Tag: history

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#BookReview: Distorting Democracy by Carolyn Renee Dupont

Distorting The Discussion. For a book about the history of the Electoral College that opens up admitting that the author thinks the Electoral College is foolhardy at best… the actual history here is quite good, and absolutely stuff virtually no one learns about even with a major in American History in college. (Perhaps Masters’ or PhD students specifically studying the EC or at least the Constitutional Convention that created it would know at least some of this?) So absolutely read this book for Parts I and II, where Dupont shows that the fights that we have today about the Electoral College have been there basically since its creation and have reignited every few decades since.

It is in Part III, where Dupont begins discussing the current debates about the issue, that her acknowledged disdain comes to the fore and truly distorts the discussion. Here, she creates strawman after strawman after strawman and “debunks” them… without ever actually getting to the heart of any of the arguments she is “debunking”.

Which is a shame, because throughout parts I and II, Dupont almost goes to pains to show that there have been some throughout American history who had at least part of the actual solution to the problems we now see – and were working to push that part of the solution through. In Part II, she even notes the other part to the solution… and glosses right on by it.

The solution that Dupont brings up repeatedly is the “District method” (vs the “General ticket” method we now call Winner-Take-All). Here, each Electoral Vote is, essentially, chosen by the popular vote of each Congressional District, with the overall popular vote of the State determining the Electoral Votes represented by that State’s US Senators. Going to that method right now would mean that both “large State” and “small State” (to use the Founders’ terms) or “urban” and “rural” (to use more modern terms) concerns would be more accurately represented in the overall Electoral College system.

But wait! There’s more! The item that Dupont glosses over is the 1920s era law passed by Congress capping the number of US Representatives at 435. This was the final nail in the coffin as far as how unequal the system currently appears, allowing even a District based Electoral Vote in Wyoming to represent 400K ish people vs a District based vote in Los Angeles to easily represent 3x as many people. But that is “simply” an Act of Congress… meaning Congress can remove that restriction at any time, even, literally, the day you are reading this review.

And then there becomes a point in the Constitutional Convention that even Dupont completely misses. You see, while I haven’t examined the relevant records myself (and perhaps Dupont could, and possibly release a 2nd edition of this text examining this), there are some who point out that the First Amendment as we know it… wasn’t the actual First Amendment. Instead, it was the *second*, and the actual First Amendment actually closed the “Representational loophole” that Article I, Section II of the Constitution created when it noted that the “number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand”. Reading that carefully, it means that the population represented by a single US Representative has a *minimum* – 30,000 people – meaning that the overall number of US Representatives has a *maximum* – 11,234 US Representatives, based on the US population in August 2024 as I write this review. But notice what this does *NOT* do – set a population *maximum* – and therefore an overall number of US Representatives *minimum*.

THIS is where the fight over the Electoral College misses its most crucial point – and it is a point Dupont seems to be entirely unaware or even ignorant of. If this so-called “true First Amendment” had passed, it would have set the population maximum per Representative – and therefore the minimum overall number of US Representatives – at 50,000 – or 6,740 US Representatives based on current US population as of late August 2024 as I write this review.

Combining the District Method Dupont discusses at length in the text here + this missing “actual First Amendment” would largely solve every single argument Dupont has against the Electoral College, and yet she missed such a crucial detail of James Madison’s own efforts regarding the construction of the Constitution – thereby distorting the discussion from the get-go.

Recommended, mainly for Parts I and II, where most everyone will learn quite a bit.

This review of Distorting Democracy by Carolyn Renee Dupont was originally written on August 30, 2024.

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#BookReview: Kent State by Brian VanDeMark

Well Documented History Of The Event. The massacre at Kent State happened when my parents were not quite 10 yrs old and still almost as long away from meeting. It wouldn’t be until over a decade after this event when they wed, and I was born just a couple of years later. One uncle was already nearly 30 by the time of the massacre, and my youngest aunt was still in middle single digits at the time. The rest of my dozen or so aunts and uncles were somewhere in between, including at least a couple of them that were college age at the time, and one that fought in Vietnam in this era. (I’m not sure exactly when he was deployed there, but I *know* he went and did… something. He was a career Marine, beginning then.) All of this is a long way of saying that this is a history of events that preceded me, but which my direct family knew of at various ages of their own lives and saw how it affected each of them.

Thus, other than the barest of facts of “there was a protest, the National Guard got called in, and the Guard shot and killed a few students”… I never really knew about the details of this massacre before reading this book. I’ve never read any of the other histories, I’ve never really seen it covered much at all – and certainly not to this detail – in any other medium. So I can’t really say if it has any “new” information about the event and its fallout.

What I *can* say about this book is that it is very well documented, with 23% of its text being official bibliography, and the extensive footnotes throughout the text probably adding another couple of percentage points, *maybe* up to an additional 5% or so. Bringing the total documentation here to somewhere in the 25-28% range, which is pretty solid in my extensive review work of the last several years – I’ve read books making far stronger claims than this that had far less documentation.

This book is also exceedingly detailed in its presentation of the events of those few days in May at this campus, giving brief biographical sketches of pretty well every single person named- be they victim, shooter, parent, lawyer, politician, commander, or anything else- and detailing with a fair degree of precision exactly where each person was in the periods before, during, and after the massacre. Up to and including which shooters had which guns pointing which directions. Indeed, one of the most tragic and explicit parts of this book is just how graphically the shots are described as they hit the 13 victims, and indeed there are some photographs of some of the bodies included in the text as well. So for those that get particularly squeamish about such details… you may want to skim over these bits. But also don’t, because VanDeMark’s presentation here, though excessively detailed, also does a tremendous job of showing just how tragic the event was.

To be clear, VanDeMark presents a remarkably *balanced* history as well, not really siding with either side in the debate as to who was at fault, simply presenting the available facts and showing how tragic it was that a group of young adults were all in this situation to begin with, from all of the varying sides. Indeed, perhaps this is the greatest overall strength of the text at hand – in its balance, we are allowed to get perhaps the truest picture available of what is known to have occurred and when, allowing the reader to decide for themselves, with their own biases, who was at fault and why.

After detailing the events of the day, VanDeMark closes the narrative with following the various efforts at criminal and civil trials of the shooters as well as various efforts to memorialize the events before moving on to how each of the survivors – family of the dead, the surviving victims, the shooters, and the various officials – handled the events of that weekend the rest of their lives, reaching right up into the 2020s.

Overall a truly detailed, graphic at times, and moving text, and one anyone with any interest at all in the subject should read.

Very much recommended.

This review of Kent State by Brian VanDeMark was originally written on August 13, 2024.

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#BookReview: Decade of Disunion by Robert W. Merry

Interesting History That Doesn’t Really Fulfill Its Premise. As a general history of the titular “Decade of Disunion”, this is actually a reasonably well written and documented look at the overall political situation in the US in the decade (and then some) just before the onset of the American Civil War, including solid biographical overviews of several of the key players- both the actual key players and the ones Merry chooses to try to focus on, namely those from South Carolina and Massachusetts.

But that is actually where the book fails to really drive home its purported premise, that these leaders from these two States in particular played particularly important/ oversized roles in the events of the decade, in the events that lead to war. There really is just *so much* that happened in that decade that lead to disunion, and so much of it happened outside the States of South Carolina and Massachusetts – and even outside the District of Columbia – that it really was quite a stretch to claim that *any* two States could have played outsized roles in all of it, though in picking States that did in fact lead in the opposing ideals, Merry perhaps at least came closer than other potential selections.

Truly an excellent primer on the decade, with 18% of the text being bilbiography and thus a solid set of documentation/ further reading, this book even includes several examples of what made that particular decade so turbulent throughout the nation – including both the caning of a sitting Congressman *inside Capitol Hill* and the resultant comment from a Congressman – also quoted in James A. Morone’s 2020 book Republic Of Wrath – that if a Congressman didn’t have two pistols on his person *on Capitol Hill*, it was because he had a pistol and a knife.

I read this book in the days before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, and I’m writing this review on the day this book releases, less than 48 hours after President Biden’s announcement that he would not seek a second term – and while President Biden hasn’t been seen in public in days now, somehow the Director of the US Secret Service still has her job. In other words, quite turbulent times indeed in this country.

But as Merry points out early, often, and frequently throughout this text – as turbulent as these times are, there have indeed been much, much worse. So pick up this book – and the aforementioned Morone text – and learn a degree of historical perspective that is desperately needed in these times.

Very much recommended.

This review of Decade of Disunion by Robert W. Merry was originally written on July 23, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Deepest Map by Laura Trethewey

Interesting And Comprehensive Examination Marred By Leftist Ideology. If you can overlook (or if you like) the *frequent* bigotries against “males”, “white males”, and/ or “rich white males” and if you agree with Greta Thunberg re: “Climate” “Change” (or whatever the hell they’re calling it now as you read this review), you’re going to love this book. The star deduction comes specifically because of such slanted “reporting”. (I read the Audible version of this book and thus can’t comment on the length of its bibliography one way or another.)

If the above doesn’t apply to you, you should read this book anyway.

Because when it stays on subject about the efforts to map the seas and specifically the deepest parts of them, both cutting edge and throughout history, this book actually is quite good. Tretheway manages to show both the necessity of the effort and just how dangerous it can be in both academic and very real senses, along with all of the problems associated with having the data or not as well as gathering the data in the first place. Along the way we’re going to encounter quite a few legendary people, some truly globally famous even well outside their exploratory regions, others famous only within very narrow, sometimes quite niche, fields – but famous nonetheless. She manages to make the reader care about both the historic exploration and the current efforts, up to and including even using AI drones to get data humans otherwise can’t easily obtain. And all of this is quite remarkable indeed.

It is simply a shame that she had to integrate so much bigotry into this reporting – it truly could have been a truly remarkable work otherwise. And yet, the tale as written is still strong enough even with the integrated bigotry to still warrant a read by truly everyone remotely interested in the oceans for any reason.

Recommended.

This review of The Deepest Map by Laura Tretheway was originally written on July 1, 2024.

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#BookReview: Creating Reading Rainbow by Barbara Irwin, Tony Buttino, and Pam Johnson

Well Documented History Of The Origins Of An Acclaimed Program. Coming in at 32% documentation, this is one of the better documented nonfiction tales I’ve read of late. Given that it doesn’t actually make many claims that require larger amounts of evidence, this is actually even more astounding – the authors documented seemingly more just to provide the data than to necessarily “prove” their claims. Which is to be commended.

The actual narrative of the tale as told though… could use some better editing, and perhaps the final version of this text – vs the Advanced Review Copy edition I read – has that better editing. But for the edition I read, the narrative could get a touch disjointed at times, often switching between authors and perspectives from paragraph to paragraph and even seemingly at times within a given paragraph. Which makes the overall reading experience a bit tougher, which is a shame given that the very story we’re learning here is the creation of a program that would become truly legendary in getting kids excited about reading.

Those looking for a large presence of host LeVar Burton are going to be disappointed, as while the book discusses how his involvement came about and then references him a few times as it progresses through the timeline of the show, there are only a few scant quotes directly from him – most seeming from the very documentation the authors cite in the end.

Instead, this book focuses more on coauthor Tony Buttino’s own history and efforts to get the show up and operational, including deep dives into his family and neighborhood as he grew and developed as both a person and a television professional.

Still, for anyone interested in learning the backstory of Reading Rainbow and how it came into existence, this book is a treasure trove unlike any other. Very much recommended.

This review of Creating Reading Rainbow by Barbara Irwin, Tony Buttino, and Pam Johnson was originally written on June 21, 2024.

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#BookReview: American Covenant by Yuval Levin

Dense Yet Optimistic Treatise Calls For Revival Of Long-Lost Ideals. In American political discourse, the tide turned significantly towards a more Jeffersonian approach based on liberal ideals such that most all American political discourse for quite some time now is mostly based on rights – who has them, who needs them, whose should have them, who should defend them, etc.

Here, Levin argues that this focus on Jeffersonian thoughts has led us to the current divisive era, one that threatens to tear the American nation apart.

Levin, instead, has a suggestion: the revival of Madisonian thoughts regarding *republican* ideals- somewhat (but not completely) analogous to some modern foci on pluralism, but with the added focus of making pluralism work within a functioning government. After all, it was this very tension between these two competing camps that originally allowed the nation to come together under “e pluribus unum”… and Levin has some thoughts on how that can work again.

Levin does a detailed look at the ideas, how we got to where we are, how each plays out in each realm of American polity, and how a renewed focus on republicanism could heal our divided land. It is a dense look mostly written for scholars and deep thinkers, but for those that can hang with density akin to some substance just shy of lead… this promises to be quite illuminating indeed. And it is one that more Americans *should* read than likely actually *will*.

The single star deduction here is simply due to the shorter than expected bibliography, clocking in at about 13% of the Advance Review Copy of the text I was able to read, where even in a relaxed posture on that point I would still expect around 15%. Splitting hairs at that point, perhaps, but I’ve had these standards since I began reviewing books several years ago, and it wouldn’t be fair to either this book or all the others to not hold to the same-ish standard.

Very much recommended.

This review of American Covenant by Yuval Levin was originally written on July 11, 2024.

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#BookReview: Rings Of Fire by Larry J. Hughes

Winding Tale Of Americans Coming Together To Capture The Earth. Why does every nonfiction book about the American side of WWII these days have to proclaim that whatever it is talking about “helped win WWII”???? Because let’s face it – with many things, such a claim is tenuous at best, and perhaps the most glaring weakness of this text is that while the calcite is shown to be an important tool of the war, it is never truly established how it “helped win” the war. Indeed, the book as written does a far superior job of establishing how this calcite crystal that everything in the book revolves around was crucial in capturing “Earthrise”, the famed Apollo-era shot of the Earth from orbit around the moon, than it does in establishing how this particular technology “helped win WWII”.

Beyond the criticism of the subtitle though, this truly was a well documented examination of how a group of Americans that couldn’t actively fight in the war – though some later did just that – still found a remarkable and obscure way to contribute to the overall war effort. Essential, during times of total war such as WWII. It also shows how these people – and the Polaroid Company – would advance knowledge of optics and sights to levels unknown before, and how such advances really did need such a wildly disparate group of people all around the country to work together to achieve a common goal.

Ultimately, this book is about teamwork and the “can-do” spirit that American propagandists of this and later eras were so ardently promoting – even into the modern era, in some circles – as much as it is the science and tech of the calcite and optics. So take that for what you will, though I will say that this book never actually feels like a propaganda piece. If anything, it feels so *real*, like you’re actually there as these events are happening. That is clearly thanks to Hughes’ research as well as the way he chose to write this narrative, and speaks well for his abilities in both arenas.

Overall an interesting book with perhaps a few quibbles here and there, but one esoteric enough that few (relatively, at least) will likely read it – even though it really does show a glimpse of an America and Americans rarely seen in reporting of this era. Very much recommended.

This review of Rings Of Fire by Larry J. Hughes was originally written on May 23, 2024.

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#BookReview: Willie, Waylon, And The Boys by Brian Fairbanks

Well Researched Book Does Exactly What The Description Says It Does. You know how at times you read a book’s description and then you read the book and you want to know what the writer of the description was smoking when they wrote it and if you can have some of it, because the two were *nothing* alike? Yeah… this isn’t that book.

Here, you get *exactly* what the description (at least as of the writing of this review in the pre-dawn hours of May 12, 2024 along Florida’s Atlantic Coast) tells you you’re going to get: A well documented historical look at the lives of the Highwaymen – Waylon Jennings – where the narrative starts on the fateful night that he missed the plane on “The Day The Music Died” -, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson. We see each of their origins, we see how their careers progressed individually, and we see the fateful moment they all came together for a few legendary years. And in the end, we see how their lives and their music have impacted Country Music through the years, with a particular focus on 2010-current alt-country / Americana acts like Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Shooter Jennings, Brandie Carlisle, and others. Again, exactly what the description says we’re going to get.

Overall the writing is well done – there’s a lot of facts and a lot of quotes, but it never really feels like dense academic oriented text or a philosophical treatise, while still not being quite “conversational”. Yes, the focus on certain acts and the clear derision of others in the end is perhaps quite divisive – even much of the “Bro Country” the author clearly despises cite many of the Highwaymen as direct influences, and yes, it can be heard in their sounds as well – but again, we knew from the description which modern acts this text was going to highlight. So take that as you will and make your choice to read or avoid this text knowing exactly that – you know up front exactly where this is going.

Very much recommended.

This review of Willie, Waylon, And The Boys by Brian Fairbanks was originally written on May 12, 2024.

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#BookReview: Cities In The Sky by Jason M. Barr

Solid And Seemingly Comprehensive Examination Of The Topic. This is a book that takes a look at the ever-evolving quest to build the world’s tallest skyscrapers, from its origins in the 19th century (and the debate over who first created what) all the way through Summer 2023, when the book was being written. Along the way we learn of various periods of American skyscraper construction – yes, including Sears Tower, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center towers, and others. But we *also* get just as detailed a view of skyscraper construction in other areas of the world and how each builds on advances in the other locations as time progresses. We visit the Middle East and learn of its mega projects. We visit Hong Kong in both the Colonial and Chinese eras. We visit Taiwan and China and see how their standoff plays out in their construction efforts. Along the way, we get the histories and economics of how and why such structures are wanted and what makes them profitable – hint, it isn’t always the rents they generate from tenants. We even get a solid examination of the arguments for and against such structures, along with the (seemingly requisite in this type of book) predictions for the future and a few suggestions for how to make those predictions become reality.

Overall truly an interesting book, well written for the average reader – yes, there is some jargon, but Barr does a solid job of using it sparingly and explaining it reasonably well when he does. Also reasonably well documented, clocking in at 20% of the text of the Advance Review Copy edition I read.

Very much recommended.

This review of Cities In The Sky by Jason M. Barr was originally written on April 27, 2024.

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#BookReview: Vanishing Act by Dan Hampton

How Jimmy Doolittle’s Raid Connected Directly To The Atomic Bomb. On the weekend of the anniversary of the Doolittle Raid (as it has come to be known) and with conversations sparking again about whether the dropping of the bomb was necessary or not, I had an opportunity to read this book – which admittedly won’t release until the day after Memorial Day here in the US. (For everyone else, this book’s release date is the last Tuesday of May 2024.)

Here, Hampton adds a wrinkle to the discussion of the bomb by revealing what had previously been hidden about the Doolittle Raid – a *second* mission, known only to the pilot of the plane and to Doolittle’s own boss, to gauge just how ready the Soviet Union was to actually engage in warfare against Japan. Here, Hampton argues that the plane that for 80 years had been believed to have gotten lost… knew *exactly* where it was going and largely *exactly* what it was doing. Or, at least the one driving it did – and he relayed those instructions to those whose help he absolutely needed, his copilot and his navigator, and *no one* else. As in, the bomber’s bomber and gunners didn’t know of this secret mission. According to Hampton here, at least.

That the crew of “Plane 8” landed in the Soviet Union and was there imprisoned for a time before being repatriated back to the US has been known effectively since the events happened over 80 years ago – at least by then current communication standards, particularly during a time of global war.

But just what they were *actually* doing is new here – and because of what they found on that mission, we now have better information about what the various Generals and civilian leadership knew or thought they knew in the closing months of the war, as J. Robert Oppenheimer and his teams on the Manhattan Project were finalizing their new weapon. We now know what Roosevelt, MacArthur, Stinson, and Arnold knew about Soviet capabilities in the Far East… because this secret secondary mission got them the data they needed, three years prior. We now know that even if they had heard – as at least some claim – as early as February 1945 that Japan may possibly consider surrendering so long as the Emperor was kept in control of at least the Shinto religion (as, ultimately, is exactly what happened on Sept 2, 1945 on the USS Missouri), that even if they had heard this that the Soviet Union was not yet able to put the kind of resources into the region that may have made even Japan’s own war hawks reconsider their actual options.

This is a harrowing tale, very well told – in some respects, it reads as easily as fiction, yet gives a complete picture of all that was happening in and around the Doolittle Raid, specifically as it relates to this second, secret, mission.

The one problem I have, at least with this early edition I read, was that the bibliography is lacking, clocking in at just 10% of the available text. Even with original research as the basis of the claims of this book – and that is indeed the case here – one would still expect that number to be perhaps at least 50% higher to meet the bare minimums of being described as adequately documented given the explosive nature of the claims contained herein.

Overall a truly well written and apparently well researched tale that just needed a touch more documentation. Very much recommended.

This review of Vanishing Act by Dan Hampton was originally written on April 22, 2024.