Introduction to David’s Book Reviews
Our biggest problem today is information overload. Someone somewhere has the answer to everything we need to know, but finding it can be a time consuming process. There are a number of topics that I have researched and have kept notes in the form of book reviews which I am happy to share. All books contributed to my education in the broadest sense – an understanding of how the world works, the deeper meaning of life, and specific issues such as diet, lifestyle, cancer, global warming, and Greece. It is my hope that readers will be able to determine whether or not a book is worth buying and studying more closely. A review will be posted weekly.
My wake-up call
I start my book reviews with my wake-up call because this part of the website would not exist if I had not understood that the deeper meaning of my tough times was that I was traveling down the wrong path and should make corrections. Wake-up calls are rather like the Titanic heading for an iceberg. The captain knew that he was taking risks by going too fast in dangerous waters but was under pressure from vested interests and he was too weak to resist. He didn’t get a second chance. Individuals have wake-up calls, institutions have wake up calls and countries have wake-up calls. The most obvious one was the oil crisis of 1973 when it became clear that we had to change direction in terms of energy use. Weak leadership and pressure from vested interests has resulted in our over-dependence on fossil fuel today and the self-imposed problems of global warming, climate change and weather extremes. Properly understood and acted upon, the beauty of wake-up calls is that you are given the opportunity to make necessary corrections before it is too late.
Some survivors look upon cancer as a blessing because it is a wake-up call. Jill Sklar who wrote The Five Gifts of Illness: A Reconsideration is one of them. My wake-up call after my brush with cancer took several forms and with hind sight I look upon my cancer as a gift. I realized that I have been sleeping through my life. My first step was to re-educate myself; life should be more than just selling your soul to your employer with no time or energy left over for the important things in life. I got busy reading books collected over the years and also combed second-hand bookshops and bought books that seemed to jump off the shelves into my hands.
I read Elie Wiesel’s speech ‘The perils of indifference’ in Speeches that Changed the World and realized that my greatest sin has been indifference and that I needed to overcome this defect in my character.
When researching my pension options I learned that a 65 year old man could expect to live to 87. Statistically I had 22 years remaining and From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older helped me realize that even as a pensioner I could still do something positive. 50 Secrets of the World’s Longest Living People told me that there are plenty of people who enjoy a very active life beyond 100 years of age and that by living my life more sensibly I might be one of them. Percy Cerutty’s Be Fit! Or Be Damned made me realize that keeping fit and keeping my weight under control are major keys to enjoying life and being an asset rather than a burden as I grow older.
With the world in chaos I wanted to have greater control over my life and found the answer in Our Next Frontier: A Personal Guide to Tomorrow’s Lifestyle and Robert Rodale’s advice that the most convenient point of entry to the idea of self-reliance is through gardening. Eliot Coleman’s The Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener provided all the information I needed to get started on my new occupation of gardening. Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management provided plenty of good ideas appropriate for our property of one acre. The best idea was on page 1 where I found Abraham Lincoln’s ‘The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.’ That simple quote has become the foundation stone for my remaining years. On the same page there is also a quote from Henry Ford: ‘The land! That is where our roots are. There is the basis of our physical life. The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity. From the land comes everything that supports life. The land has not collapsed or shrunk in either extent or productivity. It is there waiting to honor all the labor we are willing to invest in it, and able to tide us across any local dislocation of economic conditions. No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between man and a plot of land.’
One probable contributor to my cancer was my life style; I always seemed to be behind schedule and experienced stress keeping my boss happy. Stress carried over into my personal life, family life and relationships with loved ones and friends. In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Challenging the Cult of Speed convinced me that balance is the best approach – be fast when efficiency is called for but be slow for the important things in life such us family, friends, and relationships.
In the context of Leo Hickman’s A Good Life: The Guide to Ethical Living, ‘ethical’ means, above all, taking personal responsibility. This, in turn, means considering ‘sustainability’ of everything you do – making sure that your actions do not have a negative influence on you or, more importantly, the wider world. In 2001 humanity’s ecological footprint exceeded global biocapacity by 21%. A major tenet of ethical living is to attempt, wherever possible, to reduce one’s own demand for resources; it is a call to consume a fairer and more proportionate slice of the pie. It takes 24 acres (9.7 hectares) of land to sustain an American, 9 acres (3.6 hectares) an Italian and just under an acre (0.4 hectares) for an Indian. I believe that with today’s technologies/emerging technologies, working smart and cutting back on my selfishness, I can make considerable reductions in land to sustain the family and set the pattern for my children to further improve on.
Food, Diet and lifestyle
Another aspect of my wake-up call was the realization that the two biggest killers in Western society are heart disease and cancer. Poor food, diet and life style contribute to the dangers of suffering from these two ailments. Books in this section helped Christine and me to determine what to grow in our garden, how to prepare our food and how to reduce the chances of falling prey to premature death.
Books in this section will be reviewed one per week following those in the ‘My Wake-up call’ category.
Cancer
I became interested in this topic after I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in December 2004, after six friends close to the family died from cancer during 2005 and after my 40-year-old daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006. In effect this section is my crash course in cancer education to determine why we lost six good friends, how to help my daughter and how to stop my cancer returning.
The collapse of Western civilization
I entered the work force in 1961 wanting to leave the world a better place and bought into the adage that ‘a rising tide raises all ships’. On retirement I took stock and found that, by most of the criteria I considered important, the world was a worse place. However, I had unwittingly contributed to the happiness of 500 billionaires whose net worth equals the net worth of half the world population. My research convinced me that our society is working to a failed paradigm, that certain sectors have been behaving irresponsibly by placing self-interest above communal well-being, and that the problem has reached such proportions that our society is committing suicide.
Voices crying in the wilderness
The demise of our civilization today is not new. Civilizations have appeared and disappeared with surprising regularity. Great teachers, such as Jesus, have appeared to guide humanity, been listened to for a while and the world has progressed. Then the whiz kids who have new knowledge but little wisdom gain power and within a few generations that civilization is no more. This section is a collection of the wisdom of the founders of religion, sages, seers, saints, mystics and leading edge thinkers through the ages.
Rebuilding Western civilization
If we are to salvage something of our magnificent civilization the majority of us have to adopt a completely new mindset and worldview. This section looks at the various proposals for getting out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.
The Greeks
The Greek Way to Western Civilization by Edith Hamilton, referring to the eternal light of Greece, notes that five hundred years before Christ, in Athens, a strange new power was at work. It was a miracle and remains a miracle; the anthropologists and archeologists have been unable to explain how the passion for truth, beauty, simplicity and freedom developed in the midst of barbarian superstition, despotism and splendor. There a light was lit that can never go out, that has indeed never been matched in the centuries since, reaching its summit in the years of the Great Age of Pericles, when literature, science, philosophy, art, democracy, religion – the main achievements of the modern world – developed almost overnight, full-blown in many cases and as perfect as they could ever be.
Christine and I consider it a great privilege to be living in Greece and believe that the passion of the ancient Greeks for the more noble aspects of life hold some of the keys for the way forward today. Perhaps the reviews of books in this section will convince the reader and our guests that the Greek miracle of ancient times can be reproduced today.