MI Book Club - Here's What We've Been Reading
The Minuteman Indivisible Book Club provides the opportunity to discuss books that can inform our strategy and actions and help us achieve our goals. We meet monthly and new members are always welcome. See short summaries on the books that we've been reading below. Use this link to see other books our members have recommended or this link to suggest a new title or RSVP for our meetings.
Join us May 22 to Discuss The Most Dangerous Branch |
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The Most Dangerous Branch by David Kaplan is divided into two parts: the first paints a detailed portrait of the justices themselves, while the second focuses on several key cases including Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and the Shelby County v. Holder voting rights case. The author argues that the court has become too activist and is damaging its reputation, distorting our elections, and undermining our democracy by usurping powers that belong to other government entities including Congress and the states. This NPR review provides a good overview of the book and clearly explains the author’s main thesis. You can also listen to this interview with the author or watch this video of his discussion at a local book store shortly after Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed. As this article reports, one Justice has expressed his own concerns about the prospect of a “judicial power grab” by the current court.
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The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America
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In 2016, over 60% of rural voters supported Donald Trump. Robert Wuthnow, the author of The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, is a a Princeton professor who grew up in rural Kansas and has been researching small towns for more than a decade. The book highlights characteristics that rural communities share and examines how economic decline, religious beliefs, and other factors shape rural attitudes and political decisions. The book’s Introduction, available online here, provides a concise summary of the author’s approach and conclusions, while this interview with the author elaborates on some of the key points in the book.
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One Person, No Vote |
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One Person, No Vote by Carol Anderson focuses on key voter suppression techniques - voter ID, voter purges, and gerrymandering, and also includes a powerful chapter examining how ordinary citizens and groups were able to overcome these barriers to elect Doug Jones to the Senate in 2017. This Publishers Weekly review succinctly summarizes the topics covered in the book and describes the author’s forceful approach, while these Washington Post and New York Times reviews provide a more detailed description of the book. The author makes an eloquent case for her book in these video interviews: a quick overview in an interview with Trevor Noah and a comprehensive discussion of her key points in this interview with MD Congressman Jamie Raskin.
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An Uncivil War
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An Uncivil War by Greg Sargent is a fast read, but covers lots of timely topics including voter suppression, gerrymandering, fake news, and whether Democrats should join Republicans in playing political hardball. Sargent provides a concise overview of past history, key studies, and important issues for each of these topics. He also outlines steps that we can take to deal with the many threats to our democracy that the Trump administration didn’t invent, but is exploiting like no previous one. This Washington Post review describes the author’s approach and outlines the topics covered in the book, while this short video interview with the author provides a quick overview of some of his key ideas. Prefer to listen to a podcast? Washington State Indivisible interviewed the author last November and, among other things, discussed how the midterm elections might affect the issues covered in the book.
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FearFear, by award-winning journalist Bob Woodward, paints a hair-raising picture of the inner workings of the Trump White House based on extensive documentation and interviews with many key players. While some of the details have been reported in other places, Woodward hones in on the president’s chaotic management style as well as his approach to specific issues including trade policy and the Mueller investigation. This review in Slate highlights the main features of the book and some of the key episodes that Woodward describes, while this Atlantic article focuses on some of the drawbacks of the author’s approach - topics that are also covered in this video interview with the author on the PBS Newshour. In this video of a wide-ranging and often humorous conversation between Bob Woodward and New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, they discuss the book, but also talk about other current and historical developments and the challenges of this type of journalism.
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The Line Becomes a RiverFrancisco Cantu, the author of The Line Becomes A River, worked for the Border Patrol in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from 2008-2012. The book focuses on his experiences there and how the physical, legal, and political aspects of the southern border affect the lives of other individuals: migrants, drug smugglers, border patrol agents, undocumented immigrants, and citizens on both sides of the border. This book review from The Guardian describes each of the book’s major sections and highlights the difficult issues confronting the author and us. This thoughtful video interview with the author from a PBS station in New Mexico is worth 20 minutes of your time regardless of whether you have read the book, while this shorter video interview from the PBS Newshour takes place in the border area and shows the beautiful, but harsh, landscape that the author describes.
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Our TownsThe authors of Our Towns visited small cities and towns across the country to learn what’s really happening in places that big media outlets usually ignore. Although our national politics is often characterized by deep divisions and lack of faith in the ability of government to solve problems, at the local level they found examples of people working together to create livable communities even in the face of serious challenges. This article summarizes the book and profiles the authors, while the authors’ website has links to other articles and a gallery of photos from communities they visited. You can watch the authors discuss their work in these videos: a short CBS Sunday Morning segment that features two cf the communities they visited, a PBS interview that focuses on political issues, and a talk with audience questions at Google in Cambridge.
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White Working ClassWhite Working Class argues that the Democratic party (particularly members of what the author calls the Professional-Managerial Elite) often focuses on the poor, people of color, or LGBTQ people, but doesn’t understand the white working class voters that form much of Donald Trump’s base. The book expands on this article, published in the Harvard Business Review right after the 2016 election, that provides a succinct summary of Prof. Williams’ arguments. A TedX talk by the author in late 2017 focuses on why she believes class (and class cluelessness) matter, while this short video interview focuses on whether the issues of the white working class and other groups are interrelated. This May 2018 blog post by Robert Reich also discusses Trump’s appeal to the white working class and suggests a strategy that Democrats might adopt to counter it.
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The Common GoodThe Common Good describes the importance of having a shared sense of common good in a democracy, examines why even the term itself seems to have gone out of fashion, and identifies steps we can take to restore a commitment to the common good. This interview with the author summarizes many of the key points in the book, while this review challenges some of the author’s conclusions. This video of the author speaking in Seattle in March showcases his sense of humor and explains both why he wrote the book and why he feels optimistic about our future.
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How Democracies DieHow Democracies Die provides a historical review of the ways that modern democracies have failed (spoiler alert - it’s typically through the election of authoritarians and the erosion of democratic norms rather than by military coups) and examines current events in the United States from this perspective. While the book focuses primarily on the challenges facing democracies rather than ways to help maintain and strengthen them, the authors do address this issue in the last chapter and in a Q&A section on the publisher’s webpage. This Vox article provides an excellent summary of the book and this NPR interview with the authors or these videos of book readings in Cambridge, MA and Washington, DC also highlight the key points in the book.
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Strangers in Their Own LandArlie Hochschild is a sociologist who decided to get out of her liberal “bubble” in Berkeley CA and travel to Louisiana to better understand why Tea Party voters in one of the poorest states in the country seem to vote against their own self-interest. She began her research well before the 2016 election, but Strangers in Their Own Land does discuss Trump’s appeal to these voters, and the recently released paperback version contains an afterword that looks at how the people she interviewed feel about President Trump now. She paints a sympathetic portrait of the people she met and outlines the feelings and rationale behind their political choices. The author discussed the book at a forum at Harvard’s Kennedy School in March 2017 as well in interviews with PBS right before the 2016 election and with Robert Reich in December 2017.
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This Fight is Our FightThis Fight is Our Fight focuses on the middle class and how government policies shape our opportunities, how those policies have changed over time, and why we should fight the current GOP policies. Warren uses her own personal history and the stories of other people’s lives to illustrate the real impact of government programs and inspire us to take action to create the kind of government that provides real opportunity for all Americans. In this video, she describes the book as a “story about good and evil, right and wrong, monumental fights, billionaires and giant corporations and their buddies in Washington….” You can also check out Paul Krugman’s book review or this short NPR interview with the author.
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The Third ReconstructionThe Third Reconstruction describes how Rev. Barber went from being a preacher to becoming the president of the North Carolina NAACP and the leader of a moral movement fighting for a progressive agenda and against the ultra-conservative philosophy advanced by the dark money interests. The book focuses on the need for both a moral underpinning and a strong coalition to “overcome the politics of division and fear.” The 4 -page appendix of the book distills his advice into “Fourteen Steps Forward Together.”
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Don't Think Of An ElephantDon’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff is a guide for understanding how to discuss political issues so that you effectively promote progressive values and don’t inadvertently reinforce the ideas you are fighting against. As the author states: “It is vital — for us, for our country, and for the world —that we understand the progressive values on which this country was founded and that made it a great democracy. If we are to keep that democracy, we must learn to articulate those values loud and clear. If progressives are to win in the future, we must present a clear moral vision to the country — a moral vision common to all progressives. It must be more than a laundry list of facts, policies, and programs.” The author also has a podcast focusing on politics and language.
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On TyrannyIn the prologue to On Tyranny, Dr. Snyder, Professor of History at Yale, outlines his approach: “In founding a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the ancient philosophers, called tyranny…If we worry that the American experiment is threatened by tyranny, we can follow the example of the Founding Fathers and contemplate the history of other democracies and republics.The good news is that we can draw upon more recent and relevant examples than ancient Greece and Rome...Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.” For more information, check out this video of the author speaking to an Indivisible group in Connecticut or this article with his thoughts on Trump.
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