Nuture Shock: New Thinking About Children
Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman, 2009
Twelve Books
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446504133


Summary
In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel? Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter? Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated? If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie? What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?

NurtureShock is a groundbreaking collaboration between award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. They argue that when it comes to children, we've mistaken good intentions for good ideas. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, they demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring—because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

Nothing like a parenting manual, the authors' work is an insightful exploration of themes and issues that transcend children's (and adults) lives. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bios 
• Name—Po Bronson
• Birth—March 14, 1964
• Where—Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., San Francisco
   State University
• Currently—lives in San Francisco, California

Po Bronson is the rare writer that makes no claims to having an extraordinary or controversial history. On his web site, he states, "I'm a regular guy. I don't have much of a particularly unusual story." While some may assume such a description might not be the makings of a person with any stories worth telling, it actually provides the perfect background for a writer such as Bronson. He has made it his mission to relate the stories of his fellow everyday people, and with books such as What Should I Do With My Life? and Why Do I Love These People?, he has proved that ordinary people can lead extraordinary lives.

A prolific writer with a talent well-suited for a variety of genres, Bronson started out dabbling in screenplays, op-eds, TV and radio scripts, performance monologues, and literary reviews, and his first two books were satirical novels. Bombardiers (1995) was a sort of Catch 22 set in the bond-trading business; The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest: A Silicon Valley Novel, Vol. 4 (1997) a tale about the West Coast tech boom of the late 1990's. With his third book, The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other Tales of Silicon Valley, he turned his focus away from fiction and toward the true stories of the tech-heads he encountered while working as a writer in Silicon Valley. Hailed by the Village Voice Literary Supplement upon its publication as "the most complete and empathetic portrait of the Valley so far," the breakout bestseller established Bronson as the first author to truly capture the spirit of the high-tech heyday

In writing What Should I Do With My Life? (2003), Bronson posed that very question to a variety of regular folks all around the globe. The result: a rich and fascinating compendium of inspirational, witty, and insightful personal stories about finding one's direction, vocational and otherwise. The book was a tremendous success, and Bronson had clearly found his niche. Why Do I Love These People? followed in late 2005. This time around, Bronson questioned a multitude of people about illness, resolving familial conflicts, infidelity, prejudice, money problems, abuse, death, and other provocative issues, once again illustrating that one need not be a celebrity to lead a life worth reading about. Among others, Bronson encounters a Southern Baptist in the Ozarks who tracks down the teenage son he had abandoned at birth, a woman who fought for her life and the life of her children while trapped underwater in a Texas river, and a Turkish Muslim who wed a U.S. naval officer—a union resulting in death threats from her own father.

Bronson characterizes his recent books as "social documentaries," but he doesn't rule out returning to the other genres he's loved. He does, however, credit his recent work with one important feature: "I used to write novels, and maybe I will again one day," he told BN.com in an audio interview, "but I have found that writing these social documentaries is good for me as a person." (From Barnes & Noble.)

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• Name—Ashley Merryman
• Education—B.F.A., University of Southern California; J.D.,   Georgetown University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California

Ashley Merryman is a writer and attorney living in Los Angeles. She previously served in the Clinton Administration in various positions, including as a speechwriter / researcher to then Vice-President Al Gore.

Her play, Metanoia, has had staged readings in Los Angeles and Chicago, while her other writings have appeared in the Washington Post and the National Catholic Reporter. She has a JD from Georgetown, a BFA from the University of Southern California, and a Certificate in Irish Studies from Queen’s University, Northern Ireland. In addition to NurtureShock, Ashley has been working with Bronson Po on pieces for Time magazine and the Guardian. (From the author's blog.)

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Book Reviews
The authors throw open the doors on this research to create a book that is not only groundbreaking but compelling as well. Even if you don't have children, or your kids are grown, you should find the revelations about how the brain works and the rigors and frustrations of the scientific process captivating.... We see [Bronson and Merryman] doggedly digging for answers to confounding questions.... Bronson, with his gentle, conversational style, lays out every conundrum clearly, and shows all the steps the researchers took to ensure accurate results, including tweaking their testing methods when results were inconclusive or seemed flawed. In a sense, it's "Science for Dummies" —explaining cutting-edge research to a lay readership.... Riveting.
San Francisco Chronicle

Engaging.... It's not didactic—more of a revelatory journey.... Bronson relays some startling scientific findings.... Nobody's ever done this before in a systematic way.... Using the simple technique of speaking to researchers and observing them at work, Bronson and Merryman avoid the smugness common to the parenting oeuvre, which is often rather self-satisfied and/or guilt-inducing. This book's great value is to show that much of what we take to be the norms of parenting—i.e. what's good for children—is actually non-scientific and based on our own adult social anxieties.... This is a funny, clever, sensible book. Every parent should read it.
Financial Times

The central premise of this book by Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) and Merryman, a Washington Post journalist, is that many of modern society's most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked. Two errant assumptions are responsible for current distorted child-rearing habits, dysfunctional school programs and wrongheaded social policies: first, things work in children the same way they work in adults and, second, positive traits necessarily oppose and ward off negative behavior. These myths, and others, are addressed in 10 provocative chapters that cover such issues as the inverse power of praise (effort counts more than results); why insufficient sleep adversely affects kids' capacity to learn; why white parents don't talk about race; why kids lie; that evaluation methods for “giftedness” and accompanying programs don't work; why siblings really fight (to get closer). Grownups who trust in “old-fashioned” common-sense child-rearing—the definitely un-PC variety, with no negotiation or parent-child equality—will have less patience for this book than those who fear they lack innate parenting instincts. The chatty reportage and plentiful anecdotes belie the thorough research backing up numerous cited case studies, experts' findings and examination of successful progressive programs at work in schools.
Publishers Weekly

Why are kids today so fat? Too much TV and Internet surfing, right? Nope. What’s better for kids—watching Power Rangers or Clifford the Big Red Dog? (It’s not what you think.) Prepare to be slack-jawed as Bronson (What Should I Do With My Life?) and Merryman excavate astonishing research that reveals why our parenting strategies have backfired: why smart kids are underperforming, why Baby Einstein watchers speak fewer words than their peers, and why kindergarteners in the gifted program are no smarter than others. Chapters address sibling relations, self-control, sleep effects, and other relevant topics. The book presents a panoramic view of the latest research and is further distinguished by pragmatic prose that avoids alarmism and sanctimony. Verdict: This tour de force is one of the best parenting psychology books in years and will likely be seismic in influence. —Julianne J. Smith, Ypsilanti Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal

A provocative collection of essays popularizing recent research that challenges conventional wisdom about raising children. An award-winning article, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids," which advised parents that telling children they are smart is counterproductive, prompted journalists Bronson (Why Do I Love These People?: Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families, 2005, etc.) and Merryman to dig further into the science of child development. Here they ably explore a range of subjects of interest to parents: adolescents' sleep needs and the effects of sleep deprivation, children's attitudes toward skin color and race, why children lie, the dangers of using a single intelligence test at an early age to determine giftedness, how interactions with other children affect relationships with siblings, the positive effects of marital conflict, how self-control can be taught, the effects of different types of TV programs on children's behavior and the development of language in young children. Their findings are often surprising. For example, in schools with greater racial diversity, the odds that a child will have a friend of a different race decrease; listening to "baby DVDs" does not increase an infant's rate of word acquisition; children with inconsistent and permissive fathers are nearly as aggressive in school as children of distant and disengaged fathers. Bronson and Merryman call attention to what they see as two basic errors in thinking about children. The first is the fallacy of similar effect—the assumption that what is true for adults is also true for children. The second—the fallacy of the good/bad dichotomy—is the assumption that a trait or factor is either good or bad, when in factit may be both (e.g., skill at lying may be a sign of intelligence, and empathy may become a tool of aggression.) The authors also provide helpful notes for each chapter and an extensive bibliography. A skilled, accessible presentation of scientific research in layman's language.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for NutureShock:

1. What is the overall premise of Bronson and Merryman's book? What do you think sets NurtureShock apart from other parenting advice books on the market?

2. In his introduction, how does Bronson compare the 1950's paint-by-number hobby with parenting-by-the-book?

3. How does Bronson define the innate maternal instinct? Does he suggest instinct is a dependable guide for child rearing, or not?

4. Given your discussion of Question #3, does Bronson contradict himself at the end of his introduction when he says that, given all the scientific findings, "the new thinking about children felt self-evident and logical, even obvious.... It felt entirely natural, a restoration of common sense"?

5. Chapter 1 discusses the value and consequences of praising your child. How do Bronson and Merryman suggest praising can backfire?

6. Chapter 2 talks about the prevelance of sleep deprivation in the current generation of children and adolescents. What do the authors suggest are the consequences of lack of sleep?

7. Chapter 3 offers some startling insights into racial issues regarding children. What are the authors' findings about how to talk about race with children...and about diversity in our schools?

8. Chapter 4 addresses truth and lying. What does the research indicate about encouraging children to be truthful?

9. Chapter 5 undermines the validity of testing results for giftedness and intelligence. What surprised you the most about this chapter?

10. Chapter 6 challenges the ideas that siblings provide one another a path to healthy socialization. What does scientific evidence indicate about sibling rivalry and only children?

11. Chapter 7 focuses on teen rebellion. How do the authors view teenage arguing?

12. Chapter 8 talks about teaching children self-control. What do studies suggest about this area?

13. Chapter 9 is centered on antisocial behavior? What was surprising—or not—in their findings. Who, does it turn out, does the bullying, and who does not? What happens when parents try to intervene and teach their children not to bully? What are the options for children—to have friends or to be picked on? Is there another option?

14. Chapter 10 revolved around language acquisition. What points do the authors make about jump-starting your child to speak early?

15. Which findings in the book most surprised you? Which seemed most counter-intuitive or challenged the ways in which you have always thought about child-rearing?

16. Were there findings in the book that confirmed some of you prior understandings about children?

17. Some criticism of this book has centered on the fact that it points out problems but offers little guidance? Do you agree...and if so, in which areas would you have appreciated more advice. If you disagree with that statement...why?

18. Given the plethora of child-rearing advice books, should this particular book be taken seriously by parents and educators? Why or why not?

19. If you do consider NurtureShock a serious book, what would need to change in your approach to child-rearing and/or education? How can you best maximize attempts to achieve effective learning, better socialization, and more confident children?

20. On the other hand, what do you feel you are doing correctly?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Kabul Beauty School
Deborah Rodriguez, 2007
Random House
275 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976731


Summary
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills—as doctors, nurses, and therapists—seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.

With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup.

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style.

With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom. (From the publisher

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Author Bio 
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Holland, Michigan, USA
• Currently—lives in Kabul, Afghanistan

Deborah Rodriguez has been as a hairdresser since 1979, except for one brief stint when she worked as a corrections officer in her hometown of Holland, Michigan. She currently directs the Kabul Beauty School, the first modern beauty academy and training salon in Afghanistan. Rodriguez also owns the Oasis Salon and the Cabul Coffee House. She lives in Kabul with her Afghan husband. (From the publisher.)

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Book Reviews 
When Deborah Rodriguez, an American hairdresser, decided to contribute to Afghan women's emancipation by establishing a beauty school in Kabul, her project exposed the constraints of conservative tradition and male-ruled culture that still trap many Afghan girls and women into lives of suffering and injustice.... Rodriguez also takes a personal plunge into the minefield of Afghan romance by marrying a man she meets there. The subplot of that tempestuous bicultural relationship is revealing, but it also has a self-indulgently confessional quality. In contrast, her story of the beauty school and the Afghan women who found refuge there is an important testimonial to the stubborn misogyny of a country many earnest Westerners are trying so hard to change.
Pamela Constable - Washington Post's Book World

(Starred review.) A terrific opening chapter—colorful, suspenseful, funny—ushers readers into the curious closed world of Afghan women. A wedding is about to take place, arranged, of course, but there is a potentially dire secret—the bride is not technically a virgin. How Rodriguez, an admirably resourceful and dynamic woman, set to marry a nice Afghan man, solves this problem makes a great story, embellished as it is with all the traditional wedding preparations. Rodriguez went to Afghanistan in 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban, volunteering as a nurse's aide, but soon found that her skills as a trained hairdresser were far more in demand, both for the Western workers and, as word got out, Afghans. On a trip back to the U.S., she persuaded companies in the beauty industry to donate 10,000 boxes of products and supplies to ship to Kabul, and instantly she started a training school. Political problems ensued ("too much laughing within the school"), financial problems, cultural misunderstandings and finally the government closed the school and salon—though the reader will suspect that the endlessly ingenious Rodriguez, using her book as a wedge against authority, will triumph in the end. This witty and insightful (if light) memoir will be perfect for women's reading groups and daytime talk shows.
Publishers Weekly

In 2002, just months after the Taliban had been driven out of Afghanistan, Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Holland, MI, joined a small nongovernmental aid organization on a mission to the war-torn nation. That visit changed her life. In Kabul, she chronicles her efforts to help establish the country's first modern beauty school and training salon; along with music and kite-flying, hairdressing had been banned under the previous regime. This memoir offers a glimpse into a world Westerners seldom see–life behind the veil. Rodriguez was entranced with the delightful personalities that emerged when her students removed their burqas behind closed doors, but her book is also a tale of empowerment–both for her and the women. In a city with no mail service, she went door-to-door to recruit students from clandestine beauty shops, and there were constant efforts to shut her down. She had to convince Afghan men to work side by side with her to unpack cartons of supplies donated from the U.S. The students, however, are the heroines of this memoir. Women denied education and seldom allowed to leave their homes found they were able to support themselves and their families. Rodriguez's experiences will delight readers as she recounts such tales as two friends acting as parents and negotiating a dowry for her marriage to an Afghan man or her students puzzling over a donation of a carton of thongs. Most of all, they will share her admiration for Afghan women's survival and triumph in chaotic times. –Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Library Journal

Riveting from the start, Rodriguez's account tells the story of one Michigan woman's quest to help women in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban the best way she knows how: by opening a beauty school.... [U]nderneath the culture clash is genuine care, respect, and juicy storytelling. —Emily Cook
Booklist

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Discussion Questions 
1. We so often think of ourselves as more socially advanced than Middle Eastern nations. What does it say about this assumption that the author was treated by a preacher husband in the US the same way that Nahhida, wife of a Taliban member, is treated in Afghanistan?

2. Did Debbie take a chance of repeating her abusive history by marrying a relatively unknown man from a culture with a reputation for mistreating women?

3. Were you shocked when she revealed that her husband had another wife?

4. Why do you think Debbie was so emotional upon meeting Sam’s father? Would you have been eager to meet him or preferred not to? Were you surprised at his reaction?

5. As a mother of two, was Debbie irresponsible in taking risks like crossing the Khyber pass and confronting her neighbors? Should she have gone to Afghanistan at all, knowing the conditions in the country?

6. Debbie’s “bad” neighbors were potentially dangerous. What would you have done in her situation? How would the ineffectiveness of the local police make you feel?

7. Was it foolish for Debbie to continue running the beauty school in the face of government interference and hostility?

8. Debbie goes to Afghanistan in order to change the lives of women there and give them greater power in their personal lives, a mission that she has fulfilled for many women. How have these women changed her?

9. Does the example of a strong self-sufficient woman Debbie sets for the Afghan women provide them with helpful inspiration or does it set a dangerous precedent, encouraging them to model behaviors and aspirations that might be dangerous to them in their environment?

10. Would you have let a known Taliban member, and opium addict at that, stay under your roof in order to help his wife? How dangerous do you think this decision really was?

11. Why do you think Hama was unable to follow through and accept the generous offer of a place to live and a new life in the US?

12. How would you have reacted if your son offered to marry Hama? Would you have encouraged him? Argued against it?

13. How do you think American women are similar to and, at the same time, different from the Afghan women Debbie befriended and works with?

14. Did it surprise you to read about some of the frank discussions and depictions of sex among the Afghan women at the beauty salon and the wedding that Debbie attended?

15. Do you think it was wise for Debbie to help Roshanna escape detection as a non-virgin on her wedding night? Would you have chosen to interfere? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
Paul Theroux, 2002
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
496 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780618446872


Summary
In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.

Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—April 10, 1941
• Where—Medford, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—University of Massachusetts
• Awards—James Tait Black Memorial Prize
• Currently—Hawaii and Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work is, perhaps, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), a travelogue about a trip he made by train from Great Britain through Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, through South Asia, then South-East Asia, up through East Asia, as far east as Japan, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. Theroux has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast.

Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the son of Catholic parents, a French-Canadian father and an Italian mother. After he finished his university education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi from 1963 to 1965. While there, he helped a political opponent of Hastings Banda escape to Uganda, for which he was expelled from Malawi and thrown out of the Peace Corps. He then moved to Uganda to teach at Makerere University, where he wrote for the magazine Transition (including the article "Nkrumah the Leninist Czar.")

While at Makerere, Theroux began his three-decade friendship with novelist V. S. Naipaul, then a visiting scholar at the university. During his time in Uganda, an angry mob at a demonstration threatened to overturn the car in which his pregnant wife was riding. This incident may have contributed to his decision to leave Africa. He moved again to Singapore. After two years of teaching at the University of Singapore, he settled in England, first in Dorset, and then in south London with his wife and two young children.

His first novel, Waldo, was published during his time in Uganda and was moderately successful. He published several more novels over the next few years, including Fong and the Indians and Jungle Lovers. On his return to Malawi many years later, he found that this latter novel, which was set in that country, was still banned, a story told in his book Dark Star Safari.

He had already moved to London, in 1972, before setting off on his epic journey by train from Great Britain to Japan and back again. His account of this journey was published as The Great Railway Bazaar, his first major success as a travel writer, and which has since become a classic in the genre. He has since written a number of other travel books, including descriptions of traveling by train from Boston to Argentina (The Old Patagonian Express), walking around the United Kingdom (the poorly-received The Kingdom By The Sea), kayaking in the South Pacific (The Happy Isles Of Oceania), visiting China (Riding the Iron Rooster), and traveling from Cairo to Cape Town (Dark Star Safari).

As a travel writer he is noted for his rich descriptions of people and places, laced with a heavy streak of irony, or even misanthropy. Other non-fiction by Theroux includes Sir Vidia's Shadow, an account of his personal and professional friendship with Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul that ended abruptly after thirty years.

Theroux currently resides in Hawaii and Cape Cod, Ma., U.S.A. He is currently married to Sheila Donnelly (since November 18, 1975). Previously, he was married to Anne Castle. He has two sons with his first wife—Marcel Theroux and Louis Theroux —both of whom are writers and television presenters. In his books, Theroux alludes to his ability to speak Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, Chichewa, and Swahili.

Extras
• By including versions of himself, his family, and acquaintances in some of his fiction, Theroux has occasionally disconcerted his readers. "A. Burgess, Slightly Foxed: Fact and Fiction", a story originally published in The New Yorker magazine (August 7, 1995), describes a dinner at the narrator's home with author Anthony Burgess and a book-hoarding philistine lawyer who nags the narrator for an introduction to the great writer. “Burgess” arrives drunk and cruelly mocks the lawyer, who introduces himself as “a fan.” The narrator’s wife, like Theroux’s then-wife, is named Anne and she shrewishly refuses to help with the dinner. The magazine later published a letter from Anne Theroux denying that Burgess was ever a guest in her home and expressing admiration for him, having once interviewed the real Burgess for the BBC: “I was dismayed to read in your August 7th edition a story....by Paul Theroux, in which a very unpleasant character with my name said and did things that I have never said or done.” When the story was incorporated into Theroux’s novel, My Other Life (1996), the wife character is renamed Alison and reference to her work at the BBC is excised.

• Theroux's sometimes caustic portrait of Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul in his memoir Sir Vidia's Shadow (1998) is at considerable odds with his earlier, gushing portrait of the same author in V.S. Naipaul, an Introduction to His Work (1972).

• On December 15, 2005 the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Theroux called "The Rock Star's Burden" criticizing Bono, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie as "mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth." Theroux, who lived in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer and a university teacher, adds that "the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help—not to mention celebrities and charity concerts—is a destructive and misleading conceit.

• However, in 2002, on publication of his Africa travelogue Dark Star Safari, reviewer John Ryle in the London Guardian contradicted Theroux's views on international aid, accusing him of ignorance. "I'm not an aid worker, but I was working in Kenya myself at about the time Theroux passed through ... It's not that Theroux is wrong to criticise the empire of aid. In some ways the situation is even worse than he says.... The problem is that Theroux knows next to nothing about it. Aid is a failure, he says, because 'the only people dishing up the food and doling out the money are foreigners. No Africans are involved'. But the majority of employees of international aid agencies in Africa, at almost all levels, are Africans. In some African countries it is international aid agencies that provide the most consistent source of employment.... The problem is not, as Theroux says, that Africans are not involved; it is, if anything, the opposite. How come he didn't notice this? Because, despite his hissy fits about white people in white cars who won't give him lifts, he never actually visits an aid project or the office of an aid organization." (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
That's not exactly a journey readers will want to duplicate. Actually, Theroux himself seems mostly miserable. The tricky balance that has served him so well in the past eludes him here. He doesn't just grump about people, he lets them have it, as if trying to out-Naipaul Naipaul. In Malawi, he berates a man begging in the street, demanding why he doesn't ask for work instead of a handout.... Throughout Dark Star Safari, Theroux is particularly venomous on the subject of aid workers. There's a respectable philosophical position in here somewhere: namely, that foreign aid sponsors corruption and saps local initiative. But Theroux's critique of Africa seems more like anger in search of an argument.
Rand Richards Cooper - The New York Times

Theroux is best at shorthand dissections of trends that have already become obvious. In no other book will one find such entertaining and penetrating comments about the ironies, as well as the historic failure, of foreign aid.
Robert D. Kaplan - Washington Post

"All news out of Africa is bad. It made me want to go there," Theroux writes in his thirty-eighth book, which describes his yearlong journey from Cairo to Cape Town by creaky train, ferry and rattletrap bus.... By the end of the trip, Theroux seems more concerned with the arrogant aid workers who constantly zoom past him in glistening white Land Rovers, refusing to give him a ride.
Book Magazine

Some of [Theroux's] observations about Africa's economic decline are astute, although his quest for explanations is limited to what he can extract from the cast of characters he meets along his way. Mostly, however, this book is an intelligent, funny, and frankly sentimental account by a young-at-heart idealist who is trying to make sense of the painful disparity between what Africa is and what he once hoped it might become.
Foreign Affairs

"You'll have a terrible time," one diplomat tells Theroux upon discovering the prolific writer's plans to hitch a ride hundreds of miles along a desolate road to Nairobi instead of taking a plane. "You'll have some great stuff for your book." That seems to be the strategy for Theroux's extended "experience of vanishing" into the African continent, where disparate incidents reveal Theroux as well as the people he meets. At times, he goes out of his way to satisfy some perverse curmudgeonly desire to pick theological disputes with Christian missionaries. But his encounters with the natives, aid workers and occasional tourists make for rollicking entertainment, even as they offer a sobering look at the social and political chaos in which much of Africa finds itself. Theroux occasionally strays into theorizing about the underlying causes for the conditions he finds, but his cogent insights are well integrated. He doesn't shy away from the literary aspects of his tale, either, frequently invoking Conrad and Rimbaud, and dropping in at the homes of Naguib Mahfouz and Nadine Gordimer at the beginning and end of his trip. He also returns to many of the places where he lived and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer and teacher in the 1960s, locations that have cropped up in earlier novels. These visits fuel the book's ongoing obsession with his approaching 60th birthday and his insistence that he isn't old yet. As a travel guide, Theroux can both rankle and beguile, but after reading this marvelous report, readers will probably agree with the priest who observes, "Wonderful people. Terrible government. The African story."
Publishers Weekly

Legendary travel writer and novelist Theroux will probably never work for the Kenya or Malawi (or any other country between Cairo and the Cape) tourist boards after the publication of this latest book. In it, he tells of being shot at in Kenya, depressed in Malawi, pestered in Mozambique, robbed in South Africa, and invaded by intestinal parasites in Ethiopia. But this is no mere tale of travel mishaps. Theroux, who lived and worked in Malawi and Uganda in the 1960s, has a genuine affection for the continent that comes through in his tales of African friends, old and new. Among them he counts a former political prisoner in Nairobi, the prime minister of Uganda, a boat captain on Lake Victoria, a former student in Zomba (in Malawi), a besieged farmer in Zimbabwe, and writer and activist Nadine Gordimer in Johannesburg. Safari is Swahili for journey, and Theroux's is truly fantastic. Typical of Theroux's best work, which focuses on a single trip, this book is recommended for all libraries. —Lee Arnold, Historical Soc. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Library Journal

America's master traveler takes us along on his wanderings in tumultuous bazaars, crowded railway stations, desert oases, and the occasional nicely appointed hotel lobby. "All news of out Africa is bad," Theroux gamely begins. "It made me want to go there." Forty years after making his start as a writer while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, he returns for a journey from Cairo to Cape Town along "what was now the longest road in Africa, some of it purely theoretical." More reflective and less complaining than some of his other big-tour narratives (e.g., The Happy Isles of Oceania, 1992), Theroux's account finds him in the company of Islamic fundamentalists and dissidents, sub-Saharan rebels and would-be neocolonialists, bin Ladenites, and intransigent white landholders, almost all of them angry at America for one reason or another. The author shares their anger at many points. Of the pharmaceutical plant outside Khartoum that was flattened by a cruise missile on Bill Clinton's orders a few years back, he remarks, "Though we become hysterical at the thought that someone might bomb us, bombs that we explode elsewhere, in little countries far away, are just theater, of small consequence, another public performance of our White House, the event factory." Such sentiments are rarely expressed in post-9/11 America, and Theroux is to be commended for pointing out the consequences of our half-baked imperializing in Africa's miserable backwaters. His criticisms cut both ways, however; after an Egyptian student offends him with the remark, "Israel is America's baby," he replies, "Many countries are America's babies. Some good babies, some bad babies."Theroux is often dour, although he finds hopeful signs that Africa will endure and overcome its present misfortunes in the sight, for instance, of a young African boatman doing complex mathematical equations amid "spitting jets of steam," and in the constant, calming beauty of so many African places. Engagingly written, sharply observed: another winner from Theroux.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Dark Star Safari

1. Theroux sets out on his journey hoping for "the picturesque." Does he find it? Talk about his reactions, for instance, to the Sudanese pryamids or the Maltese nun who cooks him a gourmet meal. Who or what else charms him?

2. Eventually, however, the charm escapes him, and the trip becomes a nightmare. What are some of the dangers he meets along the way? Why does he continue the trip?

3. At one point Theroux confesses that he is "abused, terrified, stranded, harassed, cheaten, bitten" ... and so on. Do you think he is unnecessarily ill-humored? Or are his complaints justified?

4. Are there times his own treatment of people seems unkind and borders on nastiness? Consider the time he berates the Malawian street begger or curses the aid workers who leave him stranded on the road. Is his behavior justified or excessive?

5. Discuss the aspects of his trip that disturbed you most—the poverty, political or social chaos, physical decay, filth, or lawlessness. What parts of the trip delighted you?

6. How does Theroux present some of the countries of Africa? What does he mean when he says, for instance, that Kenya "seemed terminally ill"?

7. What are some of Theroux's theories for the underlying causes of the poverty and chaos in much of the African continent? Are his arguments convincing?

8. Why is Theroux is critical of internatinal development efforts, including many of the foreign aid workers who help the impoverished? Do you agree with his assessment?

9. What criticisms of America does Theroux encounter along the way? How does he answer the critics ... how would you answer them?

10. Have you come away from this book with new knowledge? What, if anything, have you learned? What, in particular, struck you (as surprising or fascinating)? Has the book altered any of your perspectives regarding Africa or America's relationship with the African nations?

11. Is Paul Theroux a good travel guide? Did you enjoy traveling with him in his book? Would you enjoy traveling with him in person?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Edward Dolnick, 2008
HarperCollins
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060825423


Summary 
As riveting as a World War II thriller, The Forger's Spell is the true story of Johannes Vermeer and the small-time Dutch painter who dared to impersonate him centuries later. The con man's mark was Hermann Goering, one of the most reviled leaders of Nazi Germany and a fanatic collector of art.

It was an almost perfect crime. For seven years a no-account painter named Han van Meegeren managed to pass off his paintings as those of one of the most beloved and admired artists who ever lived. But, as Edward Dolnick reveals, the reason for the forger's success was not his artistic skill. Van Meegeren was a mediocre artist. His true genius lay in psychological manipulation, and he came within inches of fooling both the Nazis and the world. Instead, he landed in an Amsterdam court on trial for his life.

ARTnews called Dolnick's previous book, the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, "the best book ever written on art crime." In The Forger's Spell, the stage is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the villains are blacker. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Marblehead, Massachusetts, USA
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in the Washington, DC area

Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, and Washington Post, among other publications.

His books include Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).

Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)—an account of the 1994 theft, and eventual recovery, of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo—won the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Crime Fact category.

The Forger's Spell (2008), describes the 1930-40s forging of Johannes Vermeer paintings by a critic-detesting Dutch artist, accepted as "masterpieces" by art experts until the artist's confession and trial in 1945.

Dolnick lives in the Washington, D.C. area, is married, and has two children. His wife, Lynn Iphigene Golden, is a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, publishers of the New York Times, and is on the board of The New York Times Company. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
Dolnick...tells his story engagingly and with a light touch. He has a novelist's talent for characterization, and he raises fascinating questions. How, for instance, could the forgeries have fooled anyone? (Dolnick says that van Meegeren was "perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake.") How do forgers set about doing their work? One chapter is titled "Forgery 101"; it contains instructions from which any prospective forger would benefit. And why does our estimation of a work of art change when we discover it is a fake? Forgery is interesting in part because it demands great, if imitative, skill, and in part because copying itself has become a significant aspect of contemporary art-making. It is an art-crime that encourages reflections on the nature of art itself. This book is an aid to such reflections.
Anthony Julius - New York Times

Gripping historical narrative.... Dolnick, a veteran science writer, knows his way around a canvas.... The Forger's Spell has raised provocative questions about the nature of art and the psychology of deception.
Washington Post Book World

Edgar-winner Dolnick (The Rescue Artist) delves into the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren (1889—1947), who made a fortune in German-occupied Holland by forging paintings of the 17th-century Dutch painter Vermeer. The discovery of a "new" Vermeer was just what the beleaguered Dutch needed to lift their spirits, and van Meegeren's Christ at Emmaus had already been bought by the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam in 1937 for $2.6 million. Collectors, critics and the public were blind to the clumsiness of this work and five other "Vermeers" done by van Meegeren. Dolnick asks how everyone could have been fooled, and he answers with a fascinating analysis of the forger's technique and a perceptive discussion of van Meegeren's genius at manipulating people. Van Meegeren was unmasked in 1945 by one of his clients, Hermann Goering. Later accused of treason for collaboration, he saved himself from execution and even became a hero for having swindled Goering. Dolnick's compelling look at how a forger worked his magic leads to one sad conclusion: there will always be eager victims waiting to be duped. (Illustrated.)
Publishers Weekly

In 1945, just after the end of World War II in Europe, a Dutch detective looking for artwork looted by the Nazis and for Nazi collaborators questioned a high-living Dutch artist named Han van Meegeren. Had van Meegeren, the detective inquired, been involved in the sale to Hermann Goring of a priceless Vermeer painting? Upon further questioning, van Meegeren confessed that he had painted this Vermeer himself, along with other Vermeers then in the collections of several major Dutch art museums, and so began the unraveling of "the greatest art hoax of the twentieth century." While other books—including Frank Wynne's I Was Vermeer and Lord Kilbracken's Van Meegeren: Master Forger—have covered this intriguing case of forgery, greed, and detection, this account by Dolnick, author of the Edgar Award-winning The Rescue Artist, is especially strong in plot development and characterization. It also has a unique point of view: that van Meegeren was not a genius and master forger but rather his "true distinction was [that] he is perhaps the only forger whose most famous works a layman would immediately identify as fake." Recommended for public and academic library art and true-crime collections.
Marcia Welsch - Library Journal

Dolnick covers it all, from Van Meegeren’s technical brilliance to his shrewd choice of subject matter to his extraordinary manipulation of egos and perceptions. [His] zesty, incisive, and entertaining inquiry illuminates the hidden dimensions...of art and ambition, deception and war. —Donna Seaman
Booklist

Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons. Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (1889-1947). Humiliated by critics who dismissed his work as lackluster, Van Meegeren turned to cunningly crafting paintings that he peddled during the 1930s and '40s as the work of revered 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer. The polished, fast-paced narrative captures the surreal mood in Nazi-occupied Holland. As German forces killed more than 70 percent of the Jewish population, the highest toll in Europe, Hitler and his leading aide, Hermann Goering, pillaged museums and private homes for paintings, sculpture and jewelry. In a rivalry Dolnick likens to a perverse schoolyard competition, the men also vied for treasures from art dealers enticed by the Nazis' looted cash. Enter Van Meegeren, a disaffected artist who watched with glee as the same critics who had ridiculed his original work swooned over the technically competent but off-kilter compositions he sold for princely sums as "lost Vermeers." In compelling prose, Dolnick details the doctored canvases, phony paint and fake bills of sale Van Meegeren painstakingly created to achieve his grand deceit. In addition to Nazis and wealthy Europeans, the author notes, he also duped affluent Americans such as Andrew Mellon. After a high-profile 1947 trial during which the con artist demonstrated his techniques, the Dutch government found van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud. He died less than two months later, before serving his one-year prison sentence. Energetic and authoritative.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Forger's Spell:

1. What motivated Han van Meegeren to become a forger?

2. Van Meergeren mastered the scientific side of forgery through by using plastics in his paints. Would you consider him a genius?

3. Talk about the Nazis' passion for art, especially in light of the fact that the crates of confiscated masterpieces often lay unopened.

4. Why has Vermeer been so prized as an artist? What is it about his paintings, beyond their limited number, that is so alluring?

5. Dolnick says that laymen would not have been fooled by van Meergeren's fakes. How, then, was he able to fool scholars and curators, starting with Abraham Bredius? What is the psychology behind conning art dealers and collectors into accepting forgeries as genuine? What makes those who should know fall for fakery? Is "connossieurship" a hollow pretense...or does it have merit?

6. Van Meergeren became a sort of folk hero after the war when his deception was uncovered. Did he deserve that status? Does the fact that van Meergeren was able to swindle Goering, Hitler's second in command, increase your estimation of him?

7. Dolnick's book calls into question the nature of art itself, especially "great" art. If a painting is skillfuly imitative of a great artist, isn't the imitation something to be admired and valued in and of itself? If a work is good enough to fool the experts, isn't it good enough to be considered on its own merits as "art"?

8. What is the "Uncanny Valley"? How does it play out in van Meegeren's forgeries? Can you think of other instances in life where the Uncanny Valley theory applies?

9. Did you learn something new about the world of art—and the practice of forgery—by reading this book? What surprised, or intrigued, you most?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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