Two Paths: America Divided or United - John Kasich

I was excited to vote for John Kasich in Tennessee's primary in 2016. By then it was mostly clear that Donald Trump had built a momentum which was tipping toward winning. But I'd heard Kasich's message in fits and starts during the debates and tuned into to Facebook Live feeds of his town halls. 

The reason he ended up getting my support is well flushed out in this book. A reiteration of his refusal to "take the low road to the highest office." And his insistence that nothing gets accomplished without buy in from both sides - a factor I think was crushed by GOP leadership (McConnell) during Obama's eight years as president - was something I've always thought about politics. Even politics in Washington. 

As new media sources have become more and more partisan (even delving into outright lies) it seems impossible to have rational discourse these days. And the problem seems to have gotten worse over the general election and now through the first months of Donald Trump's presidency. But these pages, this book reiterates what we already know. It doesn't have to be this way. Nuance and open mindedness take effort and time. But isn't our country worth it? 

I know after the general election I took a hard look at where I was receiving my news sources and tried to take an extra second to let my initial reaction to news headlines become tempered by a second or third run through to see if the meat of the article really jibed with the headline. You'd be surprised (or maybe not surprised) to learn that a lot of times it doesn't. 

I was struck by Kasich's recounting of a townhall where a gentleman asked Kasich what he intended to do to fix the opioid epidemic, and Kasich turned that right back and asked the man what he was doing to fix it. It's an honest question. On November 8, I had a tear filled conversation with a good friend about how I clearly wasn't doing enough to make my world, heck my neighborhood, into the place I wanted to live. 

While sometimes, most of the time, I live at the base level described by Kasich in this book, in those moments where I go higher I try to keep my November 8 lessons in mind. What am I doing to make my community better? And that usually involves putting down the smart phone and really trying to connect with people, even to smile and say hello, thank you and please. Connecting to people, just like Kasich did on the campaign trail. 

Thanks John Kasich for such a thoughtful analysis and a good example.

4/5 Stars. 

Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow

Wow. Staggering. This book is a staggering feat of research in both depth and breadth. An exhaustive study into the mind and life of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States, the ten-dollar founding father. 

I'm fairly Hamilton obsessed and will be seeing the musical by the same name on Friday at the Richard Rogers Theater in the "greatest city in the world" New York City. To say I could not be more excited is a literal statement - by the time Friday comes I will likely be visibly vibrating with excitement. In my usual fashion, once I'm hooked, I basically have to ride the obsession train until its reached its final destination, or I'm distracted and wander off to a different connection. Lucky for me, this particular obsession involves lots of singing to myself in my car and watching videos on YouTube.



Did I mention that I'm seeing the show on Friday?! This will probably be the last time my husband grants me Valentine's Day carte blanche to purchase tickets to something.

Lately, my Hamilton game has been tight. I recently annotated a lyric on genius.com (you can find that here and also upvote it because that Little Mermaid reference is on point) and I've been to the end of YouTube watching SadSadConversation videos of Lin Manuel Miranda (click here). I also became the recent recipient of a gift of Dueling Shots (only take the Burr one if you want to shoot first). 

Anyway, in my desire to spread my obsession beyond the arts and into actual real academic territory, I started reading the book that inspired it all. It's not really casual summertime fair, and the fact that LMM read it on his honeymoon is puzzling and amusing all at the same time. But that said, this was no hard history slog. Chernow seemed to know just the right amount of minutiae to get into in his storytelling. He drew on sources contemporary or near-contemporary to the events so there wasn't any guesswork or editorializing. Where inferences could be made, they were made. But each fact, each segment of Hamilton's life described in the book was in furtherance of the portrait of the character Chernow was painting of Hamilton. 

There were no excess facts that meant nothing or were zero value-added. Chernow could easily have included details upon details of the massive documents Hamilton produced creating the first National Bank but that wasn't necessary for the story and really would have bogged the biography down to the point where the facts would have exceeded my curiosity. 

A. Ham. Damn!

I'm so thrilled that the success of the musical is shedding light on this eminently fascinating founding father. A boy who grew up from illegitimate parentage in the Caribbean, arrived as a teenager in America and, largely self-educated, relied on his bravery in battle and his prowess in writing to rise to the most inner circles of government. 

At times tragic and sad (especially towards the end), Hamilton is a study in hard work, brilliance, excess, bravado... so many things. If you weren't aware that Hamilton was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr (spoiler alert - you clearly have never seen the famous Got Milk? commercial), you are probably also likely unaware that his son died two years prior in a duel on the same dueling grounds. Again, tragic.

Phillip Hamilton. Okay, I get it Phillip, I see you. "God, you're a fox." 

Painfully flawed, and utterly human, Hamilton fought both his parentage and politics to put forth his vision of what he believed was best for the country. It goes without saying that Aaron Burr does not come out so well in this telling, but more surprising was the really detailed ways in which Thomas Jefferson was a total A-hole (despite my ardent love for Daveed Diggs who plays the character in the show). 

Image credit here.

I really enjoyed reading what otherwise could have been a stale bloated story of a financial genius. I will certainly read Chernow's earlier, and I'm sure just as masterfully pieced, biography of Washington.

5/5 Stars.