Page 16 RAIN CONSUMER Getting What You Deserve: A Handbook . for. the Assertive Consumer, Stephen A. Newman and Nancy Kramer, 1979, $8.95 from: I Doubleday/ Dolphin 245 Park A venue • Garden City, NY 10~17 People may have developed ·a bit of buying sophistication ·since the days of the snake oil salesman, but as the authors of this marketplace self-defense manual point out, a perfect consumer of today·would, at the least, be trained in chemistry, mech,anical engineering, food science., pharmacology, medicine, law, finance, and home econom_ics. _He/ she would al~o be "aggressive, discrimii;tating, impervious to psychological manipulation, ... possessed of a photo- .graphic memory, articulate·and assertive. For the rest of us, Getting What You .• Deserve can provide a handy substitute for knowledge and wisdom with its thorough and very ·readable descriptions of the mine-, fields which c·onfront anyone who buys a car, visits a supermarket, talks to an insurance salesman, sees a,dof:tor, applies for Consumer's Resource Handbook and Federal Register: Draft Consumer Pro- .grams, 1979, available free from: Consumer Information Center Dept. 53292 Pueblo, C081009 Ip September 1979·President Carter i~sued an Executive Order to improve the accessibility of all branches of the goverm;nent,to •citizen input. In response to that order sev:.. .eral federal agencies have published updated Consumer Affairs Programs specific to their agency. In addition, a very handy. •guide was prepared, the Consumer's Resource Handbook. The handbook outlines the consumer complaintprocedure, as well as local and federal organizations set up to process such complaints. 'It is well organized, easy to understand and very serviceable. If your interest is ~n a _specific department of the government, say the Federal Trade Commission, you can order that pffice's own draft of con.sumer programs or . , the entire set of consumer programs. They're not much fun to read, not nearly as useful as the Consumer:'s Handbook, but they do contain a lot of information about the accessibility of each agency. -CC , Allah's Oil: Mideast Petroleum~ I.G. Edmonds, 1977, $6.95 from: • Thomas'Nelson, Inc., Publishers ' 2 Park Avenue New York, NYlO0l~ ,It is remarkable, in light-of events since the oil embargo of 1973, how little many •· • Americans still know about the Middle East adjectives as "greedy'' and "fanatical,-" and we seem as far as ever from the kind of genuine understanding of Middle East history and ctJ,lture which will be needed to avoid devastating conflicts in the oil-short year's ahead. Allah's Oil is a ·good place to start the educational process. It traces1the begin:. nings of European and Americari oil exploration in the Middle East, the evolution of nationalism in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and the changing attitudes of Middle Eastern peoples toward their principal resource and toward its exploitation by Westerners. The author has a facility ,for presenting his information almost in outline form while still conveying the sense.of a g~od story well told, ·and he effectively supports his premise that people of the Middle East "have little reason to'like_or have pity cm the Western World." One minor criticism: his too bad that a book which ·succeeds so well in stimulating interest in its topic contains only a perfunctory biblibgraphy. -JF • A Toxics Primer, 1979, 16 pp;, Pub~ No. 545, $:40 from: • • League of Women Voters 1730 M StreetN.W . _Washington~ DC 20036 Good research and lots of basic information fill this little pamphlet ori hazardous substances. Highlights ,are a section on misconception~ about carcinogens and a sect~pn on voluntary vs. involuntary e~posure to toxics: "A report published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that approximately 100,000 i\mericans die of ~ ~ ,-:::::-..._ ~ .. ~ . ~ '· ~ ~ s§ ~ -:::::3 ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ . ~ ~l)os.cn. --(b~ ~il~ -~~ ..... ~ ~-~ ~T~· ~!'E,.i, ' ~~~ -~"•~ I¼Ia~ ~-~ ~ ~~ -~~ ~~~ r-._; .... ~ .. ""'-.__,,~ o._,..._ ~ .. ~~. " =-- . ,, ::::::-·1 #-. credit, 'or buries a relative. The emphasis is decidedly on middle class buying choices and it could be argued that too little attention is given to such alternatives as co-ops, credit unions, and getting-along-without, but any reader is sure to be painfully reminded of some past col).sumer debacles in . which the advice to be found in this book would have been worth several times_its purchase price. -J~ =====- and its people. Before the embargo, as au-· ·thor I.G. Edmonds points out, "Americans thought of Arabs, when they thought of ,them at all, as camel-riding warri_ors .•.. ., as romantic figures . .. ., or as terrorists making trouble for Israel." Since then, these comic :book ster~otypes (which generally are stretched to inclupe Iranians as - well) have merely acquired such additional ~t;l~ 00 "~ 0 ' ~ - ::::;- -job-related illnesses every year.' 1 The Primer also discusses federal.regulatory laws and controls, industry perspectives, and public interest'group perspectives. All that's missing is a mention of how U.S.-based companies continue to produce chernicals banned in this country for over:- seas marketing, how the present industrial system (e.g. agribusiness) necessitates excessive chemical production and use·, and , how .a self-managed/decentralized society using appropriate technologies could reduce this toxic ''necessity.'' -MR ( -
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