The Bully Pulpit

[Green Arrow]

I've started reading The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's very good, so far. It examines the upbringing of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, their relationship with each other and with their wives, and what ultimately ended that close friendship.

So far, I've especially enjoyed the chapter entitled "Nellie Herron Taft," which is the chapter about Taft's wife and how they met and came to be married. The story is adorable. They were both very nerdy and hopeless for each other.

[midcan5]

Instead of another thread I thought I'd add this here.

"Books had instant replay long before televised sports." Bernard Williams

Summer reading list below. Recently I have been fascinated by conspiratorial thinking. Why is it so common among Americans whose society is more open to information than many nations? It often seems the obvious must be hidden and the complex put in its place. This sort of thinking covers everything from our president's policies to economics. Two books below cover area.

'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds' by Charles MacKay
'Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises,' Sixth Edition, by Charles P. Kindleberger, Robert Z. Aliber, Robert Solow

Has anyone read Mark Z. Danielewski? His monster of an book 'The Familiar, Volume 1: One Rainy Day in May' looks interesting but who has time. Reminds me of Karl Ove Knausgaard's books on everything about his life. I've read the first.


Summer reading for the informed reader. The ISIS book should have a diagram of connections, what a tangled web the ME is. I like Crawford's view of working with one's hands. Something I still love. The prophets are the new rich and just as off base as the old rich. James Wood's words are worth an afternoon. And fiction as James writes may be the nearest thing to life. Enjoy.


'The New Prophets of Capital' by Nicole Aschoff

'ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror' by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan

'The Nearest Thing to Life (The Mandel Lectures in the Humanities)' by James Wood

'The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction' by Matthew B. Crawford

Fiction: 'Crow Fair: Stories' by Thomas McGuane and all of Cormac McCarthy

'My Struggle: Book 1' by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Don Bartlett ( odd but interesting too)


oldies but goodies

'The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy' Albert O. Hirschman
'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein
'Voltaire's $#@!s: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' by John Ralston Saul
'A History of Civilizations' Fernand Braudel
'The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark' Carl Sagan
'Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming' Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. M. Conway
'The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin' Corey Robin


"A book is a mirror; if an ape looks into it, an apostle is hardly likely to look out." G. C. Lichtenberg