Category: Reviews

‘Death in the Pot: The Impact of Food Poisoning on History’

by Morton Satin

Prometheus Books, 262 pp., $24

Food provides far more than nourishment. It defines culture, builds empires, feeds armies and, with equal potency, can destroy all that it built. Poisoned or spoiled food has profoundly influenced the course of human history. From the Peloponnesian War (likely lost by Athens at least in part as a result of contaminated or spoiled cereal stocks) to the death of Beethoven (lead poisoning), food poisoning has changed history in significant and memorable ways.

In “Death In The Pot,” Morton Satin, a molecular biologist and technical director at the Salt Institute, provides an interesting and quirky survey of the baneful impact of adulterated food supplies on history. Illnesses from contaminated foods through the middle ages were typically attributed to heavenly retribution for Earthly misconduct or blasphemy. In fact, however, the more likely cause was poorly maintained food supplies.

Hallucinogenic symptoms of moldy grain in early American colonies were considered by Puritan settlers to be signs of witchcraft. Even today, E. coli outbreaks make the most innocent-looking hamburger seem like a lurking menace, and once seemingly healthy seafood can in fact be loaded with food dye or threatening levels of mercury. It’s a sad day when the “fish on Friday” rule requires a blood test for toxicity.

Satin’s effort could have provided a springboard for a thoughtful survey of food safety throughout history, or perhaps proposals to avoid threats to the food supply, topics with urgent relevance to our own times. Unfortunately, though, Satin’s work fails to live up to its promise. It is poorly written, often stitching together short essays on discreet topics with abrupt transitions. But more fundamentally, much of the research seems incomplete or inconclusive.

Of course, forensic analysis hundreds, or thousands, of years after the fact must necessarily depend on a certain degree of speculation. But even with respect to more recent events (E. coli outbreaks, or intentional food contamination in the 1970s), Satin seems content to rely on information that is readily available rather than engage in any sort of serious analysis. As food for thought, “Death In The Pot” is meager gruel.

“Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”

Anthony Doerr

Scribner, 224 pp., $24)

Anthony Doerr is a lucky man. Returning from the Boise hospital where Shauna, his wife, had just given birth to twin boys, he opens the mail to find that he has won a prestigious award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters providing him with an apartment in Rome for a year, a studio in which to write anything he wishes, and a living stipend to help pay for it all.

Most people would consider dealing with newborn twins to be more than enough of a challenge for a year. Moving to a foreign country, even one as warm, familiar and welcoming to young families as Italy, would be a daunting challenge all by itself. To move to a foreign country with infant twins would strike most as nearly suicidal.

But Doerr and his young family do exactly that, and “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World” (Scribner, 224 pp., $24) is his memoir of his year abroad, wandering through Rome’s vibrant streets and learning doorpost-by-doorpost Italian language, history and culture. Doerr, a Boise author who has received numerous awards for his writing, including the O. Henry Prize (twice) and the Outstanding Book of 2003 Award from the American Library Foundation, is the author of “The Shell Collector” and “About Grace.”

Doerr’s writing is warm, colorful and flowing, and his day-by-day memoir brings the essence of Rome alive. Those incredible tomatoes, buttery yet simple sauces, freshly baked focaccia bread, and the smell of roasting pork waft through the pages of this book. To anyone who has spent time in Italy with young children, it only takes a few chapters to bring back to life every smiling little old Italian woman insisting in pinching cheeks and pronouncing “belissima!” To those who have never visited, the book is an introduction to the enrapturing power of Italian food, people and culture.

Of course, travel memoirs cram most bookstore shelves, stacked in drifts as the summer months approach. “A Year in Provence” has spawned a virtual industry of my-year-abroad travelogues. It doesn’t take long to tire of the entire self-serving genre.

But this thin volume skirts the pitfalls that plague so many similar volumes. Doerr’s writing, for one, is rich, vivid and almost worth the effort regardless of the topic. Unlike others who spend weeks, or even months, visiting Italy and return sprinkling their language with Italian, and imagining themselves part Italian, Doerr has no such pretensions. “I know nothing. I lived in Rome four seasons. I never made it through the gates between myself and the Italians. I cannot claim to have become, in even the smallest manner, Roman.” Yet he perceptively describes the cultural differences, at once familiar, fascinating and yet unknowable for most Americans, and the astonishingly transformative power of living abroad and outside of the blaring 24/7 media whirlwind that dominates modern American life.

Doerr, like most new parents, is overwrought about the burdens of new parenthood, and it’s difficult to avoid rolling one’s eyes at his overly dramatic accounts of colic, sleepless nights and crying babies. Similarly, he exaggerates the challenges of navigating an Italian grocery store or communicating everyday needs without speaking Italian. Yes, it can be a challenge, but Rome is hardly a small town, Italian food and culture are hardly unknown to Americans, and English is, like a slow-moving plague, common throughout most of Italy and certainly throughout Rome.

But the sheer warmth and obvious sincerity of Doerr’s writing is enough to overcome these minor obstacles. This book, like a long trip through a warm Italian night, is richly rewarding and well worth the effort.

‘Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton’

by Sara Wheeler

Random House, 292 pp., $27.95

Denys Finch Hatton lived life on his own terms. Tall and handsome, with a devilishly crooked smile, he was famously irresistible to women and equally unable to commit to any of them. Born into money and the English aristocracy, he refused to conform and instead fled England for the then-largely untracked British East Africa (now Kenya).

His exploits in the African bush would likely have long ago faded into obscurity but for his good fortune to have had affairs with two much more interesting women who, as it turns out, were great writers and chose to immortalize him in “Out of Africa” (Karen Blixen, under the pen name Isak Dinesen) and “West with the Night” (Beryl Markham).

In “Too Close to the Sun,” British author Sara Wheeler laboriously details Finch Hatton’s life and times. He attended Eaton and Oxford, but without enthusiasm (except for golf) and left behind a decidedly mediocre academic record. Rather than conform to the demands of his position or the expectations of British society, he fled instead to British East Africa. He invested in various farming enterprises and devoted most of his time to exploring the Kenyan jungle, ultimately serving as a jungle guide for a variety of wealthy clients.

Finch Hatton secured his place in history through his relationships with Blixen and Markham. Blixen, divorced from an unfaithful spouse, struggled to establish a coffee plantation in the Kenyan bush, “at the foot of the Ngong Hills” as she famously described it in “Out of Africa.” Although Finch Hatton lived with her, he simultaneously had a romantic relationship with Markham, a much younger woman who had been raised on the African plains by her father. Curiously, both women produced critically acclaimed autobiographies featuring, in part, their liaisons with Finch Hatton.

Blixen’s coffee plantation finally failed in 1931, forcing her to leave her cherished Africa. Shortly before Blixen’s tormented departure, Finch Hatton died in a fiery small plane crash in the African bush. Blixen returned to her native Denmark brokenhearted and poured her heart into her writing, producing not only “Out of Africa” but a variety of short stories, including “Babette’s Feast.” She was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

It is difficult to imagine anyone working up the enthusiasm to devote a full-length biography to Finch Hatton had he not already been featured in two outstanding autobiographies, not to mention a Hollywood movie. But, of course, writing a biography with that sort of competition would be difficult for even the best of writers.

Wheeler’s writing, unfortunately, has all the romance, thrill and excitement of a high-school chemistry textbook. Worse, the book is littered with elliptical historical references, long chapters on Finch Hatton’s genealogy, and random footnotes to insignificant historical controversies over events in his life.

This nearly impenetrable thicket of prose might be worth it if either the subject was worth the effort or the writing even remotely approached the lyricism of either of Finch Hatton’s lovers’ autobiographies. The book, unfortunately, fails on both accounts.

‘Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America’s Soul’

by Edward Humes

Ecco, 380 pp., $25.95

In Dover, Pa., shortly after the 2004 election, the school board adopted a policy, over the vehement objections of its science teachers, requiring that students be told that evolution is “just a theory” and that alternative scientific explanations exist, including “intelligent design,” a thinly veiled version of creationism. Predictably, the decision was enormously controversial and led to the filing of a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the policy. Far from being dismayed by the litigation, the school board welcomed it and, with volunteer lawyers from a fundamentalist Christian law firm, saw it as an opportunity to validate the teaching of creationism.

Fortunately for the teaching of science, and the separation of church and state, it didn’t turn out that way.

In “Monkey Girl,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes tells the riveting story of how a sleepy Pennsylvania town became the focus for the biggest fight over the teaching of evolution in the public schools since the Scopes Monkey Trial itself. Humes does a terrific job of evenhandedly laying out the history of creationism in America and the 150-year history of intense hostility from Biblical literalists to Darwin’s theory of evolution, virtually the entire field of modern biology, and even the scientific method itself. (Many Christians, of course, find no such inconsistency between Christianity and evolution).

Dover’s embrace of “intelligent design” was encouraged by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that pugnaciously defends the teaching of creationism. The institute crafted an ingenious political “wedge strategy” by boldly asserting that a legitimate controversy exists over evolution, then demanding that schools “teach the controversy” by presenting “both sides” of the debate. What could be wrong with that? Of course, there is no legitimate scientific debate over the basic premise of evolution – it is the very foundation of modern biology, paleontology, and genetics and is amply supported by more than 150 years of scientific research. But the call for including “both sides” was alluring for school board members utterly unfamiliar with either biology or “intelligent design.”

The trial lasted six weeks and was an utter rout of the school board and its ill-conceived policy. Although the board denied their obvious religious motivation, or even using the word “creationism,” the record dramatically undercut them. School board member Bill Buckingham, for example, during board deliberations responded to objections about injecting religion into the classroom by declaring: “Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can’t someone take a stand now?” Later he commented that “This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such.” Though he denied making the statements during the trial, other board members and reporters all confirmed his comments.

By the trial’s end it was clear that “intelligent design” had no foundation in science. Even one of the board’s experts was forced to admit that “intelligent design” could be considered “science” only if one redefined science to include astrology, magic and other supernatural beliefs.

The judge – a Republican appointed by President George W. Bush – was unconvinced by the board’s effort to defend the policy. In fact, he was outraged by the charade, rejecting the board’s policy as unconstitutional and finding that two of the board members had lied under oath. He called the board’s effort “breathtaking inanity.”

Nor were the board members any more successful with the public: The entire pro-“intelligent design” school board was voted out of office.

Humes carefully steps through both the science at the core of the debate and the legal machinations, without getting lost in the detail on either front. His writing is vivid, memorable and engaging, and a welcome breath of common sense in an area dominated by zealots and table pounding.