The Injustice System, by Clive Stafford Smith

So a businessman and his son go into a downtown Miami hotel suite to meet with a potential client who might help boost their meager income. Instead, a man with whom they have a dispute steps out, shoots the father in the knee, drags the son up some stairs, then shoots him execution-style. The father escapes, gets out the door, and bangs on the door across the hall, leaving blood in the hall, but the import-export businessman in that room doesn’t hear a thing, including the shots that then kill the father. Neville Butler, who has been held hostage in the room since before the father and son arrived, is then released.

Following Butler’s call to the police, British businessman Krishna Maharaj is detained. After waiving his Miranda rights, he makes inconsistent statements to the investigators, who hold him long enough to discover that his fingerprints are in the hotel room, and Maharaj is arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the executions of Dwight and Duane Moo Young, former associates and now rivals for Maharaj’s Caribbean newspaper. The case goes to trial. Maharaj, a flamboyant millionaire, hires the lowest bidder, Mark Hendon, as his attorney. The trial proceeds in a swift and orderly manner, except that the presiding judge is replaced after three days of testimony. Based on fingerprint evidence, a ballistics expert’s identification of Maharaj’s gun, and Neville Butler’s testimony, Maharaj is given life in prison for Dwight’s murder, and the death sentence for Duane’s.

After several years, the case comes to the attention of Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney specializing in capital cases. On his own, taking time away from his fledgling non-profit practice focusing on Louisiana death penalty cases, Smith begins reviewing the case, and this open-and-shut case turns out to have been far more complex than the trial transcript would indicate. His early investigation turns up boxes of evidence and interview materials that hadn’t been made available to the defense, prosecutors’ notes indicating that they instructed the detectives and their chief witness how to perjure themselves, and witnesses that prove that Maharaj wasn’t even in Miami at the time of the killings. Some of his basic rights—over and above their violation of his Miranda rights—were not explained to him or put into practice. Forensic evidence was questionable, but Maharaj’s trial attorney didn’t cross-examine, and even rested without calling a single witness. Confident that the reams of documentary evidence show that Maharaj did not receive a fair trial and that his counsel was (to put it mildly) incompetent, Smith heads into the appeals process.

But door after legal door is slammed in Maharaj’s face. The appeals courts won’t consider new evidence—it wasn’t presented in a timely manner and appellate courts don’t try the facts of the case. Each attempt to reopen the case takes months, if not years, to litigate, partially because a prosecutor won’t accept plentiful evidence that her colleagues convicted an innocent man. When he’s finally granted a new trial, Smith can’t introduce all the new evidence and Maharaj is again found guilty. But because the jury doesn’t prescribe the death penalty, Maharaj’s future opportunities for appeal are severely limited—capital cases usually get at least a cursory glance. Based on all the trials and appeals that go before, Maharaj’s last chance—a reprieve from Florida Governor Charlie Crist—is denied.

Unfortunately, as Smith details, Maharaj’s case is only one example of the miscarriage of justice that capital crimes nearly always involve. From personal experience and well-documented cases, Smith demonstrates that each individual misstep in the justice system that Maharaj experienced is echoed across the country, even in non-capital cases. Part of it is the culture, and he shows that from the patrol officer to the US Supreme Court, the fundamental conservatism of the law is geared towards convictions, not justice or even truth. The real poverty of this view is that convicting the innocent allows the guilty to go unpunished.

Smith’s writing is urgent, and his construction of the story maximizes both the drama and the documentation of his fundamental thesis. As he breaks the case down, the depth of the law enforcement and judicial errors becomes appallingly clear. The parallels he establishes between Maharaj’s case and convictions across the country point to the idea that the American justice system has reversed its supposed ideal. At the same time, his admiration for Maharaj (which is echoed by everyone from business associates to prison guards) as a man shines through. Even after being in prison since 1987—including 10 years on Death Row—Maharaj remains kind, gentle, and positive.

This is a timely book. States have begun to revisit their commitments to the death penalty after subsequent investigations and trials have freed other innocent people from Death Row. It is increasingly likely that people known to be innocent were executed anyway. If someone heeds Clive Stafford Smith’s plea to come forward and exonerate Krishna Maharaj, it would be a miracle; if others use his case to strengthen their calls for an end to the death penalty, it would be a huge step to ending the gaping flaws in our (in)justice system.

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo

Reading this book was like watching a car accident, I was compelled and horrified at the same time.  Katherine Boo spent almost four years interviewing and living alongside some of the world’s poorest people in the slum of Annawadi near Mumbai’s international airport. She has written the results of her researches into an un-put-downable book that reads like a novel.

A myriad of characters from different religions and at different places in the hierarchy of the slum, come living, smelling, fighting, struggling and striving off the page. But don’t get too attached, as several of them die in sordid, pointless and horrible circumstances. Others are entangled in a web of police corruption that just keeps on getting worse. I found myself wanting it to be fiction so that it could have a happy ending for some of the characters, but Annawadi is a place with few happy endings.

Katherine Boo says that when she gave a character thoughts, she has based this on extensive interviews where her subjects revealed their actual thoughts about life in general or a particular incident. What makes me uncomfortable is the extremely personal nature of some of the thoughts she puts in the book. If I revealed to a friend in quite crass terms that I was annoyed with my father for being too sick to work, but not too sick to get my mother pregnant ten times, then I don’t think I’d want my annoyance–perhaps understandable, but definitely tactless–revealed to my father in a New York Times bestseller.

This book has won lots of prizes, and was suggested to me in my book club as a must-read. I agree that is an important book because it paints a picture of a life that I cannot imagine, but a real life that these people often cannot escape through no fault of their own. It is a book that puts human faces and lives on news stories of India’s growth or India’s problems of TB. This is a great book for fans of fiction about the poor of India like A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. I also recommend it for readers who want to get a glimpse of a whole society through the lives of some of the most powerless, like in Margaret Powell’s  Below Stairs,  or readers of popular sociology books like The Big Necessity by Rose George.  It is essential reading for anyone who wants to learn more about the underside of India. Just don’t expect to feel comfortable after you finish the book.

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The Voting Wars, by Richard L. Hasen

We Americans have always prided ourselves on our democracy, our opportunity to go into a private place and select the people who most closely represent the policies we want to see.  And yet… in Virginia’s 2009 election cycle, which included a gubernatorial race, fewer than half of registered voters cast a ballot.  Even in Presidential election years, only around three-quarters of registered voters go to the polls.  And those who actually voted are about one-third the number of people who are eligible to vote.  Obviously, participation in our democracy is less than optimal.  What happens, though, when those who want to cast a ballot don’t trust the system as it stands?  That’s what worries Richard L. Hasen, creator of the Election Law Journal, which examines the cultures and technicalities of the voting process.

Hasen looks at the entire process and the potential points of conflict in our election system, which suffers from the fractured nature of county-based administration overseen by partisan state officials and guided by nearly incomprehensible law.  He surveys the charges and counter-charges of both Democrats and Republicans in the way voters are registered and identified at the polls, and the way votes are counted, or not, after they are cast.  He also envisions an election where the chaos of the Florida 2000 election looks tame by comparison.

Hasen identifies the two sides of the battle in terms of goals.  One side, usually Democratic, wants to include everyone who wants to vote, accepting that a marginal amount of fraud is possible.  The other, usually Republican, wants a strict process that eliminates any hint of fraud, even if it leads to the disenfranchisement of tens or hundreds of thousands of voters.  Of the two, Hasen identifies a real and organized threat on one side, and debunks claims against another threat.  He examines other issues that he believes to be more important to the integrity of the electoral process and ends with a pessimistic view of a future without reform.

If you tune into Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, or read the myriad of conservative newspapers and magazines, you’d inevitably hear from those Hasen identifies as “the Fraudulent Fraud Squad.”  With credibility established by their national careers, people like Karl Rove and Hans von Spakovsky are able to present their unchallenged narrative and build support for voter ID laws.   They also extend their power into the polling booths through an organization calling itself “True the Vote,” which trains volunteers to work as aggressive purgers of voter rolls and as observers primed to overwhelm poll workers and voters with challenges.

On the other hand, voter *registration* fraud, which is usefully conflated with voter fraud by ID proponents, brings up the specter of ACORN organizing waves of illegal voters.  Those accusations, which discredited the advocacy organization, made it possible for subsequent false allegations to break its back and shut it down.  When closely examined, though, it turns out that one ACORN employee violated the law in Nevada by using incentives on his workers, and that ACORN itself was defrauded by temporary workers who were later convicted.  But none of those fraudulent voters ever turned up at the polls.

Moving up the chain, Hasen discussed the problems of partisan election officials.  He’s quick to point out that both sides are guilty of manipulating their positions to take advantage of unclear vote-counting procedures, especially in recounts.  Both sides are also closely studying election laws and regulations, which may lead to a tidal wave of litigation for contested results.  That will put election outcomes in the hands of judges, who may themselves be partisan.  That kind of scenario is discouraging to both new voters and people who believe that participation in democracy is the highest form of citizenship.

He also examines and dismisses the “fringe left” theory that voting machines are subject to hacking, which probably requires a perfect storm of opportunities.  However, he is troubled by the secrecy involved in creating the machines and software, and in the unreliability of electronic machines that don’t produce a paper trail for audits.  (I would be interested in his take on the slot machine/voting equipment comparison, but he only links to it on his blog without comment.)   The good news is that problems have decreased; the bad news is that they aren’t resolved, especially for military and overseas voters.

So where does this leave us?  Hasen is glum about the likelihood of top-to-bottom reform which would standardize registration and elections, put them in the hands of competent nonpartisan professionals, and make them transparent to anyone interested in auditing results.  He’s also glum (even frightened?) by the possibility that social media has further polarized partisans and made the likelihood of finding a compromise more difficult.  My own concern is that the invective of anonymity on the Internet will boil over into public turmoil that will make the “Brooks Brothers Riot” of 2000 look like nuns playing touch football.  In any case, Hasen’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in how democracy in the United States moves forward.

PS: I wrote this post on October 26, and on the 27th, the Washington Post ran this story.  Just goes to show that we have a lot of work to do to get from here to some semblance of a national election that represents the popular will.

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This Beautiful Life, by Helen Schulman

My recent post on the immortality of your online presence offered a consoling, even redemptive, view of the digital world.  This Beautiful Life offers a searing look at the other side of that coin.  And even though the conceit centers on the Web, the impact of events illuminates a web of fissures within one family and hints at a network of flaws that will inform the direction of our society.

The Bergamot family recently relocated to Manhattan from a comfortable life in Ithaca, New York.  As the public face of Columbia University’s program to build a new campus in an area of urban blight, Richard capably dances the fine line between vision and community politics with delight. That leaves his wife Liz, with her Ph.D. in Art History and sporadic history of teaching as an adjunct at Cornell, managing their Upper West Side apartment and preparing for the move to a faculty home provided by the University.  In other words, the slightly bored housewife is watching her professional dreams fading in the rear-view mirror, with little to occupy her but the endless cycle of dropping off and picking up her daughter at school.

And what a school it is.   One of the perks of Richard’s position of power and prestige is that his children have a tuition-free guaranteed spot at Wildwood, a premier academy for the 1%.  Jake, the fifteen-year old, is at the Upper School with bored, sophisticated, seemingly self-confident kids already immune to the ravages of the outer world but still struggling with the fears of adolescence.  Coco, their six-year old Chinese adopted daughter, is at the Lower School, enjoying sleepovers at the Plaza Hotel, round-the-island birthday cruises, and other events created by wealthy and competitive moms for the City’s princesses.

Then Jake makes a mistake.  Or rather he takes someone else’s mistake and compounds it.  After a bored Saturday night spent trolling through the City for something to do, they wander up to a schoolmate’s party.  The girl is in eighth grade, home alone in her family’s mansion (her parents are on Cyprus, dodging taxes), a place with lots of beer and bedrooms.  A drunken Jake winds up making out with her, but pushes her away when his classmates mock him for robbing the cradle.  When Jake wakes up hungover the next morning, he opens a message from the girl on his cell phone, and discovers that she’s filmed herself in an explicit video.  Without thinking, he forwards it to a friend.  And from there…you can imagine.

The ensuing scandal gets Jake and the guys who forwarded the video suspended from school.  Richard is also invited to take a step back from his project–his name has been connected to the video, making him toxic for a project that requires a squeaky clean leader.  Liz finds herself searching the Web, appalled and fascinated by the quantity and variety of porn she sees.  And Coco is influenced in ways no one expects.  Trapped in their small apartment, with no friends to support them, and advice bombarding them from every direction, the pressure builds until their underlying issues burst forth and the family’s defining moment looks like it’s going to be their dividing moment.

While the topic might be sensational, Schulman digs past the surface muck to the real heart of the story, which is a family’s response to the high profile screw-up by one of its members.  Schulman leads the reader to think about parental involvement, the use and misuse of technology, and the early sexualization of both boys and girls, but doesn’t apportion blame–the mirror she holds up to us is enough to show us the fools whose knowledge will always exceed their wisdom.

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The Journal of Best Practices, by David Finch

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage and Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to be a Better Husband.  This quirky title really had me because I had been interested in learning more about Asperger Syndrome.

Reading David Finch’s book helped satisfy my curiosity and also endeared me to this amazing story about a man who isn’t diagnosed with Asberger until after he’s married with children.  The diagnosis explains a lot for him, but his approach to dealing with the problems it has caused in his relationship is so intense that he actually saves his marriage.  Wow, if only every spouse would be willing to do whatever it takes to adjust behavior and communication skills and to make such a powerful difference for his family!

This book was hilariously funny, and I did not want to put it down.  Sometimes, a memoir is just a one-time deal, but I think Finch should write more of them on a variety of subjects that touch his life.  His odd personality and easygoing writing style were the perfect ingredients for a very entertaining read.

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The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

I have actually made progress in breaking bad habits after reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.  As a bonus, I’ve gained insight into the many things I do that are habit-driven.  Unfortunately, I’m also more quick to observe it in others.  Thus, I’m trying to carefully refrain from practicing my new habit of pointing out others’ bad habits and their origins.  As the old saying goes, we are “creatures of …”

There’s a useful video online to help you get started on breaking your bad habits armed with the wisdom of Charles Duhigg’s research: How to Break Habits

I wanted to stop my habit of grabbing unhealthy snacks and eating even when I wasn’t hungry.  With the new insight I gained from reading Duhigg’s book, I was able to identify what cue was leading me to practice the bad habit, choose a suitable replacement food or beverage, and continue enjoying a reward brought on by satisfying the original cue!  I can’t say that my new good habit is perfected but at least I have a new solution that works (when I actually practice it).  I’m still just practicing.  A friend of mine mentioned that it apparently takes 21 consecutive days for a new habit to become a bona fide lifestyle-changing routine.

The book is an easily read narrative without too much science so it’s accessible to a general audience. There are funny anecdotes that convince the reader of Duhigg’s sincere and personal investment in his project.

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Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11, and the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, by William Shawcross

How does a just and civilized country conduct the trial of the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11? Is he an enemy combatant? Is he a civilian who is deserving of a civilian trial? And what happens if, despite his confession, the rules of civilian justice require that evidence against him is inadmissible?

In trying to answer these questions William Shawcross refers to the famous Nuremberg Nazi war crime trials after WWII because they set a precedent for a new kind of justice. Previously, winners of many wars have conducted trials, but the Americans wanted to do something different. In 1945 the Americans, against the wishes of some of their allies, declared that they would not conduct simple sham or show trials at Nuremberg. In a speech to the American Society of International Law in 1945 Justice Robert Jackson said that, “You must put no man on trial under the forms of judicial proceeding, if you are not willing to see him freed if not proven guilty. If you are determined to execute a man in any case, there is no occasion for a trial; the world yields no respect to courts that are merely organized to convict.”

Since 9/11 these same questions of justice have vexed the government, the military and many individuals. How do we keep the public safe from self-avowed terrorists who promise to attack any target in their power, and at the same time ensure justice for the accused? With a sketchy knowledge of both Nuremberg and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed I was interested to learn how these newsworthy events and people are connected. I have to admit that even with an interest in the topic I was doubtful about starting a tome with such a weighty title, but I found that William Shawcross has a very readable style.

This book highlights fascinating background for the events that are in the news all the time. For example, the book states that only three prisoners were ever waterboarded by representatives of the U.S. government. Perhaps this is three too many, but from the controversy and vitriol surrounding the issue, I thought it must have happened to dozens, if not hundreds of people.

Author William Shawcross is the son of Chief British Prosecutor at Nuremberg, Hartley Shawcross. He obviously grew up hearing about the trial and occasionally inserts what his father said. This book is sure to be controversial and you may disagree violently with Shawcross’s conclusions, but it is definitely still worth reading to consider some depth behind the headlines.

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The End of Overeating, by David A. Kessler

I’m not obsessing about food.  Really.  But my reading of Sarah Wu’s book led to David Kessler’s The End of Overeating, so you could say I’m just following a chain.  But I’m not obsessed about food.  Really.  (Caveat: I compulsively overeat things like pizza and ice cream, but it doesn’t really show on me.  This is not an “I’m better than you” post, just a look at an interesting book that illuminates my own relationship with food.)

Former head of the Food and Drug Administration under the Clinton Administration, Kessler led a national drive to reduce smoking, implemented nutrition information labels on packaged food, and made it easier for experimental drugs to make their way into the marketplace.  Reading his CV (Dean of the Yale Med School, top awards from major public health institutions), you know that if anyone has credibility on the topics he addresses, it’s going to be Kessler.  And American overeating is a huge (pun not intended) topic.

We know we overeat, but we don’t know why.  We also don’t really understand why some people can overeat and not gain significant weight and others become morbidly obese with all the attendant problems.  In exploring the decisions we make about food, he conducts informal tests on his employees and observes behaviors that you can see in your own life.  Some of those tests would make him a pariah in this library, but hey, he’s the boss.  But, lest we hasten to place all the blame on evil food companies, Kessler reminds us that we do have a measure of control over our eating decisions.

Not that the food companies – from growers to retailers – don’t try to capture our taste buds by creating links between their products and our brains.  Humans crave fat, salt, and sugar; when put into a precisely designed product, balanced among those ingredients and the feel of the food in your mouth, we are almost unable to resist.  (One term that stays with me is “bolus” – the scientific name for the wad of food you get as you chew.  Kind of makes the process a little less enjoyable.)  One area I think Kessler overlooks is the relationship between processed food and the speed with which we eat.  Those chicken tenders we pick up at the drive-thru have had the muscle broken down, making it easier to chew and digest as we speed from one commitment to the next.  What do you do when that much thought is given to arranging fast, tasty product consumption?

Well, you change your routine to avoid food temptation and limit your exposure to the foods that make you overeat.  By knowing how much food it takes to make you feel full until the next scheduled mealtime, or the proper size of a snack to bridge that gap, you can scale portions back.  By knowing alternate routes home, you can avoid the temptations of all those brightly colored restaurants that line our highways.  And, in part,  knowing how food is processed before it reaches you might encourage you to take the slow food path back to a healthier relationship with your diet.  It isn’t easy, but it is worth a try.

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We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, by Daniel Akst

I have to admit that I picked up We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess because I thought it would annoy me.  I saw a bomb made out of a chocolate-coated doughnut on the cover and thought, “Another screed blaming all the world’s ills on people the author considers fat!”  I was annoyed less than I anticipated, laughed, and even learned, more than I anticipated.

Daniel Akst is a journalist whose basic premise is the question, “Why is self-control so difficult?”  He points out that some of the modern obsession with self-control is just silly.  After all, you don’t have to control yourself if there isn’t abundance.  “The problems of freedom and affluence–of managing desire in a landscape rich with temptation–are just the kind all of us should want to have.”

On the other hand, he points out that giving in to our temptations does have real and often strongly negative consequences for individuals as well as for society as a whole.  After years of education everyone knows that smoking can be destructive to an individual, but who would have guessed in 2005 that buying a large house could affect society so much?

He cites recent studies in self-control from the areas of neurology and psychology, and looks into the science of addiction and the hereditary basis for self-control.  An interesting example is the marshmallow test where small children have to choose whether to have a marshmallow now or wait until later and get a reward. It appears that self-control has a hereditary basis and also that, “Youthful self-control predicted success in later life.” This, of course, begs all sorts of questions about responsibility and whether addicts (of any sort) can really control themselves. Akst points out how these questions are central to stories as old as “Adam and Eve,” The Odyssey and Hamlet.

For those of us who are feeling a bit guilty of too many indulgences in the holiday season, keep in mind that parties, gifts, and special food are rituals that we often indulge in only once a year.  If we take into account, “how helpful ritual can be in promoting pleasure by keeping it within bounds” then one eggnog per year is not all that bad!

His writing is dense and erudite (I sometimes had to run to the dictionary) but Akst is conversational enough to be very readable.  He was sometimes very funny, as when he said, “In the early nineteenth century … Americans drank so much it’s a miracle our country’s symbol isn’t a pink elephant instead of a bald eagle.”

You don’t have to agree with everything Akst writes (and you’re certain to disagree with something) but We Have Met the Enemy is useful to everyone who has ever done anything that they knew wasn’t sensible (and who hasn’t ever eaten that last cupcake, sneaked a cigarette, bought something on their credit card just because they wanted it, put off boring paperwork or vacuuming by reading a blog?).

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The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, by Rose George

Like many who have traveled I am intimately aware that umpteen people around the world have dirty, nasty, and awkward toilet facilities.  It is great to see the world but sometimes even better to get back to my own bathroom.  What I didn’t realize before reading The Big Necessity is that “2.6 billion people don’t have sanitation … Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box.”

These figures are astonishing and are what drew me to read The Big Necessity when a biology professor recommended it for Freshman Seminar classes.  Ever since reading it I have been recommending it to people, from my book club of older women to my husband as he was deploying to Afghanistan.  All of them, after giving me a strange look and being initially reluctant to tackle a book with a cover picturing a roll of toilet paper, have said that it was well worth reading.  ”Fascinating” was a word I heard a lot to describe the book and I agree–it is a surprisingly engrossing read.

Perhaps it is engrossing because this is a subject that we are even more reluctant to talk about than sex, but it is vitally important and affects us all. In ten chapters, British journalist Rose George travels from east to west as she looks at aging sewer systems in New York and luxurious robo-toilets in Japan.  The chapters on biogas and biosolids point out that the admirable goal of making use of the resources in waste has advantages and big disadvantages.  If you like to read while you eat, the chapter “Open Defecation-Free India” is the one to avoid over lunch, but even it has positive notes.

The Big Necessity isn’t a simple tirade about how people in poor countries have terrible lives while rich people have life easy–it is more than that.  It points out how we are very conservative about our toilet habits–conservative in the sense that we don’t like to change them–deep down we feel that what our mother taught us when we were toddlers is how we should conduct our business all our lives.  In many cases, whether we have a squat toilet or a seat, a private room or no doors is immaterial to health and safety but is individually very important to us.

This is an important book on an important subject that makes a great read for anyone interested in topics as diverse as international development to the psychology of our private acts.

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Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do, by Gabriel Thompson

When Barbara Ehrenreich spent a year undercover working in minimum-wage jobs in Nickel and Dimed, she was trying to make a political point about class, labor, and fair wages. Gabriel Thompson didn’t have a political agenda underpinning his year in crappy jobs. He just wanted to see if he could do it.

Specifically, Thompson wants to see if a young educated white guy from Brooklyn can hack it in jobs normally filled by immigrants. His first stop is Yuma, Arizona, where he convinces a skeptical foreman to give him a job picking lettuce.

He barely makes it through the day. Between the heat, the sweat, the hard labor, and the physical pain that comes from bending, twisting, and hoisting lettuces for hours on end, Thompson only just manages to get through his shift without collapsing. And yet, to the astonishment of the other lettuce-pickers, he drags himself back to work the next day, and the next, and the next, through the whole three months.

Remarkably, despite the chronic pain and severe working conditions, Thompson remains cheerful during his agricultural stint. (This same cheerfulness gets him fired from a flower shop later in the year, when he remains positive despite earning less than minimum wage and getting no lunch breaks; the shop owners prefer employees who are properly downtrodden).  He remains sanguine in the face of blatant anti-black and anti-Latino racism while tearing apart chicken breasts in an Alabama poultry plant. He stoically accepts the condescending barbs of the New Yorkers to whom he delivers food by bike.

Thompson mostly focuses on describing his work and his fellow laborers, though you can’t help noticing the heavy themes underpinning the surface story. Thompson is a reporter, not a pedantic, but it’s impossible to ignore the issues of class, race, nationality, and immigration. His book will resonate with anyone who has ever worked in physically-demanding, low-paying jobs, and it will open the eyes of anyone who hasn’t.

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Big Girls Don’t Cry, by Rebecca Traister

The early campaigning for the 2012 presidential election is well underway, which is impossible. We only just finished the 2008 election season. Hillary vs. Obama, then McCain and Palin vs. Obama and Whatshisname– all that drama took place, like, last week.

So why read a book about it? We all lived through it. We were there. We were active at the polls; we were engaged in discussions about race and gender and politics. We voted in primaries, for crying out loud, primaries. We already know what it was like.

Or do we? Television and the internet deluged us with election info in 2008, but mostly with “sloppy synopses and cartoonish characters at a rat-a-tat pace,” recalls Salon writer Rebecca Traister, whose prose is disgustingly quotable. “Many of us, struggling to keep up, were happy to just get the Cliffs Notes version. But in the ceaseless cycle of revelation and analysis we lost depth, clarity and perspective on the story that was unfolding around us, as well as on how that story was itself changing and reshaping itself.”

Traister delivers on the depth, clarity, and perspective in a book that is compulsively readable. If you thought you had a firm grasp on the events and personalities of the 2008 presidential campaigns, prepare to be taken down a peg. Traister has rummaged through the glut of information from America’s recent history and emerged with a narrative that will enthrall anyone who cares about sex, power, gender, or the media.

Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin all feature prominently in the book, but this story is not just about them. It is about Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow, Gloria Steinem and Tina Fey. It is about the older feminists who flocked to Clinton and the younger women who flocked to Obama, and the young men who loathed Hillary but who swore they weren’t sexist. It is about understanding feminism as it related to a vice-presidential candidate who balanced marriage, five children, and a powerful political career while remaining staunchly anti-choice. It is about the eighteen million pro-Clinton voters whom Clinton so eloquently thanked in her concession speech: “Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it’s got about eighteen million cracks in it.”

I hope you remember that line– it still makes me tear up to read it– but you can be forgiven if you don’t. The mainstream media spent most of their time focused on the other part of Clinton’s concession speech, the not-news that she would be endorsing Obama. That decision to focus on Clinton’s capitulation, rather than on her astounding feminist success, speaks to the subtle sexism in the media and at large. This is where Traister truly shines. It is easy to cry sexism when newscasters criticize a candidate for her ankles or the pitch of her laugh rather than her policies. (Not that many people did cry sexism when that happened, alas.) It is harder to perceive sexism when it is nuanced and subtle, but Traister recognizes it for what it is and cries foul.

Does this sound like feminist screed? It’s not. Traister is in her thirties. She identifies less with the trailblazing feminists of her mother’s generation and more with younger women, many of whom felt uncomfortable at even considering gender when evaluating a candidate (because that sort of thing would be sexist, right?). Instead, Traister teases out the subtleties of feminisms old and new, creating her own fiery perspective.

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The Central Park Five, by Sarah Burns

When political and media pressure combine in high profile criminal cases, the result can become the disgrace of a civilized society.  Sarah Burns has gone back to 1989 to remind us of a particularly odious episode that exemplifies that disgrace.

The term ‘wilding’ entered our vocabulary when a large group of black and Hispanic teens roamed through Central Park in New York City, verbally and physically assaulting passers-by.  That same evening, a young woman jogging through the park was raped and nearly beaten to death.

Several teens had been detained for the various assaults in the park but were set to be released when word of the rape and near-murder came through.  The veteran prosecutor and elite detectives assigned to the case could not believe that the incidents were coincidental, and began working to turn circumstantial evidence into direct evidence by soliciting confessions from the teens.  Their tactics were questionable at best: they denied the accused boys food for nearly a full day, pulled the required adult guardians out of the interview rooms during crucial parts of their interrogation, led one boy on a tour of the crime scene, and dictated the confessions to them.  Some of the boys said that they were physically abused, and that they eventually signed their confessions to end the questioning.  Their accounts were at odds with the facts and with each other, but those confessions outweighed everything else.

Citywide and national condemnation of the assaults and rape began immediately.  Mayor Ed Koch took every opportunity to get in front of cameras.  Donald Trump took out a full-page ad in one paper.  The New York press, especially the tabloids, led the way in describing the teens as beasts with human faces.  (The term ‘wilding’ itself was the creation of the police, but the media loved it and ran with it. )  Even the supposedly objective New York Times took up the metaphor of predators ruling a jungle of their own making in their reporting.  Perp walks, conveniently timed for news deadlines, identified the teens (now being treated as adults) and forever linked them to the crime.  They were convicted in the court of public opinion before the first witness was heard.

When the judicial system took over, Lady Justice’s blindfold disappeared in the glare of television lights.  Inexperienced or self-promoting defense attorneys, novel evidence presented as scientific certainty, and the behavior of the boys’ advocates ensured that the facts of the case would be obscured.  When the jurors finished deliberating, all five were found guilty of various crimes connected to the rape and sentenced to prison.  The case was closed.

Except that at the same time, a serial rapist named Mathias Reyes, using the same MO as the Central Park crime, was operating in the neighborhood.  After raping several women and murdering one, he was finally caught, convicted of those crimes, and sent to prison.  In 2002, he confessed to a prison official that he had committed the Central Park rape.  His story was investigated by the New York District Attorney’s office, and a dispassionate re-evaluation of the evidence demonstrated that he was the man who had raped and nearly killed the Central Park jogger.   The boys, now young men who had served in some of the worst prisons in the country, were immediately set free.  Unfortunately police, prosecutors, and the media– and impressionable media viewers– were still convinced of the boys’ guilt.  The prospect of a suit against the city and reviews of Burns’ book have reignited the vitriol surrounding the case.

Burns lays out the case that the conviction of the Central Park Five was the outward manifestation of fear and racism during a time when New York was a city in decline.  She shows how similar cases in which whites were the aggressors were treated differently in the media, and how bad relations between the black and Hispanic communities exacerbated the boys’ response to the accusations.  At the same time, she follows Mathias Reyes’ rape spree, which could only have continued if police chose to pursue the wrong people.   Given those factors, Burns’ subtitle (A Chronicle of a City Wilding) is not the description of a crime, but an indictment of the out-of-control political, judicial, and media powers that chose not to perform the roles that a civilized society demands of them.

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Gristle, co-edited by Moby and Miyun Park

“University of Arizona researchers found more fecal bacteria in the kitchen—on sponges, dish towels, and the sink drain—than they found swabbing the toilet” (p. 11).

The researchers, by the way, had first washed everything with bleach. Twice.

Unless you’re a strict vegan, you’d be better off licking your toilet than your kitchen counter. If you eat meat, eggs, or dairy, you ingest what the animal ingested—and farm animals may eat pig and cattle waste, as well as poultry litter. It’s perfectly legal.

Gristle, a very quick read comprising ten short essays, is filled with all kinds of unsettling information. People who deliberately want to bury their heads in the sand about the perils of contemporary meat production and consumption should stay away. You can’t unlearn what you have learned.

But if you want a fast overview of the personal, environmental, humanitarian, and financial arguments against big agribusiness, this is a great place to start. Even if you already consider yourself well-informed, you’ll probably discover something new. For instance:

—You could drive to the moon and back 114,000 times and still have released less carbon than the United States chicken industry does each year (p. 57)

—In a given year, 1.5 million residents of Philadelphia produce 1,000,000 tons of urine and feces, while 800,000 pigs at one (only one!) pork facility produce 1,600,000 tons of manure (p.16)

—For nearly their entire four-month pregnancies, breeding sows on factory farms can only stand or lie down. They do not have room to turn around. (p. 43)

Contributors to the anthology include farmers, activists, researchers, grocers, business people, and world-famous musicians. The strength here is not depth but scope, with topics ranging from personal health to animal welfare to climate change, and perspectives advocating veganism and vegetarianism and even omnivorism (but only if the animals were raised ethically!). Filled with graphs and images  like the one shown here, from the Humane Society of the United States, the book is a great overview for people who are concerned about food supply and distribution; it is particularly timely, considering the recent outbreak of e. coli in Germany. I recommend it for anyone who eats food.

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Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, by Hal Herzog

“Like most people, I am conflicted about our ethical obligations to animals,” writes psychologist Hal Herzog. “I oppose testing the toxicity of oven cleaner and eye shadow on animals, but I would sacrifice a lot of mice to find a cure for cancer.” Herzog is an anthrozoologist—one who studies human/animal interactions—but though he devotes his time to studying the moral, philosophical, and practical nuances of humans and their treatment of animals, at the end of the day he is just like the rest of us: inconsistent.

This book is about those inconsistencies, and it is fascinating.

The biggie, of course, is meat. There is only one strong argument in favor of eating animal flesh: it is tasty. There are several arguments against it: you have to kill the animal; the animal suffered continuously during its dismal life, if it came from a factory farm, which it probably did; meat production is terrible for the environment; meat causes obesity, cancer, and heart disease.

“You would think it would be easy to convince people not to eat flesh,” says Herzog. “You would be wrong.” There are far more former vegetarians than current vegetarians, and even the omnivores are terribly inconsistent. No one wants to eat a Patagonian toothfish, but re-name it as a Chilean sea bass, and suddenly it’s a sophisticated entrée. Most Americans wouldn’t eat a dog (“No! Not Mr. Fluffers!”), nor would most Kenyans (“No! Dogs are vermin!”), but Koreans view dogs as neither pets nor pests. Bon appetit!

Or consider cockfighting, a sport that has finally been criminalized in all fifty states. Most people think it is repulsive and barbaric to force two chickens to fight to the death, but we inhumanely slaughter 9 billion broiler chickens every year. For every one gamecock who dies in a fight, there are something like 10,000 to 20,000 chickens who die in factory farms—and those chickens live without ever seeing the light of day. Gamecocks live long, pampered lives, right until that final night.

And why pick on cockfighting? Could it have something to do with race and class? Cockfighters are mostly Hispanics and poor whites, while horse racing is a pastime of the rich. Most Americans oppose any ban on horse racing, never mind the 5,000 horses who died at racetracks between 2003 and 2008. Herzog includes a quote from comedian Chris Rock, who sums it up nicely: “[Sarah Palin is] holding a dead, bloody moose. And Michael Vick’s like, ‘Why am I in jail?’”

Herzog teases out the oddities of the relationship between humans and animals in a wide variety of contexts. (Gentlemen, next time you’re trying to meet women, bring a dog. Your chances of success will triple.) He relies on quirky personal anecdotes as well as very-heavily-endnoted scientific research, and he delves into the philosophical underpinnings that govern, or fail to govern, our actions. And because Herzog readily admits his own hypocrisies toward animals, the tone throughout the book is informative rather than strident, making this an excellent choice for people who want to know more about animals without being preached at.

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The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them, by Wayne Pacelle

This week we’ll be looking at five books about animals, but not in that warm-tingly Charlotte’s Web kind of way. These books aren’t supposed to make you sentimental. They’re supposed to make you hopping mad.

“Michael Vick loves animals. At least, that’s what he told me when we met at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary. And he said it with a straight face.”

Michael Vick made headlines when he was convicted of dogfighting. (Apparently he also made headlines as a football player, but whatever.) He is but one of the many people involved with animals, for good or ill, whom Wayne Pacelle has encountered during his seventeen years with the Humane Society of the United States. The current president and CEO of HSUS, Pacelle brings his unique experience in animal advocacy to this examination of human and animal interactions.

Though Pacelle writes with an easygoing tone, much of the book is disturbing. We as people do some horrible things to animals. We justify experiments on animals in the name of science, but we tend to forget the effect on chimps like Sterling, who has literally gone insane after twenty years of confinement: he has become a self-mutilator.

Or we abuse them before turning them into food. Just imagine if we kept human beings captive, fattening them into deformity, deliberately turning them obese (with no regard for the health problems of obesity), and forcing them to breed. We do this to animals by the millions. USDA oversight is a farce; between weak regulations and rampant cronyism, the agribusiness leaders act with all the integrity of nineteenth-century robber barons, or twenty-first century Wall Street leaders. With practically no oversight in place, processing plants are free to torture the animals, literally torture them. Did you know you can water-board cows?

It’s not just food animals who suffer. Only about twenty-five percent of pet dogs come from shelters. This is a shameful statistic, especially when you consider all the dogs who instead come from puppy mills, where the animals are kept in squalid conditions and the mothers are forced to bear litter after litter. Even if you buy your puppy from a reputable-looking store or website, she might have started out life at a mill. And—here’s the really sickening part—the American Kennel Club supports this. The AKC cares more about the cosmetic appearance of dogs than their health or well-being.

These are just a few of the very unpleasant topics in the book. Happily, some very pleasant topics show up, too. Pacelle writes about an array of people who go out of their way to help animals, from pet owners to conservationists to law enforcement officers. The chapter on animal rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina, in particular, showcased people acting at their very best.

I can’t call this a heartwarming book. There are too many scenes of cruelty against animals to strike the same feel-good chords as Marley & Me or Dewey. But I hope the same people who loved those books will try this one, and other folks, too: if you’ve ever loved an animal (or eaten one!), this book has information you need to know.

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