Yesterday I read Children at War, by P.W. Singer, a study of the children who serve as soldiers, spys, and "wives" in conflicts all over the world. AlYesterday I read Children at War, by P.W. Singer, a study of the children who serve as soldiers, spys, and "wives" in conflicts all over the world. Although the book itself is a bit repetitive, the topic is fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.
Singer attributes the prevalence of child soliders to three factors. First, the large number of children who are orphaned, literally or figuratively, by poverty and illness (especially AIDS). This creates a pool of vulnerable children who can be abducted and manipulated without adults interfering on their behalf, at least not effectively. Second, the existence of conflicts in which the "rules of war" are ignored or flouted, creating a pool of adults who are willing to exploit the children. Third, the ready (and, in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, cheap) supply of deadly weapons that are light and simple enough to be operated by a child. Whereas premodern weapons depended on the brute strength of the operator, "a handful of children can now have the equivalent firepower of an entire regiment of Napoleonic infantry."
The larger part of the book is a chilling description of how the child soldiers and recruited and used. Children are abducted from orphanages and schools, or they are taken from their families during raids on villages. The abductors often force the children to commit atrocities, so that they won't be accepted back, and later may scar or brand them to achieve the same purpose. The children are indoctrinated and trained in the use of weapons. In battle, they are often used to clear mines (by blowing them up) or as sheer cannon fodder in attacks on forts and towns. In some cases, they are forcibly drugged to overcome their natural reluctance to proceed under fire. Some want only to escape, but others grow to accept their captors' beliefs.
Later, the author describes the effect that the use of child soldiers can have on a conflict. Because they are cheap to recruit and arm, adults can use them to wreak destruction out of proportion with their own numbers or the popularity of their opinions. He suggests that in some failing nations, a figure on the par of David Koresh can terrorize a population for years, raising funds through looting and using them to arm his charges. Children are more easily persuaded to perform illegal acts of war, so conflicts in which child soldiers are involved can be more brutal than traditional warfare. Child soldiers usually have no home to return to, so their involvement tends to prolong wars; when a cease-fire is actually achieved, they might seep into surrounding territories, inflaming conflicts there. Members of professional, Western armies are traumatized by encounters with child regiments, because their natural instinct is not to shoot them. Because so many of the children are simply looking for a chance to escape, Singer advocates targeting their adult leaders, which may cause the children to disperse.
Singer addresses an obvious question: is the current use of child soldiers unique in history? He believes it is. While youths of fourteen to eighteen may have been used as musicians or support staff in wars like the American Revolution, and as pages in medieval times, and while the Hitlerjugend was forced into service during the desperate last hours of World War II, the use of younger children, ages ten to fourteen, and the wholesale use of children under eighteen as infantry, seems to be unique to our own time. It's not surprising though, that Singer has no clear prescription for ending the practice, other than to address the underlying causes of war and poverty. The research here is better than the book itself, but the topic makes the writing more or less irrelevant....more
I am very pleased to report that Prep, a first novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, has finally been published. This is a book that I desperately wanted ImprinI am very pleased to report that Prep, a first novel by Curtis Sittenfeld, has finally been published. This is a book that I desperately wanted Imprint X to buy, back when I read it under its original, cleverer title (CIPHER). Nearly two years later, it was finally published in hardcover by "little Random."
The new title doesn't do the book any favors; it underlines the superficial side of the story. The novel covers Lee Fiora's high school career as a boarding student at the prestigious Ault School. Lee is an anomaly: a white scholarship student from the Midwest in a sea of ultra-rich white Easterners and carefully-selected representatives of minority groups. On the surface, the book is about a girl who's out of her element, surrounded by snobs and jocks who speak a social language foreign to her. What the original title, CIPHER, reflected was that the novel is really about Lee's struggle to learn how to present herself to others. How much should she change her behavior to fit in? How much of herself should she keep hidden? Can she even control how others perceive her? The book is about Lee, not the school.
The novel's eight sections would seem disconnected if Lee were not such a good character. She is clearly narrating from adulthood, painfully aware of how her behavior was naïve or self-defeating, but Sittenfeld simultaneously conveys an in-the-minute sense of how desperately important everything is to a fifteen-year-old. She captures the sad chaos of graduation and shows how much one glance from a boy can matter, without ever trivializing Lee’s feelings. Lee’s primary dilemma is how to relate to the other students when she feels she has nothing to say to them--and once she has marked herself as weird by purposefully staying alone, how can she change their impression of her and get to know them? Particularly in the earlier sections of the book (corresponding to Lee’s freshman and sophomore years), her desperation and frustration are palpable, excruciatingly real. She consciously eschews any attempt to fit into the school’s pecking order, only to turn around and allow the popular students to take advantage of her. Her mortifying quasi-romance with a popular boy named Cross who never acknowledges in her public is the most extreme example of this. The ending comes very close to being too trite--a newspaper reporter arrives to ask Lee questions about her boarding school experience, which seems a bit too convenient--but Sittenfeld spins this into a new personal fiasco for Lee, one that leaves the reader with the impression that Lee has grown as a person, but that her relationship with the school hasn’t changed at all.
Above all, I admire Sittenfeld for writing a novel about a teenage girl that isn't full of precocious sexual discovery, ironic literary references and pseudo-poetic hyperbole, or familial discord....more
I've just reread this as a part of my less than fully intentional project to grab anything on my bookshelves that is gripping enough to distract me, mI've just reread this as a part of my less than fully intentional project to grab anything on my bookshelves that is gripping enough to distract me, momentarily, from the real world. This is also the One Book, One Philadelphia pick. I first read it around the time it came out, but for some reason never wrote a review.
I have a love-hate relationship with this novel in which love wins out. On some level, I find it to be a suspiciously effective tearjerker, and I do hate to be manipulated. But in the end, the genuine, idiosyncratic, and ordinary qualities of all the struggling characters in the story win me over. The father, in particular, is flawed, hardworking, well-meaning, and unintentionally hilarious.
This is a family story, not a mystery, and despite odd echoes of it in (for example) The Humans, I find it a unique and affecting read. ...more
I am about to embark on my third trip to Mexico in 13 months (for various coincidental reasons), so it feels like a good moment to revisit this book. I am about to embark on my third trip to Mexico in 13 months (for various coincidental reasons), so it feels like a good moment to revisit this book. I learned so much when I first read it, and have always been disappointed not to find newer books that build on it in the same readable vein. The experience of having visited some of these archaeological sites--standing in the middle of what was once a bustling city, but with the barest signage to indicate what the inhabitants' lives might have been like--heightens the sense of neglect that this book was calling out. In short, I wanted to restock my imagination before going back (a repeat visit to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City would be even more effective, but is not on the present itinerary). This is certainly a book that deserves my "five stars of having permanently changed the way I look at something."
Here's what I originally wrote when the book came out in 2005, which was part of a longer blog post and starts kind of mid-thought:
The author, Charles Mann, as a journalist, has no particular stake in the scholarly debate, and presents both sides of each argument in turn. You come away from it having learned about archaeological and anthropological method as well as the new theories. The author also writes well about his various adventures researching the book, which include a plane running out of fuel and a truly disgusting sounding meal.
The first major section deals with the population of the Americas. It opens with a great anecdote: about an early 20th century anthropologist who studied a primitive group called the Siriono, whom he called "among the most culturally backward peoples of the world." The problem was that he had it all wrong:
The Siriono were among the most culturally impoverished people in the world. But this was not because they were unchanged holdovers from humankind's ancient past, but because smallpox and influenza laid waste to their villages in the 1920s. Before the epidemics at least three thousand Siriono, and probably many more, lived in eastern Bolivia. By Holmberg's time fewer then 150 remained--a loss of more than 95 percent in less than a generation. [...] Even as the epidemics hit, the group was fighting the white cattle ranchers who were taking over the region. The Bolivian military aided the incursion by hunting down the Siriono and throwing them into what were, in effect, prison camps. [...] It was as if [Holmberg] had come across refugees from a Nazi concentration camp, and concluded that they belonged to a culture that had always been barefoot and starving. (9)
This same error seems to have been made time and time again in the study of pre-Columbian America. Scholars believe that the very first contacts between explorers and Indians (before Europeans were attempting to colonize) exposed the Indians to diseases--smallpox, mostly--that killed as much as 95% of the population. When the 17th century colonists showed up and saw small bands of Indians foraging and camping, they were seeing the traumatized, disoriented remnants of much larger societies, not some idealized nature-loving innocents.
The problem then becomes mathematical. If you say that the post-Columbian population of the Americas was X and hypothesize that 96% of the population was killed by disease (therefore, the pre-Columbian population = X/.04) you are going to come up with a vastly higher figure for the pre-Columbian population than you would if you assumed that only, say, 94% were killed. This has led to the accusation that archaeologists are creating millions of people out of thin air. Mann then discusses the study of these epidemics, for example, why they spread so quickly and had such high death rates. (On major explanation is that the Indians, having few domesticated animals--cf. the work of Jared Diamond--were much more susceptible to diseases that crossed from livestock to people than were the Europeans who brought the germs over, who'd been living among pigs and goats for centuries.)
The second part of the book talks about Indian technology and, particularly, agriculture. It explains, for example, that Europeans and Indian societies made different use of tension and compression in engineering. When Europeans encountered an Indian rope bridge, which relies of course on tension, they were terrified because they had never seen bridges that didn't rely on visible arched supports (compression). The Indians did not use the wheel because they had no suitable domestic animals and slippery surfaces, not because they were simple-minded. Many of their tools and records were created of materials that rotted away quickly in the damp climate.
But the most interesting discussion has to do with agriculture. Mann describes how the Indians appear to have created maize (corn), possibly the world's most useful crop, almost from scratch. "Maize's closest relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks nothing like it [and] is not a practical food source." (194) Somehow, Indians hybridized an edible version that doesn't "shatter" (its seed waits on the stem to be collected by humans), a process controlled by 16 genes in maize and teosinte, unlike wheat and barley in which that behavior is controlled by a single gene. No one seems to understand how they did it. Moreover, scholars now believe that parts of the "natural" American landscape were intentionally created by Indians--the Great Plains, for example, created over many hundreds of years by Indian fires in order to encourage a population of buffalo. In the Amazon, where the soil is so poor that it has been called "wet desert," Indians started using swidden (also known as slash-and-burn) techniques to avoid exhausting any single area of soil, and they fostered seemingly random combinations of plants and animals that bolstered soil quality. Huge areas of the Amazon may be, in a sense, man-made.
The book contains many more interesting little points that I won't bother to type out, and, despite its occasionally rambling feel, it does a good job of arguing a central point: Americans have, for centuries, used what they "knew" about the Indians to either excoriate or mythologize them. The new research makes it ever harder to reduce the Indians to soulful wanderers, innocent hunter-gatherers, or ruthless heathens; instead, it begins to reveal fascinating societies that rivalled those of contemporary Europe in population and sophistication....more
The next book I read was Courtroom 302, in which a Chicago journalist spends a year in a low-level criminal courtroom, observing the judge, prosecutorThe next book I read was Courtroom 302, in which a Chicago journalist spends a year in a low-level criminal courtroom, observing the judge, prosecutors, public defenders, defendants, witnesses, and jurors. I found the book interesting primarily because the court was very similar to one in which I served as a juror a few years ago, only the author of the book lavishes the kind of research and attention on each defendant that no one in the criminal justice system has time to do. He shows how most cases are disposed of through plea bargains and how a judicial election might taint a judge's decisions, how a publicity-fueled "heater" case is treated versus an ordinary drug arrest. Locallo, the judge of Courtroom 302, comes off as serious-minded and fair, but still flawed. The defendants are humanized, or at least put in context. Above all, the author shows how the court milieu becomes unremarkable and quotidian for both the staff and the defendants. I thought the book was a bit longer than it needed to be--there are several "subplots" that could probably have been omitted--but I still found it worthwhile....more
Last week, as I was digging around looking for something to read on the subway, I picked up a copy of Consuming Kids: Protecting Our Children from theLast week, as I was digging around looking for something to read on the subway, I picked up a copy of Consuming Kids: Protecting Our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing & Advertising, a book by a Harvard psychologist that is substantially less priggish than its title makes it sound. Covered with blurbs by the likes of Marian Wright Edelman and T. Berry Brazelton, Susan Linn's book is a good study of marketing and children, as well as a conflicted, thus somewhat muddled, call to protect children from the pervasive influence of commercial content. Even when they aren't spending their time watching commercial TV (and even PBS seems pretty commercial these days) or playing at themed locations, they're playing with toys that represent media characters or learning to count by reading candy-themed books.
The first aim of the book, to show how marketers try to appeal to children by undermining their parents, is an eyebrow-raiser. Charged to sell products that pretty much no parent would ever want their child to have (hideously tacky toys, gleefully unhealthy foods), marketers design campaigns that give children ideas about to wear down the resistance of various different types of parents. (E.g. the parents who just want to be their child's friends, guilty working mothers, etc.) For these marketers, nagging is a wonderful tool. Linn writes about how children don't understand the difference between shows and commercials, which marketers have capitalized on since the deregulation of children's television by creating shows around their products. Even parents who strenuously attempt to limit their children's exposure to advertising find themselves undermined when their children return from a "field trip" to the Sports Authority with a bag full of promos and coupons. One chapter deals entirely with commercial influences in underfunded public schools.
Some of the most surprising and sad passages have to do with how media content undermines children's natural sense of play.
Annie pulls out a plastic container of dinosaurs. These come with plastic palm trees, rocks, and even a volcano. They also come with a plastic floor plan showing exactly where every tree and rock should go. I place a tree on an unmarked piece of land. "No, she says, moving it. "They have to go here." [...:] "These dinosaurs have to fight," she says. I begin making my dinosaur talk. "No!" she insists. "It's like the movie," she explains impatiently. "You know! They fight and they can't talk!" (71, snipped quite a bit)
Instead of imagining their own world for the toys, children get stuck reenacting some adult's ideas. Linn refutes those who say that violent shows and games are all right for children because children's play can be violent and nasty by pointing out that children's games come from within them, from their own experiences and feelings, which is healthy--whereas watching some adult's violent fantasies isn't. Similarly she discusses how the invention of "tween" as a concept for children ages 6 to 12 (after marketers noticed how susceptible unsupervised latchkey kids were to advertising) has blurred what is and isn't acceptable for children of those ages. Barbie dolls were becoming popular only among preschoolers, so a competing company invented the Bratz, which look like sassy teenagers (actually, they look like those creepy Steve Madden ads), but end up being played with by eight-year-olds. Marketers think that an eight-year-old is almost a twelve-year-old who is almost an eighteen-year-old, but developmentally, that just isn't true.
Many of Linn's examples are completely distasteful, from an adult's perspective. For example, the idea of green ketchup or chocolate french fries as "eatertainment" is hardly healthy--and surely eating is already pleasuarable in its own lo-fi way. The idea that toddlers need "lapware"--software to be used by a parent while they watch--in order to develop an interest in computers is totally laughable, yet parents are being sold all sorts of "educational" games and videos that have no proven effect other than to make their children zone out in front of a screen at an earlier age.
The conflicted feeling in Linn's writing comes from the fact that she is a political liberal; every time she agrees with soi-disant "pro-family" conservatives she finds the need to disavow any prudery, insisting that it's fine for children to learn about same-sex couples, just not by means of scantily-clad bisexual "lesbians" on WWE shows. Furthermore, she apparently recognizes (barely) that these issues lack bright lines that make legislation possible. What's left? A section at the end suggesting that readers boycott stores selling manifestly inappropriate materials, get involved with their PTA, and monitor what their kids watch at friends' houses, among other things. The end of the book is a demonstration that the path between awareness and action isn't smooth, particularly with issues that have at least partly to do with taste....more
Unfortunately, I did subject myself to the entirety of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers, which must rank among the most tiresome books on language that I'veUnfortunately, I did subject myself to the entirety of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers, which must rank among the most tiresome books on language that I've ever read. The author is attempting to show how "pop phrases" (by which she means a sort of media-driven cliche) pervade the culture and undermine intelligent discourse. She shows one or two examples of how "pop phrases" can come from the media and become part of slang ("Whaassssup?") and how they can come from the street and be adopted by the media ("Mickey D's").
The problem is that Savan quickly abandons any attempt to adhere rigorously to this definition. Instead, she rags on phrases that happen to annoy her. Everything from her five-years-ago version of netspeak to the bland cliches of the boardroom is subjected to her interpretation of what's really going through the head of the offender when the phrase is used. For example,
When I say "No way" and you say "Way," we may be exchanging a nod of appreciation for our mutual acquaintance with Wayne and Garth [...:] but we are also reducing each other to interchangeable parts, minor guest stars in that moment's passing sitcom.
Totally forgotten? The fact that we are also saying to each other "I don't believe it!" and "No, really, it's true!" At no point did she convince me that these "pop phrases" were any different than ordinary cliches, writ large on billboards.
Occasionally Savan writes something totally ridiculous, such as when she uses the stupid-sounding "Japlish" instead of the established term "Engrish." Or when she asserts that "dilio" is "a kind of ironic goateed Latino for deal, [that:] started as spoken, moved to Hollywood [...:] but now resides mostly in blogdom." Blogdom? Dilio? Savan writes a little pre-emptive defense about how some terms may be passé by the time the book is published, but what she doesn't manage to explain away is the air of general cluelessness that wafts through the entire book. You certainly don't get any idea of her doing research on the "street"; most of her citations are from newspapers, mainstream magazines, Salon, Meet the Press, and other media that she likely encounters in her everyday life. Not, say, hip-hop clubs or Myspace.
In one instance, she does find an excellent example of a company trying to use slang to its advantage and botching it: the very short lived McDonald's ad on ESPN that read "DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER? I'D HIT IT."
Meanwhile, the writing borders, at times, on the painful. Take this excerpt from a section at the end of the introduction that is meant to be over-the-top funny:
Whatever. I'm talkin' about a book that, best-case scenario, takes no prisoners as it puts its ass on the line [oh, there's more but I'm cutting it for you:] and gives 110 percent to explain that even though pop words rock, they like, really suck. Oh, they sound smart, but, trust me, I'm going to step up, break 'em down, and show you they ain't called no-brainers for nothing.
Does Savan realize that "rock" and "suck" are, roughly speaking, antonyms? Is there anything more annoying that a book about slang that "piles on" "quirky" words in the text which is meant to sound "with it" but actually comes off as "totally freaking annoying"? I had ample time to ponder that question with this book as my only companion on a New Jersey Transit train....more
I enjoyed Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture, so I thought I'd try reading something that argued against free use of electronic information, just toI enjoyed Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture, so I thought I'd try reading something that argued against free use of electronic information, just to see what I'd think of something I don't expect to agree with. Unfortunately, Hot Property--which is by the less hilarious of Ross Perot's two vice-presidential candidates--was not informative enough to pursue past page 53. On one page, Choate lionizes "those Americans bold and capable enough to steal foreign industrial secrets and bring them back to the United States." But just a few pages earlier, he was excoriating foreign nations "[whose:] laws are legal niceties, as fake as the goods whose production they facilitate." It's hard to read something so relentlessly chauvinistic with a straight face. Meanwhile, Choate lumps together all acts of piracy and counterfeiting as the same crime. Here I was expecting to read a reasoned explanation of why it was so much worse for me to burn a mix for a friend on a CD rather than a tape--instead, I read a tirade about how an aircraft parts manufacturer made batches of shoddy parts that resulted in plane crashes, without any explanation of how this constituted counterfeiting. Needless to say, I gave up on the book quickly....more
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