#71 -
American Gospel: God, The Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation by Jon Meacham
From Goodreads:
The American Gospel-literally, the good news about America-is that religion shapes our public life without controlling it. In this vivid book, New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham tells the human story of how the Founding Fathers viewed faith, and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice.
At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics-from John Winthrop's "city on a hill" sermon to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.
This was assigned reading for one of my classes this semester, and I was a big skeptical. I have little patience with the cultural wars of modern politics and the historical justifications for it. But Meacham does a good job of looking over the historical record and presenting a coherent and unbiased look at the complicated relationship between government and religion going all the way back to the Declaration of Independence and continuing to the present day. I probably wouldn't have read it for fun, but it was a solid, informative historical read.
#72 -
What We're Fighting for Now is Each Other by Wen Stephenson
From Goodreads:
The science is clear: catastrophic climate change, by any humane definition, is upon us. At the same time, the fossil-fuel industry has doubled down, economically and politically, on business as usual. We face an unprecedented situation—a radical situation. As an individual of conscience, how will you respond?
In 2010, journalist Wen Stephenson woke up to the true scale and urgency of the catastrophe bearing down on humanity, starting with the poorest and most vulnerable everywhere, and confronted what he calls “the spiritual crisis at the heart of the climate crisis.” Inspired by others who refused to retreat into various forms of denial and fatalism, he walked away from his career in mainstream media and became an activist, joining those working to build a transformative movement for climate justice in America.
In What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other, Stephenson tells his own story and offers an up-close, on-the-ground look at some of the remarkable and courageous people—those he calls “new American radicals”—who have laid everything on the line to build and inspire this fast-growing movement: old-school environmentalists and young climate-justice organizers, frontline community leaders and Texas tar-sands blockaders, Quakers and college students, evangelicals and Occupiers. Most important, Stephenson pushes beyond easy labels to understand who these people really are, what drives them, and what they’re ultimately fighting for. He argues that the movement is less like environmentalism as we know it and more like the great human-rights and social-justice struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from abolitionism to civil rights. It’s a movement for human solidarity.
This is a fiercely urgent and profoundly spiritual journey into the climate-justice movement at a critical moment—in search of what climate justice, at this late hour, might yet mean.
Another assigned read - I'm enjoying a semester of huge loads of scholarly non-fiction but few actual textbooks! - this one was at times fascinating and at times frustrating. Stephenson lays out his argument as part journalistic non-fiction, part personal memoir, a format that tended to be a bit rambling or winding at times. The overall premise was interesting, climate change not simply as a scientific issue but as a matter of spirituality and fundamental human rights, but the writing wandered in such a way that sometimes the major thread got a bit lost. Still, it was interesting to look at the issue from that perspective and make connections that I wouldn't necessarily have made on my own.
#73 -
Kiss of a Dragon
#74 -
Heart of a Dragon
#75 -
Fire of a Dragon by Alisa Woods
From Goodreads:
LUCIAN
I am a Dragon Prince of the House of Smoke… and I am dying.
Five hundred years is truly enough for a man like me. A monster. Yet a ten-thousand-year treaty will die with me, if I don’t spawn a dragonling to take my place. My two brothers are no use in this task. It falls to me, the eldest by a hair’s breadth, and yet, I cannot face the horror of another sealing. Another death. Another woman’s blood on my hands.
ARABELLA
I was saved from death in a dark Seattle alley by an impossibly beautiful man who swooped in on golden wings. Now he’s taken me to his lair, opened my eyes to a world of immortals I didn’t know existed, and given me an impossible task—find him a mate. Then, and only then, will he set me free.
He needs her more than he wants; she wants him more than she should; and the fate of both the mortal and immortal worlds depends on not just repairing their hearts, but finding a Love that’s True…
I picked up the first in this series through
Amazon's new Prime reading feature and got sucked in enough to buy the other two. All three were pure fluff, but fast paced from the start and populated with interesting, sympathetic characters. At times the progression was a bit shallow and major issues resolved far too easily, but the balance of action to romance was well done and the story moved along at an engrossing clip without feeling rushed or forced.
#76 -
Wild Man's Curse by Susannah Sandlin
From Goodreads:
The bones said death was comin’, and the bones never lied.
While on an early morning patrol in the swamps of Whiskey Bayou, Louisiana wildlife agent Gentry Broussard spots a man leaving the home of voodoo priestess Eva Savoie—a man who bears a startling resemblance to his brother, whom Gentry thought he had killed during a drug raid three years earlier. Shaken, the agent enters Eva’s cabin and makes a bloody discovery: the old woman has been brutally murdered.
With no jurisdiction over the case, he’s forced to leave the investigation to the local sheriff, until Eva’s beautiful heir, Celestine, receives a series of gruesome threats. As Gentry’s involvement deepens and more victims turn up, can he untangle the secrets behind Eva’s murder and protect Celestine from the same fate? Or will an old family curse finally have its way?
Another fun, escapist read - nail-biting romantic suspense, heavier on the suspense than the romance. Set in southern Louisiana, the setting was almost a character in itself, stronger and most distinctive than the human characters in some aspects. Also a free read for Prime members and also the first in the series, but I haven't decided yet if I'll pick up the second even though I enjoyed this one. If I finally bite the bullet and subscribe to Kindle Unlimited the rest of the series will probably make my to-read list, though.
#77 -
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
From Goodreads:
"As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status -- much like their grandparents before them."
In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crowchallenges the civil rights community -- and all of us - -to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
This should be required reading in American government classes. It is a compelling and surprisingly readable account of how mass incarceration came to be the nearly unquestioned law of the land even as crime rates were in decline, and Alexander makes a strong case that despite the white lives that get entangled in the system, it is primarily a new form of racialized control and subjugation. Well-documented and persuasively reasoned, the book has a lot to say not only about the subject matter itself but also about events that have happened since its 2010 publication that have thrust the relationship between minority communities and the criminal justice system into the headlines.
