Today’s prompt from Long and Short reviews is, “Websites we wish still existed”. The first thing that comes to mind is the old 3DO forums: 3DO was a game-publishing company that did several very different series, including the Army Men games and Heroes of Might and Magic. Their forums, which were the first I ever tried, had a ranking system based on your post count — but, the expressed rank was different depending on the “class” you registered as. I registered there as a fan of the Army Men games, so our titles were military ranks and job duties: we’d appear as Smellincoffee the Rifelman (yes, they really misspelled it), or Sarge506 the Tank Driver. The ranks had a steep progressive curve, so it was easy to be promoted from “Puddle of Warm Goo” to “Recruit”, but it would take ages to move from Brigadier to Major General. (Er, Army Men is a series in which the rival armies are plastic. The games took this premise seriously to varying degrees. Most were straight-up WW2-esque games but others had fun with it.) Someone who registered in the Might and Magic class, though, would have completely different, but still escalating, ranks. I can’t remember what they used but it was probably stuff like “goblin123 the Halfling” and “josecanseco the Orc Slayer”. Only one person, General Plastico, ever made 100 as far as I know. (We Army Men people were so proud it was one of us and not one of those Might and Magic people who made it first.)
circa 2001
One popular board was the Halfway House, which opened at level 50: it was a major moment to get access there, since the discussions were a lot more serious. When I came home on 9/11, the Halfway House was the first place I looked for information. It was tremendously creative and, so far as I know, unique to us: the 3DO forums had a genuine sense of ‘we’re special’, with one user creating a website to chronicle members and stories gone by. (It was called The Codex but I have never been able to find it in the wayback machine.) I was particularly invested in it: I had a monopoly on the Captain Blade display photo, and designated myself the Army Men: Air Tactics expert, complete with a Homestead website with mission guides. When 3DO switched to generic forum software, a lot of old hands left — though some of us persisted, even after 3DO closed its forums permanently and we wound up regrouping on another user (Sarge506)’s private forum. I would love to see even just a screenshot of the old 3DO boards: it was my internet “home” for many years, and even today I’m facebook friends with several people from The 3DO Days. (The first time I ever shared photos or talked on a mic to People On the Internet involved faith130 and Sarge506…3DO peeps.)
Sarge506’s place circa 2004. We had an active role-playing game that led me to discovering NationStates and creating the Holy Republic of the Cofficon Union.
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Woodrow Wilson, . I wanted to go ahead and get him out of the way before the year’s second half begins.
WHAT are you reading now? The Power and the Dream, about the relationship between RFK and MLK. I’m also listening to an audiobook called The Hidden Coalition, about the sub rosa dealings of Eisenhower and LBJ to work together.
WHAT are you reading next? I should really read faith130’s Rupture since I was just waxing nostalgic about the 3DO days.
Well, dear readers, we are six months into 2026. Time to look and see how I’m doing on my reading goals. One happy bit of news is that I found a new binge-able artist. The last years I haven’t done a “20__ in Other Media: Music!” post, mostly because I’ve been listening to artists whom I already knew. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one does like a bit of adventure from time to time, to become obsessed with a new artist. In my case, her name is “Sophie Grey.”. The period is part of her name. Her main genre is “Retro Electro”, and as someone who loves synthwave I’m enjoying the connection. She works in a lot of…telecom/IT audio into her videos. Yes, I’m serious. I stumbled on her randomly when I had youtube set to pop-female (think B*Witched, Britney, Spice Girls, Taylor Swift) and it decided to feature her cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star“. I spent the entire day listening to her! But this is a book blog, not a music blog, so let’s get to it — and more importantly, we are halfway through the year, so I need to assess how I’m doing on my goals.
Science Survey
I read When the Earth Had Two Moons, though I dragged my feet through it and was continually distracted by Nixon and Kennedy so I’ve retained almost nothing. Ten categories remain for the Survey: so far I’ve only claimed the Wildcard and Local Astronomy categories.
Classics Club
I’m steadily working on Angle of Repose; Stegner’s writing is exquisite.
Bible in a Year
As mentioned in January, I decided to read the Bible in a year following Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast. While I have not followed it evenly (there have been periods where I lapsed and then binged), I am on course. To date I have read everything from Genesis through to Kings and Chronicles, plus Job, the Gospel of John, Ecclesiastes, and large portions of the Psalms. I’d also planned to read a book a month about the Bible to aid in my quest, but you know the old saying: Man proposes and Reading Frenzies disposes. It’s been an…interesting journey so far. The Hebrew scriptures are rich with wild, emotionally volatile stories — especially the Tamar/Amnon/Absalom drama — but the amount of census-taking is insane. A lot of times I’d just boot up Stardew Valley and fish while I listened to Fr. Mike read out the Hebrew phone book. I think the second half of the year will be a lot more lively than the first half, because we get the Prophets and the Gospels. (We also get the Epistles: St. Paul’s love of long, complicated sentences is something you really notice when you’re a lector.)
America @ 250
As far as my three-track model goes, I’m doing rather poorly. I’ve read a history of one period-city, Boston and the Revolution; I’ve read almost no general American history save for presidential biographies and histories; and track three on ‘Americans of Note’ has been wholly dominated by presidents, with a couple of exceptions in the form of Thomas Sowell and RFK. I’d wanted Americans of Note to feature musicians, authors, etc. However, the presidential fixation — which has included books about political relationships, not just biographies — has allowed me to absorb a lot of American history on the side, including stuff I know virtually nothing about like the Vietnam war. Do I have intentions of trying to return to my three-track model? You bet. Will I?
New Acquisitions
Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa, James Neff Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, Chris Matthews Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit, Chris Matthews The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, David Margolick Communion, J.D. Vance
Coming up in July….
Um..history. History is a really safe bet.
2026 Goals in the Back 9?
I still want to do some place-oriented reading, celebrating American cities and states, but to be honest I think America @ 250 is just going to focus on finishing my Hail to the Chief reading project. The amount of dead presidents I need books for is under twenty, so it’s COMPLETELY plausible that I could finish that before year’s end. Heck, if I was as fixated on it as I have been on Nixon and Kennedy, I could knock it out in two months. The potential issue is that a lot of the men left are so frustrating and interesting (like Nixon) that I’m not going to be satisfied with one book. I can’t Zachary Taylor men like LBJ: even if I don’t like LBJ (and I don’t, he was a vulgar boor albeit a master politician), I feel like he’ll deserve a serious study.
As far as Science Survey and Classics Club….may the odds be ever in their favor. Neither is by necessity doomed but the America @ 250 fire would really need to dampen down. It’s entirely possible — look at CJ Box taking over February — but not necessarily probable.
The danger of speaking badly about others or exposing their secrets on social media lies in our inability to repair the damage once we later recognize our sin. When I gossip or slander someone privately, I may apologize and mend the situation once I realize the evil I have done. But on social media, countless people who read what I wrote will never know of my repentance, while the harm done to the other person remains. – Metropolitan Saba Isper
Whoever has not been formed by the Gospel will not be corrected merely by manners. – ibid
“The devil does not destroy a man with one blow, but whispers ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow.’ And so, the heart is lulled to sleep, and the soul forgets eternity. But the wise man says, ‘Today is the day of salvation,’ and he rises to repent while there is still time.” – St. Moses the Black, quoted by Michael Warren Davis
You are not coming to Orthodoxy to optimize your personal spiritual metrics. You are being woven into a body. – Martin Myers, “On Orthodox Formation and Convert Burnout“.
Fr. John Behr recently said in an interview with the guys at Worse for the Facts that you can really only get to know a handful of thinkers in your life. Bear in mind, Fr. John probably fits that description of person we’re not found two paragraphs above better than most. So, if one of the greatest living scholars of patristics says that he can only know a few thinkers in his life, well, shoot, I’d love to even know one then. – “How Should We Think about the Church Fathers?”, Austin Suggs
“However successful the darkness may be, for however long a time, and however it may increase, yet the Light is imperishable. All lies die. Truth alone remains.” – Dr Peter Kreeft, “Ten Lies of Contemporary Culture”.
The Desert Fathers did not leave us a religion of comfort, affirmation, and therapeutic self-discovery. They left us a faith of repentance, sacrifice, discipline, and holiness. – Frank Bruno, comment
“If man were born only to be happy, he would not also be born to die. Since his body is doomed to death, his task on Earth must evidently be more spiritual. Not to gorge on everyday life, not to search for the best ways of obtaining material goods and eagerly consuming them, but to bear perpetual, earnest, duty — so that one’s entire life journey may become, above all, an experience of moral assent, To leave life a better human being than one started it.” – Ignat Solzhenitsyn, quoting (I think) his father Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at ARC 2026.
“Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion was, a totalitarian state isn’t a dictator oppressing the freedom-loving masses. That’s a fool’s vision of the world. It’s the universal grip of The Lie on every soul, every single one. Not a single man, in a totalitarian state, is willing to stand up and say what he knows to be true.” Jordan Peterson, “Does God Speak to You?”, a reflection on Job.
“Perhaps the greatest difference between those years from my childhood and the current era was not that life was slower back then, but that our attention was directed somewhere other than ourselves. We were occupied with neighbors, friends, family, and whatever adventure the day happened to bring. Today’s world, by contrast, constantly invites us to become students of ourselves. We are encouraged to analyze our feelings, cultivate our self-esteem, curate our identity, and endlessly examine our own story. It is precisely here that the wisdom of the Orthodox Church becomes important, for the saints consistently teach that the more preoccupied we become with ourselves, the less free we become to love God and our neighbor.” – “Orthodox Christianity Doesn’t Want You Living in the Past“, Kenneth B
The longer I live, the more I realize that that cheesy coffee mug saying, “Be kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle” — really is true. I don’t live by that admonition as much as I should. – Rod Dreher, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Mall“.
So, in a real sense, just as every individual monastery is a place where a group of people have committed to live together in order to be perfected in Christ, so every individual marriage and family is a “domestic monastery”. They are BOTH communities of imperfect people who come to it with different issues, sins, inclinations, failures, and dispositions chosen, forced, habitual, and genetic. The community is joined and established by free will and within that community we learn to be like Christ. It is also a place to learn how to give up your self will and sacrifice your desires for the sake of love for others. It is where we learn to man our post in spite of…. It is the place we ultimately learn the humility of the Trinity: the laying down of my individuality for the sake of my fulfilling my created personhood. It is the cross on which our self dies and our humanity is raised transfigured. – “The Domestic Monastery“, Steve Robinson.
I think that last one is particularly….chewy, because Christianity occupies this odd space where the individual is important as a Person — Christ always dealt with people one on one — but not important merely in themselves, as an individual. The modern ‘liberal’ world prioritizes the individual to a large degree — declaring that people have their own truths, that feelings dictate reality, and so on — even as it damns those like Ayn Rand who take individualism to its logical conclusion.
In conclusion, June was a heck of a month, and it’s been a fun reading year so far. If you made it this far, good for you! Here’s your reward.
Today’s TTT is books we’re looking forward to being released, but the books I was anticipating have already been released (GIRLS, etc) and the next book on my radar (Rod Dreher’s Warning to Weimar America or whatever final title it takes) has a hazy ‘probably in 2027’ date. Rod posted recently that he just found another book he’s going to be incorporating into the final draft, so who knows. Anyway, I thought today might be a fun day to treat as a freebie and look at never-published drafts. It’s more of a meditation on drafts in general.
Teaser Tuesday
Some thought the straightlaced [Robert] Kennedy, a man who threw Fanny Hill overboard during a Potomac cruise and barred Playboy from his house, was put off by King’s sexual indiscretions, minutely chronicled by the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. (Other Kennedy intimates found that laughable, given the womanizing of his father and brother.) Paradoxically, King’s saintliness was also hard to take. “Doc was a moralist,” a Kennedy backer, referring to King, once told the pioneering black journalist Simeon Booker. “A politician just can’t honeymoon with this kind of guy. Sooner or later, there has to be a falling out.” Stylistically, [Robert] Kennedy seemed to prefer the company of grittier black leaders, like the ones who’d organized the rally for him in Indianapolis. Kennedy might have been bitter over King’s sex-laced wisecracks about his late brother and his wife, overheard and recorded and then gleefully transmitted to him by Hoover’s FBI. But guilt too, may have been a barrier. Just how do you befriend someone you’ve wiretapped, especially if, as former attorney general Ramsey Clark has speculated, Kennedy was ashamed of what he had done? THE PROMISE AND THE DREAM: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MLK AND RFK
Top Ten Unpublished Drafts
I frequently work on posts well in advance: for instance, I already have a draft for next year announcing twenty years of book blogging, since this blog’s first post was in May 2007. Sometimes I start a book review post before I’ve even read the book, because I want to get tags and such in order while I’m thinking about it. Witness:
I have finished none of these books with the exception of that Stephen Fry as Lady Bracknell piece: it wound up being short-rounded, I think. (Fry played a part in an audiobook version of “The Important of Being Earnest”, the stage play I have seen performed the most times.) “Some music from the White Zulu” is a Johnny Clegg music post I have prepped for whenever I finish Scatterling of Africa, “Wake Me Up Before You Go, Jo” is the start to a review of Jo Jorgensen’s biography — she was the Libertarian candidate for president in 2020 and is thinking about running again, and Confidence Man is a book I haven’t even bought yet, let alone read. (Nor will I, for a while: I won’t be reading any biographies of living presidents until I finish my dead presidents, and Confidence Man is a Trump biography.)
As you can see, my drafts tend to be more whimsically titled than the final versions. (That’s a Gilda Radner biography I’d checked out, gotten distracted by, and have not yet returned to.)
Sometimes my drafts have nothing to do with books: they’re just something I’m thinking about. Sometimes the thinking is fairly raw and bristling, especially when I’ve been thinking and feeling about a subject.
I will often sit on a review for years because I am not happy with it. To me, the book was great: it needs a great review. If the disparity between the book and what I’ve written is broad enough, I simply don’t post a review. This is why I have never gotten to reviewing Death and Life of Great American Cities: for me, it would be not in the neighborhood but at least the exurban fringes of, reviewing the Bible.
God Bless You Past Me, You Were So Naive and Unsuspecting
I like to look at this preview every now and again and laugh bitterly. It was obviously composed before March 2020.
Two dormant reviews:
I read this book five years ago and I still haven’t arrived at a proper review of it, but I do like that intro for its synthesis mojo.
Of course, the Winnah for “Books I read a Long Time Ago and Haven’t Reviewed” is Age of Absurdity. I’ve read it three times since 2013.
Ridiculously Ambitious Series Posts
Yes, there is a version of me who wants to do an entire month of just medieval history and historical fiction. I’m mad, mad! (But one of these days I’m going to do it, so help me.)
Reading Lolita for Jeremy Irons
I started listening to this audiobook for Jeremy Irons, but didn’t finish. It did not stop me from beginning a Margin Call-inspired post, however.
IRONS: Let me tell you something, Mr. Sullivan. Do you care to know why I’m in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks? I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That’s it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I’m afraid that I don’t hear a thing. Just…silence.
Books I Read and Chose Not to Review
Last year I read Tulsi Gabbard’s For the Love of Country, which I’d bought thinking was a campaign biography of sorts: I’ve been watching her since she was an anti-war Democrat, so I was interested. The book proved to have one remark which was interesting as hell (John Lewis mentioned to Gabbard that the ‘racists’ attacking white students doing sit-ins were often white members of SNCC), but I wound up not posting the book because it was too partisan: while I have posted polemics, they’re good libertarian polemics with a barrel for both parties.
STUFF I LITERALLY FORGOT TO POST
Considering how long I labored on my Provoked review, not posting quotes from it is hilarious.
Interesting Stuff that Doesn’t Quite Belong
Sometimes I create a draft and think, “mm….does this really belong on a book review blog?” I mean, sure, I do create off-topic posts sometimes, but by and large this is a blog about books. And, once a month, movies.
Stuff I Just Didn’t Finish
It happens.
Past me did not use a quote block because such things did not exist back then. That is how old this draft is.
Funny story: that book has two unfinished posts about the same theme. This from 2017;
Past-me obviously meant “VE Day @ 80”.
Another “Post I Didn’t Finish”, and on this one I’m giving a shoutout to the lady-friend who recently publically chided me for not finishing the stack of girl books she gave me back when she was just “a friend of the blog”.
Stuff I Didn’t Post for Whatever Reason
Back in October 2024, I went to a screening of the first episode of “Live Not by Lies”, based on a book I’ve not yet reviewed (damn you, past me, you are such a bum). The post detailed my arriving an hour early along with everyone else because of some miscommunication, but the absolute delight I found in just hanging out with an hour with people who READ BOOKS. (Actually, past me deserves an apology, present-me: he wrote a five-paragraph review of Live Not By Lies but it’s in “I’m Not Happy With It Just Yet” territory. Also, past-me wrote it during COVID, so he was really angry.)
This is probably my favorite part of the post:
Fr. Longenecker and Joseph Peace have both written on how we gollumize ourselves — that is, allow sin or vice or whatever to turn us into pathetic yet proud half-versions of ourselves — but I never posted this for whatever reason.
Well, so ends my thinking about drafts. I hope it doesn’t go too much into “man behind the curtain” territory; my posts begin with brutal honesty and then get made respectable by my editing voice. They’re made to comb their hair, to wear shoes, to straighten their collar. Parts of me are told, “Hey, maybe you just should….chill out back here while the more photogenic thoughts take the runway.” There is more of a look into what’s happening when that happens.
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF JUNE! I have one book review I might post (it’s a short biography of Woodrow Wilson, don’t get excited) and I may finish a movie tonight in which Tom Selleck plays Dwight Eisenhower. Yes, really. It’s a fairly quiet movie, though, and I opened the month with Saving Private Ryan and Pressure so the main thing keeping me going is “Tom Selleck playing Eisenhower is weird“.
When J.D. Vance’s formidable grandmother died, his connection to Christianity went with it. Although he’d been raised going to church with her on occasion, the faith had never become internalized; as he deployed to Iraq, he was moving further and further away from the memory of it. Communion is the story of how a young man came to believe again, and a reflection on how Christianity’s eternal truths have inspired him as a father, husband, and public servant.
Although I’ve been sold on this book as a memoir of his coming to the Catholic church – an improbable decision given his origins in Protestant hill country – that is not strictly the case. The first half follows his faith’s decline and fall, but I noticed ambiguity. Even in the desert, he was reading Chronicles of Narnia and wishing Jesus was more like Aslan – and when he’s in college and identifying as an atheist, he still notices contempt for Christians as if he’s still connected to the faith. While pursuing the cursus Mammonae – law school, clerking for a judge, lucrative practice – Vance began having a crisis of meaning. What was all this for? His coworkers were seemingly married to their jobs, with no time left for their children or the simple enjoyment of life. He realized, with a Girard-esque start, that he was simply modeling the desires and ambitions of those around him, just as if he were in high school again. Around this time, he fell in love with a woman, Usha, who seemed destined for a great career in the law – but she had little interest in getting and spending and laying waste to all her powers. She wanted an interesting job, but she wanted a meaningful life – children to love, a husband to experience adventures with – not to be a girlboss. Her perspective, and his realization that he needed to be a worthier partner, put Vance on a quest for meaning. The more he read, the more interesting he found the wisdom of the Church – particularly its social doctrine, which places the human person and not GDP at the center of social, economic, and political thinking. After a quiet evening reflecting in a cathedral while his son slept, he made the choice to swim the Tiber.
Communion is an intimate work; conversion stories cannot help be. Part of the story is his learning to accept grace, to realize that as haunted as he may be by his past of violent, dysfunctional relatives, it needn’t – won’t – define him. It dovetails neatly with Christianity’s message of grace and redemption, of escaping sin’s power. The second half of the book is more of a reflection on Christianity’s place in the West, both historically and now, and he muses on ways that the Christian appreciation of the person can inform politics. This is not your granddaddy’s ‘moral majority’: while no doubt agreeing that much of what is tolerated in society is destructive, like pornography, Vance focuses his thinking on other issues, particularly labor and the family. Given how central becoming a husband and father was to Vance changing his life, making him assess the why of things, he unsurprisingly agrees with the social doctrine (and others, like Wendell Berry) that the economy exists for human needs, not the other way around. Corporations should not be allowed to keep wages miserly by relying on illegal migrant labor, nor should apps that allow for the complete commodification of labor – calling in workers only when The Algorithm suggests they’ll deliver the most bang for the buck – be tolerated. Human beings are persons made imago Dei, not cogs to be manipulated or resources to be managed. We know what happens when those resources are wasted or those cogs are worn down in materialist societies: they are disposed of.
I devoured this book, staying up until the early hours of the next day and then gnawing on it all day the next. Those of you who are familiar with what I tend to read and write about are probably not surprised – trying to figure out what the flourishing life is, and how to guide people towards it, has been my passion for twenty years now. I think it’s rare, though, for someone who have this itch, this bug, this desire to break out of going with the flow, and asking – what’s it all for? I think it’s especially rare for politicians, because as honorable as some of their intentions might be, it’s a field of human endeavour that attracts those who crave power, authority, influence, etc. Seneca aside, I don’t think the pursuit of gold and the pursuit of wisdom overlap overmuch. But Vance proves in this book to be an author deeply versed in Augustinian thought, and that’s not just this layman’s notion: Bishop Robert Barron, who presumably knows a thing about patristics, said as much in his own review. One thing Vance criticizes throughout the text is that economics increasingly displaces morality as our default language to evaluate matters of concern to the republic – and his rejection of that in his earnest defense of humanity against the machine, is a throughline. Unfortunately, I think this book will be judged by many simply because of Vance’s role in the Trump administration, which is doubly sad because Vance and progressives who are oriented toward family needs could have a conversation. The political parties are changing, in both good and unhinged ways, and those who genuinely care more about the body politic rather than an ideology, need to find one another instead of trolling for twitter cred. Vance, like Sasse before him, and Ralph Nader too, is raising questions that can and should be considered by everyone.
And just as it is a sin to assume that we can control everything, so it is a sin to ignore that we can—with the help of grace—defeat the demons of the past and chart our own course. I might never escape my past. But by the grace of God, it would never consume me.
I saw one billionaire, who had nothing to do with the entertainment industry, laughing hysterically with Matt Damon and Denzel Washington. One of the minor celebrities I’d befriended at the bar turned to me and observed: “Look at them, man. It’s high school all over again. The awkward kid laughing too hard at the popular kid’s jokes. The girls floating around them. The dork paying them too much attention; the cool kid kind of ignoring them.” He was right.
“But,” he went on, giving voice to something I’d long pondered, “for most of us, grace is not something that happens in a moment. You don’t feel God’s presence and then change in an instant. Real grace comes through practice. This is why we demand that you live a sacramental life: going to church, taking Communion, doing confession. This is a process. You don’t accept Jesus into your heart—or get baptized—and fix everything. That’s not the promise of the Church. The promise of the Church is that you are lost, and the Church will provide you a road map to God.”
A college friend, Ethan, once remarked to me how easy it would be to believe in God if, like Peter the Apostle, he saw Christ walk on water and if Christ pulled him out of a lake when he was drowning. I acknowledged that, yes, everyone would believe if they saw a real live miracle. But the Christian argument is a bit more complicated: No matter what we see, we are all tempted by doubt. The Peter whom Jesus pulled out of the sea is the same Peter who denied Christ three times shortly before His crucifixion.
Indeed, one of the subtexts of the Trump rebellion in the Republican Party in 2016 was that the business elites found out the working-class members of their party cared far more about factory jobs than abstract libertarian economics.
But we now live in a society almost blinded to considerations outside of the economic. This way of thinking is inherently opposed to the Christian way, which demands more focus on people.
A Christian approach to economics would demand something different: concern for GDP, yes, but only insofar as it promotes human flourishing. The economy is a means—an important one—to enable people to live good lives. The point at which we see the economy as the end in itself is the point at which we dehumanize ourselves.
When I first made some money, I reached out to an eighty-year-old cousin to buy the family cemetery in Eastern Kentucky. I spoke about this cemetery—probably about a half acre—in my acceptance speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Even as vice president, I try to visit at least once a year. It’s a beautiful part of the country, my favorite part in many ways, and I still have relatives there whom I love to see. But I also visit because I find it oddly comforting to know that I’ll be buried among my ancestors. I walk in that ancient plot of land and speak to people long dead, some of them gone before my grandmother was even born. I’ve visited that cemetery before every major life decision, from proposing to Usha to running for the Senate. I listen to the birds chirp and watch the grasshoppers dance from grave to grave, and I remember that I used to chase the ancestors of those grasshoppers in these very mountains, when the people now buried were alive and breathing and watching over me. I talk to my grandparents and my great-grandparents, like patron saints of the episodes and emotions we all experience in the course of life. I talk to Mamaw when I need strength or focus and to Papaw when I need wisdom. I talk to Mamaw’s mother, Mamaw Blanton, when I need kindness or empathy and to her father, Papaw Blaine, whom I never met, when I need toughness. I bought the cemetery for selfless reasons. I wanted to preserve this outdoor temple of the dead for my family and the sake of those buried. But I bought it for selfish reasons, too: for the moments of quiet reflection I find only in this place, unique in all the world.
Despite only serving most of two years, JFK has loomed large in the memories of Americans, and his brutal assassination has much to do with that. His presidency was potential cut short; hope, aborted. In John F. Kennedy, Brinkley writes: “What made Kennedy’s image so powerful and so enduring was not the product of his own achievements; it was that so many people have imagined what might have happened had he lived.” This is a short but servicable biography of our 35th president, a man who served through the Cold War’s most dramatic moments — a man who still haunts Americans, whose life still inspires volume after volume written on what he did, what he might have done, and who killed him before he could do more.
In looking at my Hail to the Chief series, or project, ordinarily I would not be content with using this slim volume from the American Presidents series to address Kennedy. However, I have read so much around Kennedy this summer that it seemed time for more of an overview, and Alan Brinkley’s book provides that handily. The first quarter concerns his early life and rise to power; the middle half concerns his presidency; and the last quarter focuses on how he is remembered. I was pleasantly surprised by Brinkley as an author, because he does not shy away from Kennedy’s moral failings, particularly his womanizing and utter betrayal of his wife. This evidently ran in the family, with the possible exception of Bobby. (I say possible exception because the only book I’ve found that hints toward RFK having an affairs had to settle for “he was a flirt and probably had affairs”, which is about as credible as a campaign promise after the election.) That said, Brinkley is also not writing a gossip column, and keeps the focus squarely on JFK’s role as an administrator and leader. While he frequently fumbled there — the Bay of Pigs and early inaction on Civil Rights — he did have an enormous charisma that inspired people to hope for the future, despite the gloom of the Cold War. His speeches are far and and away the most recognizable in 20th century American political rhetoric.
If you are looking for an introduction to JFK, this was both well-written and quite fair.
For those weary of Kennedys, I’m presently finalizing a review that has nothing to do with them at all, and one of my Kennedy books that is forthcoming will introduce MLK Jr. I haven’t read anything on King since 2010, and since my library has a new biography on him I may check it out.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest time the Cold War came to turning into a hot war, and (presumably) a global holocaust. RFK served the President most immediately not as his attorney general, but his confidant and advisor. Thirteen Days is a memoir — in part — of the crisis from a man who was embedded in it almost as long as the president himself. RFK was one of the first people notified by the president about the new intelligence, and his closest confidant during the crisis. The book isn’t just a record of RFK’s memories, though, but contains his views on important lessons from it. RFK stresses how the United States acted within the framework of international cooperation, for instance: JFK had enlisted the support of the entire Organization of American States, which added weight to his protestations about nuclear missiles in Cuba. He also stresses how JFK labored to understand events as they might be interpreted within the Kremlin: with humanity itself at stake, he could not afford any ‘my way or the highway’ thinking. The book was not in a finished state when it was published following RFK’s assassination: RFK had intended to add to his memories of the two weeks a reflection on ethics in the nuclear age. in place of that, Richard Neustadt and Graham Allison offer their own reflection on what the Crisis meant, the futility of nuclear war, and the role of the Constitution in immediate crises like this. It’s a very short work (~100 pages or so), and best read knowing something about the context of the era, but I wanted to experience RFK as an author.
Quotations
My belief when I went to Havana was that we had over-dramatized the danger. After all, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, was well aware that the United States had conventional superiority in the Caribbean and nuclear superiority overall. As a rational man, he would never have launched a suicidal war. This complacent view did not survive the conference. Going to war is not necessarily a rational process. – from the preface by Arthur Scheislinger Jr
Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.” – Basil Hart. From the preface.
Each one of us was being asked to make a recommendation which would affect the future of all mankind, a recommendation which, if wrong and if accepted, could mean the destruction of the human race. That kind of pressure does strange things to a human being, even to brilliant, self- confident, mature, experienced men. For some it brings out characteristics and strengths that perhaps even they never knew they had, and for others the pressure is too overwhelming.
“It isn’t the first step that concerns me,” [President Kennedy] said, “but both sides escalating to the fourth and fifth step—and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so. We must remind ourselves we are embarking on a very hazardous course.”
Opinion, even fact itself, can best be judged by conflict, by debate. There is an important element missing when there is unanimity of viewpoint. Yet that not only can happen; it frequently does when the recommendations are being given to the President of the United States. His office creates such respect and awe that it has almost a cowering effect on men. Frequently I saw advisers adapt their opinions to what they believed President Kennedy and, later, President Johnson wished to hear.
We had virtual unanimity at the time of the Bay of Pigs. At least, if any officials in the highest ranks of government were opposed, they did not speak out. Thereafter, I suggested there be a devil’s advocate to give an opposite opinion if none was pressed.
While I was there, [President Kennedy] placed telephone calls to former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. As I was leaving, he said, making reference to Abraham Lincoln, “This is the night I should go to the theater.”
THE FINAL LESSON of the Cuban missile crisis is the importance of placing ourselves in the other country’s shoes. During the crisis, President Kennedy spent more time trying to determine the effect of a particular course of action on Khrushchev or the Russians than on any other phase of what he was doing. What guided all his deliberations was an effort not to disgrace Khrushchev, not to humiliate the Soviet Union, not to have them feel they would have to escalate their response because their national security or national interests so committed them.
As mentioned before, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August had made a great impression on the President. “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October,” he said to me that Saturday night, October 26. “If anybody is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary.”
“The fourteen people involved [in Ex-Comm] were very significant…. If six of them had been President of the U.S., I think that the world might have been blown up.”
“I’m the only candidate who has ever united business and labor, Southerners, party bosses, and intellectuals. They’re all against me.”
David Halberstam was already a seasoned reporter when he began covering RFK’s fatal 1968 bid for the presidency. The bid itself was almost dead on arrival; RFK dragged his feet on deciding, and continually probed those around him as to whether or not he should. “No,” said the party leadership, “Wait until 1972.” LBJ still had a second full potential term to look forward to, after all, and going in 1972 would allow for a lot more groundwork than a scant few weeks RFK was giving himself before the primary season opened. RFK decided to go for it, regardless: LBJ was sinking the US deeper into the mire of Vietnam, and while Eugene McCarthy was vying for the Democratic nomination on that point alone, RFK didn’t think McCarthy had any platform besides escaping Vietnam. Unfinished Odyssey is a history of that campaign.
If I’d known the scope of the book was so narrow, I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but I’m newly curious about RFK and I’ve enjoyed Halberstam’s baseball books before. I’m interested in RFK the man — particularly the man who worked and cried for Joe McCarthy, who criticized LBJ’s Great Society for simply throwing money at problems, and yet who remains an icon of liberalism– rather than the campaigner. The book has the virtue of showing RFK in his final days, as he would be gunned down immediately after winning the California primaries, and has some additional interest in that the author was directly involved in following it. Halberstam in fact writes about himself sometimes, especially in Indiana when he and the other reporters were bored by the rubes and complained about everything from the restaurants to the accommodations. The book is presumably intended for the RFK devotee who wants to read about “Bobby’s Last Campaign”, as Halberstam doesn’t bother giving any introduction or background to RFK himself until the last third of the book where he’s reflecting on what RFK meant to him, then and now. An interesting title, but again not one I would’ve bothered with had I not recognized the author and been generally curious about its principle subject. Although a lot of this is just about the art of electioneering, we do get to see RFK’s personality at times — in particular, his genuine curiosity about, and interest in, the lower classes that DC loves to ignore.
I must admit he’s growing on me a bit.
Quotations
A well-known columnist once asked for a copy of his speech. “What do you care?” [Gene] McCarthy asked back, “You’ve never accurately reported my speeches before.”
Part of it was that he was a Kennedy, which meant that everything was bigger than life. He could not be judged like other men; more had been given to him, more was expected of him, and more would be doubted about him.
Another kid asked a belligerent question, a question filled with hate spilling over so that in the end one forgot what the question was about and remembered only the hatred and the edge and the bitterness. Kennedy, a little tired, answered, “What we need in this country is to cut down the belligerence. If we let this hatred and emotion control our lives, we’re lost.”
Bright, upper-middle-class kids, children of affluence, they believed in the doctrines of the New Left, that if a society is wrong you can do anything you want to redress it, and if someone says something you don’t like, you can drown him out and deprive him of his speech. It was an ugly hour, for one sensed that it would get worse, that this was not going to be the last such evening in American life.
Then he descended to acknowledge his victory, to talk about the violence and the divisiveness, and to let a nation discover in his death what it had never understood or believed about him during his life.
‘Cause Lyndon now we’ve got bad blood Ya know we used to be mad love
When LBJ mentioned that Joe Kennedy’s son Robert would be excellent at leading something like NASA, RFK recorded this in his diary. The master of the Senate thought he had potential! Only a few years later, however, RFK and LBJ would stare at each other in contempt, and when LBJ inherited the Presidency following JFK’s assassination, his brother would stand down rather than serve long a man he hated. Bad Blood is the story of how Johnson and Kennedy’s relationship turned into a summer squall, black and crackling with lightning. The book is preceded by a note from the author that he feels endnotes and footnotes impede truly narrative history, but having immersed myself in presidential politics for the last two months, I saw nothing untoward — and the narrative was a cracking good read.
I rather looked forward to this book, because its stars are two men whom I dislike — but about whom I wanted to learn more. Bad Blood allowed me to start learning about LBJ and RFK without diving into a full biography, and made me intrigued about both men. LBJ was essentially a career politician: he came from a family of Texas politicos, and after a brief stint at teaching moved into the family racket himself. He developed ‘leadership’ skills early, bossing his younger siblings around, and would only grow in manipulative acumen as the years progressed. While he wasn’t exactly born into poverty, it was still a hardscrabble life. Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, was born with a titanium spoon in his mouth — but was overshadowed by his brothers. He was the family runt, the one destined to be forgotten. It was one of his brothers, JFK, who would bring RFK and LBJ together — and make them antagonists.
After Joseph Kennedy Jr died in an experimental mission in World War 2 (flying a plane packed with explosives, with the intent of bailing out so that the plane could then be remotely-steered as a guided missile), JFK assumed the responsibility of being the family’s political face. The don of the Kennedy clan, Joe Sr, pitched the idea to LBJ of running for president and taking Jack with him as VP — but LBJ had no interest in throwing away money and energy challenging Eisenhower. By the time LBJ was ready to run for the White House, he and Jack were direct competitors — and LBJ was a hard campaigner. Smith writes that RFK was offended by LBJ not wanting to run with JFK in ’56, and outraged by LBJ’s attacks on the Kennedys during the primaries. A young idealist, he also didn’t like brother Jack contemplating bringing LBJ on as his running mate, even if LBJ would bring the South with him. LBJ was both cunning and crude, and RFK didn’t have JFK’s easy ability to work with those who differed from him. I’ve gotten the sense from other books and especially from this one that RFK had a hard personality: he wasn’t at ease with people the way his brothers were, and definitely not a natural politician. Although he’d win a senate seat — with LBJ’s help — he struggled there in a way that JFK and Ted simply didn’t. Once JFK was shot, LBJ inherited his presidency — and, Smith argues, entered into a contest with RFK over JFK’s legacy. RFK had been the number two man in DC, with LBJ sidelined despite being vice president, but on November 23, 1963, he was as Jimmy Hoffa said, “Just another lawyer”. As LBJ settled into power, RFK became more of an open critic of him, particularly on Vietnam– and while they met cordially, their relationship never had time to heal before RFK met his own end at an assassin’s bullet.
This was a riveting, fascinating, but sad read. I regard LBJ as the most vile human specimen to ever sit in the Oval Office, a man who was obsessed with his genitalia who loved physically humiliating others by forcing them to meet with him while he was on the toilet & so on — and as a libertarian I am of course against his engorgement of the federal government, good intentions or no. This book left me with the impression that his concern for the poor was sincere, however, not simply politically useful, and we’re allowed to see the poisoned flower of Vietnam burst into bloom and then completely destroy Johnson’s presidency and arguably the man himself. There’s such a sad irony that LBJ and RFK were both driven by concern for the poor, but could not tame their egos — more in RFK’s case, surprisingly — enough to realize that. RFK did bounce the idea of running as LBJ’s vice president in the ’64 election, but LBJ had no interest in running alongside a man who was a persistent critic and scold. (RFK would become more critical of LBJ’s Vietnam policy as more troops were committed.) And there’s the sadness of RFK, too — a man whose humanity is allowed to emerge after he was broken by his brother’s death. While in my other reading he is consistently a jerk — to use polite language- – after JFK’s death he appears to become more …human. And just as he’s starting to find himself, some human turdlet inflicted the shock and anguish of murder on the Kennedys yet again.
Bad Blood was unexpectedly illuminating. More RFK to come…
Quotes:
LBJ’s long-time aide and future Texas Governor, John Connally, described his mentor’s powerful personality: “There is no adjective in the dictionary to describe him. He was cruel and kind, generous and greedy, sensitive and insensitive, crafty and naïve, ruthless and thoughtful, simple in many ways, yet extremely complex, caring and totally not caring. He could overwhelm people with kindness and turn around and be cruel and petty towards those same people. He knew how to use people in politics the way nobody else could that I know of. As a matter of fact, it would take every adjective in the dictionary to describe him.”
In late August, Jackie Kennedy began hemorrhaging, and was rushed to the hospital. An emergency C-section was performed, but the baby girl was stillborn. Meanwhile, Jack was on a private yacht, thousands of miles away, enjoying the company of other women. When he received the tragic news, JFK initially refused to end his vacation and return home to his wife. Two days later, Senator George Smathers, who had accompanied Jack on the pleasure cruise, convinced the seemingly insensitive and uncaring husband to return home: “You’d better haul your ass back to your wife, if you ever want to run for President.”
On March 15, 1958, JFK addressed the annual Gridiron Dinner in Washington D.C., and joked about his political future: “I dreamed about 1960 the other night, and told Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it yesterday. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointing my head, and said, ‘John Kennedy, I hereby anoint you President of the United States.’ Stu Symington said, ‘that’s strange, Jack, because I had a similar dream last night, in which the Lord anointed me President of the United States and outer space.’ Then Lyndon Johnson said, ‘that’s very interesting, gentlemen, because I, too, had a similar dream last night, and I don’t remember anointing either one of you!’”
Jackie Kennedy was refreshingly honest: “I think it’s so unjust of people to be against Jack because he’s a Catholic. He’s such a poor Catholic. Now, if it was Bobby, I could understand it.”
On Inauguration Day, a photographer for United Press International, who had known RFK for many years, jokingly asked: “Well, Bobby, what are we supposed to call you now? Is it Bobby, or Attorney General, or General, or Sir?” “Just call me son of a bitch, because that’s what everybody else is going to be doing,” Bobby replied.
In the weeks following JFK’s assassination, RFK exhibited a dark sense of humor. On one occasion, Bobby asked a friend: “Been to any good funerals, lately? I don’t like to let too many days go by without a funeral.”
While the credibility gap ultimately exposed LBJ’s duplicity to the world, those who observed him closely (advisers, fellow politicians, and reporters) had long been aware of his propensity to stretch the truth. Some of the lies were harmless—such as his preference for bourbon (like all good Texans), when he really drank scotch. Other falsehoods achieved whopper status—LBJ claimed his uncle fought at the Alamo, and that he had earned his Silver Star for “helping shoot down twenty Zeros.” Editing a speechwriter’s draft, LBJ scratched out the name Socrates in a quotation, and replaced it with “my Granddaddy.”
“A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road, somewhere. But, there ain’t no daylight in Vietnam. There’s not a bit.”
Kennedy made light of his campaign’s strengths, in a conversation with Ted Sorensen: “I’m the only candidate who has ever united business and labor, Southerners, party bosses, and intellectuals. They’re all against me.”
“It must be quite something to land at an airport named for your brother,” the newsman opined. “I wish it was still called Idlewild,” RFK softly replied.
In New York City, Jackie Kennedy was awakened by a telephone call from her brother-in-law, Stas Radziwill: “Jackie? How’s Bobby?” “He’s fine, terrific. You heard that he won California by (with) 53 percent, didn’t you?” the former First Lady replied, having retired for the evening, after RFK was projected the winner in the primary contest. “But Jackie, he’s been shot. It happened just a few minutes ago,” Radziwill informed her. “No! It can’t have happened!” Jackie exclaimed, realizing that her shocking premonitions about RFK’s fate had come to fruition, “No! It can’t have happened!”
Related: “Why Don’t You Like Me?” Woody Harrelson’s LBJ confronts RFK in the Oval Office.
Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “Have You Ever Attended Your High School Reunion? Why or why not?”
Be true to your school Like you would to your girl Be true to your school Let your colors fly (“Be True To Your School”, Beach Boys)
Well…no. I graduated in 2003: by 2013 we were all facebook friends. My high school class didn’t even talk about a ten-year reunion; it simply wasn’t on our radar. We see pictures of each other and our kids every day; we’re part of group chats where people talk about politics and substance abuse problems and getting along with spouses and share recipes. I have literally seen kids grow up on facebook, from pregnancy bumps to senior photos.The closest thing we had to a real reunion was a rally/fundraiser for a classmate who had been stricken with a rare cancer. Our class has had numerous deaths, so there have been funerals over the years — far, far more than we would expect, even if we are ‘geriatric millennials’. An attempt was made at a 20-year reunion, but it was a small group (under ten, mostly the organizer’s friends) and sadly one of the few attendees has since passed away. These days our big class event chat is mostly used to share links to each other’s fundraisers, gofundmes, that kind of thing. Robert Putnam would not be surprised. Working at the library, whenever I see class reunion adverts it’s always for classes that preceded social media: I wonder if they’ll just stop being a thing once the Boomers pass away It’s a morbid thought, but Boomers really do prop up a lot of society that people don’t realize. Mainline Protestantism, for instance, is half-Boomer.
And on that chipper note, WWW Wednesday!
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Bad Blood. A narrative history of the RFK/LBJ relationship, which was fairly acrimonious.
WHAT are you reading now? Need to focus on Angle of Repose.
WHAT are you reading next? Need to give Rupture some attention.
Today’s TTT is books on our summer reading list; as I normally do, I’m going to look back at the last quarterly TBR to see how I did. As it turns out, I batted .500 again! The ones I missed were a Cory Doctorow title on the internet getting worse, a book on black baseball in Alabama, GIRLS, a biography of Polk, and “something by Annie Jacobsen”. But first, the tease!
“How are you, Lyndon?” the physician inquired, as the boy dramatically writhed in pain. “Oh, I’m killed! I’m killed!” Lyndon cried. When the doctor suggested administering a “shot” for pain, his young patient’s hysterics escalated: “Oh, please doctor, don’t shoot me! I want to live awhile longer!” BAD BLOOD: LBJ, RFK, AND THE TUMULTUOUS 1960s. Jeffrey Smith.
Ten Books on my Summer TBR
(1) GIRLS, Freya India. I support her brilliant substack and ordered the book, so I definitely plan on reading this.It’s a reflection by a Gen-Z woman on the commodification of girlhood — how growing up on social media made them turn themselves into brands. Her writing is really good and I’m sure I’ll love the book once I can escape the clutches of Mr. Nixon & Mr. Kennedy.
(2) Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner. Working away at this one.
(3) Inventing a Nation, Gore Vidal
(4) Bad Blood, Jeffrey Smith. RFK vs LBJ. I’ll have a review posted for this one before the week is out. It’s a fast read and I’m so familiar with the context at this point that I recognize practically all the quotes being pulled.
(5) Rupture, Regina Kay. Dark urban fantasy, I think. Outside my usual range, and definitely outside the scope of my current obsession, but it’s a debut book from a friend.
(6) Black Baseball in Alabama: Rough Diamonds of Dixie, Shane Earnest. Somewhat similar, but in this case baseball and local history are definitely in my wheelhouse. The only reason I haven’t started this yet is because because 2026 is The Year of Presidents, apparently.
(7) End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers, Gord McGill. This is of both personal and academic interest to me; my family is full of OTR drivers, including my father, and I love reading about transportation. McGill writes on Substack at Autonomous Truckers.
(8) Communion, J.D. Vance. A memoir of coming back to Christianity via the Catholic Church. I should preface this by saying I readHillbilly Elegy back in 2016, well before J.D. was a politician, let alone the vice president, so I’m reading this out of personal interest in the man and his story rather than as a politician: my personal interest is redoubled by the fact that I have a fascination with Catholicism that dates back to 2011 and which persists today. Although I worship in a different communion, Catholic authors and priests account for the overwhelming majority of my Christian formation. It helps, of course, that a strong part of my own conversion to Christianity involved Communion or the Eucharist.
(9) Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy vs Jimmy Hoffa, James Neff.
I’ve wanted to read this since seeing Jack Nicholson playing Jimmy Hoffa giving RFK as righteous telling-off in HOFFA.
(10) Six Crises, Richard Nixon. A pre-presidential memoir. Chatgpt suggests that this may not be a healthy choice for someone trying to escape dead presidents. I actually had a dream a few weeks ago that I met Nixon in a back-country dive bar and we talked aboutIke and Dick as he shook his head ruefully.
