Good Books To Get Through The Heat

POLITICIANS, POLITICS MAKE INTERESTING READING; GRISHAM’S ‘CALICO JOE’ HAS ARKANSAS TIE

Scattershooting while wondering what ever happened to …” That’s the way legendary sports writer Blackie Sherrod would regularly begin his Sunday columns. So I’m scattershooting today and wondering what ever happened to summer.

Despite the oppressive heat, it has gone by very fast and I am a bit late with my semiannual rundown of signifi cant and/or interesting books I have been reading.

I’ll begin my literary scattershooting with the heftiest tome, Robert Caro’s “The Passage of Power,” the fourth volume in his monumental series on Lyndon Johnson, this one covering 1958-64.

Impressive as it is, the reader can be overwhelmed by the barrage of minute detail. Nonetheless, it is an extraordinary account of an extraordinary time, the Kennedy and Johnson years.

Another hefty volume is historian Douglas Brinkley’s “Cronkite,” a thorough biography of the CBS newsman considered “the most trusted man in America” during one of the most chaotic periods in our history.

As the CBS anchor when network news programs were widely watched, Cronkite was a leading agenda-setter during the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon years. Brinkley’s book covers Cronkite’s entire career, and though not entirely adulatory, it underlines Cronkite’s significant role, “the TVconscience of Cold War America and beyond.”

The final decades of the last century were marked by some tumultuous times but we also experienced major achievements and benefited from some able and committed public fi gures. I have previously mentioned Ira Shapiro’s “The Last Great Senate,” which focuses on the Senate of the 1960s and ’70s, a time when Congress worked to solve problems, not create them. That era provides a striking contrast to today’s Washington, the subject of “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks,” which analyzes how our constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism.

Authors Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, experienced and respected observers of the Washington scene, see Congress as more dysfunctional than at any time since the Civil War, characterized by ideological extremism andscorn for compromise and unpersuaded by facts.

Facts should inform the debate but are frequently ignored or manipulated, especially when it comes to the federal budget.

But here comes David Wessel, economics editor of the Wall Street Journal, and he actually has facts. His “Red Ink” is a valuable guide to the realities of taxes, spending and defi cits and knocks down many a myth.

Among the key points: our defense budget exceeds the combined budget of the next 17 highest; tax loopholes and breaks account for as much as the government collects in corporate and individual income taxes; fi ring every federal government employee wouldn’t saveenough even to cut the budget deficit in half.

Speaking of economics, the rise of China is among the most signifi cant developments of our time. James Fallows in “China Airborne” focuses on theexplosive growth of China’s aviation industry. In fact, the book is much more, a look at China’s effort to become a technologically advanced society. China faces signifi cant challenges, but Fallows sees China’s action and sense of can-do as “so diff erent from the political and economic paralysis of America’s age of constraint.”

Now, a quick turn to fi ction.

I knew that John Grisham had stepped away from his usual legal thrillers and written a baseball novel, “Calico Joe.” What I didn’t know was that the Calico name came from the fictional player’s hometown of Calico Rock, Ark., a reallife town on the White Riverand a favorite fi shing spot.

Grisham mixes real locations, teams and players into this fi ctional morality tale involving an astounding rookie hitter whose promising career is ended by a beanball. The story is told from the viewpointof the son of the irascible beanball pitcher and his efforts to bring his father and Calico Joe together.

Alan Furst is the master of the historical spy novel and his latest is “Mission to Paris,” part of his sequence of intriguing stories set in Europe just before and during World War II. This one involves the Nazis and a Hollywood star they want to exploit for propaganda purposes.

There’s still a little time for some late-summer reading. I have several more in my stack. And coming soon, Roy Reed’s “Beware of Limbo Dancers,” from the University of Arkansas Press, a correspondent’s adventures with the NewYork Times, a highly readable recollection and commentary on covering the news.

HOYT PURVIS IS A JOURNALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PROFESSOR.

Opinion, Pages 13 on 08/12/2012

Upcoming Events