Titles to please the curious
By: Joan Ruddiman – Special Writer
Fiction demands attention, often undivided. We start the mystery and there goes the "to do" list, answering messages and making dinner. Inevitably, our pleasurable reverie is jolted by guilt as we turn that last page. But how can we not read an intriguing novel in one sitting?
For many reading addicts, rehab includes a good dose of nonfiction. The pleasure is all there, but the compulsion to polish the book off all at once is tempered by style and substance. Nonfiction often reads better over multiple sessions. We certainly know that fun fiction can suffer from close scrutiny, whereas non-fiction can be enhanced by reflection.
Like most, I have my pile of nonfiction that waits patiently for attention. Over the long winter, I read several that are worth sharing.
No topic is hotter right now than health care/health insurance reform. T.R. Reid tackles this issue from his own experience and with his journalist’s eye. As a longtime correspondent for The Washto analyze what actually works and why.
"The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care" (Penguin Press, 2009) examines how France, Germany, Japan, the UK and Canada handle the medical and economic challenges of providing health care for their citizens. He provides an overview of models and some historical context and does not shirk the moral issues that drive the health care debates. Then, in attempting to compare apples to apples, he used his own "bum shoulder" as the case study. The effect is a balanced look at a complex subject that helps readers make sense of the debate and decisions that will affect us all.
The Freakonomics boys Steven D.Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are back with "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" (William Morrow, 2009). I received this as a welcomed Christmas gift but did not crack it open until one of the snow days. This book can be read in one sitting, particularly if you know Misters Levitt and Dubner’s work, but the pauses to read aloud passages to anyone in proximity will slow you down. Though the premise is the same, this is not merely a freakonomics redo; circumstances are new – and provocative.
Misters Levitt and Dubner are particularly good as helping us keep our world in perspective. For example, with all our concerns about gas-guzzling cars, did we ever consider the problems of having horse drawn vehicles? The authors do as they recall the crisis in cites worldwide at the end of the 19th century. Next time you are strolling down a side street in New York and marvel at the brownstones’ elegant stoops that rise from street level to the second floor, the authors note, "Keep in mind that this was a design of necessity, allowing a homeowner to rise about the sea of horse manure."
And then – without edicts or grand strategies – that horrendous problem was gone. This makes readers wonder what crises we face today that will be of no consequence to our descendants.
Often nonfiction reads like a story and is as compelling as good fiction. Craig Nelson knows how to write to please an audience as a contributor to Vanity Fair, Reader’s Digest and other popular publications. Also, he’s written several books, winning the 2007 Henry Adams prize for his biography "Thomas Paine."
Mr. Nelson’s credentials and talents are well used in "Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon," (Viking, 2009). In the story of the Apollo 11 moon mission, he recognizes a moment that defines an era and impacts our own. In July of 1969, Astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, backed by a nervous NASA ground crew, upped the stakes in the space race with the Soviets, and captured the full attention of the world. Though Apollo 10 made it to the moon – but did not land – who remembers this event now and who cared then? That was just a dress rehearsal for the big show – Apollo 11 – that we all know from the iconic image of "our" man walking on the moon, planting an American flag.
Mr. Nelson delves deeply into how that mission came to be – the politics within NASA and within the government as well as the Cold War gaming that was going on. He provides biographies of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins that explores their personal and professional backgrounds as he also looks deeply into the nature of these men and their relationships with their families – and each other.
The drama, the chaos, the fears, the valor that drove the Apollo 11 mission resulted in a job well done. We made it to the moon – first. But the irony is what happened next. NASA grew up and has achieved some amazing feats. The Hubble launch and recent in-space repair, the space shuttle runs that have helped build the amazing international space station – all are so much more important than landing on the moon in terms of information gained, applications to our world and the potential for our future.
But who is paying attention?
Michael Collins, the one who did not walk on the moon and who has lived the most balanced post-Apollo 11 life of the three, acknowledges that the moonwalk "was perceived by most Americans as being the end, rather than a beginning."
Those who love nonfiction recognize the thrill of reading stories that are real, seeing facts in a new light and discovering ideas beyond our limited world. Pile them up because anytime is a good time to read nonfiction. Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is the coordinator/facilitator of the gifted and talented PRISM program at the Thomas R. Grover Middle School in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District.