Huck’s Raft

Steven Mintz’s book Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood is a thorough discussion of the topic. He goes from early colonial times to the modern day, covering children of all races, classes, and backgrounds. For example, the book depicts life as a young black slave, an Irish servant girl, or a teenager fighting on either side of the Civil War.

Mintz demonstrates how the life of children and the adult perception of them have changed over the centuries. It’s a long book, at almost 400 pages, full of vivid personal accounts and factual content. Huck's Raft is impressive and well-written, if you have the persistence to get through it.

First, Do No Harm

In First, Do No Harm, journalist Lisa Belkin examines how life-and-death decisions are made at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. She describes a handful of ethically challenging cases. A terminally ill teenager requires additional desperate measures to prolong his painful existence. A premature baby stays alive through massive intervention techniques, but has a poor long-term prognosis. A poor immigrant is paralyzed from the neck down by a bullet wound, but indicates by blinking that he wants to continue living.

Belkin presents the views and feelings of the main players involved in each case: doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, family members, and when possible, the patient. She records the dynamics of the hospital ethics committee that handles any contentious decisions. She presents the arguments made by each side, without stating her own judgment about the right course of action.

The events of the book occurred in 1988, and medical technology and processes have obviously evolved since then. Still, medical practitioners continue to face similar issues about how far to go in prolonging someone's painful existence and who should make the final decision. The book itself reads as a novel, painting a vivid picture of the people at the hospital and their concerns.

Iraq events

Several Iraq news stories have caught my eye lately.

Regarding the early stages of the war,

Paul Bremer, who led the US civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted that the Americans 'didn't really see' the threat coming from insurgents in the country.

The Bush administration's gross incompetence continues to expose US soldiers to unnecessary risk (from Daily Kos).

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
...
The vulnerability of the military's body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until this September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine Corps officials acknowledge.

The Army, which has the largest force in Iraq, is still deciding what to purchase, according to Army procurement officials. They said the Army is deciding between various sizes of plates to give its 130,000 soldiers; the officials said they hope to issue contracts this month.

The true cost of the war, even in purely economic terms, is vastly more than official estimates. (from Daily Kos).

The real cost to America of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expands on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concludes that the U.S. Government is continuing to grossly underestimate the cost of the war.

In addition, 11 American soldiers died in a single day last week, while over the weekend (from AmericaBlog),

A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter went down in northern Iraq, killing all 12 Americans believed to be aboard in the deadliest crash in nearly a year, while five U.S. Marines died in weekend attacks, the military said Sunday.

On a lighter note,

Bernard Planche, 52, was kidnapped on his way to work at a water plant. Planche worked for a non-governmental organization called AACCESS and was found Saturday night near a checkpoint in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood. His captors had demanded the withdrawal from Iraq of French troops - even though the country has none in Iraq.

I shouldn't laugh, since being captured must have been terrifying for Planche, who is now safe, but I can't resist.

Us and Them

David Berreby's Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind covers an important topic -- how people divide themselves into groups by race, religion, nationality, etc., and the effects of that grouping. However, the book as a whole was a disappointment. He spends chapters going over basic points, such as the arbitrariness of the way societies categorize people and consider the various categories, along with the changing nature of those categories across cultures and over time. A less well-read audience would probably appreciate the book more.

A History of Twentieth-Century Russia

Robert Service's A History of Twentieth-Century Russia is a good piece of narrative history. His perspective focuses on those at the top: the power struggles among the leaders and the policies they pursued. He spends less time discussing Russian society and the lives of typical people. That kind of analysis explains the functioning of the Soviet state, though it's less illuminating about how the Communist revolutionaries gained power in the first place.

He doesn't emphasize the horrors of the Russian Civil War, World War II, and Stalin's purges, which seems a little odd but keeps the book from being depressing to read. I was most interested to learn how people like Stalin and Gorbachev came to power, topics that were covered in great detail. It's a worthwhile history, though the big picture was sometimes lost in all the details. Note that an updated version of the book, A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin, was published several months ago.