White Trash, The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America (2016 by Nancy Isenberg

This is a good read.  It really makes you question whether the is exceptional.  You hear politicians and their teammates say so, but is it really? 

There is and has always been racial discrimination.  That's too obvious to deny.  But there has also always been discrimination against poor whites. 

It puts neat things like To Kill a Mockingbird in a different light. It's a critique of racial discrimination, to be sure, but it also promotes negative stereotypes of the poor white. 

One strategy employed by those in power is to pit the racial minorities against the poor whites.  Jackson attacked racial minorities and did not really help the poor whites. He was not a universal suffrage guy, as advertised.  Conversely, those efforts to help the one disadvantaged group also are intended to help the other.  President Lincoln was the liberator of the slaves but also helped the poor white in his struggle against the slave power. 

The author takes it from the beginning in the 1600's and draws a straight line to last year.  The America First movement seems to validate her point.

Back to exceptionalism. Don't the elites in this country do what elites do in other countries?  They make do with what they have to stay on top the best they can.

This is an important subject and the author does it justice.

Baseball weekend

Friday-- A's practice, the first with our new pitching machine.

Saturday-- season opener, A's v. Dodgers.  We played with the machine.  The settings were a little off from our practice, but Taoster and the team figured it out.  Taoster can make that thing sing Home Sweet Home.  By the second inning, our kids were crushing it.  There was a little flap with the other manager about whether we continue playing in the bottom half of the inning when the game was effectively over.  The other team called it after our kid on second had to use the bathroom.  But overall it was a great experience experience.  All but 2 of our kids made contact, there were some serious plays in the field, and James went 3-3.

Sunday (today-- we put up the cage!  Saturday we assembled, but assembled it wrong.  Today we fixed it. Taoster and I were out there in 90 degree whether assembling this thing.  And I pitched a round of tennis balls to James.  He tore up the vegetables.  Success!  we still need to get the mulch out, drag the dirt, put in a home plate, get the machine set up, and other small potatoes stuff.  But we're 90% of the way there.  Now we can play ball and grow vegetables and fruit in the back yard.

Seoul Man by Frank Ahrens (2016

Interesting autobiography about reporter turned PR exec who works for Hyundai in Korea. It's mostly about his experiences of the Korean culture and there's also a bit about the car business.  There is some interesting surprising stuff about Koreans and Americans on the base there.  Also, he has a good sense of humor.  One to read.

Underground Airlines (2016) by Ben Winters

This is a great. It's a novel based on an alternative history.  What would the US be like if Lincoln was assassinated before he became president?  The US would still have slavery in 4 states, call the "hard 4."  The protagonist is a slave catcher who was formerly a slave.

It gets you wondering, what about this nation is exceptional?  what is meant by that? If it exceptional, when did the exceptionalism start?

Read this one.

notes on Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, by William Finnegan (1998

This is a very insightful book.  William Finnegan is a journalist with the New Yorker and a very good writer.

In this book, he studies the lives of four working class families, and their communities, across the country. Despite differences in region, ethnicity and culture, they are all on the other side of post-WWII prosperity and sliding down, down down.  FTW is everywhere.

How did it happen? The people of a certain era were provided great and free public schools, but rejected the same for their kids.  Unions used to be great, but now just increase costs of consumer goods and cut into corporate profits. After these things have served their purpose, they're too expensive to maintain for future generations.

And this book was 19 years before President Trump, who is both reflective of this decline and will no doubt accelerate it.

I can't really describe it as a pleasant read, but it certainly helped me to understand things better.

Notes on Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad (2009

I got the idea for this one from NPR's story program, Snap Judgment.  The author basically did the book in 15 minutes.

It's a true story, written well, about an 11 year old kid and his dad in a plane crash around Big Bear.  The kid survives, and dad and dad's girlfriend don't.

The kid grows up at Topanga Beach in the late 1970's and it feels like the 70's with puka shells and big collars.  Dad teaches the kid to surf, ski and play hockey, which the kid later understands to be training for surviving the ordeal of the crash.

Read this one.

Note on The First Christmas, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan (2007)

This is a great historical look at the Christmas narratives in Matthew and Luke.  It treats those as parable. It was not intended to be factual. Those stories contrast a baby king in a manger born of the dirt poor to those who rule their world and ours-- Herod, Augustus etc.-- and that contrast is the point of Christmas and the gospels generally.

It rings true and was an inspiring read. My favorite bible historians knock another one of the park.   James, read this one and any others these authors write.