The naked truth about redwoods

Ancient redwoods are an iconic symbol of California. Their demise – and their promise – is documented in the October edition of National Geographic.

The "Tallest Trees" package includes maps showing the historic and current range of redwoods, from Big Sur to the Oregon border. The narrative follows an ecologist as he hikes 1,800 miles through this entire range.

As always, National Geographic sucks you in with photographs. You catch glimpses of life in logging towns like Rio Dell. For lovers of tree porn, there's a fold-out centerfold of a 1,500-year-old redwood in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, north of Arcata.

Beyond all the graphics and photos, there is a story.

Writer Joel K. Bourne, Jr. poses an important question: Can California become a model of restoring redwood forests – sustaining habitat and the timber industry?

He seems hopeful on this point – more than I would be.

Before the housing market collapsed, developers of vineyards and trophy homes were carving up Redwood Country. They'll be back again.

That's one trend the magazine didn't deeply explore. But it's a minor omission in an otherwise extraordinary work of journalism.

– Stuart Leavenworth

Meet new Jerry, same as …?

For those of us old enough to remember the last time Jerry Brown was governor of California, and are still try to make sense of it, California-based writer Joe Matthews of the New America Foundation has a nice, thorough piece on Jerry Brown, version 2.0 in the American Prospect out on the stands this month:

"Progressives, both then and now, argue that Brown's brand of anti-government liberalism fueled the Prop. 13 fire. If government isn't all that important, what does it matter if you cut taxes?

"Brown had frozen highway construction, criticized funding for adult education and food stamps, and slashed social services. "I am going to starve the schools financially until I get some educational reforms," he said in one encounter with reporters.

"What reforms, governor? 'I don't know yet.' "

Matthews does a good job of looking back to find out whether the new version of Jerry Brown is, indeed, not the Jerry Brown we used to know, or, rather the Jerry Brown we used to know is not the Jerry Brown we thought we knew and the new Jerry Brown is not really so new, but rather old.

Check out "See Jerry Run" at www.prospect.org.

– Rex Babin

Major surgery is possible

T. R. Reid's "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care" provides a wonderful antidote to the fatalistic view that Americans either have to accept the current "excessively expensive, ineffective and unjust" system of health care or head down the road of "socialized medicine."

He takes readers on a tour of wealthy, technologically advanced, industrialized countries "that are just as committed as we are to equal opportunity, individual liberty and the free market" – including France, Germany and Japan.

He finds, in details that will be surprising to most Americans who have been told otherwise, "most developed countries manage health care without resorting to 'socialized medicine.' " Most provide universal health care "of high quality at reasonable cost using private doctors, private hospitals and private insurance plans" – some with a smaller government role than in the United States.

Many, for example, have nothing equivalent to our Medicare insurance system for the elderly or our government-run medical system for military veterans.

And Reid describes in understandable, engaging language just how these countries do it – and how we could learn from their experience.

Reid believes our system is fixable – but not by tweaking. He calls for "major surgery." The beauty of this timely book is that Reid shows just how possible change is. We don't have to reinvent the wheel to achieve universal, affordable and effective health care.

Reid dedicates the book to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and after reading it you'll see the fitness of his choice.

– Pia Lopez