Page 30 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 2 Winter 2014

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REVIEWS
Barry’s Wild Ride: The
Illustrated Adventures
of Barry the Bear
by Nicholas Hutchinson ’85
Self-Published, 35 pages,
$10.95
www.barryswildride.com
Reviewed by Jana F. Brown
Barry’s Wild Ride is a sweet story of a
friendly but misunderstood bear, who
enlarges his initial circle of friends from
an owl and a weasel to include surfers
from the local beach.
When we first meet Barry, he is living in
a comfortable cave at the edge of a berry
patch. He enjoys meandering to the beach
to watch surfers catch their waves; how-
ever, the surfers are afraid of him, misread-
ing his signals as threatening. Who can
blame them? After all, Barry is a full-grown
grizzly bear. It all changes when Barry dis-
covers an old redwood log and decides to
use it as a makeshift surfboard. Finding
something in common with the surfers
changes the relationship between this
bruin and his human counterparts, proving
that common ground can close the gap,
even between the most different of species.
Written by Nicholas Hutchinson ’85
and funded on Kickstarter.com, Barry’s
Wild Ride is a charming story for parents
to read to their children or for beginning
readers looking to suspend disbelief. As
a bonus, Barry the bear has been immor-
talized in a wooden jigsaw puzzle, made
with quarter-inch maple plywood by Lib-
erty Puzzles (www.libertypuzzles.com)
and founder Chris Wirth ’86.
Hail Mary: The
10-Step Playbook for
Republican Recovery
by Ford O’Connell ’95
CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform,
148 pages, $12.99
Reviewed by Grant Edwards,
SPS humanities faculty
In the introduction to his recent release,
Ford O’Connell ’95 asserts that “the Repub-
lican Party could be demoted to third-
party status” if it follows up losses in the
2008 and 2012 presidential elections with
a similar defeat in 2016. In other words,
even though conservatives are “still
hanging in there,” their chances for a
comeback “are getting longer…[a]nd the
consequences are potentially severe.”
O’Connell uses the 10 chapters that
follow to outline the tactics necessary for
the Grand Old Party to not simply avoid
such a fate, but also “to fundamentally
rebrand itself as a party of the people.”
Each section relies on a football analogy
as a way of introducing the proposed
strategic shifts to be addressed. After
outlining the essential details inherent to
his strategy, O’Connell ultimately demon-
strates how historic successes achieved
by such gridiron legends as Vince Lom-
bardi, Joe Namath, and Paul “Bear” Bryant
can be used as blueprints for future Re-
publican victories.
While some of his ideas seem rather
logical (see “Rule #6: Leave the Sideshows
to Donald Trump”), O’Connell also pushes
Republicans to fundamentally rethink both
their agenda and their appeal to indepen-
dent voters. His first rule even sounds
like heresy in its admonition that “Ronald
Reagan is dead. Accept it.” In promoting
such a seemingly radical idea at the outset
of his text, O’Connell sends a clear message:
in order to follow in the 40th President’s
forward-looking footsteps, conservatives
must embrace innovation, make careful
adjustments, and “let him rest in peace.”
O’Connell saves his most radical sug-
gestions for two topics at the heart of the
“culture wars” between liberals and con-
servatives: gay rights and immigration. In
both cases, he makes clear that principles
need not change completely and that, in
some cases, the party’s platform can
actually attract members of both constit-
uencies. O’Connell asserts that reaching
out to those groups in a tolerant, respect-
ful, and authentically engaging manner
and using rhetoric that highlights common
ground can aid the GOP in its efforts to
earn their support.
Perhaps O’Connell’s best advice comes
through in the timely message that “The
Preseason Doesn’t Win You the Super
Bowl,” as it reiterates the idea promoted
in a 2010 article in The Washington Post
by Alan Abramowitz and Norman Ornstein:
“[E]ven if Republicans make major gains in
2010, as is widely expected, it won’t tell us
anything about what will happen in 2012.”
The same, O’Connell promises, is true
of this year’s midterm elections and their
influence on the 2016 presidential cam-
paign. Unless, the author says, Republi-
cans “take a fresh look at the American
population they are seeking to represent”
and adjust their approach accordingly,
they won’t simply repeat the past; they
will gradually be disregarded by a nation in
desperate need of constructive leadership.
How to Avoid the
Over-diagnosis and
Over-treatment of
Prostate Cancer
by Anthony H. Horan ’57
On the Write Path Pub-
lishing, 171 pages, $39.95
Reviewed by Michael Matros
Just as the necessity of annual mammo-
grams has become increasingly questioned
in recent years, so has the validity of using
PSA testing to detect dangerous levels of
prostate cancer. In this updated re-issue
of Dr. Horan’s The Big Scare: The Business
of Prostate Cancer, the author discusses
not only the recommendation by the U.S.
Preventive Services Task Force against
routine PSA screening, with which he
agrees, but he also describes reports in-
dicating that radical prostatectomy does
not extend life and that radiation can cause
more damage than good.
“No more cancers have been discovered
in the PSA era than would have been
found in a random series of men that age
off the street whose PSA was unknown,”
Dr. Horan tells us. His views are supported
not only by the hundreds of medical studies
cited in his endnotes but also by his many
years of urology practice.
Offering rich and sometimes dense
medical detail, Dr. Horan maintains a
lay reader’s interest with an exuberant
personality and his angry denunciations
of practices he finds beneficial only to
pharmaceutical companies, hospitals,