My COVID Reading List: Non-fiction books that have stayed with me

Well I have COVID this week - it finally got me after 2 1/2 years - so the deep exploration of our meaning on this earth - and how journalism is missing the point - will have to wait for next week.

As I sit here reading and sleeping, reading and sleeping, reading the news occasionally, flashes come into my head from books I’ve read in the past. So, 7 non-fiction books that I can’t stop thinking about, even years after reading them.

Krakatoa

Krakatoa was, simply put, a lesson on geography. A fascinating lesson in geography. A lesson on how the continents moved and how they are still moving, about why earthquakes shake us and volcanoes erupt, and why Australia has kangaroos and Indonesia does not.

It’s also a story about 19th century colonialism. And, at its heart, it’s a story about a volcano situated between Java and Sumatra that is still the world’s strongest ever recorded eruption. The ground shook 3,000 miles away. Think about that. If Mt. St. Helens in Washington State erupted and people in Maine could feel it.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was larger than the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan in 1945. Smoke filled the skies and was taken by the jet stream all over the world. Global temperatures went down for a few years. And rats, escaping the carnage, jumped aboard ships going to all parts of the world, which quite probably contributed to the Third Bubonic Plague in the 1800s and early 1900s.

What I got most from this - aside from enjoying the excellent storytelling of Simon Winchester - is that we are all connected. Something that happens on one side of the world absolutely affects people on the other side. We are a global village, in more than economics. And we have to think about that.

Caste, and The Warmth of Other Suns

I couldn’t choose. And why should I have to. Isabel Wilkerson is a gifted storyteller, and the stories she has to tell - the truths she has to tell - are stunning.

In The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson looks at the great migration of Black people from the south, and details how their lives were only marginally better in the unstated segregation of the north. She made me see the people in Philadelphia she was writing about. And introduced me in detail to a history I knew only existed in concept.

Caste, of course, has been written about a lot since George Floyd’s murder. It is the one book I tell people to read to learn about race.

Wilkerson describes her trip to India, having someone introduce her as part of a group of people who were the “dalits [untouchables] of America.”

This introduction stunned her, but as she thought about it, she realized it was correct. We in the U.S. have been trained to think racism is about skin color. What Wilkerson discovered - and allows us to discover - is that racism is about “othering.” It is about a power structure where some group has to be at the bottom.

I love books that create a paradigm shift, and Caste is definitely that. Black people are “the untouchables of America” for many reasons, not least of which is that white people built entire fortunes by telling themselves dark skinned people weren’t people. As we’re seeing now, admitting that what you did was inhuman is not easy. Even 150 years later when it’s the great-grandchildren who are defending their slavemaster ancestors.

Things I remember from this book. Wilkerson, who worked for the New York Times, sidling up to the late Gwen Ifill on New Year’s Eve in 2015 and saying, “People are not paying attention. I believe he can win.” Ifill agreed. Wilkerson then said, “It’s all about 2042.” And Ifill said, “Exactly.”

2042*, of course, is the expected year when white people will no longer be in the majority in the U.S. It is, as Wilkerson pointed out, the underpinning for the white supremacist uprising we’re seeing today. She knew that in 2015.

*Yes, AP Style people, I started a sentence with a number.

Confidence Men

Confidence Men, by Ron Suskind, is one of three books on this list about the 2008 financial crisis. Suskind lays out the missteps by the Obama administration in putting so much confidence in Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary in the waning two years of the Clinton presidency and was leading Obama’s National Economic Council; and Timothy Geithner, who became Treasury Secretary under Obama. Both Summers and Geithner were among the architects of the financial instruments that led to Wall Street’s meltdown.

There are a lot of things I remember from this book. Suskind tells the story of a group of seven Democratic Senators, led by North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan, who tried in vain to get a meeting with Obama after he was elected. They finally got one after Obama had picked his cabinet, and the first thing Dorgan said in that meeting with the president-elect was, “You picked the wrong people.” Suskind describes that bit of honesty as highly unusual in the pre-Trump protocol era.

Needless to say, the plan that these Senators came up with was never even considered. I have always wanted to know what it was.

I also remember the description of Obama’s first meeting with Wall Street CEOs. Suskind describes them as “nervous in the ways that these men are never nervous” as they were waiting for the president, just days after AIG - which went under - gave bonuses to top executives using bailout money, and they were being pilloried in the press.

Suskind quotes Obama as saying to these CEOs, “I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.”

Suskind goes on: “…the bankers realized he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger had passed. It would be for show.”

After that, Suskind notes, Wall Street CEOs cried “unfair” at every attempt to rein in their excesses, knowing Obama would back them.

Suskind also describes Obama as unsure of himself when he first took office, always wanting to come in with answers so he wouldn’t look inexperienced, which, Suskind suspects, is why the president didn’t want to meet with the Senators he knew had more experience than he did.

He describes the rift between Summers and Geithner, how the latter, in concert with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, ignored the president’s orders, but didn’t tell him. He describes Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, slipping a note to Summers saying she was going to leave a meeting where she was the only economist not called upon - and the only woman in the room.

Remember, Larry Summers was the professor who famously said girls were bad at math.

Suskind thought this was so important, he took a detour to explore it for a couple of pages:

“There was a nascent gender struggle in the White House. The women, Romer included, were tired of preparing for group meetings and watching them men talk to one another. Obama seemed to favor the men - especially Summers and Emanuel - and not the strong and accomplished women sitting nearby.”

Most of the women who worked in the White House - whether cabinet level or staff - felt the same way. From this came the infamous amplification strategy used by women in the White House and copied by many female executives since. When one woman made a point or suggestion, other women in the room would repeat it, and note who said it first. This stopped the men in the room from taking the idea as their own.

There is a lot more that pops up for me from time to time from this book. After reading it - it came out in 2011, I was stunned that Chicagoans elected Emanuel as mayor. Even more stunned that many of my Chicago friends on social media were voting for him because they had stars in their eyes about Obama.

From what I can tell, Emanuel - who started a gang war in Chicago that is still happening when he closed more than 50 schools without understanding what would happen when kids crossed into other neighborhoods - was elected because he was the most famous person running.

Needless to say, Confidence Men shook my confidence in our leaders, our institutions and our voters. When Trump was elected in 2016, this book came back to me hard.

Bull By the Horns

Sheila Bair was also part of the Obama administration, as the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That’s the New Deal agency that makes sure depositors aren’t on the hook when banks screw up.

Bair is - or was, you never know these days - a Republican. She was appointed by George Bush in 2006 for a 5-year term.

In Bull By the Horns, Bair describes in detail her many clashes with Geithner and other male financial elites. Bair broke up many banks as FDIC chair, and her team was expert at doing that. She felt - as did Elizabeth Warren - that Wall Street banks were no different.

Geithner’s entire role in the Obama administration was to save Wall Street, and Bair, like Suskind, details how Geithner and Summers felt about women in economics.

This is the thing I remember most from this book: Bair wanted meaningful stress tests on Wall Street banks. She was vilified for that.

What was not in the book, but what I kept in mind the entire time I was reading it, is that when Obama was putting together his economics team, he considered Bair. Someone - probably Emanuel - said “she wasn’t a team player.”

I guess it was mainly a boys league.

Bailout

Neil Barofsky was a prosecutor with the Southern District of New York when he left to become the Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP.

TARP was supposed to help us. It was supposed to help people on main street keep their homes. But it was rife with problems. First, there was no oversight. Geithner gave banks sole responsibility for deciding what the rules should be on how they should help people who owed them more than their house was worth through no fault of their own.

Barofsky notes how Geithner barely noticed the parts of the bailout Congress meant to help regular people. He writes about programs beneath TARP which were put together in slapdash fashion: HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) and PPIP (Public-Private Investment Program), for two. Geithner saw these programs as a way to funnel more money to Wall Street, and Congress’ intent to lower principal for homeowners never materialized.

The one thing that sticks with me very strongly from this book is when Barofsky - who had gotten a reputation as a troublemaker - went to lunch with one of his mentors. The mentor warned him that he should back off, go with the flow, and hinted he would get a cushy job afterwards. Barofsky was appalled. There are few Neil Barofskys (or Sheila Bair’s) in this world. I will always be drawn to them.

The Affluent Society & The Price of Peace

OK, another twofer. But what I remember from reading John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society as a 20-something is learning about the idea of inequality and what will happen if we don’t see economics as a tool to help people live better lives, not just a tool to make money for the fortunate. It was the first economics book I had ever read. And I realized that George H.W. Bush was right in 1980 when he called what came to be known as Reaganomics “voodoo economics.” Economies rise from the bottom. I suppose they also fall from the top, but not in the way that Reagan and his advisors envisioned.

Galbraith’s views came, of course, from John Maynard Keynes, the British economist and member of Bloomsbury (from whence came Virginia Woolf), whose work informed the New Deal. John Maynard Keynes gave America the 20th Century. The Price of Peace (fully titled “Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes”) is a fascinating look at Keynes’ life and his economic philosophy. It helped me vastly understand Keynes’ General Theory, which I tried to read about the time I was reading Galbraith and couldn’t get through it. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Zachary D. Carter noted that Keynes’ writings were virtually incomprehensible. Thank god Carter comprehended them.

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Regional Cultures of North America

This is the book I’m re-reading during my COVID stint. All my life, growing up in Vegas with relatives in the Midwest and heading to school in Boston, I have tried to put my finger on how different regions of this country are. When I headed to Brandeis, I might as well have gone to London or Shanghai, so foreign was the northeastern United States to me.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Colin Woodard a few years ago, but I just skimmed the book then. I was on deadline and working 14-hour days. But going back and slowly reading through it is illuminating. We are not a melting pot as much as an amalgamation of nations who established their form of society and then were asked to come together to fight the British. The eleven groups - and especially four who were established before the revolution - hated each other. One of the revelations that I remembered, even from my skimming, is that the North almost didn’t have a coalition to fight the Civil War - so hated were the Yankees by most every other nation.

It was refreshing to read Woodard’s take on immigration patterns in the U.S.:

“It’s not difficult to understand why immigrants avoided the three southern nations. Most were fleeing countries with repressive feudal systems controlled by entrenched aristocracies; until 1866 [those three nations] were regressive, near-feudal systems with entrenched aristocracies, and after Reconstruction ended in 1877 they returned to form.”

This book was written in 2011, but only picked up steam after Trump’s white supremacist message took hold. What Woodard doesn’t say is that since 1877, not much has changed.

Runners Up

This is tough nailing books down, but if I’m only going by books that stayed with me, I also have to include books I thought were meh.

By “meh” I mean, ran out of steam. Adam Jentleson’s Kill Switch definitely taught me about the history and current misuse of the filibuster. But explaining the filibuster is not a full-length book. Or at least the one Jentleson wrote. Which means the second half of the book is mostly filler. Read the first half. It’s important.

I feel the same way about Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us, though it is engaging for more than half the book. Her point is that racism hurts white people. That poor and working class people who are anti-government are hurting themselves, and they need to see that their goals align with their Black peers.

Except I think most white people in this country see their goals as being above Black people - as Wilkerson pointed out in Caste. Still, McGhee gives some great examples and anecdotes.

Dirty Politics was my first foray into analyzing the political press - which I had been appalled by in 1988. I don’t know if it’s worth reading now. I haven’t reread it. But everything I do now was underpinned by Kathleen Hall Jamieson.

So, that’s my list of the non-fiction books that have stayed with me the most. Welcome to my brain. I guess this was an exploration of deeper meaning after all. I tried.

Would love to hear what you think of these books, and what your favorite non-fiction books are. If you have also read economics books, share with us what you read and what they taught you. Leave a message below, or reach out to me at carrie@nevadavoice.org.