Uncovering Writing

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A powerful read with a strong narrative, Takei’s story is something we need to read again and again so that we can live up to the mantra of Never Again. The graphic novel format shines here, adding another dimension of depth to the story. The art and the story work so well together.

The cycle in America seems to be “We fail, we ignore, we accept, we restore”. Then we repeat. American concentration camps are back on the scene in the 2010s/2020s, something I would have thought unthinkable. Takei’s story shows us our history and asks, demands us not to repeat it.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was an impulse buy of a fine binding (Folio Society) with a local connection (Baltimore librarian and collector) based on a translation by Montague Summers, who wrote the Gothic Bibliography I consult regularly. I can’t say this purchase was really worth it, but I’m glad to have read it.

The editor of the series, Pennethorne Hughes, attempts to whitewash the Catholic Church’s action in murdering “witches”, predominately women. He says that while maybe many of the women killed were not witches, there still was something going on, hence the need to be vigilant. He claims that the Inquisitors and their overlords had nothing to gain by pursuing frivolous trials. He says they were only acting as best they could. This is disingenuous and simply fails to see the power that the Church had at that time and all the efforts it went to to sustain and grow that power from its founding up to the present. And he ignores human nature and how some people use a judicial process to punish those who they dislike or feel wronged them in some way.

The text itself is broken up into three parts. The first and third are only summarized in this edition. The first covers the “scientific” basis of witchcraft while the third covers the “trial”, torture and execution of the condemned. The editor notes that he has summarized the methods of torture in order to not offend or be sadistic. In some sense, I think he should have included it to further show how horrible this whole project was. He does give enough for me to wonder if the Malleus Maleficarum is being used as the foundation legal document for the US military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. By that I mean that the accused shouldn’t be allowed access to competent legal representation, they should be mentally then physically tortured, lied to, promised salvation and then executed since by definition they were guilty before proceedings began. Sadly, not much has changed in 529 years.

The second section focuses on what witches can do and how to undo their acts. It is a testament to Christian misogyny. Women are weaker, less spiritual, easily deceived, subverters of god and man, etc. Women who defy men for whatever reason are by definition under the influence of the devil. The logic of the writers is also very convoluted. Evil is all powerful, but only when god lets evil work. So, the god they are protecting and worshiping is childish, spiteful and sadistic and willing to harm even the just. How people didn’t rise up earlier from this religion boggles the mind.

The editor tries to end in a good way, noting how the situations that led to the Malleus in the first place are still present today (1968). He sees it in communism, fascism, the Red Scare of McCarthy, the Holocaust, the violence during Algerian independence, etc. He says while he cannot condone the violence, he hopes that after reading this edition, we may begin to understand how it came about. This effort raised the book for me from 1 to 2 stars. He could have gone a lot further, perhaps with an afterward, but maybe that should be saved for a different work.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was very much looking forward to reading this book. On one hand, I enjoyed it, but on the other, I think it could have been so much better.

The author captured and reported on the larger context of the overthrow of the democratically elected leftist president of Chile. I was familiar with the story, but that didn’t temper my anger as I worked through each phase of the effort to oust Salvadore Allende. The US, like it had done in Iran and Guatemala before, worked overtly and covertly to subvert the voice of the electorate in another country. Supplying guns, underwriting campaigns, fostering treason by the armed forces, etc. was the main role of the US. Nixon and Kissinger, the latter a true war criminal, worked nonstop to teach the Chileans that only voices in the US counted. The US primarily feared Chile’s election of Allende since he showed the socialism was entirely compatible with democracy and freedom. This was the antithesis of US propaganda and needed to be stopped at all costs lest it undermine the US’s entire foreign and domestic policy foundations.

Guardiola-Rivera echoes my own worry that the deification of the military and its members only leads to bad places. He also shows the impact that religion has, especially in the hands of the rightwing military and civilian propaganda groups in Chile. It was Christianity, through its Catholic instantiation, that was partly used to justify overthrowing the rule of law, arbitrary detentions and torture, book destruction, murder and genocide.

On thought I had while reading the book was how some people reacted to Allende’s attempt to nationalize the media in case of a coup. The assumption is that government controlled media cannot be tolerated or trusted. But, is corporately-controlled media much better? The people are still excluded from decision making and from having a voice in what is reported and what is suppressed.

As for how this book could be better, I think the work lacked focus. It jumped all over the place, in time, theory and explanation of events. There was nothing drawing me through the story to hang on to as I worked through this tome. It also felt like preaching to the choir at times, based on some word choices and cited sources. I think the author nailed it and is correct on most points, but how you make that case determines what impact the work will have beyond the already converted.

I think Jennifer Shirmer’s “The Guatemalan Military Project” is the best work I’ve read on the evolution of a country from democracy and freedom on the left to dictatorship and terror by the right. Her work covered a great deal of history but I never felt lost or confused as I worked from the introduction to the conclusion.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is a fantastic piece of philosophy, analysis and policy that ventures to allow women to fully engage with the world. Why wasn’t I ever exposed to this? I was lucky to be introduced to so many classics, but women were almost totally absent from my curriculum, especially when it came to philosophy or politics. Wollstonecraft shows that people were writing, talking and thinking about these important issues 222 years ago. She just blew me away with this piece and I highly recommend it to everyone.

Education is at the forefront of her recommendations, noting that women excel at learning, when they are given the same opportunities as their male counterparts. In her introduction, she attributes one cause of the lack of advanced knowledge and cognitive power in women to “a false system of education gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives” (p. 11).

Wollstonecraft works to deobjectify and humanize women: “My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their FASCINATING graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone. I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists–I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them, that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt” (p.13).

She hits the moralists, and this resonates today with calls from the rightwing and evangelicals in the United States: “And will moralists pretend to assert, that this is the condition in which one half of the human race should be encouraged to remain with listless inactivity and stupid acquiescence? Kind instructors! what were we created for? To remain, it may be said, innocent; they mean in a state of childhood” (p. 75).

Let me close with one more quote: “I know that libertines will also exclaim, that woman would be unsexed by acquiring strength of body and mind, and that beauty, soft bewitching beauty! would no longer adorn the daughters of men. I am of a very different opinion for I think, that on the contrary, we should then see dignified beauty, and true grace; to produce which, many powerful physical and moral causes would concur. Not relaxed beauty, it is true, nor the graces of helplessness; but such as appears to make us respect the human body as a majestic pile, fit to receive a noble inhabitant, in the relics of antiquity” (p. 209).

Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray Monk

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’ve been torn about how to rate and review Ray Monk’s biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. I learned a great deal from it, including the evolution of modern physics and details of Oppenheimer’s hearing that lead to his security clearance being stripped. It also led me down the path to think about the bigger picture: education, morality and justice. However, there was a definite tabloid journalism feel whenever Monk ventured beyond the physical sciences. Passing along innuendo and making unsubstantiated guesses at what other people thought really bothered me. And while Monk started me down the path to thinking about the bigger things, he never really sounded the klaxon himself. If I hadn’t brought a background to the table, I think I would have been lost.

Oppenheimer as an individual intrigued me. I relished his Renaissance approach to life. He wasn’t just a physicist, but he studied languages, read poetry and fiction, followed philosophy and religion and politics. One of his mentors at the University of Utrecht played the cello. Today’s focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and the downplaying and defunding of music and liberal arts threatens our humanity.

I think a classical education is important to understanding the world about us. Throughout history, humanity’s technology has alway outstripped its advances in morality. Without an appreciation for what differentiates us from machines, e.g. our art, literature, music, and so forth, we can never humanely use the tools we create. This is especially true of the weapons we make. Oppenheimer was called a traitor or subversive for even thinking that the Hydrogen bomb was only a weapon of genocide, something that had no military value except to create massive death. The original atom bomb paled in comparison. But free thought, speech and association, cherished on paper by the US, were all but missing in practice.

Monk also taught me a great deal about universities in the early 20th century. Many graduate students and professors could move about relatively freely, spending a year here, a few years there, especially when they were young and sough after. Oppenheimer helped create an American school of physics, gathering great minds from Europe and mentoring new homegrown talent who then spread across the nation’s universities. Within a generation, US-born and educated physicists were making groundbreaking discoveries. Oppenheimer also worked with his students, co-authoring papers and including them in cutting edge research.

But, Monk noted anti-Communist which hunts that got people fired and kept others from getting hired or receiving tenure. Happily, my alma mater, the University of Rochester, stood up against one such anticommunist witch hunt in 1949. Instead of heeding public calls and firing an assistant professor who had been accused of communist sympathies, they promoted him. Monk notes that the University displayed “a moral steadfastness that was all too rare during these troubled times” (p. 557).

Monk certainly covered a lot of material in 695 pages, plus 72 pages of notes and 22 pages of bibliography. He included a lot but it sometimes reminded me of reading Wikipedia. Monk would tell me a little about X, then switch to Y, then Z, back to X and maybe off to R for a little bit. He would always close the loop and finish all his open thought threads, but I felt like I was mentally bouncing all over the place at times. This was more prominent in the first three parts of the book. The final part, which covered his life after the end of World War II until his death, seemed more focused. I wonder if this was his core part of the book that he then grew into the larger opus.

I wish he delved deeper into Oppenheimer’s wife and children, who are mentioned only in passing and often in a derogatory manner without substantiation or elucidation. Also, he should have had a stronger critique of the red scare and its impact. I applaud Monk for unveiling the way the scare itself was used by unscrupulous people to wage their personal feuds at the expensive of others. But he never really talked about how circumscribed American rights were at this time.

In the end, I gave the book three stars and would say that it s a good history of physics and a solid jumping off point on Oppenheimer. Many have recommended Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin’s biography, American Prometheus: The Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. These two books, along with Hans Bethe’s essays The Road from Los Alamos and Jay Feldman’s Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America might be a great way to further study on Oppenheimer and these times.

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not your typical beach read, unless Nevil Shute’s On The Beach is your go to holiday reading. However, this was a phenomenal book. Well-written, detailed, meticulously researched. I came away from it much more knowledgeable and a great deal more afraid of the weapons we have built since World War II. I grew up during the 70s and 80s, watching more and more missiles being built and the growing movement to stop this madness of nuclear weapons. I worked these issues from the inside in the 2000s, via grassroots and in DC policy circles. I still learned things that made me shudder.

Schlosser paints an amazing history of these weapons from deserts to the sky, from labs to the Oval Office and from military commands to corporate suites. This is not a polemic, it’s not a screed, it’s just damn fine research that let’s the reader draw their own conclusions. Using a 1980 nuclear-tipped missile accident at a Titan II missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas as his frame, he builds an entire house the explores the development, use, planned use, safety, security and maintenance of the US’s most deadly arsenal.

This book deserves six stars, but I am happy to give it GoodReads highest rating of five. 2014 has started out well for me, with two five star books to ring it in. Please read this book!

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Hughes Galeano

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the thesis of Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. I also agree with his analysis and data. But, I thought his presentation hurt his cause. It read more like a polemic, a preaching to the choir rather than an effort to persuade. He doesn’t write in an overly technical or esoteric style, following his own belief that scholarly work often obfuscates or creates texts only for internal use. But he never connects with me, as a reader. I was instantly and profoundly drawn into Ernesto Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries. That work connected through his prose and letting others tell his story for him. Galeano’s work is more about ideology and less about humanity.

Having said that, this is a good introduction to the history of Latin America. Paired with other works, e.g. the Guevara work and The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Lisa Lowe & David Lloyd, eds.), you will garner a good understanding of the role of imperialism, neoliberalism, colonialism and political economy in Latin America.

I’ll close with a quote from Galeano’s final paragraph: “In these lands we are not experiencing the primitive infancy of capitalism but its vicious senility” (p. 285).

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this in one sitting. It’s easy going after you get used to his pacing and style of writing. I’ve read his Innumeracy book back in the early 90s and I think another one of his as well.

The topic is of definite interest to me as an atheist. However, I didn’t find anything in the book that was new, though it might be good for someone who is beginning to question faith or religion. For those who’ve already made the leap, I think it’s preaching to the choir, pun intended. I don’t think his arguments would be persuasive to many of those in the believing population, a point he makes occasionally in the book. I think his writing will also likely help educated readers pat themselves on the back for knowing the philosophers, mathematicians and theories he casually drops into his text.

On a more useful note, though not necessarily for believers or non-believers, he shows that there really is no way to prove, or disprove, the existence of a god or gods. I’d say that our current language/thought system is incomplete to describe the system. It’s like Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. There are certain statements in a logical system that can be posited but not proven true.

What shines throughout the book is that he does indeed show that many explanations for the existence of god can be proven to be fallacious, often via simple logic or mathematics. So while there is no way to disprove god exists, the various “proofs” that have been put out there are wanting, sometimes severely. He touches on frame theory, noting how people will throw away facts that contradict their belief system, regardless of whether that fact is true or not (p. 54, 108). He decimates creationist and intelligent design approaches that suggest the world is so complex it needs a god, not realizing that they address complexity with an even more complex solution (p. 13).

He posits an interesting situation about the need for a god. “Imagine a serial child killer with his thirtieth victim tied before him. Prayers for the child are offered by many. If God is either unable or unwilling to stop the killer, what good is He? It seems that the usual response to this is that we don’t understand His ways, but if this is true, once again you must ask why introduce Him in the first place? Is there such a shortage of things we don’t understand that we need to manufacture another?” (p. 125) Well said.

He also calls out the politicization in America of religion and how the anti-science, anti-thinking positions have been incorporated into the platform of the Republican party. In a funny but telling example, he notes how many fundamentalist Christians ardently believe in the invisible hand of the market to organize complexity out of nothing, but scream violently against any support for Darwinian evolution (p. 20).

What I take away from this book is a confirmation of my following a form of Camus' philosophy of the absurd. I choose not to make a leap of faith nor commit suicide. I choose to make sense of the world by giving life meaning from within myself. I create my own meaning without flinching from a lack of meaning or a “leap of faith.”

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was very excited to pick up a book on the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It was one of the most important parts of FDR’s New Deal and it has had a long legacy with the infrastructure it created and the careers it helped launch. The timing of reading this book is also good in that I thought the US should have resurrected the WPA during the Great Recession that started at the end of the second Bush Administration. The government could have helped provide jobs and rebuild our roadways, bridges, schools, libraries and so forth. Private industry has never focused on these issues, filling their pockets rather than uplifting their fellow citizens.

Author Nick Taylor covers some of the amazing things that the WPA did. He tallies up the numbers in his epilogue and it blew me away. The WPA built 650,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, and 125,000 buildings, including what became the Camp David Presidential Retreat in Maryland. It built or updated 800 airports and paved 700 miles of runways. Almost 900 million hot school lunches were provided to students and it operated 1,500 nursery schools. The Music portion of the WPA performed 225,000 concerts to over 150 million people. The theater project and its partners performed plays, puppet shows, vaudeville acts and circuses to 30 million people. On a smaller scale, books and magazines were delivered via cars, trucks and even pack animals to urban and rural people in order to rebuild their spirit and not just provide for their physical needs. In Kentucky in 1936, 33,000 books and magazines were delivered via these mobile libraries to 57,000 families. This program was expanded throughout the South and then to many parts across the country.

The arts were an important component to the WPA. For the first time, some artists were able to work on their art without having to have another job to support themselves. Muralists were prolific, covering public buildings and school walls with what would be held up as indicative of “New Deal art.” The WPA also funded art classes for school children and the general public. Theater, especially in urban areas, was strongly supported. So was music, although the director of the Music project focused mostly on European classical music, eschewing American folk, jazz, gospel and even some American classical composers. Even given that, the music part of the WPA was the largest Arts project employer.

Amazingly, the author shows in example after example that the rhetoric of Republicans and the conservative media and populace hasn’t changed at all since the 1920s. The same “government is bad” theme is echoed by Republican lawmakers, the 1930s-era Chicago Tribune and its ilk, and many business lobbying groups that are still in existence today, such as the National Association of Manufacturers. These groups said that people should just get a job (there were none with 25% unemployment) and take care of themselves (without any money) and each other with charitable organizations (that were stretched beyond their small coffers). Federal and state Republicans fought benefits for their constituents, including WPA jobs and projects, on the basis of ideology rather than necessity. Their constituents suffered, including privation and real starvation, to sate the officials’ hatreds. Compare this to today and health care system the Obama Administration helped create. Even the religious conservatives acted the same then as they do today. Fr. Coughlin blamed droughts on failing to be godly enough and that Democrats and the New Deal were simply doing the devil’s work. No ideas, just ideology and hate.

A perfect example of business’s speaking out of both sides of their mouth was an incident involving a Vineland, New Jersey glassworks factory (p. 276). The WPA resurrected jobs and the factory for these specialized glassblowers. Over time, their glassware vases and other creations became sought after, to the consternation of Corning Glass and their Steuben Art Glass subsidiary. Corning forced the government to end the funding for this program. They argued that if there were beautiful vases in public buildings, they ought to be from Corning, not from a WPA-funded factory. To me, that’s not a reason at all. Businesses claim they shouldn’t have to compete against a government-funded entity. They claim this is anti-capitalist and anti-free market. But, capitalism calls for competition and consumers normally buy the best products. So, instead of making their product better, Corning Glass forced the WPA-funded organization to close, sending those skilled glassblowers right back onto the welfare rolls.

While I liked the book and the information it gave me, I did have a big problem with its approach. It felt scattershot. I read a review of this book before I started and it really stuck with me. The review called it a book report on the WPA. As I read through each short chapter (often only a few pages long), I felt like someone had done a big Google search of “WPA” and then used those hits and Wikipedia to craft each section. Granted, there are interesting and valuable nuggets of originality when the author focuses on specific people who worked on a WPA project. But these character sketches are too brief, and sometimes too obvious, to illustrate the point. There was no momentum that these stories built, more just a smattering of color here and there.

The author also bought into the Red Scare rhetoric on one level. He goes to great lengths to show that the WPA was unfairly tarred as overrun with communists, socialists and other leftists. He makes a strong case that these were simply attacks by those opposed to the New Deal and FDR in general and the WPA in particular. However, while showing there wasn’t a communist takeover, he believes that there really were evil, mean communists out there trying to take over everything in some concerted and orchestrated manner. A lot of that was simply part of the Red Scare and that those who rallied for better wages, safer working conditions and access to the plenty that the rich had were not communists but just people asserting their rights as American citizens.

The House UnAmerican Activities Committee in Congress, known as the Dies Committee for its chairman, frequently targeted the WPA. They helped institute loyalty oaths for WPA workers, and eventually full-blown affidavits that seemed to curtail or eliminate freedoms of speech, thought and assembly. WPA Artists and muralists who were labelled “red” had their works destroyed. These committees and their rightwing supporters saw no irony in the suppression of the artist freedom. They only allowed testimony from those who supported the committees views, even when there was no evidence, or worse, contradictory evidence available. McCarthyism didn’t start in the 50s, it started in the late teens and continues on up to the present.

In conclusion, I would have liked a book that flowed better, and that was more focused. The WPA was an important institution and I wonder if I hadn’t known about it before I picked up this book, would Nick Taylor’s argument have been enough to make me like it? Further, I wish he’d spent more time on the WPA’s legacy. As it is, he devotes eight pages in an epilogue. Given all that, there’s, there’s a great thought he highlights from one of the people on the WPA Writers Project. This writer said it’s only welfare or “make-work” until you yourself need it Then it’s a job just like any other one (p. 301). That’s a great statement on the WPA and the importance role government can and should play for its citizens.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

James Bamford writes a good book on the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 era. This is a good follow up to his groundbreaking work, The Puzzle Palace (1982). It’s a quick read as long as you’ve been following real news over the last ten years (i.e. not watching Faux News) and are either familiar with or don’t care about some of the multitude of details about communication systems that Bamford describes. At times it feels like he weaves his story throughout a large encyclopedia on the intelligence community. The core of the book is very short but having it all in one place makes this a useful reference.

I wish Bamford had explored more deeply a few of the outcomes of the NSA’s programs post-9/11. For example, he doesn’t delve into the correlation between the Republican Congress’s push to outsource NSA’s work to private industry and their ideological axiom that “Gubment bad, m’okay.” Further, he could have explored the election outcome possibilities of the New York Times holding off on their story in 2004 about NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. Had they not held off until the following year, their story would likely have been a huge splash heading into the Fall and could have prevented Bush from getting a second term.

The book could have done with a little more editing. Bamford would mention one thing and then repeat it almost verbatim within the next paragraph or two. There were also some stories he gave that weren’t related to his central thesis and could have been expunged without losing his focus nor the strength of his argument.

For me, there are a few important things to take away from this book. First, laws and safeguards are only good if they are enforceable and there is accountability. Laws against spying and communications snooping have been on the books, in some format or another, since the beginning of radio and radio interception. Every time, these laws are broken and those who break them are caught. The public gasps and is horrified that it happened, introduces new laws or penalties and then blindly believes all is well … until the next instance. NSA Director Hayden, Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft at the beginning, Gonzales, Yoo, Addington, etc. all knew the law, all circumvented the law and all got off scot free due to back room deals, fear mongering and the need to “keep things secret.”

Second, Bamford cites various people who felt their conscience wouldn’t allow them to continue doing their jobs due to their actions being illegal and/or unethical. Some leave, some leave after a long period, and some just sit back and brood internally while helping the cogs of the system grind along. Others are browbeaten by colleagues and superiors to “just do it” or fear mongered into committing acts that go against their values, and sometimes against the laws and the Constitution. We need to encourage people to stand up for their beliefs and our laws.

Third, President Eisenhower’s retirement warning to beware the military industrial complex is still true today, especially with regard to the bed occupied by the NSA and their contractors. Senior executives at NSA, including former directors, leave government service and sit on the boards or become executives at private companies. These companies then get very profitable contracts. It seems there should be some effort made to prevent the appearance, or actuality, of collusion and bringing in the bucks because of who you know. And like with other public/private partnerships, it’s sad to see all the public funds being used to create technology that is then resold to others with the profits going to the companies, not the government or taxpayers.

A seemingly endless bucket of money is poured into a black hole without questioning what is being done with the money and if we are getting our money’s worth. In a post-9/11 world, greed is good and profitable for security contractors. Worse, some of these contractors sell their goods and services to other countries, friend and foe, to help monitor and in some cases, control and suppress their own populace. Bamford writes that “for the companies, marketing mass interception systems to dictatorships and authoritarian governments to enhance their police states and to jail opponents is just business” (p. 261). He quotes Steve Bannerman, a VP of marketing at Naros (one of these companies): “Once our customers buy our products, it’s relatively opaque to us” (p. 261). Looking the other way, especially in these types of instances, is simply unacceptable. Today’s Stasi are wearing red, white and blue and munching on Mom’s apple pie.

Finally, I’d like to ask who will be our age’s Senator Frank Church? I hope she or he comes to the fore soon. Bamford connects the dots and shows us where some of the graves are. In some of those graves are our privacy and transparency in what occurs behind NSA’s doors. Spy agencies and their contractors get total privacy while the general population, who are supposed to be receiving the protection of these groups, are left with nothing but their lives recorded in databases and analyzed by supercomputers.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you don’t know who Frances Perkins is, you must read this book by Kirstin Downey. The first female Cabinet member, she was the Secretary of Labor under FDR, from 1933 through 1945. Her ideas and her perseverance created many of the programs that encompassed the New Deal. These included a forty-hour workweek, a minimum wage, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, a federal law banning child labor, direct federal aid for unemployment relief, Social Security, and a revitalized public employment service. The only thing she advocated for that she didn’t get was national health insurance, which took until 2010.

I told a friend over dinner recently that I’d never heard of Perkins until 2011, when the Republican Governor of Maine dissed this Maine native and removed a mural that included her and renamed a room that bore her name. I went through grade school, high school and college without ever hearing about her. That is a disgrace. Downey has done the country a great service in resurrecting her name and accomplishments.

What’s most impressive is that she did this as a woman in the early 20th century. Reading about the sniping that she had to endure as a strong woman in a national position of power was truly sad. More pathetic is that such discrimination still occurs today and remains the bread and butter of the right. The war on women didn’t start today or in the 1930s, but its main proponents were then, and are now, Republicans.

While Perkins had many great attributes, there were a few that I didn’t like. Both Perkins and Downey buy wholesale into the Red Scare and the hounding of decent people for thinking differently. They try to justify the un-American assault on freedom of thought but more often they say one guilty person justifies the wholesale character assassinations that occurred. Perkins helped set up loyalty systems and vetting then complained that the media blew the red scare out of proportion. Downey should read Jay Feldman’s “Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America.”

Perkins also kept quiet about many things, including sexism, racism, and the Holocaust. She and Downey attribute this to her strong New England training to keep quiet, not rock the boat and not embarrass one’s boss. In my opinion, leaders need to speak out not embrace outdated codes of conduct. If something is wrong, keeping quiet just perpetuates the problem.

A situation that Downey doesn’t comment on is when Perkins is replaced by Lewis B. Schwellenbach as Secretary of Labor under Truman. She complains that Schwellenbach showed up in her office after being sworn in and took it over, regardless of Perkins' last minute scheduled items. Perkins herself did the very same thing when she took over as Secretary of Labor in 1933. The situation is ripe for commentary, but Downey only paints Schwellenbach in a bad light.

Finally, I was put off by the author and Perkins religiousness, especially toward the end of the book. Perkins believe that secularization was bad, claiming that only her god and Christians had people’s best interests in mind. She tries to say that the nation was not founded as a secular nation, going so far as to focus more on the 20th century invention of “in god we trust” rather than the founding motto of “e pluribus unum.”

As far as the mechanics of the book go, I think Downey should have done another draft or two before publication. The book flow is awkward, jumping back and forth in time as she coves different topics. I felt a little whiplash as each chapter, and sometimes sub-chapters, jerked back to early 1933 before moving ahead to the mid-to-late 30s and then the 40s. Downey also adores her subject, to the detriment of all the other actors. No one is perfect, but in this book you might think Perkins is a god while everyone else is a bumbling fool, devoted acolyte of Perkins or a devious person.

There is a special callousness by both Perkins and Downey to Eleanor Roosevelt. They both ignored the great things that woman did, especially with her work related to the United Nations. They snipe at her and diminish her work, claiming that she only showboated, self-aggrandized and road FDR’s coattails, which is so incredibly shallow. They do to Eleanor Roosevelt what they rightfully complain about was done to Perkins while she was a national figure.

Finally, I wasn’t happy that the author called her subject by her first name throughout the book, while rarely referring to the other actors, especially the men, by their first names.

Having said all that, I think this is a good book and the topic is something everyone in America should know about. Frances Perkins changed our world and what she did affects every American today.

Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir by John Paul Stevens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I first heard that John Paul Stevens was writing a memoir that coved his life’s intersection with the Supreme Court of the United States, I was very excited. He was one of my favorite justices, due to his somewhat liberal bent. Liberal in that the rest of the Court had moved so far to the right that a moderate conservative is now seen as a “liberal”.

What a fantastic book. Stevens gives insight into his judicial philosophy and what has transpired during the tenures of the last five Chief Justices. He briefly touches on the twelve Chiefs who preceded his time with the Court. Interestingly, his five greatest Chiefs all were before he became acquainted with the Court. They were John Jay (1st Chief), John Marshall (4th and his favorite), William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes and Harlan F. Stone.

Stevens also gives a rare insider view of the mechanics of the Court, regarding personal interactions, filing systems, discussions and some non-judicial activities. For anyone interested in important cases that concern our Constitution or juris prudence since our Founding as a nation, you really want to read this book. I’d really hate to give away the cool things he tells us about the more mundane things that happen behind closed doors, but suffice it to say, working at Joe’s Bar is never a dull day!

The five Chiefs he covers are Fred Vinson, Earl Warren, Warren Berger, William Rehnquist and John Roberts, Jr. Stevens was a clerk to Justice Wiley Rutledge during Vinson’s term as Chief. He was a private attorney during Warren’s term and then a justice during the remaining three Chiefs time at the Court. He seems to have the most distaste for Rehnquist (as do I) as far as his approach to liberty, the death penalty, states rights and his personal arrogance (e.g. decorating the Chiefs robes differently than the other justices on the Court).

My greatest distaste with the book in not in what it covers but in Stevens takes on judicial pay. He claims that judges, especially at the federal level, aren’t paid enough. I’ve heard this argument and thought it convincing when I’ve read it in other places. Stevens, however, really destroys its veracity for me. He says that he had to sell his summer home, that he flew to on the plane he owned, because he couldn’t afford it as a judge. His friend on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals also had to sell his second home when he was appointed. Excuse me but WTF! Stevens and his ilk must have no comprehension of fairness if they believe owning multiple homes and private planes is something their salary should cover when the great masses of this country don’t have their own homes or much money.

Overall, this book was an excellent read by a mostly excellent justice. His thoughts on the death penalty, states rights and how the Constituion is a living document are worth the price of admission. As he says near the end, history “provides an insufficient guide to the meaning of our Constituion.” Justice John Paul’s Stevens memoir of his time interacting with the Court is part history, part analysis and part “user’s guide” to our Nation.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This collection of essays was not my favorite of Marx writings, but there were engaging sections sprinkled here and there. It was also interesting to hear him make keen observations about religion, politics and economics in a young United States (early to mid 1800s).

In his essay “A Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right”, Marx gives what I thought was a great understanding of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation:

"Luther vanquished servility based upon devotion, because he replaced it by servility based upon conviction. He shattered faith in authority, because he restored the authority of faith. He transformed parsons into laymen, because he transformed laymen into parsons. He liberated men from outward religiosity, because he made religiosity an inward affair of the heart. He emancipated the body from chains, because he laid chains upon the heart."

Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America by Jay Feldman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jay Feldman has done a great service in writing this book. He writes of how politicians and community leaders have often stirred up controversy where it didn’t exist and used minority groups as convenient scapegoats. The book covers actions done by Democrats and Republicans from the early 1900s up to the present.

It’s shocking how much the government created mountains out of simply nothing in order to further policy goals (e.g. supporting World War I), consolidate power (Hoover at the BI and FBI), generate money (part of the reason why loyal Japanese-Americans were forced off their rich agricultural property during World War II), etc.

Even worse, the media whipped it the hatred and hypocrisy, time and again. And not just some controversial rag but the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. Bloodthirsty calls for silencing alternate opinions by all means necessary flew out of the so-called Free Press. Back then, these papers were right up there with today’s Fox (Faux) News.

At first, I was a little overwhelmed by Feldman’s example after example for each situation he covered. However, after awhile, I realized that this was one of the major accomplishments of the book. Overwhelming evidence that what happened was not an aberration. The constant scapegoating, federal spying and outright lies by Members of Congress and the Administration were not simply a sign of the times. Over and over again, he shows how individuals at the time told their superiors that the end result the boss wanted simply wasn’t true and could not be supported by facts. The superiors outright ignored their confidants (not some anonymous grunt miles away but their direct aides and often high-government official aides) and pushed forward with some of the most undemocratic, un-American actions I’ve ever read.

Attacks on teachers, labor unions, minority groups, peace groups, women’s rights, civil rights, etc. went on nonstop since the early part of the 20th Century. Whole movements were undermined and destroyed by FBI disinformation campaigns (under the various COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Programs), including many leftist parties that were not coordinating with global communist but were fighting for better wages, safer working environments and respect. The mind boggles at what would have happened if socialist parties had a chance to develop in this country. Would they have grown into the social democratic parties we see in Europe that provide safety nets and make sure that their citizens aren’t one illness away from poverty?

The irony of most of what was happening was that while saying that they were working to protect the Constitution and fight against world authoritarianism, various federal, state and local governmental forces practically turned the United States into a police state, with the outright support of the media and often certain sections of the population. We’ve always been able to pull back from the precipice, but Feldman ends the book by noting that we must be ever vigilant, for there is a tipping point.

I originally thought of giving Manufacturing Hysteria four stars since I thought the epilogue that touched on the Bush II era was more of a sketch than a real contribution. If you paid attention during the last decade, you know what he would be writing, but it doesn’t stand up to the quality and depth of the rest of the book. However, overall, this is an excellent book and worth reading and keeping close at hand as America continues growing up.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I originally read this book back around 2004/2005. A good friend lent me her copy and I cruised through it quickly. I just reread it. While I still am not an anarchist (I believe in the value of the state), I thoroughly enjoyed her essays and encourage others to read this book. Just like my recent rereading of several of Karl Marx’s works, Emma Goldman was a prescient author. Writing over 100 years ago at times, she nails today’s political, economic and gender issues. Sadly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I enjoyed her take on religion and how it has been more of a gloom/tears/blood experience rather than what it professes to be. She expertly covers the impact of labor and capital on workers and their families. She explores the intersection of art/culture and capital, and how capital looks to simply commodify art without looking at any intrinsic value. She covers the emptiness of politics and how it is easier to titillate rather than advance analysis and real policy changes. It’s also funny, to this reader, that her take on Republicans over 100 years ago is still valid today.

Her essay on “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty” is spot on and worth buying and reading this collection of essays in and of itself. To quote at length: “Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”

Even better, in that same essay, she comments on what I call “boners for blood” that has been rampant ever since the first Gulf War. “We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens.”

I enjoyed thinking about her suggestion that a draft creates skepticism of the military (finding ways to get out of service and questioning authority) while a volunteer force propagates the belief in militarism and a blind faith in military leaders and patriotism.

Overall, a very good critique of current (late 1800s, early 1900s and 2011) events that should make you think. While I am not an anarchist and don’t subscribe to her comments on why anarchism is the only path, her analysis is spot on.