What Unites Us by Dan Rather

 

In these days before the 2020 election I have been reading Dan Rather's What Unites Us, recently released in paperback form. 

I was able to join Politics and Prose Bookstore's Zoom talk with Rather. He was interviewed by Jennifer Steinhauer, whose book The Firsts: The Inside Story of the Women Reshaping Congress I read a few months ago.

Rather lays out the shared values Americans which can become a platform for building consensus in our divided country. 

One person, one vote. The freedom of speech, to dissent; freedom of the press--no matter how flawed. The importance of science and knowledge, even if we disagree over specific ideas. Education. Our desire to be an empathetic people.

Rather hopes his book can be a jumping off place for dialogue, starting a much needed conversation. 

Rather harkens back to his childhood and draws from his years as a journalist. He first defines patriotism as opposed to nationalism and ends with what it means to be a citizen. 

In the Zoom talk, a listener asked Rather if the country has ever been as divided as it is today. He recalled the 1960s when rebellions and nonviolent protests erupted over war and racism. Today, he notes, protests include a broader demographic mix in age, class and ethnicity. 

"I'm a reporter who got lucky, very, very lucky," the eighty-nine-year-old Rather responded to being called a 'national treasure.' His tip for aging well? Rather replied luck, genetics, God's grace, determination, and dedicating one's life to something bigger than yourself, and finding a life companion who sticks with you through thick and thin.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

Dissent can sometimes be uncomfortable, but it is vital in a democracy.

Like so many others in our country, I journeyed from ignorance to tolerance to inclusion.

Empathy builds community, Communities strengthen a country and its resolve and will to fight back...I worry that our nation today suffers from a deficit of empathy, and this is especially true of many in positions of national leadership.

I remind myself and others that we have been through big challenges in the past, that it often seems darkest in the present. The pendulum of our great nations seems to have swung toward conceit and unsteadiness once again, but it is in our power to wrest it back. 

Ultimately, democracy is an action more than a belief. The people's voice, your voice, must be heard for it to have an effect.

I voted absentee last month, delivering my ballot to the city hall. 

Please--vote.

Homeland Elegies: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies was a revelation, a chance to see American culture and history and politics from the viewpoint of an 'outsider,' even if that outsider was American born.

Ayad Akhtar  has written a novel with a strong narrative voice that reads like memoir. It's compelling storyline and conflicted characters engage the reader. It is also a novel of ideas, a dissection of social and political culture.

How Christian is America? Consider the commercialization of Christian holy days, the Christian based place names of cities, the King James Bible language and words that are woven in our writing and speech, how we do personal hygiene, dogs in every home. 

The accumulation of wealth, buying sprees dependent on credit cards and interest, and the importance of corporate wealth and the power it wields is another theme. It's a Wonderful Life, that beloved Christmas movie, the narrator realizes, was really about money and power.

Central to the novel is the experience of living in a racist culture, especially after 9-11. When the narrator's car breaks down in rural Pennsylvania, the narrator finds himself vulnerable.

The narrator travels to Pakistan to visit family. Is returning to one's family homeland the answer? The anger that fuels people here is also found abroad. 

"America is my home," the narrator affirms. 

Homeland Elegies, this poem that mourns the country of our hopes and dreams, reveals our character like a mirror. It isn't pretty. 

I was given access to a free galley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. I received a final copy of the novel from a giveaway through Bookreporter.com.

Homeland Elegies: A Novel
by Ayad Akhtar
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: September 15, 2020   
ISBN: 9780316496438
hardcover $14.99 (USD)

from the publisher

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.

Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare by Ryan Dezember

My brother tells the story of a friend and his wife who in the early 2000s built their dream house in an upscale part of Oakland County, Michigan. After a few years they decided to relocate. They owed more than the house's market value.

Is real estate still a good investment? Perhaps if you are in it for the long run.

My folks bought a modest house in 1972 for $33,900. Between 2004 to 2005 it's value shot up by 72%. By 2009 when I inherited the house it's value had plummeted by 50%.

We weren't selling. It was our retirement home. Today the value has risen again, neighboring houses selling in the range of their high back in 2005.

Perhaps the house's value will plummet again. Who knows what will happen in ten or twenty years? But if we had not inherited a home, we would be renting. That $1500 a month expense would have made us penny-pinchers in our golden years, just as we were when we were starting out. Living without mortgage or rent has made all the difference.

Ryan Dezember was a journalist covering real estate for an Alabama newspaper when he and his wife purchased a modest home in 2005. Within years the marriage was over, the house up for sale. The house would not sell for what he owed. The housing market had collapsed.

It took ten years before Dezember could unload the house. He figures it cost him $60,000. He understood the real estate business, the deals and flipping that made billionaires overnight--selling housing that didn't even exist yet. Still, he was a sucker for the American Dream of homeownership.

Underwater explains the whole messy, disgusting process that ruined the lives of so many. People like my brother's friends who ultimately told the bank, accept the buyer's offer or we are walking away and you'll get nothing. (The bank opted for nothing.)

After we inherited my folk's house, we spent our days off doing yard work and upgrading the electric and appliances. We walked the dog in our so-to-be-neighborhood, noting the foreclosure signs and sale signs. It was heartbreaking. These same houses are now so hot, realtors are clambering for houses to sell.

Dezember's book is full of real estate details of the transactions in the Alabama beach community he covered. It can be overwhelming! The book is humanized by his personal story. The environmental impact of building on the white sand shore of Alabama is distressing to read.

Dezember notes that 55% of owner-occupied home in the US are filled with people like me--seniors who will swamp the market in the 2030s as they downsize or die. That means our home will fetch far less than it does today.

Should we sell when the value is high and rent?

Since the stock market is also unreliable, selling and investing the money could also be risky.

Underwater explains the real estate game and how people like you and me find our investments gutted overnight. "Banks are amoral," Dezember reminds us. It's all about profit.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare
by Ryan Dezember
St. Martin's Press
Thomas Dunne Books
Pub Date  July 14, 2020
ISBN: 9781250241801
hardcover $28.99 (USD)

from the publisher:

His assignment was to write about a real-estate frenzy lighting up the Redneck Riviera. So Ryan Dezember settled in and bought a home nearby himself. Then the market crashed, and he became one of the millions of Americans who suddenly owed more on their homes than they were worth. A flood of foreclosures made it impossible to sell. It didn't help that his quaint neighborhood fell into disrepair and drug-induced despair. He had no choice but to become a reluctant and wildly unprofitable landlord to move on. 

Meanwhile, his reporting showed how the speculative mania that caused the crash opened the U.S. housing market to a much larger breed of investors.
In this deeply personal story, Dezember shows how decisions on Wall Street and in Washington played out on his street in a corner of the Sunbelt that was convulsed by the foreclosure crisis. 

Readers will witness the housing market collapse from Dezember’s perch as a newspaper reporter. First he’s in the boom-to-bust South where a hot-air balloonist named Bob Shallow becomes one of the world’s top selling real-estate agents arranging condo flips, developers flop in spectacular fashion and the law catches up with a beach-town mayor on the take. Later he’s in New York, among financiers like Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman who are building rental empires out of foreclosures, staking claim to the bastion of middle-class wealth: the single-family home.

 Through it all, Dezember is an underwater homeowner caught up in the mess. 

A cautionary tale of Wall Street's push to turn homes into assets, Underwater is a powerful, incisive story that chronicles the crash and its aftermath from a fresh perspective—the forgotten, middle-class homeowner.

American Romantic by Ward Just

Harry had killed a man and it set him apart.~from American Romantic by Ward Just

Another TBR shelf book that was waiting for its time was Ward Just's American Romantic. The passing of the author spurred me to take it down to read. My first acquaintance with Just was his Pulitizer Prize-nominated novel An Unfinished Season. I have been a fan ever since.

Just was a war correspondent in Vietnam; his novels explore the disenchantment of individuals who discover the failings of Washington D.C. politics.

The novels are beautifully written, focusing on the internal growth of the characters, not page-turners with gripping plotlines. My favorite kind of novel!

American Romantic begins with Harry's life-altering experiences in Vietnam and his brief love affair with a German ex-pat nurse. Harry's career takes him across the world as an ambassador. He marries a woman who isn't up to the role of ambassador's wife. His war wounds are constant reminders of his time in Vietnam and the boy soldier he killed. He grows old in a foreign land that is less foreign to him now than America and his Connecticut home. But the lessons garnered at his wealthy father's dinner table, with political guests conversing on Washington D.C. news while sidestepping things that can't be spoken remain the most lasting.

After I read a book I do look at reviews. You can read an excellent review by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post here.

Favorite quotes from American Romantic:

We live in a turnstile of lies.

Americans are romantic, she said.
I would not say romantic. I would say optimistic. ..
...They take pride in their makeovers, a nation of actors, or should I say playwrights, each examining her own story. That's the myth, anyhow. A nation in an eternal state of rewrite.

What have you learned, Harry?... What have the years taught you?
At my father's table failure was more instructive, more revealing than success.
...all the stories they told had something missing...To go beyond that certain point might have--would have--undermined faith in the system....they were deep in their memories, pondering what they were unable--not unwilling but unable--to say aloud. The missing piece.

And do you want to know something else? The stakes are not small. This world is filled with mischief, and more than mischief. Time retreats. Time advances. Time is discontinuous. Time is always in motion, like the waves of a great sea. And failure is more commanding than success.

He had the idea that there were rules somewhere and that if you followed the rules things would come out all right...And without warning your world turned upside down. No logic to it.

Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak

Maddow has impressed me with her cogent and reasoned narratives in explaining news stories. Earlier this year I read her book Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russian, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth in which she explains the gas and oil industry's influence and power and how Putin's goal of becoming a gas and oil supplier to Europe and the world has impacted current American politics. I count it as one of the best 2019 books I read..

I was late to discovering Rachel Maddow in spite of her popularity as I don't care for most cable and network news shows featuring a personality. I prefer print media sources.

In 2015, I followed the Michigan online newspaper Bridge stories on the Flint, Michigan lead water crisis. Maddow turned this local story into national news. She publicized the decisions by Flint's emergency managers which bought about the contamination and hosted a live Town Hall meeting in Flint. Maddow caught my attention at this time.

When St. Martin's Press offered me a chance to read Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak I was very pleased. I knew I had a lot to learn about Maddow.

I was disappointed when Rogak's coverage of Maddow's involvement was a few sentences. I hoped for more insight, especially since this showed Maddow's activist side as well as her penchant for finding buried news.

I did learn about Maddow as a person, her early activism, her work habits, and her overall career. It was no surprise to learn that Maddow's deep intelligence and perfectionist drive was manifest from childhood.

The portrayal leans heavy on the personal. I had no idea of Maddow's struggle with depression or even of her earlier activism in AIDS and LBGT organizations. I knew she was lesbian and have noted her handsome, no-frills style. Maddow's wardrobe choices take up too much space, her preference for hoodies and sneakers mentioned several times. I appreciate that Maddow found the love of her life.

I preferred the sections which described her ability to put personal politics aside and her reasoned interactions with people whose political views were vastly divergent from her own.

I wish the author had been able to include a section on Blowout.

I loved the quote about Maddow's dislike of cable news hosts as 'brands' and her comment on how some even profess opinions just for attention and to draw viewers. Maddow sees her role as offering "a useful analysis" to help viewers "come to their own conclusions." I love that! That is my ideal.

The biography has reinforced my estimation of Maddow.

I was given an Advanced Reading Copy by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt here.

About the author:LISA ROGAK is the author of numerous books, including And Nothing But the Truthiness: The Rise (and Further Rise) of Stephen Colbert. She is the editor of the New York Times bestseller Barack Obama in His Own Words and author of the New York Times bestseller Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart. Rogak lives in New Hampshire. Learn more on her website.

Rachel Maddow: A Biography
by Lisa Rogak
Thomas Dunne Books
St. Martin's Publishing Group
On Sale: 01/07/2020
$28.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250298249

Joe Biden by Jules Witcover

Jules Witcover's biography Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption has been updated and rereleased. Reading this book helped me to understand Biden's career, his consistent strengths and weaknesses, and his deeply held values. I found the biography to be interesting, informative, accessible, and enoyable.

Witcover gives us details of Joe's legislative career, illustrating his long-held views. I was thoroughly engaged while experiencing many 'ah-ha' moments of clarity on issues currently being discussed, such as his view on busing which came up in an early Democratic primary debate.

Biden's ability to connect with people, coupled with his winning smile, his accessibility in a small state, made him Delaware's "Joe." Readers learn that Delaware is such a small state that politicians can't afford to not get along, a quality Joe brought into national politics. Joe also was unafraid to stand up against his own party's stance, such as busing. 

It was also very interesting to learn about Joe's leadership in vetting supreme court justices. The book is detailed and yet so interesting and relevant. Also, Joe's experience in foreign affairs is very revealing and relevant.

As a family man, Joe offers much to recommend as a role model. The 'life of trial,' as many know, includes the early loss of his wife and child and the more recent loss of his son Beau. Joe's commitment to his family took precedence over becoming a Washington insider, as his daily commute from Washington D.C. to Delaware isolated him from other congressmen.

Witcover doesn't shy away from exploring Joe's 'fatal flaws' which have labeled him. For instance, the charge that Joe talks too much is explored while also affirming that Joe really knows what he is talking about. Although a lackluster student, Joe is an avid reader and lifelong learner, which with his years of experience, makes him an authority.

Previously, I had read Joe's profoundly moving and inspirational book Promise Me, Dad and The Book of Joe. I had also read about how Joe and Beau Biden supported Sarah McBride in her memoir Tomorrow Will Be Different.

I won a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read a sample from the book at https://aerbook.com/books/Joe_Biden-81529.html?social=1&retail=1&emailcap=0

from the publisher:Based on exhaustive research by one of Washington's most prolific journalists, including numerous exclusive interviews with Biden's confidants and family members, as well as President Obama and the former vice president himself, Joe Biden goes beyond conventional biography to track the forces that have shaped a man who, with his plainspoken style and inspiring life story, has resonated with millions of Americans and whose work has shaped modern American life.

Identity Politics

The current political climate in America has led many to consider how we became a country torn asunder by factionalism and hatred of those who do not think or look or love or worship like 'us.'  There have recently been quite a few books out on Identity Politics and I have read several.

A LibraryThing win, The Splintering of the American Mind: Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today's College Campuses by William Egginton considers how higher education contributes to divisiveness vs. the free exchange of ideas in America. The author considers identity, inequality, and community and how these values have changed in American society over my lifetime.

Egginton argues that identity politics has segregated society and that a sense of community and reasoned conversation must be rediscovered if the American experiment in Democracy is to survive.

His argument calls for a compromise or synthesis between a society dominated by an elite few and the tribal mentality of today.

He promotes a liberal arts education as pivotal to the education of good citizens, in terms of learning to dialogue and reason and communicate. Yet, with college education so competitive and expensive, few parents or students can justify the cost of a liberal education. It's all about money, today, preparing for "economic self-improvement" as Egginton puts it. I saw that even back in the 1970s when I completed my education.

"Listening to each other isn't just some surface fix, it's fundamental to the very idea of liberty that the United States claims to embody." William Egginton, The Splintering of the American Mind

The importance of establishing a nationwide sense of community is of tantamount importance. And Egginton believes it begins on the campuses of our colleges and universities. Emphasized is teaching for empathy and dialogue and communication, finding the universal experiences in literature, learning to tolerate differences, supporting freedom of expression, and creating an educated citizenry able to employ critical thinking and dialogue. A section of Media Literacy caught my attention as something I had used in my volunteer teaching with high school students. And of course, the importance of a groundwork upon which we can all agree.

I was inspired by his hopefulness.

"Yes, American history is a history of slavery, oppression, and extermination. But it is also a history of redemption, coming to terms with our nation's sins, and of overcoming them  on the way to a better future, on the way to, in Abraham Lincoln's words from the blood-soaked battlefield at Gettysburg four score and seven years later, "a new birth of freedom."

"The point is that our history, as full as it is of examples of depravity and corruption, oppression and discrimination, is equally full of stories of altruism and redemption, of the triumph of community over selfishness. These are the stories we need now." 

I was not comfortable with all of his interpretations and arguments. I appreciated his consideration of inequality and the call for reestablishing a common ground based on conversation and empathy.

The Splintering of the American Mind
William Egginton
Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 97816355713

After hearing about the book on NPR my husband suggested I read Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment by Frances Fukuyama.

One thing I appreciated about this book is how the author presents his arguments, explains them, and before he moves on to his next argument restates his case to that point. It really makes it easier for the general reader because this is a theoretical book.

The author offers a brief history of the development of identity from the ancient Greeks through the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and revolutions in France and America to establish the rising concept of individuals' need for dignity and personal recognition. He discusses how democratic governments have failed to "fully live up to their underlying ideals of freedom and equality," with the violation of the rights of the poor and weaker citizens at the hand of the few rich and powerful.

Another aspect he traces is the rise of industrialization and cities which broke down traditional communities. The social upheaval and adjustment to a blended society left a nostalgia for a remembered and idealized past.

He blames the contemporary left for focusing on "ever smaller groups" instead of "large collectivities such as the working class or economically exploited." He also blames the rise of "self-actualization" as a form of narcissism. He sees the rise of Multiculturalism as divisive.

Fukuyama calls for the need of a strong national identity, with an official language and civics classes and shared cultural values. This need not negate diversity. He writes, 'National identities can be built around liberal and democratic political values, and the common experiences that provide the connect tissue around which diverse communities can thrive." He mentions India, France, Canada as countries who have successfully created a strong national identity that embraces a diverse population.

Fukuyama asks, "How do we translate these abstract ideas into concrete policies at the current movement?" He continues, "We can start by trying to counter the specific abuses that have driven assertions of identity," by protecting the rights of minorities and women, and promoting "creedal national identities" based on the ideals of a liberal democracy. He also calls for better assimilation of immigrants.

Identity
by Frances Fukuyama
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 9780374129293

My frustration is that the policies presented in these books are not easily or quickly accomplished. Focusing on education will prepare future generations for citizenship if we can hold things together until then.

These books were challenging reads and I am glad I read them. They are interesting as a study of how we 'got to here' but I left with the need for something more to hold on to, something concrete that offers me real hope and surety.

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality

"I'm twenty-four, transgender, and a widow...that's a lot for someone in this society to handle." Sarah McBride

In Tomorrow Will Be Different, Sarah McBride shares her personal story as inspiration and to put a face on what it is to be transgender.

Imagine being unable to go into a public restroom in North Carolina without breaking the law. Imagine being unable to change your sex on your state ID, or being unable to keep a job or find housing. Imagine being vilified, ostracized, beaten up, an object of fear.

Nearly fifty years ago my husband 's father's best friend disowned his son when he became a woman. Over the years I heard snippets of the story, how as a child their son loved to play dolls and dress up with his older sisters, how blame was assigned for causing their son's 'problem', the resulting divorce and alienation.

In the 1990s my husband was approached by a teen from his church, an unhappy and angry child. Some thought she was presenting 'butch' because she was not conventionally pretty, assuming she was a 'pretend lesbian'. My husband affirmed her, but the support she needed from the community was not there. She changed her name and moved away. Today I know he was transgender, and I see on his Facebook page a happy, confident, burly guy with a successful career and a sparkle in his eye. I am so happy for him.

I wanted to read Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride because I had seen her on television and knew she was an intelligent and lovely person. And I wanted to better understand her experience and the work toward equality for all persons.

The book's preface by Joe Biden is a must read. I recently read his Promise Me, Dad and I heard the same compassion and love in this preface.

McBride was fascinated by American politics since childhood. Meeting Joe Biden was an unforgettable moment. She interned on Beau Biden's first race. McBride was fifteen when she introduced Jack Markell at the launch for his 2006 race for reelection as state treasurer, and at age eighteen when he ran for governor.

During these years, McBride outwardly conformed to the gender role socially acceptable, presenting masculine and even dating. She did not want to let anyone down. But she was miserable.

McBride ran for student president at college to great success and was very popular and led a push to end gender exclusive housing.  In her junior year, with great trepidation, McBride announced being transsexual.

She describes the scene when she came out to her family, her mother in tears. McBride had a gay brother, and her other brother tried to break the ice by announcing, "I'm heterosexual." In a heartwarming scene, McBride tells her fraternity brothers, who enveloped her in an embrace. Beau Biden called her to offer his love and support, as did Joe Biden. The Biden family confirmed her belief that there are still good people in politics.

McBride repeats how lucky and privileged she has been, knowing that most trans persons lack a support system and her advantages. Throughout the book, she shares the devastating statistics behind the transgender experience: high rates of suicide; verbal harassment and physical assault in public restrooms; legal exemptions that allow discrimination; inability to find housing or keep a job.

McBride met the love of her life, Andy, who was a few years older and also trans. Tragedy struck when Andy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery and treatment with McBride providing care and support.

I can't imagine the burden of being twenty-three and watching your beloved struggle with a terminal illness. Both my parents died of cancer, and I was at my Dad's side in the hospital for over two months. My heart broke as I read McBride's story.

Trans rights advanced under President Obama,  then 2016 saw the election of President Trump and Vice President Pence. The gains for equality under the law are being threatened. But McBride has found hope in the young people of our country, those who have been accepted as children for who they are, and who assume that the doors are open to them.

I pray it is so.

I received a free ebook from First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality
Sarah McBride