My Life in Baseball: The True Record

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One of sports literature's great whitewashes and cover-ups, Ty Cobb's autobiography is anything but the "true record" of its titular claim. Cobb was as haunted and complex a man as has ever sharpened a pair of spikes, and, in his 70s, when he sat down to tell his story, he simply didn't want the whole of his truth revealed; he preferred to perpetuate his legend. What results, then, is a flawed fairy tale filled with colorful anecdotes and reminiscences that duck the demons that fueled Cobb's inspired play like a pitcher trying to hide from a line drive smashed in the direction of his eyeballs.

Interestingly, the story behind the book is far more raucous and compelling than the book itself. Cobb, as violent and demanding at the end of his life as he was in his playing heyday, virtually kidnapped Stump (one of the most honored sports writers of the late '50s and early '60s), subjecting almost every word and observation to Cobb's approval. Stump finally exacted his literary pound of flesh years later when he slid spikes high into Cobb's ghost with the publication of his marvelously rich--and real--accounting of Cobb's life in Cobb: A Biography. Stump not only nicked the fuzz off the Georgia Peach in that second effort, he recounted the harrowing circumstances behind the first. Together, the two books provide a fascinating prism into a man's life and legacy, the first volume bending the light to diffuse the truth, the second straightening it out to preserve it. --Jeff Silverman

Customer Reviews:

Great book.......2006-02-14

This book is great Ty Cobb teaches you all of his secrets and relationships between other players in his time he even picks his all time team that he would go against anyone today and he said he would beat anyone with his all time team I think he probably would

This book is a must for a Cobb fan and a must if you are a baseball fan

Does he tell the truth?.......2004-05-03

I think that this book was very well-written. Cobb seems like a smart man who was ahead of his time when it came to baseball. He comes across as a very bitter guy though... of course Ty was in his 70s at the time and oldtimer athletes always seem that way. Complaining about how the game has changed to be horrible and such. Its always cool to get an insider look at pro sports and athletes tho , and while i feel he didn't always tell the whole truth, I think it was a good book overall. Especially if you are a baseball history dork like me. i give it 4 out of 5.

One big story, with a million entertaining substories........2003-08-20

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was the first book about Cobb that I had ever read; before that, he was just a name and statistics to me.

The overarcing story of this book is Ty Cobb's career in baseball, with a little bit about his life before and a few flashes into his life after. Now, it would be easy to sum up a career in baseball with several numbers, a few game highlights, etc. But that is not what you'll find in this book. What you'll find is a ton of short, 5-10 paragraph interludes about almost every big name in baseball from the 1905-1928 period... and even big names elsewhere. Ty Cobb was fortunate enough to have interacted with everyone from actors to presidents to business executives, and he has humorous angles on each of them. I actually laughed out loud several times while reading this book at the way he portrayed various people.

In a lot of ways, reading this book is almost like listening to your grandfather tell stories of his adventures and his friends in his youth. Except it's not your grandfather, it's Ty Cobb, telling stories of the Golden Age of Baseball, and his friends were legends like Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Connie Mack, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, Nap Lajoie, and others who may also simply be names in the Hall of Fame to you. Cobb's stories bring life to long-dead names, color to old black-and-white photos. Most of us have only heard legends of those early parks, players, pennants, pitches, pundits. Cobb was there. And through reading his story, it almost feels like you were there, too.

While I've read other reviews that say this book hides the Dark Side of Ty Cobb, I don't think that is entirely true. He definitely talks about some ways he treated people, such as Shoeless Joe Jackson, that makes you realize that at his core he was a man who would stop at nothing to win.

It doesn't matter if you like Ty Cobb or hate Ty Cobb. If you want to hear some great baseball stories, read this book.

A LOOK AT A LEGEND.......2003-07-20

TY COBB TELLS OF HIS LIFE AND CAREER IN THIS INTERESTING STORY. I FOUND HIS SIDE OF THE STORY TO BE VERY REFRESHING. HE CERTAINLY IS NO ANGEL. HIS FAMILY LIFE IS MENTIONED, MAYBE 5 TIMES IN THE WHOLE BOOK. HE WAS A TRUE BRAINY PLAYER AND TOTALLY FEARLESS. HIS TROUBLED BOYHOOD WAS A REAL NIGHTMARE (HIS MOTHER ACCIDENTLY SHOT HIS FATHER TO DEATH). HE IS TOTALLY WRAPPED UP IS HIS OWN LITTLE WORLD NEVER ALLOWING ANYONE TO GET CLOSE TO HIM. I FOUND HIM TO BE FULL OF HIMSELF AND IN SELF DENIAL CONCERNING HIS ANGER AND SELF CENTEREDNESS. AS A HUMAN BEING HE IS VERY FLAWED, HATED BY TEAMATES AND JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE. A TRUE LEGEND AS A PLAYER AND A VERY INTERESTING AND TROUBLED PERSON. RECOMMENDED.

a must read for a true baseball fan.......2003-02-21

Cobb is the 1st man into the hall of fame
you need to read this
No one ever loved playing baseball more than the Peach
love him or hate him
this is a must read for any TRUE baseball fan

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My Life in Baseball the True Record

Manufacturer: Amereon House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H6ECJW

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My life in baseball, the true record,
Ty Cobb
Manufacturer: DOUBLEDAY & CO INC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UDTCN8

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My life in baseball,: The true record,
Ty Cobb
Manufacturer: EX-LIBRARY WITH MYLAR COVERED JACKET
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000V7ASZO

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My Life in Baseball-the True Record
Ty Cobb
Manufacturer: Doubleday & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VRRLWM

Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map
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The Lowell plan

Flawed fabric

"...fanning that trigger."

A lack of coherence

Cotton's Compendium

Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map
Stephen Yafa
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Cotton: The Biography of a Revolutionary Fiber

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ASIN: 0670033677
Release Date: 2004-12-29

Book Description

Cotton has touched off wars and revolutions, inspired astonishing inventions, laid waste to entire ecosystems, and enslaved untold millions of people. Alexander the Great carried cotton cloth on his back from India to Europe. Starting from the late eighteenth century, the fiber transformed creaky rural England into the greatest industrial power on earth. Today, cotton is, if anything, more preeminent than ever and at the center of raging global controversies. Now Stephen Yafa delves deep into the past to tell the amazing story of this humble, infinitely adaptable fiber that hasÂ—again and againÂ—reinvented our world.

Domesticated simultaneously in Peru and Pakistan some 5,500 years ago, later a prime motive for the colonization of the New World, as Yafa shows, cottonÂ's most profound impact came after the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-nineteenth century, the vast plantations of the antebellum South, the grim mill towns of New England, and the soot-spewing factories of the English Midlands were knit together in a global system of exploitation and enslavementÂ—all of it based on cotton. When Marx and Engels composed The Communist Manifesto, they chose cotton manufacturing as the prime symbol of capitalism run amok. Beautifully researched and written, Big Cotton traces the cultural, economic, and social history of the Â“worldÂ's friendliestÂ” fiber from the kingdoms of Mesopotamia to the Gap.

Customer Reviews:

The Lowell plan.......2007-10-02

Basing a book on a commodity is not a unique plan, but in this instance it is a fruitful way of looking at social, political, and economic history. My review necessarily simplifies some of the issues presented. My interest in the subject is caused in part by having visited Lowell and having become astonished at the vast size of the National Park Service installation there. In reading the book I learned that Paul Tsongas, a boyhood friend of the author, was instrumental in having the National Park Service turn Lowell into a living museum. (The author grew up in Lowell, a city famous for Jack Kerouac, its mills, and the Lowell system of employer-employee relations.)

Cotton has versatility. Down sides to the cotton story abound. Child laborers were used in Manchester, England. Cotton crops and irrigation resulted in the diversion of the waters of the Aral Sea. India traded cotton cloth with China and Indonesia at the time of Alexander the Great. In the seventeenth century cotton replaced wool in England and silk in France. The governments attempted bans.

In the eighteenth century Richard Arkwright created the factory system. English people desired the fabrics called chintz and calico. Cotton manufacturing provided a source of immense wealth. Arkwright spun his cotton thread establishing an industrial dynasty near the Derwent River. Afterwards Watts's steam engine and Cartwright's power loom resulted in cotton manufacturing in Manchester. In America Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Slater, a former employee of Arkwright, built a cotton yarn factory in Rhode Island. By 1809 there were eighty-seven operations in New England and New York. Slater limited himself to cotton yarn. Francis Cabot Lowell used his photographic memory to become a sort of industrial spy in Manchester, England. The mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, automated using the Jacquard system.

Lowell introduced corporate paternalism since farmers could not spare their sons but sent daughters to work at the mill. Anthony Trollope believed that Lowell was a commercial utopia. The harmonious view of the enterprise lasted about twenty years. Later the inevitable friction between workers and management took place. At any rate, Lowell never was the ideal community observers believed it was. The good press was a product of a publication, THE LOWELL OFFERING, written by the female workers. The Lowell mill was less life-draining, less polluted than comparable English factories.

Another concern of conscience was that cotton and slavery were connected strongly. The owners, the Boston Associates, were dubbed the Lords of the Loom. Mill towns included Saco, Lynn, Chicopee, Taunton, Dover, Fall River. Daniel Webster, taking a moderate stance and defending monied interests, was shunned by his good friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Greenleaf Whittier. Irish immigrants, more malleable than the daughters of the farmers, formed a great portion of the workforce of the mills by 1860. Northern mill owners and English textile lords misjudged the length of the war. After the war and the immense losses of the South, the price of cotton fell. The share-cropping era commenced.

The development of ring spinning and the bobbin changer reduced the need for skilled operators. This enabled owners to build mills closer to the raw materials, a case of disruptive technology. Factory villages emerged in North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Most complexes were financed by Northern investors. The author contends that cotton democratized greed. In childhood Andrew Carnegie was a bobbin boy.

The Cone brothers of Baltimore convinced the Southern mills to upgrade the quality of their product. In the West Levi Strauss sold blue jeans, denim. Adding rivets strengthened the work garments. Levi's became a brand pioneer. Sanford Cluett developed a process to preshrink cotton fabrics in 1933. In 1970 denim resurrected the American cotton apparel industry. The Gap and Banana Republic raised the public appeal of cotton pants, blue jeans and khakis.

Research has produced transgenic cotton seed. We are all in the dark about the future of biotechnology. In America two hundred thousand textile workers have lost their jobs since 1997. Cotton, subsidized in the U.S., has been used by both liberal and conservative journals to illustrate the cruel arrogance of power. The National Park Service facility at Lowell is described in this splendid book's Afterward. A glossary, notes, bibliography, and index follow.

Flawed fabric.......2007-03-03

This book is an adequate introduction to the long and convoluted history of cotton, but not, I hope, the finest piece of scholarship on the subject.

Big Cotton provides fascinating tidbits about the cotton plant and the fabric made from it. Although Yafa's "cotton-centric" approach to history is sometimes simplistic, it still makes for interesting reading. However, the writing tends to be clumsy and confusing, and the textile puns are overused. Also, for my tastes, Yafa's political and regional biases intrude into his subject far too often.

"...fanning that trigger.".......2006-10-21

"Gunsligers, snake-eyed varmints, low-down horse rustlers, and lily-livered scumsuckers bit the dust when John Wayne pulled out his six-shooter and started fanning the trigger." (p. 213) Trigger???

That sentence should give you an idea of just how jarring, flip and accurate this author is.

Three crops are the foundation of modern Europe's (and America's) economic and imperial hedgemony over the rest of the world: spices, sugar and cotton. Cotton is, simply, the genesis of the industrial revolution and the resurrection of American slavery. As such, the subject is incredibly important. Mr. Yafa isn't up to the task.

Yes, he's trying to write a popular history rather than a scholarly treatise. But his focus is virtually completely on America. As such is scope is simply too limited.

He mentions aniline as the foundation for synthetic indigo dye in passing in a long, rambling aside about blue jeans. Aniline and the coal-tar it's derived from are the cornerstones of modern chemistry, the chemical industry and the modern (early 20th century) German economy. Eh. No biggie.

If the guy could write, I'd probably be more forgiving of the book's shortcomings. It is a big subject.

Despite the importance of cotton, there aren't very many books extant about its history. Yafa doesn't have the sweep the subject deserves, but you will learn a few things, at least some of the outline of the story.

A lack of coherence.......2006-07-17

"Big Cotton" and US agricultural subsidies are big news in the world of trade. Yafa teases a promise to enlighten on this situation, but fails to deliver.

Yafa knows there is a big and tangled picture here to illustrate, but is unable to work out the world view and settles instead for a series of scenes in cotton's long history. The start of the industrial revolution in England, the rise of Lowell, MA, the beginning of Levi Straus & Co are written as grand chapters containing some amusing anecdotes, but sitting in isolation.

In the final chapters, pesticides and genetically-modified cotton appear, largely wrapped in a diatribe on the evils of both rather than any real analysis. Yafa has left out how the South changed from a resion of sharecroppers pre-WW II to industrial farming by the mid-50's.

Most disappointing are the final chapters on the current world trade. There is a complex story to be told here of US politics and farming as well as farming in Africa. Yafa misses most of this. The devil is in the details of most of this story. With few if any numbers and no detail of costs or pricing Yafa cannot capture this story. It does not lend itself to a journalistic approach, although Yafa's refernces to stories in the Wall Street Journal suggest that the WSJ writers may have written a better piece on the subject than "Big Cotton".

Meanwhile, Yafa purports to tell a tale worldwide in scope, yet his "Big Cotton" is really a US story. After 300 pages of almost exclusively US tales we are told that China is the biggest current producer. Where did the Chinese industry come from? Or Pakistan's or India's?

If you are looking for the story of cotton, keep looking - this is not the book.

Cotton's Compendium.......2005-12-11

This is the complete story of cotton's global, economic impact from the first recordings of reported history up to and including our current era.. Big Cotton is the most complete history of this cloth yet written.

It is the an economic story highlighting how cotton cultivation and production have profoundly shaped the past 5,500 years of human history. From India to Europe to the United States, this plant has defined the economic and social institutions that endure today, from agricultural economies to the industrial revolution, from slavery and the Underground Railroad to wage slavery, from the American Civil War and the most marvelous technological accomplishments to environmental and social disasters of truly epic, global proportions.

Driven by greed, fomenting social and economic misery while providing the cheapest and most durable of human clothing and fashion worldwide, Stephen Yafa's remarkably excellent story is the most well written book I have ever read.

Big Cotton: How a Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map

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Big Cotton: How a Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map
Stephen Yafa
Manufacturer: RB Large Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 1419333216

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Big Cotton: How a Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map
Stephen Yafa
Manufacturer: Viking Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K059I8

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Thought-provoking, intriguing and easy read

The monster of hunger

A beautiful tapestry of hunger-related topics written in prose that reads like poetry

A top pick not just for college collections, but for public libraries and general-interest readers

Book Review : HUNGER: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell

Hunger: An Unnatural History
Sharman A. Russell
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Core Texts)

The Great Starvation Experiment: The Heroic Men Who Starved so That Millions Could Live

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Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food (California Studies in Food and Culture)

The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict

ASIN: 0465071635
Release Date: 2005-09-06

Book Description

A subject as big as history and as everyday as skipping lunch-hunger and how it works-is explored in this thought-provoking, kaleidoscopic blend of science, anthropology, and personal reflection

Every day, we wake up hungry. Every day, we break our fast. Hunger explores the range of this primal experience. Sharman Apt Russell, the highly acclaimed author of Anatomy of a Rose and An Obsession with Butterflies, here takes us on a tour of hunger, from eighteen hours without food to thirty-six hours to seven days and beyond.

What Russell finds-both in our bodies and in cultures around the world-is extraordinary. It is a biological process that transcends nature to shape the very of fabric of societies. In a fascinating survey of centuries of thought on hunger's unique power, she discovers an ability to adapt to it that is nothing short of miraculous. From the fasting saints of the early Christian church to activists like Mahatma Gandhi, generations have used hunger to make spiritual and political statements. Russell highlights these remarkable cases where hunger can inspire and even heal, but she also addresses the devastating impact of starvation on cultures around the world today.

Written with consummate skill, a compassionate heart, and stocked with facts, figures, and fascinating lore, Hunger is an inspiring window on history and the human spirit.

Customer Reviews:

Thought-provoking, intriguing and easy read .......2007-03-09

Great introductory book that opens your eyes to the misfortune of many who have, do and will suffer from voluntary and involuntary hunger. The author's ideas and thoughts are backed up with science, yet the book is an easy read for the layperson. If this book really grabs your attention, the author cites a wealth of sources to learn more about hunger. Highly recommend this book!

The monster of hunger.......2006-12-02

Most of us have never been hungry, I mean really hungry the way many of the people in this book have been hungry. What Sharman Apt Russell does is show the reader just what it is like in a physical, mental, political and medical way to be hungry, very hungry.

She begins with the so-called "hunger artists" who performed feats of fasting for audiences while sometimes up in cages overlooking traveled boulevards. It seems fasting was a bit of a fad in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She mentions literary fasters like the protagonist of Kalka's story "A Hunger Artist" and that of Knut Hamsun's splendid short autobiographical novel Hunger (1890). She also gives us the all-time champ, holder of the record in the Guinness Book of Records (last acknowledged in 1971; Guinness no longer records fasts because of the dangers involved). His name is Mr. A.B. and he weighed 456 pounds when he began. 382 days later he weighed 180 pounds.

Next she shows how our digestive system works and how it changes during food deprivation--what happens after 36 hours, 7 days, 30 days. The details about ghrelin and leptin, glucose and ketones are fascinating. Then she recalls famous hunger strikes including some very interesting material on the suffragettes, the Irish Republicans and Mahatma Gandhi. Then comes the horror of the Warsaw Ghetto and, amazingly enough, the work of Jewish doctors in the ghetto who took that gruesome opportunity to measure and study the steps toward death by starvation.

Russell reports on "The Minnesota Experiment" during World War II in which young male conscientious objectors volunteered to go on an extended starvation diet so that doctors would know how to treat those in Europe and elsewhere after the war was over. After awhile these healthy young men cared nothing about sex or social activities. All they thought about was food. The academically inclined turned from scholarly books to cookbooks and found that the only conversations that interested them were about food, food, food. This reminds me of some of the episodes of TV's "Survivor."

In "The Anthropology of Hunger" (Chapter 9) Russell explores "hunger frustration" among some tribes in Africa and Papua New Guinea. People tend to get a little testy when they don't have enough to eat, and when they have a culture that admires thinness and detests gluttony, they tend to eat on the sly, as do the Kalauna of Papua New Guinea. In this chapter Russell revisits anthropologist Colin Turnbull's famous book The Mountain People (1972) about the Ik people of Uganda who seemed to lack in common human decency. She argues that it was semi-starvation that drove the psychology of these people, and that Turnbull failed to adequately appreciate this.

There is a chapter on "Anorexia nervosa" and attendant psychology, Karen Carpenter and the distorted body images of adolescent girls.

And then come the chapters entitled, "Hungry Children" and the "Protocols of Famine." Now it really gets ugly, and the pages no longer turn themselves. The technical words become "dysentery" and "cholera" and "marasmus" and "kwashiorkor," words that describe starvation in children. Now the book is hard to read: Somalia, Ethiopia, the Sudan, famine all over the world, in China under Mao 1959-1962, in Guatemala under the military backed by the US, in short the words are about the geopolitics of hunger.

Russell ends with a chapter on the potato famine in Ireland in 1845-50 and how that too was as much the result of political failure as it was the result of the potato blight. Her last words are about St. Patrick who went on a hunger strike against God, "a troscad until death."

A beautiful tapestry of hunger-related topics written in prose that reads like poetry.......2006-06-30

In marvelously non-technical fashion, Russell describes the biology of hunger: what happens to your body as you go eighteen hours, thirty-six hours, and thirty days without food. She shows how hunger strikes have changed the world (from Gandhi's non-violent strikes to the Irish Republican Army and British suffragettes), the role of fasting in myriad religious traditions, how hunger has defined certain traditional cultures, and even how hunger has been used as entertainment.

Some chapters illuminate fascinating chapters in the history of hunger. "The Hunger Disease Studies" narrates how internationally renowned Jewish scientists in the Warsaw Ghetto used the omnipresent starvation to perform scientific studies on every aspect of starvation, searching for meaning in terrible suffering. "The Minnesota Experiment" describes an enlightening study of starvation and refeeding during World War II. Russell casts her net wide, examining the social and biological aspects of anorexia, giving an inside view to famine relief in Somalia and Ethiopia, and showing how hunger affects children distinctly.

Russell's skilled prose makes even the World Health Organization's technical instructions on refeeding a malnourished child interesting. She reminds us that science is a kind of poetry. As with all the best non-fiction, her endnotes offer a wealth of fascinating literature on every aspect of hunger, a literature I'll be sure to dive into. As another reviewer wrote, Russell's writing "is an extraordinary mating of exciting, sure-footed science and inspired prose poetry" (Burlington Free Press, 10 August 2003).

A top pick not just for college collections, but for public libraries and general-interest readers.......2006-05-22

Every day we wake up hungry and break a potential fast: but few have had the experience of real hunger. HUNGER takes a day-by-day tour of body and mind sans food, from Day 1 to a week or more without food. History, culture, and health concerns blend in a wide-ranging analysis of the different experiences of and influences on hunger, how it works physiologically, and more. A top pick not just for college collections, but for public libraries and general-interest readers.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Book Review : HUNGER: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell.......2006-04-10

People say I have a "bonne fourchette" which means good fork, which implies I have quite the appetite. And it's true. I live in a food-town and the variety alone will drive you to eat. Plus I have such a disposition. I know so well how hunger tortures me into eating despite knowing I shouldn't. So reading the book Hunger by Sharman Apt Russell was a given for me, a matter of time, since my appetite for reading is equal to my appetite for food.

Hunger is one of those books that look at things we would rather not. To stare into our own humanity's eyes and pass judgment. The book starts out with her own failed attempt at fasting. Who can blame her? Fasting for a day can be a lesson into our slavery to this bag of meat and bones.

I do quick and dirty fasts on a monthly basis, which means from bed to second rise, where I go to bed one night and don't eat until the morning following the next one. Its torture for me but it just cleans out the system. And the book reveals this as fact by pointing that children, not yet encumbered with cultural habits, will stop eating once sick and also that animals, when sick, will refuse to eat. Starve your illness, let your body fix itself; don't bother it with digestive chores.

The book takes us through all the facets of hunger. From fasting to anorexia to world hunger and it's no holds barred. It continues her fast with a history of fasting. She begins with the religious fasts, those "hungry maidens" who fasted for holiness, for God in the Middle Ages. Seems it was what honorable young maidens did to get close to God. This ultimately leads to hunger striking, fasting for political reasons. These chapters are the easy ones.

It's when the book gets to the starved victims of war and she goes deep into the Jews who suffered at the Nazi's hands in Poland. And if this chapter doesn't leave you with a deep need to vomit, it's because you have no heart. Nurses killing newborns so the Nazis won't experiment on them or torture them; mothers lying dead in the streets with her children still clutching unto her; and it goes on with other human atrocities.

There are also some interesting chapters of studies of hunger, starvation and famine done in the US with volunteers. It shows how our behaviors change when faced with limited food or no food at all. How we revert so easily to animals, hovering over our small plate of gruel, playing with it for hours, to make the eating last longer; the coveting of unnecessary stuff; volunteers wanting to become chefs or read books about food; stealing trinkets in stores, etc.

The studies take us inevitably to the paradox that is anorexia nervosa. Hungry people tend to become immobile, inactive, while anorectics on the contrary seem to have so much energy. An interesting parallel is established between the starving maidens and anorectics. How "the complexity of one woman's self-starvation might yet be a mix of chemistry, Vogue, Father's expectations, and ancient imperatives."

The book finishes off with famine and refeeding the famished. So we get a fast-track trip through all the major famines up to this day. And there is plenty of talk on the trials and errors of refeeding which are even more difficult with complex types of starvations (Yes there's more than one). Basically famine is easier than refeeding. The refeeding process is so complex, it covers the last section of the book. And this is where the book begins to fall apart.

The book follows what the title says it does; it offers us the unnatural history of hunger. But by the final chapters you feel duped. The book then feels like a manifesto pamphlet. I wanted to learn about hunger, to understand it better, I didn't want to be conned into feeling guilty for the life I live and basically get my arm twisted into becoming an aid worker for the Peace Corp.

I have all the respect they deserve for the insane work they do to help, but don't try to con me into it. Because it's not for everyone as the book tells us about a photojournalist who took pictures of a dying child. She literally died on the pictures. The photojournalist was criticized for doing so, why didn't he help the child they said. He could only argue that it was impossible to save them, there were too many hundreds dying each day. He still won accolades and prizes but ended up taking his own life once he crumbled under the crushing guilt of his inaction.

Not everyone can do this. I can't deal well with suffering children, even adults. But I could dissect humans as a coroner without ever losing my lunch. It's all about perception and where your heart is I guess. We can't all Schindler our way through life. So when a book about the history and the science of hunger turns into a war cry from relief workers, I feel like I've been lied to.

The writing style is good but isn't my forte. It feels like reading, and I exagerate, a much extended power point file, due to all the enumeration it contains of shrunk down and vulgarized scientific information. But for an information junky like me, it's still a satisfying read despite its manifesto aftertaste.

I give it a 3 outta 5.

Book Description

This book examines the role of international trade in affecting the global environment, the conflicts and case studies in the resolution of internationa trade disputes arising from national attempts to protect the environment, and proposes principles for the resolution of trade-environment conflicts under the WTO regime.

The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation

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The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation

Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 185383954X

Book Description

* Regulation of the international trade in wildlife is failing: Why?
* How do we stop more and more plant and animal species from being endangered?
* Leading authorities in the field show why it is not working and what needs to be done
*
The regulation of the trade in wildlife is failing: increasing numbers of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction despite improvements in our understanding and the management of global trade. Understanding why, and what to do about it, is urgently needed.

This book provides a critical assessment of how the trade in wildlife is currently regulated and how those regulations are enforced. Through analysis of case studies and comparisons with the trade in other illegal goods, it shows what the weaknesses are, where the system is failing and what must be done if conservation efforts are to be supported by trade regulations, and not undermined.

CITES supports sustainable use.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) : An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin

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CITES supports sustainable use.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) : An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin
Kenneth Stansell
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Endangered Species Bulletin, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1589 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: CITES supports sustainable use.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
Author: Kenneth Stansell
Publication: Endangered Species Bulletin (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Page: 4(4)

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Confusing controversy with failure: the Ft. Lauderdale listing criteria and CITES appendix I and II species proposals. (Case Notes).(Statistical Data Included): ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy

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Confusing controversy with failure: the Ft. Lauderdale listing criteria and CITES appendix I and II species proposals. (Case Notes).(Statistical Data Included): ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy
Arthur G. Blundell , and Bruce D. Rodan
Manufacturer: Kluwer Law International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, published by Kluwer Law International on March 22, 2001. The length of the article is 6080 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Confusing controversy with failure: the Ft. Lauderdale listing criteria and CITES appendix I and II species proposals. (Case Notes).(Statistical Data Included)
Author: Arthur G. Blundell
Publication: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2001
Publisher: Kluwer Law International
Volume: 4 Issue: 1 Page: 35(11)

Article Type: Statistical Data Included

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Enforcement starts with wildlife inspectors.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora): An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin

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Enforcement starts with wildlife inspectors.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora): An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin
Sandra Cleva
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Endangered Species Bulletin, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 997 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Enforcement starts with wildlife inspectors.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora)
Author: Sandra Cleva
Publication: Endangered Species Bulletin (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Page: 18(2)

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European Health Regulations and Brazil Nuts: Implications for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in the Amazon.: An article from: ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy

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European Health Regulations and Brazil Nuts: Implications for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in the Amazon.: An article from: ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy
Helen Newing , and Stuart Harrop
Manufacturer: Kluwer Law International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, published by Kluwer Law International on June 22, 2000. The length of the article is 7433 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: European Health Regulations and Brazil Nuts: Implications for Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Rural Livelihoods in the Amazon.
Author: Helen Newing
Publication: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2000
Publisher: Kluwer Law International
Volume: 3 Issue: 2 Page: 109

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Fact or Fiction: CITES and the ESA.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Endangered Species Act) : An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin

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Fact or Fiction: CITES and the ESA.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Endangered Species Act) : An article from: Endangered Species Bulletin
Tim Van Norman
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Endangered Species Bulletin, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1112 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fact or Fiction: CITES and the ESA.(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Endangered Species Act)
Author: Tim Van Norman
Publication: Endangered Species Bulletin (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Page: 8(2)

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On the expansion of species protection in Nepal: advances and pitfalls of new efforts to implement and comply with CITES. (Comments).(Convention on International ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy

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On the expansion of species protection in Nepal: advances and pitfalls of new efforts to implement and comply with CITES. (Comments).(Convention on International ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy
Joel T. Heinen , and Diwakar P. Chapagain
Manufacturer: Kluwer Law International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, published by Kluwer Law International on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 7868 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: On the expansion of species protection in Nepal: advances and pitfalls of new efforts to implement and comply with CITES. (Comments).(Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora )
Author: Joel T. Heinen
Publication: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Kluwer Law International
Volume: 5 Issue: 3 Page: 235(16)

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SC45 Doc. 11.1 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora: forty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee, Paris (France), ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy

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SC45 Doc. 11.1 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora: forty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee, Paris (France), ... of International Wildlife Law & Policy

Manufacturer: Kluwer Law International
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, published by Kluwer Law International on June 22, 2001. The length of the article is 2211 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: SC45 Doc. 11.1 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of wild fauna and flora: forty-fifth meeting of the Standing Committee, Paris (France), 19-22 June 2001 interpretation and implementation of the convention. Implementation of the convention in individual countries.
Publication: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2001
Publisher: Kluwer Law International
Volume: 4 Issue: 2 Page: 179(6)

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The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation [A book review from: Ecological Economics]

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The Trade in Wildlife: Regulation for Conservation [A book review from: Ecological Economics]
D. Favre
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000RQZILI

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Ecological Economics, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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