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Don't Worry, Be Happy
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Those food alarmists, Paul Roberts and Raj Patel, cheered on by reviewer Judith Weinraub (Book World, Aug. 17), yearn for a return of victory gardens and lament the failure of our food system. They give me indigestion.
To hear them tell it, our lives are being shortened and our health endangered. They're not. And, from the personal standpoint of an aging American who hates cooking but must provide the meals for himself and his invalid wife, America's food system is doing a splendid job.
Food industry innovations keep simplifying my chores. Heat-and-eat dishes are tasty and thrifty. To avoid health dangers and save grocery money, I also enjoy bypassing the high-priced organic foods, which have been grown lovingly and inefficiently in manure.
--BEN R. BLANKENSHIP JR.
Stafford, Va .
Your reviewer Martha M. Hamilton must be just back from Shangri-La or some other fairy-tale world if she really sees the American economy accurately mirrored in Peter Gosselin's hyperventilated new book, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families (Book World, Aug. 17).
The rest of the world would love to be part of an economy in which a "stay-at-home mother" can go back to work and quickly be earning an income of $250,000 in one year. I repeat: a quarter of a million dollars. Your reviewer and the book's author must move in some mighty tony circles if that sounds like a good start for a tale of woe and misery in the American economy.
Perhaps Ms. Hamilton and Mr. Gosselin could set aside their prejudices, note that we do not live in Shangri-La, and admit that in spite of all our shared human failings, our economy is providing jobs, income, opportunity and security beyond the imagining of our grandparents' generation. That is the story that is so close to our eyes that even our most talented journalists and writers tend to look right past it.
--DAVID BURNS
Springfield, Va.
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