Blog Posts

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Morning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild

12/23/2018

August 14, 2019

Discussion led by Will Singleton

Arlie Hochschild’s generous but disconcerting look at the Tea Party presents a likable fellow named Lee Sherman, who once worked for a Louisiana chemical plant where his duties included illegally dumping toxic waste into the bayou.
Sherman did the dirty work; then the company did him dirty. After 15 years on the job, he was doused with chemicals that “burned my clothes clean off me” and left him ill. But rather than pay his disability costs, his bosses accused him of absenteeism and fired him.

Sherman became a fledgling environmentalist and got his revenge after a giant fish kill threatened the livelihood of nearby fishermen. Company officials feigned innocence, but Sherman barged into a public meeting with an incriminating sign: I’M THE ONE WHO DUMPED IT IN THE BAYOU. Fast-forward a couple of decades and Sherman, still an environmentalist, is campaigning for a Tea Party congressman who wants to gut the Environmental Protection Agency. Sherman still distrusts chemical companies, but he distrusts the federal government more, because it spends his tax money on people who “lazed around days and partied at night.”

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/11/10/american-right-inside-the-sacrifice-zone/

https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10767-017-9266-6

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The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law by Joseph Tartakovsky

12/22/2018

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August 15, 2019

Discussion Led by Ed Lane

In a fascinating blend of biography and history, Joseph Tartakovsky tells the epic and unexpected story of our Constitution through the eyes of ten extraordinary individuals―some renowned, like Alexander Hamilton and Woodrow Wilson, and some forgotten, like James Wilson and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

Tartakovsky brings to life their struggles over our supreme law from its origins in revolutionary America to the era of Obama and Trump. Sweeping from settings as diverse as Gold Rush California to the halls of Congress, and crowded with a vivid Dickensian cast, Tartakovsky shows how America’s unique constitutional culture grapples with questions like democracy, racial and sexual equality, free speech, economic liberty, and the role of government.

Joining the ranks of other great American storytellers, Tartakovsky chronicles how Daniel Webster sought to avert the Civil War; how Alexis de Tocqueville misunderstood America; how Robert Jackson balanced liberty and order in the battle against Nazism and Communism; and how Antonin Scalia died warning Americans about the ever-growing reach of the Supreme Court.

From the 1787 Philadelphia Convention to the clash over gay marriage, this is a grand tour through two centuries of constitutional history as never told before, and an education in the principles that sustain America in the most astonishing experiment in government ever undertaken.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/the-human-factor/

https://www.josephtartakovsky.com/about/

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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

12/12/2018

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April 16, 2019

Discussion led by Peter Bluhm

ABOUT 1493
A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of 1491.

Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today's fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In 1493, Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.

An excellent NY Times review
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/books/review/1493-uncovering-the-new-world-columbus-created-by-charles-c-mann-book-review.html

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Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

12/12/2018

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March 21, 2019

Discussion led by Joel Wolk

Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths.

From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisers and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—both physically and emotionally—or were broken by them.

Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before. Presidents of War combines the sense of being there with the overarching context of two centuries of American history. This important book shows how far we have traveled from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/books/review/michael-beschloss-presidents-of-war.html

https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/presidents-war

https://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/2018/10/15/presidents-war-michael-beschloss-looks-long-history-lines-crossed

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-5-worst-wartime-presidents-12668

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The Wright Brothers by David McCullogh

12/11/2018

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February 21, 2019

Discussion led by Nathan Doctrow

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers—bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio—changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity. When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education and little money never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off, they risked being killed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/books/review-the-wright-brothers-by-david-mccullough.html

https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough-ebook/dp/B00LD1RWP6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544561103&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wright+brothers+book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wright_Brothers_(book)

https://www.biography.com/news/the-wright-brothers-david-mccullough-book

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How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

12/10/2018

1 Comment

Discussion led by Andy Fisher

January 14, 2019

What’s the worst thing to happen to US democracy recently? Most answers to that question start and end with Donald Trump. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two Harvard political scientists, though as horrified by Trump as anyone, try to take a wider view. For them the great harbinger of disaster happened during the final year of the Obama presidency. Following the sudden death of the conservative supreme court justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a centrist liberal, to replace him. It was up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm the president’s choice. But the Senate did something it had never done in more than 150 years: it refused even to grant Garland a hearing. This was not about Trump – most Republican senators were at this point deeply alarmed by, if not downright hostile to, the prospect of the Donald in the White House. Instead, it was about their shared view that any Republican supreme court nominee would be better than any Democratic nominee, and any price was worth paying to achieve that. It was scorched earth politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/21/this-is-how-democracies-die

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=1334

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/books/review-trumpocracy-david-frum-how-democracies-die-steven-levitsky-daniel-ziblatt.html

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/05/how-democracy-dies

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The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

9/17/2018

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December 20, 2018

Discussion led by Ben Liptzin

Instead of “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” Patricia O’Toole could have titled her new book “The Hypocrite.”
After all, as she herself points out, to lay claim to the moral high ground as often and as fervently as President Wilson did during his eight years in the White House was to court charges that he failed to live up to his own principles. He called for an end to secret treaties while negotiating secretly with the Allies in World War I. He declared himself unwilling to compromise with belligerents abroad while showing himself very willing to compromise with segregationists at home. He pursued a progressive economic agenda while approving a regressive racial one. He spoke of national self-determination in the loftiest terms while initiating the American occupation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
O’Toole’s is the third major biography of Wilson in the last decade, coming on the heels of substantial works by John Milton Cooper Jr. (2009) and A. Scott Berg (2013), an output of Wilsoniana that attests to the 28th president’s complicated — and contested — legacy. O’Toole’s book doesn’t purport to be as exhaustive as Cooper’s or Berg’s; her project was born from her interest in World War I, and as she persuasively shows, American foreign policy throughout the 20th century adopted Wilson’s war-forged liberal internationalism, in word if not always in deed.
President Richard Nixon cynically used the rhetoric of Wilsonian idealism to escalate the war in Vietnam, saying that his plan would bring the United States closer to Wilson’s “goal of a just and lasting peace.” Wilson’s principle of national self-determination — a phrase that his own secretary of state deemed “loaded with dynamite” — has since been enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.

NY Times Books of the Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/books/review-moralist-woodrow-wilson-patricia-otoole.html

Auther Talk at Wilson Center
https://youtu.be/rp_1gWny-JY

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"The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War" by Benn Steil

9/5/2018

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November 15, 2018

Discussion led by Alan Rubin

Hope M. Harrison is an associate professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of “Driving the Soviets up the Wall.”
If you want to ensure you’re never so naive as to call for another Marshall Plan, read this book. Benn Steil’s exhaustive narrative about the massive and complicated U.S. effort to aid Europe after World War II makes it clear that a similar initiative is not likely ever to be implemented — even if the United States is someday governed again by a president who sees America’s core interests as connected to others we might want to help.
Drawing extensively on U.S. archival material as well as some Russian, British, French, German, Serbian and Czech sources, Steil tells the story of not just the development of the Marshall Plan but also the division of Germany, the founding of NATO and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, the dawn of the Cold War. Steil’s account is the most detailed yet of the lengthy, constantly evolving initiative, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who guided the planning of the enormous effort to help Europeans recover from the war’s devastation. He argues that the main success of the Marshall Plan was the psychological boost it gave to Western Europeans, but the chief drawback was that it essentially marked the start of the Cold War.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-marshall-plan-spooked-the-soviets-and-sparked-the-cold-war/2018/02/23/fdeae418-0a85-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9d8565185128

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/02/20/excellent-book-tells-story-marshall-plan-which-rebuilt-europe-launched-cold-war/355129002/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297577-the-marshall-plan

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

8/25/2018

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October 18, 2018

Discussion led by Lucy Kennedy

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.”
One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
===============================================
Bill Gates disagrees with some of author Yuval Noah Harari's premises in her book.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Sapiens-A-Brief-History-of-Humankind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind

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One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858 by Rosemary Ashton

8/25/2018

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November 15, 2018

Discussion led by Alan Rubin

A unique, in-depth view of Victorian London during the record-breaking summer of 1858, when residents both famous and now-forgotten endured “The Great Stink” together

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence.

Ashton mines Victorian letters and gossip, diaries, court records, newspapers, and other contemporary sources to uncover historically crucial moments in the lives of three protagonists—Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Benjamin Disraeli. She also introduces others who gained renown in the headlines of the day, among them George Eliot, Karl Marx, William Thackeray, and Edward Bulwer Lytton. Ashton reveals invisible threads of connection among Londoners at every social level in 1858, bringing the celebrated city and its citizens vibrantly to life.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300227260/one-hot-summer

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/15/one-hot-summer-rosemary-ashton-review

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History Study Group (HSG)

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Morning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild

August 14, 2019

Discussion led by Will Singleton

The Lives of the Constitution: Ten Exceptional Minds that Shaped America's Supreme Law by Joseph Tartakovsky

August 15, 2019

Discussion Led by Ed Lane

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

April 16, 2019

Discussion led by Peter Bluhm

Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

March 21, 2019

Discussion led by Joel Wolk

The Wright Brothers by David McCullogh

February 21, 2019

Discussion led by Nathan Doctrow

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

Discussion led by Andy Fisher

January 14, 2019

The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

"The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War" by Benn Steil

November 15, 2018

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

October 18, 2018

One Hot Summer: Dickens, Darwin, Disraeli, and the Great Stink of 1858 by Rosemary Ashton

November 15, 2018

Group Leader: Alan Rubin

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