Book Report Preview in Pictures

This year I read 50 books. I have not even started writing my 2020 book report, so I am making a preview in pictures: both a preview of the books I will be writing about and a preview of what I will be reading and discussing in the coming months.   

This first picture is the next book in several of the book discussion groups I am participating in.  Starting from the top is "The Promise of Politics" the current book in the Virtual Reading Group at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. 

Next is The Mandrake, a play by Niccolo Machiavelli, which is the next book we discuss in the World Conquest Book Club.

The next two books are part of the Writers in Residences series that is hosted by Franklin and Marshall College and local synagogues, including the one I attend: Shaarai Shomayim in Lancaster, Pa. The discussion of "Hebrew Roots, Jewish Routes" by Jeremy Benstein was a week ago. "Red Sea Spies" by Raffi Berg will be in February.

"Some Assembly Required" by Neil Shubin is the next book in the Evolution Round Table at Franklin and Marshall College.  I have been part of that group for more than a decade and a half.  Stephen Jay Gould sat in with the group when he visited the college in the 1990s.

"The Tiger's Wife" by Tea Obreht is the next book in a discussion group of ESL volunteers and others. 

"Morality" by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is the topic of a weekly discussion group at Shaarai Shomayim Synagogue. 

The photo above is the books we discussed this year in ESL Book Group mentioned above.

The books in this photo were the books we read this year in the World Conquest Book Club. 

I will say a lot more about these books in the eventual book report.  

Happy New Year!

Celebrating the 51st Anniversary of My Driver's with a 1,400-Mile, 44-Hour Trip

On Thursday morning, December 17, my daughter Lisa sent me a text saying that should would be in Chicago on Saturday, December 19.  I had said months before if she was going to be in Chicago, I would love to see her. She lives in Minneapolis, but her now-remote job is in Chicago.  

Saturday, December 19, would be the 51st anniversary of my driver's license.  What better way to celebrate than to drive to Chicago for dinner and drive back.  

At 8 pm on Friday, the 18th, Nigel and I drove west across Pennsylvania to Cleveland where we stopped for the night just before 2am.  I like driving at night. So much less traffic.  

The next morning we drove to my daughter's apartment on the north side of Chicago.  She was pretty much packed for the move. We walked along the lake shore then ordered dinner from Mr. Dumpling.

After dinner at about 7pm Nigel and I started the 700-mile journey east. We stopped outside of Cleveland again.  By 4pm we were back in Lancaster: 44 hours, 1,422 miles. The car switched to metric units with one click so the journey was also 2,288km getting using 8.5 liters per 100 kilometers traveled. 

Just a nerdy aside, but we use a measure of how far we get per gallon of gas, the metric world, which means the rest of the world except the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar, use a measure of how much fuel they use to go 100 kilometers.  Fuel costs two to three times as much in most of the world as it does in America, so the emphasis makes sense.  

I like doing two-day circle drives. Each of my last three trips in Europe and Israel has included a two-day car trip of either side of a thousand miles.  In 2017, I drove from Paris to Nice and Monaco, then Turin, Zurich and back to Paris: 47 hours, 1,203 miles.  In the fall of 2019, I drove a circle of Israel from Tel Aviv, to Eilat, to Mount Bental on the Golan Heights, back to the coast, then to Jerusalem: 750 miles, 32 hours. I also did a five country loop visiting battlefields and the Spa Francorchamps racetrack that went from Paris to Luxembourg to Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and back to Paris: 45 hours, 900 miles.

I really am a motorhead.

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American Exceptionalism Died on Trump's Lying Lips

 

In an essay on Socrates, Hannah Arendt says Socrates wanted all of us to be at peace within ourselves: as much as possible our inner self should be in line with who we present to the world.

To Socrates, one of the problems with being a murderer is that, even if you are never caught, for the rest of your life, you are a murderer. Your inner self can never line up with your public self in a civilized place. You will never be a virtuous person.

In the same way, American exceptionalism died in the five weeks between the election and Mitch McConnell saying "It's over." We were the first successful revolution followed by an enduring democracy. Even if Joe Biden is sworn in as President and the orange liar leaves office, America is now a place in which the sitting President of the United States lied, is lying and will continue to lie about the result of the election. We did not have a peaceful transfer of power and 2018 may still be the last free and fair election in American history.

America is now no better than any broken country fighting against a would-be dictator.

And when the rest of the world laughs at us, as they should, they can point to more than 70 million voters who looked at four years of hate and lies and said, "I want more of that."

America will never again have standing to lecture another country about peaceful transfer of power and democratic norms.

Foreign policy magazine has a good summary of American Exceptionalism.