Finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Thought it was excellent.

He takes 4 meals and tries to follow the food chain back to their originations, finding surprising difficulty in some cases. Alot of surprises (to me) along the way. One example was the idea of "free range chicken". Pollan visited one of these operations (one of the few that would let him inside) and was shown a warehouse packed wall to wall with a sea of chickens. For the first 6 weeks or so the chickens are not allowed outside at all for fear they will get some kind of disease. Then finally the gate is opened to allow them outside into what i envision is a fenced off "dog run" type yard. However Pollan observed that not a single chicken dared venture out into that unknown area. 2 weeks later they are slaughtered. Apparently to be "free range" you only need provide them access to outside, regardless of whether they use it.

Also, there is corn in everything.


Now I'm meandering through "The Classic Slave Narratives", particularly "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano" which is pretty good, so far not as good as the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass", which is fantastic.

Also started The Grapes of Wrath last night.

Then you will definitely enjoy The Family. I found it helped me immensely to understand the too-often toxic interaction of religion and politics throughout American history and gave me a very useful perspective on the contemporary moment and its particular nuttiness. (You'll never again think of the White House Prayer Breakfast as a harmless exercise in piety.)

I just heard on last night's news about Franklin Graham (Billy G's son) being disinvited from the National Day of Prayer, which suggests some lessons are being learned.

Hey Bost,

If you want to know more about things like "free range chicken" and other travesties perpetuated by the the factory farm industry, check you Jonathan Safran's Eating Animals.

James

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is another really good one.

Back to the Lincoln theme, this book might interest those who don't necessarily care too much for biographies: Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L Swanson.

The title says it all.
From Amazon:
The Greatest Manhunt in American History

For 12 days after his brazen assassination of Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth was at large, and in Manhunt, historian James L. Swanson tells the vivid, fully documented tale of his escape and the wild, massive pursuit. Get a taste of the daily drama from this timeline of the desperate search.

Riveting chase.

sic semper tyrannis

My buddy gushed about this book and he rarely reads.

I'm a sucker for Vonnegut, but I'm about 50 pages in and already loving it.

Just finished Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Loved it in a way like a I love a good horror story: scared me ****less by reminding me how easily such a scenario could happen. Very engrossing story imo.

Hey emmemere: I know that you were looking for some dystopian novels to read, and I found a list of them off of the Wikipage for The Handmaid's Tale. Here they are (though I haven't personally read any of them):

I bought David Sklansky's book DUCY off Amazon last week, God help me, and it is really really bad, unless you have a Bob Stupak fetish or something. Our man in Havana Sklansky is very pleased with himself indeed, but he seems like someone who can't even see what makes him special. It's a really bad book, amateurish. So David Sklansky, you are a visionary in ways that you don't seem to even appreciate yourself, and this book is really bad, but you're always be very cool to me.

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland

His nonsensical posts in this forum have convinced me not to read anything he's written in the last decade, and certainly not anything he's ever written that isn't directly connected to gambling.

Exactly, although I'd still read anything he wrote specifically about poker. He has insight into this game that I lack and I really like the way he presents the concepts. The best poker books for me are the ones that are a bit more generic rather than the recipe type of books. Theory of Poker, Weighing the Odds, Holdem Poker for Advanced Players, Inside the Poker Mind, etc.

I have yet to find the equivalent NL poker book though.

Outside of poker Sklansky strikes me as self indulgent, egotistic, narcissistic weirdo... but he's made me money.

Hellhound on his trail - I found this book very interesting. As I said before its about James Earl Ray, MLK Jr, J Edgar Hoover, and many others. It starts out with J E Ray escaping from prison like a year before assassinating MLK and finishes with his death years after the assassination. There were several things I learned in the book. Like JERay escaped from prison again, after the assassination. I also learned Jesse Jackson is even more of a self serving opportunistic person than I thought. A pretty good read all in all, imo.

First Family - David Baldacci - this is a fictional book about 2 former Secret Service agents who are now PI's investigating the kidnapping of the US Presidents niece. To me the book was pretty entertaining but somewhat oer the top as far as believability (yes I know its non-fiction). I'd say its a decent to good read but there was a time or 2 I'd have to force myself into the next chapter.