Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

28 Books for Your Africa Reading List - Safaris, Politics, Culture, History, and More

In February, I traveled through South Africa and Tanzania, taking part in a few safaris while exploring Cape Town and unwinding in Zanzibar. Along the way I also spent a night in Nairobi, Kenya and got a brief tour of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. To prepare for the trip and expand my horizons while away, I read about 30 books on Africa. As I've done before with reading lists for Egypt and South America, your reading list for Africa is below, this time with 28 reviews and recommendations. Feel free to share other recommendations in the comments.

I need to thank two sources in particular that helped with this list. One is Amazon, from its references to the Kindle. With the flights to Zanzibar I could only take 33 lbs of luggage for a 17-day trip through varying climates, and the Kindle made reading so many books possible. Highlighted passages below all come from Kindle versions. The other is Idlewild Books, a Manhattan bookstore specializing in international books, and I picked up at least 10 books there from this selection alone; most aren't available on the Kindle, and the staff there is extremely sharp.     

South Africa

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
If you only read one book about Africa, this is it. Mandela's the hero, the change agent, the revolutionary, the larger than life inspiring figure you want him to be. The only thing more incredible than his autobiography is that when reading anything else about Africa, Mandela remains unblemished. This is also a book that anyone interested in leadership needs to read. 

Highlight:Of so many great quotes from Mandela, here's one that stands out: "Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another." 

Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog
This one will rank up there in terms of books that keep you up at night. Krog covers the Truth and Reconilliation Commission hearings in South Africa in the 1990s, and you feel the torture Krog endures by hearing and relaying the horrors and atrocities that happened in her country.  

Highlight: We all want to resign. We all yearn for another life. At Tzaneen a young Tswana interpreter is interviewed. He holds on to the tabletop; his other hand moves restlessly in his lap. “It is difficult to interpret victim hearings,” he says, “because you use the first person all the time. I have no distance when I say ‘I’ . . . it runs through me with ‘I.’ ” “Now how do you survive it?” “I don’t. After the first three months of hearings, my wife and baby left me because of my violent outbursts. The Truth Commission provided counseling and I was advised to stop. But I don’t want to. This is my history, and I want to be part of it—until the end. 

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
This is one of those books that I felt so privileged to read. If I hadn't gone on this trip I might never have found it, and it's undoubtedly one of the world's great works of poetry.What makes it chilling is that it was written right before the advent of apartheid, so it's this snapshot of South Africa before the country spirals even further downhill.

Highlight: We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
All you really need to know about this one is that it's like reading a Philip Roth novel set in South Africa. It's about a professor who can't control his prick (a term Roth would use, so it fits) and whose attempts at escaping his problems only cause more misery. It's less about South Africa than human nature, but that's also part of the fun of it - reading a book that's not a history lesson.

Favorite African Folktales edited by Nelson Mandela
You can often learn a lot about a country from its folktales, and the scope here is far wider than a country. It's a fun mix, but nothing here is as striking or well written as Kalila and Dimna from the Egypt roundup. If you're at all interested in folklore, go with Kalila - and if you're not, you might be after reading it.

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
This is an odd book by one of South Africa's best known writers. Here, Julie falls for a Muslim mechanic and leaves her Sex and the City set for a life of Islam, Arabie, and destitution. While it's an interesting story at times, I never really got why Julie was acting the way she was - it seemed a little forced at most major junctures.

 

Zanzibar

Revolution in Zanzibar: An American's Cold War Tale by Donald Petterson
If you go to Zanzibar, or if you love Cold War history, you have to read this. You meet divinely inspired coup leaders, womanizing ambassadors, and world leaders as Petterson shares his first-hand experience from serving in the American consulate on Zanzibar during these revolutinoary days.

The Sultan's Shadow by Christiane Bird
Zanzibar's a surprising, even magical island, albeit with quite a few dark spots in its history. It was the capital of East Africa's slave trade, which picked up once the scion of an Omani dynasty discovered the riches from the islad's spice plantations, and slaves were needed to supply the island. The most ambitious of the island's sultans had a daughter who was quite the renegade, as running off with German men wasn't exactly de rigeur at the time for an Omani Zanzibari princess. Along with following the sultan and princess, we meet infamous black African slave trader Tippu Tip, British Christian anti-slavery crusader David Livingstone, and other leading figures of the day. While the narrative is all over the place, as a reader I felt enriched by having it cover so many angles. 

Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah 
While the book isn't set in Zanzibar, the author hails from there. Though you won't see this in the Amazon description, the story is remarkably similar to the biblical story of Joseph. The protagonist is even named Yusuf, and he's similar to his namesake in appearance and can interpret dreams. His father sells him into bondage (instead of Joseph's brothers - but really, it's the same plot line), and you know you can expect trouble when you meet the woman who resembles Potiphar's wife.  

 

General History: Colonial Period (starting around 16th/17th centuries) until Independence (around 1950s-60s)

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
Belgium's King Leopold II is one of the world's least known genocidists, a mass murderer few can compare to, and one few heard of before Hochshild's best-seller. Edwin Morel, the hero of the book, was a British shipping executive who noticed a disparity in some records that led to a global anti-slavery crusade. Horrifying through and through, Hochshild is such a great storyteller that perhaps it's a little too much of a page-turner. 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I hadn't read this until this trip, and by the time I did, I had read so much about it that the novel itself was anticlimactic. Real life villains like King Leopold II are far scarier than anything in here. While the story itself's essential reading, I'm more impressed by what Conrad did and inspired than the work itself.   

Exterminate All the Brutes by Sven Lindqvist
Lindqvist journeys into Africa to explroe the meaning of the Heart of Darkness phrase, "Exterminate all the brutes." Where did that ideology originate, to treat people as animals or lesser evolved humans? How did it influence Hitler, and why do we focus on the Holocaust while ignoring other mass killings? There aren't easy answers but it's a thouhtful thought experiment.  

First Footsteps in East Africa by Sir Richard Burton
Sir Burton is clearly an outsized personality. Often, he's intoerably bigoted, putting down anyone and any tribe he meets with as he shares his theories of civilization. And yet, he has his moments, such as his understanding the dangers of pitting one tribe against another - this kind of action caused irreperable harm as the colonial powers left africa. It's great to have access to this work, but tough to swallow.

Highlight (well, more of a typical passage - hardly a highlight): The natives of the country are essentially commercial: they have lapsed into barbarism by reason of their political condition--the rude equality of the Hottentots,--but they appear to contain material for a moral regeneration. As subjects they offer a favourable contrast to their kindred, the Arabs of El Yemen, a race untameable as the wolf, and which, subjugated in turn by Abyssinian, Persian, Egyptian, and Turk, has ever preserved an indomitable spirit of freedom, and eventually succeeded in skaking off the yoke of foreign dominion

Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith
While well reviewed, this book of the Dutch history of South Africa was a bit of a slog for me. The basic history is important, and I enjoyed the character sketch of Cecil Rhodes, among others, but perhaps I was a little historied out by the time I read this. 

 

Modern Politics (post-colonial area, focused generally on 1950s-present)

The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence by Martin Meredith
This was the first sweeping work I read about Africa's modern history. You read the same story in country after country: Colonizing power props up a seemingly non-threatening but charismatic lackey; colonizing power makes a hasty exit before there are even a few hundred black Africans in the entire country with college degrees; former lackey pillages the country for his personal gain while playing Cold War rivals against each other to gain global standing; some kind of civil war, coup, and/or genocide ensues. A few break that pattern, usually with an educated leader who takes their responsibility more seriously (see Ghana, Botswana, Tanzania, and ultimately Mandela in South Africa) but not always successfully (Tanzania's Nyerere, for instance, took his socialist ideals too far, but at least he was one of few leaders to step down voluntarily when the economy crashed). This was the first such sweeping tome I read on Africa's modern history, and it was confusing to no end, but after a few such works I got the hang of it and can even put a few of these countries on a map. Yay.

Highlight: By the end of the 1980s, not a single African head of state in three decades had allowed himself to be voted out of office. Of some 150 heads of state who had trodden the African stage, only six had voluntarily relinquished power. 

The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai
An incredible Kenyan woman who has served her country and continent in goverment, on foundations and through her writing, Maathai ultimately focuses on the Millennium Development Goals for Africa and why they won't be met by 2015. Especially powerful is when this 'green party' hero focuses on the environment and she makes a case for the positive ripple effects that stem from sustainability. 

Highlight: Before the arrival of the Europeans, Mount Kenya was called Kirinyaga, or “Place of Brightness,” by the people who lived in its shadow. The Kikuyus believed that God dwelled on the mountain, and that the rains, clean drinking water, green vegetation, and crops, all of which had a central place in their lives, flowed from it. When Christian missionaries arrived in the area toward the end of the nineteenth century, they told the local people that God did not live on Mount Kenya, but rather in heaven, and that the mountain and its forests, previously considered sacred grounds, could be encroached upon and the reverence accorded to them abandoned. The people believed this and were persuaded to consider their relationship with the mountain and, indeed, nature itself as primitive, worthless, and an obstacle to development and progress in an age of modernity and advances in science and technology. This did not happen only, of course, to the people who lived around Mount Kenya. Over the next generations, the reverence and spirit that had led the communities to preserve specific species of tree, like the wild fig, and the forests on Mount Kenya died away. When the white settlers and then the local communities themselves cut down the trees to plant coffee and tea and other agricultural products, encroaching farther and farther up the mountain, there was little resistance. From then on, they were seen as commodities only, to be privatized and exploited.

Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles by Richard Dowden
As great as this book is - the writer is a gifted wordsmith while focusing on many of the salient stories and perspectives that make this modern history lesson so memorable - I wish there were a few more ordinary miracles. As in so many of Africa's histories, they proved hard to find here.

Highlight: As John Robertson, a Zimbabwean economist, says, `We imagine corruption to be like a tick on a dog. There are some places in Africa where the tick is bigger than the dog.'

Highlight 2: Shakespeare would have found it easier to talk with modern Africans than modern Europeans and Americans who have no sense of anything beyond the physical realities of Western urban culture. Africans understand Shakespeare's woodland inhabited by sprites and fairies or by ghosts of dead fathers and other mystical apparitions. Living in harmony with the other world is important. 

China Safari by Sege Michel Michel Beuret
This was the first book I read in this crash course on Africa, and it's one of the best. It shows the complicated nature of the Chinese helping to build Africa while not letting morals get in the way of business decisions.

Highlight (proverbs): 
China: "When a tree is moved, it dies. When a man movies, he can make a fortune."
Mali: "If you see a goat at the mouth of the lion's den, fear the goat."

 

Memoirs

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
Beautifully told, a reporter reminisces about his life primarily in Zimbabwe, where his parents survive endless diffuclties while staying attached to their country. There's also a memorable subplot, not to be disclosed here, as Godwin discovers the truth about his own heritage.

Highlight: I feel like weeping. Weeping at the way Africa does this to you. Just as you’re about to dismiss it and walk away, it delivers something so unexpected, so tender. One minute you’re scared shitless, the next you’re choked with affection. 

Highlight 2 (because I love folkore, and hippos): Of all the theories for the hippo’s antisocial behavior, my favorite is the one offered by the San, the Bushmen with whom I have recently spent so much time for National Geographic. They believe that the hippo was the last animal to be created and was made of parts left over from the construction of other beasts. When the hippo saw its reflection in the water, it was so ashamed of its ugliness that it begged the creator — Kaggan — to allow it to live underwater, out of sight. But Kaggan refused, worried that the hippo would eat up all the fish with its huge mouth. The hippo promised that it wouldn’t eat any living thing from the water, and Kaggan relented. A deal was struck that the hippo must return each night to the land to eat and to shit so that the other animals could examine its dung to ensure that there were no fish bones in it. The regular humiliation of public fecal inspection could well account for the hippo’s irascibility.

The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley
This is two memoirs in one. Half of the book has Hartley recounting the story of his Scottish father who 'went native' in Arabia and then East Africa, where he came to feel at home. It's intertwined with the author's autobiography of surviving as a journalist in some of the most hellish, war-torn conflicts.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run - True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide by Peter Allison
It's not saying much to call this the funniest book I read about Africa, and one of the least depressing. If I got any nightmares reading about this, then they were about Japanese tourists. While the book starts off rough, fortunately Allison matures just enough with his experience as a guide to strengthen the narrative while sharpening the humor.

Highlight: Honey badgers belong to a group of only four animals that lions tend to avoid. The other three members are elephants, rhinoceroses, and hippos. 

 

African Fiction (general)

Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing by Rob Spillman
This is a useful guide to modern African writers. I bought a few of the books in this roundup after reading excerpts here, including Minaret and Half a Yellow Sun. I guess the con of the book is also a pro - a lot of the works were underwhelming, but that also meant I didn't have to read more from every writer in here.  

Highlight (from an introduction to the section on Mozambique and Angola, by the former's Mia Couto): I am a biologist and I travel a lot through my country’s savanna. In these regions, I meet people who don’t know how to read books. But they know how to read their world. In such a universe where other wisdoms prevail, I am the one who is illiterate. I don’t know how to read the signs in the soil, the trees, the animals. I can’t read clouds and the likelihood of rain. I don’t know how to talk to the dead, I’ve lost all contact with ancestors who give us our sense of the eternal. In these visits to the savanna, I learn sensitivities that help me to come out of myself and remove me from my certainties. In this type of territory, I don’t just have dreams. I am dreamable. 

Petals of Blood by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
A teacher, a socialist, and a prostitute walk into Abdullah's bar - no, not the beginning of a joke, but the setting for the Kenyan novelist's dark story about a fictional town that becomes a city, but with many sacrifices. We meet everyone from local robber barrons to colonialist missionaries. It picks up the pace considerably as it progresses. While I wound up loving this, I couldn't get into Thiong'o's other seminal work WIzard of the Crow, though if you read its reviews you'll see I'm in the minority

The Gunny Sack by MG Vassanji
Dubbed "Africa's answer to Midnight's Children, it's a fantastic romp through a couple family histories spannign India, Zanzibar, Eastern Africa, and a bit of teh west. And times it's too similar to Rushdie's work, and it lost me, but it's often lyrical and playful. While I enjoyed it, it wasn't as memorable for me as most of the others.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
This was, I'm embarrassed to admit, the only book from this list I read before planning the Africa trip, thanks to my Mamaroneck High School teacher Shannon Turner-Porter (if you're Googling yourself, Mrs. Porter, thank you). The book itself takes a little while to get going, but once it lives up to its title and things really start falling apart in the second half, we see why antihero Okonkwo emerges as one of the most renowned protagonists in African fiction.

Highlight: We approach a great man through his servants. But when his servants fail to help us, then we go to the last source of hope. We appear to pay greater attention to the little gods but that is not so. We worry them more because we are afraid to worry their Master. Our fathers knew that Chukwu was the Overlord and that is why many of them gave their children the name Chukwuka—“Chukwu is Supreme.” “You said one interesting thing,” said Mr. Brown. “You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will.” “But we must fear Him when we are not doing His will,” said Akunna. “And who is to tell His will? It is too great to be known.”

Murambi, The Book of Bones by Boubacar Boris Diop
This Senagelese writer joined a creative mission in the late 1990s to venture into Rwanda and tell its stories. His book is so haunting that I had several horrific nightmares reading it. It's a sort of As I Lay Dying, told from several perspectives of those grappling with the genocide, and it is one of those works that makes me appreciate how revealing fiction can be to elucidate actual events.

Highlight (referring to the calls for genocide broadcast casually over the radio - the "work" here means exterminating people): The radio says: "My friends, they have dared to kill our good president Habyarimana, the hour of truth is at hand!" Then there're some music and games. The host of the program, in brilliant form, quizzes his listeners: "How do you recognize an Inyenzi?" The listeners call in. Some of the answers are really funny, so we have a good laugh. Everyone gives a description. The host becomes serious again, almost severe: "Have fun, my friends, but don't forget the work that's waiting for you!"

Minaret: A Novel by Leila Aboulela
It's a sad story (surprise) as a Sudanese family falls apart following the father's demise in a regime change. It is an often wonderful portrait of life in different eras of Sudan's modern society, and of a wealthy heiress who finds herself barely scraping by. The protagonist is hard to pity too much though, making her own mistakes to the point where religion alone won't save her. 

Highlight: All the ingratiating manners, the downcast eyes, the sideway movements of the servants I grew up with. I used to take them for granted. I didn't know a lot about them - our succession of Ethiopian maids, houseboys, our gardener - but I must have been close to them, absorbing their ways, so that now, years later and in another continent, I am one of them. 

What is the What by Dave Eggers
Wow. This book, recommended by Joe Kutchera, was the last one I read on Africa and may complete my reading for awhile, though of course it'll never end. It's the true story of a Sudanese "Lost Boy" who survives one outbreak of the North-South civil war only to find that war was the new normal. It's a true story, but billed as fiction as the narrator, Valentino Achak Deng, had a few holes in his memory. The two make a gifted pair, and I constantly wanted to flip ahead pages and chapters when Eggers was leaving me hanging.

Highlight: What did she look like, my mother? I had only a shifting memory, as light as linen, and the longer I was with this woman Ajulo, the more distant and indistinguishable my vision of my mother would become. I told Ajulo I could not be her son, but she fed me still. I came once a week and helped how I could, bringing her water, portions of my rations, things she could not otherwise procure. I went there and she fed me and let me lie in her lap. During those hours I was a boy with a home.

That's a wrap. Be sure to leave your favorite picks in the comments or tweet me, and if there's a Kindle version of a book here that can be loaned (most I've found can't yet), I'm happy to do so.

All in the Social Family

What a handsome bunch of social media users

All in the Social Family

The end-of-year holidays offer a perennial reminder that no matter how hard you try, you can never escape your family. My own family often inspires columns here, sometimes directly as in 2005's "Google vs. Grandmom," and sometimes through more convoluted paths.

They don't always get credit here, nor do they necessarily seek it, but each of my relatives has his or her own approach to social media. Meet the extended Berkowitz family:

Mom: I was so excited on New Year's Day when she commented on my Facebook Places check-in from White House Sub Shop in Atlantic City, asking, "How come you didn't bring any back for us?" She told me she was going through my Facebook photos, too and noticed they're all about travel, food, and animals. Perhaps that's a hint that family should be higher on the list. My mom is growing more tech-savvy by the day, as last year my parents switched from PCs to Macs, and my mom has been especially diligent at taking lessons at her local Apple store.

Dad: I'm still not sure why he has two Facebook profiles, though only one is current. He barely uses Facebook, except for a few times last year when he'd reply to others posting on his wall. The other day he did "like" a book review on WSJ.com, a first for him using Facebook's plug-ins. A while back, Facebook intimidated him, as he thought he was supposed to respond to every single status update, so he stayed away. It's thanks to my dad, though, that I'm technologically savvy, and in many ways he's been an early adopter. For instance, he's been sharing photos online for years, even early last decade as an avid Picasa user when it was a paid download before Google acquired it.

Oldest brother: It annoys me sometimes that he's a very savvy Facebook user and often gets more responses to his posts than I do. Genetically, we're practically twins born 13 years apart, so I'm not surprised our pseudo sibling rivalry extends to social media. One recent post of his read, "Wisconsin: cold weather, warm people," and showed a car with a license plate reading "IPUTOUT." I can't compete with that.

Other brother: He's launching his own business and recently sought my social media guidance. He's the only member of my immediate family whose updates I never see in any social channel, though I am one of his 80 LinkedIn connections, and it looks like he's been using that site a bit more frequently lately.

Sister: She has personal and professional interests in social media. She's the one person who sometimes sees my updates on Google Buzz, where I automatically share updates from various sites. Her favorite social site? Skype. She lives in Mexico, so Skype, instant messenger, and other social services help her stay connected with her gringos up north.

Grandmom: She really needs a new computer. She still has the same one from 2005, and it's so slow that most people give up when they try to teach her something new. She's ready for her next toy though. I was just visiting her and after I showed her my Kindle, she really wants one. Don't tell her I said this, but Amazon's future e-book customer will turn 95 in March.

Wife: She reads all my columns and blog posts, as she's done since we met. On Facebook she routinely catches family members' updates on either side before I do, so it provides another way for her to tell me what my own family is up to. She'll also be offended that she's not first on this list unless I publicly state on the record that this list is not in order of importance.

Parents-in-law: They remain enthusiastic about social media. He loves it as a way to grow their business. She enjoys the business aspect but also uses it to stay in touch with her family.

Brother -in-law: A constant resource, I bribed him with beer from 360i's Tweeting Bar to help me set up the Xbox in the Emerging Media Lab. He's always quick to send me links from sources that are too geeky for me to read regularly.

Oldest nephew: Facebook is the one and only way I stay on top of any of his relationship updates. A college-aged kid studying abroad, he constantly fills me in on his favorite mobile communication apps.

Cousin G: He was a longstanding Mafia Wars friend until I kicked my Zynga habit in October. He recently got annoyed that I kept un-tagging myself from Facebook photos that don't include me.

Aunt L: As a genealogy collaborator, she's helping me with my biggest personal crowdsourcing project, even if she'd never refer to it that way.

Aunt C: She loves social media and is by far the most active on my list of family members on Twitter.

Aunt S: She's the only person I know who ever comments on updates I automatically share through Plaxo. I still don't know why. Beyond my wife, she's the next most likely to read my blog posts.

If anything, all of the varied uses of social media are apt reminders that it's bigger than Facebook and Twitter, even if Facebook is by far the biggest hub that brings a lot of us together. The one thing all my relatives have in common is that I'd wager not one would say they're using social media. Instead, they adopt the technologies and services that add something to their lives. Technologists and marketers alike need to keep remembering what's in it for all of these people.

 

South America: The Travel Journals - Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile

One more personal post to close out the year - following up on my book recommendations for South America, I've also publicly shared my travel journal, embedded below and freely downloadable if you're at all interested in more than just the photo or book highlights.

If you do check it out, let me know what you think.

The Other Americas Journal: Travels through South America

View more documents from David Berkowitz.

20+ Reading Recommendations for South America - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru

When I travel internationally, I try to read a fair amount of non-fiction and literature about the country, including works by many indigenous authors. Last year, for instance, I published areading list for Egypt. 

This year, I wound up taking two trips to South America, covering sixcountries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay. My biggest trip of the year was to Peru and Ecuador, and then spent shorter amounts of time in the other countries (Uruguay was a last minute day trip from Argentina).

Below are my favorites from each country. I note the specific country that the book relates to if it's not obvious from the title. Others that don't list a country are about the continent or region as a whole.

Links go to Amazon. Especially if you’re in New York City, I’d also highly recommend visiting Idlewild Books for their selection and suggestions on books relating to anywhere you might travel: http://www.idlewildbooks.com/ .

Feel free to share your own recommendations in the comments.

Anthologies

• The Peru Reader edited by Orin Starn, Ivan Degregori and Robin Kirk
  • If you’re going to Peru and really want a taste of the history and literature, start with this, a sweeping compilation of historical essays, fictional excerpts, poetry, and other entries to give a sense of the breadth of Peruvian culture. It’s a great starting point to discover what else you’ll want to read, and I discovered several authors here whose works are in this list.
• The Ecuador Reader edited by Carlos de la Torre and Steve Striffler
  • See the Peru Reader description. It’s just as good, just Ecuadorian.
• Additional Readers (I haven’t read any of these others):
  • You can find many other readers listed on the Duke University Press site for travel books (including Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Cuba, Russia, Mexico, Czech, Sri Lanka, and Alaska Native). Oddly Peru isn’t listed there, but it’s easily available on Amazon. You can find Peru in the Latin American Reader section and others in the World Reader section.

Fiction

• The Aleph and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)
  • The mysteries of the universe are revealed under a staircase. A prisoner discovers the power of God. A man embarks on a quest for immortality. These are some of the thought puzzles Borges plays with in this collection. Even as some stories failed to grab me, others ended with dazzling flashes of light.
• At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen
  • One of the best known books on the list thanks to the feature film based on it (let alone the author’s two National Book Awards), it’s a very dark piece of fiction exploring a series of awakenings, some on the part of Christian missionaries seeking converts in the South American jungle, as well as that of a local who finds a sense of purpose when he joins a native tribe. At its best, this book is a twisted exploration of human nature when people are torn from their usual surroundings.
• Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
  • If you read any Peruvian literature, you have to start with Vargas Llosa, the prolific national novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. Death in the Andes is dark and bizarre, and it will help to read up on the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) for context beforehand. For a very different read, I’d recommend trying Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral, but it’s so sweeping that it kept losing me (for instance, people would refer to some characters separately by their first and last names and never clarify it’s the same person). It made more sense when I skimmed it again after reading it.
• Deep Rivers by Jose Maria Arguedas (Peru)
  • A teenage boy heads to boarding school in the outskirts of Cusco as he tries to figure out to what extent he identifies with his elite, Christian classmates versus the indigenous population. A semi-autobiographical perspective, there’s poetry on every page especially when the protagonist continually reconnects with his natural surroundings. This was one of my favorites.
• Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado (Brazil)
  • A 1920s Brazilian town is torn asunder by a series of events, from homicide to the arrival of a beautiful woman. It’s a wonderful read, but one of the least memorable for me among those here. Part of my problem with it is that I couldn’t stop comparing it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of my favorite writers, and it just made me want to read 100 Years of Solitude again.
• Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon (Peru)
  • Norma’s the voice of Peru for those who lost loved ones during the military clashes with domestic terrorists in the 1980, and she’s lost someone herself. A young boy who arrives at the radio station makes her mission all the more personal. Norma’s one of the best protagonists I’ve read about in fiction in some time, and this novel stuck with me more than most others.
• Peruvian Traditions by Ricardo Palma
  • Palma used a form of storytelling dubbed a “tradition” to combine history with allegory. Some stories can be considered folklore that incorporates elements of Peru’s history, while other stories can be considered historical sketches with touches of folklore. It is useful to be more familiar with Peruvian history before reading this book, but it’s still easy to appreciate how Palma’s a master of his craft.
• Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (Chile)
  • Want a taste of why Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature? This is a great way to start the exploration, and the book’s available with the original Spanish and the English translation side by side, so those who know at least a bit of Spanish will appreciate glancing at the original text. Most surprising: this book was published when the author was 20. Beyond the wonders of Neruda’s talent, how could he know so much about passion, love, and longing at such a young age?
• The Villagers (Huasipungo) by Jorge Icaza (Ecuador)
  • In the novel, Icaza describes what was a familiar scenario for many native inhabitants of Ecuador when Spanish or half-Spanish hacienda owners sought new territory and labor. In this story, neither the landlord nor the native protagonist are totally sure what roles they need to play, and it leads to increasingly dire outcomes. It wasn’t my favorite read from a South American author, but it is a quick and often heartbreaking perspective.

Non-Fiction

• The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir by Fernando Henrique Cardoso
  • Cardoso led a number of lives before becoming president: sociology professor, exile, and finance minister, to name a few. He was hardly groomed to be the leader of the country but dove headfirst into challenges of stabilizing the economy and improving the quality of life. He’s candid about himself and others, especially regarding his roller coaster relationship with Lula, who succeeded him, so it’s not the typical watered down bore of a memoir we’ve come to expect from our leaders in the US.
• And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) by Paul Blustein (Argentina)
  • This book is partially about Argentina’s financial crisis and partially about the inner workings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Neither gets off easy here, and it won’t bolster confidence in how decisions are made to attempt to prop up economies.
• Four Years among the Ecuadorians by Friedrick Hassaurek
  • Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Ecuador provides one of the best glimpses into the country in the 19^th century. It’s unintentionally funny, as he’s constantly miserable (his first choice was to go to Switzerland), and he claims most of what he admires about the country came from the United States. This proved to be one of my favorite books, as it’s a thrill that we have access to such writing today.
• The Heart That Bleeds by Alma Guillermoprieto
  • This internationally acclaimed journalist collects her writings for The New Yorker in this anthology spanning the late 1980s and early 1990s. She discusses Escobar’s terrorism of Colombia, political scandals in Argentina, garbage pickers in Mexico City, the rise and fall of the Shining Path in Peru, Panama City’s love-hate relationship with the United States, and other pivotal moments in modern Latin American history. It’s a crash course from a gifted writer.
• The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie
  • This was the first book I read about Peru, a gripping story of the Inca empire and its downfall largely since the day Francisco Pizarro arrived. It was also when I first appreciated that tragic as the Inca story was, it was largely a case of one warring empire trumping another. For those who haven’t read it, it’s worth reading Guns, Germs and Steel for some added context.
• Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien: A Yanqui’s Missteps in Argentina  by Brian Winter
  • Take a fun romp through Buenos Aires as a young American visits Argentina, tries to learn the tango, and shares the history of various prominent elements of the country’s culture and people. His personal story is entertaining enough, and the history adds more substance, so together it proves to be a good balance.
• Man of Ashes by Salomon Isacovici (Ecuador)
  • A Romanian Holocaust survivor recounts life before and during the horrors, and then picks up his story afterwards in Ecuador. It’s often reminiscent of Primo Levi, and nearly as well written.
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (Ecuador)
  • Admittedly this wasn’t my favorite read. When Darwin goes on for five pages about some species that I’m not sure whether it’s a bird or plant, it’s tough to stay with him. Yet by reading the original text, you get a sense of all the various disciplines of study Darwin mastered, and all the leading experts around the globe he communicated with to further his own research. Going to the Galapagos is a good excuse to dive into this if you haven’t read it.
• Santiago’s Children by Steve Reifenberg (Chile)
  • Reifenberg spent two years in the 1980s working at a small Chilean orphanage. Told as a series of short essays, this fairly short book makes you feel like you know many of the dozen-plus children of the orphanage. An epilogue mentions how they fared twenty years later.
• Viva South America! A Journey Through a Restless Continent by Oliver Balch
  • A reporter travels across the continent, often well off the beaten path, to hear stories of those from all walks of life, with a focus on those who haven’t fared as well from the imprisoned to tortured to abused. The breadth he covers is tremendous, and compared with many other books I’ve read lately from reporters traveling internationally, he keeps his subjects at the center and minimizes his own role in the story.
• The White Rock by Hugh Thomson (Peru)
  • An aimless, young Brit took up archaeology and emerged as one of the more accomplished explorers of recent decades. He’s also a gifted storyteller, tying together the Inca history with his own modern adventures.

 

Nine Days of Social Silence

In Buenos Aires, I made some new friends, but not through social media

Nine days of Social Silence
originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider 

For nine days, I was silent. The world heard not a tweet, not a Facebook post, not an email from me. This is the story of one man who went to four South American countries with nothing but an iPhone, two digital cameras, a Kindle, and a couple suitcases, and survived without social media in even the darkest of times, like when I really could have used restaurant recommendations.

I didn't expect to be as disconnected as I was earlier this month while on vacation. I like to occasionally share updates from other countries, even if I'm not actively monitoring all the responses. Reviewing the travel journal I penned longhand while away, my first entry mentioned, "No phone for me (well, iPhone, but that's more for games and Foursquare)."

Then something miraculous happened. When I arrived at the hotel in Rio de Janeiro, there was no open Internet access. The idea of pay-per-minute Internet usage just to claim Foursquare mayorship bragging rights seemed ludicrous when I was trying to get away from my daily routine. Friends could wait for me to return to see my photos of Christ the Redeemer and the city's favelas (slums).

Early on, it was tough to resist temptation. Lunch spots in the Copacabana neighborhood where we stayed all seemed to serve the same food, and I was tempted to tweet out a request for help. Thanks to certain articles getting republished in Brazilian trade publications, I even have a disproportionate number of Portuguese-speaking Twitter followers. Yet with the Frommer's guide to Rio, asking hotel concierges and other locals, and simply walking around exploring, I hardly went hungry.

The week progressed. My wife and I made it to Buenos Aires, where we knew about the best restaurants and biggest attractions. Advice we'd received before we left both from guidebooks and friends converged on the same places. Some spots underwhelmed -- really, avoid dinner theater-type tango shows at all costs even if someone swears it's authentic. Other tips couldn't have been better, such as when the city shut down for the Immaculate Conception holiday and we chose to spend the day in Uruguay. It would have been fun to post about the Uruguay jaunt on Facebook, but again, it could wait.

In Santiago, Chile, serendipity played an especially prominent role. As I led us in the wrong direction trying to find the subway, my wife spotted a tourism office and picked up information on a free four-hour walking tour covering a large swath of the city's colonial and bohemian neighborhoods. Being disoriented can pay off, as long as you keep your eyes open.

That final Sunday night, while waiting in Santiago's airport lounge for the return flight home, I resisted going back online. If I had any urgent business to attend to at work Monday morning, I could find out once I landed at JFK. Sure enough, when I arrived, there was plenty waiting for me:

·     652 emails in my work inbox

·     342 emails in my personal Gmail account

·     13 Facebook friend requests (only one from someone I clearly knew), plus five emails there and 11 event invitations

·     32 connection requests on LinkedIn (the vast majority from people I don't know)

·     22 friend requests on Foursquare

·     A handful of tweets and direct messages I had to respond to, plus some new Twitter followers to check out

And then there were all the updates I had to share, from the photos on Facebook and Flickr to a few blog posts I haven't written yet. All of it could have waited a few days more.

Foursquare wound up being the hardest social service to disconnect from for several reasons. For social media geeks like me, it's fun to get mayorships in other countries. I also love that on the Weeplaces visualization of my check-in history, it darts around to other countries, and I miss having four more additions to that map. Lastly, and more practically, food always plays a prominent role in my vacations, and it's helpful to access local tips, especially when you can do so passively, rather than by actively asking your friends.

I managed, though. Sure, it's not exactly the kind of survival story that James Franco will want to option. As a social media addict personally and professionally, I was able to disconnect and have at least as good a time abroad as I would have had I brought my social graph along for the ride. Completely disconnecting is possible -- a lesson I'm happy to both learn and share. I did miss it, though, and on my next trip I probably won't hold back from social media entirely. It will be that much easier to use it in moderation. 

 

 

A Reason to Care about Social Media

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

"Her surgery is tomorrow morning and she's not at all nervous! Please say a prayer for her and think of her tomorrow at 7:30 when surgery begins." -- Sept. 1, 11:15 a.m.

This was the first entry posted on the site "Heal Fast Billie" hosted on CarePages through the hospital where a preteen I know just had surgery. CarePages offers these private blogs either directly or through more than 625 North American healthcare facilities. I'd heard of it before, but it was hard to fully appreciate until I had a personal connection. For the past week, I've been glued to Billie's site, checking updates almost as frequently as I've accessed Facebook. (Note that names of friends and family are changed here to protect their privacy.)

"We just met with the doctor who seemed really really pleased with everything. They are 'closing her up' now." -- Sept. 2, 2:41 p.m.

As I write this, the community for Billie has attracted 61 visitors and 104 public comments. Her mom publishes updates several times daily. I don't get to see Billie and her parents that often, so without this I'd have probably heard the result of the surgery but little more. Now, while she lives several states away from me, I have this ongoing connection, and with all the positive news I've come to look forward to the results.

"I'm sure there's a more tech-savvy way to do this... but I just took pictures of Billie's x-rays and posted them to the Photo Gallery. The contrast in pre/post op images is remarkable. As I said earlier, Billie was especially happy when she saw these x-rays, even in her very groggy, post op state. All really great." -- Sept. 3, 3:47 p.m. 

The CarePages sites are hardly fancy, but they're extremely functional. Billie's mom quickly figured out how to run her own community, one with a small but devoted following. The photos of x-rays are remarkable, as are the pictures of Billie. Even if Billie won't put all these photos on Facebook someday, she loves sharing them with this intimate group.

"Dudes!!!! I didn't notice any virtual bagels or I wouldn't have sent them. I am feeling very bright and sunny myself just knowing all is well with you. Will try to make it in for a visit Tuesday. Remember Billie, walk before you run! Much love." -- A response to a post on Sept. 5

As with any great blog, the comments are required reading. I know several of the people who write them but don't know most others. Even though I have no clue who wrote the note about virtual bagels, it's personally reassuring seeing that this couple is a part of Billie's life.

The more I visit the site, the more it reminds me what's truly remarkable about social media. It's about people coming together to connect around something - or someone - they care about. Sharing media here, whether status updates or photos, is practically effortless. All participants can respond, giving them a greater investment in the community. The cause doesn't even have to be as lofty as the recovery of a loved one. Facilitating this kind of involvement around other passion points like recipes or travel advice can be powerful for those participating. Yet CarePages offers that crystal-clear reminder of how social media can bring people together in ways that weren't possible several years ago.

For those running communities, whether as a marketer, technology vendor, or any kind of community manager, the biggest lesson you can learn from CarePages is to make it as easy as possible for the target users to do what they're supposed to do. In this case, it's about sharing text updates, posting photos, and responding to posts. Personally, I'd love to see other features, like the ability for organizers to send updates via text messaging or custom apps, and easy ways for visitors to send virtual and physical gifts. I'm quickly getting into columnist mode, though; I don't know firsthand how much those matter to the target users of CarePages. The simplicity seems to work for Billie's mom.

CarePages is just one way to do it. It's also possible to run similar communities through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging platforms, forums and countless other means. That only reinforces how far we've come and how meaningful social media can be. The only thing more exciting for me is that we're just getting started, and there's so much more good we can do.

We can return one final time to Billie's mom, who was more eloquent than I could be. She wrote after the surgery, "I'm so busy thinking about Billie that I completely forgot thank all of you who are/were thinking about Billie today and wishing her well. Today was about as perfect as it could have been and knowing that she had so many people pulling for her, really means so much to us."

Connecting Roots and Branches

Originally published in MediaPostAbove: My grandfather's emigration card from Germany in 1951, found on Ancestry.com. Born in Poland, he escaped the Holocaust with his family through Siberia and Kazakhstan, settling in Germany after the war before coming to the United States.

Connecting Roots and Branches 

Some people compete around badges and mayorships (Foursquare), connections and testimonials (LinkedIn), followers and list appearances (Twitter), and gang members and farm acreage (Zynga). Lately, I've found a new addiction: racking up profiles added and managed (Geni).

Geni, one of the leading genealogy sites, tells me I've added 334 relatives to my family tree. I created the tree on January 17, 2007. Most of the connections happened in the past few weeks, and it's all thanks to social media.

The network effect applies to genealogy. Having more people active in a network increases the value of the offering for everyone taking part. In this case, when more people are part of my family tree, it increases the likelihood that I will connect with others in the tree and thus discover more people in turn. Additionally, as I create more spokes branching out from me, other family members will gravitate toward me as a hub, and all such hubs in turn will strengthen from the increased information flowing among us.

As in any network, you'll find hubs who actively create content, joiners who manage their own profiles and perhaps those of their immediate families, and spectators who passively peruse the content without contributing to it. In this case, hubs are both people and content. I'm a hub because I've connected so many branches of the tree together in one place, just as my David Berkowitz avatar on sites like Geni is a hub that links to branches such as those of the Silversteins, Baraks, Samuels, Freilichs, and too many others to name.

My "come to Jesus moment," if I can borrow the phrase given my lineage of Berkowitzes and Silversteins, came from using genealogy sites as social networks. I maintain a profile on another site, MyHeritage, and my father's third cousin discovered there that our trees overlapped.  He provided information that I then incorporated into my tree, and I built on it, wiki-style. He then introduced me to other relatives. I shared some details he didn't know. I discovered more far-flung family members, including one woman whose tree has about a thousand relatives; she is my first cousin three times removed's husband's third great nephew's wife. (Cue "Spaceballs": Dark Helmet: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate." Lone Star: "What's that make us?" Dark Helmet: "Absolutely nothing...")

If you're curious to see how the worlds of social media and genealogy collide firsthand, here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:

1) Use a Web-based program. There's some great software you can download, but even if you go that route, upload the tree periodically online to find other relatives. Thanks to a string of connections, I met a relative in his 80s actively managing a tree who reconstructed family lines I never knew of before, and he's doing it all on his computer. He's extremely generous with his information, but he'd be much easier to find online.

2) Use several sites. I'm partial to Geni, MyHeritage, and Ancestry.com. I find Geni to be the easiest to use. MyHeritage has led to the most discoveries of family members, but those relatives are in Israel and each site will undoubtedly have various geographies and demographics where they are strongest. Hedge bets if you're trying to find new family members rather than simply organizing what you know. If you start filling out one tree, you can export data to other sites using the standard GEDCOM format.

3) Fill out complete profiles. What's true of LinkedIn and dating sites is true of genealogy sites: complete profiles get better results. It's hard enough finding the right matches for names like Berkowitz and Silverstein. If you're Jack Smith, forget it. Yet if you're Jack Smith married to Elaine Harris Smith, you were born in Houston in 1954, and your parents are Roger and Millie, you increase your chances of finding more relevant relatives. Much of this is possible thanks to the matching technology (e.g., Tree Matches on Geni or Smart Matches on MyHeritage) that look for similar family relationships and allow you to reach out to those trees' managers.

4) Consider trial subscriptions. If you're already investing a lot of time in genealogy, investing a little money can help. All of these sites have premium offerings, and the value proposition is somewhat different with each one. At Ancestry, the advanced record search is invaluable; I found my father's family's emigration files when they left Germany for the U.S. in 1951, along with census information on my mother's ancestors in early 20^th century New York. Geni promotes its tree matches, which linked me up with several relatives and greatly contributed to my tree. MyHeritage hooked me when it said I'd need to pay up to manage more than 250 relatives, a number I'll likely double by the year's end.

5) Repeat searches periodically. Ancestry seems to constantly add new databases to its search records. Search functionality across all of the sites keeps getting better. New databases keep migrating online. Every year or so, try some searches that may not have proved fruitful the first time.

6) Pick up the phone, and pack up your suitcase. Some relatives like keeping the past in the past, but there tend to be a few who are willing to recreate the past as best as they can remember it. Software will never replace that truly personal form of social networking.

If you have other tips, share them in the comments. If you've connected with relatives of yours this way, share your story. If you think we're related, share your tree. I have more relatives today than I thought I did a month ago -- and always welcome a few more.

What A Camp Counselor Can Teach You about Social Media

Today's column channels some fun camp memories. I was walking through Madison Square Park on the way to work and saw a woman with two kids in matching blue t-shirts, and suddenly I was back - metaphorically - at Beth El. One personally gratifying experience in writing this was realizing how many of those memories have crystallized and how vivid they still are - even dating back to the initial orientations when I was 13.

Here's the post, originally in MediaPost's Search Insider:

What A Camp Counselor Can Teach You about Social Media

One of the hardest jobs I ever had was working as a day camp counselor, spending eight summers straight at Beth El Summer Session in New Rochelle, NY. While it's been a few years since I wore a T-shirt and swimsuit to work every day, seeing all the kids home from camp swarming around Madison Square Park this week brought back a few memories. It also made me realize how relevant a lot of what I learned in that job is to what I'm doing now.

Here are some of the lessons I still carry with me. They should be especially relevant to social marketing practitioners today.

1)   Don't feed your campers soggy chips. This is more or less a direct quote from Jack Gruenberg, who ran the Counselor in Training program with his wife Sandy when I worked at the camp. The literal meaning was to avoid giving campers anything that you wouldn't want to eat yourself. I'd amend this today to "Don't feed your clients soggy chips." Think of yourself in their situation with their specific goals and needs. You should only present them with ideas and work product that you'd in turn be happy with. And just as kids know when they're getting a raw deal, clients can smell a dud right away. In both circumstances, you risk hurting your credibility.

2)   Plan ahead. Before the summer started, counselors and parents received group schedules that had a plan for every day of the week and an overview of what the entire summer would look like. So much of social media feels reactive to the point where plans get lost too easily, but developing editorial calendars can be so helpful for just about any content-rich program you're running, whether it's a Facebook Page, Twitter, blog, video production or syndication program, or digital word-of-mouth marketing.

3)   Keep a rainy-day schedule handy. Rainy-day schedules and backup indoor activities were always on-hand. Some days schedules shifted indoors due to heat advisories (though those days, as a bonus, they served delicious fruit punch that my five-year-old campers called "blood"). It's hard to tell when New Yorkers should carry umbrellas, and it's hard to tell what brands will come under fire. Really, did you ever think that Whole Foods' CEO, a hippie who started his company in Austin, would irk liberals so much that they'd stage a boycott against his company? And the poor Domino's Pizza CEO had to publicly apologize for a brand hijack by two of his own employees, something that could happen to any business owner. As a counselor, especially when I became group leader, I had to put those rainy-day plans into action FAST -- if you've worked with a group of 20 kindergarteners, mommy bloggers seem tame by comparison. You have to have a plan for those days to make sure you can execute on it if you have to. Know who's in charge, who can respond, and what communication channels you have available.

4)   Run headcounts often. If I had 20 kids in my group, I'd probably count to 20 a hundred times a day (after a few days I got pretty good at it). What marketers need to keep track of is their assets they can use for social marketing, what 360i's Social Marketing Playbook refers to as a brand's arsenal. Know what you have to work with inside and out -- then you'll get a pretty good idea of what you can do with it.

5)   Get down to eye level. During staff orientation, Julie Rockowitz, who ran the program when I was there and still does so today, urged all counselors to get down to eye level with the children. Someone who's five-foot-something looks pretty distant and imposing to someone who's three-foot-something, but crouching down and talking eye to eye eliminates that issue. The same is true when communicating with others through social media, whether it's a customer or an influencer. You can still use your own voice and be yourself, but you need to use them in the way that's appropriate to the platform you're using, eliminating any barriers between you and your audience.

6)   Get wet. Counselors had to wear their swimsuits every day, even days that started out rainy. This rule was made partially for safety reasons, but also to encourage counselors to swim with their campers and share their experiences. Marketers and agencies similarly need to swim where their customers swim. You might not always feel like swimming and sometimes the water will be freezing, but the only way to really develop a meaningful experience is to know what it's like firsthand. Most of the time you'll find it's more fun hanging out in the pool rather than sitting on your towel.

7)   Have fun. There were so many rules and regulations as a counselor that it was easy to complain. But the job meant getting paid to run around outdoors, hang out with a bunch of mostly pretty entertaining kids, and work decent hours. Now the hours are much longer, the pay's a bit better, and some clients are every bit as demanding as the most attention-hogging campers, but it's still a fun way to make a living. Anyone who's in this field has to take a second to remember that every day, no matter how hectic it is.

Thank you Julie, Jack, Sandy, the hundreds of other staff I had the pleasure of working with, and the children in the Barracudas, Whales, Sunfish, Blue Jays, All-Stars, and Batmen. You all taught me far more than I could ever capture here.

Vote

Image by RodBegbie via FlickrThat's it.

Really.

Just reminding you. No endorsements here or anything. Rather, the picture included here serves to let you know that even Storm Troopers are taking part in the political process, and just think how hard it was to get an absentee ballot on the Death Star. You should have no excuse.

If you need your polling place, you can find it on Google Maps.

I'd write more, but I'm voting.

And when I'm not voting, I'm checking election.twitter.com. And stopping by ad:tech. And getting some work done. And spending election night with the New York Times.

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Birthday Greetings by Channel: Facebook Surges Ahead in 2008

Image via Wikipedia

Last year, I took an analytical approach to my birthday - hardly surprising to those who know me. When I learned in first grade how to take surveys and make tally marks, I did a poll around school of preferences for Doritos, Fritos, or Cheetos (Doritos won handily).

This year, two birthday well-wishers mentioned they were eager to see how things would track for 2008 chart. Given the anticipation, and my own curiosity, I kept better track of the metrics. Nothing makes for birthday fun than opening up a spreadsheet whenever someone says happy birthday to you.

Here are a few observations about this year's birthday greetings:

• Facebook well surpassed in-person greetings this year. Even with birthday drinks with friends, celebrating the day in the office, and a family lunch on Sunday. Some other personal greetings came the night before my birthday, which was coincidentally the party for 360i's tenth birthday (see the MediaPost coverage and Kelly Samardak's Flickr photos).
• Facebook does so well feeding on itself. Someone wishes me happy birthday, it appears on my wall. That action may show up in their friends' news feeds. I'll then write on their walls to thank them (or I might do so via Facebook email), and then anyone who visits those walls will see the exchange. Of course, the biggest driver is the prominent space on the homepage Facebook provides to alert people of their friends' birthdays. Then there are apps like Birthday Calendar that provide other notifications.
• Dropping off the list from last year: MySpace and Friendster. My network has fully migrated.  Also, no Skype this time, but I don't keep it open as much.
• New to the list: Twitter, with four mentions (first one, thanks @andrewnevelos, and then a quick burst of a few, @danperry, @worleygirl, and @gregory - thanks all around there too). Also, I received my first note on geneaology service Geni (thanks Aunt Aida).
• Not yet on the list: LinkedIn wasn't used for birthday greetings at all, nor was FriendFeed.
• I kept a few new tallies - including greetings from:
  • People I kind of know: 4
  • People I can't remember how I know: 7
  • People I know but am kind of embarrassed to be friends with or don't like very much: 3
• Time zones also played a fun role:
  • Ryan Govindan in India was the first to wish me happy birthday on my actual birthday; it was only 2:30pm in New York but my birthday was underway then.
  • My brother emailed me happy birthday while on business in China. Yet at the time, it was his birthday (I'm eight years, 364 days his junior). 
• Marketers to send birthday greetings this year included Michael C. Fina (like last year, with a 15% coupon for the month), Borders (with a 15% coupon for the day), Facebook (just on the site), Eons (wow, I must be getting old), and this themed cruise outfit in Atlanta called Sixthman that I hadn't heard of before.

And now, this year's chart. The one channel I included was in-person, which was much harder to track; again, Facebook still would have come out on top.