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I love end-of-the-year lists. So, as my offering to that genre (and don’t you just hate the word genre?) here’s a list of books that had the biggest impact on me last year. Not all of them were published in 2018. In fact, most weren’t. They were just books that caught my interest as I wandered from book to book during the year.
Most important book I read: The Lost History of Liberalism by Helena Rosenblatt
This book will make you realize that what we think of as liberal democracy is not so very old, so very well established or so stable. Authoritarian regimes have a much longer and maybe more enduring history. Combined with my reading of Grand Improvisation by Derek Leebaert, which is about the not-so-smooth handoff of world leadership from Great Britain to the U.S. after World War II, I started to think about the rise of China. It wasn’t so long ago that we were thinking that western-style democratic liberal values (the rule of law, personal and religious freedom, a free press) had won the day. But maybe history isn’t over after all. Maybe it’s turning back to a really ugly chapter.
Most important book for Wisconsin I read: Great Lakes Water Wars by Peter Annin
Why is Foxconn here? Because state and local governments gave them over $4 billion of our money? No, because they need lots of water. That water-dependent company was going to locate a U.S. plant somewhere near the Great Lakes and the location they settled on, just north of Chicago and south of Milwaukee, gives them access to the workers and transportation hub they need. Annin won’t lead you to that exact conclusion (I got there on my own based on my reading of his book) but his update of a book he originally published in 2006 documents how thirsty the world is and how much water we have right here — about one-fifth of all the surface fresh water in the world is in the Great Lakes. Will that water be the source of an economic renaissance here or will we allow it to be siphoned off by others who want to remain in their unsustainable locales? Combined with another book published in 2017, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Egan, you can learn a lot about the incredibly valuable resource in our back yard. Maybe we don’t need to give industries billion dollar handouts after all.
Best book I read: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I know what you’re thinking: “You’re almost 60 years old and you’ve never read To Kill a Mockingbird?!” What can I say? It was never assigned in my high school English classes and then I never read it as an adult, I suppose because I thought it was the kind of book that gets assigned in high school English classes. Besides, I’d seen the movie. About 20 times. Anyway, I learned what all the fuss was about. It’s a great book. I thought to read it because early in the year some parents in Monona wanted it taken off the high school reading list because they said it portrays a white savior narrative. Actually, it does. In fact, I’d go further to say that Atticus Finch, through no fault of his own or of Harper Lee’s, has become the prototype for every insufferable, self-righteous white liberal in America. Still, great literature is great literature. A book written in 1960 about attitudes in the 1930’s American South is bound to face challenges of reinterpretation six decades after publication. That’s good and necessary and someday it may lead to the demise of Harper Lee’s masterpiece, but it’s such a good book that I hope it holds on a while longer.
Best book I read that got made into a TV movie: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
I came across this book because I decided this year that I wanted to make a living as a writer. Since I have no illusions of becoming Harper Lee (who had only two books published in her lifetime and the second published by just a hair), my idea is to crank out modestly successful books that supplement my income. I don’t plan to write as an artist; more like a machinist. So, I started researching writers that get a lot of stuff published. McMurtry has had something like 70 works of fiction, nonfiction and collections published in his long career. So, I read what is probably his most famous work and I thought it was excellent. His cowboys are not like John Wayne. The cattle drive north from Lonesome Dove, Texas, is brutal and the characters are real, flawed and immensely interesting. I loved this book.
Best book I read that got made into a real movie: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I liked this book, published in 1966 about the 1959 murder of a prominent Kansas farm family, for its clarity of language and it’s simple exposition of the facts. Capote doesn’t preach, he doesn’t shove his opinions at the reader and there’s no artifice in his writing. He just reports. He just tells the story, which is riveting enough on its own, cleanly and clearly. The murderers killed in cold blood, but when the state exacted its revenge, did it kill them just as coldly?
Most disappointing book I read: The Fall of Wisconsin by Dan Kaufman
I had great hopes for this book. Because it got national attention (it was reviewed by The New York Times) I thought it could have had the same impact as What’s the Matter With Kansas by Thomas Frank, published back in 2005. But Kaufman just recounts the events of early 2011 when Act 10 was brutally shoved through the Wisconsin Legislature by Scott Walker. He offers little in the way of explanation or context. At least those of us who lived through it know all too well what happened. Eight years later it’s time to gain some understanding of why it happened. But Kaufman pretty much just blames the Koch brothers, which is about as shopworn a liberal excuse as you’re going to find. The Fall would have been so much better if Kaufman had written a book like Capote’s; if he had reported instead of commiserated. But by taking sides, he fails to cast a reporter’s eye on the whole picture. If you want to get enraged all over again read The Fall. If you want to gain some perspective, wait for another book.
I’m not waiting for more books. I already have a long list for 2019. When a friend tells me about a book or I read a review of one I might like, I download the sample on my e-reader so that I won’t forget it. I have about two dozen books in a holding pattern, waiting for me to reach for them on the digital shelf. I can’t wait.
Happy reading in the new year.
