Facing the myths in our personal histories
A West Point history professor suggests to prevent a racist future we must understand our racist past.
All posts tagged: Recommended Readings
On Tyranny
Timothy Snyder and Lewis Lapham on the response to tyranny and the hard labor of democracy.
Our imperfect union
Understanding compromises made for unity is the start to addressing the underlying causes of our cleavages.
Happy birthday, Frederick Douglass
Born in slavery, Frederick Douglass chose February 14th as his birthday. Read why he remains a prophet for today.
The abandonment of democracy
“Democracy in Chains” helps the reader understand how unfettered capitalism became more sacrosanct than democracy in America.
How we came to be the people we are today
The books which have shaped the work of a leader at one of my favorite historic sites.
We have to own up to our culture if we want to change it
Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be An Antiracist” is a powerful reminder of our personal responsibilities in fighting racism.
The information crisis
Steve Almond’s “Bad Stories” is a good book to revisit when considering our ongoing information crisis.
Lessons from the death of democracies
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt was tapped as my Book of the Year when I first read it in 2018. I bring it up again today, just three short weeks before our election, After yet another major violation of the Hatch Act, where an illegal political event was held on White House grounds on Saturday and labeled — with no sense of irony — a “Law & Order” rally; Soon after a right wing terrorist plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan was thwarted by FBI actions; The day before a rushed nomination of a hard-right judge begins to be pushed through the Senate with the benefit of Republican lies and against the will of the majority of the people; and During the weekend U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said African Americans and immigrants can “go anywhere” in his home state but they “just need to be conservative.” It took me less than a minute to find these four recent threats to our democracy: flagrant disregard for the law, violent threats against …
The struggle between tyranny and freedom
America faces great challenges in 2020. It is even tempting to call these times unprecedented, but they are not. Harry Truman, of course, made this point in very plain language: “It was the same with those old birds in Greece and Rome as it is now. . . . The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” As Samuel W. Rushay, Jr. wrote about Truman’s understanding of history and the threats to democracy in the 1940s, “(H)is understanding of history provided him with a wider perspective on communism, whose assault on democracy was, in the words of historian Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, the ‘current form of a timeless struggle on earth’ between the forces of tyranny and freedom.” We have seen that struggle between tyranny and freedom over and over again here in America. I was reminded of that feature of American life during my summer break, as I read of one particular moment in that struggle as told in Edward Achorn’s fascinating new book Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous …
MORE TO COME... 