BOOKS! The 2008 Reading List, Part II: Nonfiction

The Chainbreaker Bike Book by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark

Since moving to Austin in 2006, I've relied almost exclusively on bicycles for transportation, but for most of that time, my understanding of my vehicle was spotty at best. This year marked a big leap forward for me, both in terms of mechanical know-how and depth of appreciation for these most brilliant of machines, and The Chainbreaker Bike Book put both the education and the emotions into print perfectly. The first half of the book constitutes the "Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance" advertised on the cover, and it's exactly that, done wonderfully. Far from an exhaustive, in-depth manual (the authors repeatedly suggest picking up one of those, too), Chainbreaker sticks to the basics, explaining them in straightforward, conversational style, illustrated by hand-drawn sketches rather than photos. Shelley and Ethan were both volunteers at the Plan B Bike Project, New Orleans' community shop equivalent to Yellow Bike, and it comes across in spades. Their instructions are never dry or difficult to follow, but rather capture the tone, patience, and humor of a great shop coordinator, providing the kind of confidence and enthusiasm that can help dissolve a beginner's fears about wrenching.

If Chainbreaker were only that, it would be a great volume, but it's so much more. The second half of the book is a collection of reprinted articles from Shelley's original Chainbreaker zines. Running the gamut from historical snapshots to DIY pannier instructions to diatribes against sexism, this is some of the finest zine content I've ever seen on any subject, and the most thoughtful, affectionate, multi-dimensional examination of the bicycle I've ever seen anywhere. The great pieces about Maya Pedal and cycling in India look at the broad utility that imagination and necessity can unleash; there are hilarious tales of food delivery in New Orleans (that city's primary paid cycling position); essays unlock the democratic, equalizing, anti-capitalist potential the bicycle contains. If the repair portion of Chainbreaker is mostly geared towards less experienced mechanics, the additional material is likely to penetrate the heart of even the most hardened veteran. A fabulous book unlike anything else out there, Chainbreaker is a must read for everyone who has ever found joy in spinning the pedals, and a great guide to keeping those pedals spinning right.

Going Postal by Mark Ames

Mark Ames takes a long, hard look at the horrifying workplace and schoolyard massacres that have so thoroughly disturbed modern America, and posits a theory that many would find as shocking as the murders themselves: our offices and schools are to blame. An insightful, incendiary read revolving around a thesis that "controversial" doesn't even begin to describe, Going Postal demands reassessment of environs we take for granted, staring past the mundane and monotonous to discover so much tension and torture underneath the fluorescent light fixtures. Ames goes out on some long limbs, especially in comparing rage-murders to the slave uprisings of the 19th century; but then again, when 19th century media accounts of random, inexplicable, and unexpected acts of violence sound so familiar, you can't help but admit he's on to something, far-fetched as it may seem. Ultimately, these comparative leaps serve less as persuasion and more as a catalyst for witnessing the present in a different light, and it's difficult to come away from Ames' meticulously researched accounts of various bloodbaths without seeing them a little differently as a whole. Perhaps the most troubling fact is that the rage-murderer lacks any distinct profile; perhaps the most infuriating is that, in a strange, recurring joke of fate, the bosses and bullies who push them over the edge are quite often absent when they snap. Take from it what you will, but you'd have to be one confident worker bee to read Going Postal and not wonder if a post-Reagan world of uncompromising productivity hasn't put us all in a dangerously unstable place.

Babylon by Bus by Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann

Trudging towards the sixth anniversary of Shock and Awe, those first few months of the war in Iraq can be difficult to recollect. The brief window of time when there was still a chance for the Bush administration to prove us all wrong and actually improve things in that country is mostly visible in retrospect as a whirlwind of damaging, deadly mismanagement. In 2008, the premise of Babylon by Bus seems almost too innocent and impish to believe: two shiftless twentysomething pals give up their lucrative racket slinging "Yankees Suck" t-shirts outside Fenway and travel to Iraq to lend an inexperienced and uninvited hand. It sounds like something the screenwriters for Harold and Kumar might've kicked around before deciding it was too ridiculous, but Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann actually did it. Their account of the journey sheds a unique light on everything that went wrong, and the depth of the resulting tragedy. From Coalition Provisional Authority job fairs to open bars in the Green Zone, from lounging around hookahs to intense exchanges in Sadr City, this book removes the distance between here and Baghdad in a way that little other journalism has, their dazed wanderings reconstructing a city as palpable as any in America. It's informal and impolite, but without shying away from the weight of its own reality and the responsibility of telling it. That two drunken dropouts did more for Iraqis thrown into a state of chaos than a lot of the people in charge did is funny for a moment, and painful forever after that.

Nonconformity by Nelson Algren

Subtitled "Writing on Writing," this long essay by Nelson Algren doesn't so much give specific insight into his own brilliant craftsmanship as it does point out the pitfalls facing the squeamish or subservient author. Penned in the wake of his masterpiece The Man with the Golden Arm and largely a reaction to the growing shadow McCarthyism was casting over America, Nonconformity remains a powerful indictment of the hypocrisy and emptiness of liberalism. As a result, what feigns being a criticism of artists or authors who only go halfway ends up striking a considerably wider chord. "Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present," wrote a discouraged Algren, "and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not honestly believ'd in (for all this hectic glow, and these melodramatic screamings), nor is humanity itself believ'd in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask?" If Algren's fiction can sometimes seem like an epitaph for last hopes, this essay is a desperate rally cry.

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Giving my honest opinion of this book is going to make me feel terrible. I love Sarah Vowell. Love her. Every time I listen to an episode of This American Life, and Ira's ticking off the acts, and her name comes up, I'm all a-titter. In fact, quite possibly my favorite episode ever (most definitely one of my top five) is "Trail of Tears," in which Sarah and her twin sister retrace the fatal march of their Cherokee ancestors, visiting the rather nonfatal attractions that mark their path today. That I am so enthralled by this piece of historical tourism made my lukewarm feelings toward Assassination Vacation seem downright icy. Maybe if I were a bigger Lincoln buff it would have done it for me, but I don't think even that could make up for the disjointedness of it all, bouncing from gift shop to obscure footnote to gift shop until you start to feel as road-weary as the friend who doesn't give a damn about McKinley but still agrees to drive Sarah to the museum. I don't find myself any less affectionate towards her on the radio, but I'm still not sure about going out on a second print date.

Banana by Dan Koeppel

In spite of the gargantuan quantity of bananas that I consume, I knew next to nothing about them before I picked up Dan Koeppel's book. I was hardly alone; while bananas are the most popular fruit in the United States, outselling apples and oranges combined, we're quite far removed from them - although bananas were evidently the first cultivated crop in human history, North America appears to have been nearly the last stop on their global journey, and lacks a suitable climate for growing. Yet somehow, this highly perishable, easily damaged tropical harvest that must be shipped in vast amounts over vast distances has become a less expensive and more beloved staple of our diet than anything on the trees in our own backyards. Banana traces the bizarre, colorful, bloody path of this strange international trade, but neither starts nor stops there. Riddled with great trivia (it turns out that it probably wasn't an apple that Eve bit into at all), mouth-watering descriptions of myriad varieties that will leave you cursing our American limitation to the single Cavendish, and history both bio- and anthropological, Koeppel's work culminates in an urgent warning: bananas are in deep, deep trouble, and we need to do something about it, fast. You'll never take the perfect food for granted ever again.

The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Although his philosophies on our food system have placed Michael Pollan in the national spotlight, he is, first and foremost, an extremely talented writer. A former editor of Harper's, I am convinced that the sentences Pollan so artfully strings together could make damn near any subject sound absolutely arresting. His mastery of language combines and his palpable sense of curiosity draw you in, making you as interested in whatever he's studying as he so obviously is. Pollan's current arc didn't begin with just any subject, though, but with one that has been near and dear to him since childhood: gardening. From this rather banal starting point, he's constructed a canon that journeys from the soil to our stomachs and everywhere in between.

The Botany of Desire reveals Pollan's brilliant grasp of perspective in its very premise: how have the plants we've controlled also controlled us? Pollan's belief in the infinite complexity of the natural world transcends simple acknowledgment by changing points of view not only between humans, but species as well, and even ideals: he portrays domestication not as simple resignation to order, but as a delicate dance between the civilized and the wild in both plant and animal. Split into four segments about four plants and the four human wants they fulfill, Botany is eye-opening and impossible to put down throughout, whether focusing on food as he does in his more recent work (the apple and the potato), or on more abstract but no less powerful desires (beauty and the tulip, intoxication and marijuana). Whether weaving the weird true story of Johnny Appleseed or taking a tastebud-tickling walk through an heirloom apple orchard, whether marveling at the intricately controlled environment of a cannabis grow-room or the nearly opposite effects that its flora yields, whether speaking of the tulip enthralling the Dutch to the point of madness or Monsanto manipulating the very genetic makeup of the potato, Pollan's prose is kaleidoscopic and wide-eyed, thirsting for a more complete understanding with the knowledge that complete understanding is impossible.

Most writing about our modern food chain begins with an opinion, and it is not difficult to see why. The systematic exploitation from the slaughterhouse to the field hand to the very soil itself is undeniable and inescapable, and razor-penned writers such as Eric Schlosser are badly needed to open our eyes to that. Unfortunately, for the average eater, authors who take a deep look at the dark side of their meal can be, well, rather unappetizing. Perhaps that's why Michael Pollan's unfailingly multi-faceted way of looking at things has made him such a unifying figure amongst food reformers, and why The Omnivore's Dilemma is so goddamn popular and so goddamn important. Not unlike the four-plant structure of Botany, Pollan builds the book around four meals from four sources: the McDonald's drive-thru; the industrial-organic, "Supermarket Pastoral" of Whole Foods; a small "beyond organic" family farm; and hunted, gathered, and gardened self-reliance. Within this framework, Pollan explores our relationship with the food we eat with remarkable depth and scope. Rather than being governed by its agenda, The Omnivore's Dilemma derives its lessons from its discoveries. As a result, Pollan is able to balance the deplorable horrors of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations with the delectable quality of a humane free-range egg, or the disturbing empire of corn with the untamed mystery of wild mushrooms. Most importantly, while delving into all of its disparate elements, Pollan never forgets what too many food reformists do: the pleasure of a delicious meal. That pleasure is present here, an appetizer for absolutely essential reading.