Every day people are born and people die. People marry, divorce, change jobs, have kids, watch those same kids move on to college and careers and family. These are all the ordinary things we expect are ours because we are good people, and fair, and play by the rules. Some people who have similar aspirations and hopes and dreams and us, however, are taught time and again that they must have no expectation of success and freedom and safety. They are considered, as a class, inferior, suspects in crime, complicit in social decay, willing agents of destruction and chaos and evil. They excluded from normal society, from jobs and housing…

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an excellent book, for many reasons. First, it’s a book about the history of the Western Hemisphere (mostly), centering on Haiti and San Souci, and then upon Columbus. Second, it’s a book about how history is determined. It’s not just a compendium of facts. History is developed and managed based upon certain facts and upon the suppression of other certain facts. Third, it’s a book about what history means, how facts are presented or suppressed, what the history of that history is. Fourth, it is simply an excellently written book.…

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole My rating: 4 of 5 stars Most excellent–funny, insightful, wacky. View all my reviews

American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan My rating: 5 of 5 stars Very nimble and clear writing for such a book packed with data and narrative. The author argues that the experience of the Virgina colonies show the natural and inevitable rise in slavery as an American solution to a very real problem of labor shortages, excess capacity, and open markets. View all my reviews

Burning Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Carl Waters My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was given this book to read for this review. But I would have read it anyway–it was enjoyable, fast-moving, and clearly written. This book is the tale of George Harris, his wife Eliza (of ice floe fame), son Harry, and those around him in antebellum slave-owning Kentucky and the free state of Ohio under the ministrations of both slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act. It is also a retelling of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s opus “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the book written by a little woman that started a great war. The story opens as George, a slave…

Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter by Craig R. Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars Note: I received this as a gift. This book is a good insight into the life and thoughts of the writer, Dr. Craig Smith, who has many talents and passions for life and politics. Dr. Smith, a professor of rhetoric and debate, gives great insights into the politicians of the late 20th and early 21 century, focusing on Republicans he served as speech-writer and advisor. I found it especially interesting when he talked about Senator Bob Packwood, as Dr. Craig worked closely with the senator for decades up through the time of the senator’s resignation…

This is a phenomenal piece of writing. It will get a Pulitzer Prize. Read it now. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture. Even if you don’t believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at. What does it say about the character of a person that they could make that joking comparison, and that so many people would cheer for it. Nothing good — and nothing that does honor to the cause of Jesus Christ.  http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-sacrilegious-sarah-palin/ I have nothing more to add.

“Oh, but you can’t offend [Islamic terrorists], can’t make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” ~ Sarah Palin Well, no. This is not a Christian statement. This is an anti-Christian statement. Jesus, I must remind people, did not recommend torture as a means of conversion. People who say this type of stuff are not representing Christ. And again, where are the Christian voices speaking out against this perversion of their Christian faith?

The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates My rating: 5 of 5 stars African-Americans have struggled to acquire their voice in American culture. We have had uncertain biographies and stories written by others; in the last century we had the eruption of Harlem when black voices began to be more fully heard. It’s still difficult to write those stories, but more and more black Americans are telling their lives, not to justify them or to make their unknown presence known, but to say “I am here and this is what I think and feel. Take me on my own words; accept…

The Control of Nature by John McPhee My rating: 4 of 5 stars Very good, entertaining stories of three attempts by men and women to control nature–to control the Mississippi, to control the volcanoes and lava of Iceland, and to control the floods and fires of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles. View all my reviews

Zulu Heart by Steven Barnes My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is just a fine book. It is the sequel, of course, to Lion’s Blood, but I have to hand it to Mr. Barnes in that the story and the characters have advanced. We still have Kai and Aiden, brothers beneath the skin in a nation on the North American continent where things are delightfully awry compared to today–somehow in the distant past it was the African nations, and not the Europeans, who conquered the world with learning and art and culture and military prowess. Kai is now functioning as the Wakil of his estate-empire, a slaveowner of northern…

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson My rating: 1 of 5 stars This is a dreadful, unfunny, pretentious pile of trash. I got to 48 pages and stopped reading–there is not one bit of wit or freshness in this book. It is written because the guy has a TV personality. But there is nothing of value so far. View all my reviews

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin My rating: 5 of 5 stars My lord, this is a very fine book. Ms. Le Guin does not write one word more than necessary, but within the laconic toolset she writes a story. There is Owen, and there is Natalie. Owen is intelligent but not quite smart. Natalie is talented but not able to communicate her vision. They stumble into each other, part, and come together more fiercely. They learn that they themselves must learn who they are. It is all there in 90 or so pages with generous margins, but it is _all there_. The only thing…

Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was not prepared to love this book as much as I did. This was recommended to me by a friend, and I picked it up somewhat as a curiousity. I like sci-fi and alternate histories, and thought this might be like dozens of others I’ve read. It is the telling of an America where Alexander the Great didn’t die, and didn’t go on to conquer the East but instead conquered the West, setting up the rise of the Abyssinian and Egyptian kingdoms, changing the course of Western Civilization, and bringing about the discovery of the American continents by…

Recently someone posted on a website their observations about Black Americans, that they were curious and frustrated at how Black Americans, religious and hard-working and future-oriented, would so often and so blindly pick the Democrats when they went into the voting booth. Frustrated that Black Americans were so lazy and uneducated, so “urban” and so exotic. I responded with the following. I don’t expect the person to read it, much less take my advice. But I thought it a useful summary of how to educate yourself to understand other people without having to do much work except read and think a bit. Do you know any actual Black families? Go…

The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States by Edwidge Danticat My rating: 5 of 5 stars Really very good. This is a collection of tales of the Haitian Diaspora–those who fled from Haiti for various reasons to settle elsewhere, and their reactions both to their new homes and their home in memory. It was not what I expected, due to my own ignorance. I expected it to be much more a collection of writings by people just as if they were journaling, but these are more than that. Yes, it is somewhat like a collection of journals, but the stories are thoughtful, and insightful, and…

The Nazi Seizure of Power. I generally don’t link to books, and I think predicting the future by using the past is stupid. And I most assuredly do not believe that opponents of the ACA are Nazis. That is stupid as well as incoherent. You can oppose the ACA and be a respectable American. The reason I like this book, though, is that it illustrates how a sincere, moderate government can be toppled through the inaction of the moderates and the folks who just want to get along, because there are some who want to overthrow the government and take power. The Weimar Republic was fairly stable and working on…

So I said I’d make this available. So here it is: “If Your Hair’s Too Long, There’s Sin in Your Heart.” If you’ve never sat through an Evangelical church service, this is an affectionate parody. If Your Hair’s Too Long (audio file) I have the full album. It’s non-stop.

Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner My rating: 5 of 5 stars Foner writes well. This is the first thing you should know. You will not be reading a dusty tome of long-ago lives. You will read about actual people from just a few short years ago, how they felt, how they struggled, what they wanted, what they hoped for. You will get in touch with these people, some enslaved, some free, some made free. Some were the people who worked for freedom, and some were those who upheld slavery. It is all a mess in a way, just like life, but Foner extracts the…

“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton We fail at Christianity when we think it covers only attending group meetings to listen to speeches, memorization of information about the speeches, and obedience to rules that keeps us only going to group meetings and listening to speeches. If that is what Christianity is, then it is not difficult at all, for it requires nothing of you but your body sitting passively. Christianity is about what you do with your life, and how you affect others with the love you display and the acts of mercy you do. If…