Reading in Interesting Times

Happy new year!

The internet wrecks our attention spans. We dash from one brief article or video or post to another, tying to take in as much “content” as possible, without giving much serious thought to any of it. While the fact that we have so much information, analysis, and entertainment at our fingertips is miraculous, there are serious side effects for our intellects, emotions, and ability to concentrate. We pay a high price for technological progress.

I see this in my own life. While I love books, I struggle to read them to a much greater degree than I did about ten years ago. Partly this is because some of the jobs I’ve had have required me to consume lots of media items in fairly short spans of time. But also, the combination of my love of reading with the ability to read so much about so many topics from any number of locations - at home, at work, on trains, in waiting rooms - leads me to read a colossal number of short and short-ish pieces: journal articles, news bulletins, think tank papers, hot takes, brief works of fiction. As great as many of these are, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes from thoroughly digesting an excellent book. It’s a satisfaction that often eludes me nowadays.

Nevertheless, I read some quite interesting books in 2024. Those I share below are not the only ones I’ve read during the last twelve months, but they’re the ones that stand out most in my memory. I recommend them to you if you are interested, dear reader.

Poverty for Profit, by Anne Kim

Capitalism does many good things. When carefully regulated and combined with smart government programs to help the disadvantaged, it does more to improve humans’ material well-being than any of the alternatives. The United States, however, has a love of free enterprise that often extends to idolization of the private sector, the belief that any worthwhile undertaking must involve someone making a buck.

Kim exposes the downsides of this line of thought when it comes to America’s poorest citizens. She describes how, over the past half century, a decline in Americans’ confidence in government created opportunities for businesses to make money from the poor without making them better off. Her book details how the privatization of public services worsens problems like high rents, food insecurity, kidney disease, excessive incarceration, and a needlessly complicated tax code. As Democrats explore possible routes back to power after their drubbing on November 5, I hope we look for ways to make government programs simpler and more efficient as well as fairer and more generous.

Shadow War, by Sean McFate and Bret Witter

This is not your typical thriller about covert action in conflict zones. McFate, a former U.S. Army paratrooper and private military contractor, paints a much more realistic picture of modern combat than you’d get from most war or spy novels. It has tense scenes, to be sure: gunfights, desperate escape attempts, characters sizing each other up and staring each other down. But no stolen nuclear weapons, hijacked airliners, or supercomputers that can destroy humanity.

While there’s nothing wrong with suspending disbelief while reading or watching something purely for entertainment, there’s extra value in taking in something that’s more grounded in the real world than a work of sheer escapism. In an age when Marvel and DC superheroes are for many people what pantheons of gods were for ancient societies, it’s good for there to be stories available that give a glimpse into the brutality and difficulty of the world beyond comfortable civilization, even as they are also fun. McFate and Witter’s characters are a lot more plausible than Jack Ryan and his foes, and that’s great.

The Ghost, by Jefferson Morley

This biography of James J. Angleton, head of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1954-1975, is a fascinating exploration of American espionage from the 1940s to the 1970s. It covers many of the moral and political dilemmas found in debates about U.S. foreign policy in any age: whether to support one thug to defeat another; how much information to share with allies; where to draw the line between domestic and international concerns; who to trust. Angleton’s career in first the Office of Strategic Services, and then the CIA, is a good example of the accomplishments, insights, contradictions, and paranoia that can emerge when a country that prides itself on defending freedom and democracy steps into the nebulous, often nasty role of global superpower.

While Morley can lean too far in the conspiratorial direction at times (like when he gets to the grassy knoll), he does an excellent job of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Angleton’s personality and the work that resulted from it. My main takeaway is that no one stays at the top of their game for very long. Even the person with the greatest record of achievement in their field will begin to lose their abilities eventually, and the institutions in which they reside must be ready, willing, and able to replace them when they can no longer perform their roles well.

The Politics of Free Markets, by Monica Prasad

Because Anglo-American political traditions often seem to place greater value on individual liberty and initiative than their equivalents in continental Europe, it’s easy to assume that it was only natural for free market reforms in the late 20th century to take place in Reagan’s America and Thatcher’s Britain, but not in France or West Germany. Prasad, however, presents considerable evidence to refute this. Her thesis is that libertarian economics took off in the U.S. and the U.K. not because those countries were more individualistic, but because market forces were more tightly controlled there in the decades following World War II.

Policy changes that are popular in one place can be completely rejected in another at the same time, sometimes for surprising reasons. Exploring, for example, ways in which America’s New Deal/Keynesian economy was more populist, more empowering of workers, than France’s dirigiste economy can help explain why tax cuts and deregulation took hold in the former from the 1970s onward, but not the latter. The appeal of “neoliberal” (is there a more overused word in the political lexicon?) policies can depend on whether a population senses that relatively interventionist alternatives have gone too far.

The Peasant Prince, by Alex Storozynski

Tadeusz Kościuszko really should be better known in the United States than he is. A Polish aristocrat who served in the Continental Army, then returned home to fight against Russia’s invasion of his native country, he is both a Polish and an American hero. In both countries, he fought for liberty and dignity for all, often going much further in these beliefs than many of his fellow revolutionaries.

Storozynski’s biography has excellent details about Kościuszko’s varied and adventurous life: his meeting with Benjamin Franklin upon arriving in America; his key role in fortifying West Point and essentially founding U.S. military engineering; his vehement opposition to slavery, including clashes with his friend Thomas Jefferson over the subject; his love affairs with multiple noblewomen; his leading role in Poland’s last valiant war against partition by its more powerful neighbors; his insistence that Polish Jews and Muslims be well treated by the Catholic majority; his attempt at suicide when facing capture by Russian soldiers; and his ultimate exile.

While the fact that I am of Polish extraction certainly influenced my enjoyment of this book, I believe anyone with sympathies for political freedom, democracy, and national pride and sovereignty can enjoy it, as well.

Happy new year, all! May your 2025 include many fine and fun reading experiences.