Paul's Down-Home Page

The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities

by Mike Tidwell

As much as I enjoyed Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell, I expected to enjoy The Ravaging Tide too. However, I couldn’t even finish it; the tone was just too preachy. Tidwell makes some important points about the importance of coastal cities (and wetlands) to the American economy, and he lays out a pretty good case for why all Americans should care. However, that wasn’t enough to get me to finish. Maybe I’ll give it another try at some future time.

Four Days to Veracruz : A Novel

by Owen West

Four Days to Veracruz : A Novel is one of the most vivid thrillers I’ve ever read– and I read a lot of ’em.
The author, Owen West, is a serving Marine officer who’s also an adventure racer (think Eco Challenge). He draws on both those skill sets for this book, which tells the story of a newlywed couple who accidentally trespass on a Mexican drug lord’s estancia and are held hostage. They manage to escape, killing the drug lord in the process, but when they go to the local police their real problems start. Fortunately, the newlyweds are both adventure racers, and the husband is a Marine infantry officer (the husband and his best friend, Gavin Kelly, are both return characters from West’s Sharkman Six).
West did a great job with pacing and plotting, and his descriptions of the physiology and psychology of adventure endurance racing are interesting in themselves. There are many minor implausibilities (not the least of which is the inclusion of an Aztec serial killer as a foil for the chase), but they’re outweighed by West’s skill at moving the story along. Highly recommended.

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

by Brian Wansink

This is perhaps the most interesting book I’ve read in the last few years, right up there with Freakonomics. I’ve written briefly about Brian Wansink before, and I’m pleased to report that his book matches my initial impression of his work: it’s a neat hack. Wansink’s basic theorem is that, because there are so many environmental factors that influence how much people eat, you can manage your weight simply by juggling those factors to work in your favor. I tried using a smaller dinner plate for about a week and found that– sure enough– I did eat less, even though I didn’t feel hungry or deprived.
There are a ton of interesting anecdotes in the book, but Wansink is careful to knit them together into a simple plan: slightly change your eating habits as he suggests, and you’ll lose weight slowly (he proposes a simple estimate: cut N calories per day and you’ll lose N/10 pounds in a year). His focus is on weight management through environmental and portion control, which I think is pretty sound. Interestingly, there’s a good bit of overlap with The Hacker’s Diet, at least in terms of Wansink’s emphasis on gradual weight reduction instead of sudden changes in eating habits.
Wansink also engages in some pretty cool mythbusting; for example, he compares the number of calories people consumed with the number they thought they were eating at both Subway and McDonald’s. Result: people who ate at Subway, which heavily promotes its food as healthy, underestimated the number of calories they actually ate by as much as 20%. Oops.
Highly recommended as a fun read; the more so if you’re actually trying to control your weight.

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Falluja

by Bing West

The first book I read by Bing West was The March Up. It was excellent, if somewhat dry. This book is head and shoulders above West’s previous book. In No True Glory, West gives a detailed, week-by-week account of the on-again, off-again US response to the Iraqi insurgency in the city of Fallujah. He does an excellent job of presenting both the high-level strategic considerations (and blunders) of the US and Iraqi governments and the nitty-gritty, house-by-house fighting that ensued.
West doesn’t pull any punches. He clearly identifies the critical US mistakes (including the decision not to “finish the fight” with the insurgents in April 2004), and he names names. Paul Bremer and John Abizaid don’t come off looking good by West’s descriptions. By the same token, he does a fantastic job of portraying the life of a Marine infantryman in the First Marine Division. I don’t think most Americans realized how brutal the fighting in Fallujah during the second assault was– or the degree to which the battle was poorly reported, or misreported, by the US media.
In reading this, I gained a new appreciation for the valor, dedication, and perseverance of the US Marine Corps. I highly recommend this book to everyone– including (or perhaps especially) people who normally avoid military history. Whether you support this war or not; whether you support President Bush or not; Americans should understand the sacrifices that our Marines have made on their behalf.

747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation

by Joe Sutter, Jay Spenser

If you’re at all interested in aviation, read this book! Joe Sutter has written a delightful account of his career at Boeing and his role in driving the creation of the 747 jumbo jet. The book is a fascinating look at the old-school culture of aerospace engineering (in that regard, it’s not dissimilar from Skunk Works). It was a quick read, and there’s not a ton of technical detail. However, there is enough detail to have kept the book interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and when David read it he loved it too. That’s high praise indeed, given how much he reads 🙂 Highly recommended for the aviation or biography buff; everyone else would probably be better off reading something else.