Book Reviews

"Bazooka Joe" from the boxing club dropped a book off for me to read the other night. It's Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. If you're at all interested in running, I'd get a copy of it. It's the story of a pick-up race between a few of the best American trail runners and a few members of the Tarahumara Indian tribe from Mexico. The race itself is a little anti-climatic with the real meat of the book being all of the events leading up to it. In addition to telling the story of the race and how it came about, the author also weaves in things like the shoeless running movement, how humans developed to become runners, health benefits of running and why people still persist in distance running, especially ultra running, that is, distances longer than the standard marathon distance of 26.2 miles.

It's especially interesting to note that the Tarahumara basically are cancer free as well as never having to worry about a hear attack. They run and play, eat a diet of veggies, fruit, some kind of barbecued mouse, and corn, including corn beer, keep to themselves and do just fine. Really good book, in fact, I stayed up to a little past midnight finishing it up.

I also just read this past week Chasing the White Dog by Max Watman. It's the story of moonshine, both past and present. It chronicles the author's experiments as an amateur moonshiner and many other notables in the business, including stock car legend Junior Johnson. The book is not a how to manual by any means but if you're interested in the production of alcohol from an historical, technical, or sociological stand point I'd check it out.

I'm planning on making some peach cordial as soon as the peaches ripen up just a little more, which is perfectly legal. However, if I were to make peach brandy, that would be a different story all together. If I had a still I'd be able to make applejack, brandy and power my automobile if gas wasn't available. I don't plan on building a still anytime soon, and if I did, even I'm smart enough to know posting it on the Internet would be a bad idea. Apparently just having a working still is against the law - federal law at that. The law might be changing, however. You can produce beer and wine for home consumption and with the number of legit micro-distilleries popping up, people might be able to produce their own liquor with a minimum of red tape sometime in the foreseeable future. I don't need another hobby but I like the idea of working with copper to make some cool looking moonshine rig. I've got a 4'x4' sheet of copper that I've had for a long time and some copper tubing. After meeting with the financial guy the other day, maybe that should be my retirement plan. When I run out of money, I'll build the still, get caught moonshining and let the government put me up for the duration.