Gabrielle Giffords

is back voting in the House today. Good for you, Ms. Giffords!

What Denise WILL be reading this week

Reckless Endangerment, by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. I would be reading it now, except the screen on my Kindle broke. A new one will be here tomorrow (FREE! Thanks Amazon!), at which time furious reading will commence. Alexander Hamilton was very good. I love how reading about the Founding 235 years ago makes me understand what's going on today more thoroughly. Sometimes it's comforting, sometimes it's profoundly disquieting, but in any case I like understanding. Anyway, Hamilton didn't deserve the bad reputation that he has. He was brilliant, occasionally nearly prophetic. He was also brash, heedless,and often incapable of self-control. In several very real ways, he saved the country. People call George Washington the father of the country. Chernow calls Hamilton the father of the government. The first 4 presidential administrations were far more fluid and uncertain than people tend to think. The whole American experiment almost came crashing down several times-- and many of those times, either Hamilton himself or one of his policies stepped in and saved it. Which is all the more remarkable considering he wasn't a huge fan of the Constitution to begin with. He just figured it was the best compromise that was likely to come out of Philadelphia, and once it was put to the vote, he did everything he could to make it the law. Good for him. A good statesman (as opposed to a politician) should know a good compromise when he sees one. Hamilton also gave the U.S. its very first s*x scandal-- and spent the rest of his life making it up to his wife. She was blissfully happy with him. Would that more men who cheated followed his example. Anyway, kudos to Hamilton (and Chernow-- it's a VERY well written book). Voracious reading will recommence tomorrow!

What Denise is reading this week...

Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow. Pretty darn good. The author seems to have a touch of hero worship, which is never ideal in a biographer, but considering Hamilton's reputation, perhaps having a biography like this a cosmic justice. Anyway, Hamilton was a fascinating person. Contradictory (yet principled), loyal (but instigator of the first great American s*x scandal), brilliant (but got himself killed in a duel, of all things). Alexander Hamilton is a thoroughly enjoyable read, and makes you see current politics in a completely different light-- as, really, all books on the Founders and early America should. If for no other reason than perspective.

What Denise read LAST week

We were in Alaska last week, which meant plenty of fun time, family, mosquitoes, and Kindle time, but no internet. So here's what I read/ am reading.

Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card. This is the sequel to Ender's Game, which I have never read (too much CIP-- Children In Peril-- to make comfortable reading for yours truly), but which James assures me is fantastic. Speaker for the Dead is quite readable on its own, but then, James had already told me what happened in Ender's Game. Either reading EG or giving its Wikipedia page a read is recommended. Speaker is a murder mystery/sci-fi/xenoanthropology study all in one-- and it's very very good. A+!

Xenocide is the next book in the series. It's also good, but I'm not very far into it yet.

I'm also working on What Would the Founders Do, by Richard Brookhiser. He writes for National Review, one of my long-time favorites, so I had high hopes for this one. The fact that I'm still trying to get through it should tell you guys something. I was hoping for a fair bit of Constitutional analysis combined with Founder-lore... but this is not it. There were what, 70-odd founders? The book's title is a faulty premise-- about the ONLY thing that the Founders agreed on were the two documents they signed-- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Everything else is up for grabs, and good heavens, they grabbed. To my mind, the only way to answer any question like "what would they do?" is to go back to the Declaration and Constitution and what they said about, and work from there. But Brookhiser (who had listed something like 30 questions so far) simply takes anecdotes from a Founder or two's lives which purportedly answer the question (sometimes this works, sometimes not). That answers what a given Founder would have done (maybe), but it can hardly be said to answer what the group as a whole would have done. Some of the stories are neat, and I'm glad to have read them, buuuut... WWFD earns a solid C.

What Denise is reading this week...

With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen B. Oates. It's very good. And instructional. If there's one thing that everyone who knew Abraham Lincoln agreed on, it's that his integrity was unimpeachable. Ah, for a politician that couldn't be bought! It's interesting to see, though, that Lincoln really was a politician. He was, at times, a partisan hack. Just an honest partisan hack. That makes all the difference. Also, for all the weirdness you hear about Abraham Lincoln's marriage, they evidently loved each other very much (so far anyway. I'm only to 1860). And Lincoln was a slob. He kept documents for his law practice in drawers, on tables, in boxes, in his stovepipe hat (apparently all kinds of stuff got stashed up there-- his partner said it was "[Lincoln's] desk and memorandum book), and in a little packet on his desk marked "when you can't find it anywhere else look into this". Neither he nor his partner Herndon ever bothered sweeping, and Lincoln liked to eat fruit like oranges and cherries for lunch and then spit the seeds on the floor. One law student who had been in their office said that the floor was so literally dirty that some of the seeds actually sprouted.
Politics right before the Civil War were explosive. Congressmen were duking it out on the House floor in Congress, showing up drunk for votes, and threatening the opposite sides with predictions of the end of American civilization if what they wanted to happen concerning slavery failed to come to pass. Probably not too different from now, other than I don't recall a recent fist fight.