Tag: politics

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Review

“A People’s History of the United States”

Howard Zinn

This was one of those books that took me a long time to get through; 650 pages of small print, dense with names and dates, it’s basically my precise weakness in reading. It is also—and, in reading it over the course of several weeks, I assure you I have had time to think about this—one of the most important books I’ve ever read.1 I’ll let Zinn speak for himself in what purpose the book actually serves:

As for the subtitle of this book, it is not quite accurate; a “people’s history” promises more than any one person can fulfill, and it is the most difficult kind of history to recapture. I call it that anyway because, with all its limitations, it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people’s movements of resistance.

That makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission. (631)2

This is the counterpart to my “I went to public schools in the USA” education.3 This is the book that points out the things I never think about, because we’re gently guided away from thinking about them.4

It is also, setting aside the aforementioned name-and-date density, very well written. Some choice quotes, where I just truly appreciated the writing style:

In premodern times, the maldistribution of wealth was accomplished by simple force. In modern times, exploitation is disguised—it is accomplished by law, which has the look of neutrality and fairness. By the time of the Civil War, modernization was well under way in the United States. (240)

… one could call that a zinn-ger.5

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. (516)

And one more quote that I enjoyed enough to copy down:

Vietnam was “lost” (the very word supposed it was ours to lose). (551)

The chapter that felt like the original end to the book, prior to it being updated for the Clinton and Bush administrations, had a little bit of a call-to-action feel to it, but given when it was written, it mostly just made me think oh, this is a really useful way to look at the elections that’ve happened in my adult life.

Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes. (637)

I enjoyed the hell out of this book. I wish I could get my hands on a version that covered up until now, but alas, old historians never die… they just become primary sources. Still, despite being over 20 years old, the only part of it that actually felt dated to me was how little reference to the LGBTQ rights movement there was.6 Absolutely worth the read; check it out.7

  1. It’s also one of the first times in quite a while that I’ve used Ulysses’ little ‘notes’ sidebar to store a set of quotes to maybe insert into my writing, so: brace yourself. ↩
  2. I’m quoting from the 2003 “Perennial Classics” edition; given how many different versions of the book I saw when I picked it up at Powell’s, that may still not be enough to narrow down exactly which version it is, but hopefully the page numbers will at least get you close. The afterword in this edition ended on page 688. ↩
  3. I’m not quite paraphrasing Zinn, but I got close:
    > For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs. (408) ↩
  4. For example: it’s a little weird that we talk up how close any given presidential election is when, to use 2016 as an example, of the eligible voters in the US, Donald Trump got 25.6% of the vote, and Hillary got 26.8%. ↩
  5. Given how mad at me autocorrect got about trying to type that pun, one probably shouldn’t. ↩
  6. Roughly two paragraphs, all told; one mention of the earlier parts of it, and several chapters later, an admission that it should’ve been covered more. Yep! It should’ve! ↩
  7. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“The Deep and Shining Dark”

Juliet Kemp

This is one of those books that makes me think about hard versus soft magic systems. A hard magic system has strict rules; an extension of the laws of physics. Soft magic systems are a lot looser; the rules are “whatever the plot requires them to be.” Pros and cons to either.

In this case, we have a pretty soft magic system; the only real rule seems to be that you need blood to control magic. With the exception of Marek, a city whose founders negotiated a deal with an angel, and it came to live there, interceding between the people that raw magic, making it a much safer affair overall. And, in true “wisdom of the ancients” style, they were very clever about it, and the deal included things like “you can’t use magic for politics” and “the angel has to keep the good of the city in mind.”

All of which worked quite well as backdrop for what is, essentially, a political intrigue. It may have taken a few hundred years, but no system works perfectly forever. Not without maintenance, at least. Once most people forget why and how the magic works, it gets easy to assume that it works that way because it works that way. You stop thinking about it. It becomes a norm.

But, eventually, someone comes along who doesn’t accept the norm. Who thinks, well, this rule seems breakable. Nobody’s actively enforcing it anymore.

I don’t think this book was meant to be quite as topical to politics as it felt, given that perspective, but it worked out well. Made for a very interesting read overall, and I can definitely recommend it. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“That Wild Country”

Mark Kenyon

I went in with the wrong expectations here—I was expecting a purely-history book, and so the opening chapters being entirely autobiographical about this guy’s experience of going on hikes felt very weird. Over the course of the book, though, I adjusted to it being a split of history and autobiography, and I think Kenyon did as well, striking a better balance by the end.

It was nice that the book had, in essence, a thesis throughout: our public lands are the thing that truly makes America great, and we should be defending them against the predations of… industry and development, basically. And, as a bonus, this is something that we can build a bipartisan coalition around: “Cabela’s and REI” both agree that these public lands should be preserved for public use, if for slightly different reasons. But that’s the beauty of a multiple-use land arrangement; all the outdoorsy folks can do their thing.

Overall, I found this book quite enjoyable, and heartily recommend it. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Review

“Solutionary Rail”

Bill Moyer & Patrick Mazza

Right off the bat, let me say: the name is not great. Having just read the whole book, which mentions its own name quite often, I feel as if I’ve been somewhat inoculated against how bad a name it is, but even with that, it’s still very clearly not a great name.

That said, the actual concept is, in my opinion, rock-solid. In short, the book is arguing that we should convert from diesel to electric power for our rail networks, and use the existing rail right-of-ways to build the transmission lines that we desperately need in order to make the green energy transition.

In slightly longer:

  • Rail freight is, inherently, way more efficient than truck freight, and hilariously more so than air freight. Rolling resistance is a hell of a thing; the least efficient train is still twice as energy-efficient as the most efficient truck.
  • Making a train run on electricity is a lot easier than making a truck run on electricity. Turns out it’s way easier to run power lines over a train track than it is to run them over every road ever. (And, bonus, electric trains have the exact same benefit electric cars do: way less maintenance.)
  • Truck freight is massively taxpayer-subsidized: by gallon of fuel purchased, a heavy truck pays, very roughly, 1.75x the gas tax of a sedan. But, for every mile driven, that heavy truck does around 5,000x as much damage to the road it’s driving on that the sedan does. tl;dr: the reason our roads need so much work is because of trucks; every time we use taxpayer money to rebuild a road, the trucking industry is getting a big ol’ present.
  • Railway right-of-ways are a Whole Thing, but for historical reasons, are basically a perfectly-interconnected network that ties together every city in the entire country, as well as whole lot o’ non-city land. This description also applies to the sort of long-distance power transmission infrastructure we need. Is it a coincidence I’m putting these two facts in the same bullet point? Not even remotely!

By these facts combined, we arrive at the argument that a) we should be using a whole lot more rail freight, b) we should be electrifying as much of our rail network as possible, and c) we shouldn’t be afraid to have government step in, because the competition literally could not exist without the massive government intervention that is the creation and maintenance of the interstate highway system.

The bit about using rail routes to also do power transmission is just a really clever way to combine two big projects and get them to pay for each other. Electrified rail means power companies have a brand-new, large-scale customer; siting power transmission literally on top of that large-scale customer not only provides guaranteed demand, it also significantly reduces the amount of time the power companies have to spend shoveling through the horrific mess that is the approvals process for power transmission.1

There’s some weird parts to the argument, namely the way that the book bends over backwards to never yell at the Class I rail carriers for their horrible business practices. Sure, there’s an appendix about it, courtesy of the rail unions, but within the actual text, they’re very careful not to say “and hey, maybe if Wall Street spent less time turning rail freight into the highest-profit-margin industry in the country and instead focused on making it actually good at its job, these problems wouldn’t be as bad!” But then, given that the target demographic of this book is Warren Buffet (owner of Berkshire Hathaway, owner of BNSF, monopolist of the Seattle-Chicago rail route that the authors have identified as the best starting point for electrifying the rail network), it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’s kinda the villain of the story.2

Overall, I found this a fascinating read, and I heartily recommend checking out their website, if not the whole book. (There’s a video summary, but you can also get a free download of the book if you, like me, saw the concept and went “oh I have got to know more about this.”)

And then, as a secondary call to action, write to your representatives (state and federal!), your governor, and whoever you know that owns some shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Point out that, hey. Trains. They’re pretty cool. We should do more with them.

  1. As a side note, we desperately need to fix that. Hey, Congress, get on that! ↩
  2. And, frankly, he really should be listening to the idea of using the rail right-of-ways to connect all the wind farms he owns to, y’know, places people actually want to buy that electricity. If you’re gonna be a capitalist on that scale, at least actually get the benefits of vertical integration! ↩
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Review

“Becoming”

Michelle Obama

I really wasn’t sure what to expect, going in to this book. I’m not a big memoir person, and it did take me a while to really get into the book, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

I think the most useful takeaway for me, from this book, is that it humanized Michelle. It’s easy to look at the occupants of the White House and think of them as these far-off figures, something akin to demigods for how remote their lives are from mine. Which remains true—the experience of living in the White House is so different from any aspect of my life I can barely imagine it—but we are all only human.

What I enjoyed the most was hearing about the limitations that come with it. It’s one thing to fantasize about it: “imagine being part of the First Family, you get to meet so many interesting people and be so close to history as it’s happening!”1 But the reality is motorcades and secret service escorts. Knowing that any time you want to go out for dinner, you’re causing traffic jams and costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in additional security costs. Even something as simple as “I’m going to sit on the balcony to drink my morning tea” becomes a mess—because, as Michelle notes, sitting on the balcony for her meant the Secret Service closing off a nearby street from which the balcony was visible. You can’t use a portion of your home without it disrupting the lives of hundreds of other people.

Michelle’s story is inspiring, and tragic, and delightful; it is entirely, perfectly human. I absolutely loved this book, and highly recommend it—even to my fellow “not a big memoir” people. Give it a read.2

  1. I’ve long since abandoned the dream of the Presidency. Being responsible for the entirety of the United States sounds like a special circle of hell, and no amount of escapist fantasy can paper over the sheer, staggering, impossible weight that the President has to bear. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩