SOME SUMMER SUGGESTIONS
We’ve written before about our reading
habits and preferences. What’s on a person’s
bookshelf can offer significant insight into that individual’s true nature. Reading
informs what we write in this space. Books on public affairs, novels, and
memoirs teach us what keen observers see in world events and expand our
understanding of the human experience.
In this post, we recommend
impactful books we’ve each read recently. Seeing what we read may also help
readers better understand us.
Henry:
A Mystery with Larger Consequences
I believe by reading we gain
access to the lives of others and, perhaps, understand
ourselves
better. If so, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by
Patrick Radden Keefe
confronts readers with difficult issues. Keefe presents Say Nothing as a mystery in search of answers after the abduction
of a mother in Belfast which most laid at the feet of the Irish Republican Army. However, the entire violent conflict known as The Troubles that consumed Northern
Ireland between the 1960s and 1998 provides the backdrop. 
Keefe offers up the conflict
through the eyes of actual participants in this incredibly tragic loss of life.
With access to the participants, many readers might find themselves appalled
because no heroes deserving admiration seem to emerge. We see only humans
caught up in a vicious conflict with no striking lessons for our species.
I began the book hoping I’d find answers about a conflict I’d read about for much of my life.
I wanted explanations for what led ordinary people to engage in such acts of
cruelty. Keefe writes the abduction mystery, around which much of the book
centers, well and that story engages the reader throughout. If that were the
book’s only focus, I could praise it and the writing without reservation. But, the book leaves me with a greater
mystery: What roads to peace might have
been taken without the price of so many lives?
Rob: Reaching Back for
a Consequential
Memoir
People usually talk about recently
released books they’ve read or that they’ve finally read an old book they
missed along the way, perhaps a literary classic. Sometimes, however, books get released we’d enjoy but never get
to. That happened with me and 2011’s An
Unquenchable Thirst: Following
Mother
Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life by
Mary Johnson. This memoir of a former nun in the
Missionaries of Charity, the Calcutta, India based order led by the late Mother Teresa, explores the tension between the life people may believe they
want in youth and the life they may grow into later.
Mary Johnson was an idealistic
teenager desiring a life of service and dedication to faith. At 17, she saw a Time magazine
cover
story on Mother Teresa and latched on to
the idea of joining the MCs. She realized that dream, living as Sister Donata
for 20 years, mostly in New York, Washington, and Rome. Then, in 1997, the year
of Mother Teresa’s death, she left the MCs and became Mary Johnson again
While I took some interest in her description of the
upstairs/downstairs politics in the MCs, the book’s greatest contribution lies
in showing how people grow and change. Mary Johnson took a chastity vow when
she joined, but left having had sexual encounters of varying intensity with two
other nuns and a priest. She realized the vows she took no longer fit the
person she had become or wanted to become. She left the order, later married,
and continued her service outside the church.
She described herself as an atheist. She became a different person. An
Unquenchable Thirst reminds us life takes many twists and turns. Regardless
of our certainty, change is always foreseeable.
Woodson:
Property and Power over People
Social justice is my primary interest. No books
have given me the clarity
for achieving social justice like Capital
and Ideology by world
renowned economist Thomas Piketty and Arguing with
Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by
nationally renowned American economist Paul Krugman. Henry once told me he often reads
multiple books simultaneously. My private reaction (which I didn’t share until
now) was that only pointy-headed intellectuals would do that. Be careful not to
judge others too quickly. Reading these two books at the same time
has been gratifying. Before Henry says, “I
told you so,” let me explain that both concern economics and politics, which
could explain why the process can work.
Piketty writes from an historic and global perspective, discussing
the late Middle Ages, the Early Modern, and Modern and Contemporary periods. He covers Russia, China, Iran, the United States, and 
numerous countries in Africa and Europe. He focuses on the sacralization of property and how it and money determine the choice of
government as much as social movements. Piketty contends that if nations study
the corrupting role of property and money in government, and build safeguards
against their influence, nations can establish more egalitarian societies.
Krugman writes about current
day U.S. economics and politics and the governing ideologies of the two major
political parties. Eerily, he seems to prove Piketty’s point: by ignoring the
practices of past societies and their sacralization of property and giving
moneyed interests disproportionate influence in our democracy, America now experiences
greater inegalitarianism than ever before.
Both books are fun to
read and enlightening for those who seek an understanding of how the United States
might build a more just and egalitarian society.
