No, I haven’t finished Barack Obama’s new memoir yet. I’ll be making my way through its 700+ pages for another few weeks, but I wanted to share one early passage that really grabbed me. After I read it the first time, I read it again out loud to Jennifer and could hardly get through it. I kept choking up. . . .
Category: Books
The Books I’ll Be Reading Next
This past week I finished both of the non-fiction books I’ve been reading. . . . I like to have more than one book going at a time so I’ve picked two more to start reading this week. One is Barack Obama’s new memoir, A Promised Land, which comes out today. The other is Year Zero: A History of 1945, by Ian Buruma, which describes the massive efforts that began in 1945 to transform Europe and the Asian Pacific following the devastation of WW II. . . .
Evil Geniuses, by Kurt Andersen
I just finished reading Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America – A Recent History, by Kurt Andersen. The primary thesis of this book is similar to that of Robert Reich’s book, The System: Who Rigged It and How to Fix It, which I read and blogged about a couple of months ago. But Evil Geniuses is a longer and more ambitious book. Andersen tells the story of how conservatives in America — specifically CEOs, conservative politicians and academics, and some hugely wealthy people — set about starting in the 1970s to change the minds of Americans about the nature of markets, the source of American prosperity, and the role of government in managing the economy. It’s a fascinating story, and one I’ve never seen told in such journalistic detail. . . .
Essentialism, by Greg McKeown
I friend of mine told me the other day that he’s interested in improving his focus and reigning in his inclination to spread himself too thin. I recommended that he read Greg McKeown’s book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, which I first read in 2017. He finished the book last week and told me he found it energizing but that it also made him angry. . . .
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
I just finished reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson’s recounting of the three and a half years that William E. Dodd spent as U.S. ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, from 1933 through 1937. It is excellent. . . .
Trumpty Dumpty
I’m enjoying John Lithgow’s new book, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age, a sequel to his 2019 book, Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse. Lithgow did both the writing and the illustrations, including the one shown here. Here’s the title verse . . .
A History of Anti-Populism
I just finished reading a book that blew my mind: The People, NO: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, by Thomas Frank. The title is a play on a slogan of the People’s Party in the late 19th century: “The People, Yes!” As the book explains, the People’s Party was the first true populist movement in America, a coalition of farmers and laborers, blacks and whites, looking to topple the hegemony of wealthy capitalists and reclaim a fair share of the fruits of the American economy. Since then, Frank explains, populism has been widely maligned by corporate leaders, academic elites, journalists and others. . . .
The Gatekeepers, by Chris Whipple
This week I finished reading Chris Whipple’s 2017 book, The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. As a presidential politics nerd, I found it fascinating, but I expect that anyone who is even somewhat interested in the inner workings of the West Wing would it find it compelling. . . .
Learning to Fly, by Gordon Baxter
As I described earlier this month, I starting thinking recently about taking flying lessons. That led me to attend a Zoom meeting of a local flying club. When I introduced myself and explained why I was there, one of the members recommended a book called How to Fly: For People Who Are Not Sure They Want To, by Gordon Baxter. I finished reading it last night. . . .
Fallout, by Lesley M.M. Blume
Some extensively researched histories are overwritten. You can feel as if you’re wading through a slough of extraneous details. Fallout is not one of those. . . . Blume keeps her story moving.