Books, books, books

People tell me vacations are good, but I tried to take one and it didn’t go well. The plan was to take Amtrak down to Virginia, bring my bike, and hang out in rural Virginia with a friend for a week doing lots of biking and hiking. Instead, I got Covid on my second day. I didn’t get to ride my bike once. And for reasons that aren’t worth getting into, my bike is still in Virginia. My conclusion from this experience is vacations are bad and I’m never going on one again.

But books, books are good. I have had a lot of time to read. And it’s been a while since I provided a books update/recommendations. So let’s dive in.

A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, by Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein

This is a strong but oddly constructed book. The book is at its best when it’s showing how Clinton’s proposed reforms on things like health care got neutered. It is less compelling when all of a sudden we’re knee deep in, like, arcane details of international trade negotiations for unspecified reasons. But for anyone who, like me, feels like the Clinton presidency is a blind spot on their historical radar, it’s well worth a read. I’m not sure how much it has to offer for people who were alive and paid attention at the time.

The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 by Cecil Woodham-Smith and A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland by Christine Kinealy

I read these because I realized I knew basically nothing about the potato famine, which is one of history’s greatest examples of bureaucratic failure, a particular fetish of mine.

Upon completing the book, I sent the following email to Professor Kinealy:

I’m writing with a question that, in the grand scheme of things, is not that important, but has perplexed me. In your work and others, I see the statistic that the average Irish adult male ate 14 pounds of potatoes a day pre-famine. This statistic is widely reported and used. The first time I read it, I thought wow, that’s a lot of potatoes! The second time I read it I thought, wait, that is a lot of potatoes. And the third time I read it I thought, wait a minute, exactly how many potatoes is that? Next time I went to the store, I made a note of how many potatoes that would be. It’s something like 60-70 full-size russet potatoes! I even decided to make a few baked potatoes for dinner to see how many I could eat. The answer was three.

So, this got me wondering: Where does this statistic come from? How reliable is it? Because it is one of those statistics that seems to be generally accepted in the field but as an outsider is, quite literally, unbelievable to me.

If you have any insight into this statistic that could offer any clarity, or if you just want to point me to existing literature that could help answer this question for me, I would be tremendously appreciative.

I did not receive a reply.

Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond

From the guy who brought you Evicted, a genuinely great book, this is more like a pamphlet you can give to your relative who has lived in a gated community for their entire adult life and never spoken to a poor person. That may sound like an insult to the book but it’s really an insult to America.

From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America, by Beth Bailey

I’m a sucker for works where professors take an aspect of daily life super seriously as a subject of historical study and write it up in a way anyone can read and learn from. So I loved this book. Dating has always been a giant pain in the ass, but the ways in which it used to be a pain in the ass were so much more interesting than the ways it is now.

Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest, by Andrew Needham

A fairly dense academic work but now on my list of must-read urbanist texts.

Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America, by David Skeel Jr.

American exceptionalism is usually overstated but I learned from this book that U.S. bankruptcy law is unlike bankruptcy law in any other country in the world. No other country gives the managers of the bankrupt firm as much control over the process or allow lawyers to dictate the outcomes rather than a government-appointed administrator like in the rest of the world. These combine to make U.S. bankruptcy law uniquely favorable for managers of companies with too much debt, which encourages companies to load up on debt because the “worst case” scenario of bankruptcy actually isn’t that bad for them. They get to keep their jobs!

Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando, by Richard Foglesong

An absolute must-read urbanist text. Also an absolute must-read economic development text. Also just a damn fun book.

Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area, by Henry Caudill

A beautifully-written book from the early 1960s about a fascinating and sad region. Mostly ages well, too. Ought to be much more prominently mentioned as a foundational environmentalist text along with Silent Spring.

The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler, by Kathryn Olmsted

I learned a lot from this book, not just on the named subject matter but also how the press worked in the 1930s. Also I now think of Elon Musk more as a wannabe descendant of the Press Baron than anything else.

That’s all from me today. If you have any upcoming vacations, I hope they go a lot better than mine did.

Cheers,

Aaron