Seems that, without hoping to, I’ve read now read 52 books this year with almost a full month to go. And the 52nd book? Richard Brookhiser’s America’s First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 about the impact of John Adams’ family for four generations from the Revolution to World War I. John Adams was never in the running for my favorite Founder, especially given his extreme elitism and inflated sense of self-importance. Nevertheless, he was important in the cause and pushed John Quincy into politics and another poor turn as President. John Quincy’s son Charles Francis similarly went into politics and dabbled with presidential runs as a Free Soil candidate. The last of the line, Henry Adams spurned the idea of being a politician, but he covered it as a journalist in D.C. The Adams weren’t a particularly effective dynasty, but they were the closest thing America had coming out of the Revolution.
I have read all of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s novels, especially enjoying the Blackford Oakes spy novels, but I not as well read on his nonfiction works of which there are many. My latest attempt to close that gap is On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures, which excerpts a number of very interesting debates and exchanges from the first 22 years of the long-running (33 years) Firing Line TV program. Topics include 60s culture, democracy at home and abroad, the Panama Canal, civil liberties, and crime and punishment among others. And with guests like Timothy Leary, Ronald Reagan, Claire Luce Booth, Norman Mailer, John Kenneth Gailbraith, etc., etc., etc. A real pleasure to read, I think, regardless of political leanings. Sadly, not included are any gems from this wonderful debate with Noam Chomsky in 1969:
I received a free ebook copy of Chris Tusa’s new novel, Dirty Little Angels, through LibraryThing. A very short work, packed full of drama and emotions, Hailey is a teenager encased in turmoil in New Orleans. Her mother is depressed having recently lost a pregnancy, her father laid off and tomcatting around, putting his marriage into jeopardy, her older brother making poor decisions on a daily basis, and herself not exactly the picture of reasoned judgment. Yet she’s trying to keep it together without any inclination of how to do so. Meh.
