I’ve felt for a long time that income inequality is one of the biggest problems in this country, but I’ve also had a sense that the problem isn’t just that a few people are making an obscene amount of money while many more struggle to get by, or even that the disparity between rich and poor is increasing. It also seemed to me that our country was drifting in the direction of becoming an oligarchy, in which a small number of people not only enjoy a disproportionate share of the country’s wealth but also an ever-increasing share of power over our politics and governance. . . .
Category: Books
Truman
Yesterday I finished reading David McCullough’s exceptional biography of Harry S. Truman, titled simply Truman. The book is 1,117 pages — 992 pages not counting the end matter — and I’d been working my way through it for a month and a half. So what to say in a brief blog post about such a long book? First, I loved it. . . .
Is News Consumption Bad For You?
One of the themes that both pundits and ordinary people expound on these days is the way that following the news can be stressful. There’s so much bad news, and there are so many outlets that will dish it up for as many of your waking hours as you’re willing to spend consuming it. But I’ve read a couple of things recently that go a bit further: suggestions that overconsumption of news is detrimental to your mental health and bad for your grip on reality. . . .
My Favorite Science Fiction Author
When I was thirteen years old, a very literate friend of my parents was chatting with me one day about what I was reading. When she learned that I was an avid reader of books in the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction series (Tom Swift and His Jetmarine, Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship, Tom Swift and His Giant Robot), she said, “I think we can do better than that,” . . .
Humankind, by Rutger Bregman
I blogged in June about an interview with Rutger Bregman that I’d heard on the public radio program “On the Media.” Bregman had just published a book entitled Humankind: A Hopeful History. I was so intrigued by what he had to say that I immediately ordered the book. I finished reading it yesterday…
Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande
In deciding what to write about today, I asked myself whether there are any books I’ve read lately that I would recommend unconditionally. As I scanned my bookshelf, the one that jumped out was Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. It’s a wonderful and thought-provoking look at how our society cares for — or fails to care for — its oldest and most infirm members. . . .
Morning Pages
Years ago my friend Jill told me about The Artist’s Way
by Julia Cameron, a book of advice for people who make their living in the creative arts. Perhaps the best-known suggestion in the book is a practice Cameron calls “Morning Pages,” a kind of stream-of-consciousness journaling to be done each morning. . . .
Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care?
I just finished reading the book, Which Country Has the World’s Best Health Care? by Ezekiel Emanuel. I won’t keep you in suspense about Emanuel’s answer to that question. He asserts that no country can be said to have the best health care overall. There are several dimensions (Emanuel identifies 22) on which one can assess a country’s health care system…
Reading Books
As I’ve mentioned, I read a lot. Most of the books I read are non-fiction — history, biographies, economics, politics, and various other topics. As it happens, there’s a book club in my neighborhood that’s been meeting for years, but it’s restricted to women, and they read only literary fiction. A year and a half ago one of my neighbors, who reads a lot of history, asked if I’d be interested in forming a non-fiction book club for the men in the neighborhood.
Smartphones and a Loss of Creativity
When neural scanning technologies were developed that allowed the workings of the human brain to be observed in real time, neuroscientists were surprised by how active the brain is when nothing much is going on. . . It seems that when our mind is wandering, when we’re daydreaming, when we’re just plain bored, valuable things are happening in our heads that boost our ability to be creative and solve problems…