nonfiction

“A useful, nuts-and-bolts handbook for concerned parents.”
from talking back to facebook
the author that she was the child of an incestuous relationship.
The experience was so distressing that Slaton became
active in KinQuest, a support group for adoptees that helps
them reconnect with their birth families. The author also
found her father, and her involvement in KinQuest set her
on a new career path as an investigator.
A heartwarming account, still relevant even though
out-of-wedlock birth is no longer stigmatized and the concept
of family has broadened.
TALKING BACK
TO FACEBOOK
A Common Sense
Guide to Raising Kids
in the Digital Age
Steyer, James P.
Scribner (224 pp.)
$15.00 paperback | May 8, 2012
978-1-4516-5734-0
Common Sense Media founder Steyer
(The Other Parent: The Inside Story of the
Media’s Effect on Our Children, 2002) addresses common concerns
of many parents in managing the online lives of their children.
Keeping track of the privacy and security aspects of socialmedia
accounts can feel like a shell game for even the most
astute Internet user. This seems especially true with regard to
Facebook, whose enormous membership of 800 million users,
coupled with their erratic shifting of privacy settings, has
changed Mark Zuckerberg’s college-dorm project into a potentially
dangerous destination for millions of teenagers. Computer
and Internet education in elementary schools has given
young people a formidable working knowledge of technology
that often outpaces that of their parents—and of their own ability
to judge the safety of what personal information they put on
the Internet. Steyer is well positioned to write cogently on this
subject. As a parent and founder of an organization working to
empower Internet consumers to protect themselves, he brings
a pragmatic approach to managing adolescent Internet activity.
Recognizing the likely futility of “banning the Internet” for
today’s kids, the author instead focuses on educating parents
about “R.A.P.”—relationships, attention/addiction problems
and privacy—with case-study examples and concrete suggestions
on appropriate guidelines to set for children organized by
age groups. The approach includes recognizing and building on
the positive aspects of social media, which will help minimize
the negative aspects. Some of Steyer’s recommendations are
bigger-picture suggestions—e.g., challenging elected officials
to take a serious look at updating the nation’s privacy laws.
A useful, nuts-and-bolts handbook for concerned parents.
THE LAST HUNGER SEASON
A Year in an African
Farm Community
on the Brink of Change
Thurow, Roger
PublicAffairs (320 pp.)
$26.99 | May 29, 2012
978-1-61039-067-5
Toiling one step ahead of famine: a
firsthand chronicle of a year in the life of
small farmers in Kenya.
As a senior fellow at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs,
Thurow (co-author, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age
of Plenty, 2009) traveled to Kenya at the invitation of the American
social enterprise One Acre Fund in order to help often-neglected
small farmers gain access to the technology and knowledge that
would allow them to avoid the famines that have typically plagued
the African regions. Rural Africa, long a “nightmarish landscape of
neglect,” underutilized and undercultivated, might offer the hope
of feeding the burgeoning future population of the world—but
only if its resources can be ecologically harnessed and its small
farmers trained to use the land wisely, according to the Obama
Administration’s Feed the Future initiative, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and other organizations. Under the auspices of
One Acre, Thurow worked with cooperatives in Lutacho, in the
same Lugulu Hills of western Kenya made famous by Isak Dinesen’s
Out of Africa. Of the 100 or so farmers in the area (overall, One
Acre worked with 50,000 farmers in western Kenya and Rwanda),
more than two-thirds were women who had to put aside traditional
farming methods and learn the “Obama method,” as the One Acre
field officers called it, capitalizing on the American president’s
family ties to the region. As they trusted the new hybrid seeds of
maize and learned how to weed, use fertilizer, buy on credit and sell
on the commodities market, farmers like Leonida and Rasoa were
seeing greater yields and learning how to plan for times of scarcity.
Thurow’s account is a seasonal diary, moving from the dry season at
the New Year through the planting; he recounts the wait for rains
and the harvest and the successes and failures of a handful of tenacious
family farmers.
A business-based approach that redefines the notion of
food aid to Africa.
MY TWO MOMS
Lessons of Love, Strength,
and What Makes a Family
Wahls, Zach with Littlefield, Bruce
Gotham Books (304 pp.)
$26.00 | May 1, 2012
978-1-592-40713-2
With the assistance of Littlefield (coauthor:
The Truth Advantage: The 7 Keys
to a Happy and Fulfilling Life, 2011, etc.),
Wahls writes about growing up as the son
of gay parents in the heartland.
In January 2011, the author, then a student at the University
of Iowa, testified before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee
as they considered a state constitutional amendment to ban
same-sex marriage. In a short speech, Wahls talked about being
raised by two lesbians and how his childhood was no different
than those of children raised by heterosexual couples. The
speech was aimed at dismantling the myth that kids are damaged
by having gay parents, and it was effective: The YouTube
video of the speech was viewed more than 18 million times,
and Wahls appeared on national TV talk shows, including The
Ellen DeGeneres Show. Here the author expands on his speech,
discussing the values that his parents helped to instill in him,
naming chapters after aspects of the Boy Scout law: “Trustworthy,”
“Courteous,” “Reverent.” (Wahls takes pride in his
scouting experience, repeatedly mentioning that he is an Eagle
Scout, but he disagrees with the Boy Scouts of America’s official
policy banning gays from leadership positions.) Some of the
author’s stories are quite moving—particularly those addressing
his mother Terry’s multiple sclerosis—but many of Wahls’
epiphanies are unsurprising: “We are more alike than we are different”;
“hate has no hope of ever erasing hate”; etc. The book
works best when there’s more levity amidst the earnestness, as
when the author humorously answers questions he’s asked most
frequently (e.g., “Which one of your moms is the man”). Few
minds will be changed by this book—it seems unlikely that a
homophobe would read something titled My Two Moms—but
Wahls’ heart is in the right place.
A sincere first effort that aims to chip away at stereotypes
surrounding same-sex parents.
WAGING WAR ON
THE AUTISTIC CHILD
The Arizona 5 and
the Legacy of Baron
von Munchausen
Wakefield, Andrew J.
Skyhorse Publishing (272 pp.)
$26.95 | Jun. 1, 2012
978-1-61608-614-5
Wakefield (Callous Disregard: Autisms
and Vaccines: The Truth Behind a Tragedy,
2010), a British gastroenterologist who was stricken from the
British medical register in 2010, defends himself against the
charges brought against him.
In 1998, the author published a research study that claimed to
have established a link between the measles, mumps and rubella
vaccination (MMR) and gastrointestinal disease and autism spectrum
disorder. Accused of falsifying the data, he was subsequently
barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. He begins this book
with a spirited attack against the Sunday Times reporter, Brian Deer,
who first exposed him in a series of articles. Wakefield brought an
unsuccessful libel suit against the journalist, but he continues his
attack on Deer, Times publisher Rupert Murdoch and the pharmaceutical
companies that produce vaccines. The ostensible occasion
for this sequel to his 2011 book on the same subject is a dispute
between Arizona parents and child-welfare authorities. The author
writes in defense of the parents, who were accused of child abuse
when they repeatedly sought medical services at Phoenix Children’s
Hospital for their five children. The parents claimed that
their children were suffering from developmental disabilities and
gastrointestinal problems that resulted from vaccinations they had
received. Wakefield writes that the doctors who treated the children,
“supported by hospital psychologists, bureaucrats, and litigators…believed
that the children were healthy but abused,” and
that the parents were seeking attention—the so-called “Munchausen
Syndrome by Proxy.” The parents were accused of fabricating
information and refusing to have their children properly vaccinated,
and the children were temporarily removed by Arizona
child-welfare authorities to foster care.
The jury is still out on the causes and best treatment of
autism spectrum disorder, but readers will find it difficult
to disentangle the author’s efforts at self-rehabilitation
from his contentions that this family was treated unjustly.
THE HARM IN HATE SPEECH
Waldron, Jeremy
Harvard Univ. (264 pp.)
$26.95 | May 23, 2012
978-0-674-06589-5
A vigorously argued, intelligent challenge
to the “liberal bravado” of U.S. First
Amendment scholars.
In an eloquent reply to free-speech
advocates, Waldron (New York University
School of Law; Torture, Terror, and
Trade-Offs: Philosophy for the White House, 2010, etc.) moves step
by step in building the argument as to why hate-speech laws are
good for a well-ordered society. In many enlightened democracies
in Europe, as well as in Canada, the use of threatening,
abusive speech or behavior to stir up racial hatred is prohibited
by law. Americans, on the other hand, are vociferously more
guarded about the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court
has opposed regulation on free speech only since 1931, when
it struck down a California law forbidding the display of a red
flag as an oppositional symbol. Subsequently, the government,
Christian Church and public officials were deemed sufficiently
strong enough not to need regulation of attacks on them, while
even the Ku Klux Klan could indulge in hate speech “unless
it is calculated to incite or likely to produce imminent lawless
action.” But racial and ethnic minorities are vulnerable, Waldron
writes, and a liberal democracy’s “assurance” of their protection
from attack and denigration are not secure when hate
speech is allowed free rein, such as in the time of public hysteria
after 9/11. The author argues that the damage caused by hate
speech is like an “environmental threat to social peace, a sort
of slow-acting poison” that robs the intended victims of their
dignity and reputation in society. Waldron’s analogy between
hate speech and pornography—in terms of the defamation of
women—is particularly noteworthy. He responds carefully to
the notion of free speech as a necessary part of democracy’s
836 | 15 april 2012 | nonfiction | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | nonfiction | 15 april 2012 | 837