Listen Liberal, Thomas Frank

Listen Liberal:  Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank is a call to arms for liberals in general.

Started:  3/12/2018

Completed: 4/3/2018

Recommended By: The New York Times and Current Affair

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Review:

It is kind of amazing to me how many books I read recently quote Alexis de Tocqueville (his books, Democracy in America, Vol. 1 and Democracy in America, Vol. 2, are on the shelf to be read).  This particular book also quotes the Federalist Papers right up front.  What a great start to any book that hopes to address politics in the United States.

This book sheds a lot of light on the modern corportacracy that is the current political system.  I have felt things shifting to the right.  Reagan was a hard right conservative in his day and he is solidly left of center today (read his inaugural address--he wanted a representative from Canada and one from Mexico in his cabinet).  This book helps identify how far right Democrats have gone (as though you could not tell when Obama's signature Obamacare is based on a Republican system and has the poor paying money they cannot afford in order to, well, live).  Democrats have consciously and intentionally abandoned the working man.  The concept of a professional class was something new to me and the application of that concept in terms of a meritocracy and the tie between that and income inequality.

Demagoguery and Democracy, Patricia Roberts-Miller

Demagoguery and Democracy by Patricia Roberts-Miller is a tiny little book that I picked up as a result of reading a portion of it in Salon.

Started:  3/13/2018

Completed: 3/17/2018

Recommendation: Recommended for those familiar with oratory

Recommended By:  Nobody

Review:

This is a fairly technical book written by a pretty impressive author and the attempt is clearly to make the material approachable for most people.  I do not think that people unfamiliar with oratory will find it approachable.  In addition, I think people well-versed in oratory will find it slow-paced and with lots of explanations of obvious things.  I fit in this middle ground--I have studied oratory (and references to Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle seem welcome), but I am far from knowledgeable in the topic.  This book has a very useful definition of Demagoguery and is so small that it will fit nicely on my shelf next to On Tyranny.  I plan to keep this book and come back to it as needed.

This is a small format book which packs a lot into a small number of pages.  It is smaller than a paperback (perhaps 2/3 the size) and the 120 pages would be far fewer in any other format.  The book has a certain confidence that I find useful and backs up that confidence with reasonable arguments.  I like that!

Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is based on the author's own rather odd and broad experiences, but is not intended as an autobiography.  It is the first of a projected 4 book series and is rather daunting at close to 1,000 pages.

Started: 1/1/2017

Completed: 3/12/2018

Recommendation: Mild Recommendation

Recommended By:  Nobody

Words for which I sought help:

ambit -- the scope, extent, or bounds of something.

infrangible -- unbreakable; inviolable

melliferous -- yielding or producing honey

prised -- the British variant of prize.  The context, however suggests that it is intended as some tense of "pry" as the top of a water bottle is being opened.  Perhaps it is a form of pun.

Review:

This is an odd book.  The narrator is an anti-hero--not as strongly as Thomas Covenant--but still someone for whom it was hard to have compassion.  I think that the initial take on the narrator is that he is struggling under a burden he should not have to bear, but as the book goes on, it is easy to believe that he should not only bear this cross, but that it rubs too lightly on his shoulders.  He sees himself as a man of honor and he has a certain degree of honor, but he is not honorable.  Enough said without giving away the main plot too much.

I enjoyed the reading.  The descriptions were fun, the word play excellent, and there are plenty of quotations to be had.  Having said that, the story itself was unsatisfactory.  The main character seems to have wrapped things up in many ways, yet remains both dangerous and vulnerable at the same time.  He is beloved by so many and, yet, it feels like it is only a matter of time before he betrays these people who love him.  So, the book is one that should probably be read.  It is a tour-de-force but  it is not a pleasure read.

There is a lot of cosmology and most of it is right, but there is a tiny piece that is incorrect and it kind of ruins the whole picture.  It is OK that this piece is incorrect as it is not reasonable to expect that the character who puts it all together would get it all right, but it is mildly disturbing as it feels like the author is trying to create a recruit for his perception of the world through this character.  If so, it is a chilling reality.

I plan to read the next book which is now on the end of the shelf.

The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown

The Boys in the Boat:  Nine American and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown.  I picked this book up based on an NPR story I heard on the radio.  There is an upcoming movie as well.

Started: 3/2/2018

Completed: 3/12/2018

Recommended By: NPR

Recommendation: Really enjoyed it, quick easy book

Review:

I thought I would do crew when I reached college.  I did not.  I could, conceivably, have been the cockswain (as I was quite small), but my university did not have a crew team of which I was aware.  I would have been disappointed to ride and not row, I'm sure.  I did work for a guy who crewed as an adult and he was small, but he was really, really strong.  Anyway, it was not going to happen for me.

This book talks about a young man who is frequently abandoned and found a home in the crew shell.  It is a good story in almost every way I can conceive.  The plot is compelling and moves well.  The rowing terms are gradually introduced so that by the end the terms are familiar.  It is about an American team winning in Hitler's Germany.  All that is great.

The underlying story of one of the oarsman and his early life is nothing short of horrifying.  I was in tears for the boy and young man.  He was not alone as the brutally hard work of rowing a boat competitively can only be done by those with a steel backbone and hardened life.  I am glad I read this book despite the almost absurd beginning (truth is stranger than fiction).  I will look forward to the movie.

What Money Can't Buy, Michael Sandel

What Money Can't Buy:  the Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel.  Harvard professor talks about markets?  Count me in!

Started:  2/18/2018

Completed: 3/1/2018

Recommended By: Nobody

Recommendation: Recommended

Review:

So, the idea here is that there are two things all of us are missing in our analysis of free markets.  1) People do not always operate in their own best interest and 2) introducing a market can have an influence over the product(s) commoditized by the market.  There are a couple of other interesting points that follow from these:

• Markets can corrupt common morality when introduced (e.g. People who are charged a fee for being late to pick up a child at day care start to accept the fee as a payment for being late and the concept of not holding up the teacher is removed).
• Incentives can backfire (e.g. monetary incentives can be perceived as blackmail instead of as compensation)
• Money isn't everything (e.g. gifts also indicate that one has thought about another, so there is more than monetary value involved)

The upshot is that markets are not always a good idea.  Private prisons have always been a problem for me because I could not figure out how to generate a monetary reward for rehabilitating prisoners (e.g. private prisons make more money when there are more prisoners, so why rehabilitate?).  I have wondered how to provide a proper incentive to make a private prison work.  The reality is that there is no incentive because rehabilitating prisoners is not associated with money, it is associated with morality and a sense of the public good.  Any effort to "incentivize" prisons so that more prisoners will be rehabilitated will fail because it is not associated with money.  Private prisons will simply fail because having a market for them is nonsensical.  Ditto for schools.  Paying teachers for test scores doesn't work because successful teaching needs to be its own passion and no desire for money can replace that passion.

Read the book and stop hating Capitalism and start hating misplaced markets.

Born Standing Up, Steve Martin

Born Standing Up:  A comic's life by Steve Martin is an autobiography by my favorite comic.

Started:  2/12/2018

Completed: 2/18/2018

Recommended By: Nobody

Recommendation: Hilarious and very informative

Review:

I learned a lot about Steve Martin and many of the things that I learned helped me understand how Mr. Martin's act was so carefully crafted and yet felt so spontaneous.  This autobiography is mostly about his stand up career with very little attention paid to his movies.  I understand that as his movie career feels "current" but his stand-up is over.  Still I wish he had included more about his more recent life.  I really liked that he covered his public life very completely while managing to leave a lot of his private life personal.

Ratf**ked, David Daley

Ratf**ked:  The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy by David Daley is a book recommended in The Nation.  I got the book out of the library, but kept getting other things to read and even after three renewals I hadn't read it.  I picked it up on audio so that I could listen to it on the way to work...of course, that assumes the government will continue to operate.

Started:  1/24/2018

Completed: 2/12/2018

Recommended By: The Nation

Recommendation: Recommended

Review:

The most recent set of gerrymandering (2010) and its after effects are highly detailed.  Daley really went at it and whether you crow with delight when you hear how Republicans put it to the Democrats or howl with dismay at how politicians chose their own voters (instead of the other way around), this is a remarkably detailed look at what happened.  The story is a good one, but unless you are into minutia, you will likely find the book boring after the first few chapters.  In my opinion (a definite gerrymandering wonk), it is a comprehensive look at gerrymandering and how the republican Red Map program literally has compromised democracy (good if you are a minority Republican afraid of the liberals, bad if you are a progressive worried about the conservatives).