Hot tip on another new book, this one a history of the early twentieth-century Prohibition movement: Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

In my opinion, up to now, no one has written a particularly good, accessible history of Prohibition. As I noted in Ambitious Brew, most accounts  focus on speakeasies and gunslingers, and so completely miss the extraordinary political/lobbying group that built the 18th Amendment over a period of 25 years.

But I gather that Okrent has gotten it right. The book just came out, so presumably it's available anywhere fine-and-not-so-fine books are sold. .

I've not yet read the book (honest: I'm up to my ears in poultry trade journals...), but it sounds like a winner. So if you're looking for a good nonfiction read with which to kick off your summer, I doubt you can do better than this. (For a substantive review, see this from last Sunday's New York Times.)

As for me, I plan to read it --- ya know, just as soon as I bring my brain up out of the chicken coop. Which should be soon (I'm writing the relevant chapter and when I finish it, I plan to reward myself by resuming my regular break-neck pace of blogging.)

Useful ruminations from Jacob Grier on why Twitter is worth it. I agree with his list (*1) And have to say that "socializing" was definitely not part of the equation from me when I started. Yes, I was trying to figure out how to get my books in front of people.

Like Jacob, I've ended up getting to "know" people I otherwise never would have known (or known about). Most important, however, Twitter has significantly expanded my intellectual realm of possibilities. And I mean significantly. I've run into and benefited from people a host of fields (science, journalism, lit crit, younameit). Plus I've been able to follow the ongoing "debate" among and between the food people in a way that I probably would not have without Twitter.

So . . . there you have, from me to you, at the end of a long day during which I continued my efforts to break the back of this chapter.

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*1: Jacob was one of three two people who urged/persuaded, me to try Twitter. The other two were Jeff Alworth at Beervana and David Nygren at The Urban Elitist.) (Which, no, he's not updated recently. I gather he's involved in the move-and-remodel from hell.)

Just finished reading the current issue of The Atlantic. (I'm not big on magazines, but I do read this one --- and yes, I read it on paper.) It contains the usual great mix of articles, poems, etc.

But one article in particular is worth reading: "The Story Behind the Story," by Mark Bowden, an informed and critical look at what passes for "journalism" today, especially on television. You can read it online here. (It is, I point out, a several-thousand-word essay, not a short blog entry, so if you're burdened with a short attention span, well, don't bother.) Definitely worth reading.

There's a companion piece of sorts, "The Moguls' New Clothes," which looks at the dollars and cents of media in the information age. It's here, and it's worth strolling on over to The Atlantic website if only to see the illustration that accompanied this essay.

Indeed, one of the pleasures of The Atlantic is the care the editors take with illustrations --- as well as layout and font selection. Which is a fancy way of saying that the magazine is a easy on the eyes. There are entirely too many websites, magazines, and newspapers out there that are almost impossible to read thanks to bad design.

Oh --- one other piece in this issue: an essay about how and why California came to play such a prominent role in energy efficiency. Think of it as a mini-primer on the subject.

Okay, I have now fulfilled my role as a "lazy" blogger --- one of those who "reacts" to material rather than creates it. (So says Bowden in the first essay I mentioned above.)

Sounds interesting.

In nine hours of sitting on planes (plus several more sitting in airports), the best thing I read.

I rarely recommend books (frankly, what appeals to me may not to you, and vice versa), but I'm going to do so now.

First some background on the author: James E. McWilliams is a historian at Texas State University. He's written several books, one of which, A Revolution In Eating, is hands-down the single best history of American food written by anyone. (Alas, it's a history of colonial American foodways. I sure wish he'd write a history of 19th and 20th century food.) (*2) (*3)

His latest book is Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. The subtitle is misleading --- the chapter on "where locavores get it wrong" is just that: a single chapter in a 200-plus page book. (*1)

Instead, this is a brilliant, thoughtful analysis of the complexities of the modern global food system, with equally thoughtful ideas about how we can change the food system in order to improve the quality of the climate and thus life on planet earth.

Those looking for a Pollanesque polemic (or a paean to the pleasures of gardening, heirloom tomatoes, and farmer's markets) will have to go elsewhere. Instead, Just Food explores the substantive research, scientific and otherwise, being conducted around the world as farmers, economists, agronomists, and the like try to figure out where modern food systems went wrong and what to do about it (oh, and still feed the world.) (No problem; we'll have the answers by Friday...)

Yes, because I was familiar with McWilliams' earlier work, and because I am a historian myself, I was predisposed to this book even before it came out. It does not disappoint (plus, McWilliams is a terrific writer; in other hands, this might have been a cruel snore; in his hands, it's a lively engaging narrative).

But because he is a historian, he approaches his material the way we historians do: by taking the Long View of the Big Picture. As a result, his analysis and his conclusions are considerably more substantive and thoughtful than what usually passes for discussion about the "food situation." (*4)

So --- if you're interested in learning more about the "food situation"; if you're wondering why Time magazine's recent cover story was about food; if you're interested in the climate crisis or life on planet earth, or, hey, your stomach, read this book.

_____________ *1: It's entirely possible that McWilliams didn't even choose that title. You'd be amazed at what happens once a book goes into production. I was surprised as hell to by the subtitle of my beer book.

*2: There are several excellent historical studies of American food in those eras, but I'd still love to see McWilliams' take on it.

*3: Full disclosure: I do not know McWilliams; I only know his work.

*4: As I've noted here before, I avoid using the phrase "food crisis."

"Fat" is so unhip. So so so unhip. Just like me. That's not why I like fat. (After all, what's the point of trying to be unhip? The minute you try, you're not, if you know what I mean.)

I like fat because fat is good. Good for you; good to eat. Sounds weird, eh? Especially in these don't-eat-that-it'll-kill-you days. But the human body wants and needs fat. Just like it wants and needs cholesterol.

Of course what it wants/needs is REAL fat and cholesterol, not the fake shit that'll kill you. And which does not taste good.

So I'm delighted to find a kindred spirit in the form of Zachary Cohen, who urges us all to eat more fat. Plus, his blog is one of those only-in-the-age-of-the-internet things: a blog devoted to the "emerging American meal."

Although to be precise, the blog is itself a spinoff of a television program Zachary is producing, "Farm to Table." Good stuff all around (especially for me, who am spending much of my time thinking about American food, albeit in a historical perspective). Give it a look.

Great contrarian view of the AIG "scandal."

Astute Reader Dexter (our man-on-the-beach in Hawaii) sends along a group of links to some fascinating discussions about beer, beer's image, and other matters -- from a British perspective. As always, make sure to read the comments posted at each entry; those make some of the best reading. First this from the Real Ale Blog. Then this from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog. The estimable Pete Brown also weighs in here. And this, too, from Pete. To that last entry from Pete, Dexter adds his own punchline: a terrific riff of Aquarius" --- and, presumably, my own recent series titled Is This the Age of E-Quarius?

Golden liquid dreams of visions Mystic hoppy revelations And the mind's true libations

Love it! Major tip o' the mug to Dexter for taking the time. (And sorry I didn't get to this sooner. Was focused on correcting all those dead links. Which, I might add, have been repaired.)

How's that for a snappy title on the first Monday of daylight savings time?

From Stan: this bittersweet "turn out the lights" nod to newsmaking.

This on why we need to legalize illegal drugs (tip o' the mug to Jacob Grier).

And finally, from the folks at Reasontv, a subset of the Reason Foundation (which is, if I understand it correctly, one of the marketing partners for the upcoming fim Beer Wars): a short video about beer, consumer choice, and, er, revolution? More or less. It's short on factual accuracy, but hey, I'm used to that and besides, it features Jay Brooks (and a bunch of other good guys).

This is a fascinating essay from today's Wall Street Journal -- about a computer matchmaking project in 1965.

The piece is interesting because of its historical content, but it also resonates with me because of the way my husband and I met: through personals, in 1984. It sounds so archaic now: We both placed ads in the Des Moines Register (I lived in Des Moines; he lived in Ames, which is about 40 miles north of DM).

This project involved writing the ad, contacting the newspaper, paying for the ad, and then receiving from the newspaper's advertising department a big envelope full of replies. And then deciding who to contact, and writing letters in reply, mailing them, waiting for response.

It was so -- drawn out and so, well, personal: All those handwritten letters from respondents. (*1)

My husband's ad and mine launched a bizarre chain of events: We answered each other's ads; realized the other was a person someone else had already tried to set each other up with; another set of letters crossed in the mail because of that realization, as did the letters we'd written in reply to the letters written in reply to the ad. (If you can follow that...)

You get the drift. Wierd. (*2)

Anyway, I have no real point here except that I'm fascinated to discover that 20 years earlier, a group of people at Harvard attempted a form of what we know think of as electronic matchmaking. I think, based on the author's description of that effort, that I'm glad I used pen-and-ink. If nothing else, I had a hell of a lot more control over the outcome than her mother did.

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*1: My big envelope of replies was heavy on responses with "drawer numbers" as the return address, "drawer numbers" being the address of men at the state penitentiary.

*2: By the time I realized how many weird coincidences were involved, I had no desire to go on a "date" with the guy. It sounded too much like a recipe for disaster.... And yet, here he and I are, bearing down on the 25th anniversary of that first date. Which, to make things weird beyond belief, consisted of us seeing the film "Liquid Sky," which, let me say for the record, is absolutely not a movie you want to see with someone you don't know.

I'm always up for a good rant, especially when it's a reasoned, thoughtful rant. Just read two such critters at Tony Comstock's blog. Here and here. (In case you're wondering: The blogs I read cover a spectrum of topics: food, beer, economics, politics, publishing, and so forth. As far as I'm concerned, it's all fodder for my creative mind, such as it is.)

Heee heee..... This is truly funny -- and for all I know, maybe even true.

Honesty compels me to disclose, re. Facebook, that I set up an account only so that -- I could see photos of our new (and probably only) grandchild. His parents, being, ahem, somewhat younger, informed us it would be easier to stay in touch that way. (Apparently not, however: So far they've I-phoned us every photo of the baby BEFORE they've posted it at F'book.)

Tip o' the mug to Stan for sending me to this hoot-inducing article -- Stan,who claims to be older than me, but I don't believe it. (My main question, however, is this: Why in the world am I suddenly so aware of my age??? It's something I otherwise rarely think about. Is Twitter inducing age-pains?)

Last week, there was an unintentionally hilarious article in the New York Times about the on-going debate over grading, students, and expectations. No surprise, among the denizens of academia -- and the escapees like me -- this provoked a fair amount of commentary. I

f you're interested, there's this at Scholars & Rogues. (The comments will provide considerable entertainment because the back-and-forth between and among commentators turned into a kids versus oldsters battle.)

Then there's this from the always-worth-reading Alan Jacobs, who also has a link to an equally hilarious response from a writer for The New Republic.

This morning I read an interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (no, you liberals! That's not an oxymoron.) The piece is titled "Information Wants to Be Expensive," and concerned the whole newspapers-are-dying problem. (As always, there's no way to know if the WSJ provides free access or not.)

Anyway, the author mentioned Stewart Brand's now-legendary comment about information wanting to be free -- and then noted that the "free" statement was only part of a longer comment.

So naturally, the historian in me wanted whole story. You can read Brand's original comments (which he made at the now-famous, in some circles, 1984 "hackers" conference) here. (The link will take you to an e-version of the May 1985 issue of Whole Earth Review. Brand's comments -- and Steven Wozniak's reply -- begin on p. 49.)

Then he expounded on the idea in a 1987 book, The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT:

"Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine---too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better."

The book itself has not been digitized (at least not as near as I can tell), but I found the full quote here. More here. Two useful books on the history of all this: Fred Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture, and John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said. (Full disclosure: I've read Markoff's book, and I read Fred Turner's dissertation, on which he based his book, but not the book itself. It's on my list.)

Just what I need: yet another distraction. But this is worth it. First, this from last Sunday's Times, to which I'd been meaning to post a link. And today was reminded to do so by this from Alan Jacobs, one of my favorite bloggers. (Make sure to click through to the Wired story and Vanderbilt's site.)

And all of that reminds of me of the remarkable work of E. O. Wilson . (I had a chance to hear him speak a few years ago. Amazing.)

Leading. It's what leaders do. No surprise, most people don't recognize it because most adult Americans have never experienced serious presidential leadership. Last time it happened, sadly, was during the Reagan years. (Also sadly . . . .) (No. I was not a fan.)

President Obama is moving quickly (or trying to do so) and tackling short-term problems: He's facing the enemy at the gates. But he's also engaging in the second, and perhaps more important task, of a good leader: Trying to figure out how and why the enemy got there in the first place, and thus trying to prevent it from happening again.

Put another way, he's tackling the immediate issues, while taking the long view of the big picture. He's leading.

Go, Barack.

Silly me. Somehow I thought the troops would rally 'round the president. No. Instead, we've been subjected to a week of senators and representatives strutting around the capital building playing "Mine's Bigger."

Which I wouldn't mind, except -- Rome is collapsing while they're busy comparing dicks/clits/facelifts/whatever.... I belive that most people who run for "high office" start their careers with good intentions. (*1)

But then they get comfy and get used to the free health insurance and the gym and the drivers and the other perks and pretty soon they forget why they went there in the first place. Which is why there oughta be term limits for both House and Senate. (*2)

But I digress. Point is: someone needs to be thinking beyond dick-size and where the next cocktail party is.

For an antidote to your nausea, and some clear thinking/writing on the disaster that is our economy, some Sunday-morning reading:

This from Matthew Yglesias. Tyler Cowen's response.

Lots of ponderings from Patrick Emerson, but this in particular.

And then of course there's always Krugman.

(Yes, the internet improves our lives. Ten years ago, it would have been tough to find so much accessible clear thinking on such difficult topics.) (Gee, I hope the electrical grid holds up under the weight of so many internet connections, and that somehow we can figure out how to make high-speed internet affordable for everyone because clearly digital communication/debate and digital information creation/gathering/access are The Way We Live Now. (*3))

(Oh. Wait. That would require the House and Senate to stop dicking around and do something and . . . . ) (Oh. Never mind.)

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*1: There are, of course, exceptions. I'm pretty sure Palin, for example, only wants to sit in the Senate because it's good for her, not for her constituents. I'm not picking on her, mind you; there are plenty of Palin-types out there. But she's the only obvious example I can think of at the moment.

*2: For more information on term limits, see here, here, and here.

*3: Nod to my second-favorite Anthony Trollope novel. If you can't bring yourself to wade through it (it runs about a thousand pages), at least watch the BBC production, which is spectacular.

The lead essay in this week's New York Times Magazine is worth reading (assuming you've got 20 minutes to spare). It's certainly causing me to re-think my stance on Whither The Economy.

The author, David Leonhardt, focuses on the economy, but he inadvertently makes another point worth noting: Scholarship, research, and "higher education" matter. Leonha

rdt refers to and relies on the research of several intellectuals (aka “academics”) and treats their work with respect. That's refreshing. Americans have a long tradition of anti-intellecualism, but in the recent decades, it seems as though that strain as become more pronounced. State legislatures don’t want to fund “higher” education, and deride what seems, to them, to be inane, useless research.

I’m an escapee from academia, and I know that university campuses shelter more than a bit of bullshit. But the "pure" research being carried out in university laboratories and libraries is fundamental to human progress, whether social, political, moral, or economic. Nearly every aspect of life in “modern” society stems from the work of someone thinking hard about an intellectual problem, whether that person is an engineer, a physicist, an economist, or a philosopher. (Or, okay, a historian...)

When you hear an expert yapping away about this, that, and the other, chances are his or her opinions and ideas are based on primary research: Information and analyses developed by collecting raw data, creating and studying equations, watching the stars, or rummaging through old newspapers and diaries.

Paul Krugman, for example, now writes for a "popular" audience, but he won the Nobel for his academic "pure" research. The textbooks your kids read in school are “popular” translations of decades of hard research carried out by thousands of scholars.

So it’s good to see substantive scholarship being treated with respect. We need the scholarship, and the scholarship deserves our respect.

. . . and the whole ball of wax. I'm probably driving half of you nuts -- but.... What can I say? I'm a writer, so I think about this stuff.

"Media" as we know it is undergoing a profound shift and it's fascinating to live through the experience. Painful, but fascinating.

Eg, as I may have mentioned earlier, although I have a contract for the book I'm writing, I have no idea if the publisher will still exist in two years. Have no idea if, by then, that publisher or any other will still want to "publish" "real" books. Have no idea what "publishing" and "books" will be like by that time. 

Then there's the recent settlement with Google about its project to digitize the known universe. (This will affect just about everyone on the planet, so it's worth knowing about.)

No surprise, many people are weighing in on all of this, and I keep track of it, and so I offer this up to those of you who, like me, are living through a moment of historical import.

Some of these links below are now about a week old (I've been trying to put this entry together that long; the baby is a time sink), so you may have seen some of them already.

For a great introduction to the issues facing the publishing industry, this piece in Time magazine.

If you're up for more, this fascinating essay pondering the possible impact of the Google settlement. The author, Robert Darnton, is a historian (a considerably more refined, high-brow, and erudite one than am I), so his take is, uh, historical. If you can wade through the technical stuff at the beginning, the essay is absolutely worth reading. (*1)

And then this alt-view on the same subject from Nicholas Carr. Connected to all of this is, of course, the ongoing debate on "the future of the book."

Many people are thinking in detail about that, but one of the best efforts is that of David Nygren at his blog, The Urban Elitist. David isn't just some random, frustrated writer-wannabe. He works in mainstream publishing, so he's inside the belly of the beast and grasps the technical and logistical issues at stake. He's got many posts on this subject, so start with this, and then click on his "books" or "e-books" tags for more. He's also partnered up with another friend, and they're writing a series of cross-posts on the subject, so take a look at this if you have time.

I've also been enjoying the ruminations on these topics by Alan Jacobs at Text Patterns and the folks at Book Oven.

And finally, a sobering roundup of the latest newspaper closing/bankruptcies/etc. (I believe I owe Stan for this particular link, when he commented on an earlier post of mine.) (And for this.)

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*1: I'm puzzled, however, by the lack of links to relevant topics. Why in the world didn't the editors say "gee, this would be a great opportunity to use the web's power to enhance a piece that also appeared in print.