Books read: 11 (3 Fiction, 8 Non-Fiction)
Unique Authors: 9 (6 Men, 3 Women)
Average Rating: 4.36 (4 Fiction, 4.5 Non-Fiction)
warning: some spoilers may be contained in the following reviews
The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #1) - Robert Caro
Robert Caro is a legendary biographer, and the project he’s devoted his career to has been his biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, which is why I had to pick this up. It’s the 1st out of 5 (the last one is still a WIP), and covers LBJ’s childhood from poverty stricken rural Texas all the way up to his failed Senate campaign in 1941 at the age of 33.
Fundamentally, these books are about power. How it can be attained, wielded, and used to dominate. LBJ was the master of exercising his high agency to break implicit rules with the goal of creating a behemoth of a political machine.
He’s also someone who didn’t believe in any ideology, which I had previously assumed to be fairly rare for someone who ascended to the political heights he did (I’m in the process of de-conditioning myself of naivete). The only thing he worshiped was the acquisition of more power to exercise his will. He’s the purest form of naked ambition. He was willing to lie, cheat, and steal to improve his political position (stealing elections was his forte). He would adopt whatever ideology was necessary to cajole those he wanted to curry favor with. Nobody really even knew what he believed in, but he was an expert in convincing them that he was aligned with their view of the world. He lived and breathed competition, and had a dogged work ethic which allowed him to outwork everyone he went up against. He sucked up to those above him, and worked the crap out of the sycophants who idolized him.
Caro does a beautiful job describing the richness of Texas country life (he apparently moved to Hill County for three years when writing this book), and the vastness of all the ancillary characters blew me away. There may never be such a well researched biography ever written — Caro turned over every stone when putting this together, and somehow dredged up primary sources from all parts of LBJ’s life. I finished the book aching to read more and more and will make it a point to finish the whole series in the next couple of years. 5/5
Age of Revolutions - Fareed Zakaria
Zakaria takes a look at a few historical revolutions: the birth of liberalism, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution to understand the conditions that set them up, why they succeeded / failed, and the legacy they’ve imprinted on today’s world. He then analyzes modernity through the lenses of (1) globalization, (2) technology, (3) identity, and (4) geopolitics to produce some legibility around the current state of affairs and where we may be headed.
The aforementioned forces have changed the world at a blistering pace. Globalization + technology have lifted up the world economy but have also changed where we live (e.g. urban / rural split), relate to our communities (e.g. religiosity, cultural erosion), and interact with reality (e.g. the digital economy). The ethnically homogeneous nation-state has been upended by mass immigration. And the post-Cold War unipolar regime of Pax Americana may be coming to a close with the ascension of China and other developing economies. Liberalism as a vector to view international relations is seeing a whiplash from realpolitik.
I, like Zakaria, lean classical liberal, so I found his biases charming. I particularly liked his framing of progressives and conservatives both contributing to the liberal cause — progressives want to transform society and extend liberal freedoms to larger swaths of the population, while conservatives adhere to tradition to manage the rate of change, as societies that attempt tops-down change too quickly fold into themselves.
One qualm I had was that the book felt like a hodgepodge sometimes. He would meander, throw some small asides, decide to substantiate certain arguments but blow through others. 4/5
Wild Girls - Ursula Le Guin
1 short story, 2 essays, a collection of poems, and an interview? Oh, what a treat. The titular story is classic Le Guin, the piece on modesty called my name from the rafters, and the scathing critique of the publishing industry nestled in the impassioned defense of reading literature lit me up (I read the new Sam Kriss piece on reading a day later and am now convinced I need to do something to revitalize literacy in the world). 4.5/5
The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke - Elizabeth & Amelia Warren
This mother and daughter duo aim to answer the question (back in 2003): Why do so many families go bankrupt even though they’ve added an additional income to the household? Their argument goes as follows: