By Neal Lemery Bayocean: Atlantis of Oregon offers a comprehensive examination of a massive real estate development in one of the Northwest’s most scenic and pristine ocean beaches. The many tales of speculation, promotion, and determination are interwoven with extensive research of original sources to tell the tales of a long-ago age. Jerry Sutherland teaches us history and also engages…
Category: Books
BOOK REVIEW: “The Politics Industry”
By Jim Heffernan I usually wait until I finish a book before I begin to write my review, but this one is different. I’ve read a lot of books about contempory politics and “The Politics Industry” is special. I’m very impressed how original and even-handed it is. Michael Porter is an economist born in 1947 who is known in academic…
BOOK REVIEW: “I Have the Right to Remain Silent—But I Lack the Ability” by Madelaine Brauner Landry
By Jim Heffernan I think perhaps I might have a “book guardian angel” who sits on my shoulder and prods me when she sees a book she thinks I “need” to read. I saw Landry’s book while browsing the library at Braver Angels* and my “book guardian angel” made me get it. It wasn’t easy, the publisher “Ally Gater Bites”…
BOOK REVIEW: Listen, Liberal: or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People? –
By Jim Heffernan This is a book I started reading 8 days after the 2020 election, once my shell-shock had dissipated. It started a reading binge that has continued until the present day. I just could not believe how far out of step I was with nearly half of my fellow citizens. Thomas Frank was born in 1965 and grew…
BOOK REVIEW: Strangers in Their Own Land
By Jim Heffernan This is Arlie Hochshcild’s 9th and latest book. It was a finalist for a National Book Award. It the result of 5 years research in rural Louisiana into the “deep story” of working class people who are sympathetic to Tea Party beliefs. When she’s not writing or researching, she’s a Professor of Sociology at University of California…
BOOK REVIEW: I’m Still Here – Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
By Jim Heffernan This month (February) is “Black History Month” and I chose this book because it represents a different take on the black experience. The book is a memoir of a woman born in 1984 who mainly grows up in a very white suburb of Toledo. Her parents named her “Austin” with the express idea that the name would…
BOOK REVIEW: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
By Jim Heffernan “For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depend on it.” Robin Wall Kimmerer is a professor and a citizen of the Potawatomi* nation. In college, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to study…
BOOK REVIEW: Dirt Road Revival – How to rebuild rural politics and why our future depends on it
By Jim Heffernan I’m an old man, and most of the books I read are written by people as old or older than me. This book’s authors, Chloe and Canyon, are barely in their thirties. Chloe, the candidate, and Canyon, the campaign manager, managed to win State House and Senate elections in a rural and very red corner of Maine….
JOIN A BOOK CLUB – “The Warmth of Other Suns”; Book Review
By Jim Heffernan I was lucky that I grew up close to a branch library in Denver. It was named Smiley Branch Library after a 19th. century teacher/superindendent in Denver. I never thought of the man, but more how that library made me “smile”. In those days, all you could get at the library was books. Tillamook Public Library, of…
BOOK REVIEW: Dark Money by Jane Mayer
By Jim Heffernan I found this is a very important and fascinating book. It’s eight years old, but I think its insights are still very valid and accurate. This is Jane Mayer’s fourth book. She is primarily a journalist. Her writing is spritely and her insights are profound. She has been a staff writer for the New Yorker for nearly…