One of the ‘fair and balanced’ ways the mainstream media keeps acting to normalize Trump is through articles on the theme of voter amnesia. (the two links embedded there should give you free access to a New York Times and a Washington Post article.) Over time, you see, voters tend to forget what things were like under Trump, and as they ponder their current disatisfaction, they begin to ‘remember’ things being better under Trump.
Oh, how very interesting, New York Times and Washington Post. But have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, that voter amnesia comes from you pushing the Trump years down the memory hole, and being reticent about covering the outrageous statements and ideas coming from Trump now (when he isn’t being completely incoherent, that is.) Or maybe because you love ruminating about Biden’s age, but give a pass to the nearly as old Trump, who is spouting mentally confused gaffes at every speech he gives. Or maybe it’s because you consider stories about how well the economy is faring under Biden, and how skillfully he is navigating a treacherous time in foreign policy, too boring to cover.
I can tell you that I sure as hell don’t have voter amnesia. I remember every disaster Trump wrought in his presidency, and I remember every horror he has unleashed in his post-presidency era of sedition. I can’t believe that after the gutwrenching election year of 2016 culminating in Trump’s win, and after the four year disaster of his presidency, we still have to be pummeled by his presence nearly four years later. Eight years of this shit weighing on us.
My Literate Lizard Bookstore will be doing our part to fight voter amnesia and build to a huge blue wave in November. My Blue Wave Special promotion will start later this week and runs through Election Day, with dozens of discounted books on the disastrous Trump years, on fighting disinformation, on the rightwing plans for America, and on the goals Democrats seek to achieve. There will be at least thirty books for kids as well, as this is an all-hands-on-deck election. While I haven’t linked publicly to the promotion yet on the home page and on social media, it is live in the background as I finish tinkering with it, and you can visit it HERE. The discounts are already in, and you can place orders from the promotion. I’m happy to consider your suggestions for books to feature as well.
Here are some of the books I’ve been dipping into lately which you’ll find in the promotion. 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, by Eric Klinenberg, is an excellent book to bring back the memory of those dark Covid days of 2020. Personally, I’ve never forgotten. I still have vivid memories of the fear that permeated our lives. My wife does stand-up comedy, and I remember she had a gig booked at the House of Comedy in Phoenix just a day or two before everything shut down. The gig was cancelled at the last minute, because there was no audience. Though the shutdown was not yet ordered, everyone was spooked. The normally busy shopping and dining out center where the club is located was nearly empty, though the businesses were still open. I remember the first time I ventured out to the supermarket, with maks, gloves, getting in and out as quickly as possible, heart hammering, leaving the groceries in the garage to wipe off before bringing them in the house. I remember the isolation, and how boring Zoom meetings were in place of meeting people in person. Klinenberg’s book does a good job in recreating those days by focusing on the lives of seven people in New York City, setting their live against the uncertainty, fear and chaos.
Policing Pregnant Bodies: From Ancient Greece to Post-Roe America, by Kathleen M. Crowther, is one of the books currently in my bedside pile. She does an excellent job of demonstarting the long history behind some of the rightwing tropes currently popular in their efforts to end abortion and other elements of women’s healthcare. Regarding the emphasis on the fetal heartbeat as one marker for banning abortion, for example, she examines the history of medical understanding of the organ. In ancient Greece, the heart was viewed as a seat of the soul, the essence of being human. A medical treatise from the 4th Cenury BC stated that “The intelligence of man is innate in the left hollow [of the heart] and rules the rest of the soul.” In the Bible, the Old Testament mentions the heart over 800 times, and the New Testament over 200 times, often referencing it as an essential influence in our human emotions. As science has advanced to offer a clear understanding of the purely biological function of this organ, the emotional overtones remain strong, and thus are used to argue against abortion. Similarly, she looks at laws penalizing women for being the cause of a miscarriage through examining the long history of men defining the womb as a special but precarious space that the women must protect zealously.
I’ve also been reading The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider, by Michiko Kakutani, which does a good job of documenting the movement of ideas from the fronge to the center. as the former book critic of the New York Times, she works books into her narration frequently, but also presents a lot of history and draws on other creating arts as well. For example, in discussing the rise of the internet, she references T. S. Eliot writing in 1935 of “distracted from distraction by distraction” in a “twittering world”; Marshall McCluhan in 1969 saying the emerging electronic media techno;ogies promoted “discontinuity and diversity and division...conflict and discord”; and Google’s Tristan Harris in 2019 saying that algorithms “ drive us down rabbit holes toward extremism and conspiracy theories.”
The election is getting close. Countering the idea of ‘voter amnesia’ have been the many positive results in elections, primaries and special elections over the past year, which indicate that when voters cast their ballot, they still have a very clear memory of the Trump years and the disasters that await if we allow even more Trump years. Let books inform you and inspire you, but don’t forget to get out there and do what you can to educate voters and help campaigns.
The spring publishing season seems to be winding down, and the list of featured new nonfiction is short this week.
THIS WEEK”S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, by Shefali Luthra. Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of these patients—who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved—illustrate how fragile the system is, and how devastating the consequences can be. A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures. "Shefali Luthra places at the center of this urgent volume the people whose lives, bodies, families, and ability to provide care have been wholly remade by Dobbs, insisting that the stories of human suffering cannot be sidelined as some niche politicized concern. An absolute must-read—tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need."—Rebecca Traister
- American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873, by Alan Taylor. In a fast-paced narrative of soaring ideals and sordid politics, of civil war and foreign invasion, the award-winning historian Alan Taylor presents a pivotal twenty-year period in which North America’s three largest countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—all transformed themselves into nations. The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. The outbreak of the Civil War created a continental power vacuum that allowed French forces to invade Mexico in 1862 and set up an empire ruled by a Habsburg archduke. This inflamed the ongoing power struggle between Mexico’s Conservatives—landowners, the military, the Church—and Liberal supporters of social democracy, led ably by Benito Juarez. Canada was meantime fending off a potential rupture between French-speaking Catholics in Quebec and English-speakers in Ontario.
“From its first map showing the United States of America and the Confederate States of America bordered not only by each other but also by the Republic of Mexico, British Canada, and Indian Territory, American Civil Wars shifts our perspective to reveal the US Civil War in the context that everyone at the time understood to involve multiple sovereignties in North America debating and fighting over territory, slavery, sovereignty, and democracy.— Kathleen DuVal
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Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022, by Zachary Small. A New York Times investigative reporter wades into the murky, pixelated waters of the multibillion-dollar NFT market—the virtual casino that sprang up overnight in 2020 and came crashing down, with all its celebrity hucksters, just two years later. A vibrant and witty exploration of the increasingly blurry line between art and money, artist and con artist, value and worthlessness. "A rollicking journey through the phantasmagoric landscape of NFTs, cryptocurrencies, DeFi and art, with side jaunts into video games and the healthcare industry. Small manages to make the brain-muddling concepts behind all of these things not only legible to the average reader, but animated by a dizzying cast of characters . . . A fun read that proves the old chestnut: life really is stranger than fiction." —Sarah Douglas
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House of Lilies: The Dynasty That Made Medieval France, by Justine Firnhaber-Baker. Reigning from 987 to 1328, the Capetians became the most powerful monarchy of the Middle Ages. Consolidating a fragmented realm that eventually stretched from the Rhône to the Pyrenees, they were the first royal house to adopt the fleur-de-lys, displaying this lily emblem to signify their divine favor and legitimate their rule. The Capetians were at the center of some of the most dramatic and far-reaching episodes in European history, including the Crusades, bloody waves of religious persecution, and a series of wars with England. The Capetian age saw the emergence of Gothic architecture, the romantic ideals of chivalry and courtly love, and the Church’s role at the center of daily life. “More than the history of a dynasty, House of Lilies is the engrossing story of the building of France, the greatest political and cultural power of the Middle Ages. The book’s protagonists are not only violent, saintly, and hapless kings, but also a series of fascinating, clever, and often indestructible queens and consorts.”—Paul Freedman
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In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife, by Sebastian Junger. For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived. This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. “Having come within mere minutes of not surviving a ruptured pancreatic artery, Junger has returned to masterfully braid together a discussion of family, near-death experiences, quantum physics, and the miracle of modern medicine. With this soon-to-be classic, Junger has crafted an ode to the magical healing power of love and the wonder of life.”
—David R. Dow
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Paradise of the Damned: The True Story of an Obsessive Quest for El Dorado, the Legendary City of Gold, by Keith Thomson. As early as 1530, reports of El Dorado, a city of gold in the South American interior, beckoned to European explorers. Whether there was any truth to the stories remained to be seen, but the allure of unimaginable riches was enough to ensnare dozens of would-be heroes and glory hounds in the desperate hunt. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh: ambitious courtier, confidant to Queen Elizabeth, and, before long, El Dorado fanatic.
- American Diva: Extraordinary, Unruly, Fabulous, by Deborah Paredez. American Diva journeys into Tina Turner’s scintillating performances, Celia Cruz’s command of the male-dominated salsa world, the transcendent revival of Jomama Jones after a period of exile, and the unparalleled excellence of Venus and Serena Williams. Paredez chronicles the celebrated and skilled performers who not only shaped her life but boldly expressed the aspiration for freedom among brown, Black, and gay communities. Paredez also traces the evolution of the diva through the decades, dismayed at the mid-aughts’ commodification and juvenilizing of its meaning but finding its lasting beauty and power. “One of Paredez’s great themes is that a diva can empower her audience—us—to reach beyond our ordinary selves. Diva ambition is potent and generous. It challenges other artists and defies cultural pieties. Deborah Paredez is the American Diva reborn as scholar, poet, and critic.”— Margo Jefferson
All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them, but If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be truly appreciated. I would love to be considered ‘The Official Bookstore of Daily Kos.’ Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 20% each week). I’m busily adding new content every day, and will have lots more dedicated subject pages and curated booklists as it grows. I want it to be full of book-lined rabbit holes to lose yourself in (and maybe throw some of those books into a shopping cart as well.)
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