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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Grant has commented on (2) products
Character Americas Search For Leadership
by
Gail Sheehy
Grant
, March 22, 2014
"Character" remains one of my favorite campaign books, even close to three decades after the election. While most other political books recall campaigns chronologically after the fact, Sheehy studied the leading '88 candidates prior to the first primaires, focusing on personal character and how their character was shaped throughout their lives. She interviewed countless relatives, friends, and co-workers who knew the candidates, and connects their narratives in fascinating prose. I was most intrigued by her study of Bob Dole, the survivor who endured three years of hospitalizations and therapy following his grievous World War II injuries. However far he climbed, Dole never felt "whole",a feeling of inadequacy that likely drove him to great political heights. Sheehy was more complimentary of Dole than many of his contemporaries. Gary Hart, in particular, earned Sheehy's pity- but also sympathy- for a severe fundamentalist upbringing that caused him to rebel against authority and conformity. Sheehy predicated Hart's downfall months before he sailed on the good ship Monkey Business, torpedoing his presidential hopes. She offers an interesting insight, in the form of the two nominees, that we can remake- or at least modify- seemingly inherited traits; up to a point. After Michael Dukakis's role as a loner reformer helped cost him his job as Governor in the '78 MA primary, he emerged a seemingly more inclusive and open candidate in the comeback '82 race. As a candidate in a grueling presidential marathon, however, his core trait of stubbornness- some thought arrogance- reappeared in the fall campaign as he sulked away a summer lead to George Bush. Bush is depicted by in the first edition as the dutiful son to a domineering father who repeated that role serving presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. Sheehy acknowledges in the second edition paperback that she missed something; the ultra ambitious and confident blue blood Bush campaigned with an aggressiveness, purpose, and ruthless effectiveness that she and others had missed. For those interested in U.S. history and politics, Gail Sheehy's chapters/mini biographies ( first published in Vanity Fair in 1987 and early 1988) of Reagan, Bush, Dukakis, Hart, Jackson, Dole, and Gore, are timeless treasures.
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Making Government Work: Lessons from a Life in Politics
by
Ernest F. Fritz Hollings and Kirk Victor
Grant
, June 28, 2009
United States Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings was known as one of the most quick witted and sharp tongued figures in national politics, as when he told an opponent, " I'll take a drug test if you take an IQ test." He is also known as of man of great intelligence and deep principles. A Charleston, South Carolina native and front line World War II veteran, the 23 year old Hollings returned home in 1945 and was elected to the state legislature in 1948, when racial divisions dominated the old south. Despite the "separate but equal" law allowing for segregated but equally funded schools, Hollings saw that schools were not equal, visiting a one room schoolhouse where 80 black students were taught by one teacher. Hollings fought successfully for a sales tax for better education for all. Elected governor in 1958, Hollings set out to make the still largely rural and poor SC an industrial state beyond just textiles, knowing he would have to raise taxes and expand education funding to do so. Funding for the tech schools favored by business was in the hands of a bourbon loving Senate Finance Committee chairman, and the Governor wisely produced a bottle for the Chairman as he made a successful pitch for the funding. Hollings was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1966 and took many predictable conservative positions, particularly on foreign policy; however, he displayed a populist streak on many social justice issues. In January 1968 Hollings began visiting poor areas of SC where hunger was rampant. Hollings says that "nothing in my 38 years as a U.S Senator affected me more profoundly than the (hunger) tour I took of my home state" as he saw children with rickets and scurvy. The tour led Hollings to author The Case Against Hunger in 1970 and fight hard for food stamps, WIC, and other nutrition programs. A proposed hunger tour by his friend and colleague Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York at the same time did not set well with Hollings, who had stuck his neck out as a the first southern governor to endorse the northern Catholic John Kennedy early in 1960. When the younger Kennedy insisted that he would go ahead with his planned visit to SC, Hollings called RFK and threatened to fly to Harlem at the same time, reporters in tow, and have his own hunger expose of NY. Kennedy decided to scratch SC from his itinerary, several months his presidential campaign was ended by an assassin's bullet. Hollings believes organized crime played a role in both Kennedy assassinations. Hollings still regrets voting against Thurgood Marshall for the Supreme Court in 1967, but said that the racial dynamics involved would have ended his political career. Long a deficit hawk who believes in pay-as-you-go government, Hollings was opposed to the Regan tax cuts and deficit spending, Hollings proposed a budget freeze in the early 80s which was at the heart of his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. It is the issue of continued free trade bills and the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to countries paying low wages that seems to anger Hollings more than anything. Although a majority of congress through the early '90s often shared Hollings protectionist trade views, he saw presidents starting with Jimmy Carter adopt the pro-free trade dogma that has devastated SC's once strong textile industry. Questioning about trade led to a memorable moment on ABC's This Week in 1990. When asked by Sam Donaldson if it were true that he bought his suit from South Korea, Holling fired back "... I bought it at the same store where you bought your wig, Sam." Hollings, up to then a This Week regular, was never invited back. Reagan and both Bush's continued what Hollings calls the "hemorrhaging of jobs" but Hollings is especially scathing in his critique of President Bill Clinton. Clinton, despite adopting a populist pro-worker message and receiving key labor union support in 1992, abandoned unions along with his campaign rhetoric and made a successful full court press for passage of NAFTA in 1993. Hollings movingly recalls a visit to a Mexican industrial community where impoverished workers lived in shacks with no electricity or sewage facilities. The workers saw more low wage jobs from the U.S but endured the same impoverished conditions as always, while lower corn prices as a result of NAFTA have sent hundreds of thousands of poor Mexican farmers to the U.S. in search of jobs. Clinton/Gore free trade zeal extended to WTO, GATT and passage of normal trade relations with China, where Hollings says we help make Communism work for China while undermining our own free-market economy. Hollings glumly offers the figure that only 12% of U.S. jobs are in manufacturing, down from 41% after World War II. Hollings does give Clinton credit for being the only president since Carter to work at reducing the national debt. Hollings is equally disturbed by the power of money in politics and the all consuming task of raising campaign funds. In his last and most competitive race in 1998, Hollings had to raise over $8 million, or nearly $30,000 a week for six years. He says that the constant money chase consumes lawmakers' time, and detracts not only from congressional work, but also from developing friendships with colleagues. It is clear to Hollings that fundraising ability, and not legislative talent, now determines who receives the best committee assignments/ chairmanships. He repeatedly emphasizes that the only way to truly cap campaign expenditures is to pass a constitutional amendment repealing 1976's Buckley v Valeo decision, which made unlimited campaign spending a protected form of speech. Hollings tried unsuccessfully several times to pass such an amendment. Unlike some political memoirs, the ever-confident Hollings displays little need to defend or prove himself. He sincerely shares his concerns about continued bipartisan mistakes, while offering clear ideas for reform. Those interested in making government work will benefit from reading this memoir of a genuine statesman.
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