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Thursday, December 20, 2018

Friday, December 14, 2018

History readings

I write about reading and studying history, Richard Brookhiser's latest book, and more.




Monday, November 19, 2018

Otherworldly evening

At Splice Today, I report on my recent evening with the SETI Institute, and a memory of Lou Dobbs: "Encountering the Extraterrestrial."




Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Poached review

I review Rachel Nuwer's Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife Tracking at Splice Today.

Friday, November 2, 2018

Family history

Alexei Bayer has written about my family's (father side) history for a Russian Jewish publication. It's in Russian but can be read with Google Translate; but note that the machine translation is not always on target.


Monday, October 22, 2018

An afternoon on the water

At Splice Today, I offer "A View from New York Harbor."


Some other pics from that day:







Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Fake news delivery

My review of LikeWar is here, complete with an Election 2016 anecdote from my own driveway.




Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

In Splice Today today

Science “knows not party politics,” wrote physician and botanist David Hosack in 1811. Hosack took his neutrality seriously. He avoided not only aligning with a political party but also taking sides in the political rivalry between his friends Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He was the doctor who attended to Hamilton at the site of the 1804 duel and at Hamilton’s deathbed a day later. Though stricken by Hamilton’s loss, Hosack maintained his friendship with Burr.

The rest is here, including about Hosack's friendship with DeWitt Clinton.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Spartan story

Reflections on ancient Greece and Rick Wilson's new book here.

Monday, July 9, 2018

Venezuela memories

At Splice Today, a bit of memoir: "The Venezuela I Once Knew." Excerpt:
Venezuela in the 1980s was not much of a tourist destination, though its troubles would get far worse. I was there three times, accompanying my father on business trips for the New York-based import-export firm where he traded what in Venezuela were frijoles; in Puerto Rico, habichuelas; back home, beans. 
Recent news that “Trump pressed aides about invading Venezuela” suggests a serious deficiency in the president’s judgment. For me, it also stirs memories.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

The roots of mendacity

Over at Splice Today, I review Michiko Kakutani's new book The Death of Truth.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

In DeWitt's Footsteps

For info on my book, In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal, see eriecanalbook.com. Or buy it on Amazon. Also, see its Twitter and FB pages.


Thursday, January 18, 2018

Review: David Frum's Trumpocracy

I read David Frum's new book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic in just a couple of sittings, and highly recommend it to people across the political spectrum, including current Trump supporters, as it is a valuable, cogent analysis that will provoke thinking and rethinking.

First, some context and disclosure: David is a friend of mine. I was a regular contributor to his onetime website FrumForum; among the articles I wrote there were ones on early American history that turned out to be early stages of research for my book about DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal. I broadly share Frum's desire for, to quote a passage in Trumpocracy, "a conservatism that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible, that upholds markets at home and US leadership internationally." We have some differences, of course, one being my more favorable view of immigration (watching the Trump administration's actions in this area has firmed up this opinion). David remains a member of the Republican Party, whereas I switched to independent the day after Trump clinched the nomination.

A formidable strength of David's, manifest throughout Trumpocracy, is his capacity to follow arguments where they lead, regardless of whether the results are pleasing to any particular political faction. He is known as a "Never Trump" Republican, but unlike some such he has no illusion that all was well with the GOP before Trump came along. (By contrast, see this Jay Nordlinger piece about leaving a party that had been suddenly--inexplicably--disfigured by Trump.) Democrats eager to plunge into a book about Trump's authoritarianism may be discombobulated, early on, to read about how President Barack Obama stated that circumventing Congress on immigration was beyond the rightful powers of his office--and then did so anyway when that became politically expedient.

My statement above that I hope Trump supporters will read Trumpocracy is in earnest. In this era, we have become cynical about the ability of facts and logic to change minds, and I suspect we have gone too far in discounting such possibilities. There are, I imagine, some Trump-supporting Americans who will be alarmed at seeing evidence of the widening chasms between Trumpism's sales pitch and its reality: a nationalism determinedly oblivious to the machinations of hostile foreign governments; a populism intensely focused on benefitting wealthy donors and enriching those in power; a proclamation of American strength while weakening alliances and values that have been crucial to America's position in the world; a religiosity in defense of a man who pays blackmail to porn stars.

Readers of various political stripes may be surprised by the optimism of the book's final chapter. Frum notes some quite unintended benefits that Trump has brought to the American political scene, such as: a greater awareness of the importance of truth, precisely because the president is so grossly untruthful; on the left, a growing concern about national security, in contrast to a onetime dismissal of the idea that Russia is any kind of a threat; and for the right, an opportunity to look beyond stale ideological orthodoxy--albeit perhaps at the price of an impending political catastrophe.

In a telling anecdote, Frum recounts how an attendee viewing a panel discussion complained along these lines: "We can't stop Donald Trump by going soft. If we want to stop him, we have to imitate him." To which David answered: "But if you imitate him, you won't stop him. You'll only replace him." Trumpocracy is a powerful argument for a post-Trump era that truly leaves the man's legacy behind.


Tuesday, January 2, 2018

2018

Greetings. Blogging is only occasional at this site currently. Please see my Twitter feed, my book website and related Twitter feed, and the Amazon page for my book In DeWitt's Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canal.