What is money? What is art? The answer to the first question seems a lot more obvious than the second, until you read Lawrence Wescher's Boggs: A Comedy of Values. This book tells the story of J.S.G. Boggs, an artist who is best known for drawing very-nearly-exact reproductions of paper money bills and spending them in exchange for items one would normally buy with those "actual" paper bills. He even gets change back in "official" money. The book chronicles nearly fifteen years of Boggs' work, including his being put on trial in England for reproducing Bank of England notes, and harrassment by other governments for counterfeiting. But the fascinating part is the exchanges -- the people who won't take Boggs' drawings as a medium of exchange, and the people who will, and the reasons both give. (Such as the Orthodox Jewish-run establishment which says it won't take the drawing because graven images are forbidden by the Ten Commandments, though it does accept normal money.) Is it counterfeiting if you make it clear that the drawings aren't "real" bills, and you never intend to pass them as such? Does it matter that the drawings have sold to collectors (after Boggs "spends" them) for several times their "face value"?

If I sent the artist a letter asking if he'd like to exchange a drawing of his for, say, a knitted blanket or a handmade Christmas ornament, what makes that technically "barter," but the exchange of a U.S. government-issued bill a "sale"? Would that be different if I exchanged my handiwork for bills in Euros or yen or Australian dollars or some currency legitimized by the government of a country I have never visited and have no immediate plans to? All these freaky questions are evoked by reading this book, which contains discussion of not only Boggs' work but that of other artists who have involved money in some way in their creation, and the history of money as well. It is a rare work that explains art in a way that makes sense to the rational part of my brain, and such supposedly rational pursuits as economics and law start to seem nonsensical in comparison to art after reading this book. And I do mean that as a compliment.

Economics. History. Art. No matter which of these subjects piques your interest, The Art of Money by David Standish as something for you. Pictures of paper money from around the world and covering quite a few decades (centuries, for American money), all nicely captioned to tell you why there's an ancient Greek sculpture on Ireland's ten-pound bill; what's up with the apparently abstract design on one side of the Swiss ten-franc bill; what countries put lizards on their money; and when the United States had bare-breasted women on money. Stories about inflation, the genesis of using paper instead of coins, and the political results of England keeping English money out of its North American colonies -- and amusing remarks by the author sprinkled throughout. This is the closest thing to an economics book that I've ever found interesting -- probably because it's not dry theory but colorful reality -- dig the near-photographic image of the sea turtle on the money from the Comoros Islands!

I'm a suburban girl who generally thinks of plants as being nice landscaping or the source of my spring allergy problems. There are a few flowers I can identify, but that's about it. So David Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants really gave me a new view on plants; they're not just things to be stepped on or provide a visual break from buildings, but living beings that are just as interesting as animals. TV networks such as PBS, the Discovery Channel, and obviously from its name, Animal Planet, supply tons of nature documentaries on the animal kingdom, but the documentary film that this book accompanies (also called The Private Life of Plants) uses time-lapse photography to show that plants live in motion, even if it's too slow for the normal human eye to see. But even the book is terribly well illustrated, with just the right still (or series of stills) to show the pebble plant of Africa which avoids being eaten because it looks exactly like a rock, the various types of pitcher plants which evolved ways to catch bugs in little reservoirs of liquid, and the fungi which grow on your local trees. (Yes, I know a fungus isn't a plant, and Attenborough points this out too, but due to such things as lichens, which turn out to be fungi and algae working together as one organism, the book does wander into fungi in some places.) In a very readable manner, avoiding biologist jargon, the book really explains the incredible variety of plants on the planet; the ways, from commonplace to peculiar, that they manage to survive; and the way that plants, other plants, animals, fungi, and even humans work together for mutual benefit.

I just finished Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death Revisited. Despite being 29 and in good health, I'm certainly thinking about what should be done with my body when I'm dead now, and I can't imagine that anyone could read this book without the same thoughts. The ridiculous coffins, "services," and other things that funeral homes routinely charge inflated prices for are detailed in the book, along with the self-serving doublespeak that the funeral and cemetery industries put out to protect their profits. You will go "That's outrageous!" at some point, guaranteed. But you will probably produce many wry snickers, as the depressing subject matter is well relieved by Ms. Mitford's sense of humor.

The book isn't perfect. Since the original version was published more than 30 years ago, some parts of the book have been updated, but others have not, so one is constantly jumping from 1960s prices to 1990s, or left unsure which time period "now" refers to. However, it is useful to read about the effects of the first book, such as the story of President Kennedy's death and funeral arrangements by people who had read the first version and were trying to avoid unnecessary items and inflated prices, not always successfully.

Even if you don't choose to read the book, take a look at The Funeral Consumers Alliance web site or look for a local Memorial Society in your area, for comparison shopping if nothing else. Even if you actually want everything the funeral industry will try to sell you, a little advance planning will keep your family or friends from having to make some quick decisions at a time when they're not thinking straight.

In the U.S., no one thinks of farms in Saudi Arabia. We think of only deserts and a few cities, the little bits shown on the videotapes from the Gulf War. Martha Kirk's Green Sands: My Five Years In The Saudi Desert talks about a lot of things, but the premise is that technology could bring those sands to support wheat fields. Her husband, Terry Kirk, was hired in the early 1980s to manage farms owned by a rich Saudi, so that they could grow the wheat that was heavily subsidized by the Saudi government. They were perhaps too successful, as more wheat was grown than could be used or stored.

But Martha's story of coming to Saudi Arabia from Texas, to be with her husband and supposedly to computerize the farm's records, is interesting not for the technology (although the means used to bring wheat fields and even fish farms to the middle of the desert are fascinating) but for the tale of being an American woman with her head uncovered in a land where nomad women cover all but their eyes, and city women cover even those; being a Christian in a place where stores are not legally allowed to be open during the prescribed times when Muslims pray (although the book does not delve much into the author's faith; nothing to offend an agnostic like me); and of course, being a foreigner in a land very far from home.

Little things, such as the items Safeway can't carry in Riyadh or the picture of transporting a camel to market in the back of a pickup truck, give a much fuller picture of everyday life in Saudi Arabia than any impersonal summary of conditions could. Since the Kirks lived some distance from cities or even towns, the Bedouins around their farm are given just as much or more attention as the urbanized people, and the contrast between the rich farm owners' lifestyle and that of the laborers from Pakistan and Sri Lanka who work on the farm is quite telling. The book makes you think about your own lifestyle: could you manage under the conditions of the nomads, or even of Martha Kirk without the things Westerners are usually accustomed to having (such as flush toilets)? I'm not sure that I could, and by American standards I don't live that lavishly.

But many Americans will be pleased to know that birthday cakes and chocolate chip cookies seem to have been a hit with people of every nationality. <grin>

Anyone living in the modern world has probably grumbled to themselves that modern conveniences can be distinctly less convenient at times than living without them would be. Now there's an entire book on the subject, and how dealing with short-term, catastrophic problems can often just lead to less-intense but longer-lasting problems.

A "revenge effect" is the ironic, unintended effect of some action or technology, according to Edward Tenner in the book Why Things Bite Back: The Revenge of Unintended Consequences. Examples of revenge effects are:

• Bacterial infections are harder to cure now because of wide use of antibiotics -- the bacteria that have survived despite modern medicine are resistant to common antibiotics.
• Filter-tip cigarettes often increase nicotine intake because smokers inhale them more deeply.
• Telecommuting often ties workers to their work more closely because work can be done at any hour of the day or night.
• Car alarms can sometimes lead to a car being damaged by angry neighbors who want the alarm noise stopped.

Tenner notes, "A revenge effect is not the same thing as a side effect. If a cancer chemotherapy treatment causes baldness, that is not a revenge effect; but if it induces another, equally lethal cancer, that is a revenge effect." (He also notes "reverse revenge effects", where something unintended but positive happens, like a former artillery range becoming a thriving habitat for animals because artillery shells and waste make humans leave the area alone.) The book is a truly interesting read both for its information (how much environmental damage did cleaning up after the Exxon Valdez oil spill cause?) and its new way of thinking; the reader is really encouraged to view the world from different angles by seeing the unexpected consequences of everything from time-saving devices to advances in medicine.

American schools are not the greatest at covering history. The "social studies" courses that elementary and middle schoolers get jump hither and thither such that out of six years of them, I only remember three of them imparting any information (two years of American history starting with the explorers and never getting past the American Revolution; one year of "world history" which didn't get past the Roman Empire). High school, even in the International Baccalaureate program, spent two years repeating the previous courses, albeit with more detail (and we got to World War II in American history). A semester each of government and economics and, quite unusually for the U.S., a year of Latin American history.

So, like most people who come out of these schools, my knowledge of other times and places is sketchy. One book that really helped with that deficiency is Robert K. Massie's Peter The Great: His Life And World. This 900-page Pulitzer Prize winner is not just a book about Peter the Great of Russia, though its details on the life of that ruler are fascinating. It is a history of Russia for several decades before Peter's birth, a biography of Charles XII of Sweden, an overview of the Great Northern War which involved most of Northern and Eastern Europe over ten years. And despite all that, it reads like a novel, sucking you in until you have to find out what happened next, even if you already knew. This book is a great way to get a feel for Europe in the late 1600s-early 1700s, and will make you want to find out more.