Category Archives: Non-Fiction

10.05.22
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WASTELANDS/CORBAN ADDISON

WASTELANDS could have been a John Grisham novel. No, it is a true story of the industrial pork industry that remains in existence in Eastern North Carolina.

Wastelands is not about the horrible treatment of industrially raised pork ( that is another horror subject) but rather a story of the historical havoc raised upon the environment by giant corporations. Author John Addison focuses his research on exactly how huge industrial pork farms on the Eastern Shore of North Carolina have made living conditions for neighbors literally intolerable. It is the story of how a small group of black citizens said “enough is enough” and took the giant Smithfield Corporation and its surrogates to the court house.

Addison is by profession a novelist. A walk Across the Sun, The Garden of Burning Sand, The Tears of Dark Water, A Harvest of Thorns. WASTELANDS reads like a novel but every word is true.

” Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up.” -Abraham Lincoln.

They did and they won!

05.30.22
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BRAIDING SWEETGRASS

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.

Robin Kimmerer takes the reader on a journey into an America of what might have been in the present had not the culture of America’s Indigenous People been destroyed by “Manifest Destiny.” Immerse yourself in this beautifully crafted manuscript and learn of a lost culture of which the earth of the 21st Century screams for a return. It is a beautiful and even hopeful story of a generation of scientists, ecologists and sociologists that have not given up on the lost culture of those first inhabitants of our land. Native American history and culture are perfectly blended with an ecological lesson within these pages. Braiding Sweetgrass is worthy of its long standing among the New York Times Best Sellers.

05.26.21
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MADHOUSE AT THE END OF THE EARTH

Don’t look in these pages for another Ernest Shackleton adventure or for a repeat of the Jeannette disaster. This is a different story of death and survival in an ego driven pursuit of Antarctic exploration and the South Pole. Belgium, as described by author Julian Sancton, is an unlikely contender in the race for glory in charting the icy subcontinent. The same is true for the expedition’s leader, Adrien de Gerlache, well-intentioned but severely lacking in seamanship and funding. Despite his shortcomings, de Gerlache manages to raise funds and crew the refitted Belgica. Among those recruited for the expedition, Roald Amundsen who would later out race the ill-fated Robert Scott quest for claiming the South Pole. Also aboard was one American, Dr. Frederick Cook who later in 1908 would claim to have reached the North Pole. MADHOUSE AT THE END OF THE EARTH is an exact description of what occurs when dreams of glory steer a ship deep into the polar ice of the Bellingshausen Sea. The outcome is inevitable, months locked in the Antarctic ice, worsened by the disappearance of daylight. Sancton’s book becomes a study of the day by day, hour by hour mental and physical deterioration of all on board. Miraculously, only two members of the expedition would die, one of whom fell overboard in a storm, prior to the ship’s entombment. Author Sancton poured over personal diaries and the ships logs and emerged from his research with vivid detail of how loneliness, hopelessness and physical deterioration effect humans.  His telling of the story takes on the character of a well written novel. Sunlight returned, the pack ice relented, and after nearly a three years journey, despite failing to reach the South Pole, the Belgica returned to a glorious reception in Belgium. Survival had become the  goal. For more reads on Arctic exploration search Gordon’s Good Reads for The Endurance, Robert Peary, Jeannette.
04.30.21
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A PROMISED LAND

I tend to stay away from presidential memoirs, preferring biographies. Biographies are more objective, although depending on the historian, that is not always the case.

Barak Obama’s A PROMISED LAND falls somewhere in between. I found the book very enlightening of his early years and the long process by which he became a politician. You will learn early on that decision did not enjoy much favor from Michelle. Two lawyers, a nice family and lifestyle in Chicago was more her plan. It is very interesting to learn how a political partnership evolved.

Volume one sets the stage for Obama’s remarkable rise to power details the husband and wife partnership that became a formidable force on the American Political scene. It remains so to this day.

As you would expect the volume is very well written and an enjoyable preamble to his presidency. It is interesting that Michelle’s book has outlasted A PROMISED LAND on the New York Times’ Best Seller List.

04.30.21
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AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY/ORTIZ

 

You will be hard pressed to read a broader documentation of the genocide of native Americans and other indigenous peoples across the Americas than in Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. Every ugly aspect of Colonialism, Manifest Destiny, Slavery, and the Doctrine of Discovery is explored in depth.

Ortiz makes a strong case that America’s Manifest Destiny, disguised as moral wars in the 20th Century (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) remains as a dangerous undercurrent in American foreign policy and in the 21st Century treatment of native American. Every member of Congress should read this work before even considering to vote on such issues as reparations. This is not a rehash of the same old story. The book has plenty of attitude and that is a very good thing.

 

03.23.21
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BLACK RADICAL/WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER

Kerri K. Greenidge in her book BLACK RADICAL THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WILLIAM MONROE TROTTER isa bold revelation of civil rights history in America. The insight into this heretofore obscure figure in the civil rights movement is a great historical contribution. The research and careful narrative evolve into a tableau of the life of this early activist who followed in the Boston tradition of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator with his own publication The Guardian.

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Trotter turned Boston and New England civil rights activism on its head taking a no holds barred approach at his overflow rallies at Faneuil Hall and his in-your-face challenges to Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Booker T. Washington. No Tuskegee philosophy for Monroe Trotter as his demands for equality were absolute. So strong were his protestations that even staunch advocates such as W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglas stood back.

“Unlike other members od Du Bois’s ‘talented tenth’ (mostly light-skinned black elites) Monroe Trotter would never confine his civil rights activism to the circle of black elite on Martha’s Vineyard, or the coterie of fellow light skinned northern born professionals with whom he socialized in Washington D.C., and Brooklyn.  Despite his New England upbringing and Victorian sensibilities, Trotter provided a voice for thousands of disenchanted, politically marginalized black working people for whom neither the National Negro Business League nor the NAACP had much relevance.”

Follow this Harvard man’s radical fight for a Federal antilynching bill and the enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as he defiantly confronted the white power brokers of the time.

I am thankful to Kerri Greenidge for telling this story.

02.03.21
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FIRST Principles/THOMAS E. RICKS

As readers of this blog may know I am a fan of John Adams and have within these pages questioned historian Gordon Wood and others regarding objectivity concerning Adams, in particular in comparison’s to Jefferson. Thomas E. Rick’s new book FiRST Principals, WHAT AMERICA’S FOUNDERS LEARNED from the GREEKS and ROMANS AND HOW THAT SHAPED OUR COUNTRY makes a herculean effort to connect the thinking of the Founding Fathers with that of the ancient Greeks and Romans as they organized their governments and laws.

Ricks authors an in depth analysis of the political and ruling organizations of those ancient times and attempts to connect them to the thinking of those who founded the fledging America. You will need to judge whether or not he succeeded.

In addition to the ancient perspective, throughout the book Ricks finds ways to circle back to his passion of comparing the thinking of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson during America’s daybreak. Like historian Gordon Wood his writing becomes clouded with his reverence for Jefferson and I think disdain for Adams. So often, Ricks seems to go out of his way to demean Adams’s thinking while praising, and in this readers view, making excuses for Jefferson’s shortcomings. He brushes past Jefferson’s slaveholding, his virtual disappearance during the Revolutionary War and his relationship with fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings. The book does not recognize the depth of Jefferson’s disdain for Federalism and his advancement of the superiority of states rights over a strong federal government. ( The continuation of the “Plantation” economy and expansion of slavery.)

In fairness, I think Ricks is himself conflicted about John Adams. On the one hand he references Adam’s best known work A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America as, The sole piece of writing he finished that is longer than an essay. However just two paragraphs later Ricks writes, Adams in turn wrote , there can be no government of laws without a balance and there can be no balance without the three orders. Sounds like executive, judicial and legislative to me. No surprise here because John Adams is credited with authoring the Massachusetts Constitution which in 1788 became the blueprint for the U.S. Constitution.

With regard to what the founders learned from the Greeks and Romans I must confess that Ricks gives Adams his due. Quoting from a famous John Adams essay in the Boston Gazette in 1765 titled Let Us Dare , Let us dare to read, think, speak and write. Let every order and degree among the people rouse their attention and animate their resolution. Let them all become attentive to the grounds and principles of government, ecclesiastical and civil. Let us study the law of nature; search into the spirit of the British Constitution; read the histories of ancient ages; contemplate the great examples of Greece and Rome.

This essay was written just as the Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament which many consider to be the final spark that ignited the American Revolution. This is Adam’s prescient thought in the opening lines of Let Us Dare. Liberty. . .which has never been enjoyed, in its full perfection, by more than ten or twelve millions of men at any Time, since the Creation, will reign in America, over hundreds and thousands of millions at a Time.

Getting past my defense of Adams, Rick’s book creates a superior condensed history of the Revolutionary War, the rise of George Washington, the telling of the Adams, Jefferson, Burr election of 1800, the impact of James Madison and the evolution of political parties in America. His epilogue ” What We Can Do” is filled with positive responses to what America has learned from history and the founding fathers.

First Principles is a great read for those who are looking for a deep dive into a slice on early American history.

09.22.20
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BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME/ TA-NEHISI COATES

TA NEHISI COATES, BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME . A letter to an adolescent son.  Not unlike  The Soul of Black Folks by W.E.B. Dubois. ( search gordonsgoodreads).  An extraordinarily powerful book. Toni Morrison is correct, “This is required Reading.”   Think of writing this to your own son or daughter:  At the onset of the Civil War, our stolen bodies were worth four billion dollars, more than all of America industry, all of American Railroads, workshops and factories combined.

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME  could not be more relevant than in today’s discourse. The  messaging is profound, deep, touching and real.  The type of book that those who need to read it most likely will not.  Please choose yes and be enlightened.

08.19.20
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THE DEFICIT MYTH/ A MUST READ FOR THE TIME

Stephenie Kelton’s book The DEFICIT MYTH, Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy explodes the economic myths that have been dictating the U.S. economy for generations.  The title speaks for itself and I could not recommend a more timely read to understand and explore a new approach for our economy to serve the needs of this generation. Kelton’s explodes  time honored “bromides:”   “We can’t afford it, We are mortgaging our children’s future, SS will go broke,”  ” If our generation continues to use the wrong lens, we will not make the right investments at the scale and pace needed to avert ever greater social and ecological crises.”

Kelton’s Modern Monetary Theory pushes the envelope of economic thought and the book is even more appropriate during the current pandemic and economic disaster.  Kelton advances MMT as new wave problem solving that ironically has its roots in 1936 with John Maynard Keynes.  A perfect read for the time for those who are looking for answers beyond the myths of current economic thinking.

This is an A List recommendation from GGR.

07.03.20
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THE PRICE OF PEACE/THE LIFE OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES/ TIMELY!

Zachary Carter’s  THE PRICE OF PEACE, MONEY, DEMOCRACY AND THE LIFE OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES  Is  a timely biography of the world’s most famous economist.  The Keynesian economic philosophy, so prominent in the 20th Century, strikes a relevant chord in today’s economic disarray. The book strikes at the heart of income inequality, an inegalitarian society, racism, and the damage to  American by the economic control of nearly all wealth the top ten percent.

THE PRICE OF PEACE tracks the life of Keynes and the Keynes philosophy from the lead up to WWI through  the Great Depression, the New Deal and WWII.  Carter makes every word in every paragraph count. The book is for those seeking a serious look at Keynes’ brilliant insights and yes, not always popular solutions.  Current events in America suggest that  ” Keynesian Economics” has stood the test of time and may be more relevant that ever.” If you believe that systemic change is needed in the polemic and the economic structure in the United States, you will find support and comfort on these pages. i

“Keynesianism in this purest, simplest form is not so much a school of economic thought as a spirit of radical optimism, unjustified by most of human history and extremely difficult to conjure up, preciously when it is most needed.

Put the work into this book. You will be richly rewarded.