(source: Library Journal, 15/03/2009)
Economics
Altucher, James. The Forever Porfolio: How To Pick Stocks That You Can Hold for the Long Run. Portfolio. 2008. c.256p. ISBN 978-1-59184-211-8. $27.95. BUS
Altucher, founder of the Stockpickr.com social networking web site for investing, shows how to find stocks that should benefit from irresistible multidecade demographic trends. He singles out the Barnes Group, for instance, because its business of producing parts for railroads should be positively impacted by rail growth. Altucher also says individuals should seek out and emulate the investments made by successful professionals and piggyback onto their research. If Warren Buffett has been buying stock in railroads like Burlington Northern, then, says Altucher, so should you. The irreverent Altucher doesn’t mind poking holes in cherished beliefs, as when he says he would rather give his children money to start successful businesses than spend it on college, which might not be economically beneficial. He also recounts some of the lessons he learned from his investing and business successes and, most insightfully, his failures. All in all, Altucher makes good investing and life points that would benefit most readers, especially young professionals.—Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
Goleman, Daniel. Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. Doubleday. Apr. 2009. c.275p. index. ISBN 978-0-385-52782-8. $26. BUS
Former New York Times columnist Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) contends that to address environmental challenges, we must rethink our industrial legacy, reform manufacturing and commerce, and improve our collective ecological footprint. In essence, he asserts that collective consumerism is central to environmental action. He discusses the process of life-cycle analysis to determine a product’s environmental impact but maintains it does not go far enough. He persuasively argues that radical transparency—which includes environmental, social, biological, and worker safety and health impacts—will better enable consumers to make decisions based on what matters most to them. Goleman’s discussion of individual shopping habits is particularly interesting, including the need to be aware of superficial service and product claims—”greenwashing.” Although individual decisions are important, he asserts that group action and institutions can create market pressure to shift to sustainable practices and that digital tools can play an effective role in shaping collective awareness and creating coordinated action. Recommended for readers interested in business or environmental issues. [For more on business and the environment, see Robert Eagan's collection development article, "The Green Capitalist," LJ 2/1/09, p. 37-39.—Ed.]—Robin K. Dillow, Rotary International, Lincolnwood, IL
Political Science
Majid, Anouar. We Are All Moors: Ending Centuries of Crusades Against Muslims and Other Minorities. Univ. of Minnesota. Apr. 2009. c.240p. index. ISBN 978-0-8166-6079-7. $24.95. INT AFFAIRS
Majid, an unorthodox professor of English (Univ. of New England; A Call for Heresy) has now written an alternative history of European xenophobia that will stimulate and provoke readers across the political spectrum. The idea that Jews and Muslims share in the indignity of anti-Semitism has been expounded before—Majid relies on works by Gil Anidjar (e.g., The Jew, The Arab) as well as Allan Harris Cutler and Helen E. Cutler’s The Jew as Ally of the Muslim: Medieval Roots of Anti-Semitism, but Majid further broadens the image of the “Moor” to a general metaphor of presumed racial inferiority and troublesome incompatibility. Nimbly stringing together a variety of sources, symbolic associations, and historical parallels, Majid proposes that current American and European anti-immigrant campaigns are culturally descended from medieval Christian crusades against the dark-skinned, non-Christian, culturally perverse “Moor.” This work will generate criticism and conversation; it will be taken up by intellectual reading clubs as well as graduate seminars and should be made available to all academic audiences as well as informed lay readers.—Lisa Klopfer, Eastern Michigan Univ., Ypsilanti
Peters, Gretchen. Seeds of Terror: Heroin and the Financing of the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s Master Plans. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. May 2009. c.320p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-312-37927-8. $25.95. INT AFFAIRS
Peters, a former AP and ABC News journalist, presents a meticulous firsthand account of her experiences investigating the role of heroin production and distribution in Afghanistan and the surrounding countries and the reluctance of the U.S. government to address the issue. Covering key players, such as Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and Benazir Bhutto, Peters highlights this lesser-known Afghani product of war and government instability, one that is hard to track and harder to stop. Hers is a tale of how money from opium brought the Taliban back from the brink of extinction and how their joining with al Qaeda has turned Afghanistan into “the world’s first fully fledged narco-terror state.” Her detailed notes and bibliography assist in referencing information; however, general readers would have been better served by the inclusion of maps and a glossary of names/places/acronyms. Recommended for informed audiences. (Photographs not seen.)—Jenny Seftas, Southwest Florida Coll., Fort Myers, FL
Social Sciences
Coles, Roberta L. The Best Kept Secret: Single Black Fathers. Rowman & Littlefield. Mar. 2009. c.192p. index. ISBN 978-0-7425-6425-1. $34.95. SOC SCI
Studies of black fatherhood have focused largely on the absence of or problems with black fathers, overlooking those fathers who, in fact, take sole care of their children. Ironically, then, absent black fathers are present everywhere, in the literature and popular consciousness, while present black fathers are effectively absent, writes Coles. Coles (social & cultural sciences, Marquette Univ.), an expert on families and race, makes a major contribution to the literature on single black custodial fathers. Her study is exploratory and descriptive, offering an examination of the meaning of fatherhood held by the 20 single black custodial fathers she interviewed. Although her findings cannot be generalized (her study does not claim to be representative), her work offers a rich picture of fatherhood embodied by the fathers she interviewed. She discusses themes such as possible differences between raising daughters and sons, getting parenting advice, and talking about racial discrimination with one’s children. An important book that gets this best-kept secret out in the open.—Karen Okamoto, John Jay Coll. Lib., NY
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. Twelve: Hachette. Apr. 2009. c.432p. bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-446-54693-5. $26.99. SOC SCI
The tenth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy has brought several new books with new information about the school shootings. Cullen, a journalist who was there to cover the story on April 20, 1999, has been researching this event ever since and offers eyewitness testimony, survivor interviews, writings from both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and police reports. (He documents his sources at the end of his text.) Any book about this tragedy can be hard to read, and Cullen’s detailed account of the gruesome killings and suicides is no exception. Cullen’s style can also make the book hard going, as he skips back and forth through time and among different people involved in the event and occasionally repeats himself. In the end, however, Cullen clarifies a lot of misconceptions that evolved soon after the tragedy and provides new insights into why it occurred, which makes the book definitely worth reading despite the disjointed narrative.—Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
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