Washington Post // Larry's Kidney by Daniel Asa Rose

Who Needs One?

Sunday, May 31, 2009 

Larry's Kidney

By Daniel Asa Rose. 305 pp. $25.99

"Larry's Kidney," a stranger-than-fiction memoir by Daniel Asa Rose, serves as an enjoyable testament to the lengths to which we sometimes go to help family, even when doing so is a terrible, terrible idea. The absurdly long subtitle -- "Being the Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant -- and Save His Life" -- should come with a spoiler alert. It's not giving too much away to reveal that the plot involves a guy named Larry, who somehow persuaded his long-lost cousin, Daniel Rose, editor of the literary magazine the Reading Room, to leave his wife and kids behind and accompany him to China. There Larry hoped to get an illegal kidney transplant and meet his bride-to-be.

The ensuing adventure is the stuff of slapstick comedy, as Rose and Larry navigate the Chinese black market, the dodgy medical establishment and their own relationship. It's curious and occasionally tense, especially when after all that trouble Larry threatens to call off the operation if it's going to be too expensive. Though their odyssey was a success in the end, Rose makes the moral of the story clear: "Don't try to go to China for a kidney. We got the last one."

6/17/09: A blog about bioethics called this "another favorable--and utterly amoral--book review."

Washington Post // The Dangerous World of Butterflies by Peter Laufer

A Delicate Subject

Sunday, May 24, 2009 

THE DANGEROUS WORLD OF BUTTERFLIES

The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists

By Peter Laufer

Lyons Press. 271 pp. $24.95

"To me," Peter Laufer writes early in "The Dangerous World of Butterflies," "journalism is an all-or-nothing calling. A real journalist is a journalist to the grave." But even the toughest reporters can get worn out. Laufer, the author of many hard-edged books -- about the rise of neo-Nazism, vigilantes on the Mexican-American border and, more recently, the suffering of soldiers returning from Iraq -- has decided to take on a more lighthearted subject: butterflies. He begins his sally in Nicaragua, where he learns of a conflict between the "butterfly huggers" of the North American Butterfly Association and the International Butterfly Breeders Association over the staged release of butterflies at public events. His investigation reveals a sordid underworld of butterfly hobbyists in which "nefarious collectors fuel criminal butterfly poachers worldwide."

Laufer writes with humor, as if to concede that he's trying too hard to find an exciting story where one doesn't exist. Nevertheless, his book is charming and his attention to detail, combined with a real gift for describing these fascinating characters -- like calling entomologist Arthur Shapiro "an endless litany of intriguing butterfly stories" -- made me want to read everything else he has written. And I'm certain to look differently at the butterflies in my own backyard, knowing now how far they may have traveled to get there.

6/28/09: Republished in the Miami Herald.