Everybody should read Richard Evans’s magisterial trilogy (two volumes are out) on the history of the Third Reich, and then file it under the Department of Eerie Historical Parallels. The Coming of the Third Reich shows weak political institutions failing to confront a power that seeks to destroy and replace them; The Third Reich in Power shows the Nazi Party consolidating all institutions as part of gleischaltung, or alignment. The third volume is yet to come.

Fortunately, so far, we haven’t lost millions of dead in the trenches, undergone starvation, or the German inflation, so our traumas and pain and rage and fear are less — or we have less excuse for them — than the Germans. But there are plenty of lessons for how authoritarian leaders and followers behave…

The moral of the story is that even a great county in a great civilization — the home of Mozart, Goethe, Einstein, the maker of trockenbeerenauslese wine — can allow itself to become governed by a criminal regime, and descend into madness and barbarism in a single generation. Like climate change, it can happen fast. Human nature being what it is.

Other than that, I’m still reading Agatha Christie novels; oddly, or not, also in the 1930s, and showing in countless small ways the effects of the Great War on the British.

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

… see the Howler for this 1999 classic (Leah reminds me).

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Of Christie’s—she wrote so many…

It’s important to study past failures of government as Evan does. Thanks. Does he detail how the old government failed? What in particular was their failure?

Now she’s someone I miss. Jonathan Karp, her editor on “Who Let the Dogs In?” who appeared to her “about fourteen years old” called the book her “career retrospective.”
“Jonathan,” she said at the time (2004), “that makes me feel slightly dead.”
Unfortunately, Ivins is now for real slightly dead, although I like to think the “slightly” applies and that she’s just the other side of the ether, snorting with laughter and shaking her head at our current follies.
Her book is a must-read for those disgusted with today’s politicians. She had a merciless eye, but an understanding of human nature. I only wish she were here now to take us all apart. Especially you, the Democrats on the RBC who “changed” the results of the elections—would she say “the real results just being too inconvenient”? And you in Congress, especially the GOPers, who went along on the FISA bill, because although the Constitution is nice and all, and you’ve spent a lot of time hollaring about how important it is, you can’t let sentiment get in the way of the really important stuff, like making a buck, or depriving people of the ability to get in a phone booth by themselves. Assuming anyone knows what a phone booth still is. It’s not a subway car for starters.

“You may think,” she wrote, “a person would bring up the subject of political rhetoric in our day only to dis it, to mourn the decline of the once-noble art, to compare the puny babble of our modern pipsqueaks to the magnificent cadences of Jefferson, Lincoln and Churchill and so lament anew. Not me. What I mourn is that none of the current candidates measures up to the glory years of the Ineffable Big George Bush and the Immortal Danny Quayle, who shall be forever revered for setting new standards in political language.” (This was before Bush Jr.)

She then goes on to quote Dan Quayle: “If we don’t succeed, then we run the risk of failure.” (Did Bush Sr. really run with Quayle to accustom the nation to this kind of thing?)

And Bush Sr.: “To kind of suddenly try and get my hair colored, and dance up and down in a mini-skirt or something, you know, show that I’ve got a lot of jazz out there and drop a bunch of one-liners, I’m running for president of the United States. I kind of think I’m a scintillating fellow.”

In 2000, she wrote:
“I know it’s hard for young people to envision age or illness, or the sick feeling of frantic despair when your old wreck of a car finally dies (it always does this in traffic) and will not start again. People who work two and even three jobs to support their kids get so tired—you can’t imagine how tired—and guilt and depression and anxiety all pile on, too….This is an old argument between radicals and liberals; sometimes I’m on one side, and sometimes I’m on the other. In the primaries, I vote to change the world; in November, I vote for a sliver more for the programs that help the needy.”

George H. W. Bush’s book “A World Transformed” (Knopf, 1998) is a huge look at the history of his era. It is Bush’s views and his diary during those times, with National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft’s notes interspersed. The Berlin Wall actually fell under BUSH SR., not Reagan. The insider’s look at whom they consulted, what they talked about and what their fears were—many foreign leaders were afraid of a united Germany and its possible social unrest—is fascinating and was unknown to us in the general public of the time. Of the Persian-Gulf War (I), Bush wrote:
“Bob Gates told me this morning, one thing historic is, we stopped. We crushed their 43 divisions, but we stopped—we didn’t just want to kill, and history will look on that kindly.”
(p. 487)
The poignancy of this in view of the ensuing history is immense. One only wishes Bush Jr. had not been so set on totally making his own course, because I think some of the advice Bush Sr. and Scowcroft gave him was good.

The silver-haired, kindly receptionist motioned me over. To my amazement, she motioned me closer and lowered her voice.
“You must read this,” she said, opening a lower drawer and handing me a book. “I couldn’t put it down.”
I took the book home and read it. I will never think of that receptionist the same way again.

“Mercy” by Julie Garwood is the fastest paced book I have ever read. Just when you think everything’s settled down, boom! Something—or someone—else big and unexpected comes running right in the door or through the window! It’s a mystery with a murder and romance between characters in it, with really big unknowns and crossing plots.

It’s got a fair amount of sex and violence, be warned—but it’s not cheap or malicious. Definitely a beach book but one that will leave you breathless.

Thumbs up, thumbs down?

by Gordon Korman; Hyperion, DBG.

It’s a young adult book and has the honesty and painful memories of that teen-age time. What makes it interesting is that the main character, Capricorn Anderson, was raised on a commune without much access to the outer world, so it’s kind of the 60’s meet the 00’s—and see what happens!

One favorite moment:
“Of course it’s empty. It’s your locker.”
“What do I have to put in there?” (Cap) demanded.
“How should I know? It’s your stuff.”
“When we lock things away,” he said with conviction, “we’re really imprisoning ourselves.”

The innocence of the time of hippies, where many thought you could draw life lessons from all kinds of things you ran into—like lockers (ouch)—seems gone. But it was a shared time, where people had a social contract to be open. It can happen still. (Read the book…although the last chapter was—unbelieveable. Would that really happen to a flower child from the ’60’s? Is that really their chosen happy ending?) But the difference between the 60’s-80’s flower children and the Hope-Change children of today is that the flower children were very oriented toward changing themselves and being open to enlightenment—and acting on it. Most of the hippies eventually returned to main stream society—but without them, we would not have organic food in supermarkets, gay marriage, and family caretaking leaves, etc., etc. The truth inside must manifest itself outside—like Kennedy’s and Shriver’s Peace Corps and its like. The Hope-Change children of today must find their mission—not electing one candidate and thereby freeing themselves permanently from racism or caring for others, but by opening themselves to everyone and helping transform society in great ways.

The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War is a clear, interesting history of how Americans went from “no entangling foreign alliances” in Washington’s time to positive public views of the use of American forces. For me, baffled at anything other than nausea at war, it helped me understand a little. I guess I need to make it clear that Bacevich condemns the current militarism.

I’d second Lambert’s recommendation of Evans’ Coming of the Third Reich, except that it made me suicidal reading newspapers about the Democrats’ capitulation to an authoritarian minority party here and now. The similarities are stunning. I’m finally getting enough calmness back to contemplate reading the second volume.

I also recommend, every chance I get, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry Wallace. It’s got everything: interesting biography, a reminder of the exciting early days of the New Deal when smart people went headlong into addressing a nation’s problems, evidence that the press hasn’t actually gotten much worse in covering Wallace’s ’48 campaign. And on FDR — I’ve read Jean Edward Smith’s biography, which seemed good to me. Anybody recommend another one that I should read?

And for fellow fiction fiends — C.J. Sansom’s Winter in Madrid is a look into the Spanish Civil War and European tensions as fascism rose in Europe. It’s not as good as the Shardlake series set in England in the 1640’s, but it helped me understand more about the Spanish Civil War. That’s puzzled me in movies from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie on. And then those very good Spanish Civil War movies came available since 2000 (Pan’s Labyrinth, Spirit of the Beehive, and Butterfly, so it was nice to read about the era in a somewhat more encompassing story.

fought in the Spanish Civil War with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (I come by my lefty credentials honestly!). You might want to rent the excellent documentary The Good Fight, which is about the Brigade, from Netflix. It’s narrated by Studs Terkel and has interviews with many of the Brigade’s members. (My uncle was a consultant on the film.)

is also an excellent movie on the Spanish Civil War.

by Michael Perry
Harper Perennial

Based on the real New Auburn, Wisconsin, (pop. 485), this is a book for both the BGTRLI voter AND the elitist. In fact, one of the central draws of the book is the tension the reader experiences on behalf of the narrator, Michael Perry: not only “will he accidentally kill people?” in his job as newly trained volunteer firefighter, but also “will he blow himself so far out of the water socially that he won’t be able to recover?”
Michael himself eventually discusses his divided loyalties: he jokes that he sees himself as “the Bohemian Farmboy…the Arty Redneck…”; and as stomach-turning a creative class observation as that comes off, he goes on to say:

“Truth is, I am a dilettante in either camp. I own a rusty old pickup truck, but it’s not running right now, and I don’t know how to fix it…I have read great works of literature but recall only the grossest details…I once composed an essay, and it had this aw-shucks feel, which I maintained right up to the third paragraph, only to resume the narrative with the words, “Heraclitus said…” I read the essay aloud at a bookstore engagement, and when I invoked Heraclitus, a large man in the back of the room snorted like an ox.” (p. 110-111)

But Perry gets you, and here’s why the book is worth reading: he’s awkward and self-conscious but he’s trying to talk about the life and death love and care we show to each other. He tells the story of rescuing his neighbors (huge invasion of privacy aside), the unintentional humor of “Tricky” Jackson who drove into the laundromat with a carful of drinking buddies, one of whom the firefighters can’t rouse: “Somewhere along the line, Tricky says, “He was unconscious when we put him in the car.” (p.42) Perry brings us to the sadness of teenager Tracy who doesn’t make the sharp turn in her car:

Now a man is leaning by the girl’s shoulder, speaking to her intently, his face tight with fear. She reaches to him. It is her father. “I love you, Tracy,” he says. “You be strong.” (p. 15)

This is a political book because it makes you feel the needs of the people the author is rescuing. When he says, we don’t have that equipment here and you know they have to wait for another ambulance or a chopper, you feel your guts tighten in sympathy. He brings the stories of people into your life. When Perry talks about how much a little improvement had helped the firefighters rescue townspeople in trouble or illness, you feel, yes! Yes, let’s work together to help each other, life and death is close-by, unseen until they arrive in the form of an accident or illness, showing us who we love in the flashing of blue lights.

Here are BTD’s comments on Sean Wilentz, of recent NR fame, writing a review on Davis S. Brown’s Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (NYT: “David S. Brown assesses the life and work of postwar liberalism’s exemplary intellectual.”) and quoting Digby for good measure. Interesting for all five of their views of history, and particularly views of Obama then (2006) and now:

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2006/07/14…