More recommended, "good reads"
We are traveling. Meaning posts here will be fewer and farther between for a few weeks. Please try to control your anguish.
But while Tracy is off on hiking trek which my rebuilt ankle does not allow, I’ve used two days of solo-retreat time to catch-up on some reading. As a result, and following upon a post a couple of weeks back that received a good response, here are five compelling pieces for your reading enjoyment.
Or if not enjoyment, then at least cogitation and consideration.
I return to David Brooks quite often. He is invariably insightful, provocative and his views don’t find easily into a left-right paradigm.
For the latest issue of The Atlantic, he warned of the dangers of Trumpist autocracy not just for the remainder of Trump’s presidency but as something that could define and bedevil America for a generation or more.
His turn of phrase, “a miasma of passivity,” is classic and so apt. Even as I compile this from afar on “No Kings” protest day.
I urge you to read this…take note…and take action.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/11/autocracy-resistance-social-movement/684336/
In a similar vein and from the same issue of The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum penned this essay, “The Beacon of Democracy Goes Dark.”
Applebaum is a formidable thinker with a focus on eastern European history and politics. She knows something of what she writes here.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/11/america-democracy-autocracy/684335/
This news story from the Washington Post tells of an Afghan refugee who aligned with and aided the U.S. during that miserable war and who now faces deportation back to his home country where no good outcome awaits.
As the article notes, so much for the President’s claim to only be getting rid of “the worst of the worst,” blah, blah.This is simply unconscionable and cannot represent this “nation of immigrants” in which I grew up and which I still love.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/10/14/trump-immigratio-afghanistan-asylum-deportation/
Back to David Brooks, and changing the subject a bit, his latest column for the New York Times offers a searing critique of Democratic attitudes and policy with respect to K-12 education and the marked underperformance which has resulted in blue states.
In their hoary acquiescence to union demands and other assorted adult agendas, Democrats have thoroughly lost the plot line when it comes to public education.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/opinion/democrats-education-failure.html
For The Free Press (itself in the news lately), the British scholar, Niall Ferguson, wrote this important piece on the decline in reading and, thus, in literacy.
We see it all around us. We have become a society of watchers, not readers. Smartphones with their non-stop access to videos are ubiquitous and consuming. Reading as a habit has declined across all age cohorts, but most dramatically among younger generations. Colleges and universities have adjusted by lowering expectations.
To read is to think and to broaden one’s experience. Ferguson writes of “the intimate connection between the written word and civilization itself.” If you wish to consider what has contributed to the downslide addressed in some of the pieces referenced above, the falloff in reading (and thinking) has to be a factor.
By your very choice to be here, you are part of a diminishing breed of readers. Cheers to that. And thank you.
If you value this content, I’d like to build a larger base on Substack and would be grateful if you would spread the word and urge those in your circle to subscribe. As you know, there is no cost; only benefit.
