Category Archives: Non-Fiction

03.02.24
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WAYS AND MEANS/ROGER LOWENSTEIN

Roger Lowenstein has researched and written an excellent analysis of an often overlooked battlefield of the Civil War. ” Money” This in depth academic work explores in great detail the complexity and drama of exactly how both the Confederacy and the Union financed the war. In Lowenstein’s account, the battle for financing may have equaled and even surpassed the importance of outcomes from the horrendous military clashes.

Taking a page from Doris Kern Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, Lowenstein places Salmon P. Chase’s selection by President Lincoln as Treasury Secretary at the very center of finding the money to finance the prolonged conflict, rightfully called America’s Second Revolution. In the north money for the war effort was a daily struggle but in the Confederate south the impossibility and mismanagement of securing funding became the most significant factor in the Confederacy’s final defeat.

Often overlooked during the passions of the war in 1862 the Republican 37th Congress, following succession by the Democratic southern states, enacted some of the most progressive legislation in the nation’s history. The Homestead Act, the Land Grant College Act, the Transcontinental Railroad, creation of the Agriculture Department, the Legal Tender Act, making paper money legal tender for all debts public and private. The same congress established the nation’s first Graduated Income Tax to provide critical financing for the war effort.

Lowenstein’s narrative ties together how the critical role the divergent approaches to financing the war were a determining factor in the final outcome at Appomattox. Additionally, the book is a study of the expansion of the power of the federal government acting as a nation.

02.01.24
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THE REBELS/DEMOCRACY AWAKENING

Two recent books are great reads providing insight and understanding into the 2024 election year. DEMOCRACY AWAKENING by Heather Cox Richardson is an insightful narrative into the political rise of Donald Trump dating back to the beginning of Republican conservatism following FDR’s New Deal.Her concise narrative makes abundantly clear as to how and why Trump has taken over the Republican Party. A history that looks back to a mythologized past as the country’s perfect time is a key tool of authoritarians.

THE REBELS- Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the Struggle for a New American Politics by Joshua Green is a another must for the political observer. Green’s historical perspective does not miss one major player in this political drama.

Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez, as detailed by Green, pulled the Democratic Party back to its working class roots. He speculates, We don’t know yet whether history will remember them as harbingers of a new Democratic age or as insurgents who ultimately didn’t change the party as they’d hoped.

Two books, perfect companion reads.

11.10.23
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GOING INFINITE/ MICHAEL LEWIS

Was Effective Altruism a creed to do good or a cover for personal greed? Does anyone understand the Crypto marketplace? Will you understand Crypto and Bitcoin exchanges and millisecond trading after immersing yourself in the pages of Michael Lewis’s new book GOING INFINITE? Maybe, but it will be a struggle.

What I can say is that you will get a good look at the persona, ethos and tactics of Sam Brinkman-Fried and exactly how he momentarily became the richest person in the world under 30 years of age. Brinkman’s rise and fall and the monetary and human wreckage he left behind is an astonishing story as told in Lewis’s unique style.

With Lewis’s book you need not have been in the courtroom to predict what would be a guilty on all counts verdict. You will understand why and may decide never to become a Crypto investor.

11.09.23
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ELON MUSK/WALTER ISAACSON

Like all of Isaacson’s biographies you will come away with an intimate knowledge of the subject. Elon Musk is trademark Walter Isaacson excellence.

I choose to peak your interest in this very large volume by selecting quotes from throughout the book that I feel are particularly relevant to Musk and his formula for success. Some may even hint at his personal idiosyncrasies.

Move fast, blow things up, repeat. It’s not how well you avoid problems it’s how fast you figure out what the problem is and fix it.

Nobody is going to pay for something that looks like crap. The way to get a car company started was to build a high priced car first and then move to a mass-market model.

Every part, every process and every specification needs to have a person’s name attached to it to personalize blame when something goes wrong.

I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI.

Musk made a rule to be wary of anyone whose confidence was greater than their competence.

And finally:

Is being unfiltered and untethered integral to who is is? Could you get the rockets to orbit or the transition to electric vehicles without accepting all aspects of him, hinged and unhinged.” Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist potty training. They can be reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes even toxic. They can also be crazy. Crazy enough to think they can change the world. Walter Isaacson.

Just like his biographies of Franklin, Jobs, Einstein, and da Vinci Elon Musk is a six hundred fifteen page read that is part of our nation’s history.

Go for it.

10.05.23
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ASTOR/ANDERSON COOPER

The perfect author for a book on the Astors. Anderson Cooper is a journalist and he understands the culture because he is a Vanderbilt. Don’t discount the collaboration of Katherine Howe in the research and writing of ASTOR. She is brilliant in her own right as a novelist and historian.

This writer can not think of a better collaboration for the book. ASTOR has the organization, narrative and storytelling that comes from two excellent authors. In the book’s 279 concise pages you will learn of the Astor family and fortune and also receive a continuing glimpse into the vast American income inequality of then and now.

So much to learn of THE RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN FORTUNE in a most rewarding several hours. ASTOR is worth every minute.

ENJOY!

08.24.23
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BATTLE OF INK AND ICE/DARRELL HARTMAN

You’ll explore as much about the New York City competitive newspaper environment at the turn of the 20th Century as you will about the discovery of the North Pole by either Robert Peary Frederick Cook! Darrell Hartman’s book is a fascinating enlightenment of the parallel stories, each with its own surprising turns. BATTLE OF INK AND ICE reads like a historical novel making all of the facts easily digestible.

Who got to the North Pole, Cook or Peary? Better yet, the book raises the prospect that neither of the men may have accomplished the feat.

The personalities of Cook and Peary are fascinating but the in sight into Adolph Ochs of the New York Times, James Gordon Bennett of the Herald, William Randolph Hearst of the Journal reveals the competitive environment of the period amongst the New York media barrons.

Who first reached the North Pole, which newspaper got the story right? You will be the judge.

08.05.23
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AMERICAN PROMETHEUS/J.ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

Without hesitation, this superb work by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin is among the very best biographies I have read in recent years. I place the writing and research on a level with Robert Caro and Jon Meacham.

The wonder of this book is the understanding of Oppenheimer and his time and place in American History. The story of the Atomic Bomb is well known to many. However, the complexity and passages of Oppenheimer himself amid the social and political atmosphere in which he lived and worked is a revelation. The beauty of Bird’s and Sherwin’s writing is that you need not be a physicist to wrap yourself around the life and story of this complex scientist, intellectual and iconic American figure. The dimension of the book is enormous, foremost in its content, but also in size!

I am confident that reading THE TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY of J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER is a plus before seeing OPPENHEIMER the movie.

07.13.23
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AND THERE WAS LIGHT ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE /JON MEACHAM

Yet another excellent work by Jon Meacham. AND THERE WAS LIGHT ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE is a detailed chronology of Lincoln’s positions on slavery from his early years in politics prior to the Civil War through the Emancipation Proclamation. It is a remarkable look not only at Lincoln’s changing personal views on abolition but how he managed this toxic issue as a master politician.

Meacham coaxes the reader to evolve along with Lincoln as the president wrestles emotionally, religiously and politically to ultimately envision and execute the correct route to not only abolish slavery but to save The Union.

Search gordonsgoodreads for these other works by Meacham. The Soul of America, American Lion Andrew Jackson and the White House, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship.

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.