While it’s conceivable that I could finish a book today (I’m halfway through The Last Republicans, and ditto for Off the Planet: Five Months on Mir), I doubt it. I spent the weekend saying goodbye to a friend: the Harmony Club, a Jewish community center turned restaurant/bar turned antiques store and clubhouse, is passing into new ownership tomorrow. I’ve spent every weekend and holiday there for the last three years, hanging out with friends, yakking with tourists, watching birds and bugs and the skies — riding out tornadoes and heartbreak. C’est finis, alas. Those of us who used to gather there helped clean the place out over the weekend, and that will continue a little tonight. The sideshot was taken yesterday, as we took a break from moving to huddle inside while a thunderstorm rolled through the area. July certainly proved to be a different month ’round these parts. My plans for focusing on American lit titles in my Classics Club and Mount TBR endeavors were derailed completely when an early TBR read, The Presidents Club, sent me on a presidential reading tangent that was interrupted only by Space Camp and then Blast from the Past, a fun look at kid lit from the 1990s. It was a very healthy reading month, just…er, not for any of my goals. I’m still have a few more Blast from the Past posts upcoming, but they’ll be mixed in with ‘normal’ reading. (As normal as RF ever is!)

Climbing Mount Doom:
British Soldiers, American War; Don Hagist
The Presidents Club, Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
What the Dormouse Said. I read some of this, then skimmed the rest. Count that as a DNF, I suppose. Lots of characters and more LSD than computers.

Classics Club, Readin’ Dixie, and The Big Reads:

Space Camp:
Space Camp went well, I think, and will be remembered chiefly for Mike Collin’s excellent Carrying the Fire. I expect to see it on this year’s top ten list.

Read but Unreviewed:
The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H.G. Wells. This is a short biography of H.G. Wells that covers a lot of his work, with some odd exceptions, and is sharply critical of Wells’ relentless womanizing. It focuses a bit on Wells’ relationships with other men and women of the age, particularly his public argument about evolution with Hillaire Belloc. Interesting enough but not memorable, I don’t think. An excerpt:

“To-day I’ve motored from Stonehenge, and you may care to know that I polished that off in forty minutes.’
‘Good heavens!’ I gasped, ‘a place that has been puzzling antiquaries for a thousand years!’
‘Very likely,’ he rejoined, ‘but anyhow I’ve settled it to my satisfaction,’ and then, catching sight of my horrified expression, ‘I’ve left a couple of experts behind,’ he added quickly, ‘they have a fussy kind of knowledge that looks well in a footnote.’

The Trump White House was inspired by my presidential reading tangent, but it was less about the Trump White House and more about the Trump Oval Office — specifically, it’s Kessler’s review of Trump’s first year in office, and an introduction to some of the very strong personalities that marked it. Kessler has written several score of books about the presidency and various executive-level offices, and has known Trump personally for over a decade. The book is thus an interesting mix of frank observations about the turbulence of that first year, particularly the undue influence of Trump’s family, and his unorthodox approach while at the same time defending some decisions and comparing the media’s treatment of similar decisions made by prior administrations. It’s a little People Magazine at times, especially when covering the social scene around Palm Beach and the ludicrous wealth concentrated there. Kessler has done a separate book on the Palm Beach scene, so that’s not surprising. His First Family Detail was similarly gossipy, so that just may be his style. Some highlights:

“Every administration has people in it who get White House-itus,” says Robert Gates, a former National Security Council staffer in the White House and a former director of Central Intelligence. “The first giveaway is when a relatively junior staffer has his secretary place calls saying, ‘The White House is calling,’ instead of ‘Joe Schmo from the National Security Council is calling.’ ”

The paradox of Trump was that he could be generous, supportive, and considerate and at other times treat his aides like dirt. In effect, some aides felt, Trump manages through chaos by pounding someone down to the ground to build someone else up for a couple of weeks. While the team-of-rivals game sparks competition, it also stirs resentment among the staff. When it came to his tirades, Trump seemed to lack empathy, aides thought. While Trump could make an aide feel like a million bucks, at other times he seemed incapable of understanding how his humiliation of them made them feel. Yet if Trump treated an aide rudely, an hour later he acted as if nothing had happened, as if the incident had vanished from his brain. Since he did not view the humiliation of an aide as awkward or strange, it did not exist in his head.