Exit in Guyville is a brilliant debut album. Liz Phair put it out in 1993, while living in Chicago, and she followed it the next year with Whip-Smart, another strong effort. I remember buying both all those years ago and noticing her lyrics. They were pointed, thought-provoking, and carefully crafted. Phair struck me as something of a poet. Her lyrics stuck with me more than her melodies.
Over the years I lost track of Phair as a musician, though I did see her perform. She came out with a memoir in late 2019.
Horror Stories is Liz Phair’s wholly original, non-glamorous, non-rock star memoir, though she is most definitely a rock start. It is a unique sort of work, off-kilter and de-centered. It highlight’s Phair’s way of looking at the world and her life. Her perception, candor, and ability to look at things differently gives the work an unusual flavor. She tells us in the introduction that she wrote it “to articulate those experiences that people may not always want to recognize, but describe them in a way that makes them worth the effort.” It is worth the effort. Had Phair not fashioned a career as a musician, she could have given it a go as a writer.
Phair’s non-chronological observations range from childhood to where she is know. She notices things, big and small, and describes them with intensity and feeling: from a girl who passed out to a break-in at college to her thoughts while being made-up for a photo shoot. She brings care and honesty to these moments, explaining quite a bit about her, her privilege, talent, pains and suffering. More intentional than a flaneur, she is a smart woman with creative edges.
What Horror Story lacks is structure. If you give it a chance, Phair’s creativity and voice will carry you along.
Sarah Smarsh is a fifth-generation Kansan who grew up amid grinding poverty. She found a way to get an education and become a journalist. Her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a heartfelt and powerful account of her extended families and community. It is not a rags to riches story. It is not about luck or personal triumph, and it is not a political call for government action or this policy or that policy. Instead, Heartland is an empathetic and critical account of poverty, an up close look at the millions of ways that being poor affects one’s life.
In the trilogy of race, class and gender, Smarsh effectively carves out a perspective that offers a deep understanding of what it means to be poor, white, and a woman in the Midwest. She does it with care and an outstanding eye for detail. (It isn’t what mobile one home one lives in that matters – it is where the mobile home is parked) Readily acknowledging the problems of racism and the difficulties of class identity, Smersh situates herself and her family within larger structures of power and disadvantage. The book’s greatest strength is perhaps in its attention to how women work, work even more, and endure in extraordinarily difficult circumstances with limited options. She makes clear that for her and many of those around here, only one small mistake – a problem that could be readily overcome by someone in the middle class – could effectively derail a person’s life.
Smarsh attributes her education and career to some family stability, to good fortune, and to not becoming a teenage mother, something very common in her family and community. She explores the impacts of domestic violence, the cycle of power exercised by the powerless on those with even less agency. She also calls out the policies and practice that seem aimed at further marginalizing or simply punishing women. Some are known; others are less visible.
For example, women often move regularly out of necessity or fear. Smarsh’s maternal grandmother, Betty, moved constantly. When Betty found a good and reliable match in her seventh husband, Arnie, they were able to keep a farm. The farm, a very modest place, was an anchor, a haven, in Smarsh’s childhood. But like many other family farms that barely make enough, the farm eventually was lost when Arnie died. Just about everyone is working hard, but financial stability is elusive. Rural life in Kansas is tough and unforgiving. Nearby cities, Wichita and Topeka, are not easy, either.
Smarsh mixes government policies and big picture events with local histories. Politics is part of the climate. It is present, it has an impact, and it seems as though it cannot be changed. Smarsh clearly wants to see opportunities and at least some semblance of economic and social justice for many, but that’s not the thrust of her book.
Instead, what is haunting throughout the narrative is the everyday heroism of her kith and kin. Yes, they are flawed and yes, they do not always make the optimal choices. But they often make understandable choices. They are mostly good people and a few are really outstanding – loving, caring and deserving of much more of the good life. They struggle and work hard. Smarsh paints their stories with care and without romanticism. It’s an effective and moving memoir.
Heartland is very easy to read. It’s well written, really beautifully crafted. It is also difficult to digest. The unfairness is raw and uncomfortable, especially in a nation that has so much. If you give Heartland deep consideration, it will haunt you.
Good journalism is about telling stories. Peter Lovenheim is a good journalist and he knows how to tell a story.
Lovenheim grew up in Rochester, NY. He traveled, married, began a career, and decided to raise a family back in his home town. He and his wife purchased his childhood house from his parents, giving Lovenheim an unusual perspective on his old neighborhood. As Lovenheim’s marriage was unraveling, a tragedy took place just a few doors away. A physician murdered his physician wife and then turned the gun on himself. The murder-suicide left two orphaned children and the neighborhood in a state of shock. No one in the neighborhood, an upper-middle class enclave with a good reputation, really knew the family.
Most in the neighborhood offered help, gossiped, and moved on with their lives. Lovenheim dug deeper, driven by curiosity, his loss of sense of community, and his personal issues. He wondered if engaged neighbors might have prevented the violence. He wondered, too, who his neighbors were and if they shared his worry about isolation. Were they really all strangers to each another? A year later, Lovenheim developed a plan to learn more about his neighbors and more about his community. The result was a well-received 2010 book, In The Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at at Time.
Lovenheim reached out and found some neighbors who let him sleep in their homes, who shared their day-to-day with him, who brought him to events. He ate breakfasts with his neighbors, rode with the newspaper delivery man, and visited people whenever and where ever he could. He made a few real connections, some true friendships. He interviewed the family of the slain couple. He also was unable to forge much of a relationship many who lived on the street. Lovenheim’s genuine curiosity about his neighbors and their lives makes for interesting reading. He tells a story of a neighborhood and the diversity of its people. What might initially look like a homogeneous upper-middle class community turned out to be something significantly more dynamic and heterogeneous.
Lovenheim also wrote about his life and his search for connection and meaning. Careful not to draw many broad conclusions from his experience, he also knows that his search is part of a bigger issue for many of us. In the Neighborhood is not a rigorous study but it aligns with broader work about contemporary society. Many of us feel isolated. However, if we seek companionship, it is possible to reach out and connect with others. We can build bridges and help each other out. It takes initiative and courage, but it is not impossible. And that when we do, we feel better about ourselves and our communities.
In the Neighborhood is a thought provoking book. Lovenheim certainly has me thinking about my neighbors, and my community, in different ways. No immediate plans for sleepovers, though.
The border between Mexico and the United States has been a cruel space for many decades. The pull northward for opportunity is enticing, but the journey can be deadly, especially for undocumented immigrants. In 2001, twenty-six such Mexicans attempted the crossing. They had the great misfortune to have the wrong guides at the wrong time who chose the wrong path. Fourteen of them died of the terrible heat of the desert.
Luis Alberto Urrea, an award-winning author and professor of English at the University of Illinois Chicago, learned about the tragedy in 2004. He decided to investigate. Urrea’s background informed his approach to the project. His father is Hispanic, his mother Anglo, and he grew up in San Diego, where the border is a significant presence. He researched the story thoroughly, talking with as many of the participants as he could, from immigrants to border patrol agents. The result, The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, is a gripping and harrowing account of the event. Also an examination of the border and the many people who live and work around it, the book became a best-seller, a Pulitzer prize finalist, and the recipient of many awards. The book is regularly taught and read today.
The Devil’s Highway is lyrically written. Urrea’s prose is dramatic and compelling. The people in the book are described with compassion and understanding. There are no cartoon villains – even the coyotes who led the immigrants to their death are treated with empathy. Unfortunately, there are also no heroes who were able to erase the suffering or to stop future tragedies. The broader situation, the gross inequity, and poor policy, practice and culture doomed these immigrants – and many more before and after. It’s a haunting book.
I wish that I could say that things are better now at the border. Clearly, they are not. Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway remains as relevant as ever. It’s a difficult story and an amazingly good read.
Eboo Patel is a champion of religious diversity and interfaith cooperation. A Chicago based organizer and author, he founded the Interfaith Youth Core and advised President Obama on faith based neighborhood partnerships. In Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversity and the American Promise, Patel makes a compelling case for the enduring importance of religious diversity to our nation’s values. The book is an extension of the mission of the Interfaith Youth Core, which aims to develop ongoing critical dialogues about faith to America’s colleges through participation of religious leaders.
Patel brings his personal history as a Muslim-American to Out of Many Faiths. He notes local and national prejudice, but remains resolutely optimistic about the ways that America can and has built positive religious identities. Of particular interest is Patel’s reading of the creation of “Judeo-Christian” as a national theme. It is a concept that simply did not exist in the early part of the 1900s and was developed to meet the needs of a particular time.
Out of Many Faiths is not a work of history, religious scholarship or policy. Instead, it is a few lengthy essays with a common theme, followed by commentary by three academics. Patel is strongest when weaving together philosophical and values-based arguments. He uses contemporary events, such as the attempt by American Muslims to build the Cordoba House by the World Trade Center, as a means of exploring tolerance and intolerance. He charts, at high level, the rise and use of Islamophobia as a political tool. The chapter on the development of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago explains how change can take place, ground up. Patel also gives voice to different issues and perspectives within the Muslim-American community.
Out of Many Faiths is the kind of book that might be assigned in undergraduate religious studies course. It is accessible, inclusive and moderately left of center. Patel’s book gives substance and direction to those who are interested in fostering interfaith work.
New York City, Gotham, a space of opportunity or threat? Or perhaps both?
Brian Tochterman is an associate professor of sustainable community development at Northland College and the author of The Dying City: Postwar New York and the Ideology of Fear. The book is a reworking of his University of Minnesota history dissertation, but it’s not traditional history. This is cultural and intellectual history, with little economics, demographics, political studies – and few “great men.” Tochterman, who is from the midwest, has a provocative perspective on New York City in the latter part of the twentieth century.
The Dying City spans from the end of World War II until the early 1980s. Tochterman posits two discourses about the city: cosmopolis, as exemplified by the optimism of a young E.B. White, and necropolis, as defined by Mickey Spillane. These visions and narratives competed as ways to best understand and define a rapidly changing New York City. White presented the city as open, young, growing and inclusive; Spillane represented the city as dangerous, a frontier with little order calling out for violence and strong men. From these two constructs, Tochterman spins a web of voices, actions, debates and decisions to explain the Big Apple.
The book draws from literature, film, popular culture, criticism, music and media. It’s not comprehensive. Instead, Tochterman’s methodology is more opportunitistic and impressionistic. He crafts arguments of contrast: White and Spillane, Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, growth versus destruction. Running throughout the narrative is a heightened appreciation of how narratives of fear framed debates, decisions and cultural production. The books makes one appreciate just how pervasive fear is as a justification, a motivator, and as a means of control.
One of the challenges of cultural history is inclusivity. Most people do not get published, do not produce “culture” and their voices and influence may not be recognized. I think that the issue especially difficult in framing what happens in the city, where interactions between people and groups of people spark all manner of creativity. New York City has been a tremendous engine for cultural production. Tochterman’s construct tends to focus on the work made by white and educated professionals. There’s nothing wrong with that focus, but is it the most representative? He could have done something similar but given priority to the origin and growth of hip hop and rap, for example. Who matters more: E. B. White or Grandmaster Flash? There are no easy answers – just different framings.
One could claim, using a more traditional history lens, that there are more “accurate” ways of understanding the sweeping changes New York City faced after World War II. One could pay close attention to demographics, to changes in the economy, to broad political trends, and the general shift of influence to the west and the south. However, that is a different kind of book. Tochterman has crafted something thoughtful in The Dying City. It’s creative and well done. And while it may be a bit too dissertation-like for some, I found it very interesting.
Why does America imprison so many people? And why are those who lives are all tangled up in our criminal justice system so often people of color? It is a question that drove James Forman, Jr., to write an extraordinarily powerful and important book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. The book has received a great deal of well-deserved attention. Forman, a professor of law at Yale, makes it clear that this issue is central to understanding crime and justice in the US.
Forman, a former public defender, opens the narrative recounting the sentencing of a young black man in a Washington, D.C., all-black courtroom. He is angered, frustrated, upset, and wonders: “How did a majority-black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its own?” The book is a well-researched attempt to answer that question, looking at politics, economics, and social history. Forman readily acknowledges the role of whites to promote mass incarceration, but his focus here is on black leadership and black communities. Doing so, he highlights extremely important issues of class. In 2000, “the lifetime risk of incarceration for black high school dropouts was ten times higher than it was for African Americans who attended college.”
The book is organized into two parts: origins and consequences. Forman’s personal experience as an attorney, a public defender, and community member buttresses his research throughout. He starts with the 1970s and the debate over marijuana laws and their enforcement. Within the Washington, DC community, David Clark, an African-American lawyer, successfully ran for city council with an aim to end prison as a potential penalty for marijuana possession. Then, as now, a drug possession conviction could have negative consequences for someone’s entire life.
Moderate as Clarke’s proposal was, it struggled to gain acceptance. Many political leaders in the black community worried about heroin and believed that any weakening of anti-drug laws would cause further problems. The bill died, foundering on the shores of moral hazard.
At the same time, a growing crime epidemic in DC within the black community outraged law-abiding citizens. With increasing calls for “getting tough on crime,” gun control legislation passed in the District. Dissenters unsuccessfully argued that it would weaken the right to defend one’s self. The result were stiffer penalties for gun possession without systemic efforts to address the causes of crime.
Forman’s chapter on the integration of color into the police is worthy of lengthy analysis on its own. He notes that “the case for black police has always been premised on the unquestioned assumption of racial solidarity between black citizens and black officers.” As it turns out, that assumption was and remains incorrect.
Consequences picks up with changes in sentencing in the 1980s. Forman explains how many in the black community in DC were let down by police and the courts – and how that frustration led to calls for longer and harsher sentences. Drug dealers were excoriated by black leaders. Mandatory sentencing was championed by many who distrusted the system. In 1982, Initiative 9 was overwhelming passed in an District-wide election. It called for a minimum mandatory sentence of five years for committing a violent felony with a gun for the first offense and ten years for all further offenses. Selling heroin netted a four-year minimum sentence, with two years for cocaine and one year for large amounts of marijuana. And again, not much was done to address underlying causes or treatment.
A serious problem that became a media frenzy, the epidemic of crack cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to greater gang violence and even more dramatic responses. Political leaders – often African American – hyped anti-crime measures and and increased policing presence. Forman rightly calls this the rise of “warrior policing.” In addition to more police sweeps, more violence, assets were seized. The toll on the black community was devastating, both from crack and the response to it.
The book concludes with implementation of “stop and frisk” and an epilogue that summarizes how we got to mass incarceration: “the result of a series of small decisions, made over time, by a disparate group of actors.” It is rare to see so many efforts over so long to address problems with policy choices that have not done what many have hoped. Forman argues that if we are to do something about these issues and the resulting institutional race and class problems, we will have to recognize the failures and start with small steps. In other words, we have take it apart the same way it was built, with securing local political support and greater awareness. While this may not be optimistic conclusion, it is practical – and it makes sense.
Michael Ruhlman is a prolific author, writing mostly about food. He does cookbooks, recipes, reviews, books, blogs, articles and more. He is always publishing, always getting prose out, and there is a good chance that you may have come across his work in a newspaper or magazine. It’s easy to understand why. Ruhlman writes as a friend, an informed colleague, and as the man next door (who loves to eat well).
Ruhlman’s recently published book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of American Food, is a non-fiction account of the supermarket, written with a focus on a small family run chain, Heinen’s, in Cleveland. It is not a comprehensive account of the supermarket industry. Nor is it a business history, or what is all to common in the books about food, a polemic on what we should or should not be eating. Instead, Ruhlman is after information – about the store, they buying and selling of food, about his father, and about himself. To the extent that one can write a personal book about a grocery store, Ruhlman has done it. The book features some very interesting genre-crossing observations.
Ruhlman’s late father figures prominently. He loved to shop, to cook, and to feed people. Prominently among Ruhlman’s childhood memories are shopping with his father at Heinen’s, buying food for a week’s worth of meals, and large get togethers with family, friends and neighbors. The shopping trip represented family, prosperity, choice and optimism. Ruhlman senior was not alone in his love of the supermarket. We learn that for many, particularly of a certain generation, the boomers, fondness for grocery store trips and opulence is all too common.
Over the years, Ruhlman’s parents divorced, ending the shopping trips and the large meals. Ruhlman, too, is writing while experiencing a divorce and traumatic change. He grew up in Cleveland, but the book jacket notes that he now divides his time between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island. One does not have to be much of a detective to appreciate that this is a tangled book. Ruhlman’s interest in Heinen’s grocery is deeply tied to a host of memories, values and meaning. The knot of issues enhance, constrain and complicate the book.
The book is wide-ranging, moving from popular culture to what grocery store owners think and do, then back again. Ruhlman walks us around the supermarket, examining the differences in produce, dairy, delis and processed foods. There is a reason that milk is usually located at the back of a supermarket – and it’s more to do with a place for coolers than a marketing trick. The changes in how groceries operate and what they sell has been tremendous. More changes are anticipated, too. It’s a very complicated business with many moving parts and small profit margins.
The book concludes with the location of a Heinen’s in a restored downtown Cleveland building. It’s an expensive project. It also represents a new direction for the city and people’s expectation for shopping and food. Ruhlman is both elated by the new space and also saddened by loss.
Remember The Clash’s Lost in the Supermarket? Great track on one of the best albums of all time, London Calling, written all the way back in 1979. The song ran repeatedly through my head when reading Michael Ruhlman’s Grocery. Sometimes shopping is not really about shopping.
I’m all lost in the supermarket I can never shop happily I came in here for that special offer A guaranteed personality
Seth Godin is a very popular marketer, author, businessman and promoter. His latest book, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See, is a marketer’s delight. It’s lovely to look at, easy to hold in one hand, and a doorway to the larger world of Seth Godin. He’s got a blog, a website, a system and an Amazon landing page featuring his many books. He tweets and is on Facebook. Seth is on Instagram and on LinkedIn. He’s a serial entrepreneur, starting several businesses as well as training. Godin is an influencer, a person riding and trying to direct the electronic wave.
What’s the question I heard from an advertising person decades ago: “How much sizzle and how much steak?” It’s a good to consider because it’s difficult to tell just how effective Seth’s wisdom – usually dispensed in bite-sized nuggets – really is. It’s easy to read and digest, that’s for sure. But would it work for your business, your idea, your brand?
Godin’s big-picture message is straightforward. If you want to connect with an audience, you have to believe in what you’re doing, build trust, and do/offer something that helps the audience. He is a believer in really understanding stories: stories that we tell ourselves and stories that we tell each other. Godin frames marketing as about change – and stories can change behavior. He cautions readers not to try to change everyone but instead to focus on smaller groups. With the right size and the right story, one can build trust and a reliable relationship. Work on a segment, a population, Godin advises, that you can get to know and help. It makes sense.
Missing from the book are studies, data, sources or any of the traditional trappings of a scholarly business book. It is neither monograph nor textbook. This is about enthusiasm, aphorisms, personal stories and accessible wisdom. He’s a marketing cheerleader with refreshingly ethical take on the business and how to market.
It is easy to see how Seth Godin and his message would inspire so many. The challenge, I wager, is in the commitment and the follow through. Perhaps a New Year’s resolution?
My education as an historian carried with it appreciation for – as well as distrust of – political science. When historians congregate, political science often gets short shrift. The complaints are more than just sniffing at the math, too (“Formulas don’t explain history!). Political science often looks at political behavior through a lens that historians have difficulty understanding or appreciating. At the same time, many of us trained in history often cast a covetous glance at the political scientists. They are great at testing the counterfactual, at looking across time and location, and at advancing very useful arguments. Whether we admit it or not, we often borrow from them.
Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels is the kind of political science that historians admire. It is clearly written, informative, and a powerful corrective to those in the field that believe that political science has all the answers (not that many do . . . ). Also, Achen and Bartels do an outstanding job with their history. Their examples are well-researched and well written.
The book explains common theories about how democracies work and how voters are supposed to make decisions. Are they making rational choices? Or using heuristics? Or perhaps they engage in retrospective voting, rewarding or punishing candidates and parties for actions? Theorists have been outlining these and other theories for decades. Unfortunately, when Achen and Bartels look at American history and the data, none of these theories hold up. They don’t really explain anything particularly well. It is a problem for political science and for all of us, today, thinking about how our democratic institutions work.
It turns out the social identity and party identity, with all its irrationality, best explains voter behavior. The arguments set out in the book are solid and difficult to refute. Voters actually change their priorities in order to align their thinking with that of their party. When push comes to shove, democracies rest on less than rational, but organized, group behavior. More telling still, when parties are relatively balanced, election results can depend upon lies, distortions and plain bad information. Democracy might be the best worst system of government. Achen and Bartels are very effective in showing just how “worst” it can be.
It’s sobering. The authors are able to cover a great deal of ground, theoretical and historical, quickly and convincingly. The lack of rationality is also something that most political historians realize when digging deep into American history. It may not be news – but it is extremely important. And for those of us who are paying close attention to recent politics, Democracy for Realists is a very helpful addition to the bookcase. It explains quite a lot.
