The Good Old Days Are Looking Better -- Though Far From Perfect

When I was a kid presidents tried to advance Civil Right

The world should be a much better place to live in today than it is. In so many ways it's worse than I was a kid. Climate change is the best example. In days of yore you’d get blizzards, heat waves, hurricanes and occasionally an abnormally warm spell in winter and a cold one in summer. Back then it was news. Something different. Now we’re living with so many weather anomalies that they’ve become the norm. Especially the blistering heat of summer all across the globe (not so much here in the Bay Area — thankfully). It’s getting worse too. People are worried about the threat to the planet. The planet will be fine, it’s the people on the planet who are fucked. Indeed, people are dying because of the extreme weather — in large numbers. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be spending summers where it’s broiling hot all day everyday. Even London has had eighty degree weather most days for the past couple of months. That’s frickin’ crazy. 

Another thing we didn’t have to deal with when I was growing up was having a total moron as the leader of the free world. We had presidents who lied, cheated, ignored the needs of the people and started wars but nothing as bad as what Trumpy has been doing. No one who shattered the political norms. Presidents didn’t used to call reporters stupid or horrible people or accuse them of fabricating “fake news.” Nor did presidents shamelessly self-promote and weren’t so blatantly corrupt. They didn’t call into question the integrity of our elections. When I was a kid we were trying to guarantee civil rights not take them away. The lies weren’t so plentiful or obvious. The loyal opposition was shown respect. Even Nixon wouldn’t have dreamed of calling the people across the aisle, “dumbocrats.” The rich have been getting much, much, much richer these days while the social safety net for the less fortunate is being shredded. The imbalance in our country’s wealth distribution is ridiculous.

There were still small businesses when I was a kid. Mom & Pop grocery stores were ubiquitous. In fact there were all kinds of independent businesses. We had places that weren’t part of a multi-national chain where you could get a burger. You might even know the guy that ran the place. There was Johnny’s down the street and we knew who Johnny was. 

I don’t know if things were better because we had milkmen, but they weren’t worse for them.

People didn’t stare at their phones all the time nor for that matter leave the house with their phones — not that they could. Kids used to go outside an use their imaginations to play games or organize ball games and they didn’t have “play dates.” We roamed the streets and did fine. You didn’t have a phone to look at but you could pick up a stick and make a game with it. People were a couple of million times less paranoid.

True, we didn’t have all the safety features with cars, bikes, playgrounds and toys so today’s kids are safer. But they’re also more pampered and made the center of attention from birth. Children aren’t integrated into families in the same way, they are the center of the universe for their parents. 

(It just occurred to me that when I was a kid if someone wore a bicycle helmet they’d be teased mercilessly.)

We didn’t have streaming services or cable so if you wanted to see a movie you had to wait until it was on TV where it was butchered by commercials and sometimes edited (censored). If you wanted to hear a song and didn’t have the record then you had to wait for it to be played on the radio. 

There were no computers for googling so if you needed the answer to something you bugged your parents, or a teacher or you looked in an encyclopedia if you had one or went to the library. You had to be resourceful. 

People had record players, sometimes stereos. Not everyone had color TVs, I didn’t until my senior year of high school back when we had six channels on TV and I think that sixth had just been added.

There were a lot fewer sports events on TV. But I liked sports from that era a lot better. It was before there were a millions teams in each sport (although the fact that there were only six ice hockey teams was ridiculous). There weren’t dozens of rounds of playoffs in pro sports. College football had conferences that were regional and practically-sized. There were no stupid playoffs for a national championship. Bowl games were still a big deal. College basketball didn’t have half the schools in the post season tournament. There were no “wildcards” making the playoffs. Best of all a stupid kid like me could afford to go to a game. A family could have season tickets for an NFL team without taking out a second mortgage.

Concerts were also affordable back then. For ten bucks you could see the biggest names in rock n’ roll. No one was getting away with selling tickets for thousands of dollars.

We still had movie theaters. Lots of them and I’m not talking about heartless cineplexes but actual theaters. Ticket prices were not just reasonable but cheap.

But back then gay people had to remain very much in the closet and could be arrested and jailed for the act of love. There was nothing approaching Pride Month or a Pride Parade. Women were still way, way behind men in terms of equal pay and just generally being treated like something other than sex objects. It still ain’t great today but it’s far better. Progress for African-Americans and other people of color was being made. Today there are forces trying to reverse those advances.

One of the biggest differences between then and now was that there was a much greater sense of hope. Like I said, progress was being made and there was the belief that improvements in society and politics were going to be permanent and added to. Today there is one helluva lot more cynicism and one can see why. The powerful have become more powerful and infinitely more heartless. Pushing them out of the way seems a mammoth task. Global warming is draining people physically and emotionally. It feels like a big defeat — likely because it is.

I still hold out hope because not doing so seems such a final loss and violates the best of the human spirit. Gotta keep the faith, baby.

Appreciating The Grapes of Wrath, A Classic American Film

There’s so much I love about John Ford’s cinematic version of The Grapes of Wrath that it’s difficult to know where to begin. How about here: Pa Joad and the two youngest (BTW, the actors playing Ma and Pa are way too old to have children that young, but that was the way with films from that era) enter a diner to buy a loaf of bread. The loaves cost fifteen cents but they can only spare ten. The cook insists the waitress give it to them for ten. Then Pa asks about the candy that the children are drooling over. How much, he wants to know. The waitress says two for a penny. That’s perfect for the Joads and the kids get their candy and leave. One of the two truck drivers who are dining there point out to the waitress that the candies are two cents each, not two for a penny. She feigns ignorance. Then the truck drivers leave. Obviously heartened by the generosity they have witnessed they leave too big a tip. The waitress points out how much they’ve left. “What’s it to ya?” One of ‘em growls. Nobody gives a speech. Nobody announces that they're being generous. The waitress pretends not to notice she's being kind. The truck drivers pretend not to notice she's being kind. The Joads are allowed their dignity. The whole scene works because everyone conspires to preserve everyone else's self-respect. Warms my heart.

I also love John Qualen as Muley. Qualen had an astounding 225 credits as an actor including in such great films as Casablanca, The Searchers, His Girl Friday and Grapes. He really demonstrates his acting chops in this film. Muley is a difficult role because he could easily come across as a colorful eccentric. Instead Qualen makes him tragic. He isn't merely stubborn; he's a man whose identity is so tied to the land that leaving would mean ceasing to be himself. When he prowls around the abandoned homestead like a ghost, he's almost a harbinger of what's waiting for the Joads.

The tracking shot when the Joads drive into the first itinerant camp is memorable. It begins at a tilted angle which gives a disorienting sense to the scene. We see the faces and the shacks of the campers as their heavily laden truck pulls in. It’s but one example of how Ford managed to show the all-encompassing poverty and desperation that afflicted the migrants.

Grapes of Wrath the film, like the great John Steinbeck novel that inspired it, is masterful at showing the combined effects of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression coupled with the callousness and greed of the wealthy farmers, union busters and businessmen who took advantage of them. It is not a great representation of the American dream but it is a brilliant exposé of capitalism run amok.

What most people remember after watching the film is the speeches by Tom (Henry Fonda) and Ma (Jane Darwell) towards the end. This is as it should be. Rather than comment on them I’ll present snippets.

Tom: Then it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too.

Ma: Well, Pa, a woman can change better'n a man. A man lives sorta - well, in jerks. Baby's born or somebody dies, and that's a jerk. He gets a farm or loses it, and that's a jerk. With a woman, it's all in one flow, like a stream - little eddies and waterfalls - but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it thata way. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever, Pa, 'cause we're the people.

Like all of Ford’s best movies, Grapes benefits from superior camera work. One of the great cinema photographers of all time, Greg Toland, worked with Ford. It’s a movie one could watch with the sound off and just appreciate the beauty of the black and white. The lighting is masterful. The choice of close-ups, medium shots and long shots is always spot on. There are shots that bookend the film of Tom Joad walking in the distance from far away. He’s barely more than a stick figure against the darkening horizon but he attains a sort of importance and dignity from being seen in such a way. Ford did a similar thing with Fonda at the end of Young Mr. Lincoln.

The Grapes of Wrath is an important film as a social document. It must have had an incredible sense of immediacy when it came out because still today it still feels as if torn from the day’s headlines, to use a cliche. The theme of the rich getting richer while the poor only get poorer is constant in American history, more so at certain times.

What a fantastic film. Surely one of the great works of American cinema.

It's Time Again For Films I've Watched Lately Some of Which I Loved Greatly, Plus a Bonus Bit About Sean Baker

The Florida Project

The Florida Project (2017) Baker. I think of The Florida Project as the 21st century version of Grapes of Wrath. Forgotten, displaced people trying to scrape by either by seeking greener pastures or hustling for every buck. The Florida Project and The Grapes of Wrath are obviously very different stylistically, but spiritually they share a great deal. Both are deeply American works about people living on the edge of the economic system that is designed to soak them for all their worth while enriching the coffers of the richest. In The Grapes of Wrath, families are displaced by the Depression, their homes, that might go back generations, are gone. In The Florida Project the poor have no homes and no means to buy one or to even lease or rent one. They’re forced to get by as best they can on a month-to-month even week-to-week basis. The Florida Project is another absolute gem from Sean Baker that primarily centers around small children but also looks at the single parents trying to raise them. Scams and hustles and deals are part of living. Both films could have been depressing but both show people with dignity and their refusal to yield to powerful forces that could break them. Like Tom Joad in Grapes, the young girl Moonee in The Florida Project has an indefatigable spirit and a stubborn refusal to accept defeat. Maybe theirs is the true spirit of America. Willem Dafoe shines as the motel manager who struggles with being empathetic while enforcing the rules.

Red Rocket (2021) Baker. Another from Sean Baker and this one pulls of the difficult feat of featuring a perfectly unlikable person as its protagonist.The ex-porn star, Mikey returns to his Texas Gulf Coast roots and is an absolute train wreck. To varying degrees he disrupts the lives of his wife, neighbors and would-be underage girl friend. We sort of root for him because he has a certain charm and his success could elevate the lives of those around him. But there’s also a fatalism to Mikey. It’s impossible to see such a tire fire of a human being doing anything but falling flat. Baker’s genius is in making Mikey someone we can’t dismiss. His story demands a look, maybe because its so outrageous, maybe because there’s a sense that maybe this time… Simon Rex is incredible as Mikey which shouldn’t be a surprise because like a lot of great directors Baker is a master at eliciting brilliant performances from his actors. Red Rocket creates atmosphere through place and texture an environment is captured without romanticizing it, in this case a Texas refinery town. The setting becomes moral atmosphere.

Nothing Sacred (1937) Wellman. A Thirties screwball comedy in color? Strange but true. The queen of the screwball comedy, Carole Lombard stars, so you know it’s good. Her leading man is the reliable Frederic March. I’ve never found him to be a terribly interesting actor yet I’ve always enjoyed his performances. March and Lombard are aided by two of the better supporting players of their time, Walter Connelly and Charles Winninger. Nothing Sacred is about Hazel Flagg (Lombard), a small-town woman mistakenly diagnosed with a fatal illness, and Wally Cook (March), a New York newspaper reporter who brings her to the big city as a human-interest sensation. Hazel becomes a celebrity and loves the attendant attention. Romance develops between her and Wally, but the truth about her perfectly good health threatens to expose them. Connelly plays Wally’s editor and Winniger is the small town doctor who knows the truth about Hazel. Why he goes along with the charade is never explained but who cares, it’s screwball, Jake, and one of the better ones at that. Directed by Wild Bill Wellman who one doesn't usually associate with comedies, screwball or otherwise. 

 

Cold Water (1994) Assays. Like most great films Cold Water deepens on rewatch rather than diminishes. It resonated with me because atmosphere and emotional drift matter as much as plot. It’s a film about youthful rebellion that doesn’t romanticize. We are drawn to watching the two co-stars but can’t let ourselves exactly root for them. They are too morally comprised.The atmosphere is extraordinary. The music and the cinema photography create an unmistakable early seventies vibe. The long party sequence is brilliant. It is less narrative and more experiential. You feel the exhaustion, intoxication, longing, and temporary sense that these kids have escaped the world. Cyprien Fouquet and the stunning Virginie Ledoyen co-star. They’re not generally likable teens but they’re compelling. Ms. Ledoyen, seventeen when the film was made, had one of the most gorgeous young faces ever to grace the scene and this played a part in how enthralling I’ve found Cold Water. This is another film in which plot is secondary to mood and atmosphere, the feeling of being transported in time.

I Knew Her Well (1965) Pietrangeli. I’ve always loved this movie but initially struggled with the ending (SPOILER ALERT) because the main character, Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) commits suicide. In the first viewing and even the second it’s not something that is telegraphed and seems barely hinted at. But with repeat viewings it has the feeling of inevitably. She is a beautiful young woman on the outskirts of fame holding down numerous jobs flirting (literally and figuratively) with those who can make or break her. She endures heartbreaks, disappointments and even humiliation. Adrianna is, unsurprisingly given the times, objectified more than respected — if indeed she’s respected at all. There are high times but always with the sense that they are stops along the way and not something that will become a permanent feature of her life. Beyond her beauty she has little to offer the entertainment world. She can’t imagine settling for less so rather than remaining on the treadmill until she ages out, she takes the inevitable ultimate step. Somehow it’s not a sad story, perhaps because it is presented so lightly (while given deeper meaning). It in some ways recalls the great Fellini film, Nights of Cabiria in that it avoids cynicism without denying cruelty. Both feature a female protagonist who suffers the slings and arrows. One ends by offering us a sad smile, the other opts out of life. Both are poignant and important films.

 

Martin Short

Marty, Life is Short (2026) Kasdan. Among other things Martin Short is the greatest talk show guest of all time. He also ranks among the funniest people of all time in any setting as has been made evident by his role in Only Murders in the Building. His career extends back nearly fifty years and has seen him star in SCTV and, for a brief time, on SNL. He’s also been in a series of films, frankly most bad but never because of him. He’s created innumerable fun characters such as the interviewer, Jimminy Glick. Comic genius is the simplest and best way to describe him. However his life has been struck by its fair share of tragedy and then some. The death of a beloved older brother when he was young and both parents before he’d turned twenty and the passing of the love of his life, his wife Nancy Dolman from cancer at 58. Add to that the recent suicide of his daughter and it’s a wonder that he can smile let alone make us laugh. But Marty Short is made of tough stuff and is living proof that laughter is the best medicine. This documentary by Lawrence Kasdan gives us some insight into the man and not surprisingly it is one rich with friends, love and laughter. It really is a wonderful life.

Point of Order! (1964) de Antonio.No narration, no later-day analysts, just raw footage from the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. One hundred and eighty-eight hours of footage was reduced to ninety-seven captivating minutes. You don’t feel the lack of those other eight days worth of film, there’s plenty here. One thing you’ve got is the slow descent of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the red-baiting Commie hunter who wreaked so much havoc on the the public and its psyche in the early fifties. By the end of the film when he is continuing a tirade as the hearing room empties and everyone is going home, you can clearly see that this once mighty figure has been exposed. Joseph Welch, the aw shucks but brilliant attorney for the army played a very large part in bringing the monster down. It’s all compelling stuff.

Il Grido (1957) Antonioni. I loved this film. The pacing was interesting, not as languid as Antonioni's later films, but leisurely yet purposeful. It was more about mood than plot with the weather and settings playing a key role in establishing the feeling. It was melancholy but never depressing, never melodramatic. As if it were purposeful. You can see how it portends some of his later work but also how it stands alone as unique to his oeuvre. But unlike the later Antonioni films, Il Grido still has traces of postwar Italian realism in it. The workers, gas stations, river towns, economic hardship, transient labor — it’s grounded in a recognizable social world. Later Antonioni becomes more abstract, more modernist, more existentially rarefied.Il Grido is a romantic, heart-breaking road film. That preceding sentence will make sense if you see the film which I recommend you do.

Platoon (1986) Stone. Platoon is one of the greatest war films ever made. As a Vietnam veteran once said of it: it has everything but the smell of war. Indeed it can at times feel like you're watching a documentary made by filmmakers embedded in the unit. There is an immediacy to the story but at the same time it has a mythic quality. It has the sweat, confusion, fear, exhaustion, and moral randomness of war — particularly the one in Vietnam — but is at its core a moral tragedy. Private Taylor (Charlie Sheen) is a soldier and our guide being transformed by war. Like the war itself, Platoon leaves residue rather than clean resolution. The cast is wonderful as is everything about the production. It was a personal film for director Oliver Stone, based in large part on his own experiences. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture which shows you that the Oscars do sometimes award excellence.

Finally a word on the director Sean Baker. I’ve now seen all of his films at least twice. The missus and I just enjoyed a retrospective of his work. For me Baker's films are about people, their relationships and their dignity regardless of their status. They're about people struggling and succeeding in small ways. A Baker film is not a grand gesture, it's a nod, a quiet affirmation. Like Aki Kaurismäki, Baker respects his audience and trusts them to appreciate small moments. Baker's world is not for Pollyanna's, there is struggle, there is shouting, there is anger and there is not always resolution, as in life. I find his films life-affirming. I don't recall ever yawning during a Baker film. His films are not heavy-handed or preachy. The stories and the people speak for themselves without him underlining or emphasizing to make a point. He trusts the audience to understand or better still to find their own answers and meaning

My Favorite History Books and Biographies

Maybe the best of the best

Hoping that it will prove beneficial to someone out there  I have here compiled here my favorite history books and biographies. I’ve been reading such fare pretty much since I got out of the cradle. I'm a life long student of history. Where appropriate I’ve grouped together books that are by the same author -- as you’ll see in the first eight paragraphs. I’ve not written complete reviews of the books as there’s enough here to wade through as it is. I’ve also not linked the books — at least not yet — because frankly that's pretty time-consuming. If you’re interested in anything here (and I hope you are) it’s simple enough to find them and more detailed reviews as well. Hopefully this will nudge some people towards a book or two that they’ll find as edifying as I did. I’m admitting right up front: There are omissions. I scoured my bookshelves for titles but some books I no longer have and have slipped my mind. I’m sure within minutes of posting this I’ll kick myself for excluding something but there are over fifty titles here. So again I hope this inspires  you, dear reader, to read one of these wonderful books.

Adam Hochschild is my favorite history author. I’ve had the privilege of seeing him give book talks three times. He’s written three books that I consider masterpieces of historical writing: To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918;  American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis; and Spain In Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. I’ve also very much enjoyed three other books of his: King Leopold’s Ghost; Bury the Chains; and Rebel Cinderella. Simply put he’s a serious scholar who can write like a novelist. While he generally takes on sobering topics he presents them with a writer’s flair and gives readers hope and inspiration often based on a hero or two who emerge in the telling.

Robert Caro is for me the grand master of biography. The first four volumes of his projected five-volume bio of Lyndon Johnson are unparalleled. Master of the Senate was for me particularly impressive. Caro actually moved to where Johnson grew up in West Texas to better write about him. For the final installment he lived for a time in Vietnam because of course that’s the country that Johnson sent so many American bombs to. He grills interview subjects getting the minutest details to better understand the big picture. I also revere his book Working, something of a writer’s autobiography. I’ve tackled the massive Powerbroker and been enthralled but needed a break from it. I’ll be back.

Over the course of four books Rick Perlstein detailed the rise of the modern conservative movement. Those four were all brilliant books: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America; The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan and Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980. Comprehensive, balanced  and surprisingly entertaining. Taken together they’ve helped me better understand the political landscape of the last sixty years and what we are facing today.

Erik Larson writes popular history that reads like great fiction. My favorites of his books are The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz; Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania; and In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. I look forward to reading each again.

Jeff Guinn has written two of the best contemporary history books I’ve ever read and on two topics of enduring fascination. Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. These are books that bring back to life two compelling if repellent individuals whose actions shocked the world. 

Richard Evans wrote the Third Reich Trilogy: The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; and The Third Reich at War. Between them they are pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about Hitler’s regime. Page-turning history.

Two great books from Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.  In The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson chronicles the Great Migration through the lived experiences of Black Americans who fled the Jim Crow South in search of freedom and opportunity, revealing both the hope and hardship of that journey. In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she broadens the lens, arguing that the United States is shaped by an unspoken caste system that underlies racial inequality, drawing parallels with India and Nazi Germany. Together, the books are eye-opening looks at the Black experience in the U.S. and I wish more people would read them.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is another popular historian. Her book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II won the Pulitzer Prize and is one of my favorite all-time books. She is also the author of Team of Rivals and Bully Pulpit both of which I enjoyed immensely. 

Barbara Tuchman Guns of August. It’s been awhile since I last read it. This is the book that helped me fall in love with reading history.

FDR by HW Brands. I’ve read many a book on Franklin Roosevelt but this the best one which is saying something given the quality of many of the bios about Roosevelt. 

King: A Life by Richard Eig. Not hagiography but an honest look at the great Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Will be the definitive book on King for years to come.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots by Alex Haley. The former is the amazing story of a former gangster who rose to become one of the most important and influential figures of the 20th century. The latter is one man’s story of where he came from.

Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power by Seth Rosenfield. uncovers how the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, secretly surveilled and sought to undermine the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley, while also tracing how these conflicts helped shape the political rise of the odious Ronald Reagan. It reveals a hidden history of government overreach and political maneuvering that influenced campus activism and, to an extent, national politics.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. After seeing the film of the same name I walked out of the theater into a bookstore and bought this, one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. It’s a great companion to the film and vice verse.

All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery by Henry Mayer. I had the privilege of knowing Henry at the time this excellent biography came out so I got to talk to him about it -- a real honor. Garrison was an amazing man and this book does him justice.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. The best author biography I’ve ever read. The word thorough doesn’t even begin to define this marvelous book. All the details are worth pouring through.

Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff. I’ve read umpteen books on Watergate and this is the definitive and most comprehensive account. If you want to understand Watergate from a to zed, here’s your book.

All The President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein. Like the movie it inspired their Washington Post reports to this real time history  is a seminal work in it’s field. Admittedly this is not technically history being written as events unfolded but it certainly serves as it now

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin. The story of Patty Hearst, her kidnapping, her abrupt conversion into a revolutionary, her time on the run, her arrest, trial and use of white privilege to avoid jail time have always fascinated me. For years I yearned for a book like this and what a delight when it came out and was as good as the subject necessitated. Amazing stuff, superbly written and illuminating.

Muse of Fire: World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets by Michael Korda traces the lives of British and American soldier-poets—like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon—to show how World War I shattered romantic ideals of war and gave rise to a new, starkly honest poetry shaped by trauma, disillusionment, and firsthand experience. I loved this book. It was heart-breaking and illuminating and even inspiring. 

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot. I’ve bought this book four times. Once for me and three times as gifts. This is a kaleidoscopic look at San Francisco from the Summer of Love through the AIDS crisis. It encompasses such ionic figures as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, Bill Walsh, Dianne Feinstein and the Zodiac killer. Fascinating times and this is the book that best sums them up.

Grant by Ron Chernow. Chernow has cranked out a half dozen or so popular biographies including ones on Alexander Hamilton (the inspiration of a noted musical) and George Washington. His book on Grant was the one I found most engaging and revelatory. I knew Grant rose from the ranks to be a great general and was subsequently a poor president but Chernow’s book filled in a lot of blanks and gave me a greater appreciation for Grant and the understanding that he wasn’t such a bad prez after all.

Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow by Leon Litwack. Not an easy read as it details some of the lynching that were — tragically — part of the Black experience in the South for nearly a hundred years. I found it indispensable when I was a teacher. Scholarly yet written with compassion.

The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II by David Nasaw. I only recently finished this excellent book that centers around the effects the “Good War” had on Americans, particularly of course, those who served. The war reverberated throughout the country for years after and as we see, PTSD is not a recent phenomenon.

Kent State: An American Tragedy by Brian Vandermark. Another book I only recently finished it is a granular but readable look at the murder of four students in May 1970, an event that to some marked the end of the Sixties. 

Keep the Faith, Baby: Maintaining Hope Against All Reason

Kent State May 4, 1970

I recently read an excellent book about the Kent State Massacre (Kent State an American Tragedy by Brian VanDerMark) in which four people were killed and eleven injured by National Guardsmen during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970. I knew the basic outline of the story and some of the details. Still I learned a lot from the book. What I found shocking was that in the aftermath of the deaths of these innocent young people, their families received hate mail. Just so we’re clear, the parents of college students who were shot and killed during a protest were mailed letters expressing pleasure that their child had died, blaming them for the way their child turned out and wishing more had been killed. They continued to receive such missives in the years that followed as they pursued justice in the courts.

Polls revealed that the majority of Ohioans supported the action of the Guard and felt no remorse for the deceased. I don’t even know how to fathom such a level of …what is it? Coldness? Hate? Insensitivity? Anger? Evil? All of the above? But then this is a country in which lynchings not only went unpunished for 100 years but spectators showed up to watch.

How do you make sense of this? How do you make sense of our current administration? Their callousness? Their total lack of empathy? Look at what ICE has been doing in this country and how it is with the full support of the administration and for that matter many (though not a majority) of Americans.

Recently I was reading a book that detailed the massacres under Stalin in the USSR in the 1930s. This included mass starvation. That is intentional mass starvation as in: let’s allow these people to starve and in fact facilitate it. 

Under Stalin any perceived enemy was subject to summary executions. It’s staggering how many people Stalin had executed for suspicion of the merest slight.

It’s also incomprehensible how many people throughout history have found that indiscriminate killing is the solution to political problems. Nearly 40,000 demonstrators have been slaughtered in Iran during the recent demonstrations there. So we’re not talking about ancient history.

Speaking of depressing….The Epstein files. I walked by a group of high school girls the other day. They appeared to be around fifteen and sixteen, maybe sophomores. It occurred to me that they were around the age, in some cases even older, than a lot of the girls Epstein and his cronies were raping. I found it heartbreaking. Powerful rich, white people think they can get away with anything most probably because they usually do. The best example is our current president whose gotten away with everything this side of murder. Oh and if you’re a journalist and you ask him about some of his sins, he’ll call you stupid, say you’re a terrible reporter and work for a failing organization. If you’re a female he might complain that you never smile and might call you piggy. He can also label you a “loser.” I’ve never known what it means to be a “loser” aside from being the individual or team that fails to win an athletic contest and even then it’s harsh.

There is a lot of love and warmth and tenderness and kindness in this world but there is also what I’ve described above. The failure of empathy. The unwillingness and inability to understand our differences. The belief that different is wrong. It’s utterly heartbreaking. It’s also unavoidable. It’s in the news every single day. It’s throughout our history books. It goes back to the beginnings of civilization and has never stopped. 

It’s impossible to make sense of. Thankfully many of us our surrounded by love and we cherish those around us and are accepting of others even if they are of a different religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality or political stripe. We have to keep pushing against the Donald Trumps of the world. We have to fight for justice, truth and equality. Giving up is not an option. Without hope we’re dead. The death of hope is the death of morality. As we said in the Sixties, “keep the faith baby.”