Where Do We Go Now?: A Review of Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

No event in recent history has been as disruptive to the world as the COVID-19 pandemic that, as of this writing, is still ongoing. Millions have died and millions more have been infected by this disease. In the United States, the number of deaths from COVID are comparable to the number of combat deaths during the Civil War. And the recession caused by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns is on a par with the 2008 financial crises that we had only just recovered from. Much has been laid bare by this once in a century catastrophe, but fortunately Mr. Zakaria has written a fabulously book to guide us through this pandemic and look forward beyond our current crisis to see what the world may look like afterwards.

Best known for his book The Post-American World and his Sunday international news show on CNN, Mr. Zakaria is the right man to take a global perspective on this pandemic.  But, rather than disprove the central theses of globalization and relative American decline, Mr. Zakaria argues in this book that the pandemic proves both the necessity of globalization and America’s continued to decline.  He even goes beyond that to reveal how important quality government is to daily living, the need for two-way dialogue between experts and average citizens, and the overwhelming necessity for global cooperation.  All of these “lessons” are very well backed up by statistics and figures from an incredibly wide variety of authoritative sources.  And yet, despite all the overwhelming citations, Mr. Zakaria’s writing style is both engaging and easy-to-follow.  Both experts and laymen should be able to pick up this book and learn something.

The only drawback of this book is how outdated some of the information is.  Published in October 2020, some events have accelerated since then.  The COVID vaccine was still in development, though close to completion, when this book went to press and, of course, the 2020 U.S. presidential election and Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol had not  happened yet either.  Though this book in hindsight is quite prescient, I do hope Mr. Zakaria does update this book when it comes out in paperback.

Overall, though only slightly out of date, this is one of the best books to examine these current times and try to project into the future.  Though the pandemic has scarred nearly all of us, this book can help us make sense of this current crisis and what is necessary to build back better in the future.  I highly recommend this book to both policy wonks and laymen alike.

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Crying Out for Freedom from the Other Side of American History: A Review of An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

America has a long history of promoting democracy and human rights, but also denying those basic rights to African-Americans and Latinx people. While there are a lot of histories that look at the history of both African-Americans and Latinx people as oppressed groups, nearly all of them treat each group separately. While there is great value in doing so, it does leave out the ways in which both groups supported each other’s fight for freedom and democratic rights and also implicitly perpetuates the false narrative that these two groups’ struggles are distinct from each other. In this incredible examination of American history from the point of view of both groups, Dr. Ortiz links both of their struggles for freedom and shows how America has too often been on the wrong side of history and freedom not just in America, but in its dealings with the Americas too.

As part of Beacon Press’s ReVisioning America series, which also has published such great books as An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and A Queer History of the United States for Young Readers, the goal of this book is to reexamine American history through a different lens.  Too often American history has been filtered through a predominately White POV that emphasizes our country’s many high points while only giving a superficial examination of America’s racist and oppressive past.  Dr. Ortiz tosses that White narrative out the window and focuses instead on the perspective of African-Americans and Latinx people.  The result is not the flattering picture most Americans already know.  African-Americans were enslaved for a good chunk of American history and faced exploitation, legalized segregation, and mass violence after the Civil War.  Latinx people in America, though never enslaved, also were exploited, segregated, and murdered by White Americans too, along with being deported unjustly when labor conditions were poor.  Thus, American history through this perspective is dark, oppressive, and never in keeping with the high ideals we claim to have founded this country on.  

The greatest value of this book though is not in treating African-Americans and Latinx groups as separate, but linking these two groups’ history and showing how each group at their best have supported each other’s struggles for freedom and basic human rights both at home and abroad.  Dr. Ortiz does a fantastic job of cataloging how African-Americans paid attention to and supported the revolutions in the Americas, drawing inspiration from them for their own early freedom struggles.  He also shows how Latinx people abroad supported African-American’s struggles for freedom in Antebellum America.  And once this book moves beyond the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, Dr. Ortiz catalogs the important contributions both groups made to the advancement of civil rights and labor rights in the 20th and 21st centuries.  It is fair to say that without both groups working both separately and together, American history would be tragically different.

Though Dr. Ortiz’s book is great, it is not perfect.  In the first few chapters, the narrative balance between both groups is tilted more towards coverage of African-Americans.  Granted, these chapters deal with pre-Civil War America, so the plight of African-Americans should take center stage at this point.  Also, once we get past the Civil War, Latinx people become a larger part of the narrative and the oppressive system of racial capitalism begins to grind both groups.  Thus, the narrative begins to balance out and Dr. Ortiz’s book starts firing on all cylinders.  Still, I wish he could’ve maintained a better narrative balance from the very beginning.

Too often the voices of African-Americans and Latinx people have been silenced or disbelieved.  The great value of a book like this is that it offers a counter-narrative to the simplistically naive story Americans are used to and acts as a clarion call for America to live up to its highest ideals of liberty and equality for all, as both African-Americans and Latinx people have been demanding from the very beginning.  Americans of all races, colors, and creeds should read this book along with other books in this series, repent, and resolve to justly apply our founding principles to all people in our country and abroad.

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The American Sphinx Speaks: A Review of Thomas Jefferson's Writings from the Library of America

Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters by Thomas Jefferson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia, is one of the more elusive Founding Father’s to pin down. Like Benjamin Franklin, he was a polymath with a deep interest in the many scientific undertakings of his age and was a consummate, though reluctant (at least according to himself), politician. At times he could be seemingly all over the place. What this book of Jefferson’s public papers and letters does is let readers peer more deeply into his mind and soul than the many biographies written of him since his death, but at the cost of creating one extremely long volume.

This book is divided into several parts including: an autobiography he wrote for his children and grandchildren; his “Summary View of the Rights of British America”, which was a prototype of the Declaration of Independence; his famous “Notes on the State of Virginia”; his public papers, letters, addresses and replies; and finally the private letters he wrote throughout his life.  By examining all of these together, one can really get the sense of Jefferson was as a person and where he stood on the key issues of the day.  Though some historians have painted Jefferson as a bit of a political opportunist and an enigma, by allowing Jefferson’s writings to speak for themselves one can see that he was a man of principle and resolve with a keen interest in advancing the sciences.  Not everything Jefferson wrote down or said will jive well with a modern audience, particularly his views on African-Americans and African colonization.  Still, for better or worse, much of America’s identity as a democratic nation comes from Jefferson’s writings and politics.

Though this volume does a great job of letting Jefferson speak for himself, it is WAY too long.  At 1600 pages, this is one of the longest books in the Library of America’s collection and is equal in size to a standard copy of the Bible.  Though I had planned on finishing this in a month, it took me over six weeks to read this book from cover to cover.  There is an opportunity though for Library of America to rectify this by splitting Jefferson’s writings into two volumes, as they have done with other presidents such as John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt.  About half of the book is made up of Jefferson’s autobiography and public addresses and papers.  The other half are Jefferson’s private letters.  Library of America could split this into two volumes between his public and private papers and may even make more room for more of Jefferson’s private letters, which were some of the most interesting and accessible reads.  As it stands right now though, this volume is better used as a reference for lay readers rather than something to be read from cover to cover.

Like other Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson left behind a legacy of liberty, but also of contradictions.  As America continues to strive to live up to its founding ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, looking back on how the founding generation both succeeded and failed at the same endeavor will be immensely educational and hopeful.  Though some may struggle to make it through this volume, there is real value in reading and understanding the thoughts and actions of Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers.  I recommend this book to people interested in learning about Jefferson first hand and are willing to devote time and effort to do so.

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Deep Crisis: A Review of War on Peace by Ronan Farrow

 

War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite its role in shaping the post-war liberal world order, American diplomacy is at a crossroads. With the end of the Cold War, the State Department and its dedicated diplomats have had their work maligned by politicians of both parties and their budgets slashed by a skeptical, even hostile, Congress and Executive branch. The hollowing out of the State Department under Pres. Trump and his two Secretaries of State, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, is just an acceleration of trends that have been in place for decades now. In this wonderful and critical read, Mr. Farrow use both his own personal experience in the State Department as well as hundreds of interviews, including with all the living Secretaries of State from Henry Kissinger to Rex Tillerson, to chart American diplomacy's declining reliance by policy makers at the highest level. It also charts the disastrous consequences of America's hand over of diplomacy to the military and is a not-so subtle plea for reinvestment in American world leadership and diplomacy.

Before Mr. Farrow was writing articles about Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault allegations that would launch both the #MeToo movement and Mr. Farrow's own reputation into the journalistic stratosphere, he was a young Foreign Service Officer under legendary diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the famous Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia in the 1990s and died tragically while trying to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan under Pres. Obama. The first half of the book is Mr. Farrow's eyewitness account of Mr. Holbrooke's Afghanistan negotiations and its unrealized potential. He makes a compelling case that, had Mr. Holbrooke lived and the Obama administration given more support to his efforts, the U.S. could have negotiated a deal with the Taliban and exited the conflict instead of being militarily bogged down for nearly two decades now. The rest of the book is a charting of how years of budget cuts and neglect has allowed the military to dominate spaces in foreign policy normally reserved for the military and how that has contributed to endless military confrontations and violence. Mr. Farrow also charts how the Trump administration's total lack of interest in diplomacy under Sec. of State Rex Tillerson has accelerated these trends. Though the book was published in 2018 and, thus, does not include Mike Pompeo's tenure nor the Trump administration's overtures to North Korea nor Pres. Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has not happened yet, the picture Mr. Farrow paints in this book is one of American diplomacy and world leadership in a state of deep crisis.

This is perhaps one of the best and most accessible books to date on the current state of affairs in American foreign policy. Mr. Farrow's research and interviews are incredibly thorough and he has a journalist's nose for a great story. I greatly enjoyed this book and my only critique is that it needs an updated edition in 2021 now that Joe Biden is the President-elect and the full story of the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy can be fully told. Foreign policy is just one of many areas that need to be rebuilt in the future Biden administration and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in foreign policy and and America's continued role as a world leader.

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