Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped January 23, 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. Days later he was beheaded by his captors. Because of his death, I read a great book this week–a collection of his work from the Journal.

The clips date back to 1994, and strange as it is to believe, I was not a WSJ reader in the 4th grade. What’s great about Pearl’s work is that he had beats that sound very mundane, yet broke out of the expectations to report interesting stories. A writer covering air cargo and telecommunications penned stories about children’s beauty pageants, candy cane trucking controversies, Iraqi planes stuck in Iran and the power of pharmacists in India.

Those are just the stories I marked, not encompassing the 8-year journey “At Home In The World” presents.

Because of my love for candy canes, I was naturally drawn into a story about how they are transported. It started as part of an investigation into a now-defunct government agency that set trucking rates for different products. Basically truckers argued that candy canes should not be classified as candy because they take up more room. Candy makers fought to keep them as candy, ultimately losing their battle. The twist comes as the agency in charge of setting the rates actually had no real power to enforce them, and the truckers didn’t pay much attention to their work. The best quote, “If we’re not careful, the [truckers] will drag Santa Claus before the commission for transporting candy canes at the wrong rating.” Hopefully he’ll just get a slap on the wrist.

Though the stories are anything but breaking news, there were some I had no idea about. Like the piece on Iraq demanding Iran return its planes. Apparently Iraq feared its arsenal would be destroyed in the first Gulf War and decided to try to stash them in Iran. Only when the war was over, Iran refused to allow Iraqi pilots to come and pick up the planes.

And then there’s the health care system in India. The story was written as the country was on the verge of having to enact new standards. But at the time, pharmacists were the main way that many people got medical advice. They would go to the pharmacy, describe some symptoms, and walk away with some pills. The system apparently led to pharmacists being the target of deals from drug makers, like buy 7 of these and get 1 free. Drug makers say it was to protect their market share, while pharmacists could take advantage and boost their profit margins. The criticism is that often people with no medical training were dispensing drugs with no instructions on how to use them. The biggest problem being with antibiotics, as “patients” would take the drugs but not complete the full course. That has been blamed on increasingly resistant strains of deadly diseases like malaria. Again, who knew.

Another interesting piece was on the “Saudization” of Saudi Arabia’s work force. The article says 6 out of every 7 service workers at the time were foreigners, and the government wanted to give the jobs to its own people. So they started training potential workers on an American-style work ethic so they would be capable of doing the job. The plan would also keep the current workers from renewing their VISAs, basically firing them all after a given period of time. Well there were some bumps along the way.

One of the workers in the training program was 24-year-old Saleh Fatallah. “Mr. Fattalah tried out for the McDonald’s job. But when a McDonald’s customer spilled a cup of soda, Mr. Fatallah says he asked a Filipino worker to clean up; the worker told him to do it himself, and Mr. Fatallah refused. He didn’t get the job.” Whoops.

I found the book after watching the movie “A Mighty Heart.” It takes you through the entire kidnapping and search for Pearl. I didn’t think much about those circumstances while reading the book. It’s broken up into sections with an introduction by a former colleague. She sets the stage of where Pearl was working at the time, gives anecdotes from co-workers, and describes some of the interesting stories behind the stories that led to Pearl’s writings.

Only after I finished the book did I think about the unfortunate circumstances that are the only reason this text exists. If you’re at all interested in good journalism, or a greater perspective on our world, “At Home In The World” is a good place to start.

Next up: “Everything Is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Ten pages in I was cursing F. Scott Fitzgerald. I remember really enjoying The “Great Gatsby,” and coupled with a recommendation from a friend I had high hopes.

Sitting in the blazing afternoon sun while trying to get the reading project back on track, all I could think about was Hemingway’s “A Farewell To Arms.” I hated that book from the beginning and don’t think there’s any way I’ll be dipping in the Hemingway pool again.

“The Beautiful And Damned” took a different course, suddenly becoming a very engaging read after the initial drudgery with which it began. I was later reminded by The Recommender that she had warned me about the slow start. I think she made that up.

The overall tone brought back memories of Oscar Wilde, with a number of characters you don’t necessarily like but still want to follow. They begin young and idealistic without the day-to-day worry of being concerned with money. The protagonist, Anthony, is little concerned about his eventual inheritance from his aging grandfather. It’s only a matter of time in his mind that a heart will stop beating and he can go cash a check.

Unfortunately for Anthony, he doesn’t quite get to Plan B. I mean, if you see millions of dollars “surely” in your future, who wants to get a job? It must have been so awful being an aristocrat in those days. It’s certainly no fun to not have to work if you can’t sit around and play video games on your giant HD television. All they could do was have nightly drunk-off-their-face parties and spend the days recovering. Who needs a job when you could just do that?

If only he had found a wife who had a bit more drive: “I just want to be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe–and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me.”

That sounds like she wouldn’t much mind if her husband actually went out and worked for a living. Unless of course she wanted him to be in the group of doing nothing. Asked if she approved of lazy men, she said, “I suppose so, if they’re gracefully lazy.”

Now gracefully lazy is something I could get into. Just have to find a couple million dollars to cover my Taco Bell trips and child support payments. I mean, Taco Bell trips and um, miscellaneous expenditures. Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Anthony, emboldened by his wife’s enabling shows some true entrepreneurial spirit and does…nothing. Oh and then he blames her, because after all it’s definitely her fault. “As a matter of fact I think that if I hadn’t met you I would have done something,” he said. “But you make leisure so subtly attractive.”

She completely derailed his career of pretending like he was going to do something, instead leaving him with just doing nothing. If Fitzgerald were writing today, the two wouldn’t be addicted to laziness. Rather they’d be going through rehab for their codependent meth addictions, and failing miserably at that.

Should I be worried that I was completely into characters with those traits? I think I’ll go check myself into rehab as a precaution. I don’t want this to be a gateway book. But hey, if you’re looking for some “good stuff,” you might want to give it a shot. Just remember the first 10 pages are a bear, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Hugs not drugs.

Next up: “At Home In The World: Collected writings of Daniel Pearl”