Four different Americas are vying for supremacy. No wonder we’re having trouble. In his latest book, Last Best Hope, America in Crisis and Renewal, George Packer offers insight into why the United States is so divided.
The first group, Free America, libertarian, wants economic freedom without restraint. The second, Smart America, professional, socially liberal, wants a knowledge driven credentialed meritocracy. The third, Real America, working class, populist, wants respect for old fashioned values and reward for labor. The fourth, Just America, wants equality for those who have been excluded from the American dream. This includes environmentalists seeking to protect the earth itself from the pressures of humanity. This perceptive description of 21st century America was the strongest part of the book.
The beginning, a recap of 2020, is strident and one sided – and who wants to live through 2020 again? The conclusions Packer draws are vague although I am interested in his view that people are not upset about inequality of financial assets but are upset about being looked down upon. (Maybe so, but does he really think that people do not mind the obscene wealth of Bezos/Gates/Musk? I have to draw a line there.)
Packer talks about how the pandemic exposed divisions so deep we could not rally as a united nation to overcome a common threat. We have been here before – the Civil War and New Deal are examples. The last chapter tries to be optimistic; we lived through those things; we will live through this. But his main prescription to bring us back to health was too obscure for me, and my sister readers, to find helpful. Democracy requires the skill of “self-government” and we had better start learning and practicing it. (But what does that mean??) Packer does point to the job ahead of us and has a neat phrase to sum it up: Make America Again.
Recently, this headline appeared in the local news. Maybe Packer is right.
In Sweet Thunder, last of a trilogy, Ivan Doig reintroduces us to erudite Morrie Morgan, walking internet, as he returns to Butte, Montana with his bride. In addition to being gifted with words, Morrie also knows his way around the Chicago boxing world, especially the bookie side, and keeps brass knuckles in his pocket.
His gamble at present is to join the pro-union startup newspaper, Thunder, whose purpose is to oppose giant Anaconda Mining which controls the town. As Thunder’s editorial writer he battles with his well-known, well-paid equivalent at the Post, the company newspaper. Throughout the novel, the case for the union is well made and Doig gives a colorful portrait of the miners and bootleggers who inhabit Prohibition era Butte.
The language of the place and times, 1920, is fun and appropriate – “What’s on your mind besides your hat…popular as hotcakes…a ring-tailed wonder…hair peeked fetchingly under her ribboned bonnet…band struck up a tune – a schottische.”
When Morrie’s somewhat shady past catches up with him in the form of a lost trunk found and delivered, his independent minded wife Grace shows that she would fit in perfectly well with the activist protesting women of the 1920’s, and 2020’s.
A reading gift this summer was an introduction to the Elly Griffiths mystery series. Her sleuth, Dr. Ruth Galloway, is a forensic archaeologist who teaches at a small university in Northern England. Whenever bones are found, she is called.
Are they ancient relics or evidence of a current murder? Often both are involved. The stories contain just the right mix of down-to-earth scientific fact with the otherworldliness of Druid rituals, Iron Age beliefs and medieval curses.
Dr. Galloway personifies the modern woman. She is a highly educated professional who loves her job and excels in her field. She also worries about her weight, is somewhat estranged from her Born Again parents, and is a conflicted single mother who feels guilty about working.
Her first book, The Crossing Place, was excellent, but number five, Dying Fall, the most recent that I’ve read, was even better crafted. Griffiths has learned to build tension and bring the story to a riveting climax.
In addition to great plot, characters, and setting, her books have some nice small touches. She refers to other authors I like – G.K. Chesterton who wrote Father Brown, the priest-detective mysteries, and Arthur Ransome who wrote the fairy tale that Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child is based on. In A Room Full of Bones, the skeleton of the medieval bishop she is inspecting turns out to be female. In Dying Fall, English King Arthur is found to have been black. We are tutored in the history of Roman soldiers from Africa. Griffiths likes language and tells us that an unkindness of ravens, like a murder of crows, is the specific word for a large group of them.
There are fourteen books in this series, and I look forward to reading them all. Plus, there is an additional series. This is one prolific writer.
It you enjoyed reading Where the Crawdads Sing, you will probably find the movie worth seeing. It keeps to the story, is true to the depiction of the culture and area, and the photography is stunning.
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The Ellie Griffiths series sounds like great fun and a fine escape from political anxiety. Thanks, as always, for your “finds” and reviews.
That is an excellent summary of THE LAST BEST HOPE. I’ve been a fan of Ivan Doig ever since “Rascal Fair”; nice to know there’s more to come.
I too finished Doig’s trilogy. Loved the first and third books but was a little bored with the second. They make a nice contrast when facing authors like Packer or Henriquez.
Yes, I agree about the Doig trilogy. The second was the weakest and then he rallied!