Quarter #4 Book Portfolio

The book that I have read is Fast food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal By Eric Schlosser. Published in 2001, and is nonfiction. This book tells how fast food chains started, how fast food is cooked and processed, and the effects that fast food restaurants, and the restaurants suppliers have on the towns they are in. Why the food tastes the way it does, why they employ mostly teenagers, how some of the suppliers cheat people, and how the amount of cattle ranchers in the U.S. are are thinning. Don't judge a book by its cover. I chose this theme because say the outside of a McDonald's appeals to you but that doesn't mean that what is inside will.

Don't judge a book by its cover. A slaughterhouse is where they kill and process cattle to make burgers, Eric Schlosser took a tour of one in the book. He said that the building from the outside looked like any other factory, but on the inside there were illegal Mexican immigrants cutting the meat on conveyor belts with long knives, and at the beginning of the line the 'knocker' shoots the cattle in the head with a captive bolt stunner, then a 'sticker' severs the carotid artery of a steer every ten seconds or so. A Big Mac meal looks really nice but that does not mean that it has a good nutritional value. They have playgrounds that kids think are there for them to have fun but they are designed to attract children (and their parents) to its restaurants so that they can make profit. This them shows up in many places in the book with very different topics but the relevance is the same.

The theme is the same in a historical context. In southern California McDonald's chains were born. In the the 1940's most of southern California was farm land with citrus groves. Now it is mostly a bustling city. Back then they would have never known what it would be like now. The them was the same way back when as it is know.

Don't judge a book by its cover. This theme shows up in many places in the book with very different topics but the relevance is the same. The them was the same way back when as it is know. This book shows the theme well in many instances all through the book. It is important to understand this theme because it is everywhere in life, even when you don't think it matters, it matters.

Valley Forge Letter

Dear Pa,




This year has been long and hard on me, right now I am stationed at Valley Forge, it is cold here so cold that it seeps into my bones and sitting around a fire doesn't help. My clothes are worn and shabby, my boots have the bottoms worn off, so I've wrapped some rags I found around them. We have been on the run all year and have not a single battle won. We live in ramshackle huts with 12 men in each, that have no doors only pieces of cloth to keep out the never ending cold. Sometimes I wish that I had stayed home in North Carolina with you, ma and sis and farmed like you wanted, tell everyone I miss them.

The camp is so dirty, the stream is dirty, the men are dirty, and I'm dirty. No one uses the out-houses they go wherever they feel like, they go upstream in the water that we have to drink. the only food we have is flour, so we make fire cakes by mixing the flour with water and cooking it for every meal. It has snowed and rained many times during the three weeks we have been here. Many have died from the cold so far, and many have also died from illness. General Washington is a good man and I would follow him till death many others would not. I believe we can win this war so I will be signing up again next year. Well its time for dinner here, have to go if I want any fire cakes.



Love, James

Essay #2

I believe that Britain has too mush control over the colonies the king is overtaxing us and getting our money from it, our hard earned money. Taxing ridiculous prices on ridiculous items, they tax us on our sugar and our tea, when will it end I ask? the answer is never as long as we are ruled by that British tyranny. This is why I believe we should rebel and not succumb to the king. The future of the colonies is in the hands of the colonists not the king if we let the king control us any longer we will never be free.