Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet

Posted on April 13, 2013 by smellincoffee

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet
352 pages
© 2008 Michael T. Klare

For much of the 20th century, a handful of industrialized countries enjoyed access to a seemingly infinite supply of oil. But a century of economic progress has seen global demand for oil soar. Ever more countries are scrambling for a bigger piece of the petroleum pie, and there’s increasingly less to divide, while appetites the sticky sweet stuff have only just been whetted.  As nations scramble to find new oil deposits to replace those which they’ve already exhausted, the global balance of power has shifted. Formerly impoverished nations are now fat with wealth, and titans of the global economy have become increasingly anxious beggars on the verge of throwing punches. In Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet,  Michael Klare elaborates on why the global dependency on a resource with an unstable future is a growing threat to world peace and muses on how the great powers, old and new, can turn competitive tension into collaborative energy and prevent quests for energy security from becoming World War III.

Oil (and gas) are potent stuff.  The energy contained within them isn’t limited to fuel for transportation: they can  and have brought back to life, Lazarus-style, failed states like Russia which capitalized on its ability to control the flow of fuel to Europe. They’ve also turned desert wastelands dotted with yurts into spectacles of affluence; goodbye tents, hello opulent towers and water fountains performing music.  This enormous wealth has been generated because global demand for oil is climbing at the same time that supplies are faltering:  the great wells have been drained, discoveries of new ones are falling, and wells are exhausted more quickly than they can found. In addition to our rapacious appetite for fuel wreaking havoc on the environment  (who needs mountains when you can have coal? Aw yeah.), they’re not having a happy effect on global politics, either. Not only has the wealth and power given to Russia and the new petrostates been restricted to a relative few, with little of the wealth being invested back into their societies, but the few have used the power to strengthen their hand; petty tribal chiefs now have money and foreign militaries doing their oppressing for them. Which foreign militaries? Those of the United States, Russia, and China, the Big Three who are canvassing the globe in search of resources and playing games with whatever tinpot dictator they can pressure to give it to them — from the Caspian Sea to Africa, and especially the Middle East. Although Klare’s early chapters detail the rising demand for oil, most of the book is given to studying how various powers, the big three in addition to Japan,  India, and a few other states, are competing with one another in board rooms cutting deals, and increasingly on the edge of the battlefield. While no wars have erupted yet, Klare seems to think they’re inevitable. His final chapter urges the powers to work together to solve their common problem of energy security, rather than wasting scarce resources trying to stave off the inevitable.

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet is a book to read if you’ve any interest in global affairs and the future of energy. It’s replete with data to impress (and horrify) your friends: did you know we’ll have to double our production of oil to meet predicted demand by 2020?  (Considering that we’ve been reduced to smashing  greasy rocks together to find it, that’s a fairly daunting challenge.) Klare is an engaging writer, making a discussion of production figures seem interesting; it helps that competition for them is causing so much conflict.  Given the importance of the subject, this is a book I think more people should read, but there are a couple of niggling problems: first, this book is four years out of date, and  so many of the facts may have changed.  Russia’s Gazprom, for instance, isn’t quite as intimidating now as it was in the book, and the new petrostates aren’t wasting all of their oil money. Some nations on the Persian Gulf are investing in renewable energy in anticipation of the inevitable day that oil proves to be not magic and runs out, like every other resource.  Additionally, some of his advice seems a bit unhelpful, namely that suggestion that China and America collaborate to make more fuel-efficient cars; those meager contributions be dwarfed by the fact that both nations are aggressive car promoters and yearn for more automobile sales. These are trifling matters, though; the meat of the book is more than food for thought.

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Monday Musings

Posted on April 8, 2013 by smellincoffee

Every Monday, Should Be Reading posts a list of questions people can write on as they like. I don’t think I’ve ever participated before, but I usually enjoy reading others’ responses. The questions are:

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

I recently purchased The Plain Reader: Essays on Making a Simple Life, and anticipate it arriving in the post sometime this week. I first heard about it on The Sprocket podcast, which covers bikes, beer, music, and ‘simplifying the good life’.   I have on order, through Interlibrary Loan, two books: Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics, and a bit of historical fiction by David Liss called A Spectacle of Corruption.   Last year I purchased eighty books, which is waaaaaaaaaay too many,  and right now I’m trying to declutter.

I currently starting two books, Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish and Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain. I’ve read both authors before; in fact, I read Shubin just a few weeks ago. I enjoyed his The Universe Within Us, but haven’t posted comments yet.  Your Inner Fish has been on my to-read list foreeeeeever, and I bought it a few weeks ago because I wanted a science read.

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1356

Posted on April 6, 2013 by smellincoffee

1356
© 2013 Bernard Cornwell
432 pages

And by God, he thought, there was nothing like this feeling. A good horse, a tight high saddle, a lance, and an enemy taken by surprise.

It’s the year..well, 1356, and after a lull in the fighting, the Hundred Years War is about to resume. England is having a merrie old time raiding the French countryside, setting fire to every structure and peasant they can find, and carting it all back to Calais.  Somewhat chuffed, the French king has at last decided to take action. His goal: capture the Black Prince, young Edward, and use him as a ransom to force the English to recoup France its losses in land and goods, and end the war. With an overwhelming advantage in numbers, and the wisdom learned after numerous defeats (to wit: don’t make it easy for the English archers by riding massive targets into battle),  France seems poised for a momentous victory at Poitiers…but then comes Thomas of Hookton, the knighted leader of a group of archers who call themselves the Damned.

Thomas is known to readers of Cornwell as the bastard son of a priest (“the devil’s whelp”) who rose from the ranks as a common archer to the leader of men, and one who found the Holy Grail, to boot. 1356 sees him on a mission  to ensure that the French don’t recover a relic known as la Malice, the sword that Simon Peter used to defend Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.   His rival is his opposite, a golden-haired idealistic  virgin who fancies himself an actor in some heroic quest, fighting dragons and demons and restoring France to glory.  These two opposites — Cap’n Mal and Captain Hammer, if you will — meet first in battle over a woman, as a young countess has decided to run off with another knight, one who isn’t her morbidly obese and stupidly cruel husband. The Virgin Knight, Sir Roland, sees it as his duty to restore a naughty adulteress to her god-given master, hubby dear, and Thomas rescues her while shaking the count down for unpaid debts. (The aristocracy may sneer at Thomas’ band of common longbowman, but they’re willing to pay a rich price to enlist their service.).  While Thomas and Roland seek la Malice and spar over the woman, each trying to avoid capture and death while traveling through a war zone — the English and French armies move to engage with one another, and eventually Thomas takes his place on the battle lines, where he fights desperately and accomplishes stunning deeds — as Cornwell’s heroes are wont to do.

Cornwell’s strengths as a writer aren’t missing here: his scenes are rich with detail, the dialogue is lively and hilarious, the prose commands the reader’s emotions, the battles are intense. He’s wonderful — but what I liked most about 1356 was Thomas’ foe, Roland. The two are on opposite sides throughout most of the novel, but it’s not as if Roland is a bad guy. He’s committed to Doing the Right Thing; like Thomas, he has a talent for fighting and enjoys the competition. But Roland is an innocent, not for his ‘virgin’ status but because he thinks the world is a fairy tale, in which he is Prince Charming. He undergoes a fair bit of character development as the tale goes on, learning how truly contemptible ‘noble’ rulers can act, and how virtuous the damned can be,

1356 is another rollicking story of war, love,  and mischevious monks.

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Straphanger

Posted on April 6, 2013 by smellincoffee

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile
336 pages
© 2012 Taras Grescoe

The cheap energy era is over, unless someone invents a Star Trek replicator that can magick barrels of oil into existence. Cities across the world are working to meet the challenge of keeping millions of people moving and their local economies growing by investing in mass transit. In Straphanger, Taras Grescoe visits thirteen cities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to experience their transportation systems, finding what what works and what doesn’t. These cities include not only those with long-successful and fully integrated systems, like Paris and Tokoyo, but cities like Phoenix which were built for the automobile and which are now trying to transform themselves. Watching these cities strive for the future has for Grescoe all the thrill of attending a rocket launch: when they’re successful, it’s glorious, but when they fail…the results aren’t pretty.  Happily for Grescoe and readers, most of his accounts are of successful takeoffs — and even the failures have something to teach.

Prior to the automobile, the great urban centers of the industrial age depended on transit systems to keep their expanding population mobile: even small cities could boast a trolley system. But as the automobile zoomed into the historical spotlight, these systems were abandoned and destroyed — until now. The transit renaissance is not only bringing old systems back to life, but bettering them: only only are trains cleaner and faster these days, but the systems themselves are better thought-out. Take buses, for instance, which are increasingly being taken out of congested traffic and deployed in Bus Rapid Transit systems, in which they’re given a full lane of the road, dedicated to them. Those who board these  have pre-purchased tickets, much like train lines — allowing BRT drivers to more than double the average speed of their buses outside the system. BRT systems are ideal for poorer cities in desperate need of transit, but which lack the means to create more involved systems. like subways.

Straphanger combines history and public policy,  covering traditional transit (trolleys,  trains, and subways),  transitional transit with a twist (BRT), and bicycles as well. Although bicyles are individual vehicles, Grescoe demonstrates how they can be connected to cities’ mass transit systems. For instance, in Paris, a Metro ticket that allows subway access can also be used to rent a bicycle to take to the train station — and bus stops there nearby, as well. Copenhagan’s history of recent expansion has been done while simutaneously promoting bicycle use, making it in Grescoe’s view an excellent choice for American cities to study. The great lesson of Straphanger is that for mass transit to succeed, it must consist of a network that people can actually use to get places. Busses that run erratically are of no use to people who need to get to work on time, and bike lanes that go nowhere do more harm to the cause of bike commuting than good. Integration is a key element of that, both in working in transit options where people live, work, and shop, and in connecting those options to expand people’s opportunities.  Paris’ achievements in this field make it Grescoe’s favorite, but Straphanger’s writing doesn’t focus just on functionality: he points out how transit can be a place for civic art, as exemplified by Moscow’s subway, and expand people’s quality of life:  cycling is fun, far more than sitting in gridlock.

Straphanger is a winsome, thoughtful, and entertaining book which should be of interest to citizens who want to make their communities better and more sustainable places to live.

Related:
Walkable City, Jeff Speck
Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes
Waiting on a Train, Jeff McCommons
The Green Metropolis, Jeff  David Owen

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Sundays in America

Posted on March 30, 2013 by smellincoffee

Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith
© 2008 Suzanne Strempek Shea
311 pages

The outpouring of devotion that followed Pope John Paul II’s death stirred Suzanne Shea: why hadn’t she felt like that in a long, long time? And how — where — could she experience such an intensity of religious feeling again?  And so, armed with a seeker’s desire to find That Something Out There, as well as impressive traveling budget, she spent a year visiting American churches,  one each Sunday (and some few on Saturdays, the ‘traditional’ Sabbath),  touring communities both close to home in New York, and as far as Hawaii.  The churches ranged from the huge to the  humble, and spanned every denomination you’ve heard of and some you couldn’t have possibly imagined, Taking notes, Sundays in America is her chronicle of that year of church-shopping,  one which allows readers to play voyeur, experiencing the services and beliefs of churches they’re curious about, but would never go into — and one which might provoke thoughts to what they’re looking for at church.

I’ve read a work like this before, in Hemant Mehta’s I Sold my Soul on eBay. A Jain-turned-atheist, Mehta wanted to explore Christianity, but figured…why do it for free? He offered his church attendance for sale on eBay, and the winner — interested in reaching out to nonbelievers — asked him to visit fifty Christian churches of all kinds and critique them so that Christians could learn what they might do better.  Mehta liked energetic services with easily understood messages, exemplified in Joel Osteen’s megachurch, and panned both high-church liturgical services and low-church bible-thumping.  Shea approaches churches from a different angle, however, as someone who believes the faith, yearns to feel it more fully, but has never ventured to do so before because the nuns who raised her threatened her with hellfire for even visiting another church.  Here, she visits an astonishing variety of churches, from the standard American faiths (Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian,  Baptist) to quirky up-and-comers (Mormons) to the bizarre (a church which worshiped God and John Coltrane). *A handful of niche churches, like the chapel at West Point, are included as well.  The author took care on some Sundays to choose an appropriate church: she visits the West Point chapel on Memorial Day, for instance, and a kooky Christian Spiritualist community on All Saints’ Day.

Shea’s account quickly revealed her personal tastes to be simple, but refined: she recoils from huge productions like Joel Osteen’s megachurch,  stares glumly at the unadorned walls and unfrocked preachers in Protestant churches, and finds the focus of some congregations on spiritual warfare (fighting actual…demons?) and hate-campaigning to be flabbergastingly strange and distasteful. More to her style are the meditative services of the Quakers, or those of Catholic-like denominations, with formal liturgies and generous decor. But she appreciates some of the novelties, as well: the intense emotional energy  of places like New Mount Zion Baptist church and their enthusiastic inclusion of the congregants in the service as doing more than repeating lines appeals to her. For Shea, a this-world spiritual approach is paramount: she delights in churches with social programs like food pantries, and scorns those that only focus on helping their attendees avoid God’s Imminent Wrath.

I found Sundays in America quite engaging, as the author and I seem to look for many of the same things in a faith community, in regards to the emphasis on helping others and the abscence of hate politics. Her story allowed me to find out a bit more about a few denominations, amused me with some of its bizaare visits,  made me appreciate having escaped my childhood Pentecostal background by forcing me to revisit it, and stirred me with her accounts of visiting the Quakers and a few other groups  whose emphasis on simplicity and mindfulness I greatly appreciate.

For those curious about the varieties of Christian religious experiences, this could prove very much worth your while.

* I used to say I went to the First Church of Frank (Sinatra), joking that we sang the Voice’s standards and read devotions from The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Living. Finding out that a church existed that actually did that, with another artist, was startling to say the least…

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Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?

Posted on March 28, 2013 by smellincoffee

Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America? Five Kids Meet their Country
© 1990 John Siegel Boettner
with excerpts from the journals of Heather Deutsch, Joy Fulton, Jimmy West, Carl Fagerlin, and Ethan Turpin.
439 pages

The United States isn’t a nation that makes touring it by bike easy: those who wish to do it must tackle mountain ranges,  broad deserts, a cornucopia of potential natural disasters — and that’s not even including American drivers. Imagine trying to do it while simultaneously watching over five teenagers —  five kids, really, a group of three boys and two girls, all eleven between eleven and thirteen years old. That’s what John Siegel Boettner, a middle-school teacher in California, did in the year of 1986. Beginning at the start of summer break, he and his wife toured with the kids from Washington, D.C. across the continent to Oregon, then down California to their home, a journey of nearly five thousand miles — braving tornadoes, heat waves, snowstorms, and a string of mechanical problems, all in an effort to teach the kids about their country.

John Siegel Boettner isn’t your usual teacher: the fact that’s he willing to take care of five of his kids for four months across the nation and through a variety of disasters might already indicate that.  An avid cyclist, as soon as he began teaching he organized a bicycle club and began taking his kids on extended trips called “Educational Safaris”: in one, he and his wards biked through the northeast,  exploring the sites of the American Revolution. Not only did the bike trips give the kids an opportunity to learn about themselves, of what they could achieve through their effort alone, but it made their history, their culture, come more alive…and such was their teacher’s intention here, as after Mississippi they follow the Oregon Trail to the west coast.  By day, John is their leader, captain, mechanic, and coach, helping them to organize and keep moving, and calling the shots when things get hairy…as they did, often.  Unlike David Lamb’s Over the Hills,  Hey Mom is peppered with near-disasters, usually near the mountains. By night, he’s a teacher, reading to them from the journals of an Oregon Trail pioneer whose path they follow and whose experiences are an eerie mirror of their own.  The trip extends a month past summer vacation, but John feels no guilt about keeping the kids about of school. In his view, the experiences they are gaining on the road are worth far more than a month of memorization and regurgitation. This is the trip of a lifetime, the intimate details of which John accounts in the book, and when it was finished I felt sad, as though I’d been part of the experience and it was now over.

Before leaving on the trip, John read to his kids from Peter Jenkins’ A Walk Across America;  Jenkins, too, transversed the nation in an effort to learn about it, to spend time with its people. Like Jenkins before them, John, his wife, and the kids gain much from the kindness of strangers…and strangers across the continent are very kind indeed to a band of kids doing what most think impossible even for adults, crossing a land of three thousand miles by bicycle.   Although this is the story of a journey, it’s more about the people — both the kids involved, like young Ethan who could barely ride a bike when the tale began, and the people who they meet, like the Amish folk in Tennessee.  I find accounts of people walking or cycling the entire country to be fascinating by themselves, but Hey Mom is extraordinary for featuring kids, whose energy, idealism, and joy and make a work to revel in reading.

Very much recommended. 
Related:
  • The author giving a TEDx talk called “The Joy of Looking“, in which he shares how one of his cycling students taught him the lesson of The Dead Poets’ Society: gather rosebuds while ye may.. It’s beautiful.
  • A Walk Across America, Peter Jenkins
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Teaser Tuesday (26 March)

Posted on March 26, 2013 by smellincoffee

One man from Nebraska even wrote us a couple of times, filling his envelopes with books and brochures. He apologized for always filling my mailbox and ended one of his letters with, “I’m just so excited that you’ll be coming through our state!” It seemed that not too many people were interested in pedaling across Nebraska.

p. 26, Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America? Five Kids Meet their Country, John Boettner

In 2010, the highly conservative International Energy Agency announced that output of conventional oil would peak within ten years if demand continued to grow on a business-as-usual basis.
“Even if oil demand were to remain flat,” Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, conceded in 2011, “the world would need to find more than forty million barrels per day of gross new capacity — equal to four new Saudi Arabias — just to offset this decline.”

p. 10-11, Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe

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Pedaling Revolution

Posted on March 25, 2013 by smellincoffee

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities
© 2009 Jeff Mapes
288 pages

That’s some serious wind resistance there, buddy.

Governments across the world today are beset by problems common to all: rising fuel prices and obesity rates, the ever-present spectre of climate change, and the transportation needs of increasingly urbanized (or re-urbanizing) populations. Enter the humble bicycle: accessible to virtually everyone, regardless of age, sex, or income level; clean, quiet, and an excellent source of exercise. For too long in the United States, bicycling has been the province of a few intense racers and tourers who pride themselves on how miserable a trek they can endure. The end of the cheap oil era, however, has prompted cities to reexamine the bicycle as a means of transportation for the many, despite the car-centric nature of the American city.

Curbing car domination is not a futile hope: in the 1970s,  stirred by soaring oil prices, the Netherlands moved to discourage car use and promote cycling. The city of Amsterdam became a pioneer in modern cycling infrastructure; only Copenhagan can rival it. Both cities boast that nearly half of all trips within their cores happen via a cycle. Fittingly, then, Mapes begins with Amsterdam’s story — but the United States has its own homegrown success in Davis, California, a university town whose early growth was managed by a cycling advocate.  But Davis had it easy:  New York City and Portland, Oregon’s success in creating room for cyclists in an already established urban area filled with cars is arguably more impressive.

Mapes’ chapters on these cities not only demonstrate their success, but explore how they did it.  There’s no authoritative source for how best to integrate bike traffic into transportation infrastructure. Approaches range from the simple (simply painting bike lanes onto existing roads) to the more involved (separate bike paths and even ‘bike boulevards’) — and there are some who deny the need for bicycle infrastructure at all, harrumphing that cyclists should just learn to ride safely with auto traffic.  But more than just the built environment have to change to encourage cycling: traffic laws, like right-turn-on-red permits that allow motorists to take over pedestrian and cyclist right-of-ways, must be addressed. The book ends with a section on cycling safety, health benefits, and the important role bikes can play in raising children, and thus in creating a broader, sustainable bike culture.

Pedaling Revolution has great appeal to both cyclists and citizens concerned about the state of American cities, for whom it should prove most encouraging. The argue for cycling more is better made in The Green Metropolis, the cover of which is of a city in bodily form on a bike, but Mapes’ account gives the already-converted great reason for hope, and could easily intrigue the curious to becoming part of a bicycling renaissance.


Taken from an April edition of The Selma Morning Times, 1900.

Related:

  • Copenhaganize, a blog covering cities around the world as they move toward being more bike friendly, like Amsterdam Copenhagen.
  • The Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability, David Owen
  • Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Jeff Speck
  • The Sprocket and Critical Transit, two podcasts hosted by urban cyclists….based in Portland, naturally. The Sprocket’s tagline is ‘Simplifying the Good Life’; I especially enjoy their interviews with carfree parents.

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Shift

Posted on March 23, 2013 by smellincoffee

Shift
© 2008 Jennifer Bradbury
245 pages

Chris and his best friend Win decided to cycle across the United States in the summer between high school and their freshman year of college — but only Chris came back, and now his first month at university is being made difficult by an intrusive FBI agent and the threats of Win’s powerful father. In Shift, Chris tells the story of his adventure across America…the story that changed his and Win’s lives, and one which is a face-paced mystery for readers.

Jennifer Bradbury seamlessly weaves together the present-day story in which Chris adjusts to freshman life coming off his cycling journey with the story of said journey, with the questions of the agent setting the stage for Chris’s recollections. When I first picked the book up,  I was wary that this might be a murder mystery of some kind, but happily that’s not the case.  After the first third of the book, the reader will probably have realized what happened to Win, and will thus be a few steps ahead of the FBI agent, who is operating on his own, and without official sanction from the Bureau. Such is the power that Win’s father holds over people. What matters is how what happened came to happen: Shift is less a journey across the United States, and more the journey of two young men to find themselves…by way of getting lost.

Although I checked the book out because it was the only novel in the library concerning bicycles, the humor and character development quickly captivated me. It’s targeted toward high schoolers.

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Reviving Ophelia: A Reading

Posted on March 22, 2013 by smellincoffee

“Most preadolescent girls are marvelous company because they are interested in everything — sports, nature, people, music, and books. Almost all the heroines of girls’ literature come from this age group — Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking and Caddie Woodlawn. Girls this age bake pies, solve mysteries, and go on quests. They can take care of themselves and are not yet burdened with caring for others. […] 

Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so to do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle. In early adolescence, studies show that girls’ IQ scores drop and their math and science scores plummet. They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic, and “tomboyish” personalities and become more deferential, self-critical, and depressed. […]  

Psychology documents but does not explain the crashes. Girls who rushed to drink in experiences in enormous gulps sit quietly in the corner. Writers such as Slyvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and Olive Schreiner have described the wreckage. Diderot, in writing to his young friend SOphie Volland, described his observations harshly: ‘You all die at 15.’ […]  Simon de Beauvoir believed that adolescence is when girls realize that men have the power and that their only power comes from consenting to become submissive adored objects. They do not suffer from the penis envy Freud postulated, but from power envy.

She described the Bermuda Triangle this way: Girls who were the subjects of their own lives become the objects of others’ lives. ‘Young girls slowly bury their childhood, put away their independent and imperious selves and submissively enter adult existence.’ […]
Girls know they are losing themselves. One girl said, ‘Everything good in me died in junior high.’ […] Parents know only too well that something is happening to their daughters. Calm, considerate daughters grow moody, demanding and distant. Girls who loved to talk are sullen and secretive. Girls who liked to hug now bristle when touched. Mothers complain that they can do nothing right in the eyes of their daughters. Involved fathers bemoan their banishment from their daughters’ lives. But few parents realize how universal their experiences are.

pp. 19-21, 23, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, Mary Pipher.

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