Rob Recommends Listening to Richistan

My family listened to Richistan, by Robert Frank, on a recent car trip to New Jersey. Frank is a Wall Street Journal reporter who got himself assigned to cover the super-wealthy beat in America. He spent a year traveling the country, observing, studying and interviewing the very wealthiest Americans. The author came to believe that the best way to understand this group of millionaires is to see them as inhabiting a separate country. To help the rest of us understand this nation’s culture and people, Frank wrote this book, Richistan: a Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich. Richistan is a fascinating and funny glimpse into a world most of us could never imagine. It’s a world of $700,000 watches, 300 foot yachts, millionaire support groups, $25,000 a plate charity dinners and residents who don’t know how many cars they own. In one particularly interesting chapter, Frank takes us through butler training at Butler Boot Camp. The rigors of the training course say more about those doing the employing (“principals”) than about the trainees themselves. (FYI, the top graduates of elite butler schools earn $75-120,000 per year.) Throughout, Frank accomplishes the nearly impossible feat of neither fawning over nor disparaging the citizens of Richistan. See what you think…

Rob Recommends the documentary There But for Fortune

I will admit it hadn’t occurred to me to mention There But for Fortune here in Staff Reads. But I happened across a list of top movies for 2011 and there it was (with a rottentomatoes.com rating by critics of 100% positive).  The film documents the life and work of Phil Ochs—the protest singer form the 1960s and 70s.  There But for Fortune breaks no new ground in movie-making, but does a very nice job of placing Ochs in the storm of counter-cultural/anti-war protest that seemed to envelop the decade. With video, songs, stills and interviews, Kenneth Bowser the director, documents the troubled life of Ochs the artist and activist and the movement he was part of.

 I had assumed that the film’s appeal for me had to do with my having grown up listening to his songs. Plus his family and mine criss-crossed in a couple of minor ways in New York.   So it was with some surprise that I read the reviews from sources as far apart as the Boston Herald and the New York Times crediting the movie as a fitting tribute to a man worth remembering.

In addition to the movie, the Library owns seven CDs byOchs.

Rob Recommends "We Are Wisconsin"

One year ago the state of Wisconsin was in an uproar. Governor Scott Walker and the Republican state legislature proposed a far-reaching law restricting the rights of government workers to bargain collectively. The reaction was immediate and unprecedented. The Democratic members of the Senate walked out, staying in Illinois for three weeks to block the vote, and tens of thousands of people converged on the capital, some camping out in the Capitol building for weeks. The protest in many ways paved the way for Occupy Wall Street later in the year. The crowds were non-violent, diverse, exuberant, cooperative, creative, angry and persistent. Though the walls of the Capitol were covered with posters, the occupants used non-marring tape to protect the walls. Cleanup brigades made the janitors' work easy. People around the country called in orders to Ian's Pizza to feed the multitudes. Police (who were exempted from the law) maintained easy dialog with the protestors and joined the crowd after their shifts. We Are Wisconsin is one of several books chronicling those heady moments. The book collects short columns, blog posts and even Twitter tweets to give readers the flavor of the movement and some brief analysis. Unfortunately there are no pictures.
For those not following the events, here's what happened: The legislation ultimately passed but in the recall elections which ensued two Republicans were defeated. Over one million signatures were gathered to recall the governor and a recall election is likely this spring. Reading the book will give you some idea of what is was like to participate in this historic moment.

Read They Marched Into Sunlight (Rob)

In October 1967 two events provided convenient portals from which to view and understand America's involvement in Vietnam. The first, on Oct. 17, was a battle at Ong Thanh between the 2nd Battalion--28th Infantry Regiment (Black Lions) and the NLF's 271st Regiment. The battle (a deadly ambush) left 61 Americans dead. The next day saw a confrontation between recruiters for Dow Chemical (manufacturers of napalm) and students at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. The students, attempting to block the recruitment interviews, were beaten and dragged from the University building. They Marched into Sunlight tells both stories in more or less alternating chapters. The author interviewed over 100 of the participants (including North Vietnamese soldiers) and mixes the personal narratives with journalistic history and war strategy. We get to know the motivations and conflicting emotions of soldiers, military family members, activists, bystanders, police, politicians and University officials. It works. For the most part the author, David Maraniss, allows the subjects to tell their stories free of judgment. We will not necessarily like or agree with or sympathize with all the interviewees (how could we?), but we readers cannot help but come away with a better understanding of the War's diverse human pieces.
(A movie is in the works for 2013.)

Rob Recommends David Sedaris on CD

I became a fan of David Sedaris from the first time I heard him on NPR lo those many years ago. I still crack up when I hear Santaland Diaries. For those unfamiliar with him, Sedaris is a storyteller. Readers learn all the intimate details of his growing up, his eccentric family, his gay awareness and later his relationship with his boyfriend Hugh. All of his books are funny and worth reading. The humor is varied enough so that there will be sly humor, wincing painful humor, smile-to-yourself pieces, I've-got-to-share-this humor, laugh out loud stories and the old eyes-tearing-I've-got-to-stop-reading humor. As good as his books are to read, I highly recommend listening to him read his stories. He's as much a performer as he is a writer and he is the reader for all of his audiobooks in the Library.

Rob swears that 99 out of 100 librarians recommend Proofiness by Charles Seife

Potemkin Numbers|Cherry-picking|Fruit-packing|Regression to the moon

In the OJ Simpson murder case, lawyer Allan Dershowitz took Simpson’s previous arrest for battering his wife and used it as an argument against Simpson’s guilt as murderer. How? By producing the statistic that only 1 batterer in a thousand ends up killing his wife.

Women who have had abortions are up to six times more likely to commit suicide. Assuming that the abortions led to the suicides, South Dakota enacted a law requiring women be warned about suicide risk before having an abortion.

In 2005 anthropologists published a study in Nature showing that Olympic athletes who wore red tended to win over athletes who wore blue.

Numbers do lie! Find out how in Proofiness.