories may make the book seem dated, but right now it has an immediacy that keeps you turning the pages. It’s not as much fun as this month’s issue of People, but definitely more educational.