Team of Five

Team of Five: The presidents club in the age of trump / Kate Andersen Brower, 320 pgs.

I'm fascinated with presidential history and the many time ex-presidents come to the aid of the sitting president.  This has been going on for a long time.  This book covers five ex-presidents and their relationships and ponders how Trump will fit in to this group.  His relationships with all of these men are rocky and for the first time, the exes have spoken up about the sitting president.  I liked the mix of politics and the personal.  This club really needs a woman member!

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving

Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving by Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg (2019) 375 pages

Mobituaries is the kind of book that can be slurped up all at once, or ingested more leisurely. Mo Rocca is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, frequent panelist for the NPR quiz show game Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!, past correspondent for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and much more. He and Jonathan Greenberg have brought the podcast series Mobituaries to us in book format. I have not listened to any of the podcasts, but now I need to put them on my "to-hear" list.

Rocca brings his interests in geography, presidents, and history together to entertain the reader with less-known information about people who were famous, along with information about people who should have been famous. Sometimes the Mobits are not about people at all (e.g., see the chapter about medieval sciences). The subjects are handled with both heart and humor. I highly recommend this well-researched, entertaining book .

Fear

Fear: Trump in the White House / Bob Woodward, 428 pgs.

Woodward is always amazing and doesn't speculate but most of what is here is what you already know if you are paying attention.  If you don't have even a "West Wing" level understanding of how government works (and I'm talking about having watched the television show), and you have no interest in learning, this is how we end up.  Whatever your feelings are about the ideas coming from this administration and the policies they would like to enact, the reality is, they have no idea how to do it.  If you don't understand the basics of international trade and facts don't interest you, you might make up something that you think is good for Americans.  If you think immigrants are in top three of problems we have, you might want to stop people from coming here. But there are laws in place, systems in place, treaties and agreements, legal ramifications and you would have to understand those to effectively put a stop to immigration.  It was interesting reading about staffers who spend their time trying to focus the attention of our chief executive and play interference on short term topics that get blurted out or tweeted.  It would be nice if this ended on a hopeful note, instead it ends looking at reality. 

Fear: Trump in the Whitehouse

Fear: Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward, 420 pages.
Woodward's book opens with Steve Bannon meeting Trump several years before the 2016 campaign. From the opening we are treated to a listing of the ways in which Donald Trump is and was not prepared to lead anything more complicated than a  tv show or a rather corrupt real estate company. We hear from Bannon, Pruitt, Mnuchin, and many others. Fear seems, in retrospect, to be a rather optimistic view of the Trump administration. Still, an instructive read.

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter  272 pp.

The first presidential election I voted in was in 1976 when Carter won. This autobiography/memoir was published in 2015 after Carter's 90th birthday. Now the longest retired U.S. President in history, Carter writes of his childhood on the family farm in the predominantly African-American town of Archery, Georgia (near his current home in Plains). Much is written about the hard work of farming and how he learned many of his mechanical and woodworking skills and how, as a teenager, was the owner of property he rented to tenants. From there Carter tells of his time at the U.S. Naval Academy and his naval career that ended when he returned home to Georgia to manage the family business after his father's death. After following his father's footsteps into heading various social organizations he migrated into politics and ultimately the Presidency. But his biggest successes followed his time in office with his work with the Carter Center, Habitat for Humanity, and serving as a negotiator during various world conflicts. Carter writes very matter-of-factly about his successes and failures and always acknowledges the presence and assistance of his wife Rosalynn who he frequently calls Rosa in the book. Definitely worth reading.