Democracy – Stillness of Heart

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Follow these tips to ensure a long, happy life for your dog / The 58 essential books to read / Democracy needs a mass movement now / Happy 200th to the Erie Canal / Rings are forming around Chiron, a celestial centaur / The mysteries of Hadrian’s Wall and Al-Kindi

This week: Follow these tips to ensure a long, happy life for your dog / The 58 essential books to read / Democracy needs a mass movement now / Happy 200th to the Erie Canal / Rings are forming around Chiron, a celestial centaur / The mysteries of Hadrian’s Wall and Al-Kindi

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. 58 Books You Need to Read (Recommended by People Who Know)
By Emily Temple | LitHub | October 2025
“We will be sharing their opinions on various subjects with you over the next weeks, but to start, we’ve collated some of the best answers on one of our favorite questions: what’s the best book you’ve read recently?”

2. What Are We Living Through?
By Jedediah Britton-Purdy and David Pozen | The Boston Review | October 2025
“Three competing narratives of the second Trump administration.”

3. Are these local newsletters local news? (And does it matter?)
By Sophie Culpepper | Nieman Lab | October 2025
“Meet a few of the entrepreneurs and hobbyists building community — and sometimes, making real ad money — from newsletters aggregating local events.”

4. Late bloomers
By Gail Dugelby | Garden Style San Antonio | October 2025
“There’s a large bouquet of wildflowers that signal the arrival of fall — and welcome the butterflies and birds that pass through our area this season.”

5. The 2025 Esquire Gadget Awards
By Krista Jones, Luke Guillory, Bryn Gelbart and The Esquire Editors | Esquire | October 2025
“These 63 products prove that keeping up with the times matters. Ranging from robots to red-light technology, this is what you’re missing.”

6. America Needs a Mass Movement — Now
By David Brooks | The Atlantic | October 2025
“Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.”

7. Astronomers observe rings forming around icy celestial body Chiron
By Will Dunham | Reuters | October 2025
“The rings of Saturn are among the wonders of our solar system, with a diameter of roughly 175,000 miles as they encircle the giant planet. But smaller celestial bodies in the solar system also boast ring systems that are impressive in their own right, even if their scale is not as grand.”

8. The Case for Unbordered Reporting
By Jean Guerrero | Columbia Journalism Review | October 2025
“A guide for taking immigration stories beyond walls both physical and mental.”

9. Erie Canal’s 200th anniversary: How a technological marvel for trade changed the environment forever
By Christine Keiner | The Conversation | October 2025
“When the Erie Canal opened 200 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1825, the route was dotted with decaying trees left by construction that had cut through more than 360 miles of forests and fields, and life quickly sped up.”

10. These 16-ton self-driving cargo trucks are joining the US Army
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal | New Atlas | October 2025
“The next iteration of these 10-wheel trucks, designed to carry 16.5-ton payloads across practically any terrain, will get ‘by-wire functionality to enable autonomous operation and active safety systems that increase protection and efficiency for soldiers operating in complex environments.’ “

11. The Best Books of the Year So Far
The New Yorker | October 2025
“Each week, our editors and critics choose the most captivating, notable, brilliant, surprising, absorbing, weird, thought-provoking, and talked-about reads.”

12. Want your dog to live a longer life? Here are 6 science-backed tips
By Julia Ries Wexler | National Geographic | October 2025
“We asked scientists from the Dog Aging Project for practical tips to improve your dog’s lifespan—from what to feed them to exactly how often they need a walk.”

13. ‘Hot mic’ hot mess: gaffes made by global leaders when they think no one is listening
By Prabowo Subianto | Explainer :: The Guardian | October 2025
“Indonesia’s Prabowo is the latest world leader to fall foul of the ‘hot mic’ – diplomatic snafus that have caused embarrassment to leaders around the globe”

14. How Healthy Are Lentils?
By Alexandra Pattillo | The New York Times | October 2025
“Some experts call them a superfood. Here’s why they deserve a spot in your pantry.”

15. No amount of alcohol is safe, at least for dementia risk, study finds
By Richard Sima | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Even a drink or two a day isn’t risk-free, a new study suggests.”

16. The Polio Crusade
American Experience :: PBS | December 2022
“In the summer of 1950 fear gripped the residents of Wytheville, Virginia. Movie theaters shut down, baseball games were cancelled and panicky parents kept their children indoors — anything to keep them safe from an invisible invader. … Polio had struck in Wytheville. The town was in the midst of a full-blown epidemic. That year alone, more than 33,000 Americans fell victim — half of them under the age of ten.”

17. The turbulent history of the union jack
By Neil Armstrong | BBC News | October 2025
“For centuries the ultimate emblem of Britishness has meant different things to different people, and now it is back in the news. What does its history tell us?”

18. Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from the internet
By Samanth Subramanian | The Guardian | September 2025
“A colossal volcanic eruption in January 2022 ripped apart the underwater cables that connect Tonga to the world – and exposed the fragility of 21st-century life.”

19. Reign of Destruction
By Steve Ryfle | The Criterion Collection | October 2019
“While Godzilla has evolved with the times, the Showa series as a whole is undeniably the foundation of this ever-growing pop-culture phenomenon.”

20. The Rapture
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2011-2020
Also see: Hadrian’s Wall | Al-Kindi | The Ming Voyages | The Etruscan Civilisation

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Herculaneum’s lost library / Gen Z-ers and conservative Christianity / These dinosaurs are your friends / Discover the usefulness of coffee naps / Being organized may suggest longer life / 1816: the ‘Year Without a Summer’

This week: Herculaneum’s lost library / Gen Z-ers and conservative Christianity / These dinosaurs are your friends / Discover the usefulness of coffee naps / Being organized may suggest longer life / 1816: the ‘Year Without a Summer’

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark
By Anne Applebaum | The Atlantic | October 2025
“For nearly 250 years, America promoted freedom and equality abroad, even when it failed to live up to those ideals itself. Not anymore.”

2. ‘Deeply alarmed’: House Democrats send a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
By Mariel Padilla | The 19th | October 2025
“Women veterans in Congress and nearly 100 House Democrats are decrying the secretary’s comments about women in the military.”

3. Get Ready to See Yourself in Ads
By John Herrman | Intelligencer :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“Thanks to generative AI, the future may look like Minority Report.”

4. We’re finally reading the secrets of Herculaneum’s lost library
By Hayley Bennett | New Scientist | October 2025
“A whole library’s worth of papyri owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law were turned to charcoal by the eruption of Vesuvius. Nearly 2000 years later, we can at last read these lost treasures.”

5. Can We Bury Enough Wood to Slow Climate Change?
By Syris Valentine | Scientific American | October 2025
“Wood vaulting, a simple, low-tech approach to storing carbon, has the potential to remove 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year — and some companies are already trying it.”

6. Why So Many Gen Z-ers Are Drawn to Conservative Christianity
By Daniel K. Williams | The New York Times | October 2025
“In the aftermath of Covid — and amid the longing for purpose, community and transcendence that many Gen Z-ers feel — a sizable minority of them have found their answer in conservative Christianity, fueling both a religious and a political revival among these young Americans. They bring a new attitude to the combination of faith and politics, and many see politics as a matter of spiritual warfare.”

7. Plato and the Poets
By Elaine Scarry | The Boston Review | Summer 2025
“The centuries-old debate should be settled: an intellectual world bereft of poetry is a damaged one.”

8. ‘Broadcasting’ has its roots in agriculture. Here’s how it made its way into media
By Rachel Treisman | NPR | October 2025
“Various dictionaries have traced the verb’s first written use — to sow seed over a broad area — to 1733 and 1744.”

9. Leapin’ lizards! These guys are good for the garden
By Malachi Leo | Garden Style San Antonio | October 2025
“Tiny dinosaurs have set up shop in your yard. Don’t worry, they’re harmless — unless you’re an insect.”

10. Coffee naps might be the weirdest — and smartest — way to recharge
By Leah Worthington | National Geographic | September 2025
“It sounds backward, but research suggests a cup of coffee followed by a short nap could sharpen focus and fight fatigue.”

11. Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Reassessing the Haitian revolutionary leader’s legacy
By Julia Gaffield | The Conversation | October 2025
“One of the founding fathers in the struggle for Haitian independence, alongside Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines has a mixed legacy: celebrated at home for his role in ending slavery and overthrowing French colonial rule, but often condemned internationally for his violent tactics and the 1804 killing of white French people in independent Haiti.”

12. Deep-diving manta rays are retrieving directions from nature’s Google Maps
By Bronwyn Thompson | New Atlas | October 2025
“The researchers believe the mantas are using nature’s cues such as changes in magnetic field strength, oxygen concentration, temperature and light to navigate themselves onto the right path for the next days’ travel.”

13. The new Dr. Google is in. Here’s how to use it.
By Leana S. Wen | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Yes, artificial intelligence can help patients with their health, when used with caution.”

14. Victory in the Pacific
American Experience | May 2005
“The two-hour program examines the final year of World War II in the Pacific, including the rationale for using the atomic bomb, and features the first-hand recollections of both American and Japanese civilians and soldiers — even a kamikaze pilot who survived his failed mission.”

15. The Real Problem Is How Trump Can Legally Use the Military
By Jeannie Suk Gersen | The New Yorker | October 2025
“Congress wrote statutes with the apparent assumption that whoever held the office of the Presidency would use the powers they granted in good faith.”

16. Chile’s Route 7: A tough, lonely drive to the end of the world
By Egle Gerulaityte | BBC News | October 2025
“Chile’s Carretera Austral remains one of the world’s most remote and spectacular road trips, where every kilometre tests your resolve and rewards your persistence.”

17. How to use tech in the garden and still keep your serenity
By Jessica Diamond | Associated Press | September 2025
“Gardening tools are evolving to incorporate technology — including artificial intelligence — to help us keep plants healthier, avoid unpleasant tasks and even grow crops indoors over winter. And we can use them without losing the stress-relieving, analog benefits that nature provides.”

18. Being organised and active may be predictor of longer life, study finds
By Amelia Hill | The Guardian | September 2025
“Researchers find specific self-descriptions predict mortality risks better than broader categories such as extraversion”

19. The Big Chill: Surviving
By Harlan Jacobson | The Criterion Collection | August 2014
“Though it represents Kasdan s tackling larger, more personal themes, The Big Chill may be about nothing more or less than how to survive a weekend with friends who knew one another for a short period long ago on someone else s money and who have since abandoned one another s lives and younger values faster than the U.S. military evacuated Saigon.”
Also see: These Are Your Parents

20. Frederick Douglass
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2020
Also see: The Bronze Age Collapse | Sovereignty | 1816, the Year Without a Summer | The 12th Century Renaissance

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The resilience of U.S. democracy / Preparing for death out of a love for life / The magic of kokedama / Amanda Shires builds her post-divorce life / ‘Platoon’ was Charlie Sheen’s Vietnam

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Six Ways to Start Early and Lift Your Mood
By Arthur C. Brooks | The Atlantic | September 2025
“Try my protocol for a happy start to the day and see what works for your own well-being.”

2. Transform your houseplants into art with this Japanese gardening technique
By Jessica Damiano | Associated Press | September 2025
“The Japanese method of growing plants in a living planter made of a moss-covered ball of soil, is a simple, DIY project that elevates common houseplants into works of art. They make great gifts, too.”

3. Amanda Shires Tells Her Side of the Story After Divorce From Jason Isbell: ‘I’m Not Scared’
By Natalie Weiner | Texas Monthly | September 2025
“The Lubbock-raised singer-songwriter-fiddler’s new album, Nobody’s Girl, is a raw and revealing look at falling out of love and finding resilience.”

4. I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism
By Hilke Schellmann | Columbia Journalism Review | August 2025
“Some tools were sufficient for summarizing meetings. For research, the results were a disaster.”

5. American Democracy Might Be Stronger Than Donald Trump
By Jonathan Schlefer | Politico Magazine | September 2025
“Yes, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. But the country has a few attributes that make it more resilient than you might think.”

6. We Are Watching a Scientific Superpower Destroy Itself
By Stephen Greenblatt | The New York Times | September 2025
“We are currently governed by a leader indifferent to scientific consensus if it contradicts his political or economic interests, hostile to immigrants and intent on crippling the research universities that embody our collective hope for the future. The menace now is within. And with very few exceptions, the leaders of American universities have done little more than duck and cover.”

7. ‘I love life:’ The man who has scheduled his death so he can enjoy living
By Amandas Ong | Al Jazeera | September 2025
“Despite Alzheimer’s, Alex Pandolfo leads a full life. But when his health declines, he plans to have an assisted death.”

8. Historian Jill Lepore explores the Constitution and its interpretations in ‘We the People’
By Geoff Bennett | PBS News Hour | September 2025
“Originalism is often countered by the idea that the Constitution is a living, breathing document meant to be interpreted and changed along with the times.”

9. What If the Next Democratic President Governs Like Trump?
By Matt Ford | The New Republic | September 2025
“Between a permissive Supreme Court and his own governing innovations, the president has greatly expanded executive power. Liberals, take note.”

10. Cats and Dogs in History
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: Indian Ocean Trade and European Dominance | Indian Ocean Trade from its Origins to the Eve of Imperialism | Ukraine and Russia | Urban Slavery in the Antebellum United States

11. Charlie Sheen’s Lifestyle Couldn’t Kill Him. ‘Platoon’ Nearly Did.
By Charlie Sheen | The Hollywood Reporter | September 2025
“In 1986, well before the sex scandals, the crack and the tiger blood, the 20-year-old actor embarked on the most intense shoot of his career. In an excerpt from his explosive new memoir, Sheen reveals how Oliver Stone’s epic Vietnam War film changed him forever.”

12. Theaters bet big on massive screens, booming sound and recliners to lure movie fans
By Harshita Mary Varghese and Dawn Chmielewski | Reuters | September 2025
“Auditoriums with enhanced visual and video formats, such as IMAX, Dolby Cinema, and ScreenX, account for a record 14.9% of all tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada this year, up from 9.8% in 2019, according to data from research firm Comscore exclusively compiled for Reuters.”

13. Orchid Fever
By Susan Orlean | The New Yorker | January 1995
“How seductive are orchids? Connoisseurs spare nothing for a rare bloom — the issue in a battle between Florida, the Seminoles, and a man with a passion.”

14. The South’s Inner Civil War
By Eric Foner | American Heritage | Summer 2025
“The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became. To fully understand the vast changes which the war unleashed on the country, you must first understand the plight of the Southerners who didn’t want secession.”

15. 6 More Things E.R. Doctors Wish You’d Avoid
By Jancee Dunn | Well :: The New York Times | September 2025
“Stay out of the emergency room with these tips.”

16. Strawberries in Winter
By Adrienne LaFrance | The Atlantic | September 2025
“Most Americans do not want civil war. Anyone who is declaring it should stop.”

17. Why your nose could be the perfect window into your mental state
By Gillian Forrester | New Scientist | September 2025
“Diagnosing mental health conditions like anxiety and depression can be difficult, but it turns out that your nose could help doctors understand when you are feeling the strain.”

18. ‘We wanted to make it real:’ How ‘Goodfellas’ reinvented the gangster film
By Myles Burke | BBC Culture | September 2025
“Martin Scorsese’s crime epic was released 35 years ago. In 1990, the director and his stars, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta, revealed its secrets to the BBC.”

19. Laughing in Hell: How We Tell the Stories of Other Peoples’ Suicides
By Sarah Adler | LitHub | September 2025
“I was drawn to memoirs about suicide even before Rebecca’s death, probably because when someone you love travels often against the thin curtain between life and death, these stories can feel like windows.”

20. Echolocation
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Animal Farm | Agrippina the Younger | The Sikh Empire | The Gettysburg Address

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Dealing when a friend has a baby / America beyond Trump / Powerless Puerto Rico / Dancing with Madonna / Loving your library

This week: Dealing when a friend has a baby / America beyond Trump / Powerless Puerto Rico / Dancing with Madonna / Loving your library

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. A Friend’s Pregnancy
By Julia Wertz | The New Yorker | October 2016
“I was happy for her, but I was afraid it would have a negative impact on our relationship. It was certainly not what I wanted, but I knew such an epic life event would change our relationship irrevocably, and I was scared.”

2. War Without End
By C.J. Chivers | The New York Times Magazine | August 2018
“The Pentagon’s failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan left a generation of soldiers with little to fight for but one another.”

3. Planning for the Post-Trump Wreckage
By Stephen M. Walt | Foreign Policy | August 2018
“When the president eventually exits the White House, the rest of us will quickly have to make sense of the world he’s left behind.”

4. What Happened in the Dark: Puerto Rico’s Year of Fighting for Power
By Daniel Alarcon | Wired | August 2018
“More Americans rely on Puerto Rico’s grid than on any other public electric utility. How one renegade plant worker led them through the shadows.”

5. Nuance: A Love Story
By Meghan Daum | Medium | August 2018
“My affair with the intellectual dark web”

6. 2001 Is Still Teaching Us How to Pay Attention to Movies
By Colin Fleming | Slate | August 2018
“Your mind need not be going.”

7. Step one for befriending a goat: Smile
By Karin Brulliard | Animalia :: The Washington Post | August 2018
“Goat subjects … had already shown themselves to be adept at reading subtle human body language. Now, the researchers have found, goats are also able to distinguish happy people faces from sad ones — and they prefer happy.”

8. Dancing with Madonna Kept Me Alive
By Salim Gauwloos | Outlook :: BBC World Service | July 2018
“Salim Gauwloos became famous dancing with Madonna on her iconic Blond Ambition tour. Madonna used the tour to promote freedom of sexuality and sexual health. All of this made a young Salim feel extremely uncomfortable. The reason he was so anxious was that he was harbouring a secret.”

9. The Dos and Don’ts of Supporting Your Local Library
By Kristin Arnett | LitHub | August 2018
“For God’s sake, do not recatalog a book with Sharpie”

10. My son, Osama: the al-Qaida leader’s mother speaks for the first time
By Martin Chulov | The Guardian | August 2018
“Nearly 17 years since 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s family remains an influential part of Saudi society – as well as a reminder of the darkest moment in the kingdom’s history. Can they escape his legacy”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Genius procrastination / Democrats face themselves / Women explain their abortions / Bittersweet breastfeediing / Future of Democracy

This week: Genius procrastination / Democrats face themselves / Women explain their abortions / Bittersweet breastfeediing / Future of democracy

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Many Creative Geniuses May Have Procrastinated — but That Doesn’t Mean You Should
By Casey Lesser | Artsy.net | July 2018
“Some believe in a form of procrastination that fosters well-being and creativity, but others argue that certain types of behavior, in which someone intentionally delays their creative work, don’t actually constitute procrastination at all.”

2. A Watershed Moment in American History
By Matt Ford | The New Republic | July 2018
“Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh will deliver Republicans a majority on the Supreme Court. Will he also prompt a reckoning among Democrats”

3. ‘I Couldn’t Tell Anyone’: Women Around the World Reveal Intimate Stories of Abortion
By Josephine Sedgwick | The New York Times | July 2018
“When we invited readers to share their own stories, more than 1,300 responded from over 30 countries, showing the vast range of reasons, means and outcomes for abortion.”

4. Why breast-feeding is a mix of joy and suffering
By Maya Uppaluru | The Lily :: Washington Post | July 2018
“Is breast-feeding anti-feminist”

5. Reporting Is Ugly
By Barry Petchesky | The Concourse :: Deadspin | October 2015
“It is invaluable and messy and it not only doesn’t diverge from the most basic principles of journalism, it exemplifies them.”

6. The Democratic Coming Apart
By David Runciman and Joshua Cohen | Boston Review | July 2018
“Democracy … could either fail while remaining intact or evolve into something different — and possibly even better.”

7. And Now, Some Little-Known Facts About Texas
By David Courtney | Texas Monthly | July 2018
“In our new video series, David Courtney takes you into some of the weird, whimsical, and lesser-known aspects of our beloved state.”

8. Is Punching Nazis Impolite
By Barry Purcell | Arc Digital | July 2018
“Exploring the limits of civility”

9. The Americanization of Alfredo Corchado
By Sergio Troncoso | Texas Monthly | June 2018
“By telling his own story, the widely admired Dallas Morning News reporter reveals how Mexican Americans have changed the United States — and how the United States has changed Mexican Americans.”

10. What does ‘normal’ mean in abnormal times
By Steven Poole | The Guardian | April 2018
“From Donald Trump to Syrian bombs — in modern political times, ‘normal’ carries an extra moral nuance”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Al Pacino’s career / Denis Johnson / Remembering the Branch Davidians / W.E.B. Du Bois and America / Colin Powell on raising children

This week: Al Pacino’s career / Denis Johnson / Remembering the Branch Davidians / W.E.B. Du Bois and America / Colin Powell on raising children

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Al Pacino on His Legendary Roles
By David Edelstein | Vulture | March 2018
“The actor discusses his first major New York retrospective.”

2. Astronomers get glimpse of dawn of universe 13.6 billion years ago
Associated Press | February 2018
“After the Big Bang, it was cold and black. And then there was light. Now, for the first time, astronomers have glimpsed that dawn of the universe 13.6 billion years ago when the earliest stars were turning on the light in the cosmic darkness.”

3. Lying Down in the Dirt
By Janet Steen | Longreads | February 2018
“An Interview with Denis Johnson”

4. The Ghosts of Mount Carmel
By Michael Hall | Texas Monthly | April 2003
“In the ten years since a devastating fire took the lives of 74 Davidians, a group of survivors has returned to the windswept plains east of Waco, like ghosts haunting the site of their former compound. A new church has been built at Mount Carmel, and inside, they listen to their leader preach the same apocalyptic doctrine, and they wait for David Koresh to return.”

5. 33 of the Weirdest Philip K. Dick Covers We Could Find
By Alicia Kroell | LitHub | March 2018
“Eyes, Brains, Babies, and Marilyn Monroe”

6. When W. E. B. Du Bois Was Un-American
By Andrew Lanham | Boston Review | January 2017
“Du Bois … fought furiously against persecution. He crisscrossed the country giving speeches, wrote passionately about his trial, and built a small but vigorous coalition that helped preserve social justice causes during a decade that tried desperately to strangle them.”

7. Trump’s Fantasies Meet the Harsh Reality of His Presidency
By Jeet Heer | The New Republic | February 2018
“He got rich by spinning a false narrative about himself. That strategy isn’t working in the White House.”

8. Kids need structure
By Colin Powell | TEDxMidAtlantic | October 2012
“How can you help kids get a good start? In this heartfelt and personal talk, Colin Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State, asks parents, friends and relatives to support children, starting before they even get to primary school, through community and a strong sense of responsibility.”

9. The Afterlife of Pablo Escobar
By Jon Anderson | The New Yorker | March 2018
“In Colombia, a drug lord’s posthumous celebrity brings profits and controversy.”

10. Slavery and the American University
By Alex Carp | The New York Review of Books | February 2018
“From their very beginnings, the American university and American slavery have been intertwined, but only recently are we beginning to understand how deeply.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Iran’s conquest of Iraq / Great Texas beach reads / Watermelon feta mint salad / What China truly fears / Corey Flintoff on Russia

This week: Iran’s conquest of Iraq / Great Texas beach reads / Watermelon feta mint salad / What China truly fears / Corey Flintoff on Russia

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Iran Dominates in Iraq After U.S. ‘Handed the Country Over’
By Tim Arango | The New York Times | July 15
“From Day 1, Iran saw … a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region. In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.”

2. Brexit followed by Corbyn in No 10 would put UK flat on its back — Blair
By Peter Walker | The Guardian | July 15
“[Former Labor prime minister] Tony Blair has warned that the combination of Brexit followed by a Jeremy Corbyn government would soon leave Britain ‘flat on our back,’ arguing that a deeply divided country needs a fundamental rethink of its political ideas.”
Also: Read Blair’s article here.

3. Why China’s leaders are so terrified of dissent
By Fred Hiatt | The Washington Post | July 13
“The answer, I believe, has something to do with the story China’s rulers tell their people, and maybe themselves, to cling to power.”

4. Wonderful Political Tales for Beach Reading
By R.G. Ratcliffe | BurkaBlog :: Texas Monthly | July 10
“Books that will take your mind off of Russians and Special Sessions”

5. A Conversation with Corey Flintoff: The Resurgence of Russia
Texas Public Radio :: YouTube | July 12, 2017
“TPR, in partnership with the World Affairs Council of San Antonio, hosted [the discussion on] June 23, 2017, at the McNay Art Museum.”

6. Maryam Mirzakhani, groundbreaking mathematician and Fields Medal winner, dies at 40
By Omar Etman | The Rundown :: PBS NewsHour | July 15
“She won the prize for a 172-page paper on the trajectory of a billiards ball around a polygonal table that has been hailed as a “titanic work” and the “beginning of a new era” in mathematics. Mirzakhani studied the complexities of curved surfaces such as spheres, doughnut shapes and hyperbolas.”
Also: Read her award-winning paper here.

7. Spain’s King Felipe VI addresses the British Parliament
SkyNews :: YouTube | July 12
The Spanish monarch’s speech followed a visit with Queen Elizabeth II.

8. Watermelon Feta Salad with Mint
ToriAvey.com | June 2011
“Even those of you who don’t like sweet, fruity salads may appreciate this one — the flavor is truly unique.”

9. How to Write an Internet Essay to Support Your Novel
By Gabe Habash | Coffee House Press :: LitHub | June 5
“You should probably write something about your book, now that it’s being published. But you are worried because you don’t have anything left to say about your book.”

10. Uncovering the brutal truth about the British empire
By Marc Perry | The Guardian | August 2016
“The Harvard historian Caroline Elkins stirred controversy with her work on the crushing of the Mau Mau uprising. But it laid the ground for a legal case that has transformed our view of Britain’s past”

Amerikan Rambler: Howard Zinn and America as Empire

From Nov. 2011: “Zinn’s agenda is just as obvious and as biased as the worst right-wing, jingoistic textbooks or monographs about American history. Subtlety is not Zinn’s strong suit. “

I started reading Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States while I was on my honeymoon. Because, you know, Matt Damon recommended it! If you’ve watched Good Will Hunting, you’ll probably remember the scene when Damon’s character says Zinn’s book — a leftist classic — is one of the “right f—ing books.”

via Howard Zinn and America as Empire — Amerikan Rambler: Everybody Has a Story

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: The truth of ‘Westworld’ / U.S. interference with other democracies / Einstein’s first wife / A new era of Reconstruction / James Buchanan’s presidential transition

This week: The truth of ‘Westworld’ / U.S. interference with other democracies / Einstein’s first wife / A new era of Reconstruction / James Buchanan’s presidential transition

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1. Trump names Conway counselor to president
By Brooke Seipel | The Hill | Dec. 22
“Conway will continue her role as a close adviser to Trump, working with senior leadership to further the his administration’s goals.”

2. Does ‘Westworld’ tell a truer story than a novel can?
By Stuart Kelly | The Guardian | Dec. 20
“The conventions of prose fiction are bound up with an understanding of life that feels more and more outdated — not so with this box-set drama”

3. The U.S. has a long history of hacking other democracies
By Mariya Y. Omelicheva, Ryan Beasley and Christian Crandall | Monkey Cage :: The Washington Post | Dec. 20
“We examined unclassified Central Intelligence Agency documents and historical academic research on U.S. interventions to identify 27 U.S. clandestine operations carried out between 1949 and 2000. Most U.S. ‘secret wars’ were against other democratic states.”

4. Russia Missing from Trump’s Top Defense Priorities, According to DoD Memo
By John Hudson, Paul McLeary, and Dan De Luce | Foreign Policy | Dec. 20
“Besides placing an emphasis on budgetary issues, ‘force strength,’ and counterterrorism in Iraq and Syria, the memo noted other briefings between the Defense Department and the Trump transition team on China and North Korea. But Russia was not mentioned.”

5. We are witnessing the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction
By the Rev. William J. Barber II | ThinkProgress | Dec. 15
“We need a moral movement to revive the heart of American democracy and build a Third Reconstruction for our time. This work is not easy, and it will not be completed quickly. But we know what is required to move forward together.”

6. Harmony Amidst Division: The Cabinet of James Buchanan
By Rick Allen | Muster :: Journal of the Civil War Era | Dec. 17
“History never specifically repeats itself, but there are parallels between 1856, 1860, and 2016. As we, like Buchanan and Lincoln, transition from one era in our national history to another, let us remember the only way to achieve true success requires the inclusiveness of both people and ideas.”

7. Analysis: On transgender Texans and bathrooms, a call to stay calm
By Ross Ramsey | The Texas Tribune | Dec. 19
“Some Texas lawmakers were in a hurry to require transgender Texans to use the restrooms that match the genders listed on their birth certificates. But the policy and politics are complicated enough to prompt the governor to tap the brakes.”

8. The Making of an American Terrorist
By Amanda Robb | New Republic | Dec. 15
“Robert Dear shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic and killed three people. Did the right-wing media help turn a disturbed loner into a mass murderer?”

9. The Forgotten Life of Einstein’s First Wife
By Pauline Gagnon | Scientific American | Dec. 19
“She was a physicist, too — and there is evidence that she contributed significantly to his groundbreaking science”

10. The President Attends the World Series
By Michael Beschloss | HistorySource :: The New York Times | October 2014
“Herbert Hoover’s surprise appearance at Game 5 of the Philadelphia Athletics vs. the Cubs in Philadelphia, in October 1929, was one of the last happy moments of his presidency, occurring two weeks before the stock market collapse that ushered in the Great Depression.”

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