Book review: American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, by Colin Woodard This is required reading for anyone who wants to understand US history, as well as current day cultural and political conflicts. In this book, Colin Woodard provides anthropological ground truth recognizable by most anyone who’s …
Author Archives: marwalk
How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman
Book review: Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman, by Charles Dunst In this book, Charles Dunst demonstrates why democracy is essential to all people’s well being and fulfillment. The author also points to how restoring democracy can be accomplished—in a world where authoritarianism is advancing in both world …
Continue reading “How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman”
We Need To Build
Book Review: We Need To Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy, by Eboo Patel This book may cause some people to rethink their basic assumptions about how to achieve the just society they properly desire. Eboo Patel offers essential perspectives that some white progressives (and those they’ve influenced) may have overlooked—or forgotten. When the dust …
Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America
Book Review: Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou Be prepared to be angry when you read this book. Many people are already aware that private equity companies are financial vultures and corporate cannibals. In this book Brendan Ballou draws the curtain back from the insatiable lust for financial gain of private …
Continue reading “Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America”
Moral Operating Systems: How Swing Voter’s Brains Work
Moral Operating Systems: How Swing Voter’s Brains Work by Antonia Scatton An article on SubStack from Reframing America This article takes George Lakoff’s book Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your values and frame the debate and others, and puts it to practical use. Antonia Scatton employs the analogy of different phone operating systems: Democrats …
Continue reading “Moral Operating Systems: How Swing Voter’s Brains Work”
Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us
Book Review: Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us by Ro Khanna In this book, Ro Khanna articulates what true progressivism should look like. While promoting dignity and equitable opportunity for persons from all walks of life the default posture is communication and problem solving, without paternalism—from any quarter. Khanna …
Continue reading “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us”
Mark’s Mastodon Profile
If you’re on Mastodon, you can follow me here.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Book Review: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder [Expanded audiobook edition, which is updated in 2022 with 20 new lessons from Russia’s war on Ukraine] This audiobook starts with Timothy Snyder narrating his own short book from 2017, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. That previous work served …
Continue reading “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”
Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever
Book Review: Permanent Distortion: How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever, by Nomi Prins From the documented accounts in this book, Nomi Prins demonstrates that the stock market has little relation to, and even less impact on, the real economy where most people live. Although left brain bean counters will be right at …
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson This is the clearest explanation I have seen anywhere of why racial animosity persists in the US and elsewhere. Through objective scholarship and observations, Isabel Wilkerson decodes (what should be) the obvious: Race is only a pointer to caste—the irrational visceral need to assert …