dagblog - Comments for "Some History and Current Affairs Books I've Especially Appreciated"

Good question. She begins

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:38:01 +0000

Good question. She begins the afterword to the paperback edition as follows:

The hardcover edition of this book was published in early September 2016. Two months later, something happened that the vast majority of America's pollsters, journalists, and politicians did not anticipate: Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Over the next year I made three trips back to Louisiana to see how the people I'd come to know over the previous half decades were feeling. They were ecstatic. All those I profiled in the book, and most of their kin, friends, and fellow parishioners had voted for Trump.

She then shares the reactions to Trump of several of the people she profiled. Late in the final chapter she shared reactions to various 2016 GOP presidential aspirants. But really the entire book, I found, was very helpful in understanding the sort of world view which Trump tapped into. Trump was not in all ways overtly hostile to the federal government on the campaign trail. But it seemed entirely understandable to me why he connected emotionally to the people profiled in the book. Beyond policy stances, he said many things they were longing to hear a politician say to leave them and their world view feeling understood and validated.

So, yes, I found it highly relevant in understanding the Trump phenomenon and prevailing sentiments in today's GOP and Trump-supporting part of the electorate.

BTW, one other thing I liked about the book is that in an appendix, she fact checks common impressions held by people she got to know.

Well it was such a great

artappraiser — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:01:02 +0000

In reply to Nothing gets by you, aa. Yes

Well it was such a great point he was raising. As I age, more and more I see this hamster wheel we are all on to create greater GNP for each country and I am going: why? So I remembered it, too. All I had to do is click on his name on the masthead here and scroll down to find it.

As to your new comment, the book by Hochschield certainly sounds intriguing. I did a quick google because I was curious to find the publication date, since you mentioned the Tea Party, and that of course has been around some time, and I wondered whether it was applicable to the here and now. And the publisher is touting it like this

Finalist, National Book Award 2016
One of “6 Books to Understand Trump’s Win” according to the New York Times the day after the election...

Did you find it actually did that for you? Or is it just more of a repeat of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Because I sense that while Trump definitely appealed to "Tea Party/Kansas" type districts, something new was in the mix, too? Something more "Steve Bannon" as it were, because he saw it as global, after all...

Nothing gets by you, aa. Yes

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 15:39:23 +0000

In reply to re: Maeillo's post: this one?

It seems as though nothing gets by you, aa. Yes.

re: Maeillo's post: this one?

artappraiser — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 15:30:13 +0000

In reply to Two additions:

re: Maeillo's post: this one? OUR NARROW FOCUS ON SUBSISTENCE AND WORKING FOR THE ECONOMY

Two additions:

AmericanDreamer — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 15:15:15 +0000

In reply to Some History and Current Affairs Books I've Especially Appreciated

Two additions:

Strangers in Their Own Land, Arlie Hoschschild. Read it--if you dare. Hochschild, a progressive Berkeley sociology professor, spent five years getting to know 40 Tea Party supporters in heavily, heavily polluted southwest Louisiana. She used views about the environment as her "keyhole" issue to try to, in her words, scale her own "emphathy wall" and, without judgment or getting into arguments with them, understand the world view of the people she sought successfully to befriend. Fascinating book.

As an aside--although views on gender are not something she chose to focus on in her book--she said, in the afterword to the paperback addition:

"....in men's minds, women tended to be divided into separate mental categories: daughters ("Be anything you want"), wives or partners ("Earn a lot but don't outshine me"), and potential rivals at work ("No pie charts, please").

"No pie charts" refers to opposition among the male Tea Party supporters she got to know to workplace affirmative action to increase the proportion of female employees.

The other addition is Fred Block's " Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion". Do people exist, or are we fated, to submit to an economic system perceived to be autonomous (from government, politics, and other realms of society such as culture, religion, etc.), coherent, and regulated by its own internal laws? Or is the economy actually fluid, not internally coherent or self-regulating, and adjusted or changing repeatedly in ways which produce very different outcomes depending on the existing legal rules and relative bargaining power of the parties?

Michael M wrote a comment a few months back which, implicitly to me, raised what seems to me to be a closely related question (I'm paraphrasing what I took to be Michael's meaning, and also elaborating a little--I am unable to locate what Michael wrote and would welcome anything Michael or others may want to say on this) of whether people exist to serve this economy, or whether the economy needs to, and could, better serve the needs of people.

If you believe that market fundamentalist thinking has been overwhelmingly dominant in public policy and in political debates in recent decades, and that this may be having some really problematic consequences for our society (and for our world), this book might help stimulate or refine your thinking on this topic.

edits to add: corrected a few typos

No short summary, key

PeraclesPlease — Tue, 15 May 2018 18:00:34 +0000

In reply to Adding Jared Bernstein, The

No short summary, key takeaways, examples?

Adding Jared Bernstein, The

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 15 May 2018 16:58:48 +0000

In reply to Some History and Current Affairs Books I've Especially Appreciated

Adding Jared Bernstein, The Reconnection Agenda, 2015, every bit as on point now as it was then. For those looking for proposals on what to do about the economy. I haven't so far come across an agenda offering more promise to cut across some of our deepest divisions to improve economic opportunity and security (and also not BTW enhance growth) for the vast majority of our fellow citizens of all backgrounds.

Yes. In these parts, Politics

AmericanDreamer — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 01:25:35 +0000

In reply to Yes I did, and was just as

Yes. In these parts, Politics and Prose bookstore in DC opened 2 new stores. They are a multi-dimensional community hub.

Yes I did, and was just as

artappraiser — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 22:09:46 +0000

In reply to Did you end up going to this?

Yes I did, and was just as nice as last year. The few vendors from NYC were the only snobby ones as typical. Even the London guys were nice. Met some real interesting people dealing from Chicago area and LA.

I just ran across this from March @ LitHub, kinda related, and very interesting, apparently there's no retail apocalypse in the book biz if you go local, the business is doing very well:

WHY IS A HARVARD BUSINESS PROFESSOR STUDYING INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES?

MAXWELL NEELY-COHEN TALKS TO ORGANIZATIONAL ETHNOGRAPHER RYAN RAFFAELLI

Did you end up going to this?

AmericanDreamer — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 21:47:52 +0000

In reply to Actually what I strongly

Did you end up going to this?