Sam’s 2021 Book List
Sitting down to write my annual summary of the books I read in the past year, I can’t help but reflect on what a strange year 2021 was. It all blurs together, thanks to the COVID pandemic that started in the early spring of 2020. By this time last year I knew I’d be changing jobs and was wondering when the whole pandemic situation would end. We somehow made it through January 2021; my wife broke her ankle a few days before I left my prior job, we muddled through school in the spring, I started an exciting new role in the spring, and by summer it seemed like we were inching back towards normal. My wife and I got our vaccines, the kids went back to school in the fall, and life got a bit hectic again with after school activities, birthday parties on the weekends, and slightly “normal” social lives. Then the fall came, I started traveling for work more, I was excited to meet people face to face again, the Delta variant made me reconsider, and last month brought the new Omicron wave. Luckily, we’ve been able to get the kids fully vaccinated and I got my booster shot.
I write all this as a preface, to say that in 2021 I was able to get back into my prior groove of reading regularly on my commute from Pasadena to Downtown Los Angeles. The pandemic interrupted this routine in 2020 and I felt like I wasn’t able to read as much last year as prior years. This year I got back; not fully back, but somewhat back to reading. I almost forgot how much I enjoy reading, both for the expansion of my knowledge and understanding, or simply for entertainment.
This year I was able to finish 11 books. Some of the best reads came from a book club I was lucky enough to be a part of. Most of the books I found through lists in either the LA Times, the Economist, or other online articles (like Fast Company). And last, for the first year in a while I can honestly say that none of the books I read were recommended by bridge engineers based on catchy “leadership” books sold in airport gift shops. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
Without any further ado, here is my book list for 2021, along with a few selected favorite passages from some of the books:
Eisenhower in War and Peace
<link>
I loved this book and learned so much about Eisenhower and the times he lived and led our country through. Because of this book I made a point of visiting the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along the border between South and North Korea when I visited in November.
There were a few quotes and lines from the book that I think very well summed up Eisenhower:
“Focus, common sense, simplicity, and attitude — the recipe for Ike’s success.”
“A great deal of the trouble in the world today is traceable to a lack of understanding of the culture of various countries.”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
And this last one really resonates with me, as I think it speaks to a large portion of today’s US population who still think the answer to “fixing” government is to tear it all down:
“Any jackass can kick a barn down. But it takes a good carpenter to build one.”
CIRCE
<link>
This was a book club recommendation via a twitter chain, I believe. Greek mythology-based fiction, sort of like a Twilight or similar teen romance novel. I didn’t really enjoy the book, sorry to say.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
<link>
This was a fantastic and illuminating read recommended to me by my colleague Derek Fretheim. It offers a unique perspective that I had not had much exposure to in my lived experience. I won’t give too much away, and will just say that you can take a different perspective on almost any aspect of our daily lives when you start to think of yourself as a part of the world you live in, and a part of nature that surrounds you, rather than thinking of yourself as just living in the world.
“as ecotheologian Thomas Berry has written, ‘we must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.’”
“We don’t have to figure out everything by ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us… A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.”
“Many Native peoples across the world, despite myriad cultural differences, have this in common — we are rooted in cultures of gratitude.”
“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”
In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
<link>
This is the kind of book that you read in a few days. I knew the basic story from the scene in Jaws where the grizzled old salt Captain Quint is recounting his story about being on the USS Indianapolis. In fact, the book highlights one member of the crew: “Gause returned to Florida as a commercial fisherman. (His sideline exploits as a shark hunter are said by some to have served as inspiration for the Captain Quint character in Jaws.)” This book goes into much deeper detail and allows the reader to nearly experience the over three days of being adrift and lost at sea, at the mercy of the sea and all its denizens. It also makes you appreciate the sacrifice of all the men aboard that ship, for the role they played in helping end the war.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
<link>
I feel like this book should be required reading for nearly every American. People in my generation, I believe, are very familiar with Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Significantly fewer people are aware of this text, which to me felt like it could have been written sometime in 2020 following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter marches that followed. This book also presents Dr. King’s perspectives on how to correct the problems created by systemic and historically embedded racism, and could have been written by anyone talking about the social welfare programs being considered by the Biden administration and Democratic leaders — things like universal basic income, improved access to and reduced cost child care, and more.
“A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.”
“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
Justice for Ella: A Story That Needed to Be Told
<link>
This was the first book read by the Arrested Mobility Book Club, a group I was honored to be invited to join led by esteemed professor and transportation professional Charles Brown. This is a deeply personal story about the experience of a husband and wife in the early 1960s in Mississippi. The book, and the book club, offered a chance to reflect on the recent history of our country through the lens of today’s ongoing challenges.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
<link>
This was the second book read by the Arrested Mobility Book Club. This book made me uncomfortable, on purpose. Some might disagree with the concept of race as America’s unique caste system, similar to the caste system in the Indian subcontinent. The author makes very compelling points to argue that in America we use race the same way the caste system operates in India, and it affects every aspect of our lived experience. If anything, this book shows how deeply embedded race and historical racial bias is embedded in nearly every aspect of our lives and society.
“Slavery built the man-made chasm between blacks and whites”
One of the more eye-opening parts of the book was a discussion of how the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s studied America’s institutional racism and Jim Crow laws before creating similar laws related to Jewish people and other races deemed “inferior” by the Nazis.
“As they settled into their chairs to hash out what would eventually become the Nuremberg Laws, the first topic on the agenda was the United States and what they could learn from it… In debating ‘how to institutionalize racism in the Third Reich,’ wrote the Yale legal historian James Q. Whitman, ‘they began by asking how the Americans did it.’ …Hitler especially marveled at the American ‘knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death.’”
“Everything that happened to the Jews of Europe, to African-Americans during the lynching terrors of Jim Crow, to Native Americans as their land was plundered and their numbers decimated, to Dalits considered so low that their very shadow polluted those deemed above them — happened because a big enough majority had been persuaded and had been open to being persuaded, centuries ago or in the recent past, that these groups were ordained by God as beneath them, subhuman, deserving of their fate.”
This book also solidly shows which political party is on the “right” side of history when it comes to advancing equality and eliminating institutional racism: “Only three Democrats have made it to the Oval Office since the Johnson and the civil rights era — Carter, Obama, and Bill Clinton, who won with 39 percent of the white vote in 1992 and 44 percent in 1996.”
Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies
<link>
After some “heavy” books, I wanted to lighten the mood and read a musician’s autobiography. I’ve been a fan of the Police since Kindergarten (although, to be honest, when another kid first asked me if I liked The Police, I answered, “Of course. I like the Police; I like firemen; I like construction workers. We can pretend to be any of those when we play!”). Plus, I got to say hello to Stewart Copeland once when he was watching a concert by Trey Anastasio at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in the early 2000s.
Pirate Latitudes: A Novel
<link>
A fun read. Like Jurassic Park, it’s action packed! Plus, it’s pirates. OK, it’s like those vampire books, but clearly written for middle aged men on vacation.
Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World
<link>
So many interesting topics are explored by this book, all of it underlying a connection between the continent we live on and our identity as Americans in the United States of America.
“The New Jersey Turnpike once manifested liberation: the magical conquest of distance in the new automobile age. Now it bespeaks congestion and anxiety, as people’s lives are busier and tenser than ever — the traffic pileups lengthen, year by year. The American population has doubled, from 157.5 million to 320 million, in the course of the Turnpike’s life… The Turnpike is the visual expression of an American economy that has ripened, settled into a stout maturity, and, in terms of the country’s transportation infrastructure, is now in decline.”
“The roads and highways of America, with their energizing early morning talk at gas station convenience stores — alongside the array of chewing tobaccos and exotic coffee machines — represent a unified culture.”
This book was written before 2020, as clearly indicated by this passage:
“Barring a mass casualty attack, a war gone horribly wrong, a disease pandemic, or some other such thing, many Americans have too little concrete evidence of the dangers outside that those in Washington must grapple with on a daily basis.”
Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
<link>
A chilling summation of all of the treachery of the Trump era, and a warning for what might come next if nothing is done to address the rot that infested our Executive branch and spread through the other two branches. This book is a summation of all of the worst aspects of the four years of Trump’s presidency and his corrupt administration. I’m happy to be a constituent of Rep. Adam Schiff, and hope that we don’t see a repeat of the malfeasance he describes in this book.
