SEPARATION of CHURCH and HATE: A SANE PERSON'S GUIDE to TAKING BACK the BIBLE from FUNDAMENTALISTS, FASCISTS, and FLOCK-FLEECING FRAUDS (audiobook) by John Fugelsang

Published in August of 2025 by Simon and Schuster Audio.

Read by the author, John Fugelsang.

Duration: 9 hours, 24 minutes.

Unabridged.

John Fugelsang is seemingly omnipresent on the cable TV news/political talk show circuit. He is a talented debater because he knows how to bring the goods to an argument, especially when Christian Nationalism is involved.

Fugelsang had a unique upbringing in a super-Catholic household. Why was it unusual? His mother was a former nun and his father was a former Franciscan friar. They fell in love, had a bunch of kids, and made sure that they all went to church whenever it was having a service. 

In a a lot of ways, this felt a lot like my childhood. No - my parents weren't nuns or priests. But, I grew up in rural setting where my Lutheran church was one of the centers of my life. Church every weekend, most of the holiday services, Sunday school, Christmas programs, church youth group, vacation bible school, and I worked at a church summer camp for five years. 

The author, John Fugelsang

I had a "lite" version of what he experienced, but a heavy dose of Christian teaching compared to most people. The result is the same - we grew up steeped in church teachings and we know that the stuff we see on TV and from Christian Nationalists does not match what we were taught.

The first and last chapters are a general summary of the problem of Christian Nationalism and his reactions to it. I found these to be very powerful chapters. The story of his grandfather at the end was very touching.

The heart of the book is Fugelsang picking a hot culture war topic (immigration, trans people, abortion, etc.), presenting the Christian Nationalist perspective, and then demonstrating why it is not really a Christian perspective at all.

Fugelsang's choice to read the book himself was perfect.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: SEPARATION of CHURCH and HATE: A SANE PERSON'S GUIDE to TAKING BACK the BIBLE from FUNDAMENTALISTS, FASCISTS, and FLOCK-FLEECING FRAUDS by John Fugelsang.

THIS BOOK WON'T BURN (audiobook) by Samira Ahmed

Published by Little, Brown Young Readers in 2024.
Read by Kauser Mohammed.
Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes.
Unabridged.

Book summary

Noor Khan is a senior in high school and she is devastated. Her father walked out on her family and moved back to his native England. He gave no warning and the family is reeling.

Noor's mother decides that a change of location would be best. Noor, her little sister (a freshman), and her mom move from their diverse upper middle class Chicago neighborhood to a downstate Illinois small town so that her mom can work at a small college. 

Noor hates it. She misses her friends and the vibrancy of Chicago. She also feels like an oddity because she is Indian and Muslim in a school that is very white and very Christian. 

She determines to gut out this one last semester of high school and then head back to Chicago to go to college. She decides she doesn't need friends or even to enjoy this small town - she just needs to get in, get the diploma and then get out.

But, she finds friends - the only Muslim/Indian boy in the area and his best friend - an proudly out-of-the-closet feisty lesbian. Together, these three comprise the diversity of their high school. They hang out in the school library whenever possible.

The library seems like a refuge until Noor notices that the stacks are missing lots and lots of books. The local chapter of a Moms for Liberty-type group has demanded that dozens and dozens of books be removed due to content. Like most of the large scale book bans across the country, this book ban has focused on books with LGBTQ+ characters, books with black and brown authors, and books that focus on America's troubled racial history. The local school board President is using his support of the high school library's book ban as the springboard to a run for the state legislature.

Can Noor stick to her original plan and just be quiet and graduate? Or, does she speak up in defense of her ideals of free speech and the freedom to read? 

Also, she is very much intrigued by the Indian/Muslim boy. But, she is also strangely attracted to a very nice white boy - he's an athlete, he's polite, and he thinks Noor is great - and his stepdad is the school board member that initiated the book ban...

My Review

The author, Samira Ahmed

The author, Samira Ahmed, has written several books that have been added to the seemingly never-ending book ban lists. She was inspired to write this book when a small town teacher spoke with her about her experience. The teacher was using one of Ahmed's books in her class when the book was banned. The teacher was caught in a bind - small town politics meant that her school administration would not support her and she feared for her job if she pushed to her hard. Her colleagues didn't fight for the books because they were about people who were different than those who lived in their town. They refused to fight for books written by and about people who were unlike themselves (NOTE: I am a public school teacher and I am so unbelievably disappointed that literature teachers would respond to a book challenge like that.)

The author changed that story a bit - instead of a teacher, she created a fiercely independent high school student with a strong sense of right and wrong when it comes to the First Amendment. 

I liked this story a lot. It drew me in - Noor and her friends are great characters. The love triangle aspect of the story works to make the consequences of Noor's actions even more powerful.

The reader was Kausar Mohammed and she did a fantastic job with a wide variety of voices and accents. Excellent work.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: This Book Won't Burn by Samira Ahmed.

LULA DEAN'S LITTLE LIBRARY of BANNED BOOKS: A NOVEL (audiobook) by Kirsten Miller

Published in 2024 by HarperAudio.

Performed by January LaVoy.

Duration: 10 hours, 13 minutes.

Unabridged.

Synopsis

Troy, Georgia is, on the surface, an idyllic small town. But, the book banners have gotten active and removed a whole list of books from the school libraries and the public library. 

The school board president, Beverly Underwood, was surprised at the arrival of this committee of book banners and how they manipulated social media to scare the town led by the local lady curmudgeon, Lula Dean. As a compromise, the school board president agrees to store all of the disputed books in her basement until things can get sorted out.

Meanwhile, Lula Dean has set up one of those "little free library" boxes in her front yard with alternative books that she considers wholesome. It features titles like The Art of the Deal, Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and "Lost Cause" histories of the Civil War that she purchased at a Goodwill store in a nearby store in the bargain section. 

The trouble begins when Underwood's daughter steals the banned books from the basement and switches the dust jackets on the banned books with the dust jackets on the books from Lula Dean's little free library. She puts the banned books back in the little free library but Lula Dean is none the wiser because she has never read any of the banned books nor has she read any of the books she is offering the town. 

When the town starts taking books from the little free library they are surprised and delighted at the books they really get to read. They are also surprised at the changes these books bring to the town.

My Review

This is a fun book to read. It has its serious moments and sometimes profound moments, but it mostly reads like a fun novel. I was reminded of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. 

The reader, January LaVoy, was excellent. She created many, many unique voices and they sounded authentic. She is very talented.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.  It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lula Deans Little Library of Banned Books.

THE INSTINCT for COOPERATION: A GRAPHIC NOVEL CONVERSATION with NOAM CHOMSKY (graphic novel) by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson

Published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press.
Written by Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Wilson.
Art by Eliseu Gouveia.

Jeffrey Wilson interviewed Noam Chomsky for The Instinct for Cooperation and the results probably would have been a typical interview with Chomsky. The interview was about the Occupy Wall Street Movement and the little groups that organically formed within the protests, such as the food tent, the medical tent, and the library. 

Wilson wove in interviews that he had done with people who participated in the Occupy Movement, students and teachers who had bad interactions with education "reform" movements, and other topics like student loan debt. 

This could have easily been a mess, but Wilson does a very good job of weaving together all of the interviews so that it felt more like a natural free-flowing conversation. The illustrations helped move everything along to make this very digestible. There is a lot of food for thought.

Well done.

5 out of 5 stars.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: The Instinct for Cooperation: A Graphic Novel Conversation with Noam Chomsky.

MONEY, LIES, and GOD: INSIDE the MOVEMENT to DESTROY AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (audiobook) by Katherine Stewart

Published in 2025 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Read by Patricia Rodriguez.
Duration: 11 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

In Money, Lies, and God, Katherine Stewart takes a hard look at the intertwined worlds of MAGA, Christian Nationalists, big money backers (old money and new tech money), the Claremont Institute, White Replacement Theory folks, militias, and groups like Moms for Liberty. 

It looks like a lot to connect but, in reality, it's not too hard. Think of your stereotypical Christian Nationalist mega-church. They're going to be MAGA voters. They are exposed to materials produced by think tanks like the Claremont Institute or Focus on the Family that are financially supported by big money backers. Moms for Liberty will already be there, hyping up the dangers of public schools and certain reading materials. Some megachurches host faith and freedom conferences that are strong on the politics and feature a bit of Christianity.

The author, Katherine Stewart

I was distressed by the sheer quantity of Christian Nationalists out there. I am a lifelong Christian and this movement scares me. It is pseudo-Christian at best and it tarnishes the Christian faith.

What is a Christian Nationalist? It's not simply a patriotic Christian. It's a belief that it is not possible to be a good American unless you are a Christian. The federal government should declare the United States a Christian Nation and the federal government should actively advocate explicitly Christian values. Under all of this is the belief that the success of the United States is part of God’s plan (as though the USA is literally mentioned in the Bible).

Throw in a media and social media environment that reinforce the whole thing and you've got the recipe that makes your uncle sound like a crazy person at the Thanksgiving table. The key is, in his world he doesn't sound crazy - you do.

This is a powerful book. She weaves it all together wonderfully.

This was also a depressing book for me. My faith is being subverted by Christian Nationalism. My fellow Americans believe nonsense like children are relieving themselves in giant kitty litter boxes and they vote for people that agree with them.

Sigh.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MONEY, LIES, and GOD: INSIDE the MOVEMENT to DESTROY AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Katherine Stewart.

WELCOMING the STRANGER: JUSTICE, COMPASSION, and TRUTH in the IMMIGRATION DEBATE by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang

Published in 2018 by IVP.

A few years ago I was determined to learn a lot about immigration in the United States. I bought Welcoming the Stranger during that time, but I put it aside because the other books I had read were, to put it simply, not good. 

So, this book went into the dreaded to-be-read pile, and it might have stayed there forever except for the reelection of President Trump. His actions to fight immigration of just about any sort prompted me to pick up this book and learn a little more about the immigration system.

Even though this book was written in 2018, just 7 years ago, some parts of it felt hopelessly out of date thanks to Trump's relentless push against so many norms, rules, and laws in 2025 when it comes to immigration. 

The basics are there, however, so the book does have value as a primer on immigration. But, the book is more than that - it is a Christian look at this issue because the authors work for World Relief, a Christian organization that works with refugees around the world and helps immigrants seeking asylum in the United States. Their budget was decimated when the DOGE cuts came after USAID funding in January of 2025.

Even though this book was written long before that, its look at what the Bible teaches about how to deal with foreign people living among God's people. The book is actually designed to be used as a small group Bible study - there are discussion questions included in the back.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion, and Truth in the Immigration Debate.

TYRANNY, INC.: HOW PRIVATE POWER CRUSHED AMERICAN LIBERTY - AND WHAT to DO ABOUT IT (audiobook) by Sohrab Ahmari

Published in 2023 by Random House Audio.
Read by the author, Sohrab Ahmari.
Duration: 7 hours, 30 minutes.
Unabridged.

Writing about government overreach is a common theme among conservatives like Sohrab Ahmari. In Tyranny, Inc. he switches gears and writes about overreach from the private sector instead. 

He talks about predatory hedge funds that purchase reasonably healthy companies, load them with debt, and then let them die. He tells the pathetic story of the decline and fall of both Sears and K-Mart, but it's happened over and over again with multiple companies.

He also talks about a number of court cases, legal rulings, new laws, and relatively new interpretations of laws that have slid the balance of societal power to private corporations. He gives tons of examples like expansive Non-Disclosure Agreements, tracking software on employee's private phones because they are forced to use them for work, and hidden clauses in multi-page employment agreements that give employers perpetual rights to use their employees' physical likeness, speaking voices, and singing voices.

He's not so keen on privatization of public services, like fire and ambulance services and tells some horror stories about those as well.

His answer is to empower the employee and the consumer through things like breaking the stranglehold of the NDA system, breaking up monopolies, and bringing back unions as a counterweight to corporate power.

This book is guaranteed to generate thought, even if you disagree with its conclusions. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: TYRANNY, INC.: HOW PRIVATE POWER CRUSHED AMERICAN LIBERTY - AND WHAT to DO ABOUT IT by Sohrab Ahmari.

YOUR JESUS IS TOO AMERICAN: CALLING the CHURCH to RECLAIM KINGDOM VALUES over the AMERICAN DREAM (audiobook) by Steve Bezner

Published in October of 2024 by eChristian.
Read by James R. Cheatham.
Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes.
Unabridged.

Have you ever listened to someone speak, agreed wholeheartedly with almost everything the person said, but still felt underwhelmed by the presentation?

That's where I am with this book.

Bezner is the pastor of a church in Houston and he discusses how the church needs to stop being a cheerleader for both America and Jesus. Oftentimes, America comes first - especially as churches make political power a priority. 

As the title says, Bezner says the church has to return to honoring Kingdom Values over American Values. Bezner is not anti-American, but he does not that American popular culture and American political culture do not really align with Kingdom Values - and that should be the goal.

He goes on to tell about things he's done wrong in this area of his ministry and things that he believes are working out well now.

Like I said at the outset, I liked what Bezner had to say, but his presentation just was merely okay. The producers of the audiobook made the choice to read the footnotes out loud, including the number of the footnote and every detail of the source. The author includes relevant commentary with his footnotes, so you can't ignore them. Most authors rework footnotes like these into the text. Reading the entire footnote was an odd choice.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: YOUR JESUS IS TOO AMERICAN: CALLING the CHURCH to RECLAIM KINGDOM VALUES over the AMERICAN DREAM by Steve Bezner.

STAR-SPANGLED JESUS: LEAVING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM and FINDING a TRUE FAITH (audiobook) by April Ajoy

Published in October of 2024 by Worthy Books.
Read by the author, April Ajoy.
Duration: 8 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

Star-Spangled Jesus is the story of April Ajoy and her spiritual evolution since the political appearance of Donald Trump in 2015-2016. 

Is it weird that a politician caused a spiritual evolution? 

No, not in a world of Christian Nationalism. For the most basic definition, I am going to say that it is a belief that a person can't truly be an American if they aren't Christian and their rights as an American should reflect that.

Also, this is precisely what happened to me, so I get it. Trump shocked me out of the Republican = Good Christian mindset because of the simple reason that he is so overtly antithetical to so many Christian ideals and is proud of it.

If the previous paragraph offends or confuses you, you will hate this book. 

Ajoy's pre-2015 Christian experience was much more conservative than mine and more intense. Her father was a conservative pastor. She went on more than one extended mission trip, including one in the United States to promote a book he wrote. She even wrote and sang a song to promote her father's book on the 700 Club!

Like me, her spiritual evolution did not lead her out of the faith, but it did lead her to a new, much more inclusive understanding of her faith.

The book is told in an informal manner, full of personal stories - as it should be because faith is personal. Some of these stories are funny, some are tragic. But, I look at this as the story of a successful maturing of faith. This doesn't mean she is a serene monk now. What it means is she's a clever, bright follower of Christ with no tolerance for hypocrisy and a wicked sense of humor that she uses to expose that hypocrisy for what it is.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith.

GHOSTED: AN AMERICAN STORY (audiobook) by Nancy French

Published by Zondervan in April of 2024.

Read by the author, Nancy French.

Duration: 9 hours, 56 minutes.

Unabridged.

My synopsis:

Ghosted is an autobiography of Nancy French. Nancy French had a career as a Conservative political columnist and ghost-writing for people in Conservative circles. She helped Conservative politicians write opinion pieces, helped them come up with clever lines for radio and TV interviews, and even books. She worked with such Conservative stars as Sarah Palin and Ben Sasse. She even worked with the Romney campaign. 

The book starts with her childhood in Kentucky, including an awful story of sexual abuse at the hands of a manipulative youth pastor and how that sent her life into a spiral into she met her future husband while she was in college.

Nancy French is married to David French, a well-known Conservative political columnist, commentator, and attorney. He worked for two organizations that defended the rights of Christian groups and Conservatives on college campuses and Christian businesses that did not want to support the birth control provisions of the Affordable Care Act. 

This couple epitomized the pre-Trump Christian Conservative movement.

When Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016, they were mortified. He was the opposite of every moral position they stood for in so many ways. They refused to back Trump and their friends refused to support them. Nancy's work dried up and people from their local church began shunning them. They were ghosted by their friends and colleagues.

My review:

This book is an up and down affair. The beginning and the end are very strong, the middle is a bit slow until the Donald Trump campaign throws their lives into disarray. On the whole, I rate Ghosted 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French. 

THE AGE of GRIEVANCE (audiobook) by Frank Bruni

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.
Read by the author, Frank Bruni.
Duration: 9 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged.

Frank Bruni, as the title The Age of Grievance implies, looks at how people of all political stripes act as though they are aggrieved at so many things. Sometimes, it's kind of funny and harmless, sometimes it's deadly serious to our values (forcing speakers off campus because they are too conservative) and sometimes people's lives (January 6th.)

If you follow the news, especially political news, not much is new here except grouping them all together and adding analysis. 

He is not saying grievance is always wrong. For example, the Civil Rights movement was a grievance movement. But, he is saying that it has to be informed grievance. For example, he discusses the fact that most people that are convinced that China's economy is larger than America's economy (China's economy is about 2/3 of the size of the U.S. economy with 3 times the population.) How can there be an actual consideration of America's policy towards China when we don't even know the facts of our relative strengths?

This book can actually be quite entertaining, but the serious side always comes back. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Age of Grievance by Frank Bruni.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (BIOGRAPHIES of U.S. PRESIDENTS) (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in March of 2024.

Hourly History publishes an extensive line of histories and biographies that are intended to be read in about an hour. With that limit, none of these are the definitive biographies, but most of them  give the average reader a good sense of who the person was and why they were important. 

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was the 36th President of the United States. One thing I particularly like about this biography is that it tells about his formative experiences in Texas as a young man, especially his short stint as a public school teacher in a very poor area of rural Texas. Getting to know those students really gave him the desire to want to create government programs to help alleviate poverty. 

This biography is a little skewed towards Johnson's early life, but it's not particularly hard to find information about LBJ's time as President and the series offers books on the big events of his administration like the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement if you would like to read more.

I rate this e-book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Lyndon B. Johnson: A Life from Beginning to End. 

AGE of REVOLUTIONS: PROGRESS and BACKLASH from 1600 to the PRESENT (audiobook) by Fareed Zakaria

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2024.

Read by the author, Fareed Zakaria
Duration: 13 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

Fareed Zakaria's Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present is exactly what the title says it is.

Zakaria writes about the beginnings of capitalism, multi-cultural societies, globalism, democracy, the industrial revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, Fascism, the failed Arab Spring, LGBTQ+ rights, and the rise illiberal democracy and the return on authoritarianism and the forces that pushed back (or overturned) them.

The author

Zakaria has clearly done his research and writes in such a way that it flows from one topic to another almost as if they entire book was just one big story (which it is, if you look at it as the story of humanity, especially The West.)

If you find yourself wondering how we got here, this is a good place to start. Zakaria breaks down complex movements and ideas and makes them understandable.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria. 

KINGDOM of RAGE: THE RISE of CHRISTIAN EXTREMISM and the PATH BACK to PEACE (audiobook) by Elizabeth Neumann

Published by Worthy Books in 2024.
Read by Erin Bennett.
Duration: 8 hours, 38 minutes.
Unabridged.

Elizabeth Neumann worked for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations. 

During the Bush Administration, the work of the DHS centered around preventing attempts by foreign groups, usually Muslim-based, to commit acts of terrorism on the United States or on Americans abroad. She became an expert on why some Muslims were radicalizing (or self-radicalizing), the signs of what to look for, and things that can be done to prevent radicalization.

During the Trump Administration, she started seeing more and more reports about domestic terrorism, usually coming from self-radicalized ultra-conservatives who are encouraged by media. Two prime examples are the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter and the El Paso shooter. Both issued manifestos that quoted liberally from fringe MAGA Conservative theories, like the  Great Replacement theory pushed by politicians like Donald Trump and media figures like Tucker Carlson. Carlson mentioned the theory more than 400 times on his show.

At first, Neumann thought this was a ridiculous notion. But, as she noticed changes in rhetoric at her own church and with old friends from a former church that she reconnected with, she decided to take a serious look.

What she saw were the exact same trends in some parts of the American Christian community that she had found in the radicalized Muslim community 10-12 years earlier and it mortified her. This was not the faith she knew. She recognized that thought as well - she had heard it so many times when Muslim terrorists were her main worry during the Bush Administration.

Neumann does a thorough job of explaining the process of radicalization and the dangers of flirting with radicalizing comments for political gain. She also demonstrates that "self-radicalization" is much easier with the rise of social media. People prone to radicalization can easily find an online community. They can also watch videos and read texts without interacting with another human being. While this section is thorough, it is often dry and clinical as well. It felt more like a textbook reading or a briefing rather than an engaging text.

Her recommendations section have a similar feel, making the book as a whole highly informative but not particularly engaging.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: KINGDOM of RAGE: THE RISE of CHRISTIAN EXTREMISM and the PATH BACK to PEACE.

RUN: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

Illustrated by L. Fury and Nate Powell.
Published by Harry N. Abrams in 2021.

This spring I read the MARCH, the three volume graphic novel series about Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) and the Civil Rights movement. When I finished the series, I thought to myself that it would be interesting to see how John Lewis ran for Congress and the struggles he encountered in an era where the KKK still openly marched.

My Synopsis:

The graphic novel RUN picks up right where MARCH trilogy left off. At the end of the MARCH trilogy, there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills - a moment of success. There was also the murder of a volunteer who was helping with the celebration by anti-Civil Rights forces.

RUN explores what happened after the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had it first taste of success. At the end of MARCH, there was a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights bills. With that, a long-term goal achieved there was a lot of discussion about where to go next. there were a lot of things to consider, including the beginnings of the Vietnam War.

The discussions soon became arguments and those arguments led people to leave the SNCC and for the movement to fragment. Some pushed for more of the same strategies due to a belief in the power of non-violence and for the simple reason that they had been effective up to this point. 

Others, led by Stokely Carmichael, wanted to pursue separatist strategies. Eventually, this leads John Lewis to leave the SNCC and run for political office.

My Review:

As I look over what I wrote in my synopsis of the book, it sounds boring. It really was not. You normally don't hear much about the Civil Rights movement after the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and 1965, so I found it interesting.

Sadly, Lewis died before this book was finished and I doubt there will be more in this series. 

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: RUN by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.

THE MOMENT: THOUGHTS on the RACE RECKONING THAT WASN'T and HOW WE CAN ALL MOVE FORWARD NOW (audiobook) by Bakari Sellers

Published in 2024 by HarperAudio.
Read by the author, Bakari Sellers.
Duration: 4 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

The Moment that Bakari Sellers refers to in his book is the so-called moment of racial reckoning that came with the murder of George Floyd and the protests all around the country that followed.

Sellers discusses a lot of relevant things that lead up to this moment including the murder of 9 African Americans by a young White supremacist in Charleston in 2015 and Covid-19. But, events like the Buffalo shooting of 2022, continued questionable acts of  and media and political-types discussing the Great Replacement Theory from 2017 until the present day have shown that moment of reckoning was not a big a moment that people supposed it was. Or, it demonstrates that the racist elements in America are pushing back hard.

I have run across Sellers as a guest on a couple of different podcasts that I follow and have always found him to be thoughtful and engaging. I have to admit, however, that I was a little disappointed in this book.

To me this book felt like two different books. I think there was too much time spent discussing the effects of Covid-19 on African American churches. Similarly, Sellers spent a lot of time discussing a police shooting case with an African American that he was involved in as an attorney. It is a sad commentary that I can say that I was only vaguely familiar with the case - and I'm not even sure if the case he referred to was the one I was thinking of because there are just so many.

The author

On the other hand, the other half of the book was compelling. He talked about the hope he had (and still has) after the George Floyd protests, his family, and some successes he has seen. 

Because of this wide variation, I am going to rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MOMENT: THOUGHTS on the RACE RECKONING THAT WASN'T and HOW WE CAN ALL MOVE FORWARD NOW by Bakari Sellers. 

WHITE RURAL RAGE: THE THREAT to AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (audiobook) by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman

Published in 2024 by Random House Audio.
Read by Ray Porter.
Duration: 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Unabridged.

White Rural Rage is a look at the rural/urban divide in the United States in politics as personified in the MAGA movement. 

The book is broken up into multiple chapters, each with a theme about how rural America is advantaged even though they claim they are put upon by urban elites. Sometimes, the authors have a point, sometimes they are just grinding their axes for no particular reason (like in the pickup truck chapter.)

The book has some excellent points, but it clearly written like an extended opinion hit piece rather than an extended informational piece and that did nothing but hurt the audiobook in my opinion. 

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: WHITE RURAL RAGE: THE THREAT to AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman.

FINISH WHAT WE STARTED: THE MAGA MOVEMENT'S GROUND WAR to END DEMOCRACY (audiobook) by Isaac Arnsdorf

Published in April of 2024 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by Will Damron.
Duration: 8 hours, 52 minutes.
Unabridged.

Finish What We Started is a look at the MAGA/Trump movement from a different perspective. There are lots of books about Trump, his children, Roger Stone, Stephen Miller, Bill Barr, Mike Pence, or any of the other big players in the Trump Administration. 

This book is different. It looks at regular people caught up in the movement in official positions and how they reacted. There is a guy who wrote a kindle e-book about the real power of political parties - the local precinct committee person in numbers. The theory is that if you get enough like-minded people in charge of the local precincts, you will control the party.

That author gets the attention of Steve Bannon and his popular podcast and people start buying the book and putting its principles in action. Bannon is the only famous person featured in the book. 

The book chronicles the transition from traditional Republicans to MAGA Republicans and the changes that means for basic retail politics (for example, motivating people to actually go to the polls to vote) and what it means for people who have been working for the Republican party for 20, 30, even 40 years. Some of the stories were compelling.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can found on Amazon.com here: FINISH WHAT WE STARTED: THE MAGA MOVEMENT'S GROUND WAR to END DEMOCRACY by Isaac Arnsdorf.

MARCH: BOOK THREE (graphic novel) by by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

 

Published in 2016 by Top Shelf Productions

Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.

Illustrated by Nate Powell.

2016 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature

2017 Printz Award Winner

2017 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner

2017 Sibert Medal Winner

2017 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner

2017 Walter Award Winner

Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) continues his life story in book three of the March series, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. The book starts with the 16th Street Birmingham Church Bombing in September of 1963 and ends with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in August of 1965.

These were, by any account, much like the famous Charles Dickens line from A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."

It was the best of times in that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed. It was the worst of times because of these landmark laws were passed due to great sacrifices. As noted on page 91, in the state of Mississippi in the summer of 1964 during an attempt to mobilize and register black voters there were "more than 1,000 arrests, 80 beatings, 35 church burnings, and 30 bombings."

A theme that runs throughout the trilogy is that every success is soured by a violent response. I was particularly struck by an act of pointless violence at the end of the book. When the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama finally happens (it had been turned back on other attempts by violence and by court order) there is a rally, there are speeches, and a concert given by an amazingly diverse crowd of artists - diverse in race and in musical styles. What should have been a beautiful moment is marred by the murder of a volunteer driver named Viola Luzzo from Detroit. She was shuttling people back to Selma. She was heading back to Montgomery to pick up more people when a car pulled alongside. A single shot was fired and she was killed (see picture.)

This is an excellent trilogy and an excellent way to tell this history. I rate this book and the entire trilogy 5 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: MARCH: BOOK THREE (graphic novel) by by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin.

Click here for March: Book One.

Click here for March: Book Two.

HOW the SOUTH WON the CIVIL WAR: OLIGARCHY, DEMOCRACY, and the CONTINUING FIGHT for the SOUL of AMERICA by Heather Cox Richardson

Originally Published in 2020.
Published by Oxford Press in 2022.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has made herself into a name brand historian with her near-daily first drafts of history in which she writes up the day's political news and ties in similar historic themes or long-running trends. 

How the South Won the Civil War follows along those lines. 

The book looks at two long-standing trends in American points of view in American history that are in constant tension with one another.

This quote from page xv of the introduction gets the thesis of the book pretty well:

America began with a great paradox: the same men who came up with the radical idea of constructing a nation on the principle of equality also owned slaves, thought Indians were savages, and considered women inferior. This apparent contradiction was not a flaw, though; it was a key feature of the new democratic republic. For the Founders, the concept that "all men are created equal" depended on the idea that the ringing phrase "all men" did not actually include everyone."

She continues: "So long as these lesser people played no role in the body politic, everyone within it could be equal. In the Founders' minds, then, the principle of equality depended on inequality."

That is the heart of the thesis - some think that everyone should be able to participate, others think that only the best people should participate because some people cannot handle the responsibility (or just want to do all of the wrong things with the power.)

Richardson goes through history and shows how this has played out over the decades. A big theme is that, in general, the South has believed that not everyone should participate. The North has gone back and forth, but consistently more on the side on equality than the South. 

The Civil War was obviously a major flare up in this ongoing struggle and seemed to end the paradox once and for all. But, the same issues migrated west and the Western states generally joined the South as time went on, especially as the Democrats stopped being the conservative party when it came to race relations after the elections of 1964, 1968, and 1972. Movement Conservatives discovered that racists liked it when they said things like letting states keep their own rules about who gets to vote and being able to create special public schools so that they stay segregated.

Not every Republican followed this line of thought and the mainstream Republican Party denied that this line of thought even had a popular foothold. But, the Tea Party Movement followed by MAGA and Christian Nationalism has pushed the radicals (the old John Birch Society types) into the forefront. Trump didn't create it, but he found it and exploited it.

The MAGA movement and Christian Nationalism continues this cementing of the West and the South and the belief that some people should not have a say. Nowadays, it is not slavery or Jim Crow or forcing people to be IN the closet, but MAGA shows spend an inordinate amount of time on gay marriage, trans people, and the bogeyman of CRT. It's not the same old thing (well, it oftentimes is for the LGBTQ+ folks, especially for trans people) but it certainly rhymes.

The only complaint I have about the book is that the author fails to see that the same type of elitism exists in both parties.  Examples include FDR and his brain trust, a center-left media that laid out a certain world view for 40 years and still tries to (I mostly agree with that view, but I also acknowledge that it existed and still exists in a much weakened state.)

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW the SOUTH WON the CIVIL WAR by Heather Cox Richardson.