This year’s holiday book list comes a little early
Inspirational girls, an examination of wokeness, and Lee bio make list
As one who still believes the Christmas season begins after Thanksgiving, I used to run my annual book recommendations list for people to read while eating leftover turkey sandwiches.
Now, however, there is a supply chain problem (in case you hadn’t heard), so we’ll go with it today so that you have time to get your books for those on your holiday shopping list.
To this year’s selections: “Downeast” by Gigi Georges — This book is about some tough and determined young women growing up in an economically challenged rural area of Maine.
Subtitled, “Five Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America,” this work inspires you and gets you caught up in the stories of the protagonists.
These girls don’t want to “escape” their impoverished community, they want to make it better.
“Woke Racism” by John McWhorter — A Columbia University linguist and newly appointed New York Times columnist, McWhorter is decidedly not among the “woke.”
He acknowledges racism exists, and he has experienced it as a Black man, but he is worried about the damage what he calls “The Elect” are doing to America.
He describes how the woke movement is like a religion, with its own dogma and rituals, and even offers suggestions on how the rest of us can with live them.
“Hello Darkness, My Old Friend” by Sanford Greenberg — This is my favorite of the year so far. Greenberg was a brilliant young student at Columbia in the early 1960s when he developed an illness that, after shockingly bad medical care, robbed him of his sight.
He refused to make any concessions to blindness, though, and, with the help of his college roommate, graduated and went on to a successful career in business.
That roommate remains Greenberg’s best friend. His name? Art Garfunkel.
“This is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by Nicole Perlroth — OK, this probably isn’t the cheeriest topic for the holidays, so maybe just get this one for your own edification. It is a great book and its subject is worth knowing about.
Perlroth covers cybersecurity for the New York Times, and her book details the constant threats Internet saboteurs present to our nation.
There are independent hackers and state sponsored (think China and Russia) enemies as well, who, if successful, could bring our nation to its knees in ways most of us would never imagine.
Most of us prefer not to think of such things, and that’s natural. But it is good for us to know what threats are out there so we can encourage our government to do something about it.
There is certainly no shortage of warnings about the long-term apocalyptic dangers of climate change.
“The Words that Made Us” by Akhil Reed Amar — A Yale professor of constitutional law, Reed traces the arguments the founders — and their successors — made in developing the Constitution and its amendments.
Amar cleverly puts 18th and 19th Century arguments into 21st Century terms, such as explaining Ben Franklin’s “meme” — “Join or Die.”
“Robert E Lee: A Life” by Allen C. Guelzo — Perhaps the foremost scholar on Lincoln, Princeton Professor Allen C Guelzo scrutinizes the “Lost Cause” mythology of Lee without the simplistic, Manichean view of the “woke.”
Guelzo goes into Lee’s relationship with his father, the eccentric Revolutionary War hero, Henry “Light Horse
Harry” Lee, who suffered financial scandal and abandoned the family.
That abandonment led Lee to always obsess over financial security and to always project an image of integrity and dignity, Guelzo argues.
The author finds Lee to be a skilled military commander, but less able than the myth would have it, often deflecting blame to his others for his own failures.
He argues that personal financial security more than some noble image of Virginia caused Lee to take up arms against his country in a rebellion whose goal was the preservation of slavery.
And no, Lee was not worthy of a pedestal.