WHAT TO DO DURING THE ISOLATION
OF A PANDEMIC?
I don’t know what others have done but I’ve used the isolation of the pandemic to read more books, mostly history books. I haven’t read fiction since I was a teenager gobbling up Shell Scott with rare exceptions like the required reading of Moby Dick by Herman Melville in my college humanities class where we were also required to read Dante’s Inferno and The Odyssey by Homer and such. They were all supposed to sophisticate us but I never really got the point as I seized the opportunity to discover what real history was all about, especially African-American history that was so completely absent from our elementary and secondary education history books. All of my reading was an extension of my love of history in junior high and high school and it continues to this day. So it was only natural that I would rely on books of history to brighten up my pandemic isolation.

STALIN
I started the year 2020 finishing reading Stephen Kotkin’s lengthy first volume of Stalin: Paradoxes of Power which would have been much less difficult to read if not for the many unfamiliar and difficult-to-pronounce-or-to remember Russian names that the author made frequent references to in telling a great tale of the life of Josef Stalin from birth through the Russian revolution and up to the evolution of Russia into the early Soviet Socialist Republic and all of the intrigue it entailed. It’s a powerful tale if you can untangle the names and tolerate the small print that went on for almost 750 pages. I also read Kotkin’s second volume, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, which was no less challenging with its more than 900 small-print pages. I started reading about Stalin because I was curious about how a man could evolve from an idealistic revolutionary into a murderous dictator who eventually cared about nobody but himself as he killed off millions of his own citizens who strangely idolized him until his death. Besides deliberately causing the death of millions of citizens, he murdered many of his close associates and most of his top military officers so randomly that the fear of him made those who survived his eager accomplices. An added benefit of reading about Stalin’s rise is that Kotkin showed how Stalin’s rise to power paralleled that of Adolf Hitler, whose brutality matched and, in some notable ways, surpassed that of Stalin’s. Needless to say, I was also looking for a frame of reference for understanding Donald Trump, who clearly aspired, at all costs, to distort our democracy into his own personal dictatorship and continues to do so. He may not have been a Stalin or a Hitler but he certainly has shown enough signs that but for the strength of our democracy, there might he have gone. I recommend Kotkin’s Stalin for those who don’t mind long, hard reading.

NOBODY
My daughter-in-law gave me a copy of Marc Lamont Hill’s Nobody last Christmas and I read it in between the two volumes of Stalin. It’s a great read written by a young Black author who explains the current murders of Black people by the police in an historical and institutional context that brings to mind Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in which the Black protagonist is struggling with his invisibility relative to the broader culture. Nobody is really a quick, well-documented read that goes beyond the institutional murders of Black folks, like Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and many more, to the environmental murders that took place in places like Flint, Michigan where putrid drinking water was allowed to poison Black residents long after its poisonous effects were known. It’s a refresher course in institutional racism that I highly recommend.

GOD’S SHADOW
God’s Shadow, by Alan Mikhail, is a must read for anyone who wants to know the real story about why Columbus sailed west toward the Americas. The short answer is because he couldn’t sail east because all of the eastern trade routes between Europe and Asia were controlled by the Ottomans who were smarter, more powerful and more civilized than the Europeans whom they out performed for centuries. The Muslim Ottomans dominated much of the Muslim world as well as much of Eastern Europe, vital parts of Southern Europe, most of North Africa and chunks of North and West Africa and Asia, and played a significant role in the shaping of the modern world―crucial historical facts that somehow have escaped our teaching of American history. The Ottomans picked the wrong side in World War I, which is why what we know today as Turkey is all that remains of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey includes Istanbul, which was once known as Constantinople, the Catholic capital of the Byzantine Empire that Ottomans captured in the 16th century. There is much history to be learned in God’s Shadow, which is a great, easily read book.

RAGE
Although Bob Woodward’s book Rage is not fiction, it reads like fiction and nobody who wants a true picture of a man who should never have become our president should miss reading it. Rage is an edited compilation of a series of 17 taped interviews between Woodward and Donald Trump over a seven month period of Trump’s presidency. I came away from the book with the thought that Trump is one severely mentally and intellectually rattled “man who would be king” but should never be and should never have been president of our imperfect republic that so many have worked so long and hard to perfect. Bob Woodward’s genius was in full bloom as he opened up the mind of Trump for all of his inadequacies to be put on full display through Trump’s own discombobulated and disingenuous words. If I had ever doubted my own low assessment of Trump as a president and a person, which only has been rarely and fleeting, after reading the best seller Rage, I can only say that my low assessment of Trump was too generous and the aftermath left me even more puzzled at how 50 percent of White Americans from every walk of life manage to support him, notwithstanding every convoluted rationale that I’ve read and heard from the many who consider themselves good and informed thinkers. GRANT
Ron Chernow’s biography of President Ulysses Grant, titled simply Grant, is another one of those long books worth reading if you can stomach the small print and almost 1,000 pages. My wife gifted it to me the Christmas before last and I read half of it and set it aside. The first half was about Grant’s role in the Civil War which most know was substantial. Grant was President Abraham Lincoln’s “winningest” General who essentially broke the back of the Confederacy through his victorious Mississippi campaign that eventually split the western Confederacy from its eastern counterpart which ultimately led to Sherman’s famous “March to the Sea” and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. The second half of Chernow’s book about Grant, which I read during the Pandemic days, was less dramatic but far more informative because of what it had to say about Grant’s peacetime accomplishments, most of which have been an historical blur. If Chernow is right, and I believe he is because it jibes with what I have learned from many other more disparate sources, Grant was probably one of our greatest presidents right up their along with Lincoln and Washington and Roosevelt and Truman. He had the misfortune of becoming president at a time when the federal government was rapidly expanding and the Civil Service System didn’t exist and power resided more in the states, especially in senators whose power was anchored in a well-designed patronage system within which corruption was rampant. Grant was not corrupt. But he had to govern within a system that was and had to deal with many politicians who were. Many historians wrote about the two-term President Grant in the context of the times he governed and skipped through his rightful role in history as a principled man who, in the face of enormous opposition, extended Lincoln’s legacy and improved upon it until his one-term Republican successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, officially sold out to those who wanted to bring an end to Reconstruction, the consequences for which we continue to pay the price.

PRESIDENTS OF WAR
Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss, another gift from my wife, is a good read for those who want to get a one-stop view of America’s wars from the War of 1812 to Vietnam and the struggles of the presidents who led them. I enjoyed it most because it was a review of much of what I already knew but it gave what I knew a more coherent and connected context.

THE BLACK FRIEND: ON BEING A BETTER WHITE PERSON
I ran into this book by Frederick Joseph completely by accident while browsing in Costco’s book section for a title that they didn’t have. To be completely honest, I was uncomfortable with the title. The idea that a Black author was writing a primer on “On Being a Better White Person” in order to be a better Black friend didn’t set well with me and still doesn’t even after I read it and concluded that it is a well-intended effort by a highly regarded Black professional to educate well-meaning White folks on things they should already know but most likely don’t know. My life experience has revealed that it is a daunting task tried by many that rarely works. Joseph at least acknowledges such in his own naïve way as he pushes forward to offer White folks “a gift,” as he puts it. He’s a younger professional who was just named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list so his idealism is understandable and just maybe he will reach a few White folks in a positive way. As for me, I’m going to gift the two copies I purchased to two of my White “friends.” Who knows? It might help. (Since writing this bit, Joseph’s book has hit the New York Times Best Seller List.)

NAPOLEON
My current read is Napoleon, a lengthy biography by Andrew Roberts that seems to be promising. I just started it. Maybe by the time I finish it, a vaccine will be available and I can switch to some more people-centered activity…or maybe I’ll just stay with the books.

READ MORE AND STAY WELL. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!