Tag: American History

Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 by Andy Horowitz

Katrina: A History 1915–2015 by Andy Horowitz

If you worked for a while in an oil refinery in Louisiana in, say, the mid-1980s (as I did), part of your orientation was hurricane training. The briefing I attended noted that there are two places on earth where the combination of low elevation, coastline shape, concentrated population, limited escape routes, location relative to wind …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/08/27/katrina-a-history-1915-2015-by-andy-horowitz/

What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer

What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer

I first read What It Takes in the early 1990s when its subject — the 1988 US presidential election — was, if not exactly fresh in mind, then at least not consigned to the oblivion of an election held decades ago and deemed mostly inconsequential. Cramer’s book made the election not just interesting, but riveting. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/03/18/what-it-takes-by-richard-ben-cramer/

Lessons from the Edge by Marie Yovanovitch

Lessons from the Edge by Marie Yovanovitch

If not for Donald Fucking Trump, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch would have had a long, distinguished and inspiring career serving the United States of America that nevertheless remained practically unknown outside the circles of her work. Perhaps she would have been best known for providing a crucial piece of local knowledge when the embassy in Mogadishu …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/10/15/lessons-from-the-edge-by-marie-yovanovitch/

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

In How the Word is Passed, Clint Smith recounts his visits to seven locations as part of what he calls in the book’s subtitle “A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” Monticello Plantation. The Whitney Plantation. Angola Prison. Blandford Cemetery. Galveston Island. New York City. Goréee Island (Ghana). Along with a prologue in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/19/how-the-word-is-passed-by-clint-smith/

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Let me stipulate from the beginning that A Promised Land is not a revelatory book like Dreams from my Father, a book Barack Obama wrote when he had no idea he would be President of the United States one day, when he was finishing figuring out who he was and why anyone who didn’t know …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/08/30/a-promised-land-by-barack-obama/

The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hämäläinen

The Comanche Empire

Pekka Hämäläinen gets right to the point: “This book is about an American empire that, according to conventional histories, did not exist. It tells the familiar tale of expansion, resistance, conquest, and loss, but with a reversal of the usual historical roles: it is a story in which Indians expand, dictate, and prosper, and European …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/15/the-comanche-empire-by-pekka-hamalainen/

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson has all of the receipts. Setting out to understand the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the South and into other regions of the country, she drew on scholarship, she drew on hundreds of interview, she drew on the archives of dozens of organizations, and she arrived with a great work of synthesis, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/01/26/the-warmth-of-other-suns-by-isabel-wilkerson/

More Becoming by Michelle Obama

“Becoming Us,” the second part of Michelle Obama’s memoir tells how two very different people, two nearly polar opposite people in fact, came not only to love and cherish one another but to build a life and a partnership that would work from Chicago to the whole world. One of their first social functions together, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/26/more-becoming-by-michelle-obama/

Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner

Legacy of Ashes

If Legacy of Ashes were a record album, Tim Weiner would surely have titled it The CIA’s Greatest Shits. As it is, the subtitle is The History of the CIA, which is a misnomer right off the bat because it’s a history and not the history, and as a history it’s mostly a litany of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/11/17/legacy-of-ashes-by-tim-weiner/

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Becoming really is that good. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from the beginning. There’s a lot I still don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother, Marian, showed me how to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2019/06/19/becoming-by-michelle-obama/