BOOK REVIEW
Bicycle: The History, Life at the Zoo and All in My Head
Christopher Brodie
Before reading David V.
Herlihy's
Bicycle: The History (Yale University Press,
$35), it hadn't even occurred to me to wonder what led Wilbur and
Orville Wright to drift from building bicycles to inventing
aircraft. Now I think I know. Among the many things I learned from
this lovingly written and beautifully illustrated volume was that
the late 1890s marked the end of the cycling boom brought on by the
arrival of the safety bicycle in the United States. Between 1896 and
1902, U.S. production fell from "1.2 million bicycles a year to
about a quarter of that figure." The Wrights, I surmise, were
in need of a new line of work. The crash that launched flight was
just one of many boom-bust cycles that seem to have characterized
bicycle popularity for most of two centuries. Herlihy carefully
plots the course of these ups and downs and fits the technology that
drove the roller coaster deftly into its cultural context. There's
no need to be a cyclist to enjoy this ride.—D.R.S.
Maybe it's our latent totemism
that makes seeing large animals like apes and tigers in the flesh
such a profound experience. We admire the powerful efficiency of
their movements, and they remind us of our own animal nature. These
feelings seem to stir particularly in kids, whose growing interest
in the natural world often crystallizes around macrofauna. Thus many
readers will open
Life at the Zoo (Columbia University Press,
$27.95) with youthful delight. Author Phillip T. Robinson can
describe with authority the inner workings of a modern zoological
park—he is the long-time veterinarian of the San Diego Zoo. He
traces the evolution of wild-animal collections from cruel
menageries to sophisticated vehicles for education and
conservation—changes that are remarkably recent and,
unfortunately, not yet universal.
Robinson peppers the text with charming anecdotes from his decades
of experience. In one of these engrossing asides, after noting that
semidomestication is the key to making captivity tolerable for a
koala, he describes conditioning one to the point of tolerating
canine transport (see above right). Unfortunately, his writing
alternately lumbers and caroms, and it is likely to remind the
reader by turns of the anesthetized elephant and the hyperactive
antelope described in the text. Despite its rough stylistic edges,
the book is compelling and ought to appeal to zoo lovers of all stripes.—C.B.
Paula Kamen has had a headache
for nearly 15 years. Her search for relief has led her to try (among
other things) acupuncture, massage, yoga, Xanax, Botox, vibrating
hats, magnets, surgery, Prozac and giving up coffee. She recounts
the frustrating shortcomings of these treatments in
All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting,
Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening
Headache (Da Capo, $24.95).
Kamen's plight is far from unique. Millions of Americans suffer from
chronic daily headache. Yet little is known about its causes, and
treatment is often inadequate. One problem, Kamen says, is that many
doctors continue to believe (against growing neurological evidence)
that daily headache is a mental rather than physical condition. She
points out that most sufferers are women and details the long
tradition in medicine of questioning female patients' motivations
when they complain of symptoms that are difficult to treat. If
doctors would admit how little they know about chronic pain, she
suggests, perhaps they would be less likely to blame their patients.
Kamen's quest is not over—she continues to experience the
headaches—but she has reached greater acceptance. Through a
combination of prescription drugs and alternative medicine she has
learned to cope with the constant pain. Her wry outlook prevents the
book from lapsing into self-pity. Extensively researched, it is a
useful source of information about the history of the condition and
current treatments. Kamen spent much of the first few years of her
illness being told that she was the cause of the problem. Her saga,
she hopes, will help convince others that chronic headaches are not
simply "all in your head."—A.E.