Word: lowdown
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...Lowdown: You can't finish this book unconvinced that our food supply is in serious danger. Although Jacobsen doesn't solve the CCD mystery, he presents ample evidence that the current state of affairs - "rented" honey bees that are shipped coast to coast to pollinate crops - is unsustainable and stressing the insects to the max. Pointing out that 80% of our food relies on pollination at some point in its life cycle, Jacobsen's concern for the fate of the honey bee population is easily contagious. He offers the same prescription as most authors writing about our modern food supply...
...Lowdown: Is it cruel to suggest that a nonfiction account of the atrocities of war is a page-turner? Very well: this is a page turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq. The magic of The Forever War is the dispassionate yet hyper-involving manner in which Filkins offers scores of mini-narratives - stories about Iraqi civilians, insurgents and politicians, American grunts and generals alike - without judgment. Filkins doesn't lecture, he just reports, in great and perfect detail. It's possibly the only true requirement for a good war story...
...LOWDOWN: Readers won't walk away from Angler feeling any differently about Vice President Cheney. His secretive, power-hungry reputation has been earned with good reason - this is, after all a man who, when tapped to lead the Vice Presidential search committee, effectively chose himself before interviewing anyone else. And while Gellman's book feels more like a collection of set-pieces than a cohesive whole, this look at this second most powerful office in the land couldn't be timelier given the current debate about vice presidential qualifications...
...such popular tomes as If You're Happy and You Think It, Think Again and Stop Hitting Yourself. Stop Hitting Yourself. Why Are You Still Hitting Yourself? Pitka is famous, but, he thinks, not famous enough. Rather like the Sean Penn guitarist in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, who realizes he's no Django Reinhardt, Pitka rankles at being No. 2 to Chopra. His manager (John Oliver of The Daily Show) convinces him that he can get on Oprah if he can just restore the frayed marriage of Darren Roanoke (Romany Malko), a Toronto Maple Leafs star whose wife...
...Lowdown on the new arrival had been that he was brilliant but austere. "He's not jolly like the Dalai Lama," warned an American devotee. "He's a bit stiff." But the baby-faced 22-year-old who may be Tibet's next great hope seemed perfectly relaxed in his room at New York City's Waldorf Towers hotel, none the worse for his first intercontinental flight. Encountering a laptop-bearing reporter, Ogyen Trinley Dorje inquired eagerly about the computer; like his mentor, he's apparently a Mac fan. Asked if he'd managed to sleep on the plane...