My New Year’s resolution for the 21st year of the 21st century was to read 21 books. Here’s what I read, in order, and below, my top 5 of the year, with a word on why I enjoyed each one.
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Encounters with the Archdruid - John McPhee
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
The Giver - Lois lowry
Onigamiising - Linda LeGarde Grover
1984 - George Orwell
Freedom Cannot Rest: Ella Baker - Lisa Frederiksen Bohannon
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
I am Coyote - Various
Story of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
Dune - Frank Herbert
How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
Rising Tide: Mississippi Flood of 1927 - John Barry
Puppetmaster: J. Edgar Hoover - Richard Hack
Caffeine: How coffee and tea created the modern world - Michael Pollan
Guns, Germs, and Steel - Jared Diamond
Arkansas Travelers - Andrew J. Milson
Dispatches from Pluto - Richard Grant
This is Your Mind on Plants - Michael Pollan
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman
The Bully Pulpit - Doris Kearns Goodwin
My Top Five
1. Rising Tide: Mississippi Flood of 1927 - John Barry
I read this book because I am a River Guide on the Lower Mississippi River. But it’s my top book of the year because it made me realize I enjoy reading history. It details “The Great Flood” of 1927, the destruction of the water, and the disfunction of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) before and throughout the process. This was especially relevant to me because I was working for the Corps at the time. It felt like living history, many of the places mentioned I had seen from the canoe.
2. How to Change Your Mind - Michael Pollan
This was the first book in what became the year of Pollan. An amazingly clear-eyed and science-based look at psychedelics, their culture, their benefits, and why they are villified in popular culture. He discusses LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and others. I appreciate that Pollan does not come into this book with an agenda, or a need to convince the reader of his point of view. Rather, he approaches the subject with an open mind, and takes readers along on his research. Funnily enough, he’s not trying to change any minds, simply lay out the facts.
3. The Bully Pulpit - Doris Kearns Goodwin
This epic about the intertwined lives of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft was certainly the most dense and most challenging book of the year. But also the most rewarding. I learned so many things about the law, the precedents, and the history of the United States, all gleaned through a lens of following two individuals in a biographical style of writing. The premise of the book was that Teddy Roosevelt used his podium as president very effectively by being very close with journalists and utilizing “The Bully Pulpit”. Some things that blew my mind , not necessarily because of their grandiosity, but rather that I just didn’t know about them before reading this book are:
The direct election of senators wasn’t put into law until the 17th amendment in 1913. I had always taken it for granted as something we have forever done. In reality the practice is barely a century old! Before this, state cogresses simply appointed two people to serve as US senators.
William Howard Taft served as Chief Justice after he was President.
Teddy Roosevelt was only actually elected once, in 1904, but he served over 7 years as president after William McKinley was assasinated eary in his term.
Teddy Roosevelt ran for a ‘third term’ in 1912, establishing his own 3rd party to do so! The Progressive Party.
Roosevelt was rather a renegade with the office of president. He tended to ‘stretch’ the powers of the office and deal with the legal remifications later. He got much done in this way. But some of his proposals didn’t stick. Roosevelt invoked many more Executive Orders than was the norm at the time.
An illustrative example of this was the “Midnight Forests” saga. When congress was in the process of removing the Executive’s power to create national forests, in 1907. Roosevelt had 6 days to sign an agricultural bill into law which would drastically reduce his power in this way (a veto was off the table). He worked around the clock for the next 6 days to sign a flurry of executive orders establishing 16 million acres of new national forest reserves including Rainier, Cascade, and Bear Lodge. Only after he had thoroughly exercised his power, and diminished the power of the new bill, did he sign it into law.1
4. Story of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
This was the surprise of the year for me. A surprising blend of sci-fi and religion, with a distinctly modern spin on the matters discussed. I love books which take a theoretical question and frame an entire short story around it. This was a mix of Phillip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov and I enjoyed it thoroughly!
5. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
In classic Vonnegut fashion, I was questioning the absurdity of humanity, humankind, and arbitrary culture in the existential roller coaster.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Bully Pulpit, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013. Page 517.