Ninety-Five: Meeting America’s Farmed Animals in Stories and Photographs, edited and published by No Voice Unheard.

This spacious, clear, compassionate book about rescued farmed animals offers three experiences you may not get from actually visiting a sanctuary where these animals are kept: a chance to look them in the eyes for an extended period of time, to see examples of every animal Americans commonly eat, and to visit them even in the midst of a city. The large photographs allow you extended closeup eye-to-eye contact, whereas if face-to-face the animal might be farther away, would move about, perhaps turn away.  And most sanctuaries would have most but possibly not all of these: chickens, turkeys, pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, ducks, geese, and rabbits. Plus, unlike a rare visit to a sanctuary, by opening the book you can see the animals again anytime and anywhere you want.

Among the sanctuaries and authors featured is Colorado’s own Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary, with written contributions from Michele and Chris Alley-Grubb and Joanna Lucas, all of Peaceful Prairie. The short essays on the animals’ behavior are thoughtful and sensitive, but to me the main reason to pick up this book is its photographs: to see, really see, these living animals that remain invisible to most people who encounter them only after they’ve been slaughtered, dismembered and served up on a plate. No other book I know is as effective in allowing the reader to make that connection.

I can’t stop telling people about this amazing landmark study of societal progress concerning violent behavior! Everyone I’ve talked to is cheered by the news that the 20th century was not the most violent; that with occasional exceptions, humans have been making solid progress in reducing violence; and that our treatment of “out-groups” of a different race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, or even species, has grown increasingly respectful. The author writes clearly and enlivens his descriptions of countless psychological studies, numerous graphs and, in the beginning chapters, grisly depictions of torture, with just the right amount of anecdotal passages to keep the reader engaged throughout its nearly 700 pages. For example, you’ve got to love that the concept of deterrence is explained using lyrics from the old Jim Croce song “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.”
Those who read the results of Pinker’s solid research in Better Angels will be better able to place the media’s sensationalized reporting on current violent incidents in historical context. In so doing, such people will be able to remain optimistic, understanding that these incidents are fewer in number and take fewer lives than would formerly have been the case. It is also welcome news that humans’ capacity for abstract reasoning and general intelligence has been rising steadily during the last century, and that this tends toward more peaceful behavior.
Furthermore, I now have another justification for my reading addiction: avid readers–of both fiction and non-fiction–test higher for empathy than non-readers.

The Spirit’s Pilgrimage, by Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade)

Mirabehn was a British-born close associate of Mohandas Gandhi, working with him from 1925 until the end of his life. She was not just a secretary or assistant, but a diplomatic adviser and project manager. On occasion she was even sent by Gandhi to represent him in negotiations with British officials. She stayed on in India until 1959, continuing her work to improve the lives of the poor.
As a young adult, she had been told by a mentor that Gandhi was “another Christ,” and from then on her mind was made up to go and work for him. Her dedication was rock-solid, as it required her to face a much harder life than she would have had at home in England: stressful political situations and imprisonment, extremely hot humid climate, poor sanitation, typhoid and repeated bouts of malaria, living in mud huts with scorpions and ticks, hard daily physical labor, language and cultural barriers, etc. She was tough, too–after all this, she lived to be nearly 90! This is her story in her own words, told as though the reader was sitting in front of her, and builds a solid on-the-ground foundation under other more philosophical commentaries about Gandhi and his work.

Dave Bruno, a fairly average guy, decides to set himself the challenge of living for a year with only 100 things for his personal use. He spends a year reducing his possessions down to that number, and setting the rules of how he will proceed. I really liked that the guy was thinking and blogging about this, honestly trying to stop buying stuff that leads to clutter and no additional happiness, followed his plan for a year and wrote a book about it. He stopped going to malls and doesn’t own a TV. His wife and three daughters are OK with him doing the challenge although they don’t set themselves the same challenge. By the end of the challenge year, he seems to have changed in ways that will last.
On closer examination, however, his actual number of possessions is far greater than 100, once you understand what he has excluded from his list. He counts all his books as one thing–the “library”–and also counts his socks, undershirts and underwear as three single items. Anything shared with other family members is completely excluded, which is huge: he excludes all home furnishings (except five items used exclusively by him); all bedding and other linens; everything in the kitchen; and washer/dryer/laundry supplies. He doesn’t include a comb, shampoo, dental floss, even a bed pillow. Much of what is on his list are tech items and adventure gear. So really it should be called “The 100 Thing Clothes and Toys Challenge.” However, any effort at lifestyle change along these lines should be encouraged, so I don’t mean to criticize, just to point out his exclusions so that other people who haven’t read the book won’t say, “Oh, I could never live with just 100 things.”

EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want, by Frances Moore Lappe. Nation Books, 2011.

Scientists are telling us a lot of depressing news these days about climate change, species extinction, overpopulation, and dwindling resources. In addition, we have unrestrained corporate power, vast wealth disparity, and workers in crisis. It can seem hard to stay hopeful and engaged–until, that is, you encounter Lappe’, who has taken on the role of cheerleader to show us positive efforts currently underway. The book is a litany of new ideas small groups of people all over the world have implemented to achieve better outcomes. They’re all small-scale now, but Lappe urges us to consider how they could be more widely applied.

What I liked about the book was the way Lappe’ doesn’t blame, but instead looks behind the disturbing statistics at how our current policies allowed these things to happen, and how those policies could be changed. She examines both the positive and negative sides of human nature, and considers ways to increase helpful human qualities like empathy and cooperation, and decrease destructive qualities like greed and violence. Whether or not the reader agrees with her approach, it is clear that Lappe’s voice is not just more of the same, and that she has spent a lot of thought and energy finding and sharing positive outcomes.

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama XIV. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

I agree with the Dalai Lama that only if the world’s people succeed in finding common ground Beyond Religion is there a chance of working together for any kind of a sane future. I wondered what he was going to suggest, and found myself reading with interest. He describes compassion–the foundation of secular ethics–in detail, what it is and isn’t (e.g. it isn’t meekness). He shows why the practice of compassion and restraint is necessary for a sustainable environment, stable governments, as well as personal well-being, and why such efforts must be undertaken outside of religion to succeed globally. Training our minds not to wallow in destructive emotions like anger and greed is not that mysterious; it can be done by anyone willing to persevere. He gives convincing motivations and detailed practices to use in taking up this work. He comments on research showing that accumulating wealth beyond basic comfort does not bring happiness, and points out that war is now “outdated and illogical.” Schools must be urged to give students training in how to develop patience and compassion; this is not being provided to most children by religion as it was in the past. Compassion training, in fact, is far more important than many of the subjects currently taught.

Without explicitly saying so, he conveys a view I’ve long held: peace and environmental responsibility will have to come from the people, because our leaders will not lead. I especially appreciated his upbeat attitude: humans have practiced cooperation for centuries, we know how to do this, we CAN do this. “Let us all, old and young,” he writes in closing,”strive together with vision, with courage, and with optimism.” The Dalai Lama conveys a strong sense of possibility to turn things around; I hope this latest book of his will attract a wide readership.

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, by Juliet Schor. Penguin Press, 2010.

Schor begins by documenting why our current lifestyles are unsustainable, then presents information on various innovations and solutions to move us in a more planet-friendly direction. A few ideas were new to me, such as fab labs and wall gardens, but I’d mostly heard it before. Schor sees the society of the future as being more satisfying than today’s business-as-usual. She’s upbeat, downplaying what I anticipate will be a tremendous social upheaval in moving from present consumption levels to part-time incomes, self-provisioning and sharing. People love their electronic toys and cheap airfares, and will resist change. It’s a positive direction, though, and will be mandatory, so we need to start thinking about it.

Whitewash: The Disturbing Truth About Cow’s Milk and Your Health

Keon gives us a comprehensive look at what the dairy industry is NOT telling us. By analyzing numerous studies, he chips away at, and ultimately demolishes, all the reasons we’ve been given to drink milk, and instead shows how hazardous it is. For adult humans to “nurse” from another species is pretty bizarre at the outset, when you view it objectively. The author’s stated purpose in writing the book is to show that instead of supporting bone health, dairy products actually undermine it. Countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis are those with the highest consumption of dairy.

We learn not only about the harm from what’s actually in milk–casein and other proteins, fat, cholesterol, lactose, etc.–but the numerous contaminants it carries. Pesticides and other environmental toxins are also present in plant foods to a certain extent, but are greatly concentrated in the fat of animals and transmitted in their milk. How about some salmonella, rocket fuel and dioxin with that yogurt? Plus there are the growth hormones and antibiotics routinely given to dairy cows, also transmitted in their milk. Diseases that can usually be prevented or improved if patients remove dairy products from their diets include heart disease, obesity, breast or prostate cancer, joint pain, MS, and many others. The chapter on children’s health points out the remarkable relief experienced by most children with autism, chronic ear infections, asthma, behavioral and learning problems, and more, when dairy is removed from their diets. Milk has been strongly implicated in the development of Type 1 diabetes in young children.

The clincher, after we learn the health consequences of consuming milk products, is the chapter on the horrible treatment of dairy cows in the U.S. industrial farming system. Confined in sheds, standing constantly in feces, mutilated without anesthetics, kept constantly pregnant, then having calves removed at birth–this is a process that no compassionate person would want to support. The massive amounts of feces produced–120 lbs. per cow per day–totals 54 billion lbs. annually in the U.S., two and a half times as much as produced by humans! This, plus the methane they produce, have serious environmental impact.

The book concludes with much helpful info showing how easy it is to get one’s calcium from plant sources.

I’d read quite a bit about the dairy issue over the years, but still learned new facts from this book. Recommended for everyone who wants to improve or maintain good health and retain strong bones, with the bonus of not having to support cruelty.

Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, by James E. McWilliams. Little, Brown, 2009.

Want to get a lively discussion going among people who care about food sustainability? This book will do it!

The author hits the ground running with a spot-on sendup of the locavore mania, and not a moment too soon. Then we get chapters on organics and GM food, which I’m still digesting (pardon the pun). I’d thought it was clear that organics should be embraced and GM foods opposed, but here are considerations that were new to me. The uncompromising chapter on livestock had me cheering “You tell ‘em!” and wondering if the author is also a vegan. Not yet, we find out: he tells us he’s given up eating land animals, but still looks favorably on aquaculture, as detailed in the following chapter. (Later note: McWilliams is now a vegan advocate. Follow his blog Eating Plants.) The last topic is agricultural subsidies; once again, he nails it.

Two major omissions jumped out at me. First, the possibility of converting urban yards into food gardens was not even mentioned. Given the total amount of land taken up by yards, this could be important. If we could incentivize food gardening, vegetables and fruits grown in American yards would not have to be provided by farmers, which would mean more food to feed the world. During World War II, victory gardens produced up to 40% of all vegetables grown in the U.S.

Second, in the aquaculture chapter, assertions of sustainability were all based on comparisons between aquaculture and livestock agriculture. Livestock is so outrageously wasteful that almost any other kind of production would look good next to it. What we need in order to be convinced are comparisons between aquaculture and plant-food agriculture; i.e. between a diet with fish and a vegan diet. If aquaculture can’t compare favorably here, and because fish-eating has negative health and ethical aspects as well, why should we give it even a moment’s consideration?

The author seems to think that veganism is too difficult for most people; he writes, “As much as I would like to push a completely meatless diet, I know that such a change is virtually impossible to achieve on even a small scale.” Why so? Several million people in the U.S. and elsewhere have been following it for years, with more coming on board daily. McWilliams need look no further than his own city of Austin, Texas, to see a textbook example of an unlikely population adopting vegan eating: the firefighters of Engine 2, whose new diet was recognized on Oprah and in the New York Times, among other media. I’d say firefighters are about as far as possible from the Skinny Bitch demographic, yet they made the switch and are much healthier for it. Furthermore, who would ever have thought that the fast-food-loving Bill Clinton would adopt a plant-based diet?