books @ cc.

And Other Tales from the American Underground
by Eric Schlosser (2003)

Three essays on different aspects of American underground — marijuana trade (Reefer Madness), migrant labourers (In the Strawberry Fields) and porn industry (An Empire of the Obscene) — offering general, if rather superficial and unsatisfying, view of ‘illicit’ industry.

What the All-American Meal is Doing to the World
by Eric Schlosser (2001)

A well-researched and very readable example of popular journalism on a topic that has attracted increasing concerns and antagonism. By now an average person would at least have a vague rancour for its nutritionally-empty, junk calories if not for its “McAmericanism”. But what really lurks behind those buns, the high school kids behind the counters, the slaughterhouse, the laboratories that manufacture the globally uniform smell of those “barbecued meat patty”? This book tells the history of fast-food industry and its impacts on social and cultural landscape.

by Umar Kayam (2005)

A selection of Kayam’s non-academic, non-specialised writings (mostly essays and reportage) from 1969 to 1999, some short, some spanning a few pages, published in one book posthumously. Written in colloquial style with plenty of flippant wisecracks (at the same time caustic criticism), Kayam writes on numerous subjects, from air-conditioned taxis, TIM, art his visit to Russia, pilgrimage to Mecca, film, literature, art, nepotism, and many more.

Chronicle of the Future
by Svetlana Alexievich (1997)

( New version from the Dalkey Archive Press available )

“This is not a book about Chernobyl, but about the world of Chernobyl,” so Alexievich wrote, and indeed, instead of writing about what happened, she compiled a wide range of oral, first-hand testimony, accounts, sometimes occasional rant and condemnations from broad range of people involved and/or affected by Chernobyl. Plenty of tongue-in-cheek resignations in the face of something big and unknown gone wrong. Alexievich is mostly invisible—she allows everyone to speak for themselves—although a certain amount of editing has definitely been done. Alexievich realises that “suffering is our refuge”, that, as one of her interviewee said, people who haven’t suffered hungered for stories about suffering— “cheap philosophy”.

Why the Truth Doesn’t Always Come Out When the UN Goes In
by Linda Polman (1997)

( Levi? I think not. )

With its common horrifying-slash-absurd images of “humanitarian” movements gone wrong (as always), you get the feeling of someone who’s only dipped her toe on the beach but saying that she’s wrestled with sharks in the ocean. Her main point, i.e. that “the UN” is not an independent, all-powerful entity but one whose goals, fundings and decisions are determined by Member States (often heavily slanted to the Fabulous Fifteen (or Five)), seems like something any considerably well-read, well-informed (or just critical) person should know that I wonder how she could still get bewildered by it, let alone writing gratuitous sob stories about feeding malnourished and wounded victimes in Rwanda while humming “We are the world.”