mrjerz

• Rated 4 stars

“Want to see inside the world of steroids and supplements and how it all became the monster industry it is today? Ever wondered what happens when you dedicate your life to finding another perfect drug for cutting fat and staying younger. Then check out Steroid Nation. The seedy underworld of the gym rats who started it all is exposed as the offshoot of the slimy drug traffickers we've come to know since cocaine hit the scene in the 1980s. The life of Dan Duchaine, The Guru, is all laid out for you, from how he came upon his first steroids and continued to use them and any number of other drugs he could find, until his death after suffering several strokes and twice serving time for distribution. All the people he met, including several prominent athletes and other dealers that have been in the news lately, are tied together to create one complete work in Steroid Nation that will surely serve to only be an initial chapter in the ongoing saga of illegal drugs that help athletes--and non-athletes--maintain a level of fitness unattainable without intense hard work over long periods of time, if at all.”

mrjerz wrote this review Friday, February 29 2008. ( reply | permalink )

2 of 2 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“Outstanding. Any book that is based on the premise that conventional wisdom is generally wrong starts off very well with me. The use of economics to distill certain "truths" down into entirely re-thought principles and ideas is innovative and, to be sure, brilliant. I can see the more traditional economics professors hating the influx of Freakonomics disciples at departments nationwide.

The chapter that most resonated with me was the one about real estate agents and the KKK. On the surface, and certainly among some people, the idea that the two are similar is offensive. But as you will see in reading the book, there is something in common among them and perhaps that offensive connection is what actually makes you understand that we're not dealing with the surface here. The result is the removal of emotion from the critical thinking that goes into the ideas presented in the book, and a return to actual thought. It sure seems simple, but if you take a good look around, we're devoid of that type of thinking. Like I said, outstanding.”

mrjerz wrote this review Wednesday, January 23 2008. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 3 stars

“Tough one to call here. I enjoyed the book, but fear I didn't get it. It was a smooth read for me and I appreciated the story. The whole thing seemed a little unbelievable to me, but I kept moving along hoping I would eventually get some insight into why these girls did what they did. I suppose there is never one easy answer to that question, and that may have been the point of the book. It was filled with things that can and do happen to people all over the place, but the result here was a freakish act by the girls in the end. Maybe that's just it. There is no answer for why suicide happens and this book was an honest illustration for that.”

mrjerz wrote this review Thursday, January 3 2008. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 3 stars

“This book has long been portrayed as the iconic look at what goes on in the life of a baseball player. Jim Bouton was ostracized for writing it, but to this fan who comes an entire generation late to the game, it's hard to fathom. I love what Bouton told us in the book. The personal anecdotes were great. The humor was what I expected. Baseball players have a knack for coming up with intelligent and very witty insults that don't resonate across other sports. There are plenty of those in this book.

Where the book lost me is in that it just didn't seem all that bad. For the establishment to dislike Jim Bouton for writing the book seems ludicrous. I'll admit, though, that the reason I think that way is that since the book was written, the stories and ways of life contained therein have been a part of the game. Most fans have come to expect the behavior that's in the book. And to read it almost 40 years later diluted the revelations for me. It just wasn't shocking.

In reading the 20th anniversary edition (published in 1990), I did get to take a look at Bouton after the book. His comeback in 1978 made for a good tale in the Ball Five section, and reading that he invented Big League Chew made me feel better about his plight. He always seemed to be scheming, and he finally nailed the big one with Big League Chew. Good for him and his family. He seems like a decent guy from the stories in the book, and the people that had some bone to pick with him generally were found to be frauds later in life (Pete Rose, Bowie Kuhn, Mickey Mantle), so I tend to think that Bouton really was decent.

Overall, the book was good. I got caught up in the 1969 pennant race despite knowing how it turned out, and I enjoyed the humor that I haven't been around since doing some oft he same things with my baseball teammates years ago.”

mrjerz wrote this review Monday, December 10 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I really liked this book. It moved along slowly, but the context in which I read it led me to be completely engulfed by the story as I got about halfway through. One caveat: there is no "event" that turns the plot at any point in time. It's simply the story of one kid's view of the turmoil his family faces when the 1940 U.S. election goes a different way than it did in reality. And that family goes through some serious turmoil. Some of it is most certainly self-inflicted. Most of it is impossible to pin down and prove, but true nonetheless.

You get the sense in the end that the events that happened during the story of the book affected the person telling the story (Philip Roth tells it in the first person, with the character being himself) greatly, but hear nothing of how life changed as the book ended. There is no epilogue giving us the remainder, which I suppose is on purpose. It's not supposed to matter.

What Roth does is take what could very well have been the very mundane and turn it into a tale that grips the reader. Like I mentioned previously, it moves slowly. That's because it simply tells us what is going on in the lives of one family. Their lives differ very little from day to day, with the possible exception of their being politically astute and Jewish with a president who cavorts with Adolf Hitler. What seems like paranoia at times turns into a serious threat and makes for a life that people in the west would have a very hard time understanding. That's what really got me. I saw what it's like to be the outcast--a true outcast, almost by overt policy--in society. With very few exceptions, there are no real outcasts here that are threatened in the way this family was in the book. But there once were in far greater frequency here.

Overall, it was a great book. If you're interested in historical fiction, this book is a great read. The events of the book are fictitious, and the history is an alternate look from reality, but in doing that, Roth was able to show us how the real history was played out in Nazi Germany. It was well done for that reason.”

mrjerz wrote this review Sunday, November 25 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“A tremendous book. Krakauer nails the story by following every clue he could find and interviewing everyone who seemed to have contact with this young man on his journey into the Alaskan wilderness. The story ends (or begins, depending on how you look at it) tragically, but the person whose story it is, Chris McCandless, touched several lives deeply along the way. Fueled by anger toward his parents, he strikes out on a quest to live off the land and criss-crosses the U.S. in preparation for a final trip into Alaska. There he makes his way into the wild and lives in an abandoned bus for several months before succumbing to starvation.

This book is about how he got there and who he met while he was living on his own. People remembered him. And Krakauer makes sure to mention how similar McCandless is to just about all of us, despite the reactions of people in the immediate wake of his death that condemned him for his stupidity and selfishness. It's just not that simple, and we learn why that's so in this book with looks into McCandless's childhood, Krakauer's own adventures at a similar age, and the disappearance of another "adventurer" in the 1930s. It's a book that can keep your attention if you're at all interested in what makes people tick, and what makes them do things that others would consider irrational.”

mrjerz wrote this review Wednesday, November 7 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“This was a fascinating look into life inside a brothel. A medical student began her study to find out why legal prostitutes have a lower rate of STD infection than other prostitutes, and even the general public. She is then pulled into a study on how life functions inside a brothel--who are the customers, why do the women work there, do they plan on leaving--and makes several return trips to the Mustang Ranch to continue her work. The book finishes with the Mustang Ranch closing its doors due to an IRS lien, and she keeps up with several of the women from inside the brothel to find out how they live once they leave. It's a riveting story that answers a lot of questions about how brothels function and who you can expect to see behind the doors.”

mrjerz wrote this review Tuesday, November 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 1 stars

“At this point, I'm not sure what this book can offer that much that's going to enlighten us in 2007. Having been written in 1991, a lot of the major issues are either embedded in the consciousness of the modern public or have been dealt with adequately to render them less critical. For instance, one of the major issues that the Ehrlichs discuss is the hole in the ozone layer. In 1991 that was a serious environmental concern, but has been reversed today to the point that the hole is no longer an issue. Al Gore briefly discussed how population is causing environmental problems in "An Inconvenient Truth," which is something far more of us have seen than have read or will read this book. If you couple the fact that this book is relatively obsolete with the preachy tone (the authors excoriate to us that we must change or we'll be complicit in the demise of humanity) that I got from the first several chapters, you have a book that's best avoided unless it can be updated to focus on more relevant issues to this decade, or even century.”

mrjerz wrote this review Tuesday, November 6 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 1 stars

“Perhaps it is because a lot of the ideas that were presented early in the book are ideas I am already familiar with, but I couldn't get out of the first several chapters. I didn't finish the book due to that and would suggest that anyone familiar with the ideas that mass collaboration can change the way things are done throughout industry and especially in information-based economies avoid the book and look for something that isn't geared toward informing people of those ideas. For anyone who is new to this, check it out. It's probably going to open your eyes to a lot of new things and hopefully engage you in a way that helps you become a part of the movement.”

mrjerz wrote this review Saturday, November 3 2007. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 5 stars

“This incredible story did several things for me. The easy ones are: it made me in no way want to take up something like mountain climbing, it made me understand how someone can easily be left for dead (intentionally or unintentionally) on a mountain like Everest, and it made me desperately ant to learn more about Everest, the region surrounding the mountain, and the people who live there. Like Under the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer got me. He pulled me in and made me want to read until I couldn't stay awake. There was even a part in this when I felt like I was short of breath, just like he was as he went up the mountain.

Climbing Everest takes a certain selfishness and a certain insanity. Why would anyone want to spend that amount of time in misery--short of breath, tired, unable to move, and even teetering on the edge of death? I certainly wouldn't. But every year, more people give it a shot. in 1996, when Krakauer's story takes place, 12 people gave their lives to the mountain. A series of bad judgments and miscalculations led to a big tragedy. It had to have been horrible to be there, and even in a hypoxic stupor, Krakauer seemed to understand the predicament he and his team were in. All the training, all the preparation, and all the effort didn't matter when a storm stranded 19 climbers in the open atop the mountain. It seems so wasted.

Luckily for us, down here where it's much safer, Krakauer lived to tell the story to the best of his ability, and hopefully his story will be a warning to others that it might not be all it's cracked up to be on Everest.”

mrjerz wrote this review Monday, September 17 2007. ( reply | permalink )