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Cesar Vargas has a resume most young Americans would envy. He graduated from a Brooklyn high school that counts Sens. Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders among its alumni. He made honors in both college and law school. But because he was brought to the United States from Mexico illegally when he was 5-years old, he can't fulfill one of his dreams: joining the armed forces.

"I do believe that because this country has given me so much, I do want to be able to give back," Vargas said in an interview.

For Vargas, who has traveled to Washington multiple times to press Congress for legislation to give immigrants like him a path to citizenship, this cause is both personal and political. The co-director of the Dream Action Coalition, a group that advocates for young Latinos, wants to become a military lawyer.

"It's a little frustrating," Vargas said. "This is the reality for us. This is the country we call home...What it really comes down to is the commitment to serve the country you call home, the country you want to wear a uniform for."

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to see a path for immigrants like Vargas, known as Dreamers, to serve in the military. Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., has repeatedly pushed a bill that would give legal status to young undocumented immigrants who serve in the military. And an amendment to a must-pass defense-policy bill would encourage the Pentagon to consider allowing immigrants brought to the country as children to do so.

That amendment has been blasted by conservatives, who say it's a "severe threat" to passage of the $612 billion defense-policy bill, which typically passes with broad bipartisan support.

Led by Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, more than two dozen House Republicans wrote a letter to the chairman of the House Rules Committee threatening to oppose the defense bill if the immigration provision wasn't stripped out. The lawmakers pointed to previous times the House had voted to declare the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as unconstitutional.

"The language contained in Rep. Gallego's amendment contradicts the House's previous position and is a severe threat to the passage of the NDAA — legislation which funds the essential programs that America's military requires," the lawmakers wrote to House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions. "Especially in this time of increased terrorism, our national security should not be threatened by allowing such controversial language on a program we have rejected three times as unconstitutional."

Brooks pointed to Pentagon force reductions and claimed, "Americans are being handed pink slips as they serve in Afghanistan."

He added, "At the same time, you've got Congressman Gallego, who is wanting to promote illegal aliens and put them in a position to compete with American citizens for military service positions, and I find that truly unconscionable."

Rep. Ruben Gallego D-Ariz., who sponsored the amendment, said he was surprised the amendment had provoked such a clash. He said Republicans were using the non-binding amendment to "play immigration politics for something that isn't really controversial."

"This is something that is really important, not because these young men and women have a right to be in the military," he said. "No one has a right to be in the military. It's the opportunity and the privilege to serve in the military that we should extend to anybody that's in this country...they should have the opportunity to serve and repay their country."

Brooks said though the amendment is technically just a sense of Congress resolution, "it is the kind of political cover that would empower the Secretary of Defense in reaction to Congress to declare this vast field of DACA illegal aliens as vital to America's interest, thereby exempting them from the citizenship and or lawful immigrant requirements to serve the United States military."

"That is not the sense of Congress," Brooks said, "and it's certainly not the sense of the American people to put already struggling American families in the position of not only having to compete in the private sector with illegal aliens, but also trying to compete for military service positions."

Gallego's amendment passed with the support of House Armed Services Committee Democrats and six Republicans: Reps. Mike Coffman R-Colo., Chris Gibson R-N.Y., Frank LoBiondo R-N.J., Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., Martha McSally R-Ariz. and Ryan Zinke R-Mont.

Coffman, who served in both Iraq wars, says he agrees with his Republican colleagues that President Obama has overreached with executive actions on immigration. But he also insisted that the country needs immigration reform. Explaining his support for an amendment that many of his Republican colleagues oppose, Coffman drew from his own careers — both in the military and in Congress.

"I'm disappointed in my colleagues for fighting this," Coffman said. "I'm not sure why they're so opposed to this. I've been in the Congress side by side with people who are opposed to this, but yet they themselves didn't want to serve. These young people ought to have the opportunity to serve."

The bill is expected to be taken up by the full House this week and then must go to the Senate where Arizona Sen. John McCain leads the Armed Services Committee. McCain has said that there will not be a similar provision included in his committee's version of the bill.

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Like the "armored muscle" of a snake, Mann's book squeezes us in an ever-tightening grip as it glides from Josh's funeral to wrap itself around many of his mourners' memories, beginning with friends and slithering on to increasingly close relatives.

The book rightly builds to its most devastating portrait, of a father (with whom Mann is obviously close) who, years after Josh's death, was still trying to make sense of his eldest son's "cracked" life. Mann captures the delicate dance Josh's divorced parents did around him, trying to buttress him while hiding their alarm and pity.

Part of the difficulty of Lord Fear is that the object of Mann's obsession, while at times charismatic, is also deeply unpleasant — a warped person who sadistically tortured cats, bullied his brother Dave and cousins, and nastily abused his worried, ever-solicitous mother. And while Mann manages to convey why his friends and family were so poleaxed by Josh's death, we ultimately care more about the people who cared about him — beginning with his sensitive younger half-brother — than about Josh.

Book Reviews

Farm Team Saga 'Class A' Hits It Out Of The Park

Mann's book exemplifies several trends in memoirs. Most notably, it takes liberties with linear chronology. ("I think that's how memory works," Mann writes.) All names, except Josh's and Mann's, have been changed, along with some biographical details. Begun when Mann was in college ten years ago, Lord Fear features scenes constructed from often spotty memories.

None of this is troubling, because Mann is upfront about it. But in a book about trying to nail down the ineffable, we can't help wishing for more concrete facts to anchor us. An investigation of Josh's arrest record, for example, could have provided a clearer picture of how he supported his heroin habit.

But clarity may be beside the point. Josh, Mann writes, "is in the thick air of the messy moments of all the years that have passed without him." Fortunately, Mann clearly has been endowed with the empathy his brother so sorely lacked. It enables him to move us with lyrical descriptions of Manhattan seen from a distance ("rising out of the water, stacks of gold light outlined by dusk. Everything else is disappointment"), and simple assertions like "I wanted him to feel better than he felt." Let's hope Lord Fear frees Mann to move on to happier projects.

Read an excerpt of Lord Fear

My Organic Life

How a Pioneering Chef Helped Shape the Way We Eat Today

by Nora Pouillon and Laura Fraser

Hardcover, 261 pages | purchase

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When restaurateur Nora Pouillon moved to the United States from Austria in the 1960s, she was surprised by how hard it was to get really fresh food. Everything was packaged and processed. Pouillon set out to find the find the best ingredients possible to cook for her family and friends. She brought that same sensibility to her Restaurant Nora, which eventually became the first certified organic restaurant in the country.

Pouillon writes about her lifelong devotion to food in a new memoir, My Organic Life: How A Pioneering Chef Helped Shape The Way We Eat Today.

Restaurant Nora is tucked into an old brick building on a busy corner in the nation's capital. An herb garden takes up part of the sidewalk outside the restaurant.

Pouillon traces her interest in food back to her earliest years when she lived on a farm in the Alps during World War II.

"This time showed me how food is like a treasure and how difficult it is to grow and raise food enough to feed you and your family all year round," she says. "And it gave me a big respect for food."

Today Pouillon channels her passion for food into her restaurant, which has been a fixture in the Washington, D.C., food scene since 1979. When Pouillon was getting ready to open the restaurant, she was introduced to then reigning power couple of that era, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, journalist Sally Quinn. They agreed to invest in the restaurant, but Pouillon says Quinn offered a word of warning:

"I told them ... that I really wanted to do natural food and she said, 'Just don't tell them that it's health food because people hate health food; they think it's bad.' So anyway, I just called it 'additive-free food," Pouillon says.

Natural food, Pouillon says, was the norm when she was living in Europe. But when she moved to this country as a young wife, she had to search for fresh ingredients wherever she could find them, mostly in small ethnic markets. And when she got started in the restaurant business, she tracked down local farmers who could supply the ingredients she needed.

"It was hard, I mean I had to drive out to Virginia to scout around to find farmers and you know then there was no Google," she recalls. "So you couldn't just Google organic farm or natural farm. So I had to go through the Yellow Pages, and through the Yellow Pages, I found farmers."

Pouillon's approach attracted legions of fans including politicians, journalists, even presidents.

Pouillon is still at the restaurant every day, which begins when she meets with her chefs to discuss what is needed for that day's service.

Restaurant Nora was certified as an organic restaurant in 1999, meaning 95 percent of all ingredients including seasonings and condiments have to be organic. Sometimes, says Pouillon, that can be challenging.

"It's a big problem that I run often out of things because the farmer didn't deliver what he said he would because the beetles ate [it] or the frost came or it was too wet ... and because of my upbringing I understand that. But it drives my chefs nuts," she says.

As the kitchen staff is prepping food for the day, Chef James Martin and Pouillon go over food orders.

"Pretty much the farm rules this kitchen, especially when you are getting organic stuff ... it takes patience, it takes time, it takes love, it takes a lot of care, it takes a lot of work," says Martin.

The food scene in this country has changed radically since Pouillon first moved here: Farmers markets have sprung up all over, supermarkets now carry fresh vegetables and organic meats and the farm-to-table movement is increasingly popular. In fact, Pouillon says sometimes differing approaches to natural foods seem to compete with each other.

"People always ask me: What is better, organic or local? And I say, well there's nothing wrong with being local and organic," she says.

Now in her early 70s, Pouillon says she feels her life has come full-circle since those early childhood days when she first learned to respect food, and the work it takes to raise it, cook it and serve it.

Correction May 12, 2015

In a previous Web version of this story, the headline called Restaurant Nora "America's first organic restaurant." The headline should have specified the first certified as organic. The earlier story misspelled Nora Pouillon's last name.

Nora Pouillon

organic food

"My dad was going to play banjo and he never got into it, so he advertised in the Palo Alto newspaper: 'Banjo for sale,' " Kreutzmann says. "One night there's a knock on the door. I open the door and Jerry Garcia was standing there."

A number of years later, Kreutzmann saw Garcia again, playing with Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, and was "completely taken away." That night, he swore to follow Garcia everywhere. Two weeks later, Kreutzmann got a phone call from Garcia asking if he'd like to be in a band.

"I thought that was a very good idea," Kreutzmann says. "Turned out to be a pretty great idea, don't you think?"

'It Can Be Like Fractals'

In the band's beginnings, altered states of consciousness fueled the Grateful Dead's creativity.

"Well, acid was the most beneficial drug," Kreutzmann says. "I jokingly refer to it as my college education, my graduate school, whatever. If I hadn't taken acid, I just would not be here talking to you today. It opens you up; it lets you see that what you're taught in school or what your parents have taught you, or society lays on you, isn't necessarily all there is to see. Your art can flourish and flourish and flourish. It can be like fractals, your art; it can just keep growing. That's what LSD did for me."

But drugs ate away at the band, even as the Grateful Dead grew into the biggest touring attraction in America.

"When cocaine came into the Grateful Dead, it really hurt us," Kreutzmann says.

Kreutzmann says that 1995, when Jerry Garcia died, "was a terrible year for me. I moved to Hawaii to get healing. I was in a really bad way —"

After a moment, Kreutzmann composed himself.

'He Was My Best Music Teacher'

The drummer and the bandleader had once made a pact: If the Grateful Dead ever came to an end, Bill Kreutzmann and Jerry Garcia would move to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, clean up and go diving. In the end, Kreutzmann moved there alone.

"I thank him. He was my best music teacher," Kreutzmann says of Garcia. "He taught me more about music than anybody else. And not necessarily just in words, but how he played. The way he played, you can learn so much from it. Doesn't matter what instrument you play.

"I [was] a senior in high school when he asked me to join the band, when that phone call came in. I knew how to play the drums just a little bit. I had the desire. The thing he said was, 'Bill, play full value. Make four beats be a really full four beats. Don't rush to the end of the bar.' "