My Reading & Thoughts
Novel Recommendation
Most of what I read is non-fiction. In recent years I have made a concerted effort to always be reading one novel. The last novel I finished, Dungeon Crawler Carl, was enjoyable because it was so unusual. The book I picked up next I am enjoying even more. Indeed, reading it reminds me of the addictiveness of fiction that I experienced growing up and in my 20s, when I read a lot of novels.
While I have about 35 pages yet go go, I can say with certainty that Ken Follett’s 1993 novel A Dangerous Fortune is a real page turner. The book is one of his earlier works, and stands apart from his more famous novels, which can be categorized as spy thrillers or historical fiction set in the Britain of the Middle Ages. This book is also set in Britain, but takes place in the later half of the 19th century, during the Victorian period.
There are a few elements that I think make the reading most enjoyable for me. For one, the plot is well layed out, with several strings being pulled through the story to the end. The characters, despite being somehat simply drawn, are interesting and their motivations intriguing. Indeed, I am anxious now that I am near the end to see how the good guys are going to pull through and the bad actors karmically brought to task.
The setting of the book reminds me of Caleb Carr’s excellent book The Alienist. I am also reminded a bit of Kevin Baker’s excellent story Paradise Alley.
If you’re looking for a ‘beach read’ or ‘page turner’, A Dangerous Fortune is a solid choice.
For the Heads
This YouTube channel has got to be one of the coolest Grateful Dead related things on the internet. If you’re a head, you’ve probably seen them before…_but maybe not! _
They call themselves Searchlight Productions, as in ‘search light casting, for thoughts in the clouds of delusion.’ You know. There are a few aspects of their production that I love. First, the host is a young dude who likely never saw the Grateful Dead. He also is dressed like a middle brow professor type. Yet he comes across as a fierce lover of the music and he definitely knows his shit. Indeed, these videos are steeped in GD lore and they aren’t shy about dropping primary source (and secondary source) materials on us. The videos are a perfect mix of Grateful Dead and history, which zaps my dinger. The video shared below covers the history of the band’s performances on July 3. Watcing the video, it was fun to see that I was at the last July 3 Dead show in 1994 at Shoreline. I think it was the only time I saw Fire on the Mountain unpaired with Scarlet Begonias.
I noticed in the video that the host has a few ‘history’ books about the Dead on the desk. One of them is a great book called Heads that I have read and highly recommend.
5 Public Intellectuals I Keep Tabs On
I’ve written before here about my respect for the late intellectual Christopher Hitchens. Boy, could we use his wit nowadays! There are other living writers, thinkers, and pontificaters that I continue to enjoy learning from. Here are 5 of them.
1. David Brooks
Brooks was a long time columnist for the New York Times, one of their ‘conservative’ writers. He is also the author of several 5-star books, including The Social Animal, The Second Mountain, and How to Know a Person. Brooks has moved to the center over the past 10 years or so. While I don’t agree with all his takes, I admire his thoughtfulness and his willingness to acknowledge changes to his thinking on important issues.
2. Sam Harris
Sam Harris pisses everybody off. Liberals don’t like him because he condemns the ideology hiding behind organized monotheistic religions, and conservatives don’t like him because he is one of the most effective verbal butchers of MAGA stupidity. He’s also an AI doomer, which can be off putting to those who are AI optimists. Most importantly though, Harris speaks clearly about the benefits of a meditation practice and his app Waking Up is arguably one of the most comprehensive secular tools for waking up from the ongoing and persistent delusion of the self.
3. Ryan Holiday
Holiday is a writer, book store owner (yes!), podcaster, and general promoter of Stoic wisdom. His books, like those by Brooks and Harris, are fantastic collections of history and all-purpose wisdom. He also walks his talk regarding virtue, calling out racism and greed that are commonly dressed up as patriotism and ‘family values.’ And did I mention he likes great music?
4. Shane Parrish
Parrish is the Canadian writer and podcaster behind the Farnam Street blog, which is a trove of wisdom about the human condition. He is also thoughtful, smart, and his work is consistently offering new and interesting ideas to explore further. Parrish, unlike the others on this list, generally avoids politics.
I’ve been a fan of Prof G, as he is affectionately known, since I first came across his podcast. Like Harris and Holiday, he is an outspoken critic of the current state of American politics and I tend to agree with most of his ideas. He can be off putting in the sense that he is often crude and has a juvenile sense of humor, but when it comes to the intersection of economics and politics I find that I am nearly always in agreement with him. He also promotes what I consider to be a much healthier version of masculinity, which is important when there are so many tools promoting toxic masculinity online. Galloway’s book Adrift, which I finished reading about a week ago, is also worth reading.
🇺🇸 America, this Fourth of July 🇺🇸
America turns 250 years old officially today. I am old enough to have vague memories of the 200th birthday celebration in 1976. Without getting specific, it is clear to those paying attention that the country is struggling in many ways. And yet the promise remains.
The quotes below come from three books I’ve read, two of which I strongly recommend. The first is called The Bill of Obligations by Richard Haass. It is required reading for true patriots. The last two quotes come from Kermit Roosevelt III’s wonderful book The Nation That Never Was (and yes, Mr. Roosevelt is the great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt). The thesis of this book is that the better version of America was created during Reconstruction, after the Civil War, not in 1776. It is a book worth reading and certainly an argument worth thinking about.
Happy 4th! May the United States of America become more united, may lying become shameful again, and may justice be established. Wave that flag!
Old Trees and Some Poetry
There were two elements of my recent road trip that I wanted my 12 year old to experience. One was the southern Oregon coast. My kiddo had been to the northern part of our state’s beautiful coast, but not south of Newport. We stayed in Gold Beach, Yachats, and Bay City, and spent several sunny hours enjoying the beach at Bandon. The other experience I wanted to share was a walk through an old growth redwood grove, which we managed to do at a place called the Stout Grove, just a bit southeast from Crescent City. (Shout out to my old friend EK for pointing us in that direction.)
The trees, of course, did not disappoint. We got to the old growth section early enough to find a good parking spot close to the Grove of Titans trail and spent about an hour walking around with our heads tilted skyward. Everyone we encountered was friendly and the weather was perfect, damp but not too cold. It is quite a feeling to walk amid trees that are more than a thousand years old.
Back home, reminiscing about the big, old trees, I picked up a book of Gary Snyder’s poetry and reread some of his poems that I love. He writes beautifully about nature in general, and the west coast of North America in particular, and I am always drawn to his work after getting back from some quality time in the outdoors. The picture below shows the final 2 stanzas of a 6 stanze poem of his called As For Poets.
On William T. Sherman
I’ve written about William Tecumseh Sherman before. However, I am inspired to share a little more about him as I am partway through Robert L. O’Connell’s wonderful, and relatively short, biography of the American warrior.
Here are 5 facts interesting facts about Mr. Sherman.
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His middle name comes from the great Shawnee warrior Tecumseh who fought against the Americans in the War of 1812. This was something I was familiar with because Tecumseh comes up in my APUSH curriculum.
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Sherman had 10 other siblings and his father died when he was young, so he and several of his siblings were orphaned out to family and friends. In Sherman’s case, he was adopted by a wealthy, good friend of his father’s named Thomas Ewing. The Ewings also took in William’s brother John, who would go on to become a congressman and the author of the famous (if ineffectual) Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890.
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Sherman was one of the first government officials to verify the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in what is now Sacramento. He had been stationed a bit south along the California coast during the Mexican War (he was bummed not to be near where the fighting was). Nevertheless, he visited Sutter, saw what had been discovered, and mailed gold dust with confirmation to Washington, helping to start the California Gold Rush.
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Sherman married his foster sister, a woman named Ellen Ewing. They weren’t blood siblings, but to the modern eye it still seems a bit off. And it was a bit off then, too. But they got married anyway in 1850.
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Because his foster dad/father-in-law was a very well connected politician from Ohio, many powerful politicians from that era attended their wedding in Washington DC. Their wedding guests included the current president, Zachary Taylor (a military man, like Sherman), members of the cabinet, and congressional giants Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. It was definitely a Whig wedding.
William Tecumseh Sherman was clearly an interesting dude.
And yes, the Sherman tank was named after him.
Start of Summer Book Haul
Summer has officially begun for me and that means even more time to enjoy reading. To celebrate the start of another summer reading season, my kiddo and I made a trip down to glorious Powell’s Books downtown. I had already snagged a few books from school that want to read soon (the history book The 20th Century and Ken Follet’s A Dangerous Fortune). I wound up getting three from Powell’s, and because they didn’t have a few Richard J. Evans books that I wanted, I had to come home and order a few more for good measure (one of the books is a biography of British historian Eric Hobsbwam, but it won’t arrive for another week or so). The very recently published Tad Stroemer book is the only non-used book of the bunch. I think the Follett novel will be the first of these that I’ll start; just got to get through Dungeon Crawler Carl first (because I can only handle one novel at a time).
Peter Shamshiri's Blog Post FTW!
Once again, the weekly newsletter Dense Discovery delivers the goods. One of the links in today’s newsletter is to a blog post by Peter Shamshiri called Rich Guy Quote Journalism. The gist of the argument is that journalists often quote wealthy people and think it’s newsworthy, because the quote comes from someone with money. Of course, the thoughts of wealthy people are not more newsworthy than the thoughts of anyone else! Nevertheless, we live in a culture that worships wealth, so here we are.
Read the blog post.
The Cradle of Citizenship
I recently finished James Traub’s excellent book The Cradle of Citizenship. Traub spends a year visiting classrooms throughout the United States, trying to understand how schools promote and teach our young people how to be citizens. As an AP US History and AP Government teacher in a majority minority public high school, with a large immigrant population, this topic is important to me. Along the way, Traub exposes the follies of both the right and the left, with Florida and Minnesota playing lead roles.Traub makes clear there are some stupid practices and ideas on both sides of the political spectrum when it comes to education. I certainly see this in my job here in Portland.
Traub defines himself as being center-left, which is how I see myself. Not surprisingly, I agree with many of his conclusions. With regards to one current debate in education, he makes the point that knowledge is the foundation of higher-order thinking and thereby citizenship. One can’t form an educated opinion on tariffs, for instance, if one doesn’t know what a tariff is. However, focusing on facts, and chronology (as opposed to thematic learning in history), and often, ‘dead white guys’, are practices associated with the conservative view of education. However, I agree whole-heartedly that Traub’s conclusion about this debate is correct; in this case, the conservatives are mostly right. For more on this topic, see this free pdf titled Developing Thinking for Deep Thinking.
I enjoyed the book as well because it gave me a peak inside other classrooms. One of the problems with teaching is that we work in a bit of a bubble. It is often difficult to see what is happening outside one’s own classroom walls, not to mention in other buildings, in other states.
Unfortunately, the book did not lessen my worries about the intellectual (and spiritual) rot of Christian Nationalism. There are some very ignorant people in this country that would turn our schools into madrasses. That is no bueno and is a reminder that there is a culture war being waged in our nation, one that is tied to the class war that continues to be waged by the Epstein class in this country. And schools are increasingly a battle ground in those wars.
If you’re at all interested in the relationship between schools and democracy, read this short gem of a book.
Some More Thoughts on AI
A topic that I continue to think a lot about is AI. As it becomes more ubiquitous, I am hearing more and more opinions about it. Hearing what others think is helpful because my reactions help guide my own reflections about the topic.
On one hand, I am coming to realize that the data center issue is an important one. The controversy in Utah has certainly got me thinking about the behind the scenes consequences of AI. Despite the benefits AI provides, would I want a giant, water and energy sucking data center located near me? The answer is hell no. I also respect the views of Sam Harris and he’s been an AI doomer since the beginning. The recent letter sent by all the giant AI companies to congress seems to indicate that Mr. Harris is right to be worried, not just about his electricity bill, but about our collective future. As a parent, these concerns cut deep. Finally, I worry about how AI seems poised to both displace millions of workers AND exacerbate the already depressing wealth disparities in our society. Will my kid graduate high school into an unimaginable job desert?
On the other hand, despite a keen awareness of my own bifurcated and evolving views about AI, the contrarian in me is irritated by other hypocrisies I detect around this issue. For instance, I use AI to help construct short, highly tailored text for use in class (usually as an introduction to a historical topic). However, I don’t hide this from my students (and of course I still assign reading from the required AP text on a daily basis, along with myriad relevant and challenging primary and secondary sources) nor do I preach to my students about how bad AI is. However, students tell me that other teachers bad mouth AI, while using it heavily (and obviously) themselves in class. That grates.
I also just listened to a podcast done by a doctor who shared her thoughts about AI. She said she’d ‘never write’ with AI, not even an email. She claimed to be irritated by reading emails from others that were AI generated. She also indicated, and I’ve heard many people say the same thing so I believe it is probably a dominate view, that she just couldn’t enjoy any writing if she knew it was AI.
I have a few responses to this. First, while she is of course entitled to her opinion, I believe it is an arrogance born of privilege to assume others want to spend their precious time writing emails. From my perspective, if someone wants, or needs, to use AI to help triage their email, that is no business of mine. Furthermore, for someone who probably hired a nanny to help raise her kids, it seems a bit rich to argue that writing that is partly done by AI is somehow ‘inauthentic.’ If you are not going to call out people for outsourcing their parenting, surely desk jockeys, newsletter writers, busy white collar workers, bloggers, and content creators can use the tools available to get their work done. Indeed, do celebrities and CEOs get shamed for hiring ghost writers to write their memoirs? Do photographers get shamed for touching up their pictures with Photoshop? If I read a newsletter that provides benefit to me somehow, I don’t give a shit who or how it was written. But alas, I realize my current view on this is probably in the minority.
I’ve heard from a few commentators that as AI continues to take over, human authenticity will be the new currency of the realm. Those that can provide a human touch in their work or their business will thrive, despite the increasing powers of AI. I think that is likely to be true. But we aren’t there yet. Instead, we are here now, in 2026, working our mostly 20th century jobs, raising our kids without robot nannys, watching idiots burn our institutions to the ground, and still driving our own cars around town. I can see why people are excited about using a technology that offers time saving, novelty, and in some important ways, hope. However, increasingly I am also aware of the huge potential downsides. One thing is certain, we are in for some major changes and I still don’t know exactly what I think about that.
Meanwhile…
Jackson Pollock's Demise
Reading Louis Menand’s The Free World I came across the section on artist Jackson Pollock. I had heard of Pollock and knew he was most famous for his unique ‘drip’ style paintings. What caught my attention about him was how his life ended. Like many, many incredibly talented artists, Pollock was an alcoholic. According to Menand, he had essentially stopped making art in 1954, but kept boozing. He also suffered from depression. On a summer night in 1956, after drinking, he crashed his car with two female passengers. One of the women, along with Polllock, died in the crash. He was just 44 years old.
What sticks in my mind is the connection between his drinking and his life being cut short. As I said, he had quit making art, but who knows if he had lived longer if he wouldn’t have cleaned up and got back down to the business of being creative and blowing people’s minds (the drip art definitely blew people away in the early 1950s!). He also killed another person, a recklessness that I pin on his drinking. What a fucking waste.
Some quick research reveals that he is one of many, many talented artists and thinkers that died in similar circumstances. For instance, others that died in car crashes include Albert Camus and James Dean. Alcohol and/or drugs doomed Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Bonham, and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
Big Red Spotted Court Side in the Times Today
Browsing through the New York Times today and who do I spot? Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, sitting courtside at a Knick’s game. The article was published today, spot-lighting the team’s owner James Dolan. Of course, Phish has played the Knick’s home arena, Madison Square Garden, more than any other musical act other than the great Billy Joel. Dolan also owns the Garden. And Sphere in Las Vegas, where Phish was the second band to play, behind U2.
Anyway, I love it when my world’s collide. In this case, the sports page and PHISH.
The Shelf of Abandonment
I mentioned last post that I gave up on a book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. It always pains me to abandon a book. It is inevitable though if you start a lot of books, which lovers of books do, of course. I have a spot in my bedroom where I put such books. I suppose the hope that one day I’ll pick a book up from this forlorn collection and try again. That said, life’s too short to read books you aren’t interested in.
Here is a picture of those books today.
Current Stack
I finally gave up on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. However, I did finish two books I’d been reading for a while, The Great Hunt and In Search of Deeper Learning. The Great Hunt got better at the end, but the book was a slog and I’ve decided I’m not going to read anymore of The Wheel of Time series. The teaching book was interesting because it gave descriptions of other schools. Teachers work in a bubble, so I liked reading about how other schools operate. That said, the authors have a few misguided ideas about what constitutes ‘deep learning’ and how important it is for 13 to 17 year olds.
My current stack (see below) contains one novel (which I’m loving) and usual history, pedagogy, self-help, and biography. The two books I find myself wanting to pick up most frequently are The Cradle of Citizenship (civics pedagogy) and the biography of writer John le Carré.
Libby's Magazine Rack FTW!
I realize I a late to the party on this app, but I’ve got to give Libby a shout out. I always knew the app was out there but I never really explored what was available. I haven’t tried renting or reading a book through the app yet, but the magazine options are phenomenal. And all for free!
Below is my ‘magazine rack.’ I’ve paid for some of these subscription in the past, but why spend the money when I can read ‘em for free on my iPad. I’m confident that annual subscriptions to all these periodicals would set me back at least a few hundred dollars. I also love that I can zoom in on the pages. Oh, and the automatically update on their own and you can browse older editions. And did I mention it’s free?
The only drawback I’ve encountered is not being able to do the crossword at the back The Week. There puzzle is my favorite because it contains current event clues and is just the right level of difficulty for me. You win some, you lose some, eh?
Friendships are True Gold
I came across this article twice in a matter of days and decided to give it a read. The article appeared originally in the Times of India and was authored by Pranav Jain. It is about adult friendships and if you give it a read you’ll see why it went a bit viral over here in North America. The dude makes some good points (including the one quoted below)!
My only commentary is that I agree with Jain’s take. Adult friendship cuts against the grain of so much in our culture, but it is true gold. The stats in America indicate many adults have fewer and fewer friendships. No doubt ‘social media’ is partly to blame. I am lucky to have friends from every period in my life and I try hard not to take them for granted (though I naturally do sometimes). Of course, the older I/we get, the longer the gaps sometimes are between connections. Gotta work on that!
On Being Brisk
This quote originally caught my eye because it is strident and it is something I need to work on. Specifically, the eating part. I like food, but I tend to scarf. At work, I only have 30 minutes, so that doesn’t help. Nevertheless, I admittedly scarf at home, too! I know eating meditation is a thing, and I understand how strong of a mindfulness practice that is. That said, I suck at it.
I also appreciate what Kierkegaard was getting at with work. I don’t think he meant ‘our job’ necessarily. I think he meant ‘what we love to do.’ For lucky people, that’s their job. For many others, its their hobby and what they do for fun when they aren’t working. Those activities should be savored and indulged in–and done mindfully and with attention to detail.
Now whether these errors are ‘the most ridiculous’ is a bit of a stretch. Being a selfish asshole or a shitty parent is more ridiculous, but hey, I see what he was getting at.
On Judging AI Art
I came across this study this weekend in one the newsletters I peruse from time to time. The study was apparently published more than two years ago.
I saw the study in a post about someone who recently went viral tricking people on X with a Monet. He told people it was AI and asked why it was not better than a real Monet. Well, the catch was that the ‘fake AI’ Monet was an actual Monet.
The controversy interests me because I see both colleagues and students who are very distrustful of AI generally. I’ve been all in on AI since 2022, but I have come to realize there are many negative aspects of the technology, not the least of which is the energy demand and the potential for human extinction. No small things, for sure!
That said, as I’ve noted before, I use AI and I appreciate what it can do for me. The fact that I can relate to the enthusiasm for AI, despite the obvious issues it creates, set me up to enjoy alll the haters getting owned online for criticizing a real Monet just because they thought it was AI derived. Seeing this also made me smile because at this point in my journey I’m sick and tired of people being against issues in a way I find overly simplistic.
The study makes the point that people are specifically biased against AI-created art. To quote the abstract, “Participants were unable to consistently distinguish between human and AI-created images. Furthermore, despite generally preferring the AI-generated artworks over human-made ones, the participants displayed a negative bias against AI-generated artworks when subjective perception of source attribution was considered, thus rating as less preferable the artworks perceived more as AI-generated, independently on their true source."
For me, this is a reminder to think more slowly and deliberately. And to verify before jumping to conclusions. Often, we cannot believe our eyes (or our ears, or our media, or other people). AI’s rapid improvement makes this even more necessary.
Is the Fourth Turning Here?
Tonight I finished Neil Howe’s book The Fourth Turning is Here. It is one of those books that provides a powerful lens or frame through which to view both the past and the future. Being well versed in American history, I suspect I was able to follow along a bit more than many. Nevertheless, I am left feeling curious about whether the ideas really do explain where America is heading. The TL;DR is that we are entering the ‘Fourth Turning’ of a cycle, which is the crisis phase. Howe argues this will culminate by/around 2033. After that will be a new ‘First Turning’ and an era with less division and more unity (among other happy outcomes) will be upon us. I remain unconvinced, though I like the framework and I don’t doubt that he may be right. We sure seem to be headed for a crisis.
For those interested in history and the immediate future (that is, parents), this book is very interesting. Below are links to two reviews and two interviews with Mr. Howe.
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The Revolutionary and the Existentialist
The beauty of reading a few books at the same time is that it provides an opportunity for a bit of “intellectual cross-pollination.” On one hand, I’m working through Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, which paints an extremely chilling portrait of Vladimir Lenin. I knew he was no angel, but I honestly didn’t know that much about him. On the other hand, I’m navigating the mid-century Parisian scenes of Louis Menand’s The Free World, focusing on writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. At first glance, they seem like an odd pair for a blog post, but for shits and giggles, and because I’ve done a few posts like this before, I figured I’d briefly compare these two 20th century giants with each other since they have both been renting space in my head of late.
Both men were intellectuals who felt a deep “moral rot” in the bourgeois systems they inhabited and were sort of ‘insider-outsiders.’ They shared a totalizing “bullet over ballot” mentality, believing that meaningful change required a violent break from the past rather than incremental reform. Whether it was Lenin’s Dialectical Materialism or Sartre’s later attempts to marry Marxism with Existentialism, they both sought a “synthesis of ideas” to explain the entire human experience.
However, when it comes to the “individual,” they were diametrically opposed. To Lenin, a person was a tool, a simple cog in the “Iron Discipline” of the party machine. He was, according to Johnson, ruthlessly quick to ‘put up against the wall’ those who were not willing to go along with his revolution. To Sartre, the individual is the ultimate source of meaning. Because he argued there is no pre-designed “human nature,” we are thus entirely responsible for creating our own truth through authentic, subjective choices. To him, hiding behind social roles or party lines (or dogmas) was a form of “bad faith”—an attempt to escape the terrifying reality that we, and we alone, are the masters of our own destiny. Indeed, for Sartre the ‘freedom’ we are born with is not a lighthearted gift, but a heavy burden, because there is no external moral authority or biological blueprint to blame for our failures, we alone are the masters of our destiny. Indeed, this existentialist idea is very Buddhist in my mind.
Ultimately, I find myself repulsed by Lenin the more I learn about him, especially his cruelty and his dogmatism. Sartre, despite being someone who apparently didn’t really take care of his body or personal hygiene (what kind of choice was that?), was accurate in his emphasis on authenticity and taking responsibility for our choices.
