Book Review: The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford

I broke my recent reading stalemate with The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq by John Crawford (Riverhead Hardcover, 2005).

The name attracted me to it when I was in the library looking for Young Stalin. While I couldn't find the Stalin biography, I decided to take a chance with Crawford's tale. The title seemed interesting, and I liked the movie Jarhead, so I figured this was a good bet.

I promptly fell into my reading hiatus and forgot about it until last week. When I finally picked it up, I read it in one sitting.

The title says it all, frankly. This is a tale of an accidental soldier—a man who took advantage of the National Guard's free school tuition for the price of a weekend a month. He's deployed to Iraq where he spends three years as an infantryman patrolling the streets of occupied Baghdad and collecting his stories.

Crawford's writing is simple and straightforward, the prose of a man who isn't interested in crafting a beautiful tale. Yet, there are lines of real beauty in the book as well. The story is propelled by his words and how well they fit together.

Despite the title, I feel no pity for Crawford's situation. Yes, most soldiers sign up so they can go to school, but they make the decision to take the risk and Crawford is no different. His story happens to be well-crafted, though, and worth telling. No one can really explain to you what it's like to go to war, but you can get a small sense of it when you read accounts like Crawford's.

There are moments when you can almost feel the regret in his mind, especially in the final moments of the book as he recounts his final days in Iraq. After three years of patrolling a war-torn country as an American conqueror, he is suspicious of everyone, right down to the children. He makes no attempt to hide the fact that the Iraqi people considered the occupying forces as conquerors, not saviors. So you can understand his motivation when he spots a child holding a gun. It still chills you to the bone, though. You don't know whether or not he shoots the child in the end, but he does tell the reader that the gun was merely a shell with no chance of being a threat.

It's a sad story, but there are funny parts, despite the grim subject. If you liked Jarhead, you'll like The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell.

Rating: Four Stars

Book Review: I'm Not the New Me by Wendy McClure

I'm Not the New Me was recommended to me several years ago by a friend. It was on my original To Be Read challenge book list, therefore I consider this a win for that first challenge. Sure, I didn't read it two years ago, at the time of the challenge, but it's now off my pile, so there's something to be said about that, right?

She recommended this to me as a memoir of a fat girl. She failed to mention that Wendy McClure is a fat girl with a blog. I've never actually read a memoir by a fat girl with a blog. Being one myself, it was a little jarring at first. Kind of like looking into the window of a shop and seeing your outfit on a mannequin.

What did I see? A lot of self-loathing and introspection. Did I see myself in her, though? No, not really.

The thing about being a fat girl is that I tend to base my opinions of myself in relation to how different I am to someone else. Okay, my arms are thinner than hers, I don't have a double chin like she does, oh god she's got nicer legs than me, etc. etc.

The thing is, I don't think I overly obssess about my fatness. Essentially, Wendy and I are the same person. We both work in publishing, we're both big girls, and we both write blogs. That's where the similarities stop, though. This is where I begin formulating an opinion about myself through her. Her weight is a major issue in her life. It haunts her from her earliest childhood memories and carries through into her adult life like a scale attached to her ankle.

I found myself disliking Wendy in parts of the book. Part of it is because she's so consumed by her own low self-esteem, but mostly it's because she has this successful online presence, yet she seems taken aback and suspicious of the other women who reach out to her through her website.

I realize this book is written in 2005, and a lot has changed in the mean time. The nature of the weblog itself has changed drastically and I'm sure Wendy's opinion of the community that grew around her is not nearly as negative as it once was.

But I still can't help but feel like she's really just a bit of a whiner.

Rating: Two Stars

It's Okay to Eat Food* Book Review: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

* Food being the operative word.

In Michael Pollan's newest book, a response of sorts to his previous work, The Omnivore's Dilemma, he suggests that it's okay to eat food. In fact, he has a manifesto: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

With that, he begins In Defense of Food, a roughly two hundred page essay on the problem with what we consider food today, and how we can change the way we eat.

Pollan has a real issue with the western diet, which largely consists of processed foods, made from grain like wheat and soybean. According to him, much of the diseases found in western civilization, like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, are linked to these foods. Never before in history has man been so "underfed yet so undernourished." The reason we eat so much, yet remain so unhealthy is because the food is so highly processed. Much of the nutrition from processed foods is removed, and then replaced by vitamins, and 'nutrients' like omega-3 fatty acids by scientists. But, because we know so little about the science behind nutrients and how our bodies absorb them (even after at least a couple of centuries of experimentation), we aren't actually getting any healthier from these "healthy foods."

He laments the loss of our former diet inspiration—our mothers—and vilifies nutritionism as a demon who has taken our cultural diet and turned it into a mass-produced industry.

Pollan's book joins a number of voices who are now calling for a return to whole foods. And with the rise of the slow movement, it feels like western society is slowly but surely moving towards a healthier diet.

Of course, while Pollan's manifesto is an important one, it doesn't offer any insight into how an entire population can achieve this, only the individual. Organic, whole food diets are expensive, and cannot feasibly support an entire country's population. Weight and health are proportional to income. The people most likely to suffer are the ones who need a change in lifestyle the most—the poor. But when a Big Mac a day costs less than a full week's worth of groceries, and you don't have to make it yourself, it's hard to change your lifestyle.

Still, for those of us who can afford to adopt Pollan's ideas, it's worth a try. Today we are encouraged to do everything as quickly as possible, but switching to a diet of whole foods automatically slows down your lifestyle. Even if you don't eat "mostly plants," you're already a step ahead of the curve.

Rating: Five stars