I recently bought three eBooks all dealing in some manner with Google. I read all three at the same time, letting the Kindle keep track of where I was in each book. Since I read all three books simultaneously and all three cover similar ground, I thought I’d comment on them together rather than separately.
This is the second memoir I’ve read from someone dealing with the hardships of growing up in Africa. The first one was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Ishmael grew up in the war-torn Congo area and became a boy soldier. William Kamkwamba’s struggle deals with poverty. Both stories are inspirational and worthy of the praise each book has received.
This book tells the story of a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness and the subsequent month-long survival of four of the plane’s six occupants. The story is told by the son of one of the survivors. It’s a compelling story but one that might have been better had the story been handled a little differently.
The story told in Methland concerns the impact that the drug methamphetamine has had on the lives of the people of one small town in America. The town the author chose to highlight is Oelwein, Iowa. But the negative circumstances attributed to meth use in Oelwein are the same in countless towns and cities across the country. The author could easily have written the same book by focusing on any number of similar towns by simply interchanging characters.
Fans of fiction often complain that nonfiction books tends to be dry. They obviously haven’t read the right books. I started this blog, in part, to expand the reach of great nonfiction. Hunting Eichmann is a real life thriller that is better than anything Tom Clancy or any other comparable fiction writer could dream up.
The title Fordlandiais not the catchiest title, but it is an appropriate title because it accurately reflects what this book is about. Fordlandia is the name given to a large parcel of land in Brazil purchased by Henry Ford for the purpose of growing rubber trees with the hope of using that rubber in his expanding automotive empire. It is also a story about what happens when Henry Ford tries to transplant a midwestern town in the middle of the Amazon.