Reading Comprehension Skills FACTS
Comprehension
Reading comprehension is one of the most important sections of the English language paper. What is reading comprehension all about? Basically, to gage your knowledge and understanding the English language, a passage from any form of literary work is given and then questions are asked, which need to be answered based on your understanding ('comprehension') of the subject. What makes reading comprehension such an integral part of English language evaluation these days? Because, it is a largely accepted fact that the answers as given by the student on the reading comprehension test, best help the examiner evaluate the understanding of the students. So since reading comprehension seems to have become a mainstay in English language tests, it is important to learn all about the strategies for improving reading comprehension. Read on for more on how to improve reading comprehension.
Tips for Improving Reading Comprehension Skills
Here are some sure-fire ways to help you in improving reading speed and reading comprehension.
Read, Read, Read
They say practice makes a man perfect. So for improving reading comprehension skills, it is important that you read a lot. Reading, especially reading different things, will help you in improving reading comprehension skills. By reading a lot, you will learn how to read faster. Also, by reading a lot more, you will also learn a lot of new words which will in turn help along your reading comprehension endeavor. More on reading strategies for struggling readers.
Ready Reference
Whenever you're reading something, it is always a good practice to keep a dictionary handy. You know that there are a lot of questions in the reading comprehension section based on meanings, definitions, etc. So it is important to know the meaning of as many words as possible. Whenever you come across something to read, always keep a dictionary handy, so that you can check the meanings of the words instantly. By doing this, you can add at least 5 words to your vocabulary everyday. Dictionary apps for cell phone are quite common nowadays, so this might save you the laborious effort of lugging the tomes by Oxford around. More on reading skills and strategies.
Highlights and Markings
While solving reading comprehension tests, it is always a good practice to carry around one of those highlighting markers. So if you spot something which you think is very important in the passage, you can mark it immediately for easier future reference. You could also make markings alongside the paragraphs where you can write a short summary of what that paragraph was all about. This will help you remember all the important points in the passage. Read on for some great speed reading exercises.
Sequence
Another very good tip for improving reading comprehension is to follow the sequence of the passage. Understanding the sequence, the cause and effect relation within the passage and the chronology of the events specified will help you gain a broader understanding of the passage. Hence try finding a sequence in the passage and it will serve you well. Read on for more on speed reading techniques and speed reading tips.
RELATED INFO :
So this was all about improving reading comprehension. Other tips aside, the most important thing is to improving reading skills. Reading comprehension requires a good deal of concentration on the work at hand and hence this really needs a lot of practice. And the only way to improve reading skills is to read different things. By reading more and more varied types of literature, you will be better familiarized with the main technique, reading.
JFK Library to show Salinger letter to Hemingway
It was the summer of 1946 when a young and war-fatigued J.D. Salinger reached out to another writer whose career had also been shaped by war, a writer he had arranged to meet while both had been in Europe.
"The talks I had with you here were the only hopeful minutes of the whole business," Salinger writes at the close of his letter to Ernest Hemingway, which will be displayed publicly for the first time on Sunday at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.
The letter, which has been available to and referenced by scholars over the years, is part of the Ernest Hemingway collection that has been kept at the JFK Library for 30 years. It offers a fascinating glimpse of a sardonic Salinger, then serving in the Army, in the period before the 1951 publication of "Catcher in the Rye."
The author even jokingly compares himself with Catcher in the Rye protagonist Holden Caulfield, who had appeared as a character in earlier short stories.
Salinger died Jan. 27 at age 91 at his home in New Hampshire. JFK Library director Thomas Putnam said renewed interest in the reclusive author was one reason why the library decided to display the letter during a presentation of the PEN/Hemingway Award, given annually to a first-time fiction writer.
Salinger addresses the letter "Dear Poppa," a Hemingway nickname, signaling a friendship possibly beyond just casual. He signs it "Jerry Salinger." (Salinger's full name was Jerome David.)
Writing from a hospital in Nuremburg, Germany, Salinger offers that nothing is wrong with him except "an almost constant state of despondency," and that his purpose in writing was "to talk to someone sane." The doctors, he wrote, had quizzed him about his sex life and his childhood, a suggestion they were employing Freudian tactics to get at the root of his melancholy.
Salinger asks Hemingway how his latest novel is coming and implores him not to sell it to a movie producer: "As Chairman of your many fan clubs, I know I speak for all the members when I say Down with Gary Cooper."
Of his own fledgling career: "I've written a couple more of my incestuous stories, and several poems, and part of a play." Possibly foretelling publication of "Catcher in the Rye," he relates that he has a "very sensitive novel in mind," and while he wishes to get out of the Army so he can pursue his writing, he worries that a psychiatric discharge might label him a "jerk" and damage his career.
Putnam said there was no indication that Hemingway answered the letter.
"Because we don't have other letters, I assume there wasn't other correspondence. There may have been and it may just not be here, but Hemingway was very good about keeping his correspondence so it could be the only letter between the two," he said.
Hemingway's widow, Mary, donated the letters to the library partly out of gratitude to the Kennedy Administration, which had helped arrange her to travel to Cuba and retrieve his papers after her husband's death in 1961, Putnam explained. The papers are kept in a room at the library that is not generally accessible to visitors.
Hemingway's son, Patrick, will attend the Sunday ceremony to honor Brigid Pasulka for her first novel, "A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True."
Related information:
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
After Kennedy's military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political. With the encouragement and grooming of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. He was the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), the first President born in the 20th century, and the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43.[3][4] Kennedy is the first and only Catholic and the first Irish American president, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize.[5] Events during his administration include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the African American Civil Rights Movement and early stages of the Vietnam War.
Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime but was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby before he could be put on trial. The FBI, the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald was the assassin, with the HSCA allowing for the probability of conspiracy based on disputed acoustic evidence. The event proved to be an important moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation and the ensuing political repercussions. Today, Kennedy continues to rank highly in public opinion ratings of former U.S. presidents.
Russia bans Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’
Russia has added Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" to a list of books that are banned for their extremist content, Russian prosecutors said on Friday.
The book "has been freely available up to now on several websites and was also sold semi-legally by booksellers, since it was not banned," the Russian prosecutor general's office said in a statement.
The lengthy 1925 book by the German Nazi leader, whose title translates as "My Struggle," tells the story of his early years and exposes elements of his anti-Semitic political ideology.
Russia introduced the ban after prosecutors in the central Russian city of Ufa found the book freely available. A city court ruled that the book was extremist, a decision that put it on the banned books list.
In a complex legal situation, Russia already has a law which automatically qualifies all books written by leaders of the German Nazi Party as extremist, but "Mein Kampf" was not explicitly named as a banned book, putting it in a legal grey area.
The Russian justice ministry maintains a list of publications that have been defined as extremist materials on its website, and the sale or distribution of them is punishable with a fine.
The list, which currently has 573 entries, includes numerous Islamic texts and magazines distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as a book about Hitler by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Related information:
Adolf Hitler (German pronunciation: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as chancellor from 1933 to 1945 and as head of state (Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the Nazi Party (DAP) in 1919 and became leader of NSDAP in 1921. Following his imprisonment after a failed coup in Bavaria in 1923, he gained support by promoting German nationalism, anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and propaganda. He was appointed chancellor in 1933, and quickly transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideals of national socialism.
Hitler ultimately wanted to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in Europe. To achieve this, he pursued a foreign policy with the declared goal of seizing Lebensraum ("living space") for the Aryan people; directing the resources of the state towards this goal. This included the rearmament of Germany, which culminated in 1939 when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland. In response, the United Kingdom and France declared war against Germany, leading to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.[2]
Within three years, Germany and the Axis powers had occupied most of Europe, and most of Northern Africa, East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. However, with the reversal of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Allies gained the upper hand from 1942 onwards. By 1945, Allied armies had invaded German-held Europe from all sides. Nazi forces engaged in numerous violent acts during the war, including the systematic murder of as many as 17 million civilians,[3] an estimated six million of whom were Jews targeted in the Holocaust.
In the final days of the war, at the fall of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress Eva Braun and, to avoid capture by Soviet forces less than two days later, the two committed suicide.
Which is more useful, a guidebook or a travel app?
A comprehensive travel guidebook can feel like a brick in your luggage. Yet smart phone travel guides are not always a good alternative. They can overwhelm users with potentially unreliable user-generated content or underwhelm them with a flashy interface and little true substance.
But two wildly different brands — Lonely Planet and Wallpaper — offer useful additions to the traveler's library — both in printed and virtual forms. On a recent work trip to London, I compared the printed guidebooks with their respective iPhone versions.
As a result of my experience, I intend to amend my customary strategy of taking two guidebooks on any family vacation — a massive comprehensive book for use on flights and trains and when stopped for the night, and a smaller, finely tuned guide to an activity or city that is light enough to carry around. Instead, I'll keep the massive tome for reference, but replace the lighter guide with one on my mobile phone.
Wallpaper guides are similar in style to their parent publication, a design, fashion and lifestyle magazine. When I picked up the London print guide, I was immediately taken by the simple cover design, slick, image-intensive interior layout, succinct writing and small, lightweight size.
The smart design carries over to the $3.99 iPhone app. Upon opening, the first option is a beautiful aerial panorama photo of London, with some landmarks labeled. The interface is fairly intuitive — letting the user look for shopping, lodging or nightlife or dive into London's neighborhoods and see the highlights.
But sleek comes at a price — the guide leaves many staples out including the British Museum, Tower of London and Big Ben.
"Our guide is presented as an edit. It's not trying to be all things to all people," said Neil Sumner, digital director of Phaidon, which publishes the guides and produced the app.
Sumner says the Wallpaper guides are intended to offer an insider's taste of a city for what he describes as a "switched-on urban traveler." The guide would help someone pick a few highlights for a 48- or 72-hour visit.
He is proud of the guide's "bespoke photography," which gives users a feel for each suggested stop.
The app contains all the information from the print edition, while providing frequent editorial updates. It also enables users with an international data plan to map locations.
I typically am annoyed by advertisements in apps, especially purchased apps. But Wallpaper's partner, Rolex, actually offers something useful at the bottom of each page: the time in London.
Shifting gears, Lonely Planet offers what one would expect of the travel guide giant: comprehensive editorial information and valuable tips.
The $15.99 iPhone app (some cities are available for Google Android phones) contains all the information packed in more than 400 pages in the print version. Upon opening the app, you see a table of contents like in the printed edition. If you've enabled location services on the phone, you can also search for nearby points of interest. There is also a filterable map of every listing in the city.
This app's strength is the quality of its content. This is Lonely Planet's bread and butter — comprehensive guides to help travelers navigate points unknown. If you like and trust the Lonely Planet books, this app offers the same quality, with detailed information. If you like a spot, add it to your favorites by clicking on the heart icon.
The breadth of content was useful when I met a former colleague for lunch. After our meal we decided to hit a pub, but didn't know the part of town well. Taking out the iPhone and using the Lonely Planet app, I found a cozy pub nearby and followed the map, though I did encounter a couple of bugs that crashed the map.
Lonely Planet's Matthew Cashmore acknowledges there are some bugs, but says the company is "releasing updates all the time and working hard to fix any problems."
Over the past year and a half, the smart phone guides have grown to 25 percent of Lonely Planet's city guide sales. But Cashmore says that doesn't mean printed books will vanish.
"The thing about guidebooks is they are very good at what they do. You can take notes in them, tear out a page, read them on the plane. If they get wet, you can put them on a radiator. They are the perfect travel device."
He says the apps are ideal as a download in an Internet cafe if, for instance, you are in London and decide to take a quick trip to Paris or another city. As such, they can readily supplement a traditional printed book.
Related information:
A guide book is a book for tourists or travelers that provides details about a geographic location, tourist destination, or itinerary. It is the written equivalent of a tour guide. Many travel guides now take the form of travel websites rather than printed books.
It will usually include details, such as phone numbers, addresses, prices, and reviews of hotels and other lodgings, restaurants, and activities. Maps of varying detail are often included. Sometimes historical and cultural information is also provided. Tourist guide also may focus on , from adventure travel to relaxation, or be aimed at travelers with larger or smaller travel budgets, or focus on the particular interests and concerns of certain groups, such as lesbian and gay singles or couples. Guide books are generally intended to be used in conjunction with actual travel, although simply enjoying a guide book with no intention of visiting may be referred to as "armchair tourism".
On the other hand, for academic purposes 'Guide Book' stands for any special brief reference, in details explanations, exercises, questions collections from the previous exams and points based discussion on any topics. In many countries its also treated as reference books. 'Guide Book' contents may be similar to Text Book on few aspects like quotations or annotations. Sometimes it explains any portion of a paragraph and other complex words that is stated in Text Books. Different guide books may focus on different aspects of the main discussion. Often, 'Guide Book' is published on latest information based on Text Books and Syllabus, it also may contain a brief compilation of all Text Books that are available in the market. In some cases, it also referred as Text Reference or Guide to Reference.
Final book in ‘Fablehaven’ series due out Tuesday
As he toiled away in the basement of his home, Brandon Mull quickly ditched the mundane for a world teeming with zombies, trolls, imps and centaurs.
The result has been the popular "Fablehaven" series, or what the author describes as "Jurassic Park meets Harry Potter." The fifth and final installment, "Fablehaven: Keys to the Demon Prison," arrives in stores Tuesday.
Beginning with book one in 2006, each has been a New York Times best seller — the series has sold more than 650,000 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan — and Mull says a movie is now in the works.
Still, the series doesn't have the national profile that it could and certainly hasn't risen to the enormous success of other fantasy series, such as "Harry Potter" or "Twilight," Mull says.
"My agent likes to call it the best-selling series you've never heard of," he says.
But "Fablehaven" fans are ready for the next adventure in Mull's enchanted sanctuary, where magic and magical beasts exist hidden from the outside world.
"People are pretty excited when his books come out," says John Clukey, events and outreach coordinator at Sam Weller's Bookstore, an independent shop in downtown Salt Lake City. "He has national distribution, which we always think is pretty awesome for people in Utah."
The 35-year-old Mull worked for years in marketing and advertising, relegating his fiction writing to a secret, off-hours pursuit. That changed, though, after the Salt Lake City-based Shadow Mountain published his first "Fablehaven" book. Simon & Schuster picked up the paperback rights, which has given the books an added boost in sales.
Fellow Shadow Mountain author Obert Skye, author of the "Leven Thumps" series, says Mull's world is creepy in some respects but also inviting.
"You have creatures you recognize. It's not totally geeked out. It's its own thing, not so heavy," Skye notes.
As he writes from his home in Highland, about 30 miles from Salt Lake, Mull takes his imagining one step further, picturing his books read to a rapt 5th-grade audience.
"One of my theories is, if a kid is scared, he's not bored," the author says.
A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Brigham Young University graduate, Mull began his career with Shadow Mountain for a reason: The publisher is the more mainstream imprint of Mormon church-owned Deseret Book Co. Still, Mull is just the latest example of an LDS fantasy writer making it big. Stephenie Meyers, the author of the ubiquitous vampire romance series "Twilight," is Mormon. So is the successful Orson Scott Card.
But "Fablehaven" veers away from the hidden lessons or cautionary tales contained in "Twilight." Mull's stories — which offer plenty of fantasy filled adventures — aren't pushing an overt religious allegory or an underlying Mormon message.
In some ways he does tiptoe around his observant audience. Black magic is a good example. Mull says that witchcraft practiced by the characters in some fantasy books turn religious readers off.
"I mean Utah itself is a super-conservative place, I didn't want my neighbors mad at me," he says.
Mull's first "Fablehaven" book starts with brother and sister Seth and Kendra stumbling on a magical park while visiting their grandfather, who oversees one of the mystical enclaves. They learn that natural reserves nurturing mythical creatures have existed for centuries.
In the ensuing books, Seth and Kendra get a little older and survive their share of close calls. A powerful plague threatens the heroes in book three. By book four, they have to dodge dragons in a sanctuary and lift a sacred artifact from right under the noses of vigilant centaurs.
Breaking the rules of reality has been a longtime activity for Mull. As a child, he was a habitual daydreamer and storyteller who invented games to play with his siblings. He spent his high school years living in Connecticut, in a house surrounded by trees. As the day grew darker, the young Mull would stare deep into the woods and try to picture supernatural creatures rustling through the forest and emerging into his backyard.
But he never thought of a meaningful way to channel his escapist imagination. For one, he didn't like reading as a kid. All that changed when he stumbled through the wardrobe of someone else's famous fantasy world: C.S. Lewis' Narnia. Something magical happened.
"It pushed my buttons and kind of broke my brain," Mull says. "That's the one that made me go, 'Oh wait a minute. Books aren't just about kids whose dogs died. There are other things out there.'"
He wrote his first short stories in high school. After graduating from college in 2000 he sweated out a novel, but nothing happened with that first try. Shadow Mountain, where he submitted the first book, liked the attempt and told him to give it another shot. That shot was "Fablehaven."
The sci-fi approach of anything goes is anathema to Mull. He has strict guidelines for writing fantasy. Rules of reality should be broken, not shattered beyond recognition. Even fantasy worlds need to make sense and have a governing system. So why would a world with magical creatures in forests exist? The familiar, down-to-earth idea of wildlife parks tied it altogether, giving "Fablehaven" its reason for being.
In the final book, Mull promises big betrayals. There will be revelations and payoffs for attentive readers who have been invested since the beginning. There will also be exotic travel. At last count, the characters had roamed as far as Australia, Finland and Turkey.
Book five sends Seth and Kendra on a mission to thwart the designs of the nefarious Sphinx, leader of the Society of the Evening Star. The Sphinx is after artifacts that can open a notorious demon prison, Zzyzx. If this happens, evil forces will take control of the world.
No pressure.
"It's the biggest roller coaster of a book I've written so far," Mull says.
The one downside of the whole ride is that Mull will have to say goodbye to Kendra and Seth, who feel like old friends.
The break is more than sentimental. He's leaving Shadow Mountain for his next series, a three-part major release put out by Simon & Schuster.
"The Beyonders" is about a world where an evil emperor is breaking the spirits of heroes. The world has rules but is Mull's first attempt at creating it all from scratch.
"It's my most epic thing I've tried to put together," he says.
Related information:
Fablehaven is The New York Times' best-selling children's literature fantasy series written by Brandon Mull.[1] The book series, which to date includes Fablehaven, Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star, Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague, and Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary is published by Shadow Mountain in hardcover and Simon & Schuster in paperback.
19th-century industrial spy stole No. 1 drink
"For All the Tea in China" (Viking, 252 pages, $25.95), by Sarah Rose: The plot for Sarah Rose's "For All the Tea in China" seems tailor-made for a Hollywood thriller: An industrial spy hired by the world's largest multinational corporation steals trade secrets that enable the world's biggest superpower to wrest control of a business that represents up to 10 percent of that nation's economy.
But the target of the theft is neither a new-generation computer chip nor a biotechnology breakthrough. Rather, it's the plants, seeds, processing techniques and production experts needed to replicate China's lucrative tea industry of the mid-19th century in British-ruled India.
In an exotic adventure tale that changed the course of history, journalist Rose details a beverage heist far more complex than any attempt to crack a safe in Atlanta and steal the formula for Coca-Cola.
The man behind the theft was Robert Fortune, a Scottish-born botanist who donned mandarin garb, shaved the top of his head and attached a long braid as part of a disguise that allowed him to pass as Chinese so he could go to areas of the country that were off-limits to foreigners.
He carried out his clandestine mission on behalf of the London-based East India Co., which prospered by shipping opium to China in return for tea. While turning millions of Chinese into drug addicts, the 200-year-old trade helped to make tea the world's most popular drink, not counting water. But the company feared that if China legalized the cultivation of opium, the British would have nothing to offer in exchange for tea.
The high, cool hillsides of India's Himalayas offered the same prime conditions as the best tea-growing regions in China. Fortune, accompanied by hirelings of questionable loyalties, traveled hundreds of miles by riverboat, sedan chair and on foot to obtain tea plants and ship them to India in glass-enclosed cases that enabled them to survive.
Despite problems during startup, tea plantations in India proved to be an astounding success, outstripping China's production during Fortune's lifetime.
During his industrial espionage mission, and in an earlier three-year expedition into the interior of China to collect botanical samples for the Royal Horticultural Society of London, Fortune proved himself to be brave, resourceful and cunning. Whether battling pirates in the South China Sea or eluding bandits on land, he comes across as an adventurer whose exploits could rank alongside those of the fictitious Indiana Jones.
Rose's fast-paced narrative offers high drama in far-flung locales and provides information on a little-known episode in the history of commerce. Her tale also incorporates details about the growing and processing of tea. It was Fortune, after all, who determined that green tea and black tea came from the same plant, and that leaves used to make black tea were left to sit in the sun for a day in a process called fermentation.
The son of a farmworker, Fortune had no formal higher education and was very much the model of a Victorian self-made man. Fortune and his wife, Jane, had three children, one of whom died in infancy, but the author uncovered few details about his family life.
Rose's research relied heavily on Fortune's memoirs and his letters to the East India Co. Jane Fortune burned her husband's papers and personal effects upon his death in 1880, but the material that survived provides fodder for a story that should appeal to readers who want to be transported on a historic journey laced with suspense, science and adventure.
Related information:
Tea is the agricultural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, prepared and cured by various methods. “Tea” also refers to the aromatic beverage prepared from the cured leaves by combination with hot or boiling water,[2] and is the common name for the Camellia sinensis plant itself. Although tea contains various types of polyphenols, “contrary to widespread belief, tea does not contain tannic acid.” [3]
After water, tea is the most widely-consumed beverage in the world.[4] It has a cooling, slightly bitter, astringent flavour which many enjoy.[5]
There are at least six varieties of tea: white, yellow, green, oolong, black and pu-erh[6] of which the most commonly found on the market are white, green, oolong and black.[7] All teas are made from the same species of plant, though different varieties may be used, and the leaves are processed differently, and, in the case of fine white tea, grown differently. Pu-erh tea, a post-fermented tea, is also often used medicinally.[6]
The term “herbal tea” usually refers to an infusion or tisane of leaves, flowers, fruit, herbs or other plant material that contains no Camellia sinensis.[8] The term “red tea” refers to an infusion made from either black tea (mainly in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other East Asian languages) or the South African rooibos plant (containing no Camellia sinensis).
Big business redesigns the tomato in ‘Ripe’
"Ripe: The Search for the Perfect Tomato" (Counterpoint, 304 pages, $26), by Arthur Allen: "Ripe" is the latest in a rapidly growing number of books examining U.S. agricultural and food production systems and their affect on public health and the environment.
Arthur Allen, a former Associated Press writer, focuses on the tomato industry, and he's somewhat more sympathetic to corporate farms and big business than trendsetter Michael Pollan and others writing on similar topics. The first part of "Ripe" includes a number of derisive comments about members of the "crunchy left," who want cheap, locally grown, organic tomatoes year-round. Allen notes, rightly, that that's nearly impossible to provide, given the climate in most of the country.
He visits Mexico, where the American entrepreneurs who run Del Cabo Farms are trying to help local farmers make a living by growing new hybrids to be shipped to American markets. The question, Allen notes, is whether their tasty tomatoes will hold their flavor and form during their long journey north.
That musing leads into an examination of American tomato breeding that has created ever firmer, but increasingly bland fruit. As labor problems and costs grew in California's tomato industry, farmers growing tomatoes for ketchup, sauce and other products turned to mechanical harvesting. Mechanical harvesters require tomatoes that fall off the vine when shaken — but not before — and can withstand sorting. Allen recounts how researchers at the University of California, Davis helped develop these.
In Florida, farmers growing tomatoes for direct sale needed fruit that ripened slowly and wouldn't spoil during shipping. They eventually developed a method of picking tomatoes while they were green and then exposing them to ethylene gas to turn them red when they reached their destination.
But while Allen is understanding of the risks farmers face and their need to make a profit, he becomes increasingly critical of the effect of business interests on the American diet as "Ripe" progresses. Americans eat tomatoes that fit the needs of Heinz, McDonald's and a few other corporate giants because those companies provide the bulk of farmers' sales. McDonald's and other fast-food companies need firm tomatoes that hold up when sliced thin and look nice on a hamburger bun. Taste, Allen insists, is not a priority.
Allen also delves into labor and trade issues, writing critically about the treatment of farmworkers in California and Florida and looking at how a flood of cheap tomato paste from China could eventually put American farmers and the Mexican laborers who pick for them out of work.
While each chapter in "Ripe" is focused, the book as a whole has a meandering feel as Allen jumps from plant breeding to international trade to labor organization. Parts are also heavy with science and Latin plant names.
But readers with endurance and a strong interest in understanding the politics of food and the forces dictating what's available at their supermarkets will probably find it enlightening.
Related information:
Ripening is a process in fruits that causes them to become more edible. In general, a fruit becomes sweeter, less green, and softer as it ripens. Even though the acidity of fruit increases as it ripens, this is not reflected in its flavor which we tend to perceive the riper the sweeter. This curious fact is attributed to the Brix-Acid Ratio.
Review: Topping leaves nothing out of memoir
"On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent's Journal From the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam" (LSU, 397 pages, $39.95), by Seymour Topping: A former editor of The New York Times sits down to write his memoir and the title alone runs 24 words. But what else, one might ask, was a reporter with Topping's breadth and depth of experience to do?
Topping, who retired as managing editor of the Times in 1987, needed a lot of words for a long-awaited personal account of the 4 1/2 decades he spent holding hands with history.
As suggested by the basic title, "On the Front Lines of the Cold War," Topping — or "Top," as he is known to longtime associates — was a witness to some of the most crucial events of the last half of the 20th century.
And not just a witness. At times he was so close to the events, leaders and others in the arena, he was virtually there himself, though conscious of the need to maintain the critical distance between himself and those he was covering.
Indeed, Topping describes being invited to sit in on one meeting of high-level administration officials, only to have them, at the end, turn to him for his views.
Over the years, Topping came in direct contact with Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek, Nikita Khruschev and Fidel Castro, along with soldiers, spies, diplomats, authors and fellow journalists.
While getting it all down for spot news dispatches, he clearly kept posterity in mind. Judging by the detail densely packed into 397 pages, he filed stories from every exotic dateline and never threw away a notebook.
Especially interesting is Topping's tale of being sent by his then-employer, The Associated Press, to become the first American correspondent based in French Indochina after World War II. Minutes after he and his wife, Audrey, arrived in Saigon in February 1950, a terrorist bomb exploded outside their hotel, killing and wounding dozens of French colonial soldiers.
The following year, Topping covered the arrival of a young U.S Congressman on a "study tour" visit. At the airport, the visitor asked to meet with Topping and the next day, John F. Kennedy climbed the stairs to the Toppings' small apartment, "seated himself in an easy chair near the bamboo bar" and peppered Topping with two hours of questions about "every aspect of the Vietnam conflict."
No one could imagine the visit would have a "profound impact" on U.S. policy in Indochina, Topping says; that a decade later, JFK as president would order 400 military advisers to help the shaky South Vietnamese regime fight a communist takeover.
Topping's writing conveys a passion for his craft, but his scrupulous concern for the minutiae of events might intimidate readers looking for a fast, exciting read. Even so, the book is a feast for students of history who want to know not just how things turned out, but also how it actually happened.
Born in the Bronx section of New York and seasoned as an infantry officer in World War II, Topping joined the Hearst-owned International News Service in China, jumped to the steadier AP there, and ultimately wound up as managing editor of The New York Times.
After his final departure from the Times in 1993, he taught journalism at Columbia University and served as its administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.
There's plenty here for students of journalism history, including courtly accounts of the executive suite and newsroom intrigues for which the Times is noted, and such memorable controversies as Timesman Harrison Salisbury's disputed reports from Hanoi in late 1966 and the Pentagon Papers in 1971 — both of which happened on Topping's watch as foreign editor.
At the end, Topping summarizes the failure of American policy not only in Vietnam but also, in his view, just about everywhere.
This gloomy record is one of "flawed government handling of national security issues" by successive administrations from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, he writes.
But he wraps it all up with a hopeful prediction: that today's financially beleaguered newspapers will meet the challenges of the digital age "if they retain the courage and quality of journalism" that made organizations such as the Times, The Washington Post and the AP "the most respected and quoted of news outlets" worldwide.
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The Cold War (Russian: Холо́дная война́) (1947–1991) was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, a nuclear arms race, economic and technological competitions, such as the Space Race.
Despite being allies against the Axis powers and having the most powerful military forces among peer nations, the USSR and the US disagreed about the configuration of the post-war world while occupying most of Europe. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991). The US and some western European countries established containment of communism as a defensive policy, establishing alliances such as NATO to that end.
Several such countries also coordinated the Marshall Plan, especially in West Germany, which the USSR opposed. Elsewhere, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others formed the Non-Aligned Movement.
Barnes & Noble names new CEO in e-books push
Barnes & Noble Inc promoted the executive who spearheaded the development and launch of its Nook electronic reader to chief executive on Thursday, as the largest specialty U.S. bookseller accelerates its push into digital books.
William Lynch, whose appointment is effective immediately, called Barnes & Noble's e-books business the "key to our future" on a conference call.
Lynch, 39, joined Barnes & Noble in February 2009 and oversaw its web business. Last October, he presided over the company's launch of the Nook, which competes with Amazon.com Inc's market-leading Kindle and Sony's e-book reader, among other devices.
After several production delays during the fall and into the holiday season, the Nook only became available for in-store orders in February.
Last week, Barnes & Noble announced that users of Apple Inc's upcoming iPad device will be able to download books from its bn.com e-bookstore.
Barnes & Noble's founder and Chairman Leonard Riggio explained Lynch's appointment by saying the retailer needed to "pick up the pace" of its shift to e-books as more bookselling gravitates to the web and e-readers. Riggio said that Lynch had quickly put the digital business on the fast track.
The company also promoted Chief Operating Officer Mitchell Klipper to CEO of its retail group.
The management shifts come at a time when Barnes & Noble's comparable sales at its namesake stores continue to decline. They fell 5.5 percent during the holiday quarter, though online sales surged 32 percent.
Barnes & Noble is also under fire from shareholder Ron Burkle. The billionaire investor has sought to gain a controlling stake in the company and criticized its management structure led by the controlling Riggio family.
NO PHYSICAL BOOK LEFT BEHIND
Lynch stressed that Barnes & Noble would not turn its back on the physical book market, which makes up about 5 percent of overall U.S. book sales.
"When you look at the book market, physical books will continue to be the dominant format that consumers buy -- they value having the object," Lynch told Reuters in an interview, though he said that attachment was weaker for the mass market paperbacks segment.
Lynch also said he did not foresee the need to close stores, saying the company was winning enough market share from struggling rivals, echoing the position of his predecessor.
Last month, the largest investor in rival Borders Group Inc, William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, suggested the No. 2 U.S. specialty bookseller could end up in a booksellers' consolidation with Barnes & Noble. Lynch dismissed the idea, saying, "there is no potential combination."
Standard & Poor's Equity Research analyst Michael Souers maintained his "sell" recommendation on the stock, saying its shares remained expensive, but praised the appointment.
"From a strategic point of view, they are treating the e-reader and e-books as their primary growth engine going forward," Souers told Reuters.
"It begs the question of whether he (Lynch) has sufficient experience given his age, but he's in the best position to drive this change."
The bookstore chain's outgoing CEO, Stephen Riggio, who is also the chairman's brother, will retain the role of vice chairman. The Riggio brothers and other insiders own about 31 percent of the company's shares.
Stephen Riggio said on a call last month that Barnes & Noble could reach the same market share in e-books as it has in physical stores "literally overnight."
In January, investor Burkle, whose investment firm Yucaipa Cos owns 18.7 percent in Barnes & Noble, had asked the board for permission to double his stake in the company without triggering a poison pill provision meant to prevent a hostile takeover. However, the board rejected the request.
By replacing the chairman's brother, Barnes & Noble may be placating other shareholders and directors concerned about the family's hold on the company's management, S&P's Souers said.
Borders also replaced its CEO this winter, when Ron Marshall stepped down after only one year. Its Chief Merchandise Officer Michael Edwards is currently serving as interim CEO.
(Additional reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bangalore, editing by Michele Gershberg and Dave Zimmerman)
Related information:
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States,[4] operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered in lower Fifth Avenue in Lower Manhattan, New York City.[5]
Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton Booksellers stores in malls until they announced the liquidation of the chain.
The company is known for large, upscale retail outlets, many of which contain a café serving Starbucks Coffee, and for competitive discounting of bestsellers. Most stores also sell magazines, newspapers, DVDs, graphic novels, gifts, games, and music. Video games and related items were sold in the company's GameStop retail outlets until October 2004, when the division was spun-off into an independent company.
As of October 2009, the company operates 777 stores in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia in addition to 636 college bookstores, which serves nearly 4 million students and 250,000 faculty members across the country.
Author Lewis equates Wall Street bonuses with “theft”
Author Michael Lewis, known for exposing the culture of excess at Solomon Brothers with his book "Liar's Poker," says Wall Street bonuses at banks bailed out by Washington are "a very elegant form of theft."
Lewis's latest book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," to be published next week, tells the story of the 2008 financial meltdown through the prism of a few Wall Street players who spotted the weaknesses of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market and made a fortune betting against it.
In an interview with the CBS news show "60 Minutes" to be broadcast on Sunday, Lewis described how banks have been given free rein to make big profits and reward themselves with whopping bonuses.
The big Wall Street banks "have access to a zero percent loan in virtually unlimited quantities from the Federal Reserve. You can take that money and reinvest it in Treasury bonds or government agency securities and you will get the spread and you could do it over and over," he said.
"You're essentially borrowing from the government ... and taking a cut," he said.
Wall Street banks, many which received government bailouts in 2008, saw higher bonuses in 2009. Even though profits returned robustly in 2009, the bonus pools still fell short of the banner year of 2007.
For example, Goldman Sachs, the poster child for excessive pay, paid out $16.2 billion in 2009, ahead of the $10.9 billion it paid in 2008, but still well below the record $20 billion it set aside for compensation in 2007.
"Really what's going on is the people on the top of the firm want to make a lot of money and if they're going to make a lot of money, they have got to pay the people under them a lot of money," Lewis said.
Related information:
Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood.[1] Wall Street is also shorthand (or a metonym) for the "influential financial interests" of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area.[2]
Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, NYMEX, and NYBOT.
