If there were ever a receptive audience for youthful, informal novice writing, we would be it. You, young readers whose patience fuels this newspaper and me, an aspiring writer who really does like to see young people make it. Still Abraham Young’s Humanity at Stake falls short.

As Young will inform you on the first page of his self-described “pamphlet book,” he is a Taiwanese-American living in New York City and volunteering at a bookstore where all the proceeds go to HIV/AIDS victims living in New York. What follows is an essential transcription of conversations that took place at this bookstore between himself, Chris the ex-Air Force now commercial pilot and Wang the politico journalism student who was actually born in China.

These three men have all interacted with China and its abrasive power struggle with history at one point, and through their discussion hope to instigate concern with the contemporary complications of Taiwan, while exhuming a legacy of violent and brazen military action.

Young’s heart is in the right place, and if more young people talked about political tyranny and the plagues of the rest of the world instead of how great the Sex and the City movie is, the world might be a better place (or at least have lower gas prices).

Grade: C

Humanity at Stake is currently available at www.HumanityAtStake.com.