This Week at the Library (2/9)

Posted on September 2, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Are We Rome?, Collen Murphy
  • Alternative American Religions, Stephen J. Stein
  • Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, Shane Claiborne
  • Roma, Steven Saylor

I began this week with Are We Rome? a political work comparing the United States and the Roman Empire. Author Collen Murphy begins by acknowledging the problems inherent in comparing states that existed in vastly different periods of history, but maintains that there are some generalities that can be noted. The book comments on military matters, privatization and corruption, imperial hubris, and a few other such topics. Nothing seemed too far-fetched: Murphy is quite cautious, but not the point of annoying the reader by soft-pedaling his criticisms of the two governments.

I followed this with Alternative American Religions, a short book of religious history covering the rise and fall of groups known as “sects”, “cults”, or “new religious movements”. The first half of the book is stronger than the first, as chapters are more detailed about their subjects. I imagine the author was confined to a certain page count, as coverage of 20th century movements tended to be a bit rushed and devoid of a lot of description.

I was able to follow up on a recommendation this week in Shane Claiborne’s Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers, a brief work on pro-active prayer – where the “prayer” consists not of requests of God, but admissions of needs and desires that the praying person wants to address in his or her own life. Claiborne is accompanied by Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, and the two labor to show how Christians can begin to answer their own prayers and effect God’s will. This was a little awkward to read (me not being a Christian), but I sympathize.

Lastly, I read Steven Saylor’s Roma, a historical epic spanning a thousand years of history, detailing the growth of Rome. Its history is seen through the eyes of one family, patricians whose fortunes rise and fall through many generations. We visit eleven specific generations, as there are eleven stories here. Saylor incorporates legends of pre-Republic Rome along with historical accounts to deliver a riveting story of human history, where the lives of one generation generate the legends and religion of further generations, as well as to comment on the universality of certain political and religious themes. It was a wonder to read, and definitely one to remember.

My reading this week was cut short by my preparations for returning to university and for the start of classes. I will be saving Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History for a time when I will be able to do it justice – Thanksgiving, perhaps. Like Erich Fromm, it’s “serious” reading, and needs my full attention: I can’t just read it off and on like a novel or popular history/science. Speaking of which, since I now have access to my university library, I can finally comment on The Sane Society.

Pick of the Week: Roma, no question. It’s probably pick of the month.

Next Week’s Potentials:

  • A History of God, Karen Armstrong. I’ll probably be finishing this one – it reads much better after Sumerian mythology is dealt with.
  • The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan. I’ve read this before (2006), but it’s been a while since I read anything by Carl Sagan and I want to return to him. This and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors were crucial in reigniting my interest in science, and making the “mundane world” a joy to consider.
  • Death by Black Hole, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson is supposed to be the next Carl Sagan – we’ll see.
  • Murder on the Appian Way, Steven Saylor. This is next up in Roma Sub Rosa.
  • Taming of the Mind, Thubten Chodron. This came up in a search for Buddhism.
  • The Sons of Caesar, Philip Matyszak. This is a history of Rome’s first dynasty. I don’t know much about it.

Given that this is the first week of classes and that there is a very strong possibility that I will be getting a new computer this weekend to replace my recently deceased Medion, I would not bet on my ability to read six average-length books. I also may check out Rome’s first season on DVD this week. If that occurs, I’ll be lucky to read three of these – but we shall see. (I’m in a very Roman mood.)

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Roma

Posted on August 30, 2009 by smellincoffee

Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome

© 2007 Steven Saylor
555 pages
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When I first saw this book’s full title, I was amused by what seemed to be presumption. The novel of ancient Rome? Really? Its plot summary — a thousand years of Roman history as seen through the eyes of one family’s many generations — immediately caught my interest, though, and soon enough I was caught up in the epic story told here. Eleven story sections tell Rome’s story from 1000 BC to 1 AD, beginning with the tale of a tribe of salt-traders who encamp on the Tiber’s banks once a year during their annual treks up and down the Italian peninsula and ending with the beginnings of Empire. In that very first story, the progenitor of all our future antagonists acquires a lump of gold with a hole bore through it so that it might be worn as a necklace. The lump is said to possess the essence of Rome’s first god, Fascinus — the winged phallus. Worn on the neck, it is said to provide protection powers for women in childbirth and against the evil eye. The amulet is passed from generation to generation, giving the reader a “ground” of sorts.
As said, there are eleven stories here, and while the gaps between them are not overly large, sometimes history happens in between them and two stories may deal with radically different circumstances, so Saylor has to set the stage — several times. Exposition is handled mostly by the narrator (who is not very intrusive), although sometimes characters step up. They don’t always do it well, but given how much exposition Saylor does have to deliver, it’s impressive to me that it only seemed weak a couple of times. Readers should note that since we are dealing with eleven stories set in eleven different periods, there is a wealth of characters to adjust to — but it only took a page or two before getting the feel of them. Our eleven antagonists present a wide range of characters, although they don’t always keep the same family names: a thousand years of history isn’t kind to many families. Our family splits into two families in the beginning, for instance, and one of them eventually vanishes while the other experiences rising and falling tides of fortune. The antagonists are different from Saylor’s sub Rosa character of Gordianus the Finder: some of them are downright despicable. Although the book’s text consists of eleven stories, I wouldn’t call this a book of short stories: they’re too tightly connected to really exist on their own. All of them are well done, connecting to the reader early. Some chapters in the books’ early middle set my blood boiling. Most of them deal with political matters, but there’s at least one horror story here and at least one romance. It should be noted that the book is about Roma, the city, and not the empire that you and I may think of when hearing “Rome” — that syllable that manages to convey so much meaning. The stories are set strictly in Rome, with the map not expanding beyond the Field of Mars and the seven hills.
There is a strong sense of history that is delivered in this book, on several levels. History as we know it happens to the amulet-bearers: at times they can only respond to it, and at other times they are active participants in it. If the amulet had eyes, it would have seen Rome turn from a crude village into a mighty empire: it sees an army approach the city intent on burning it, only to be stopped by the lamentations of the city’s mothers; the Gauls, making a mess of the city while a few defenders watch from the heights of the Capitoline hill; and the persistent collisions between the patricians and plebeians, leading to the Gracchi, Sulla, and eventually Caesar. At the same time, history as you’ve not heard it also comes into being. In the beginning, Saylor gives many of Rome’s early legends plausibility, and I had to stop reading many times just to look up the character on Wikipedia to marvel at what Saylor was doing. (The story of Cacus was especially memorable.) Saylor’s invented history becomes part of the book’s “real” history, and it gave me some nice moments. When a character in the middle of the book scales the steps leading to the Capitoline, I couldn’t help but think of why those steps were built — to make sure in the future no terror could hide itself in the now-long-forgotten caves. I knew, too, whose head had been unearthed to give the hill its name. The facts of the early stories become the legends of the latter stories: a example of this is Julius Caesar presiding over the Lupercalian Games with great solemnity (as he’s refusing the crown offered by Mark Antony, yet!), games that began with the actions of three mischievous boys very early on. One of those mischievous boys was Romulus, Rome’s first king. The grounding amulet is another example: it begins the book as a simple lump of gold, is later forged into a winged phallus, only to lose its shape as the years wear on and become a lump of gold again* — its significance lost to memory.
This book has a lot to offer to historical fiction fans, but especially to those fascinated by Roman history. Not only does it deliver eleven stories of men and women riding history’s wake, but it comments on human history in general: the significiance of legends, the various uses of religion (some noble, some not), and most prominently on politics and power. I definitely recommend it. This will probably go down as one of my favorites.
—
A video of Saylor discussing the novel can be found here.
* It’s not a round lump, but a cross-looking lump given what it used to be. This leads into the Christian era appropriately.
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Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers

Posted on August 29, 2009 by smellincoffee

Becoming the Answer to our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals

© 2208 Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
124 pages

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“As a beautiful flower that is full of hue but lacks fragrance, even so fruitless is the well-spoken word of one who does not practice it.” – Siddhartha Gautama, quoted in What the Buddha Taught

Over a month ago, reader Pom Pom suggested that I look into Shane Claiborne. While my library held one of his books, it was then checked out and remained so until last week. In the time since, I’ve listened to various sermons/talks by Claiborne and find him to be a very interesting personality — as well as a symphatetic one. Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers is written for praying Christians, and would best be deceived by them. While a more naturally-centered person like myself can make Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s message applicable, the book is focused on the text of three Christian prayers found in the Gospels and Epistles.
The two authors both write in the first-person in an informal matter. Content wise, they are most concerned with wedding faith with action: faith is less believing-in-things and more doing things based on beliefs. Instead of bickering over healthcare, for instance, Claiborne tells the story of a community that paid tithes to provide a common pool of money for members who needed it. In the decades that this pool has been in operation, he says, it has provided millions in healthcare support. While prayers are often prayed to God in the expectation that he will fulfill needs, the expectation here is that people step up and take a more active role in living their values. The great mystery, Claiborne says, is that God allows himself to be limited by the actions of people: he chooses to work through people by inspiring them to action rather than by doing it himself.
I like Claiborne for the same reason I like this book to whatever extent I like it: I believe in fulfilling worldviews. I can’t separate my philosophy from my politics, or my ‘spirituality’ from science, or my beliefs from my actions — and I appreciate movements built on similar commitments Claiborne’s approach reminds me of Buddhism’s eight noble truths, emphasizing “right livelihood” and “right action” right alongside mindfulness.
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Alternative American Religions

Posted on August 28, 2009 by smellincoffee

Alternative American Religions

© 2000 Stephen J. Stein
156 pages
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Maurice: Pastor Richards, as a human being, I have to say I find your philosophy or cult or whatever it is utterly and completely appalling.

Richards: Why thank you! I knew you’d understand.

Maurice: I mean, you seem to want to build a religion around yourself and some 1950’s vision of America. It’s the 1980’s, man! And one man worship-me cults are not allowed, my friend! (Maurice Chavez, VCPR, GTA: Vice City.)
Curious about marginalized religious movements, particularly those of the pacifistic brand, I decided to check this book out. The book is a straightforward and very brief history of cults, sects, new religious movements, and similarily-labelled movements, beginning with the Pilgrims and ending with the demise of the Heaven’s Gate cult. The chapters are arranged thematically, with plenty of chronologlical overlap, but the end of every successive chapter brings us closer to the present. Movements mentioned include the obvious (Scientology) and the obscure (“The Vermont Pilgrims”, a band of asectics who ate nothing but wheat and flower gruel and never bathed) — including the sect in which I was raised*, the United Pentecostal Church International. The book’s beginning is stronger than its end: there are fewer movements to mention, so they get more attention and thus stick in the reader’s imagination more. The movements toward the end of the movement get a paragraph or two if they’re fortunate. Despite how quickly the book moved, I was able to learn more about various religious movements I’ve heard about but knew little of.
The book is suitable for most readers: strangely curious children could read through it with ease. My general ignorance makes it difficult for me to comment on the book’s factual worth, but given the starkness it’s not as if there’s much to debate: there are no interpretations here. All is very straightforward. I did notice he referred to the Flavor Aid used by Jonestown’s late inhabitants as “Kool-Aid”, but I don’t know if that says more about the author or me, frankly.
* But which I left in 2005 after discovering the Association of Former Pentecostals and subsequently realizing that I was no longer trapped. If you want a slightly less sterile take on the UPCI than the Religious Tolerance page, I describe its doctrines and practices here.
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Are We Rome?

Posted on August 27, 2009 by smellincoffee

Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America

© 2007 Cullen Murphy
262 pages
Rome,politics
Lead poisons our wine and makes us stupid / Gladiators keep us entertained / More votes cast for idols than for Caesar / The end of empire’s easily explained / It’s carved there in plain Latin, the inscription on the wall: / “Welcome one and all to the decline and fall” / And if your Latin’s rusty, here’s the writing on the wall: / “Welcome one and all to the decline and fall” – “The Decline and Fall”, Fire Aim Ready
The author of Are We Rome begins his work by acknowledging the problems inherent in drawing comparisons between Rome and America: not only that it is overdone and typically done for ideological reasons, but that despite popular opinion, history isn’t so easy to draw lessons from. A state’s strengths and weaknesses are the result of its unique historical situation, and such specific situations don’t typically repeat themselves. At the same time, he maintains, the relationship between America and the ghost of Rome is not a newly-purported one, and there are some lessons that may be learned.
The next five chapters examine five common traits of the American and Roman republics, among them hubris, military matters, privatization of government functions and accompanying corruption, citizens’ relationships with “barbarians”, and “borders”. The last is not chiefly about political borders, but includes cultural influence as well. Murphy comments intelligently on both American and Roman history, and he writes well — and prudently. I tried to be overly sensitive while reading the book to notice any far-fetched or questionable comparisons, and there weren’t any that made themselves obvious. There is no apparent agenda behind Murphy’s writing, and his suggestions in the Epilogue are similarly cautious. The author takes both his subject and his readers seriously, which leads me to recommend it to general readers interested in American politics — whether they are Americans themselves or just mice trying to be wary of the elephant they share close quarters with, if I may use a humorous metaphor I read only recently in a forum.
—-
The cover features George Washington dressed as Cinncinatus, giving his sword back to the People. Murphy comments that modern tourists who spot the statue are probably oblivious to the Washington/Cinncinatus comparison and think it’s a depiction of George Washington in a sauna reaching for a tower.
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This Week at the Library (26/8)

Posted on August 26, 2009 by smellincoffee
Books this Update:
  • Casebook of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov
  • The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama
  • Who Needs God?, Harold Kushner
  • The Japanese Experience, W.G. Beasley
  • Catalina’s Riddle, Steven Saylor
I started the week with an old favorite by returning to the Black Widower series — again reading a collection of stories set at the Milano restaurant where the Black Widower club has its monthly meeting, accompanied by the (seemingly) monthly puzzle to reason through. I don’t know what else to add: the book was as charming and witty as I expect, although there are stronger Widower collections.
Next I read Barack Obama’s political philosophy in The Audacity of Hope. While the book is typically classified as a biography, it is at its essence a political book that uses biographical anecdotes to show the reader how Obama’s life has informed his views. His approach is one of moderate pragmatism combined with determined optimism that we do have the ability to make things work. He seems to want to bring common sense and empathy back to the political sphere , seeing them as having been lost somewhere in the past few decades. The author’s tone seemed honest, approachable, and more moderate than I would have expected. I liked and recommend it.
Who Needs God? was next, written by Harold Kushner and addressing the ethnically nonreligious. Kushner uses the book to defend religion, not the idea of God, but his idea of “religion” is far more broad than you might expect. I liked the author, but I can’t say I agreed that religions alone satisfy the needs they meet in this book.
Moving on to history, I read W.G. Beasley’s The Japanese Experience, a short book spanning most of Japanese history (ending in the 1990s). Although its scope was considerable, the book was more successful than Albert Hourani’s similar History of the Arabs: Beasley seems to have found the right balance between details and narrative, managing to convey a sense of what has happened without ignoring detailed information altogether.
The week ended strongly with Steven Saylor’s Catalina’s Riddle, a mystery-turned-political-thriller set in ancient Rome, during the time of the “Catalina conspiracies”. Populist and exiled patrician Catalina has attracted the fury of Cicero, whose rhetoric toward him is so acerbic that it became the final straw for our main character, Gordianus. Gordianus, having created a successful career for himself as a detective of sorts, decides to move to the country to get away from Roman politics. Unfortunately for him, Rome follows him and Gordianus is dragged into the heart of the conflict — giving Catalina safe haven in his home at Cicero’s request. This is probably my favorite of the Roma sub Rosa books.
Pick of the Week: Casebook of the Black Widowers, Audacity of Hope, and Catalina’s Riddle are all strong contenders, but Catalina’s Riddle was utterly riveting. Perhaps it has advantage in being the last book I read, but it’s definitely memorable.
Next Week:
  • Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals, Shaine Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I’m finally able to follow up on a recommendation from reader Pom Pom: the book has been out of the library since June or so, and finally reappeared.
  • A History of God, Karen Armstrong. I tried reading this in 2006, but I didn’t get far.
  • Roma, Steven Saylor. I’m taking a break from the Roma sub Rosa series to read a similar but unassociated novel by Saylor, this one recounting the thousand-year history of Rome through the eyes of one Roman family.
  • Are We Rome?, Cullen Murphy: a comparison of the United States and Rome.
  • Alternative American Religions, Stephen J. Stein. The book has what appears to be two Amish women holding saxophones and looking mischievous on the inside cover. How I could I resist?
  • The Irony of American History, since I didn’t finish it last week.
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Catalina’s Riddle

Posted on August 25, 2009 by smellincoffee
Rome,Saylor

Catalina’s Riddle

1993 Steven Saylor
430 pages
Returning to Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series was a treat last week, but I did not expect to be as riveted as I was this week while reading Catalina’s Riddle. Our principle character is Gordianus the Finder, and the story is set in between The Arms of Nemesis and The Venus Throw: a friend of Gordianus‘ has died and left him his farm. Discouraged by the political corruption and vileness of Rome, Gordianus has eagerly left his modest home in the city to his son Eco and become a farmer. The change in pace has not left him wholly satisfied: life in the fields is hard work, especially when blight renders the wheat harvest worthless and your neighbors hate you and headless bodies keep showing up on your property.
Although Gordianus tried to leave Rome behind, he soon learns that Rome is inescapable. A rider from the city comes to Gordianus and asks him to give service to Cicero — a small service, given that it was Cicero’s rhetorical abilities that won Gordianus‘ farm for him after his neighbors — family of his late benefactor — sued for it. Gordianus is asked to give refuge to Catalina. That Catalina, a rabble-rousing patrician whose political ideas make the “Optimates” — the leading aristocracy of Rome — froth at the mouth — would need a safe harbor is not surprising. That Cicero would ask for a favor on Catalina’s behalf is puzzling, as Cicero has become the aristocracy’s mouthpiece. Indeed, Cicero’s tactics to discredit Catalina were the final straw for Gordianus in leading him to decide to leave the city.
Unlike the other sub Rosa books, Gordianus is not playing the part of detective. For most of the book, he tends to his farm while the great political battle between Cicero and Catalina takes place in the city. This book almost seems a political thriller: while previous books have connected Gordianus‘ various hired work to political events at the time, none of those events were as big as the “Cataline Conspiracy”. Catalina is accused of planning an insurrection while everywhere ambitious men plot and fill other men’s pockets with silver. While Gordianus is morbidly contemplating the decay of the Republic, he is also contemplating the decaying and beheaded bodies that keep appearing on his property. Who is attempting to intimidate him, and to what end? There is no stability in Rome — no one is completely reliable.
Catalina’s Riddle is nicely done: as usual, Saylor brings historical artifacts and people to life. Rome is a living city: its fear is palpable. That this became a thriller of sorts instead of a mystery was not expected, but very enjoyable. I’d say it’s my favorite of the sub Rosa books thus far. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to complete the series: I only have access to two of the books (Rubicon and Caesar’s Triumph), and those two have several books separating them.
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The Japanese Experience

Posted on August 24, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan

© 1999 W. G. Beasley
299 pages, including glossary and index.
I checked this book out in April 2007. I remember this well, because I tried reading it on April 22. It was Earth Day, and I decided to spend the late afternoon in a field, laying on my back and watching the clouds while occassionally reading from the book and talking to friends. It was a glorious afternoon that ended when I accidently rolled into a patch of stinging nettles. I’d checked the book out then for the same reason I checked it out last week — to prepare myself for a Japanese history class. I didn’t take that class in 2oo7 because it was a night class and I wanted to avoid such a thing, but in the years since I’ve had two night classes with the same instructor and have found them to be mildly tolerable — and this next semester, I will be studying Japanese history on Thursday nights from 5 to 7:30.
Although I have performed well in previous classes with the same instructor, I had the advantange of knowing my subject: European history. My knowledge of Japanese history, or of anything relating to Japanese culture, is extremely limited. I know, for instance, that Shinto and Zen Buddhism were once strong there, that Japan went through a period often described as feudral (to the chagrine of another one of my instructors, a medieval historian who insists feudalism is a uniquley western affair), that it adopted modernization to catch up with the west, and that it was hard-hit by the Depression. Outside of this, though, I am unknowledgable, and so Japan seems as foreign to me as a race from Star Trek. Indeed, there were passages in this book where I might as well have been reading background information for a fantasy story: the names and places have utterly no significance to me. I don’t want to go into class wholly unprepared, though, so I’ve decided to do a little background reading before classes start. (Mine do not start until next week, for those curious. We seem to start later than other universities.)
Beasley offers a short history of Japan from the beginnings of its imperial age to the recession of the 1990s. That’s a lot to go over in only 300 pages, so Beasley doesn’t go into a lot of detail. He tracks political, economic, and cultural changes throughout those hundreds of years, focusing on especially notable leaders and movements. A dominant theme is Japan’s place in Asia — first dominated by China and its culture, and later attempting to reverse the relationship in creating the “Co-Prosperity Economic Sphere”. Despite the breadth of information he has to cover, Beasley delivers a fairly readable narrative that — while having to ignore lots of specifics, I would assume — gives the reader a general impression of how things have proceeded. The book is supplemented with two sets of plates, mostly consisting of artwork: the two lone photographs are from the late 1930s and mid-1940s.
For those who know little of Japan and wish to know a bit more, I reccommend the book.
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Who Needs God?

Posted on August 23, 2009 by smellincoffee

Who Needs God?

© 1989 Harold Kushner
208 pages
In God’s Problem, author Bart Ehrman reccommended Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People and Kushner in general. I decided to follow up on the recommendation and read the strangely-titled Who Needs God this week. I say “strangely titled”, for while Kushner is writing to two audiences — those who have a “spiritual life”, but spurn organized religion, and those who live ethically without regard to ideas of god — the book seems to be aimed more at the former. For Kushner, the ideas of God and religion are one — even though he sees religion as a human construction, formed to meet human needs and doing so through community.
The book consists of chapters detailing religion’s contributions to human happiness, although allowing plenty of room for mentions of its excesses. Some themes include: providing a worldview that makes sense of the world; giving people something to revere, thus allowing for mystery; accounting for suffering; providing community; providing a source of inner strength, and a few others. My problem with this book was not that I don’t think these things aren’t valuable, but that I don’t see them as being the sole property of religion. Confusing the matter is the nebulous definition of religion. If naturalistic humanism does what Kushner claims the world religions do, does that mean it is a religion?
Although I disagree with Kushner on a number of issues in the book, I rather liked reading him: he seems like a kindly old grandfather author. His “mistakes” seem honest, not blind ones made by adherence to ideology. He is definitely more concerned with spirituality, personal growth, and community than he is with perpeutating old ideas, but he does think they have their place in keeping people grounded to their culture. (The extent to which we “need” to associate with our culture is a matter for further thought.) I think if Kushner had defined terms at the beginning, this book would have made a lot more sense. As it is, all I can say is that I disliked some elements and liked some elements. The problem is that they’re so mixed together that I can’t point them out.
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The Audacity of Hope

Posted on August 22, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

© 2006 Barack Obama
375 pages
Knowing my interest in political speeches, a friend of mine asked me in 2005 if I’d ever heard of Barack Obama, who spoke at the 2004 DNC. I hadn’t, of course, but American Rhetoric had a copy of said speech and gave it a listen. I don’t recall my political views at the time: I know I was shifting from a fundamentalist Pentecostal and rabid Republican to questioning the former and not caring about the other. Whatever they were, I enjoyed listening to the speech, and I began watching him. In 2006, I was happy when he announced his decision to run for the office of President: I expected him to be a long-shot candidate, and planned on voting for him. I was surprised by his popularity, and bewildered by the fact that people were singing songs about him on YouTube. Wow. I grew tired of politics last summer, and was uncomfortable with some of his decisions, but I continued to watch his campaign — and when it was announced that he was the winner, I was elated. I stayed up long after my usual bedtime watching speeches and shivering in anticipation the way I used to on Christmas morning. Despite my political cynicism, Obama has a hold on me. He makes me question my jaded assumptions — he tempts me to believing in “America”.
That’s what The Audacity of Hope is principally about, although I expressed the above thoughts to myself weeks ago when writing in my journal, attempting to give voice to the thoughts swirling around in my brain. Its very title appeals to the idealist I once was — and still am, judging by my susceptibility to the president’s message. The book is less about idealism and more about common sense, for the most part. What dominates this book is not his urging the reader to believe in America — although he does — but his attempt to reintroduce common sense and empathy to politics, something that has been missing since ideology began driving political discussion in the late seventies or early eighties. Obama begins the book with a chapter on how things got to the point that they are today, going over political changes from the fifties to the present day. He brings up common sense and empathy, and applies them in following chapters to discussions of values, the Constitution, economic matters, religion, race, political campaigning, foreign affairs, and family matters.
Although the book is classified as a biography, I think this is erroneous. With the exception of “Family”, the chapters are dominated by his discussion of what is — not the story of his life. He does use personal anecdotes to introduce chapters and as occasional illustration, but they aren’t the bulk of the book. The epilogue gives the book its title, as Obama reflects on a sermon he once heard using the phrase ‘Audacity of Hope’:

“The audacity of hope. That was the best of the American spirit, I thought — having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control — and therefore responsibility — over our own fate. It was that audacity, I thought, that joined us as one people. It was that pervasive spirit of hope that tied my own family’s story to the larger American story, and my own story to those of the voters I sought to represent.”

When I see that phase “despite all the evidence to the contrary”, I’m given pause. It’s certainly idealistic, and therein lies my uncertainty. I believe in idealism — it motivates me. At the same time, I don’t want to be deceived by it. This is an honest book, I think: it may get the biographical label because the author is so present in the book, plainly agonizing over difficult decisions that aren’t so easy to make when the standard is reason and empathy. I can appreciate that — I dislike books written with that sense of moral satisfaction, books like Bush Country and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. I think people who read this book — who sit down with its author and think about these things as he’s thinking about them — will get a lot out of it. You’d have to approach this book with hostility in mind to come away from it poorly. It is at its heart an honest discussion and I recommend it. At the very least, it will allow the reader to get into the mind of the US President.
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