The Nature Fix (2017) By Florence Williams; The Blue Zones (2012) By Dan Buettner

I’m not sure if this applies to everyone my age, but pending retirement is dramatically changing my perspective on living.  I’ve stopped thinking about the manic need to “get ahead” or even to “survive until I can get out.” I now find myself dwelling almost exclusively on quality of life issues.  For my retirement, I’m way more interested in having less stress, enjoying what I like to do, and hopefully doing so in relatively good health.  The “next phase” of my life is mine to design, and it’s an important decision because it’s likely to be my last major one.

Topping the list of quality of life issues occupying my mind has been the “where” aspect of retirement – most particularly the urban vs small town vs rural choice (unfortunately all three isn’t a financially viable option).  I’ve touched on this dilemma in an earlier book review: Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

Two recent reads have added many new points for me to ponder.

Florence Williams’ The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Heathier, and More Creative is a thought provoking book that views one’s relationship to the outdoors in measurable medical and mental health terms – ranging from its impact on stress & blood pressure, to its therapeutic impact on veterans suffering with PTSD, and on “troubled” children.  As a big fan of Frederick Olmsted, William’s does not automatically disqualify urban environments as unhealthy – though as someone who lives on the edge of Chicago’s “front yard,” a.k.a. Grant Park, I would find the neighborhood less stressful with more trees and fewer drunken/drugged concert goers, and don't get me started on the subjects of car alarms and endless sirens.  However, where Chicago will always score high is in the devotion of its residents to its beautiful lakefront and refusal to let “philanthropists” with big ego’s and connections to City Hall further desecrate it. 

William’s “ultrasimple” coda:

Go outside, often, sometimes in wild places.

Bring friends or not. Breathe.

And speaking of Grant Park, when I first moved to the city Dutch Elm Disease was devastating hundreds of trees in the park (since replaced with hardier stock).  Williams devotes a lot of time to documenting the positive impact of, in fact the necessity of, trees to the health of the environment, justifying the sentiment behind “tree-hugging” -- we should hug them, they do good work!  My one and only complaint with The Nature Fix is the standard placement of the Epilogue which contains a brief recap of Tim Beatley’s (Biophilie Cities Project at theUniversity of Virginia) “nature pyramid.”  This discussion would have made an excellent opening chapter, before heading into the case studies.

While what we see, breathe and experience in Nature plays an outsized role in the quality of life, so too does what we eat and how we live.  Dan Buettner’s New York Times Bestseller The Blue Zones is a treatise on demographic pockets from around the world where people have a life expectancy well above the norm.  While I’m not particularly interested in living to 100, I am interested in what might help one maintain a healthier life in retirement.

In his book, Buettner examines the diets and lifestyles of people in: Sardinia, in the Mediterranean Sea; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Hojancha, Costa Rica; and Ikaria, Greece.  Shared by these very different communities is not only a longer life, but a healthier one.  What he found was not a common denominator “miracle” food, but a combination of diet plus other important influences, including social and genetic – call it a holistic approach.  

Since the publication of his (two) books on the subject, numerous communities around the world have begun work at emulating them.  One of those communities is Paducah, Kentucky, which is high on my retirement list for multiple other reasons.  

Recommendation:  If you are prepping for retirement, or just looking for a way to lead a less stressful, healthier life, you should find both of these books interesting.

The Shores of Tripoli: Lieutenant Putnam and the Barbary Pirates (2016) By James L. Haley

Unless you have a degree in American History hanging on your wall, the period between the Revolution and the Civil War is likely to be a blur – covered in a chapter, maybe three, in any history class you were required to take – although, you might know about Dolly Madison taking the portrait of George Washington out of the White House as the British arsonists closed in.  Author James Haley has taken on the task of filling in part of that blank space with a two-volume work of historical fiction, the first of which covers the war against the Barbary Pirates, the war that gave the U.S. Marine Corps hymn the line “to the Shores of Tripoli.”

Haley has created the character Bliven Putman, a young farmer living in Massachusetts who joins the fledging U.S. Navy in 1801, at the time a rag tag group of ships barely able to put boats to sea as training boats, rather on mount a war in the Mediterranean Sea.  His career in the Navy is an adventure story that gives us an understandable and exciting how-to (and how not-to) lesson on building and staffing a Navy.  Plus, he’ll participate in sea battles and also the legendary, though aborted, desert march on Tripoli, Libya, providing him (and us) a bitter lesson in the workings of international diplomacy, as shaped by domestic politics.

The book touches on many topics – the budding abolitionist movement, political battles between Madison and Jefferson, religious puritanism and antisemitism at home.

A second major character in the book is Sam Bandy, also a new recruit – while Putnam is the representation of the northern states, Bandy, a plantation owner’s son is the stand in for the South. Their respective reactions to meeting a black man named Jonah, who serves as the chamberlain to the dey (Ottoman Regent) of Algiers, are interesting, busting multiple stereotypes.  Jonah, once a slave on a plantation in Virginia, speaks fluent English & Arabic, and is obviously better educated than either of them.

 

Throughout the war with the Barbary Pirates, the U.S. Navy is constantly bumping into elements of the much larger and stronger British Navy, which display arrogance and commit acts that are just short of belligerent.  Detailing these interactions is the lead-in to the next volume of this “Bliven Putnam Adventure” series, which will cover the War of 1812, a book now on my reading list.

Recommendation:  Yes.  It's a totally fun adventure book with a dose of American history thrown in.