The 2017 Nonfiction Challenge Part X: Current Affairs in October

This month -- almost a year since Donald Trump was elected, with saber-rattling going on in North Korea, the debate about global warming alive and well thanks to tremendous hurricanes in the Caribbean, a crucial vote about same-sex marriage about to take place in Australia, debates ongoing about immigration, about racism, about everything under the sun -- turns out to be a nearly ideal time for a challenge devoted to current affairs, or as I sometimes refer to it, books about the world that we live in.

So, look for a book that tackles an issue of contemporary relevance in some way. It could be about politics, economics, social issues, environmental, scientific or medical trends -- whatever piques your curiosity and strikes your fancy.

As always, do tell us what you're reading, and why you chose it. And do try to come back and tell your fellow non-fiction fans whether it is as good in practice as it appeared to be when you chose it. As always, if you've got any questions and I don't respond rapidly enough to a message here, try sending me a PM.

What we're reading:





There's not much left of 2017, but here is what we've got planned:

November: Science and Technology
Probably self-explanatory, another holdover.

December: Out of Your Comfort Zone
A nonfiction book that isn't something that you would normally gravitate to, about a subject you'd never normally read about, or that is a "book bullet" you'd never previously heard about from another LT reader.

I'll be reading Rain: a natural and cultural history by Cynthia Barnett.

I'm not sure about current affairs, but am going to repost the Baillie Gifford list. If Border turns up from my library I might well count that.

The 2017 longlist:

Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, Anne Applebaum (Allen Lane)
The Islamic Enlightenment: The Modern Struggle Between Faith and Reason, Christopher de Bellaigue (The Bodley Head)
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury Circus)
How to Survive A Plague, David France (Picador)
Plot 29, Allan Jenkins (4th Estate)
Border: A Journey to The Edge of Europe, Kapka Kassabova (Granta Books)
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind The Lines of Jihad, Soaud Mekhennet (Virago)
An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic, Daniel Mendelsohn (William Collins)
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini, Caroline Moorehead (Chatto & Windus)
To Be A Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death, Mark O’Connell (Granta Books)
Belonging: the Story of the Jews, 1492-1900, Simon Schama (The Bodley Head)
Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense, Jenny Uglow (Faber & Faber)

http://thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/years/2017

I'm reading George Monbiot's Out of the Wreckage, and I have several of the Baillie long list. It's not really for this month's challenge, but Plot 29 is a very thoughtful book.

Finally reading Born a Crime and wonder if Sherman Alexie's THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST FIGHT IN HEAVEN

will qualify as creative non-fiction?

#3
That is some list. There are really good titles in there. And I never heard of the Baillie Gifford list and don't have time to go look it up. What is it?

>6 benitastrnad: Current affairs prize. You can just go back to last month's thread or Google it. Whoops, editing to add that Charlotte posted it -- and to say thanks to her. Was the Samuel Johnson Prize.

>5 m.belljackson: I don't think so. These are fictional pieces -- short stories. That said, he does have a new memoir out, I think? Sorry. Alexie may have drawn inspiration from real life, but these were intended to be fictional and I think they are labeled as such by libraries (for instance.)

Will be back in a day or so to catch up. Have had a really tough 36 hours. Had to file a police complaint against a Lyft driver who refuses to return something that was left in his car; my laptop died; migraines; sick cats. It never ends and I'm exhausted. Surreal.

>7 Chatterbox:

thanks - I'll check my shelves for an different one after listening to Born a Crime.

Sounds like a 36 hours none of us would want - hope the stress migraine has lifted, cats are better,
laptop enervated, and the driver decides to be kind.

>7 Chatterbox: Keeping the thread moving while things settle and hopefully fall back into place for you.

My obliging shelves yielded MARCH Book 2 and WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS.

Racism and Sexism as current events? just ask the reigning loser...

Yes to racism and feminism, thanks in part to BLM and Hillary Clinton's campaign here in the U.S., plus plenty of stuff in global culture and society.

I always have a hard time coming up with something for current affairs because most of my non-fiction is about history. But if the MARCH books work, then I will read MARCH book 1.

I'm on the fence. I really don't feel like reading much in the way of current affairs. Perhaps after a couple of days not involving non-fiction door stoppers.

>7 Chatterbox: Sorry about the Lyft driver. I am a bit surprised actually. You would think they wouldn't want negative reviews. My laptop died this week too. I am having terrible 1st world problems trying to remember all the passwords my laptop knows. Sigh. I hope you have a relaxing weekend and feel better soon.

I've been meaning to read Hillbilly Elegy all year and haven't managed to do it yet. I'll see if I can get to it this month.

>7 Chatterbox: hope things improve soon.

I am going to try to finish reading Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. This is a book I started for one of the earlier challenges and didn't finish. I am also involved in our colleges reading book discussion group that will be meeting for the rest of the semester. We are reading Racism, Public Schooling, and the Entrenchment of White Supremacy: A Critical Race Ethnography by Sabina E. Vaught. I am not sure that just because a bunch of college professors are reading a book makes it current affairs, but the public schools are always a hot topic. So far this title has much to think about in the 30 pages of reading I have already done.

>15 benitastrnad: Will add the public schooling one to my wishlist, sounds like a worthwhile read.

>7 Chatterbox: Oh, sorry, what a bad day and a half. Hope things are looking up.

I am still planing on What Happened for this month. I am also not much for reading books about current affairs. I always feel like you can't understand the present without understanding the past.

I really liked What Happened Rhonda. I think Hillary would have made a very good President. Undoubtedly though, she will continue to serve her nation.

Most newspapers focused on the others she says had a part in the result, but she very much takes responsibility for the things she got wrong.

#16
I am not sure how easy of a book to read this one is. I finished the introduction and it is very much a treatise on Critical Race Theory. I hope that the chapters are not as heavily theoretical. If so, it will be hard reading.

I will go back and cover images when I pick up new laptop and have it functioning. Am stumbling along right now and find it hard to do on my Fire.

I started reading This Fight is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class by Elizabeth Warren

I'll also be reading Hillbilly Elegy. After a several month wait, it just arrived for me through the inter library loan.

For a Do-it-yourself version of current event Climate Change, read
THE OLD FARMER'S 2018 ALMANAC.

Scary prediction of near drought for upper Midwest, Summer through October!

Like Sun Prairie's Jimmy the Groundhog, the authors have around an 80% accuracy rate.

Any vote on Testosterone Rex as current, given the debates around why men and women's representation and pay continues to be so different...

I thought I'd mention here that this month's free ebook from the University of Chicago Press is Vegetables: A Biography. It's not current affairs, but maybe it would work for someone for December's out of your comfort zone topic.

>25 cbl_tn:

Depending on the author's approach,
Vegetables might work for current events given the attention paid now to cow flatulence and climate change.

OK, I'm back. Sorry for the inadvertent absence. Will post covers and go over any questions...

Here is the just released National Book Awards Shortlist for Non-Fiction

Nonfiction:

Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (Atria/37 INK)
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America by Frances FitzGerald (Simon & Schuster)
The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen (Riverhead)
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Doubleday)
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean (Viking)

There are couple of these that I have read about on your threads in the last six months or so. I haven't read a single one on the list. Guess I will have to get to reading.

Well, Masha Gessen's book just came out this week!

I am posting this here, but I also posted it back in the August thread for this challenge, but I wanted all of you to know that I finished this title and it was a wonderful romp through bread-baking with an obsessed baker. It was great fun and about half-way through the book I started taking it with me wherever I went. This was a good category, and I had fund reading about the other things people were reading about as well as with my pick for that month - that stretched into almost two months.

I read 52 Loaves by William Alexander. (full title of the book is 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust. The category was "I've Always Been Curious About ...", for those of you who have moved on to other topics. This book was about baking bread and even though the book was for the August challenge and it took me two months to read it. I really liked this title. The book was more entertaining than any thing else, but it did give me some important bread baking tips. I learned about the Baker's Ratio, and about why really good bread needs both wild and domestic yeast.

The book was written by a man who spent a year baking one loaf of bread a week in pursuit of the perfect loaf of bread. He experimented with recipes, with baking techniques, and with ingredients. In the end, he managed to make, what he and his family considered, the perfect loaf, and his research took him to some unexpected places in pursuit of his endeavor. I enjoyed reading about his follies as well as his successes.

#29
There was talk about the fact that the book wasn't even readily available in library circles and so there is some controversy about whether it should have been on the short list. At least it is now available, but I do wonder about why it was included in the short list.

Well, a lot of books on the Man Booker list aren't available to most readers when that list comes out -- especially Australian/NZ titles.

I'm currently reading about Zola being exiled to the UK (it probably sums up my attitude to it to say that I was delighted when I skipped ahead, to find the Kindle version ends at 55%).
Borders: a journey to the end of Europe did of course turn up the day after I left for my trip, so might try and squeeze that in at the end of the month.

I'm going to read a book that was very much current affairs when I bought it, and I think still qualifies now, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer. I just finished the nonfiction Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxanne Gay, which doesn't really fit into any of the categories but was a powerful and thoughtful read nonetheless.

>34 ronincats: Oh I think Roxane Gay's book would qualify, given the debate about women and gender issues that continues to ripple through the world post Clinton's defeat. (And look at the hullabaloo following Roger Ailes' ouster, and now Harvey Weinstein's departure from his post, demonstrating that sexual harassers aren't confined to any part of the political spectrum...) And yes, Jane Mayer's book(s) still fit; we are living with the fallout of that today.

>35 Chatterbox: Hadn't thought about the Gay book in that context, Suz. Sounds good, I'll count them both for this month. I'm pretty sure it was you who recommended the Mayer book back in 2011, when I got it.

>36 ronincats: A lot of books have connections to contemporary issues if you squint at them the right way. OK, not a biography of Jane Austen, or George Washington, perhaps. But even Frances Fitzgerald's book about Evangelicals would qualify for this, although about half of it is history, since the other half isn't, and the point of it is to reinforce the way that this particular group in American history has influenced society and politics. And that is DEFINITELY a topic of compelling current interest, given the intensification of the culture wars...

I'm about halfway through A Moonless, Starless Sky by Alexis Okeowo, which in some ways is very good and in other aspects is frustrating. The author focuses on four separate stories from different parts of Africa, of ordinary people pushing back against extremism of different kinds (from the Lord's Resistance Army to Boko Haram). Some are familiar (the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls), while others aren't (the efforts of a Somali teenager to become a basketball player while being harassed by fundamentalists telling her that women should just stay home.) The structure irritates me a bit -- it's divided into two parts, and there's a chapter devoted to each of the four narratives, and then in Part 2, I assume, we get the same. I can see why the author doesn't do the traditional thing of allocating a chapter per country/group/person, etc. because it would intensify the inherently episodic nature of this, and there are, after all, only four of them. But it's still frustrating to break off, and return in the second half, without a natural, organic reason to do this. I keep being distracted by thinking of alternate ways to structure this. Then, there's less context than there could be. These are presented in isolation -- Mauretania has its problems, Somalia, Nigeria and the border regions affected by the LRA in Uganda, theirs. But are there common elements? What impact (if any) did the colonial legacy have on Africa as a whole? Why these stories and not others? There are some great stories but too little in the way of an overarching context in which to place them (especially for those without knowledge of the region) so they read like disjointed New Yorker articles (and the author is indeed a contributor to the NYer.) I've got an ARC, and I hope the many awkwardnesses have been cleaned up before publication, but I fear they may not have been. I keep wincing. This has great stories, but thus far is let down by structuring, editing and perhaps by the lack of context.

Finished all three of my Current Events books and will have short reviews for Born a Crime audio
and March: Book Two as soon as my printer resumes functioning correctly.

For Chimamanda Negozi Adichie's WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS -

WE SHOULD ALL READ THIS! It is hard to imagine a half hour with more inspiring words.

>38 m.belljackson: Well, so what are you going to do for the rest of October, pray tell?? *grin*

Don't tell us that you're going to stop reading non-fiction for the next three weeks...

>39 Chatterbox:

This marvelous site has inspired the most intense reading of non-fiction since college in the 60s!

I've started on WARBLER ROAD for next month,

am finishing up review on MONTAIGNE IN BARN BOOTS by Michael Perry,

continuing Peter Quennell's 1970 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (a buck at local senior center sale)
&
the 2018 OLD FARMER'S ALMANAC,

while re-reading THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN for fiction.

Alexie's story about his Dad and Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock is worth the whole book.

>38 m.belljackson: You convinced me, Marianne. Picking up We All Should Be Feminists.

>40 m.belljackson: Excellent! I got an e-galley of Montaigne in Barn Boots very recently, but I've got such a rich array of books for this month's challenge, as well as good history read (Caroline Moorehead's new book about an Italian Jewish family who stood up against Mussolini...) that I don't think I'll get to it this month. Might save it for December...? Philosophy is heavy lifting for me.

>42 Chatterbox:

Hope you enjoy Michael Perry's latest more than I have: choppy pacing among other oddities.

I alternately liked and loved both TRUCK (having my 2001 Toyota Tacoma to compare) and POPULATION 485
and enjoyed TOM...this was more Hmmmm...

Sherman Alexie's "reservation realism"THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FIST FIGHT IN HEAVEN
offers a creative non-fiction counterpoint to Current Events.

How can Sports writers and Sports announcers and fans still so casually spew out Washington "Redskins?"

>43 m.belljackson: I've never read anything by Michael Perry before, so I won't have anything to compare it to... :-)

I've started reading Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge, made even more timely and relevant by the Las Vegas shootings. So far it is excellent, if sad and heartbreaking. Should be mandatory reading: it's very thoughtful, nuanced and unbiased.

MARCH: BOOK TWO delivers the same one-two of 1960s violence and horror,
interwoven this time
with the HOPE in the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.

John Lewis' words "WAKE UP AMERICA! WAKE UP!!"
take us where we need to go today if this country is ever going to be honestly GREAT.

I finished Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge -- my second book for this month's challenge -- and it's utterly brilliant. He surveys the ten shooting deaths of children and teens during a single randomly chosen day and examines their lives -- and then uses the overall narrative to introduce, very deftly, the themes surrounding gun violence, from the disproportionate impact on minorities, to poverty, and gangs, and education, and the changing nature of adolescence. It's a sad, but practically perfect book. Younge rejects easy answers and glib jargon, and assesses the issues involved very thoughtfully, aware that many of the young people who died were part of the "gun culture". A rare full 5 stars.

I am going to read We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates this month.

I changed horses. After getting a good start on Age of Abundance my real life book discussion group decided to read Columbine by David Cullen. I am going to concentrate on that one and will come back to Age when I finish Columbine.

So far Columbine is very good. I am not usually a fan of "true crime" books, but this one is very detailed and chilling at the same time.

I have finished Testosterone Rex and am torn between going through it again with post its and lending it to everyone I know saying please read this. If like me you've ever been annoyed by someone "explaining" to you that (eg) little boys just 'naturally' behave differently to little girls, or that men just happen to be better suited to study science... I'd suggest this book for up to date, clearly argued and *funny* ammunition to make the counter arguments.

As Fine says, maybe" it's time to be less polite and more disruptive" (for the third wave / time): there is clear evidence inequalities are socially constructed, so let's socially deconstruct them...

>51 charl08: One you might enjoy to supplement Testosterone Rex is Whistling Vivaldi. You may have seen Ellen warbling about it over on her thread. It's about how stereotypes affect us, and halfway through I'm finding it absolutely fascinating. (Thank you, Ellen!) There are ways to better understand the effect of, and to de-fang, that is, socially desconstruct, these misguided ideas of how folks "naturally" behave.

I'm still working on The Dark Side but very slowly as it is seriously depressing reading how Cheney and his ilk mangled the American justice system and I can only read a few pages a day.

I'm listening to Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels. And I just picked up a copy of Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge, thanks to Suzanne's outstanding review. I doubt I'll finish both this month, but we'll see...

>48 Chatterbox: >54 katiekrug: I too dropped a copy of Another Day in the Death of America in my basket after Suzanne’s review, but it will probably roll into next month’s reading. I didn’t want to bring anything too somber on holiday, so the Monbiot I’m reading awaits my return.

I finished Hillbilly Elegy and it was absolutely excellent. Highly recommended. Will I ever understand Trump's supporters? Probably not, but this is an interesting evolution of some of their views.

I'm adding John Lewis' MARCH: BOOK THREE to this month's Current Events.

It is as chilling and compelling as the first two Graphic Novels with The South presented in its deepest horror
since Slavery and the end of Reconstruction.

So many murders and assassinations, yet, still, defying belief, Hope.

Since October is more than half over and we're not close to 150, here are a few spaced out reviews:

Likely this puts me in a minority of one, but I had to stop listening to BORN A CRIME after the
public Cat Murder. Trevor Noah doesn't seem to think that many of us - red, yellow, black, or white -
are cat owners and lovers, not just the white folks he highlights.

Also finished THE 2018 OLD FARMER'S ALMANAC - not every word since the little paperback offers technical areas just for those involved -

and skipped the "Chicken Eaters" chapter, being a Vegetarian,

but loved the New Seeds,

the Predictions, and the final page with The Golden Rule from so many faiths!

I wondered how whoever is reading Kim Jong-Il Production is doing with that book? I really enjoyed it when I read it a year ago, and North Korea is certainly in the news.

Despite the pretentious title, THE INTELLECTUAL DEVOTIONAL - AMERICAN HISTORY,

and being slightly outdated (2007),
with a definite need for more diversity,
AND a clearer chronology with categories merged,

the book presents an often needed background to today's confusing events.

I keep it on the kitchen table and read 1-2 pages every day (third re-reading).

I'd forgotten that Richard Nixon had proposed the EPA!!!

Retail Racism as a very Current Event:

aside from Nestle again rearing its ugly head
(I haven't bought a Butterfingers or Baby Ruth since the 1960s),

note the total absence of Charlie's pal, Franklin, from all PEANUTS clothing, sheets, toys, etc.

(I've written to The Vermont Country Store and to the manufacturer's rep with no intelligent responses.)

I should note that I read March Two and intend to read March Three this month. Very inspiring reading, though I was not sure I could count it for this month's theme.

I finished reading my book for the September challenge on Gods, Spirits, and Demons. I posted it there and will post it here as well. Magnificent Corpses: Searching Through Europe for St. Peter's Head, St. Claire's Heart, St. Stephen's Hand and Other Saints' Relics by Anneli Rufus. This was a short book, but it was a slog and it has several problems. The first is that none of the Saints mentioned in the title are actually in the book. Instead, the book is about the author's trek around Europe looking for relics of obscure saints that are found in obscure places. At the beginning of the book the author says that she wondered why people venerated these objects, but she never does anything or writes anything that answers that question.

The book is structured in a series of vignettes about each saint and the trials and tribulations of trying to find these obscure relics and the equally obscure churches that house them. The searches themselves would be fodder for a book, but the author chooses to make snarky remarks about the churches, the relics, the saints, and the people she sees and meets along the way. In fact it is her snarky attitude about the people she meets that set my teeth on edge. I don't think a book about relics has to be totally glorified praise or filled with excessive reverence, but this kind of remark totally disrupt the flow of the book and are just plain sarcastic and mean-spirited. Relics are relics because they have some kind of religious significance and that alone requires a certain kind of respect and tolerance. This author displays none of that.
A sample of her snark - At one of the last churches she visits she sees an American frat boy who is visiting. He leans up against the glass casket, lays his hand on it, and says "Hi Amigo." The author then adds. He has buttocks that are going to grow larger and larger with age. As a reader, you are thinking "What?" And then "Why would she say that?" I won't be reading another of her books and wonder why I bothered to finish reading this one.

My real life book discussion group met the week after the Las Vegas shootings and the group wanted to read something about this type of mass shooting/violence. The group decided on the book Columbine by David Cullen. I have avoided reading books on this topic because I abhor this type of violence and find it repelling. However, I have to say that this book is very well written. It is a narrative, but I am about 150 pages in and now I am reading about motive, and how methodically these shooters prepared for "the event." I can't say that I am happy about reading on the topic of mass shootings, this is proving to be a very timely read.

I’ll get back to my reading for this month next week, and hope to have one book read by month end.

There have been one or two books here that I want to read in time though.

Just adding a few entries to make transition smooth at month end.

Leader!

when you return, can you please also add:

One Man's Initiation by John Dos Pasos

to this month's Current Events: War.

Gradual and powerful.

>52 jnwelch: Will add this to the list Joe, thanks.

Has anyone read any of Fine's earlier books on gender and willing to comment?

I've finally started Border: a journey to the edge of Europe which I hope to finish soon, as it needs to go back to the library for the next reader!

Sorry, I have been completely AWOL. Migraines and real life have been intervening. Will get to the images shortly, I promise..

I have finished The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, which I read as an account of one woman's battle against ISIS, but also as the story of how women and civilians end up as victims in wars -- a perennial kind of current event issue, alas.

I'm now reading Dark Money by Jane Mayer, the story of the Koch brothers and the ultra-right wing, and how their circle of funders transformed the whole nature of political reality and political public opinion in the US. It's a must read, in my opinion, but it will make you very, very angry. It pulls together a lot of threads.

My options for the next book range from Masha Gessen's new book to, False Report: A True Story of Rape in America, which is a NetGalley book coming out this winter, and falls into current events because of the Harvey Weinstein stuff and the #metoo campaign and so much more... I've also got the book about North Korea and Why I'm No Longer Talking About Race on my list, so lotsa stuff as possibilities...

>72 Chatterbox: Mayer's The Dark Side already has me foaming at the mouth--I'm not sure I can handle her exposition of the Koch brothers on top of that right away. She is GOOD.

>72 Chatterbox: Jane Mayer sounds like a really good research journalist.

>73 ronincats: I listened to a series of audio lectures about human rights, in one of them the issue of Guantánamo Bay came up, and how international treaties on rights of war prisoners were circumvented. Mensenrechten

The good thing about this series was that it wasn't all negative, the human rights treaties do have a positive effect, if only because they set a norm. It's only available in Dutch, but it was interesting to listen to.

>73 ronincats: I have this issue with a lot of current affairs books!

Reading Border: a journey to the edge of Europe

The author is in a near abandoned village near the border in Bugaria...Fans of the Russian classics may wish to look away now.

Unable to sleep, I sat on my balcony and followed the yellow eyes at the edge of the forest. Hornets the size of sparrows invaded the house and I squashed them with a Russian hardback from the shelves, because a hornet sting can kill you, people said. War and Peace proved ideal.

>72 Chatterbox:

NOMAD: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives a good background for The Last Girl.

>77 m.belljackson: Thanks, have read it. Though I am not a big fan of Hirsi Ali. For context, it is possible to despise extremist Wahhabism/Salafist Islam AND Hirsi Ali, who I view as an Islamophobe, who has publicly stated she thinks ALL Muslims need to be squashed, because the entire religion is dangerous. In an interview with "Reason" magazine, when the interviewer asked if by “defeating Islam” Hirsi Ali meant, “defeating radical Islam?” she replied: “No. Islam, period.”

I would define myself as an atheist/agnostic, and I value the European Enlightenment tradition, but not to the exclusion of all else. Hirsi Ali, as part of the neocon establishment here in the US, views honoring that Enlightenment thought as rejecting everything else, and specifically all non-European traditions. I understand that she doesn't view Islam as a religion of peace, and that she blames it for her personal traumas (even though I'm not entirely sure what I can trust in her own narrative of those traumas, given the exposure of the lies about her past in the Netherlands.) Still, I will accept that she was traumatized by some things in her past, and that they were tied to Islam. But the facts remain that (a) she is not a religious scholar or a theologian. (b) She doesn't have the right to speak for all Muslims, or to paint all Muslims (1.6 billion of them) as evil based on the acts of ISIS, or al-Qaeda or her family members, any more than any single Christian does, as a result of being raised by polygamists or abusive holy-roller cults, etc., or because of the crusaders and the Inquisition. (c) She has appointed herself, unilaterally, as the arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable behavior in the religion of her birth, in spite of having rejected that religion (and knowing little of its tenets) and declaring herself an atheist. It's a bit like someone who is an atheist telling the Pope, hi, I'd like to come in and reform the Catholic church, even though I don't believe in anything about your church, but just do what I say, or else I'll tell the world that you're evil, because, you know, those child abuse scandals.

If she confined herself to talking (truthfully!) about her personally experiences, I'd have no issue with this. Or if she were more willing to engage in debate and discussion instead of issuing her own version of fatwas. But in her own way, she's really no different from some of these jihadis. She can cloak herself behind state power when it comes to violence, however. Does that sound drastic? Well, I've read a lot by and about her over more than a decade, and my views have shifted. I've watched how she has attacked those who criticize her, too. You can't just challenge her views -- you become part of an "honor squad", and a group of neo-con organizations swoop in to try to dig up dirt on people. For instance, she misspoke during an interview, by attributing 70% of the violence in the world to Muslims. When a reporter challenged her numbers (she had cited a source, and he debunked her figures, using data from the same source), Niall Ferguson and a host of other people began attacking the reporter. It turns out that the data in question was 70% of the deaths in conflict, with most of them due to the conflict in Syria that year, which (d'uh) is a Muslim nation.

So, there's a difference for me between a first hand testimony by a young woman like Nadia Murad, who was living quietly in a village and now is simply trying to talk about her experiences -- I see her as more like Malala, the young Pakistani girl, who was advocating for education before the fundamentalists swooped in. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is clearly an intellectual, but shaped by her early life into this persona that I find disconcerting. It's intriguing to me that she will sometimes accuse some of her critics of being "self-hating Jews" -- in other words, they aren't supporters of Netanyahu and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, usually -- because of the way her own thinking has evolved. I can't admire her courage, because so much of it is based on/takes the shape of attacking people who want to choose their own lives and live them peacefully in a way that she just doesn't happen to approve of.

OK, climbing down off my soapbox. Aren't you sorry you opened that door?? :-)

>78 Chatterbox:

Ah , tell me why...?

I learned a lot from her first two books, then, after Theo Van Gogh was murdered and she moved
to the U.S. with bodyguards, I heard she became more conservative.

See above, just decided to fill out my answer... :-)

Basically, she didn't just decide to move to the US, she lost her Dutch citizenship because she had lied (a lot) in her asylum application. And she's not just conservative, she's part of the neocon establishment, as in, funded by the Koch brothers and co. ltd.

Finished All Day: A Year of Love and Survival Teaching Incarcerated Kids at Rikers Island by Liza Jessie Peterson. Thought provoking reminder about how we are failing kids in this country.

>78 Chatterbox: - Fascinating. Thanks for that, Suzanne.

>82 katiekrug: Well, nobody said that I wasn't opinionated... *eyes roll*

Finished Dark Money and it's excellent. Moving on to Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, which is very focused on the experience of minorities/people of color in Britain, which makes it both more educational but also a little more distancing. The experiences are similar, but the political context is different, and of course, the demographic history is very distinctly different, which is something she doesn't quite delve into enough, at least so far.

>78 Chatterbox:

No, Ali's door opens and Pandora hands us more Clay Feet.

>84 m.belljackson: Yes, what you heard was the sound of disillusionment (from me.) I don't like it when people lie to me in order to advance a political cause and their own self-interest. People can lie for other, personal reasons, and I'll get it. But to manipulate people consistently in pursuit of a political objective? I have little tolerance for that. In the same way I have little tolerance for people like the Kochs and their ilk, who pursue political objectives that are in their own self interest and that will damage other people, and that argue self-righteously that it is in the national interest. Perhaps they deceive themselves; I don't know. If so, they either have very feeble intellects or choose not to challenge themselves and ask some of the tough questions about the policies they promote.

You know, one of the people I have come to admire, to my own astonishment, is David Frum. Precisely because he DID start to ask himself these questions, and realized that no, the place that the neocons were heading was not somewhere he could, in good conscience, follow them. Other people (including many politicians) told their consciences to shut up, out of fear or a need for $$ contributions. Frum said no. And left his positions at right-wing think tanks, and his decades-long social ties, etc. Sure, he is forging new friendships, but in your late 50s, that's no so easy. And he gets a lot of flak. It takes courage to say, I was wrong. He's got a sharp intellect (which I've always admired) and now he's writing smart pieces in the Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/

I am loving Columbine and find myself reading it far longer into the night than I should. I am learning much psychology that I didn't learn in high school. Or college for that matter. I am also surprised at how relevant this whole book is to much of what is going on today. For instance, the fake news this - the author of this book has taken the "rumors" that got turned into fact and told the story of how they started, and why. It is just fascinating stuff all the way around and I wonder at the irony of reading it like a novel due to so many parts of it read like fiction rather than non-fiction.

>85 Chatterbox:

I've been reading David Frum's articles in The Atlantic, but had no idea that he was formerly right wing.

Back to read more...

>87 m.belljackson: EXTREMELY right wing. He was one of Dubya's speechwriters. Always thought he was very smart, but now he is writing stuff that is very middle of the road, politically. He has almost ended up without a political home, just a set of convictions (democracy, freedom of expression, pragmatic free markets but not free market fundamentalism, etc.)

I finally got the chance to read Cynthia Barnett's Rain: A natural and cultural history. It's the sort of non-fiction book I generally prefer: informative, but not technical, and full of interesting tidbits. The topics are wide ranging, covering rain gods and rainmakers and the origin of the phrase "when it rains, it pours". I would have given it an extra half star except Barnett annoyed me by writing about the Los Angeles area as if it was the totality of California.

Just

adding

a

few

to

the

count.

I'm not sure if Border really counts for this month - I'm about half way through, and there's a lot of talking about the past, and the relics of the past in present day Bulgaria / Turkey. It's a fascinating look at an area I know little about, but really weird. People believing in UFOs, state theft disguised as archaeology and near empty villages. The author has been threatened by ex-officials and met some of those who tried to flee to the west during communism.

Is it still current affairs if the current is drenched in the past?

>97 charl08: I think a lot of issues that haunt us currently have their roots very firmly in the past. Look at the rift between Sunnis and Shi'ites, or the Northern Ireland conflict, for instance. Most border conflicts are like that, or any rift that involves questions of national identity. If you were reading something about Catalonia, you couldn't make sense of what happened in the referendum and subsequently, without understanding the era in which the Catalans were THE great nation in the Iberian peninsula.

Hey, you read it in good faith, and it has elements of the present in the book, so what the heck... A Russian friend of mine tipped me off to this book and told me good things about it, long before the book prize nominations, etc.

I finished Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. It was good, in that it was a personal look at at this subject, but frankly if you've been reading about the question of institutional racism, it doesn't bring much more to the table than that personal look. Well, and the fact that it's a British perspective, which was interesting, because while the issues (systemic racism) aren't all that different (sadly), the context is. The Brits were colonialists but slaveowning was more likely to have been remote; black residents are descendants of former colonies who came to the UK (at least) more or less voluntarily. It's interesting to consider this, although of course it doesn't change the reality of the lived experience or the challenges. The usual lack of race-blindness, in that people with clearly black names are discriminated against in employment (CVs) and education (exams) as long as these aren't anonymized; when they are, the results are different... So, if you're new to the concept/idea of systemic racism and white privilege, then yes, read this -- you'll understand why someone might say it's not their job to educate you on these issues. On the flip side, if you've been following this debate closely, you might not get a lot of new substance out of it, so you'll be reading for one young woman's POV. 4.1 stars.

So, we need another 50 or so posts in order to move on smoothly to the November challenge. We can discuss what else you're reading?

I'm also going to modify the December challenge slightly. right now it's "Out of Your Comfort Zone."

I'm going to make it explicit that it can be expanded to include book bullets, new ideas, something that has just crossed your radar -- "New New Things".

So the book would have to be very new to you in some way -- something you had literally just run across, that has just been published, that you wouldn't ever have thought of reading except that someone is urging you to consider it; that was a gift, or that in some other way is serendipitously just sitting there in front of you. And instead of just pushing it aside until you have time, the point of the challenge will be to put it on the top of your TBR pile, because we know what happens to books that you say "when I have time...." to!

I finished listening to Putin Country: A Journey Into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels, the former NPR correspondent. She spent many years visiting the city of Chelyabinsk and puts together a portrait of the "new" Russia through the stories of various individuals and groups. She focuses most on the Putin era, and why he remains popular, but I found the glimpse into everyday life the most fascinating part. It's not a deep dive, by any means, but it does provide some interesting detail, and her research and sources seem solid.

PS: The other fascinating, albeit totally disturbing, takeaway was how I could see some parallels between things happening in the US now and her descriptions of how Putin consolidated control and corruption ran rampant throughout all levels and parts of government in Russia.

Yeah, but...it was the BRITISH Colonizers who brought the first African slaves (in a Dutch Ship) to Jamestown.

And, those BRITS just kept bringing them...

>101 Chatterbox: Thanks! I had no idea what to read for December since I don't really have a "comfort zone" when it comes to reading.

>103 m.belljackson: Oh, I agree, and I see that. But there's a different experience, if you were living IN BRITAIN, versus in the US. It was possible to live in denial about slavery's legacy when those slaves' descendants aren't there as a living legacy -- and still struggling to overcome that, disproportionately living in poverty and grappling with Jim Crow, etc. -- vs having people of color migrate to live in the "mother country" later on. One possible weakness of the author's analysis is that she doesn't really give any demographic analysis of how many POC lived as slaves in the 17th, 18th centuries in Britain, before the abolition of slavery, and how many of their descendants survived. She gives one or two examples of early examples of people living there prior to the early 20th century, but these are anecdotal and mostly seamen and their white partners and mixed race children. Then, when the immigrants arrived, some were descendants of slaves (from the Caribbean) and some came from former African colonies. All affected by discrimination, some by slavery, some by colonialism, but most had come from societies in which they were the majority, so a different experience than POC in the US. Of course, the author's role wasn't to do a compare/contrast, but it made me think. It's a bit like sitting smugly here in Rhode Island and saying nope, no slavery here. And then realizing that some of the biggest early fortunes here were made by families who engaged in the slave trade. They didn't own slaves, they "just" traded them, or owned ships that transported them. Just...

>104 amanda4242: Glad that works for you! I realized I was having trouble defining that for myself, or narrowing it down. And I'd opened the door by mentioning "book bullets", so....

#102

Did you happen to see the PBS Frontline program on Wednesday that was about Putin and his feud with the West and the U.S.? It was very enlightening and the author of Man Without A Face, Masha Gessen was one of the featured authors. This is going to be a two part show so if you missed the first part you can watch the second. The first part was about Putin’s personal history and rise to power. Gessen says that Yeltsen was dipped by Putin despite warnings from Bill Clinton. The second part is going to deal with why Putin would try to rig the U.S. elections.

I noticed that the former head of the military arm of NATO, General Rassmussen from Denmark, gave a major speech yesterday. He said that Putin wants to destroy western style democracy and bring all of Europe back into the Russian sphere of influence. Only the U.S. keeps him from doing that. Anything that Putin can do to discredit the U.S. makes Russia more powerful.

I think that most Europeans are so shocked by the U.S. election and are so scared of Putin that they may actually start doing what the Great Orange Gasbag wants and put more money into NATO.

>105 Chatterbox: It's the money trail that really shows just how many Brits were involved in slavery. They may have sopped their consciences with the hands off approach, but lots of small investors all over the country profited, and then were even compensated when slaves in British colonies were finally freed by law. The compensation may have meant the legislation passed at the time, but is just one of those bits of history that is really revealing about a country's priorities. A bit like bankers being bought out for ***** up the economy.

>106 benitastrnad: Similar arguments about discrediting the EU (ie why Putin is pro Brexit).

>105 Chatterbox: Also your review reminded me of a new survey history Black and British which tracks history of black people in Britain. Not that I've read it, but seems to have been positively received.

>98 Chatterbox: Still reading, not quite finished yet. I got bogged down in all the depressive reading (also reading The Unwomanly Face of War, which is brilliant, but hard going with corpses everywhere) so had to distract myself with fiction.

Science and tech fits well for me with another category challenge, but despite that, still no clue. Maybe something about the way 'gaming has been adapted from computer games to other initiatives? Although maybe that's more theory than tech...?

Well, that's added a few.

>106 benitastrnad: Putting more money into NATO, is quite likely, more into defence, is already happening. Don't forget that a lot of former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe have become members of NATO. They are very wary of Russia, and Putin.

>110 charl08: I have that in the tbr mountain, yup, I can imagine you would need to break it up a bit, Charlotte.

I’ll get back to George Monbiat’s Out of the Wreckage today, so will have managed one relevant book this month.

>113 EllaTim: & >106 benitastrnad: And that makes Putin more wary of the EU and NATO, thus fuelling the spiral of distrust.

The EU is supporting every country that left Russia, but doesn't want Catalonia get independency...

>115 FAMeulstee: A little hypocrisy goes a long way, Anita

>116 EllaTim: Isn't that the truth.

Trump' s support for NATO makes me very/ increasingly sceptical of it!

Is anyone reading (Or can recommend) something about Catalonia?

>118 charl08: I recently finished Hommage to Catalonia by George Orwell. I think in the history of the Spanish Civil War are some of the roots why Catalonia wants independency. Catalonia and Aragon were not a part of Spain until the Spanish Succesion War in the 18th century.

Oh I listened to that- narrated by Jeremy Northam. Interesting especially having read a couple of bios of Orwell and Sonia Orwell - The influence that time of his life had on him and his writing.

One more for this month's Racism Current Event -

Troy Johnson founded a website:

AALBC.com

African American Literature Book Club

It features book and film reviews.

>106 benitastrnad: - I hadn't seen that but will look for it. Thanks for the heads up.

ETA: I did read The Man Without a Face on Suzanne's recommendation a few years ago. It's an excellent read, and I learned a lot.

I'm going to see Gessen speak at the NYPL in December - she has a new book out.

>122 katiekrug: Great title.

"And this was what all the centuries of civilization had struggled for."

It's difficult to comprehend how ANYONE could go to war after reading

John Dos Passos' One Man's Initiation - 1917.

Back to Current Topic of Racism -

it sure would be welcome if LT would come up with a name that is not so jarringly racist to read as REDSKINS is.

I will definitely not finish The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals this month, but will keep at it until done. Riveting and appalling.

>126 ronincats: Admire your persistence, even the title makes me (almost) want to throw something.

If anyone is looking for something for next month, I wonder if the new Leonardo da Vinci bio might work

Leonardo da Vinci: The Biography by Walter Isaacson reviewed by Robin McKie
"...he pioneered ideas in engineering, anatomy and the study of light, as Isaacson makes clear in this sumptuous, elegantly written and diligently produced offering that perfectly catches the contradictions of the man: an easily distracted obsessive who created stunning art and then – all too often – abandoned it when it was near completion."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/23/leonardo-da-vinci-biography-by-wal...

Well, I have just started my October read, Clinton's What Happened. So it may be November before I am done!

>128 charl08: - Isaacson will be here in Toronto at the end of November, at my local documentary cinema, for a speaking engagement. I would love to attend this event. I haven't read this new book but I did read and enjoy his bio of Steve Jobs, and own but haven't yet read the one on Einstein.

I loved his book on Einstein.

I went to see the LdV painting in London that was in private hands, it goes on sale in New York in mid-November.

>130 jessibud2: He's new to me as an author but that sounds like an interesting event - I'd love to hear about his research in Italy (mostly armchair traveller, me).

>131 Caroline_McElwee: I saw the picture on your thread Caroline, and it rather threw me: amazing a new picture can turn up after so long.

>132 charl08: - His book on Jobs was the first for me, by him and I was impressed with the writing and the quality of his research. I think he does for people what, say, Simon Winchester does with history and geography. A really good storyteller. The CEO of one of our largest bookstores will be sitting down with him for this event and, I'm sure, asking questions and moderating the event. I will probably purchase the book afterwards and he will be signing them.

I've picked up Dava Sobel's Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time for next month.

I liked that one - and keep meaning to pick up her latest book about women scientists.

Eta The Glass Universe

Top 15 books tagged science on LT - has anyone read more than me (a whole 2!)

Most often tagged science

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking (2,620 times)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (2,421 times)
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1,577 times)
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene (1,269 times)
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (1,198 times)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan (1,097 times)
Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick (1,063 times)
Cosmos by Carl Sagan (1,014 times)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn (943 times)
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman (916 times)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (915 times)
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel (912 times)
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins (836 times)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (792 times)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (767 time

I have read 4! And thanks for posting, it gives some good idea.

I am thinking of reading The Elegant Universe for this challenge, it's one of those books I keep starting and not finishing. But I may look for something easier to digest.

>137 charl08: How did you make this list, Charlotte?
I have read five of them: the first three, Longitude and Gödel, Escher, Bach.

I am not going to get to a current event book this month, but I've sure picked up some BB's.

>139 FAMeulstee: Search, then click on tags, then click on "Science", rather than any of the complicated longer tags.
(Although I was tempted by "bad Science"!)

>139 FAMeulstee: How did you like Godel, Escher, Bach It's on my pile as well.

Not about Catalonia, but I finally read Adam Hochschild's book about the Spanish Civil War (and specifically the Americans who got tangled up in it) and there's a reasonable bit about Catalonia in it, scattered throughout it. I didn't read Spain in Our Hearts for this challenge, but there are echoes of the past that resonate, from Franco and fascism, to separatist regional pressures (Catalonia) today.

>142 banjo123: That one I have read in the early 1990s, all I remember that I was stunned by the mix of ideas in the book.

>144 FAMeulstee: I love the title!

Two days left to get 5 more posts!

For Science & Technology in November, is a book about an "old" technology (but that was new at the time) acceptable? I'd still like to fit in Thunderstruck by Erik Larson...

Not sure, but I like the one recommended on the book page (if you like this, you might also like...)
Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention Of The 19th Century & The Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked A Revolution by Gavin Weightman

Nearly there...

Some good interesting reads as ever, I’m still not quite through Monbiot...

So may finish a couple of days late...

Though I have a book I saw reviewed elsewhere that will do for....

November.

In this challenge, I seem to be doing better at adding to my tbr pile than anything else.

Surely we are there now.....

Nope! yay...over to you Suz.

>147 katiekrug: - If you like the old technology, I would highly recommend The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage. I really enjoyed that one and he is a good writer! I also did love Larson's Thunderstruck

Thanks, Shelley. I'm just looking for a good reason to pick up Larson's book soon :)

I finished one of my current events books. Columbine by Dave Cullen. My real life book discussion group met on the weekend just after the Las Vegas, Nevada shootings and we were discussing shootings that day. (yes, we got off of the subject of the book we were supposed to be talking about.) One of the members had just finished reading A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold and started talking about the psychopathy of people who do mass killings. In the end we decided for our November group discussion we would read either that book or Columbine. I had Columbine at home, so read it. I must say it was enlightening.

The structure of the book is not exactly chronological. It does start out chronologically, but at points the narrative stops and follows some point about the event that explains why it happened that way. The author does an excellent job of telling the reader how the two shooters were and why they ended up doing what they did. He also exposes the incompetence of the local Sheriffs Office and their refusal to turn over the event itself, or the evidence collected afterwards to entities that could have ended the event sooner and followed up on the evidence in a competent way. He exposes the cover-up of evidence by the local authorities that they knew about Eric Harris two years before the shootings and did nothing. The author also details the phenomena of myth-making done by the press in the effort to get sensational news out there as fast as possible. He pointed out the danger of shallow reporting and the asking of questions with all the depth of "Tell us how you feel."

The author was careful and considerate to point out to the reader that the parents of the two shooters were not to blame for the actions of their sons. He made it possible for the reader to see that these parents lost children too, and were left with all the questions that the other parents had, but they had less consolation opportunities than did the other parents. This is often an overlooked aspect of this type of tragedy and the author does an admirable job of bringing that out.

Even though this is not a new book, and it won numerous prizes for the reporting and the completion of piles of interviews, it is definitely timely. Since Columbine, there has been Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, and now Las Vegas.

Will get this up tonight. Sorry; about to start our book circle meeting, and I've been out all day. Possess your souls in patience, good people... *grin*

>154 Caroline_McElwee: I think that's excellent. Now we just need to find you some more free time to read them all... :-)

OK, it's up!

Finally finished:

Out of the Wreckage (George Monbiot) ****1/2

An incredibly straightforward summing up of not only the the problems we are suffering (the focus primarily on the UK and US, and influence these nations have globally), but possible solutions to those problems, or in a more optimistic sense, the knowledge that although it won’t be easy, there are actions that can be taken to move us out of the mire, to empower us as individuals and communities, and to supplant and undermine the invidious neoliberalism that has its stranglehold.

For such a short book, it has a considerable amount of information, cites a number of important books that have shaped his thinking and i will be reading some of these books, and certainly be doing a reread of this one in the foreseeable future.

Inevitably, those with more knowledge than I, might be able to unseat some of his propositions, but as long as they do so by offering legitimate alternatives, progress can be made.

I’ve just started ‘After Europe’ by Ivan Krastev, which fits in this category, will report when done.

I finished Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: the inside story on how the war on terror turned into a war of American Ideals, and it was riveting and scary as hell.



Book #126 The Dark Side: the inside story on how the war on terror turned into a war of American Ideals by Jane Mayer (355 pp.)

The documentation is extensive as to how Cheney and his people completely set up and hid from Congress and the courts the procedures and legal opinions that created extraordinary renditions and interrogations that resulted in the the mess we have today, with a military tribunal judge ordering a US Judge jailed for contempt for concluding that he could not fairly represent a plaintiff at Guantanamo last week. What happens when political agendae mix with novices in government without a good legal and constitutional grounding is a terrifying cautionary tale especially given our current government.

And I finished What Happened by Hillary Clinton

Clinton isn't a great writer, though her prose is definitely serviceable; and I think she is still a little close to the election to be brilliantly insightful. But I liked reading this book, I learned more about Clinton, more about the election and campaign process. It made me sad, because she would've been a good president, and she would have won if it weren't for things like unfair press coverage, voter suppression, sexist expectations and James Comey. Clinton lays all of this out, but she is also open about her own shortcomings, and she tries to end on a hopeful note.

I enjoyed reading about the Clintons' marriage. She has a very endearing passage where she describes their day to day life. "He is reading this over my shoulder in our kitchen with our dogs underfoot, and in a minute he will reorganize our bookshelves for the millionth time, which means I will not be able to find any of my books, and once I learn the new system, he;ll just redo it again, but I don't mind because he really loves to organize those bookshelves."

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a powerful writer whose book Between the World and Me, I read back in April. Like Between the World and Me, We Were Eight Years in Power has lingered in my thinking - a sign of its impact on me.

As other reviewers have noted, Between the World and Me is a collection of essays that were originally published in the Atlantic, most having been published during Obama's presidency with the last being published following the election of Trump. As a fairly regular reader of the Atlantic, I had encountered most but not all of the essays before. Originally, this made me a bit less interested in reading We Were Eight Years in Power - why pay for a collection of what I have already read? Having completed the book, describing the book as a collection of essays really undersells it and fails to express the merit of the book.

We Were Eight Years in Power is arranged chronologically and traces Coates thinking and writing over the eight years of the Obama administration. The essays are bracketed by chapters in which Coates discusses his own success as a writer, his reaction to how Obama is doing in office, what he is reading and thinking about, etc. As such, the book becomes much more than the sum of its parts. The connective essays combined with the reprinted articles transforms the book into a longer meditation on what it means to be black in America with a black president occupying the White House.

One of the parts that I found most interesting was Coates extensive discussion about the different ways in which black thought grappled with Obama personally and with his presidency. Coates does an excellent job of comparing thought movements like Black Nationalism, expressed through figures like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, with other streams of black thought like that embodied by Booker T. Washington. This discussion continues throughout the book so that when the reader gets to the final essay, The First White President, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-t..., Coates has succintly created a narrative for how Obama fits into the black experience and how the election of Trump is a direct reminder of the lasting legacy of racisim in America.

Like Between the World and Me, We Were Eight Years in Power is not a happy book. America has largely failed in race relations and the election of Trump is a giant exclamation point on America's story of race. However, I view the book as a must read. We Were Eight Years in Power certainly cements Coates as an important public intellectual (a transformation that he remarks on in the book) and ranks closely with Between the World and Me. I suspect both books will be required reading for students, especially those trying to come to grips with how the election of Barack Obama did and did not change America and its race relations.

Highly recommended.

>166 Oberon: - Thanks for this excellent review. I was also very moved by Between the World and Me and it stayed with me a long time. I am just waiting for this one to come out in softcover as I am trying very hard not to add hardcovers to my shelves (they take up too much space!). I really find Coates to be a powerful and eloquent voice. I have heard several interviews with him.

Another very small but powerful book I just finished that would dovetail with these two on the must-read front, is On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. I read it last weekend and have marked passages on nearly every page!

>167 jessibud2: Shelley, your comment about On Tyranny was prescient. I read the book and absolutely loved it - to the point that I am seriously considering buying a number and distributing it to friends. I just haven't gotten around to writing out my review of it yet - the only problem with reading a couple of top notch books back to back.

>168 Oberon: - Hi Erik. I did a mini review on my own thread and just went back to check because it occurred to me that, in my hurry to comment about it, I forgot to even add it to my own books and review it here. Done! It's just one of those books, isn't it, that makes you want to place a copy in everyone's hands.

March: Book One is such an important book that I couldn't take it with me on my travels. That is why it took me a while to read it. I had heard of John Lewis but was not aware of his part in the struggle for civil rights. I was impressed by his dedication and by what all of the people in the struggle were able to achieve.

>170 Familyhistorian: - Wait till you read March Books 2 and 3, Meg. Even more powerful than One.

I wish I had been close enough to hear Lewis's speech to the Women's march in Atlanta, which coincided with the ALA Midwinter in January. But it was heaving with people... I admire his tenacity, and the fact that he remains an activist today, in many ways.

>171 jessibud2: I am looking forward to them, Shelley

>172 Chatterbox: It is people like him who make me believe there is still hope.