Review of The Corporate Cult: More of What Men Know That Women Don't (Paperback)

Who is Zubaty you might ask?Good question.Zubaty followed the American dream: house, kids, business, and he even helped his wife through school.When she graduated, she filed for divorce and got half his stuff and probably most of his dignity.So what does he do?Cut a hole in a trunk of a car and shoot people at gas stations? No.He does what all of us wish we could do under the circumstances and got the heck away from the confused culture we are marinated in every waking hour.He spends his days traveling from country to country, island to island, with not much more than he can carry on his back.
By now you're thinking he's a nut, that he can't cope.Major publishers will not touch his work.He is refused any publicity by the major media conglomerates.So Zubaty is considered not "Disney worthy" and people have attempted to elbow him from the status of, well, being known.
Rich says it best on the book:

"You can't judge a book by lookin' at the cover...
And you sure can't trust reviewers you don't even know!
So flip open to any page and read any sentence.
Yes, NOW!"

Quite a bold statement when most authors just want a flashy cover.So I took his challenge.He's right.You can start on any page, any paragraph, and just read and read.I would classify Zubaty as a social Galileo of our times- he knows the score but people refuse to listen.They refuse to listen because he tells the truth in its dirty, raw, and sobering form.It's too much reality for those who haven't been tested in life.
I spend my days making good money designing tools and parts on the computer.Zubaty calls me a "manhole", a man who spends his days in front of the computer all day, worried about money and toys.And the nut was right.And I like him for his honesty. And I keep reading.
Zubaty goes on to explain that corporations are no longer treating people as people and instead as "units".No new news here, but he keeps going and going, paddling his way further and further from political correctedness, ending up in a place where you are free to think for yourself without worrying about offending anyone.He speaks of a village girl who goes to town every day to try to get a loan approved.She gets her family involved.She lies to her friends.She forges papers.Zubaty hones in with laser-like precision to the observation she's acting like a greedy dimwit who is taken over by American idealism.She wants the money but has no use for it.And then there's Joe the fisherman.
You can decide to not like Zubaty, but I don't think he minds as he's sipping coconut milk or fishing for the families who let him in.Read the book.You'll understand.

Product Description
Are corporations cults? Do they control our behavior, thoughts, information and emotions? Zubaty makes a pretty good case for that. Should the legal status of corporate ?persons? be challenged as a religious violation ? a gross infringement of the supposed boundary between church and state? He makes a pretty good case for that. Have we done a good job of keeping religion out of government but a miserable job of keeping government out of religion? He makes a pretty good case for that. Is Darwinism a science? Or a religion? You?ll get vertigo over his take on that.

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Review of Gynomite: Fearless, Feminist Porn (Paperback)

First of all, the book is both moving and laugh-out loud hysterical.Three of the writers were featured before a poetry slam here in Phoenix and the sample poetry and stories they presented to the audience were unbelivable; the entire room was both captivated and amused.That was just a small sample; the book itself is even better.

Product Description
This is more than just a collection of dirtystories. This is a milestone document from an ongoing movement tochange the world one orgasm at a time.

Full of sexually charged language and imagery, unusual points of view,and subject matter covering new territory or still considered taboo;each piece of writing in this book represents an original, personalapproach to the concept of "Feminist Porn."

Lesbians writing gay male sex... straight chicks writing as hornymen...girly girls get macha, older broads buck wild... turningstereotypes on their heads... giving and taking in equal parts.

From the most subtle erotic gesture to the most extreme expressions offorbidden rage, the authors of these stories spill their inner sluts:butt zits, saggy tits, wiry nipple hair, jellyroll bellies, knifefetishes, and all. Taste the blood and the bliss.

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Review of Blue Moon Rising: Kentucky Women in Transition (Hardcover)

Having the privilege of editing Jennie's book is one of the best experiences of my life. Working with her was a pleasure and I am thankful that our paths crossed in this way.

The stories in Blue Moon Rising are incredible. These are amazing women who have overcome so much. But they are women just like you and me. It takes courage to share your story. It is my hope that all of these women will continue in the direction of their dreams and find serenity in God. I also hope that abused women who read this book will find strength to make the changes in their lives to take care of themselves and their children and that women who have been through similar trials will realize that they are not alone. --Dayna Spear (Williams), editor



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Review of X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking (Hardcover)

It's hard to be brief about reviewing the best recent book on Generation X. Gordinier's book is an update on the adult Xer and his forgotten place between the narcissistic Boomers and the clueless Generation Y--whom Karen McCullough labels as a group with a "much higher self-esteem than their abilities". Gordinier's book bluntly captures the essence of Generation X transitioning from its last coming-of-age moments in the 90s to its entrepreneurial spirit which brought influenced artistic alternative music and movies, the dot-com boom, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Napster, Youtube, and Google.

Gordinier's writing smacks of sarcasm and in-your-face rhetoric, which is both honest and entertaining. His vocabulary and pop allusions are for those of us who are part of his Xer world. If not, see you you later. Gordinier's writing is a brief dip into nostalgic "Cooler King Moments" such as the arrival of Nirvana. It also lambasts the Boomers at Woodstalk '94 with descriptive passages, and recently their immersion into recycled Beatles nostalgia in Las Vegas. Gordinier also clarifies what it means to recognize kitsch--borrowing on the Czech struggles for freedom in the late 80s.

The first half of the book calls to me, as if it were my finally-discovered anthem. It is an instant classic, starting with the author's 1984 job at Laguna Beach selling ice cream and testing the awareness of tourists with indie alternative music. Pure hilarity! There are other anecdotes and moments that also pique the reader's interests, such as the bookend to the Xer's youth: an escape symbolically depicted with a 1999 Volkswagen Cabrio commercial to the tune of "Pink Moon." Gordinier's scene of a simple South Park neighborhood in San Francisco at the height of the dot-com boom is eerie.

However, the second half of the book begins to lag as the author seems to search for answers to his book's thesis. He uses trite examples such as a poetry bus, subsistence gardening, and a self-conscious and frustrating view of the Bush years. His language loses its luster and instead becomes preachy. Gordinier still makes fine observations, but some of them are politcally motivated--such as alluding to Barack Obama as representing the Xer cause (and forgetting that Obama's poetic rhetoric has yet to produce any kind of ideas or practical solutions that appeal to Xers. There is nothing to suggest that he will relate to the self-sufficient spirit of the Xer). Gordinier does provide one more humourous scene in which alternative artist, Moby, encounters a futuristically fried Brittney Spears. It's worth the moment.

Overall: 5/5 stars for the first half and 3/5 stars for the second half. The books is still worthy of 4 1/2 stars for its refreshing observations, its defiant tone and wit, and its dip into nostalgia. And even if my views are not necessarily one with Gordinier's, I give him credit for attempting to provide solutions for the dismal aspects of our society. I'll take that anyday over a politician's poetic nonsense and rhetoric.



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Review of Unfinished Business: The 10 Most Important Issues Women Face TodayWith New Introduction (Paperback)

The book title is deceptive and often the focus veers way off womens issues (or maybe it takes the holistic view that all issues are womens issues).For example the chapter entitled Education is mostly about school vouchers and how each political party feels about those without any attempts to tie this in to the effect on women.If you are looking for different political takes on random issues, then you will be more satisfied than if you were looking for different political takes on womens issues (as the book title might suggest that it is about).It is about social support policies, which maybe because of stereotypes we think of as womens work.

So now it's established that this is more about party policies on social support in general than about women.Each chapter has a version written by Perry and a version written by Malveaux.Each gives their party's take on that issue and drops names of various policies and groups that are pushing those policies.At the end of each chapter is a list of activist organizations for the republican and the democrat sides of that issue.I liked having both takes lined up side by side and having names dropped so that I could maybe have a clue when I see something pop up later.The focus is very time specific, with what policies are in the works right now (in 2002), so the book won't age well.

A distraction for me were the copious typos through out the book.My favorite by far was "welfare deform" - a mispelling and not an ironic misnomer, used in the section on economic safety nets.It's as if a spell checker was run on the book, but an actual person didn't go over it before it was printed.I knew what they meant, but it was still distracting.

Overall, if you aren't into politics at all, then this contains a plethora of jumping off points.If you are more into politics and have researched any of the issues here, then the treatment is probably so brief that you will tend to not get much on that issue - this book is unlikely to change your mind.That said, no one knows that much about ALL issues (do they?), and this is a fast read, so it is worth the time to get that overview and those jumping off points.

Product Description
Women have made a lot of headway in society, but they need to continue to exercise their power and take action, say Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Deborah Perry. In this lively bestseller, they show us how, offering not only a spirited debate but a deeper understanding of the issues that affect our lives and futures, including:

Abortion € Crime € Work and Family € Equal Pay and Benefits € Education € Social Security and Welfare € The Economy € Race Matters € Foreign Policy € The Environment

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Review of Unfinished Business: The 10 Most Important Issues Women Face TodayWith New Introduction (Paperback)

The book title is deceptive and often the focus veers way off womens issues (or maybe it takes the holistic view that all issues are womens issues).For example the chapter entitled Education is mostly about school vouchers and how each political party feels about those without any attempts to tie this in to the effect on women.If you are looking for different political takes on random issues, then you will be more satisfied than if you were looking for different political takes on womens issues (as the book title might suggest that it is about).It is about social support policies, which maybe because of stereotypes we think of as womens work.

So now it's established that this is more about party policies on social support in general than about women.Each chapter has a version written by Perry and a version written by Malveaux.Each gives their party's take on that issue and drops names of various policies and groups that are pushing those policies.At the end of each chapter is a list of activist organizations for the republican and the democrat sides of that issue.I liked having both takes lined up side by side and having names dropped so that I could maybe have a clue when I see something pop up later.The focus is very time specific, with what policies are in the works right now (in 2002), so the book won't age well.

A distraction for me were the copious typos through out the book.My favorite by far was "welfare deform" - a mispelling and not an ironic misnomer, used in the section on economic safety nets.It's as if a spell checker was run on the book, but an actual person didn't go over it before it was printed.I knew what they meant, but it was still distracting.

Overall, if you aren't into politics at all, then this contains a plethora of jumping off points.If you are more into politics and have researched any of the issues here, then the treatment is probably so brief that you will tend to not get much on that issue - this book is unlikely to change your mind.That said, no one knows that much about ALL issues (do they?), and this is a fast read, so it is worth the time to get that overview and those jumping off points.

Product Description
Women have made a lot of headway in society, but they need to continue to exercise their power and take action, say Dr. Julianne Malveaux and Deborah Perry. In this lively bestseller, they show us how, offering not only a spirited debate but a deeper understanding of the issues that affect our lives and futures, including:

Abortion € Crime € Work and Family € Equal Pay and Benefits € Education € Social Security and Welfare € The Economy € Race Matters € Foreign Policy € The Environment

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Review of Males, Nails, Sample Sales: Everything a Woman Must Know to be Smarter, Savvier, Saner, Sooner (Paperback)

This is mandatory reading. NO woman should EVER be allowed to enter into a relationship, take a new job, furnish her home, plan a party, shop for clothes, contemplate a vacation or raise children until she has this hilarious gem on hand.I just ordered a whole pile of them to give to ALL the women in my life -- especially my adult daughters while they're still young enough to avoid their mother's mistakes. I plan to give these books as stocking stuffers, hostess gifts, engagement and bridal shower gifts, and "just because" gifts to any woman with a good sense of humor and a great desire not to screw things up.

Product Description
What your mother, Oprah, and Martha never told you

Let's face it: we live in a complicated world. Lands' End has a swimsuit anxiety zones area on its website; a moisturizer can cost more than a weekend in Paris; they can send a man and a monkey into space, but they still can't find a cure for split ends.

Clearly, we all need essential life skills and operating instructions. But why should you have to learn from hard-won experience when Stephanie Pierson is willing to give you her vast life experience and wisdom (and share some of her more humiliating life lessons)?

This smart, funny, fabulous book will get you everything from a juicier chicken to a less hostile hairdresser. Read it and you will know what not to order from room service (eggs Benedict) to what never goes out of fashion (a crisp white shirt) to what is never in fashion (socks and Birkenstocks worn together). You'll know when a man isn't a keeper (he knows more Sondheim lyrics than you do), how to buy a house (location, location, location), how to assess an Oriental rug (condition, condition, condition), how to get the best price from the wedding caterer (say it's for a funeral), and how to get the dog in a custody battle (keep a dog-walking journal).

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Review of The goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined (Paperback)

This is actually the very first charming Goth book. We have had a few Goth epics in recent years, from my Net-based tome, to Paul Hodkinson's academic study, Gavin Baddeley coming from a Metal perspective, and Dave Thompson rummaging through the eighties. What is unusual here is that Nancy Kilpatrick hasn't any ego-driven agenda, and has actively sought out Goth opinions to decorate each chapter with. 95 Goths answered 125 questions each to form an alternative spine to this work and it makes it a very different book to the rest. Nancy is best known as a Horror writer but she is a Goth, and clearly delighted to be writing the book, as she also wants this book to help others understand Goth.

You get serious contributions on sex/relationships/Fetish/marriage/Goth children/Corporate Goth/Goth homes, Art and Literature (Old and New), and it ends with a chapter on the Future, even if that felt a little skimpy.

Basically, she goes through things that effect Goth life, from clothes to accoutrements, to relationships, religion, cemeteries, architecture, music and all the expected areas, with quotes and photos from her Goths interviews draping pages like curtains, as their comments go down the outer columns to most spreads. Those interviewed within the chapter text tend to be business-related individuals pertinent to the topic in question. So, in the Fashion or Lifestyle sections you have many a Goth contribution, but also meet Morpheus of Siren, R. Hunter Gough of `Gother Than Thou', Fred H. Berger of Propaganda, Terri of Ipso Facto, Natasha of Meltdown, Steven Of Gothic Beauty, Trish & Snooky of Manic Panic, Sonia (Hair Police), AntiSally (Goth Rosary), the Alchemy boys, Batty (Azrael's Accomplice), Mirabai (Tenebrae) Doktor Joy (Pennangalan Dreams), piercer Pierre Black and those lovely X-tra-X people. You can find a proper analyses of Absinthe, then on a similar vein find the weird story of how Michael Marchet finally got Vampire wine onto the market. Out of one area another little bubble will pop, making it a very pleasant read with unexpected dalliances emerging.

The only disappointing part of me was a curious lack ofmusical coverage but Nancy has admitted the music side of thing isn't her strong point. She looked for willing musical contributors and some of what they say is unusual.

Oh Hell, you get Clubs, and zines, net.goth, net habits, comics, gardening, Goth sub-species, and so on. It's a big book, commendably detailed in its travels to the heart of Goth and it is, without doubt, the most naturally jubilant, Goth-friendly, book which has so far been printed.


Product Description
What you don't know about goths could fill a book!

An artistic culture that revels in the Victorian romantic movement, The goth Bible brings to light the traditions and history of all that is goth.The goth culture has been one of the most controversial and maligned in media history. Presented as homicidal, suicidal and socio-pathic, in the national consciousness goths are coupled with everyone from Marilyn Mason to the murderers of Columbine.But this is not who the goths are.The goth Bible will help bridge the understanding between goths and non-goths.

From their historical origins as a Germanic tribe in the sixth century who fought along side the Romans against the Huns to their current incarnation as creatures of the night, The goth Bible presents the most complete and broad perspective of this society, culled from hundreds of interviews with bands, artist, designers, and goths from all walks of life.


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Review of Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Paperback)

One of the central ironies of David Weinberger's new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous", is that a book about classification is bound to suffer from classification problems. Reviewers and bookstore owners are inclined to think of David as a business writer because his previous books - The Cluetrain Manifesto and Small Pieces Loosely Joined - were profoundly useful in helping businesspeople understand what this World Wide Web thing was really all about. But it's a mistake to consider David's new book solely as a business book.

Which isn't to say that reading Everything is Miscellaneous won't help you make a buck in world of Web 2.0. It probably will, as the issues Weinberger explores are core to any business that deals with information and knowledge... which is to say, virtually every industry you can think of. But "Everything is Miscellaneous" is also a philosophy book. It's about the shape of knowledge, and how moving information from paper to the web changes how we organize and how we think. And this means that Weinberger's book crosses from territory like Wikipedia and Flickr into Aristotle and Wittgenstein.

This would be a dangerous path for a lesser author to take, but David grounds his explorations in examples and interviews that are, as Cory Doctorow puts it, wonderfully miscellaneous. We bounce between the lives and ideas of taxonomers past - Linneaus, S.R. Ranganathan, and the wonderfully strange Melvil Dewi - and the librarians and software developers who are making sense of today's digital disorder.

At its heart, the book is about what happens when we liberate knowledge from the world of atoms. In the physical world, we can only organize books on a shelf in one way or another - books can't be in multiple places at once. Frequently we find ourselves reduced to ordering information in arbitrary ways as a result - AAAAA Towing Service gets more business through the phonebook than Mike's Wreckers through the unfairness of alphabetization.

Adding a layer of metadata to the physical world helps somewhat - card catalogs allow us to put multiple pointers to a single physical location so we can file a single book on Military Music under both "Music" and "Military". But card catalogs pale in comparison to the wonders of "third-order" metadata, the sorts of organization we're capable of in a digital age. A book listed by Amazon can be filed in any number of categories. It can be annotated with reader reviews, added to reading lists, enhanced with tags or statistically improbable phrases. The "card" in the card catalog can be larger than the book itself, and the full text of the book serves as metadata, as the book itself is searchable.

Weinberger argues that the fact that we tend to organize data in terms of its physical placement has consequences for how knowledge works. We tend to think in Aristotelian terms - objects are members of a categories, and share the same traits as other members of that category. We can organize these categories into trees: a robin is a bird, which is an animal. We can expect the leaves of trees to share the attributes of their branches, and we expect each leaf to fit onto only one, specific branch.

But that's not knowledge works in a digital age. When I bookmark a [...] it's to my benefit to add many tags to it, both because it makes it easier for me to find it again, and because it helps other people find it as well. Weinberger advises us to "put each leaf on as many branches as possible", building a tree that looks more like a hyperlinked pile of leaves.

This suggestion, along with advice to use everything as a label, to filter only when we need outputs, and to give up the idea that there's a "right way" to order things, serve as a roadmap for how to build tools and services in a digital age. But the magic of Weinberger's book is that this practical advice is also an invitation to explore categorization, language and knowledge itself. If knowledge is a pile of leaves instead of a tree, how does the shape of our knowledge change?

It's questions like this that make "Everything is Miscellaneous" deceptively deep. One moment, we're thinking about how we organize photographs in shoeboxes or on our hard drives, and a moment later we're asking whether we understand "shoebox" in terms of definitions, family resemblances or exemplars. It's a little like drinking a mojito - smooth going down, but deceptively powerful, and slightly staggering when you get up to buy the next round.

I've read the book twice now, and am looking to my third pass through it. Weinberger has done something rare and admirable here - he's written about a world I thought I knew well in a way that makes me realize that there are innumerable depths and implications left to explore.



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