Taking on Google

An Essay
by Carter Jefferson

If you've never been led astray when you Google something, find it mildly interesting, click on a link, do the same thing again (three times), and wind up somewhere you'd never thought of going, you won't sympathize with me on this. It happens to me all too often, though, and I decided to take advantage of one such adventure to blog about a book review.

I'm writing a scintillating review (don't I always?) about Steve Weinberg's new book Taking On the Trust, covering Ida Tarbell's remarkable career and her fight against the Standard Oil Company back around 1900. Searching for the name of the federal agency that is supposed to oversee the stock and bond markets (but doesn't, these days), I wound up reading a delightful review of McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers (2002) on a blog called Get Rich Slowly.

Since I have a container garden of sorts -- last year got some delicious white eggplant, as well as a gorgeous view of massed flowers out my terrace door -- I read the review with great interest, and then checked Amazon to see if I could buy the book. I could: $93.50 for a used paperback six years old! I didn't. Maybe it's in the library. But the review is worth reading in itself -- it would show you how to do a systematic job of promoting a book you love. The author ought to submit a shorter version of it to our "Lasting Impressions" department.

She'd at least get a byline from us, which her husband, the blog owner, didn't bother to give her.

Back to work. Now, what was I searching for?