BIG July Newsletter Book recommendations

By jazc

In anticipation of the significant election occurring this November, BIG would like to suggest books that may help us prepare in making these important decisions.

LEADERSHIP IN TURBULENT TIMES

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history.  This very readable book provides the early years of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson, challenges they each faced, and their leadership in terms of the  Emancipation Proclamation, the Coal Miners’ Strike, the Hundred Days, & the Civil Rights Movement, respectively.

THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU HERE: FINDING OPPORTUNITY IN THE TWENTIETH-FIRST CENTURY

Author Fiona Hill was deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump.  Her book There is Nothing for you Here:  Finding Opportunity in the Twentieth-First Century provides detailed observations and history concerning the lack of both opportunity and hope in three different societies of which Hill is knowledgeable:  the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia.    It is a call for a renewal in all three countries of equal opportunity in areas such as education and economic opportunity in order to reinvigorate the move toward democracy and away from totalitarianism. The Afterword offers specific suggestions of what we can do to create these opportunities.  Favorite quotes:  “Life is a team sport.” and “Hope is necessary for individuals or there is no hope for the rest of us.”  The book does witness the sad story of inter-agency rivalry in Washington, D.C. which makes one wish that the good of the U.S. and the rest of the world would be the prime concern rather than egos.  The personal perspective sometimes seems like this is a personal vendetta or defense by Fiona Hill.  Otherwise it is a very insightful, enlightening book.  I close with this quote from Hill’s book:  “In short, the people who had launched the vain attempt to keep Trump in the presidency had come from regions at a demographic tipping point, who believed their social status and economic prospects were impinged on.  Their anxiety about the loss of their perceived racial and socioeconomic position had propelled them into an emergent populist political movement – a collective, desperate attempt to counter their change in circumstances.”

TO MAKE MEN FREE: A HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

The final recommendation this month is Heather Cox Richardson’s  To Make Men Free:  A History of the Republican Party.   Richardson presents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower as the three Republicans who had the good of the common man as their priority.   Otherwise, she sees Republicans as falling into a pattern of creating a government for the financial elite.

All of these books are available at the Bandon Library or available from the Bandon Library through the Coastline Library system.