The Healthiest Diet on the Planet by John McDougal

I previously reviewed a couple of books on low-carb diets. Perhaps it is time for a dissenting opinion. Physician John McDowell argues for a low-fat vegan diet in The Healthiest Diet on the Planet.

The crux of the argument is the inversion of that made by some made by low-carb advocates, especially those who promote nearly carnivorous paleo diets. McDougall proposes that the primary diet of our ancient ancestors was plant-based, and that especially included energy-providing starches; he even refers to his picture of the ideal diet as “starchitarian.” He points to those parts of the world where people still eat their traditional diets and have low occurrence of obesity and associated diseases. They eat a lot of whole grains or potatoes along with vegetables and fruit; they eat little meat. It makes sense to me that this would be a natural diet for humans. In much of the world, foods from plants would have been much more widely available most of the year with much less effort and danger. Meat was probably a great calorie supplement to an otherwise lean diet, but it would not have been a reliable source of food for every meal, nor is it amenable to storage or preservation.

Another appealing aspect of the McDougall plan is it simplicity. In The Healthiest Diet on the Planet, he offers a green-yellow-red light approach to what to eat, what to eat with caution and what to avoid. The diet consists mainly of starchy foods: whole grains, potatoes, sweet potatoes and beans. It also includes vegetables and some fruit. Some foods, such as nuts, avocadoes and fruit juices, can be eaten in small amounts; they are a concern because they include a lot of fat or sugar. Finally, avoid animal products (meat, eggs and dairy) and extracted vegetable oils. McDougall admits that it is unusual of natural human diets to be completely devoid of meat, so I suspect it would be okay for someone to eat meat once in a while.

I haven’t tried it any more than I have tried a low-carb diet. It certainly seems easier. It is also likely to be less expensive.

Like many diet books, this one includes recipes. Coauthor Mary McDougal contributed the recipes.

McDougal, John, and Mary McDougal. The Healthiest Diet on the Planet: Why the Foods You Love—Pizza, Pancakes, Potatoes, Pasta, and More—are the Solution to Preventing Disease and Looking and Feeling Your Best. New York: HarperOne, 2016.

Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight

The title of Sarah Knight’s book, Get Your Sh*t Together, suggests what is inside. There is cursing on practically every page. There is tongue-in-cheek humor. There is advice on how to set goals and achieve them.

If you’ve read many books on self-help, getting organized, setting goals and success, Knight’s recommendations won’t be new to you. However, many will find her style helpful and appealing. She writes with directness, simplicity and humor.

She has a take on motivation that you don’t see everywhere: focus on what annoys you. A lot of people advise that you conjure up a richly detailed vision of the life you want. That is hard. The vision can seem out of reach. You don’t have to imagine annoying things; they are right there bothering you. If you can do something to reduce the annoyance, you’ll want to, and if some series of steps will eliminate it, they’ll seem worth the effort. The life you want may reveal itself as you shed the annoying things you want to get rid of.

Once you have a goal (stop this annoying thing by taking some action), you need a plan that breaks into manageable steps. You’ll also need to set aside time to give your energy and attention to taking those steps. It also takes commitment to follow through.

Because it takes time to get things done, you may need to make time by spending less of it on other things. Knight discusses priorities. I’ve observed that the people who are the worst at having it together seem to have no priorities. If you can learn to spend more time on what is really important, and focus on it, you’ll be way ahead.

Knight’s book isn’t for everyone. The cursing starts in the title and doesn’t let up. However, I appreciate her brevity, simplicity and directness. The concepts are easy to grasp; the challenge is in implementing them.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

Knight, Sarah. Get Your Sh*t Together: How to Stop Worrying About What You Should Do So You Can Finish What You Need to Do and Start Doing What You Want to Do. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions by Andrew Hacker

In the last decade or two, many have called for increased education in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math). As an engineer, I may hear more of it than others, or perhaps I am more attentive to it. Math, particularly algebra, trigonometry and geometry, has been seen as a foundation of STEM education with much support from the tech industry that has made it central to the Common Core curriculum used in the majority of states. However, this math requirement has become a stumbling block for many on the road to high school and college graduation. As when I was in school, students ask, “Am I ever going to need to use this?” The answer political scientist (and sometimes math professor) Andrew Hacker proposes in The Math Myth is no.

"This country has a problems. But more math is mathematics is not one of the solutions,” Andrew Hacker, The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions

 One of the first myths that Hacker tackles is this issue of the usefulness of algebra and other higher math for STEM careers or adult life in general. Most people never need anything more advanced than arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), including most scientist, technicians and engineers. In the 25 years since I graduated from engineering school, I have never need to solve a differential equation. Easily 80 percent of the math I do is arithmetic—possibly more. The rest is basic algebra and basic statistics. On the rare occasion I’ve needed some more esoteric piece of math, I’ve learned or relearned it on the job.

 In spite of this, the move in the U.S. has been to require four years of high school math through Algebra II or beyond, plus a college level course in algebra or more advanced math. This applies even to students who plan to study liberal arts, humanities and other subjects that make practically no use of math. This requirement is the number one academic reason people do not complete high school or college (there are other reasons, of course, but they are not related to a required class or subject). Even youth form affluent families with educated parents can find algebra to be an insurmountable hill. Hacker wonders how much human potential goes undeveloped because educational opportunities are denied to people who do not need math beyond arithmetic, but must pass an algebra course to get their diploma or degree.

 Why is math, and especially algebra, a near universal requirement? Hacker points to college math professors and their influence on lower level curricula. They want prospective students to be prepared to move to the advanced subjects they study, though only on percent of undergraduates major in math, and that drops lower in graduate schools. These same professors almost never teach the entry level (and especially not remedial) math classes in their own colleges. For colleges generally, math can be a weed-out course. Even if most students don’t really need algebra, the requirement is a quick way to knock down the number of students. (As an engineering student, my fellows and I understood the sequence of calculus and math-heavy physics classes required of us as freshmen and sophomores was a way of persuading us to study something else—I almost did.)

 Tech companies also call for a math intensive education and lots of STEM graduates. Hacker points out that, in spite of the hype, there are actually not that many STEM jobs in the U.S., nor is there a lot of growth in these fields. A glut of STEM graduates, in addition to the foreign tech labor market opened up by H1-B visas, keeps wages low in the tech sector. If there was an actual shortage, employers would respond with increased wages. Computer programmers don’t use much math and great majority of them don’t earn high salaries. Sadly, the same is increasingly true in engineering. My advice to someone interested in an engineering career would be to pursue it if you find the work interesting, but don’t do it with the expectation that you’ll get a high salary or rise quickly because of the demand for your technical skills.

 I’d like to mention one more thing that Hacker brings up. Though the math people learn in school often has no practical utility in their work or daily life, people have a knack for math and often do complex mathematical things as part of their jobs. Hacker uses the example of a carpet layer, but I have seen it in machinists, carpenters and other skilled laborers. The use and shape materials in ways that require some complex math, but they don’t write out a page full of equations. They instead apply tools and methods they have learned on the job. I’m a little fascinated by some of this tool-based, mechanical math, and it seems to be just as effective and more understandable that school math, especially since very few of us aspire to study math for its own sake.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Numbers behind NUMB3RS by Keith Devlin & Gary Lorden

The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin

 Hacker, Andrew. The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions. New York: The New Press, 2016.

Range by David Epstein

Specialization is king. It has become seen as the road to success. Since Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000-hour Rule a few years ago (perhaps unintentionally), I’ve seen a lot of people using it to justify and spell out the road to specialization: focus and start early. However, specialization can hurt when we face problems that cross boundaries and pull us out of our niche; we can be lost and ill equipped outside of our specialization. Journalist David Epstein explored the issue in his book, Range.

 Epstein starts out by showing the limitations of specialization. It works well in an arena where repeating patterns prevail, and we can learn to recognize those patterns from exposure. When there are no repeating patterns, or they are complex and obscure, a high degree of specialized knowledge can lead to wrong conclusions and false confidence. We can have a few good tools that we trust, but if they are the wrong tools for the job we may be doing the wrong thing without realizing it. Complex environments and problems require us to reason conceptually, connect ideas from different contexts and solve problems without direct prior knowledge of what we are facing. We need breadth.

 Though it is not as popular a narrative, Epstein provides several examples of how people with broad and diverse knowledge have become high achievers. Creativity is, to a great extent, finding relationships between seemingly unrelated things. One must be equipped with a variety of experience to be able to make these leaps.

 I can see how the generalist’s path can seem unappealing. It may not seem like a path at all. Deep learning is slow and effortful. It is a way of errors, false starts and diversions that can seem like a waste of time. Developing range is messy and uncertain; by comparison, specialization seems like a sure thing.

 Epstein’s book contains ways to develop range. Analogies allow us to apply knowledge from one area to another, and seeing where analogies fall apart can lead to new ideas. Take an outsider’s cooler, distant and critical view and save yourself from the pitfall of taking a rosy view of familiar things. Pay attention to things that don’t fit the model. Don’t plan too far ahead, but be open to exploration an experimentation. There is a time for mastering particular knowledge and procedure, but the overall approach to learning should be to make connections and gain perspective.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

 Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.

Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado

In the early chapters of Anxious for Nothing, pastor and author Max Lucado describes the kind of harried, distracted anxiety that people suffer in modern life. Many are depressed by troubling things going on all around that repeat all day on newscasts.

Honestly, that is not the reason I picked up the book. I did not have a particularly gloomy outlook. Nor was I consciously worked up about much. I was driving by an amygdala-induced fear that I didn’t understand. Even so, I read the rest of the book.

Anxious for Nothing is an extended sermon, taking its main text as Philippians 4:4-8. The Main points for the acronym CALM:

-celebrate God’s goodness,

-ask God for help,

-leave your concerns with Him and

-meditate on good things.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind ins Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:4-8 (NKJV)

For Christians, there is plenty of good to be found in God that can allay our fears. God is in control. He has demonstrated His love and mercy toward us in Christ. He has a good plan for us and He is able to carry it out.

God hears our prayers for help. He invites us to ask for what we want. His own love for us motivates Him to answer our prayers; though sometimes He has better things in mind for us than we might imagine. We can rely on His promises, which He encourages us to rehearse, though He never forgets them.

Because we can rely on God, we can stop worrying. We can let things go. We can remind ourselves of all the way God has already helped us an rest in peace.

Finally, we can choose what we think about. Instead of worrying, we can abide in Christ. We can dwell on what God has done for us and what He has promised, and we can take courage.

Max Lucado also wrote

It's Not About Me

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Philippians

Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Lucado, Max. Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2017.

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

The joke about visions of the future that never panned out is usually, “Where is my flying car?” The proliferation and promises of digital technology over the last two or three decade might prompt us to pose some other questions such as, “Where is my paperless office?”

In The Revenge of Analog, journalist David Sax discusses how analog technologies are sometimes thriving in the digital ages. Some are making comebacks. Some never went away. Some are growing more popular because of digital technology, not in spite of it.

Sax looks at a lot of analog technologies. This includes vinyl records, paper and pen, tabletop games, books and brick-and-mortar stores.

Some of these have very interesting histories in how they have fallen, risen and interacted with digital technology. What I found most interesting in the book is the reasons analog persists. It is usually because it brings something that digital technology leaves out.

For instance, analog technology appeals to the senses. I know a lot of bibliophiles who love the smell of books, though it would not seem to be a pertinent feature. The IRL space is simply much richer that even the most detailed virtual space.

 “There’s never going to be a virtual environment as completely engaging as the physical environment is,” computer game designer Bernie De Koven quoted in The Revenge of Analog

Analog is usually slow. Generally, a strength of digital is that it is almost always faster. We don’t always want fast. Sometime the slower pace, the pauses, helps us to take things in and savor them. For instance, when you listen to a vinyl record, you can’t skip songs at the touch of a button, you have to lift the needle and move it or even change records. You can’t listen to any songs you have in random order, but you have to listen to song on a single album in the order the artist or producer arranged them unless you introduce a lot of pauses as you interact with the discs and player.

Analog is limited. The digital world can be so rich with information and choices that it can be overwhelming. Paper and pen limits the size, colors and effects you can produce. These limitations help us hone in on the main issues quickly and get moving.

“People think limitations are bad things. But it moves the process forward, in a good way. You can easily get lost in the process. It’s easier to stick to a plan when you have limitations,” analog recording studio owner Chris Mara quoted in The Revenge of Analog

In the real realm of communication, analog is more intimate that digital. The ultimate analog communication is a face-to-face conversation, mediated by nothing but the air in between two people. We send off a lot of nonverbal signals when we speak, and we sense these signals from others, which gives us a more rich and nuanced understanding of what is said (and unsaid) than we can get from a text message or even over Skype or Facetime.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Sax, David. The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. New York: PublicAffairs, 2016.

Why Comics? by Hilary Chute

I enjoyed reading comic books as a kid. Sometimes I enjoy reading them as an adult. Comics have always been for adults (and kids, too). While popular superhero comics have told stories of the physical and moral paragons of our fantasies, comics have also been a place accessible to those who didn’t see themselves represented in other media. The combination of words and pictures, sometimes more of a juxtaposition, that are the language of comics can powerfully present a point of view. Hilary Chute considers the power of comics to communicate the experience of individuals and subcultures in Why Comics?

While Chute focuses on comic books, she considers cartooning more broadly, especially the early cartoons that appeared in British magazines (quickly imitated in the U.S.) and the American newspaper comic strip. While some newspaper comics were designed to appeal to kids, many were meant to attract adult readers. They often depicted people from poor and immigrant communities. In addition, cartooning could also be very artistic and even in the early days of comic strips some artists were recognized for the quality of their images and storytelling, such as Winsor McCay and George Herriman.

Because Chute generally focuses on groups that were historically or currently marginalized, much of the book focuses on underground and independent comics. I’ll admit that I’ve not particularly been a fan of underground comics. My earliest introduction to underground comics in the 1980s was mostly to 1960s and 1970s books that featured drug culture and bizarre or pornographic depictions of sex. In the subsequent years, I’ve come across some incredibly good underground, literary or artistic comics. Chute discusses some of them such as Art Spieglman’s Maus, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. I’m a Midwesterner and I was amazed to see Pekar’s depictions of scenes I might see in my own town.

Comics were born as a mass media, which may explain some of the stigma attached to them, and mainstream comics have always been produced in factory-like manor with a division of labor (writer, penciler, inker, etc.). Some creators were uncredited, or one name appeared on the work of many (this practice was common in the newspaper comic strips, too). Undeground and art comics were more often the work of an auteur, who produced the entire work. This opened up comics to more individual perspectives that strayed farther from the mainstream. Comics can powerfully represent personal experience or memories because it is like memory: it mixes words and images, it can readily present comparisons and contrasts, and it can show past, present, future, real and imagined on the same page.

I don’t plan on adding a lot of underground comics to my reading list, but I did enjoy Chute’s book. If someone is looking for an introduction to comics that are outside the mainstream and done well, Why Comics? is a good place to start.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

American Splendor

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Will Eisner by Michael Schumacher

Chute, Hilary. Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. New York: Harper, 2017.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

As I read Writing Down the Bones, the writing guide by Natalie Goldberg that was first published in 1984, I found myself being more courageous and honest in my writing. At least I’m more that way in the writing I do for myself.

That is where it starts. Better writing comes from the practice of writing. Goldberg recommends timed writing as a practice. Set the amount of time you plan to write, even if it is as short as 10 minutes, and write as fast and freely as you can.

I’ve been doing something similar for a while. What helped me break through to more scary and fruitful territory is Goldberg’s advice to write a little more. If you feel you’ve written all you can about something, write a little more. I found it pushed me to write down thoughts and feelings I didn’t want to admit I had. I don’t know that these confessions to myself had made me a better writer, but when I break through I feel like I may be able to deal with something I’ve been avoiding.

In both of these practices, writing is a kind of meditation, which Goldberg discusses in several of the book’s short chapters. She draws on Buddhist practices such as meditation throughout the book.

Her Buddhist practices also involve being present, which she suggests is helpful for writers. Be present in your everyday life and in your writing. Be attentive, listen, and you will fill your mind with the wonderful things. These become specific details that ground your writing in real life. Instead of writing about something, you can write what is; your readers will conjure up on their own the emotions associated with the experience you capture in your words.

“Whatever is in front of you is your life, so please take care of it,” Natalie Goldberg, Afterward to Writing Down the Bones

Goldberg believes writing should be tied to the rest of your life. Whatever you’re doing, you’re a writer, and even though you can and should give your full attention to the person or task in front of you, the writing mind is still being primed for its work. And writing is work; it requires effort. Like any worthwhile thing, you get out of it what you put into it. Writing is a process and it needs to be approached with joy, honesty and patience if it is to bear fruit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

Shut Up & Write! by Judy Bridges

Switch on Your Brain by Caroline Leaf

Take the Leap by Heather McCloskey Beck

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. 2^nd ed. Boston: Shambala, 2005.

Reposition Yourself by T. D. Jakes

We’re not always where we want to be in life, but we can make it better if we’re willing to change. Megachurch pastor T. D. Jakes offers advice on making positive change in his book Reposition Yourself.

To make a change, you need to face the truth. For most of us, a hard truth is that we have a lot to do with our problems. We bring ourselves to an unhappy, unfulfilled state through our own apathy, lack of passion, settling for less than our best, passivity, poor money management and lukewarm relationship with God.

Another hard truth is that life is unfair. Bad stuff happens to all of us, and to some more than others. Success demands perseverance and flexibility.

People who successfully change take effective action. They are attentive to their situation and to themselves, developing a strong sense of their gifts and purpose. They are intentional, setting definite goals and putting themselves in environments and around people who support what they want to achieve. Thee have a plan, recognizing that it is inevitable that things will that they will face setbacks, but a delay in achieving their goals does not mean they will be denied success.

Humility is another key to successful change, though I don’t recall Jakes putting it so bluntly. Humility begins with recognition that we need God; we need the cleansing and power we can only receive through Jesus Christ. Our humility is grown through gratitude. In thanksgiving we appreciate what we have, learn contentment, and gain strength from our struggles. Humility also protects us from the pitfalls of success such as excessive self-reliance, neglect of important relationships or becoming coopted for the agendas of others.

Along the way to way, it is good to make some money. Money gives you options. Jakes offers some advice on managing money so you can make yours grow and have more freedom.

Jakes, T. D. Reposition Yourself: Living Life without Limits. New York: Atria, 2007.

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Learning is not easy. It takes effort. Too often, people squander their effort on ineffective activities. Ulrich Boser seeks to correct this by describing effective, research-based learning techniques in Learn Better.

Learning begins with value. You won’t put effort into learning something you don’t care about. When I was in third grade, I found very little value in memorizing how to spell words or recite multiplication tables. When my teacher tied my performance on multiplication tables to my attendance of recess, something I valued quite a bit, I found the will to exert myself.

“Motivation is the first step in acquiring any sort of skill,” Ulrich Boser, Learn Better

Once you’ve squared away the motivation, you can get on with the doing of learing. Learing is at heart doing. It is a mental activity, though it is often paired with, supported by, or supportive of physical activity. If you’re actually learning, you’re probably experience some struggle and feel like your pushing yourself a little, but not so much that you’re lost.

In a sense, Boser’s book is organized around different types of doing appropriate for different stages of learning. In the early stages of learning, you decide what you want to learn and plan you learning process. When you have a foundation, you can concentrate on improvement. As your skills improve, you can shift to deepening your knowledge and exploring more complex applications. The best experts add to this a strong sense of the patterns and connections. From beginning to end, learning requires humility, and the people who sustain and grow mastery over time evaluate their knowledge and reflect on what they are doing.

The book is full of ideas you can use. For instance, I created for myself a simple process of spaced-out learning to polish some skills I wanted to improve at work. When I started writing reviews and summaries of books, even before I started this blog, it was because I found I could remember the major points better if I summarized them in my own words, even if I did not return to my notes. I was using form of retrieval practice, which is one of several techniques Boser describes.

Though Boser draws on research, the book is intended for a broad audience. If you’re looking to improve your own learning or for ways your children or employees can get more out of their learning efforts, you’re likely to find something you can understand and use in Learn Better.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

How to Improve Your Memory by James D. Weinland

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Boser, Ulrich. Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything. New York: Rodale, 2017.