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This latest book group shot is a good reflection of what is on my mind but also which I’m not writing about. Some of these books are brand new acquisitions. Some are old. Some are read. Some are soon (hopefully) to be read…soon meaning before the 250 US birthday reading spree is over.
Each row represents a different idea and or era. Each is worth of a seperate post. Together they represent a significant fraction of the things on my mind to save America from Donald Trump’s worst proclivities and the MAGA core’s chief blindside – unexamined and unworthy faith.
I will start with the first row consisint of a single book. It is the book that apparantly the new conservative majority of the Supreme Court is misreading to move America to the ideal of top down, know-it-allism.
By coincidence I read a tribute from this book’s author, Gordon S. Wood, of another historian, Bernard Bailyn, who was his muse. The Multi-book writing Bailyn whose book “The Barbarous Years” my reading list post tells me I read the same year I bought it 2013.
Wood practicing Bailyn’s deep research habits wrote a book I had bought many years before – the singleton at the foundation of this tower of books. Supreme Court conservatives who are enamored of the idea that our Constitution is a frozen fossil trapped in amber preserving the preferences of our slave owning founding fathers for a heirarchy that lifts the powerful over the weak love this book. It justifies the efforts of the rich over the past three quarters century – in fact since Senator Henry Calhoun wanted to nulify Federal Power over the States – to keep the rich rich.
I bought the book on some long forgotten recommendation but reading that its the plutocrats most persuasive justification for electing Donald Trump and keeping in office despite his dictatorial affinities…..well I really ought to advance it on my list of books to be read.
But the three rows above better reflect my studies this sesquicentennial year. I began the year with a missing row – books about the American revolution.
By late winter I dipped into the top tier of books in this pic of the mid century makers of the American Presidency at the peak of American world supremecy. I wanted to have a better Idea what was happening when I was born in 1950.
More recently I’ve retreated to the era of the man who rescued the dreams of the founding fathers Abraham Lincoln. I’ve read more books about Abe than any other individual. I just finished Father Abraham, the third book in the second row from the top. It reinforced my sense that Lincoln finally brought the dreams of the founding fathers into line with reality but John Wilkes Booth and the resurgent former slave owners crushed that for the next century until Civil Right in my infancy was reignighted.
I’m half way through a new book about his criticle other half Mary Lincoln. It has been a wonderful antidote for some of the overreach of Father Abraham’s author. I should also mention the first book in the list which I bought because it spells out the fighting fanaticism of the rich slave owners to extend slavery across an America the founding father’s set a slave owning limit on. That story is what undergirds Father Abraham. The second book like Father Abraham was a 49 cent purchase in a book bin about the famous family that produced Lincoln’s assassin. I have a feeling it will add some rich texture to my reading about the America leading up to the rebellion of the slave owners. BTW check out that link.
The preceding link helped prompt this post. Another NYT story prompted me to add the third row of books from the bottom. That is a book about how leading up to my birth in 1950 rich descendents of the slave owners began planning the rolling back of Roosevelt era reforms that gave the “little people” some protections from the predations of Trump alligned anti-democrats who have spent my adult life striving for a beautiful white America.
That’s a little unfair but its also a little too true. I got through two-thirds the second book in the row. I started it the year before I traveled to france for a month. It was a little too didactic for me. I read reviews to acquire it and then read some more before setting it aside. It seems the author of The Age of Revolution, Eric Hobsbawn, couldn’t be ignored despite his flaming socialism because he knew more history than anyone else who disagreed with his championing of Marxism. I have yet to read the “Communist Manifesto” because I am a thouroughly Kenyesian kind of thinker. This row of books reflects my low regard for Trumpism and its many enthusiasts.
I have yet to order the book shown in my cellphone at the beginning of the list. It is a comprehensive examination of all the financial and legal inventions that have made capitalism the great success it is. It starts with the land of Mesopotamia and leads to the idiocy of the rich who brought us the 2008 mortgage crises. Its a 500 page book so I may put it off for a while. I spent a lot of time this winter with three big books like that and they were time consuming.
Yet they are part of this post’s title. Books vs. AI? The fact is I think they go together. I love AI and there is another NYT’s story that shows the challenge ahead for it to make economic sense as four or five massive AI innovators try to figure out how to make AI pay as China tempts fate by spreading its own truth addicted AI platforms. I say tempts fate because honesty AI is the only quality an AI user will ultimately value. Honesty will reveal Xi’s limitations as he tries to make his brand of totalitarism permanant.
So the final row continues with Dark Money a book about the rich who have helped make Trumpism and another book I just ordered Invisible Hand a clever play on the words of economist Adam Smith. In this case the invisible hands are those of the creators of the modern Reagan Era Republican Party who have made the world fabulously rich followed by fabulously Trumpian.
BTW – capitalism is still inventing itself and AI is a new challenge. Here’s another NYT article I found interesting: What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?
