12.2015 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Introduction:

Hooray! A memoir-type book. My favorite genre.
We live in an age where chefs are heralded as kitchen kings and Anthony Bourdain is a household name and mainstay on the travel channel. This was the book that put him and eventually the foodie lifestyle on the map.

Overview:

Last summer, The New Yorker published Chef Bourdain's shocking, "Don't Eat Before Reading This". Bourdain spared no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky--tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable. Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

Book Details:

Paperback: 312 pages
Publisher: Ecco; Updated edition (January 9, 2007)Published: 05/22/2000
ISBN-10: 0060899220
ISBN-13: 978-0060899226

Get Book: 

Amazon
Overdrive

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Book Club #8. Lesson: not all Pulitzer Prize winners are built the same.

About the Book:

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

 

 Summary: 

"In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets."

 

Characters:

• Henry Ford
• Amazonians
• Workers

 

Questions:

1. What did you think about the book and author's writing style?
2. What were Ford's motivations for his actions?
3. Was Fordlandia a success? What is it's current state?
4. What does this say about American capitalism? Can it be successful in other parts of the world?
5. What are the economic and worldwide ramifications of Ford's innovative method of manufacturing and production?

Conversation Summary:

Discussion topics:

• book was full of random facts and details not necessary for narrative
• author thorough in research but style was difficult to read- lack of flow, ending jumps to ethical questions in completely different realms such as US invading Iraq
• Henry Ford background and rise to power
• Ford appeared crazy. Do rich, powerful people all become crazy and lose touch with reality or does that thinking bring them to power?
• Ford's production style - simplify production down to basic components and put people in charge of a small component. Method may only be beneficial for certain type of work and not translatable to certain industries or types of products.
• American capitalism harmful to Amazonians and broke down traditional, cultural values and lifestyle. Ford personally tried to control lifestyles of all aspects of life for workers. Focus on money and competition. Monetary gain does not correlate with increased quality of life.
• Fordlandia was size of small state. Large chunk of Amazon destroyed and now facilities deserted. Interested in lives of people raised and lived in Fordlandia. Children raised and educated by Fordlandia rules, lack future outside of plant operations, though born and raised in Brazil lack local culture. 
• Fordlandia was a fail

2/3 bears finished book and 0/3 loved it

References:

1.  Fordlandia (2008) - man born and raised in Fordlandia returns to see facilities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2SpGRuwqA4

2. Interview with Greg Grandin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsKukVL3Hms

2. Fordlandia in the Amazon - al Jazeera report
http://wn.com/fordlandia_in_the_amazon

Predictably Irrational

Book Club #7! Our first foray into the Non-fiction genre.

About the Book:

Predictably Irrational

 

 Summary: 

Dan Ariely performs research in behavioral economics and attempts to explain his observations and findings in plain language for the general public. People may know better but act completely irrational or be distracted by irrelevant factors from making rational decisions. Examples range from comparing two similar objects and being tricked by marketing decoys to procrastination to how the placebo effect may be effecting clinical trials and inflating drug prices.

 

Characters:

• Dan Ariely
• Irrational people like you and me

 

Questions:

1. Relativity says that if you provide a decoy (A-) that is slightly less enticing than the original (A), people will avoid comparing equally enticing options A and B and focus on the two options that are easy to compare (A and A-). People typically choose A. Several marketing examples were given in the book. Are there scenarios in which relativity/relative advantage does not work? Can you provide an example where you may think you may have fallen for relativity?

2. Americans have problems saving and getting out of debt. Is there anything you are saving for/debt you are trying to get out of and what technique are you employing? Is there anything you would add after reading this book?

3. Which lesson/advice was most meaningful to you or stuck out to you the most?

4. Dan Ariely recently published an article that about the increasing placebo effect and effects on FDA trials. Do you believe in Western medicine and/or supplements? Do you think they are effective? How do you feel about FDA trials?

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/medical-trials-are-jeopardy-due-extreme-hypochondria-americans-1523428

5. Free things and public/corporate trust seem at odds. There was a case that Dan brought up where he actually put money on the table and only 19% of people took the $50 bill from the table. Is there a situation when you were enticed by something free but didn't take advantage because of the fine print?

 

Conversation Summary:

Discussion topics:

• sections that stuck out: arousal affecting people's judgement, researchers observed college students more willing to try bestiality or deceiving women for sex
• favorite sections: procrastination, relativity, artificially affecting market demands, placebo effect
• experience: no longer being interested in free items, more skeptical, more in tune with market norms, comparing salaries
• things learned or plans for future change:
• to fight procrastination, make a plan/timeline based on what you know about yourself and employ an authoritative figure to make you stick to it
• do not be fooled by artificial market valuation, lab diamonds are just as good or better than natural diamonds
• consider all factors when comparing options, not just the factors that are easy to compare
• be wary of placebo effect
• other topics: vitamins/dietary supplements, doctors and patient satisfaction, clinical trials, lying/ altering truth, marketing

From now on, we will choose books 2 months in advance so there is more time to find the next book.

2/3 bears finished book and loved it

References:

1. Employees quitting over coworkers' pay raises

http://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/the-70000-minimum-wage-experiment-reveals-a-dark-truth.html/

2.  FDA clinical trials
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/medical-trials-are-jeopardy-due-extreme-hypochondria-americans-1523428

11.2015 Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Introduction:

Nonfiction we go! In a stranger than fiction story, "Fordlandia is the story of Henry Ford's ill-advised attempt to transform raw Brazilian rainforest into homespun slices of Americana." (Amazon)

Book Jacket:

In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets.

Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford's early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia's eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest.

More than a parable of one man's arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this gripping and mordantly observed history, Ford's great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.

Book Details:

Length: 432 pages
Publisher: Picador; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
Published: April 27, 2010
ISBN: 0312429622
ISBN13: 978-0312429621

Get Book: 

Amazon
Overdrive

10.2015 Predictably Irrational

Introduction:

Throwing a nonfiction book in the mix.

Book Jacket:

Irrational behavior is a part of human nature, but as MIT professor Ariely has discovered in 20 years of researching behavioral economics, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion. Drawing on psychology and economics, behavioral economics can show us why cautious people make poor decisions about sex when aroused, why patients get greater relief from a more expensive drug over its cheaper counterpart and why honest people may steal office supplies or communal food, but not money. According to Ariely, our understanding of economics, now based on the assumption of a rational subject, should, in fact, be based on our systematic, unsurprising irrationality. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities for reexamining individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policy. Ariely's intelligent, exuberant style and thought-provoking arguments make for a fascinating, eye-opening read.

Book Details:

Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 Exp Rev edition
Published: April 27, 2010
ISBN: 9780061353246
ISBN13: 978-0061353246

Get Book: 

Amazon
Audible
Overdrive

All the Light We Cannot See

Book Club #6!

About the Book:

All the Light We Cannot See

Summary: 

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Characters:

• Maurie-Laure leBlanc: blind girl growing up in Paris
• Daniel leBlanc: Marie-Laure's father, lockmaker at the Paris Natural History Museum
• Werner: orphan boy, radio prodigy
• Jutta: Werner's sister,
• Frau Elena: French woman runs the orphanage
• Gemologist seeking Sea of Flame diamond
• Housekeeper
• Uncle

Questions:

1. What do you think happened to Daniel, Marie's father, and who was his angel that delivered the letters?

2. Do you think the mayor made the right decision to surrender Saint Malo so quickly? Pros/Cons

3. What do you think the title means?

4. There were times characters questioned whether they were on the right or wrong side of the war. How would you determine who is right or wrong in war?

5. If you hear enemies were coming to bomb your town, what would be your course of action?

6. In the story, messages were passed from bread to radio. If you had to pass on a message what route would you take?

7. Is there any new technology that astounds you that you believe may be commonplace in the future?

8. Marie-Laure had to make quick decisions on who to trust, including strangers, how did she come to her decisions and in her place how would you decide who to trust?

Conversation Summary:

Discussion topics:

• title - radio waves, electricity and physics that are invisible to the naked eye, goodness of people in dark times, hope in tragedy
• author's writing style - beautifully descriptive, narrative jumps between characters and timelines
• do not listen to audiobook, confusing with character and timeline jumps
• author inspiration
• what happened to each character 
• personal disaster plans in case of war or natural disasters
• being in a position of power and integrity  
• struggles of being handicapped and needing to make quick judgements on who to trust

Next time do not pick a book that just won a big prize (like a pulitzer) because it's hard to find the book.

1/3 bears finished book and loved it

References:

1. Inspiration from Saint Malo and cell phones

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/25/314566791/world-war-ii-in-a-new-light-empathy-found-in-surprising-places

Game of Thrones - Book 1

Book Club #5!

About the Book:

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

Summary: 

A super long book with a ton of characters from different families with various forms of family drama all somehow cross paths in this fantasy novel involving power, battle, incest, and dragons. Most characters are located in the Seven Kingdoms. Told from the view points of different characters, each person is mostly trying to not get killed and possibly be in some ruling leadership position. Members of the former ruling family, Targaryen, are exiled but seeks to return to the Seven Kingdoms and reign again by marrying into a nomad Dothraki tribe. If only they had some more dragons. Within the Seven Kingdoms, the King's right hand is no longer and the patriarch of the Stark family is requested to fill the role. The many children of the Stark family each have a wolf as a pet that come in very handy because many people seem to want to harm them. Though the noble Eddard Stark seems to be a man of integrity, the new position ties the Stark family to the Lannisters who hide a secret. Many characters get killed in the process but then new ones get introduced.

Characters:

• Not even going to try...

Questions:

1. Who was your favorite character?
2. What did you think about the language?
3. Did you like the author's use of different characters' points of view to tell the story?
4. What were the different character's motivation?
5. What does it mean to play the game of thrones? Is it possible to be moral and have integrity?

Conversation Summary:

Discussion topics:

• author's writing style 
• character analysis 
• fantasy genre
• favorite characters - all the outcasts, khal drogo, dany, jon snow, arya
• character motivations and integrity
• being in a position of power and integrity
• where the characters start and end up
• favorite characters murdered, many characters murdered
•  book should include a summary/index of all characters
• sansa willing to harm family for a boy
• this book was very long, it's hard to finish a 800+ page book

2/3 bears unable to finish book. 3/3 happy to watch the tv show.

References:

1. George RR Martin to Taylor Swift's Blank Spaces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qhp3wnKyKA

2. George RR Martin on SNL Weekend Update
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-george-rr-martin/2770803

3. Seth Myers brings Jon Snow to dinner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BabsgCQhpu4