Books 1.0

Instead of interspersing my book reviews throughout the month, I think that I will just have a big post titled book reports at the end of each month. I'll even try to use stars for a rating system ( * = :-( , ***** = :-) ). Less relevant to my adventures, so there is no harm in skipping over these posts. When I was heading off to site, a Peace Corps staff member saw my armful of books and gave a laugh as though there was no way I would finish the books in two years. I will be lucky if these books last me two months.

**** I finished and really enjoyed a book called Agroforestry in Dryland Africa; it gave me a good sense of where to go with some of my schemes. It is written by a group called ICRAF (International Council for Research into AgroForestry, I think). They have a series, and I hope to read most of them. The book defined agroforestry in all of its different flavors, such as growing trees with crops, growing trees for animal fodder, using them to improve land and climate conditions and so on. It talked about good techniques, and trees that are appropriate. It even came with some cartoons interspersed throughout and a guide at the back with properties and alternate names of about 100 common/useful trees.

*** I read the book Small is Possible by George McRobie. He started ITDG with E.F. Schumacher and the book basically chronicles examples of people putting into practice the things described in Small is Beautiful. The book is written in 1981, and its age shows. I liked it for the most part, but they are overly critical of nuclear power, and it seemed to universally decree Big is Ugly because it will exacerbate the gap between rich and poor. While that is the case in some enterprises, I feel that things like the internet can be big (enormous) without exacerbating the gap between rich and poor.

* I read a book called A Tree for all Reasons. The book is also by ICRAF and in the same series as Agroforestry in Dryland Africa. This one was actually incredibly dry and not all that practical. It basically gave comprehensive details on how agroforestry experiments are done to make sure that the results will be useful.

During the bus ride across Kenya, I brought two books totaling 300 pages. It was way too little. Even reading two days worth of newspapers, I wished I had brought more books. The books were my father's college books from when he was at Detroit Mercy.

**** The first book was called An Introduction to American Education by Paul Woodring. The book was written 44 years ago, but it was still fairly relevant to the present. It made a lot of good points, and I would recommend seeing if you can find it. One of my favorites was about the fact that most people around the country cannot actually agree on what the goals of education are, and that is the first step towards developing a successful education system. It was also very foresighted in its discussion of educational technology.

** The second book was called Teaching in a Changing World by Anderson. It was a tad less insightful. It mostly harped on the issue that teachers in a school need to collaborate more, and then it went on long diatribes about the evils of grading and exams. It also talked a lot about elementary schools in Lexington, which made me wish that I had read it while I was still in Boston. I don't think they mentioned Hastings, but if he knew Nancy Alloway, he would have made a point to mention her. :)