ASTRONAUT!: A Novel, a metaphor for escape from here-and-now that makes it sound so...frictionless

ASTRONAUT!: A Novel
OANA ARISTIDE
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.99 hardcover, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending July 28, 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A tense, darkly funny, and politically resonant novel of life under authoritarian rule.

Romania, 1989, the twilight of Ceausescu’s dictatorship: A time when every neighbor, every friend, every family member may be an informant for the regime. When news emerges of a man-eating bear terrorizing the country, two bright lives collide. Constantin, an idealistic police detective—prone to daydreaming and scribbling fairytales in his notebook for his four-year-old son—is tasked with solving the string of mysterious deaths. Lia, a rebellious, inquisitive schoolgirl pining for more color in her life, is unwittingly drawn into an elderly neighbor’s secret plot against the regime. The decisions they make amid the constant gray skies and fear of speaking out will have sweeping consequences—for themselves, for their families, and for their country. Astronaut! is a chilling, suspenseful, and resonant tale by a dynamic new novelist.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What a claustrophobic read. At eery turn there's a wall, at every corner there's an uneasy dread of what you'll find when you turn it. Even the fun of a kid wanting to give Mama a special birthday gift...disastrous, unmitigatable harm follows.

I was uneasy, I was unnerved, and I was totally hooked. I stopped feeling like I was reading a novel pretty quickly. I winced, chuckled hollowly, got staring prickles, I felt as much a part of the cold greyness of 1989 Romania as a guy in the sunshiney summer of 2026 New York City is likely ever to feel. Lia is in the midst of things she does not realize are seismic shifts. Her sense of self-preservation hasn't taught her what safety is yet. She barrels into danger as she searches for the vibrancy and color of her home country. Honestly I wondered where she might've seen that, the eternal dankness and foggy grey of 1989 Romania was so pervasive.

Then we shift our story attention to detective Constantin, tasked with solving a brutal death, one that lends itself in its mindless ferocity of commission to the spurious explanation of a bear attack.

One that just happens to take place near the hunting party at Dictator Ceaușescu's hunting lodge.

These narratives don't appear to be connected at first. Constantin escapes from the Orwellian "investigation" he's performing to instructions from...well...Securitate (the secret police)? who can be sure, they're very secretive these secret police never doing anything directly that Constantin's seen just by innuendo and "they said"-style rumors. He writes fairy tales for his much-loved son Sandu. The fairy tales are so completely adorable and so trenchant that I want illustrated books of them!

Sandu's story-lessons in how things really are in the world are all so trenchant and targeted that they become our primary means to follow the backgrounded collapse of the Ceaușescu regime. It's a clever and enjoyable way to tell me a larger story behind the story I'm paying attention to. More violent vicious deaths occur that Constantin feels he needs to escape from absorbing, as he turns to creating stories about an astronaut (not the Party-approved term "cosmonaut" please note) to make up in his mind for the nonsensical stories titillating the people about bear attacks with escape from Earth's surly bonds entirely.

Lia's absolute unwillingness to dim down her search for color, for life, in her country and her school leads her into a dangerous association with a real honest to goodness rebel. It's something she puts her whole heart into, this small role in a small eddy of the current of rebellion in 1989 Romania, leading her into a dangerous conflict with a Party official's daughter in her school. She is clearly, obviously the winner of a contest that girl was supposed to win..."he's at the top of the page, the bravest explorer of all. She gives him a light blue helmet and matching spacesuit, and he's smiling through the visor. Why the smile? Because he has just realized that the view from the outer space is like being deep inside a Christmas tree, and he is never afraid. Lia smiles back at him. She names the drawing, flattening the black letters across the surface of the sun, 'Astronaut!'"...whose prize was a face-to-face with Ceaușescu himself. Special classes, intensive training, the usual efforts to make sure no tinge of reality can intrude on the leader's dreamworld.

Lia and her family figure in Constantin's investigation...the part without the bear story in it...and as Lia's meeting with Ceaușescu draws closer, more and more strands of story logic bind them together. We discover Constantin's dark, painful secret; we watch Lia as she draws closer to murderous scum without feeling the appropriate level of fear; we are *frantic* to save whomever we can from the explosion looming.

It's a novel with a satisfying resolution. I will say nothing of the ending.

"We've grown numb. It's like this, kid: in wars, you have to face guns and cannons and soldiers, and the situation is somehow so obviously serious that we mobilise our courage, and our will, and so on. But here, we are supposed to be heroic at our kitchen table, at the factory, on the bus. We are supposed to risk terrible consequences just for saying some perfectly commonsense thing. It never seems worth it."

{Lia}'s pretending to listen, but really she's thinking how lucky she is Comrade Mantea is her friend. He talks complete gibberish but it never feels like he's lying to her. He's nice to her, and he has ideas, not only about grown-up problems but about everyone's problems.

Don't kid yourself: Oana Aristide will show you a mirror, she will shine a harsh raking light on you while she does it.

But she sees everyone's problems in the unflattering shadows.

CITIZENSHIP: NOTES ON AN AMERICAN MYTH, Daisy Hernández reflects on a cultural sea-change

CITIZENSHIP: NOTES ON AN AMERICAN MYTH
DAISY HERNÁNDEZ
The Hogarth Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A provocative, personal, blazingly intelligent examination of one of the most vexing questions facing the United States today—who is, and should be, a citizen?

“How did ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ turn upside down to where we are today? Everyone needs to read this book, citizens and non-citizens alike. Brilliant!”—Sandra Cisneros

"The most comprehensive book on citizenship/immigration I've ever read. A must-read!"—Javier Zamora

In this one-of-a-kind book, Daisy Hernández fiercely interrogates one of the most complicated subjects of contemporary life and citizenship. Braiding memoir, history, and cultural criticism, she exposes the truths and lies of how we define ourselves as a country and a people. Turning to her own family's stories—her mother arrived from Colombia, her father a political refugee from Castro's Cuba—Hernández shows how the very idea of citizenship is a myth and part of the stories we tell ourselves about the American soul and psyche.

Reframing our understanding of what it means to be an American, Notes on Citizenship is an urgent and necessary account of the laws, customs, and language we use to include and exclude, especially those who come from Latin America. With her scholar's mind and memoirist's gift for narrative, Hernández weaves a story both personal and national, while reckoning with our country's ongoing debate about who belongs and providing fresh ways of thinking about citizenship. At once bracing, fearless, and tender, Notes on Citizenship is a powerful portrait of one family's experiences in the borderlands of citizenship and an honest illumination of the country in which we live.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on the deeply contentious topic of ending the age-old concept of "birthright citizenship," very much in the current regime's sights for elimination. Based on the Justice's tenor of questioning the Justice Department's counsel, I don't feel the regime can count on the ruling being in their favor.
This collection of essays has as its core a desire to think through how citizenship has changed in practice. The US Constitution defines citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment, and it's pretty unambiguous about it. (That same amendment gifted us with the legal horror of corporate personhood.) It's been a longstanding desire of racist, fascist scum to make the idea of citizenship into a conditional grant...which, if anyone though about it for a single minute, would mean there's no citizenship for anyone at all.

Author Daisy thinks through the various ramifications of this terrible idea. Once a right is "granted" it can be taken away. That is why every time a law is passed that limits a right, like birthright citizenship, you...you personally...are at risk of losing whatever right it is. If this kakistocracy has not taught you the lesson that believing "they wouldn't/can't do that" is a dangerous illusion, read Author Daisy's essays. They can, and they will, and even court orders will not force the scum to cease and desist from illegal, immoral behavior. Look how many losses in court have been dealt the regime; yet no sign of meaningful compliance, compliance with the *intent* of the orders and laws, exists. This is, in other words, a coup against the form of government we take for granted.

Read these essays, even though the collection feels thematically scattered, because each essay is very clearly argued, and makes excellent points. It is a slowly unfolding disaster but it is unfolding...it's time to pull your socks up and do the work of citizenship.

Follow Author Daisy's example.

FATEFUL HOURS: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, a political analysis of a difficult transition

FATEFUL HOURS: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic
VOLKER ULLRICH (tr. Jefferson Chase)
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times best-selling historian, the riveting story of the Weimar Republic—a fledgling democracy beset by chaos and extremism—and its dissolution into the Third Reich.

Democracies are fragile. Freedoms that seem secure can be lost. Few historical events illustrate this as vividly as the failure of the Weimar Republic. Germany’s first democracy endured for fourteen tumultuous years and culminated with the horrific rise of the Third Reich. As one commentator wrote in July 1933: Hitler had “won the game with little effort. . . . All he had to do was huff and puff—and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards.” But this tragedy was not inevitable.

In Fateful Hours, award-winning historian Volker Ullrich chronicles the captivating story of the Republic, capturing a nation and its people teetering on the abyss. Born from the ashes of the First World War, the fledgling democracy was saddled with debt and political instability from its beginning. In its early years, a relentless chain of crises—hyperinflation, foreign invasion, and upheaval from the right and left—shook the republic, only letting up during a brief period of stability in the 1920s. Social and cultural norms were upended. Political murder was the order of the day. Yet despite all the challenges, the Weimar Republic was not destined for its ignoble end.

Drawing on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other sources, Ullrich charts the many failed alternatives and missed opportunities that contributed to German democracy’s collapse. In an immersive style that takes us to the heart of political power, Ullrich argues that, right up until January 1933, history was open. There was no shortage of opportunities to stop the slide into fascism. Just as in the present, it is up to us whether democracy lives or dies.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is a complicated subject...how a democracy dies...and, as a result, a complex read. There were a lot of moving parts to the death of the Weimar Republic. It was not inevitable, a foregone conclusion; the economic disasters wrought by the vengeful Treaty of Versailles were even surmountable, as proved by Hjalmar Scacht; given the authority to control hyperinflation, he did so by staying outside the control of the politicians. The personalities, in other words, of the players in the government were largely to blame for that very government's demise.

A hearty share of the blame for the fall was on the Communist Party's plate. Their strong base of disaffected workers and sailors, reeling economically from the kaiser's stupid management of the economy in the war,was frittered away in insistence on Purity and perfect adherence to untested (and, it would turn out, unwise) Soviet policies. This resulted in an uncompromising, self-destructive inflexibility. Doom in politics is always inflexibility. Their rigidity and refusal to support a more center-left candidate led to Paul von Hindenburg, an old-line reactionary, being elected president in 1925. Quite simply, the destruction of the Weimar Republic was inevitable then. Right-wing ultranationalist parties had a friend in high office, one who refused to countenance the suppression of their terrorism.

Army veterans and the moneyed classes weren't innocent in the fall of the republic. Anger and hatred at the vicious Treaty of Versailles' immiseration of millions of ordinary Germans made a fertile breeding ground for paramilitaries, for well-funded but ineptly led coups against the government, and for the ultimate rise of Hitler and his National Socialist party. (You clocked that last word, right? The post-WWII US rebranded them as "Nazis" because can't have anything remotely resembling socialism getting attention.) The greedy classes were delighted to fund Hitler, in no small part because Hjalmar Schacht...the one banker who succeeded in reducing war reparations payments...was a hero among them and he said to. Sadly, all those "wise heads, leadership material" men wildly miscalculated their influence over Adolf and Co. They were never more than opportunistically interested in Hitler's plans. Rearming Germany was, to them, a way to make immense profits; the war that followed was suicidal on economic terms.

Democracy is fragile. It is always under attack from within by authoritarians, because they can make more money and get their sick fantasy high-control rocks off. The Nazi book-burnings are branded, in the US at least, as burnings of Jewish and dangerous books.

Jewish, for sure; the "dangerous" books, the ones that were "polluting German youth," were Magnus Hirschfeld's works in the Institute for Sexual Science. Weird how you were never taught that, isn't it. And isn't it just so coincidental that the current scum in power are ramping up the rhetoric against sexual and ethnic minorities. Book burning, before some annoying little twidgee says a word, looks a lot worse to people than banning, so they have learned some lessons...but the effect is the same.

A timely read. Not comfortable, not easy, but very very much a book for these times.

And the future, if we can claw one out of "Their" hands.

WINNING THE EARTHQUAKE How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress, recovering the life of a great American

WINNING THE EARTHQUAKE How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds to Become the First Woman in Congress
LORISSA RINEHART
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office.

“Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.” —President John F. Kennedy on Jeannette Rankin

Born on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to drive a tractor, ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But most of all, she knew how to talk to people, how to convince them of her vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her, in 1916, to become the first woman ever elected to the House of Representatives.

As her first act, Rankin introduced the legislation that would become the 19th Amendment. Throughout her two terms in 1916 and 1940, she continued to introduce and pass legislation benefitting unions, protecting workers, and increasing aid for children in poverty. In 1941, she stood tall as the sole anti-war voice in Congress during WWII, advocating for pacifism in the face of tragedy and stating that you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

A suffragist, feminist, peace activist, workers' rights advocate, progressive, and Republican, Rankin remained ever true to her beliefs—no matter the price she had to pay personally. Yet, despite the momentous steps she made for women in politics, overcoming the boys club of capitalists and career politicians who never wanted to see a woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin’s story has been largely forgotten. In Winning the Earthquake, Lorissa Rinehart deftly uncovers the compelling history behind this singular American hero, bringing her story back to life

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I was aware of Rankin as the lone voice against declaring war in 1941. My 1970s public school education in Austin taught me that fact in seventh grade; nothing positive was ever added to it in any class I ever took on History, on sociology, or any other discipline at any later stage of my education. This book, published fifty years after that initial mention of Rankin's name, is the first comprehensive biography of a very very important voice in US politics in the first half of the twentieth century. This proves a point Author Rinehart makes:

"Nowhere in her education or prolific reading had she learned that in 1848, three hundred women gathered in Seneca Falls to declare their sovereign right to the ballot. Nor had she heard that since then, women in every state of the nation had been fighting for their right to vote. To her even greater amazement, they had won it in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, all before the turn of the twentieth century. She and all American women seemed to have been purposefully denied knowledge of their own struggle for liberation."

My one cavil with this statement is the modifying presence of "seemed" since there is no better way to stop people from making change than to stop them from knowing about the changes that have already happened. If authoritarians do not want any changes either made again or expanded on, they simply erase the history that shows their way is not the only way from public discourse. Then the few places the awareness of the changes survives can be marginalized and shouted down.

Book banning is step one; book burning step two; reducing literacy overall is the final nail in the coffin the high-control society uses.

I was drawn in by the title of the book. It seemed so off-kilter, so self-evidently contradictory, that I wanted to know where it came from hence my desire to read a book about someone I knew nothing substantive about. It's from one of pacifist Rankin's well-known in her time sayings: "you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." Millennia of corroborative evidence has had no appreciable effect on war's prevalence.

I was impressed by the depth of Author Rinehart's scholarship. Her extensive notes and citations were all very enlightening and well-chosen from my layman's point of view. There are widely varying sources cited so this tells me how very much work it was to find all the factual crumbs she did. One major shock, though honestly it shouldn't've been, was that the representative from Montana was elected as a Republican. I'm so steeped in the post-LBJ empire of evil that is the modern GOP that I've lost sight of the entire progressive history of the Republicans. Go read about Robert La Follette and Teddy Roosevelt. Time was these were the progressive leaders, not the soulless evil bastards in the McConnell/Bush/Cheney ilk or the wild-eyed reactionary MAGAts.

How likely is the present base, let alone "leadership", of the party to embrace a pacifist follower of Gandhi, a campaigner for the abolition of the Electoral College, and vehement supporter of unions? Growing up in Montana in the 1880s (when their representatives were called "the gentlemen from Anaconda," the state's largest employer and main economic driver), Rankin recognized the evils of untrammeled capitalism. She emulated Jane Addams in her work for the betterment of ordinary folks. Rankin was, in short, the best kind of radical there is, a radical believer in people and their power to do good...when left to do it.

A role model for today who is finally getting her scholarly due, I hope the sudden awareness of Gen Z that things in the US do not have to be this way will lead some of them to discover this spirit-parent from our country's past.

THE 2nd THOM HARTMANN PAGE: The Hidden History of Big Brother in America; The Hidden History of Monopolies

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BIG BROTHER IN AMERICA: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.00 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: America's most popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann reveals how the government and corporate America misuse our personal data and shows how we can reclaim our privacy.

Most Americans are worried about how companies like Facebook invade their privacy and harvest their data, but many people don't fully understand the details of how their information is being adapted and misused. In this thought-provoking and accessible book, New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals exactly how the government and corporations are tracking our every online move and using our data to buy elections, employ social control, and score and monetize our lives.

Hartmann uses extensive, vivid examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on all aspects of our lives. Along with tracing the history of surveillance, he shows how we got to where we are today, how China—with its new Social Credit System—serves as a warning, and how we can and must avoid a similarly dystopian future.

By delving into the Constitutional right to privacy, Hartmann reminds us of our civil right and shows how we can restore it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not updated yet, I'll be very interested to see what Hartmann has to say about the extreme, upsetting effects of AI on the Body Politic.

While we are indeed starting to engage with the most important factor in this outdated screed against the Felonious Yam and his tech bro scum support/enablers, ie who's doing what with our deepest darkest secrets, it could really be much too late to do anything effective about it. Look at the *massive* data theft done by DOGE on behalf of Edolph Twitler. Why is no one in Congress screeching their fool lungs out about this?

Because, like Hartmann, they do not understand what the problem really is: Us. The userbase wants Big Data to store credit card numbers, passwords...16 billion of which were compromised on 18 June 2025 alone...so we don't have to think. Big Data will use its enormous database, its stunningly effective analytic software, and all the cash we've allowed it to pile up, to defeat any attempts to meaningfully deny it more and more and more data.

This is not to say we should not try. We should, starting right now.

Getting mad is the first stop on this train, so read this book and steam your way to Congress's inbox.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF MONOPOLIES: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream
THOM HARTMANN (foreword by Ralph Nader)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “This is the most important, dynamic book on the cancers of monopoly by giant corporations written in our generation.”—from the foreword by Ralph Nader

American monopolies dominate, control, and consume most of the energy of our entire economic system; they function the same as cancer does in a body, and, like cancer, they weaken our systems while threatening to crash the entire body economic. American monopolies have also seized massive political power and use it to maintain their obscene profits and CEO salaries while crushing small competitors.

But Thom Hartmann, America's #1 progressive radio host, shows we've broken the control of behemoths like these before, and we can do it again.

Hartmann takes us from the birth of America as a revolt against monopoly (remember the Boston Tea Party?), to the largely successful efforts of both Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and other like-minded leaders to restrain corporations' monopolistic urges, to the massive changes in the rules of business starting during the “Reagan Revolution” that have brought us to the cancer stage of capitalism.

He shows the damage monopolies have done to so many industries: agriculture, healthcare, the media, and more. Individuals have taken a hit as well: the average American family pays a $5,000 a year “monopoly tax” in the form of higher prices for everything from pharmaceuticals to airfare to household goods and food. But Hartmann also describes commonsense, historically rooted measures we can take—such as revitalizing antitrust regulation, taxing great wealth, and getting money out of politics—to pry control of our country from the tentacles of the monopolists.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: More finger-pointing and right-wing-bashing than even I, for whom those activities are recreations I savor, found excessive. Nonetheless, as a way to get at the root of a problem not at all new, not uniquely American, and not quickly resolvable, this little ammo pile is good.

I think most of y'all know much of this history but quite likely haven't put it into this context before. That makes it a good, if tendentious (by design!), read for anyone who has a single qualm about greed.

I hope you'll try to get your head around why your wallet is always flat, why politicians say we can never "afford" things other countries have had for decades, and what to do about it.

THE THOM HARTMANN PAGE: Unequal Protection; The Hidden History of American Oligarchy; The Hidden History of American Healthcare

UNEQUAL PROTECTION: How Corporations Became "People" and How You Can Fight Back
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$20.95 trade paper, presently backordered...wonder why...

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people?

Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite.

Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment—created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves—and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as "artificial persons." but in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.

As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value—growth and profit and any expense—a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders—Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike—envisioned for America.

It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: If I need to spell out why this book's subject, fifteen years on, is still relevant...nay, even moreso, please accept my congratulations for your recent recovery from the coma.

Citizens United v. FEC is one of the most direct causes of the horrible politiscape of 2025. It is an outgrowth of the central argument of this book, that "corporate personhood" is the legal equal of natural personhood (ie being a human being, though even that isn't enough anymore) and therefore endows corporations with broad civil rights including First Amendment rights to free speech.

The lawyers are, of course, thrilled because this means their clients need hugely profitable PAC-running, fee-generating help. The rest of us? Totally screwed, you can have the justice you can pay for... Hartmann, to the political left in the US, argues this is absurd. It is. He goes on to ramble about stuff from history that isn't really well-supported by facts, and his anti-corporate bias goes a lot further than the nonsensical "personhood". It's a shame on some levels because the problems and abuses he rails against are real. Distracting from them by arguing the Boston Tea Party (of 1773!) was the first salvo of resistance to multinational corporations screwing over We-the-People is fanciful at best.

Had he stopped with noting that the notion of "corporate personhood" is explicitly NOT INCLUDED in the decision of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. but is present only in a headnote written by a clerk. Headnotes do not form part of the judgment in Supreme Court decisions; this was ruled on in separate decisions on other cases, and acknowledged in this decision.

There is no Constitutional basis for "corporate personhood" as now constituted. I wish Hartmann had played less to his audience and stuck more closely to what I perceive to be his strong, central thesis. I'd rate this tendentious mash-up of political grievance (which I share!) with historical research into legal history higher had he done so.

Still it's a hugely important topic and a book whose emotional register will propel most who really don't care much for argument and prefer conclusions to finish the read.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

"For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people—one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says Thom Hartmann.

Other countries have shown us that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient. Taiwan's single-payer system saved the country a fortune as well as saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down the economy. This resulted in just ten deaths, while more than 500,000 people have died in the United States.

Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current “sickness for profit” system. Modern attempts to create versions of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn, including Obamacare.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This book is for you if you've ever wondered why Luigi Mangione is being treated like a terrorist for allegedly killing a very rich "insurance" company executive, and why when we-the-people failed to rise in our millions against his heinous murderous act, he suddenly vanished from our media landscape.

Creating a martyr, a face that can act as a rallying image for people against the horrible system that delivers the worst results for the great majority of its consumers yet fattens wallets at an obscene clip, is not what "They" want.

What this book does is delve into the ways, the compromises, the roots of capitalist seizure of healthcare delivery. It's definitely not going to convert anyone on the political right. It is unabashedly tendentious. It makes no serious effort to come up with any idea to persuade the capitalists to loosen, still less release, their grip on the public purse.

In preaching to the choir, Hartmann is mostly issuing a rallying cry. The reason to read the book is to become motivated, to pick up a few bits and bobs to hurl at the enemy within. If you're tired of arguing, this is not your best investment of time and treasure.

If like me you're in search of fuel for the possibly-wavering fires of battle, here's you a book.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN OLIGARCHY: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

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Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, looks at the history of the battle against oligarchy in America—and how we can win the latest round.

Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation closer and closer to police-state tyranny.

The United States was born in a struggle against the oligarchs of the British aristocracy, and ever since then the history of America has been one of dynamic tension between democracy and oligarchy. And much like the shock of the 1929 crash woke America up to glaring inequality and the ongoing theft of democracy by that generation's oligarchs, the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has laid bare how extensively oligarchs have looted our nation's economic system, gutted governmental institutions, and stolen the wealth of the former middle class.

Thom Hartmann traces the history of this struggle against oligarchy from America's founding to the United States' war with the feudal Confederacy to President Franklin Roosevelt's struggle against “economic royalists,” who wanted to block the New Deal. In each of those cases, the oligarchs lost the battle. But with increasing right-wing control of the media, unlimited campaign contributions, and a conservative takeover of the judicial system, we're at a crisis point.

Now is the time for action, before we flip into tyranny. We've beaten the oligarchs before, and we can do it again. Hartmann lays out practical measures we can take to break up media monopolies, limit the influence of money in politics, reclaim the wealth stolen over decades by the oligarchy, and build a movement that will return control of America to We the People.

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My Review: This is another provocatively unapologetic takedown of the right-wing slow coup that's been ongoing since "They" installed that fatuous old actor in the White House after manipulating the media into reporting insanity as facts.

Not gonna work to deradicalize your MAGAt relative, but definitely can offer you some armor against joining them for even a second. Staying alert to what their end game is will keep your from getting too far off the line "They" don't want you to draw. It's blatantly partisan and at times on the overkill side, but better that than playing nice with nasty people.

To fight intolerance, you must learn to be intolerant of it. Paradoxically that works for all topics in public life.

VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation, urgent topic and sterling example of resisting fascists

VZ: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Making of a Nation
DMITRY BYKOV (tr. John Freedman )
Open Letter Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How does a comedian become the face of a nation's fight for survival?

In VZ, celebrated Russian author Dmitry Bykov unpacks the extraordinary rise of Vladimir Zelenskyi—from a TV star to a wartime leader defying a global superpower. With wit and razor-sharp insight, Bykov dives into the moments that shaped Zelenskyi's improbable journey, revealing the man behind the headlines.

This is not just a story of one leader but of a nation on the edge, and the power of resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Bykov offers a fresh, compelling take on Zelenskyi’s leadership, Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty, and what it truly means to fight for democracy in the modern world.

For anyone eager to understand the making of a modern hero and the fierce will of a nation under siege, VZ is essential reading.

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My Review: Ukraine's president, a former performer who took on a mantle of identity formation for the ancient land of Ukraine, gets a hagiography. Bykov is a prolific writer, twelve novels and a slew of other biographies in his pocket, but until Open Letter brought this book out, nothing in English either in the UK or US markets. As translated by John Freedman, a prolific translator into English, the Bykov touch seems to serve a need to balance uncritical praise and honest assessment.

Everything starts for the Anglophone with the competing systems of Romanizing Russian and Ukrainian. They are as different as English and American, or Portuguese and Brazilian. This means they need to be transliterated differently. It will strike US readers as weird, and feel "wrong" to many who, like me, lived our entire lives accepting "USSR" and "Russia" as synonyms, "The Ukraine" being uncritically assumed to be part of both.

Volodymyr Zelenskyi (a usage common in the text; I'll use it here as I prefer it to double-y which breaks my brain) is the president of Ukraine's name. Learn it. We're not dictating anymore, old white guys, we're learning what to call people, how to spell it, when to say it. The fascism our fathers, their grandfathers, fought a war to defeat is cultural as well as political. We need to shed our old assumptions.

Accustoming myself to Author Bykov's code-switching between transliterations was as challenging as learning when to use "tu" versus the formal third person. It got to be automatic, and served as effective signposting of a source's sympathies. It's going to take effort from the deeply acculturated to the Cold War's polarities. In a multipolar world, people like Zelenskyi are the feared and/or anticipated breezes from outside certainty. There's a lot in Zelenskyi's past that makes him a good stand-in for global changes to get the old certainties to unclench: he's charismatic, he's deeply convinced of his cause's rightness not simply clinging to his power; his government, unsurprisingly, faces a lot of bad press with accusations of corruption and self-dealing that ring false and hollow, so don't stick. Reading this rather-too-long book demonstrates why: This is a man of integrity and convictions accusing by his existence those who embody other "values."

What you gain by reading this biography is a clear sense of *WHY* Ukraine unites behind the figure of Zelenskyi: He represents them, he says the words they want to hear, he makes the sacrifices they make. This is Leadership 101, folks, it's either the best stage-managed con job in political history (in which case the world's leaders would unite to kill him as fast as possible) or he's sure he's Right.

Guess which one the invaders' ruler, too scared of his people to allow them elections that are free of thumbscaling determinism, wants us all to believe. I think I'm finally understanding the Slavic concept of "the holy fool" (bozhevilyi in Ukrainian) the longer I stew over the facts of Zelenskyi's choice to stand in Putin's way. It's that real belief that the way will be made for that soul who simply does not accept the world's verdict about reality. Any sane person would've taken the ride offered to evacuate him, not demanded the weapons to fight, the invaders of a major army with a dictator at its head who needn't fear election losses or civil unrest unseating him. (It says here...watch this space.)

I will say I can't offer all five stars because, absence of footnotes and all, there's simply an overwhelming amount of detail to absorb and not a lot of framing to do it within. It's not possible to give that without a lot more history; that's not what this book's about; so it's a little unfair but I'm a reader-response reviewer not a literary critic. I'm resolutely anti-christian and find a lot of the apocalypticism around the battles of this war framed in Holy War terms unpleasantly alien, when I think the humanity on each side is more than capable of doing their worst of their own volition.

I could simply be not "getting" these references inside the proper framework. I acknowledge this...and still slice off the remaining bits of a fifth star. So four thoroughly impressed, urgently motivated "buy me now" stars.

WHACK JOB: A History of Axe Murder, does more than just titillate with true-crime gore

WHACK JOB: A History of Axe Murder
RACHEL McCARTHY JAMES
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A brilliant and bloody examination of the axe's foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture.

For as long as the axe has been in our hands, we have used it to kill.

Much like the wheel, the boat, and the telephone, the axe is a transformative piece of technology—one that has been with us since prehistory. And just as early humans used the axe to chop down trees, hunt for food, and whittle tools, they also used it to murder. Over time, this particular use has as the axe evolved over centuries to fit the needs of new agricultural, architectural, and social development, so have our lethal uses for it.

Whack Job is the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout from the first axe murder nearly half a million years ago, to the brutal harnessing of the axe in warfare, to its use in King Henry VIII's favorite method of execution, to Lizzie Borden and the birth of modern pop culture. Whack Job sheds brilliant light on this familiar implement, this most human of weapons. This is a critical examination of violence, an exploration of how technology shapes human conflict, the cruel and sacred rituals of execution and battle, and the ways humanity fits even the most savage impulses into narratives of the past and present.

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My Review: End-noted to a fare-thee-well, this rollicking romp through axes as historical objects isn't academic and dry, or deeply in-depth; it's a mountaintop view into the foothills and valleys of human material culture. Using the axe as our viewpoint stand-in makes a lot of sense. In anthropology classes I took in the 1980s, stone tools came in varieties like flakes, blades, and scrapers, all discovered by the carloads; a hand axe was treasure indeed. The knack of flintknapping is easier to acquire for smaller objects. An axe was high tech indeed.

There's a reason an axe centers the fasces in Roman art; there's a reason the axe was buried as often as a sword in Viking graves. They're not just useful, they're mightily impressive and have always been difficult to fashion until fairly recently. A sharp axe is a supremely useful tool for the agricultural way of life. Splitting logs to burn for warmth, making fenceposts to contain cattle and demarcate property, etc etc, are all made trivially easy with ownership of a good, sharp axe.

Splitting wood is, of course, not the only splitting an axe does with effectiveness and relative ease. Author Rachel starts us with split skulls in Neanderthal prehistory, when possession of an axe was a major symbol of power. As the reasons humans kill each other really haven't changed over the millennia (spoiler alert: we enjoy it), the means we choose to do it with haven't either. Whatever is handy, be it rock, knife, or axe. What we don't know in any detail is why the owner of a particular skeleton was deprived of the ghost driving it, though the remains are clearly damaged in specific, tell-tale ways. So Author Rachel talks about axes more in the first third of the book than murders. (Seriously, stop at 30%...chapter six...if details of what happens are not to your taste.)

In historical times, as details become available, they are vouchsafed you.I do not find this particularly bothersome, but if you do, understand this is not going to be an easy book for you to read. We're still focusing on the axes, though, which is what enabled me not to feel queasy. The weapon of choice is contextualized to the extent possible based on the records surviving, be they legal, social, or religious in nature. And has Author Rachel done her archive diving! Literal hundreds of endnotes could probably result in a visit from the spooks if I followed them all up on Google. The thing I appreciate most in a history like this one, focused on a reasonably narrow bit of human behavior, is that sense the author's done a lot more than the minimum. That is definitely the case here.

I don't classify this as a microhistory to myself. It has a narrow focus. It doesn't, however, confine itself to just one bit of History like The Forger's Spell or Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, both estimable books. I suppose when your topic is something as universal or as ancient as an axe, one can't feasibly stay in the micro.

Speaking of micro, Author Rachel does not spare us Y-chromosome-havers in her analysis of why axes represent authority. There's a good bit about male insecurity as it relates to symbols of power and status. If I felt she was factually incorrect, or grinding an academic axe (!) too finely to make her point, I'd say so. Instead I shrank a little more every time the topic arose. Well done, madam, point well made. Dealing with how the labrys became a feminist/matriarchal symbol was fascinating.

The structural elements of the book are largely thematic. We're in chapters called things like "In Truth, An Enemy and a Man of Violence" (chapter four, the 500s BCE) and "Five Axes in the Cellar, One Axe on the roof" (chapter nine, Lizzie Borden). Author Rachel's style lends itself to hooks, positioned carefully at the ends of chapters. It makes the read hard to portion out; I usually read a chapter of a book, take a few notes, move to a different book; not here. I read through five chapters in a long afternoon. That's not common for me. I simply didn't want to stop, and the hook-y chapter ends (can't quote them, the Spoiler Stasi will trade their hoses and chains for axes) were designed to keep the reader engaged.

So what happened to the fifth star? It's half there, and deserves to be. I can't offer the full five only because the way Author Rachel mixes it up felt at times as though there were topics she could not go into that she wanted to. That left me wishing for an extra hundred pages and more ridden hobbyhorses.

No matter about cavils so minor as that. If you're interested in anthropology and history through a narrow but deep time-lens, have a good tolerance for murderous acts, and enjoy sly witticisms, this is a solid read for you.

LAUNCHING LBJ: How a Kennedy Insider Helped Define Johnson's Presidency, history told by a fine man's daughter

LAUNCHING LBJ: How a Kennedy Insider Helped Define Johnson's Presidency
HELEN O'DONNELL
Skyhorse (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Kenneth O'Donnell was JFK's Chief of Staff, among the group known as Kennedy's "Irish Mafia." O'Donnell was with President Kennedy through his entire time in office... and he was on Air Force One in Dallas on November 22, 1963, at Jacqueline Kennedy's side, as Lyndon Johnson got sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.

When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, LBJ asked Ken O'Donnell to stay on and work with him through the first nine months of his administration, to help the country transition and heal, and to help Johnson set his own agenda for his presidency. Although they were political adversaries, they developed a mutually respectful rapport, and Ken helped LBJ find his voice, starting with his work in voting rights and developing the civil rights agenda. Ken O'Donnell was a prolific diarist and note taker, and in 'Launching LBJ', his daughter Helen, a respected historian and journalist in her own right, takes her father's journals and fills in the gaps to create an unprecedented, inside look at the early days of President Lyndon Johnson's regime.

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My Review: How does the country switch leaders in a crisis? It's not something we do on the regular, so each time there's much to be reinvented to meet the circumstances of the moment.

This assassination took place in my youth, and was a steady drumbeat in politics as I became aware of the entire field. The day itself I, all of three years old, was aware something REALLY BIG had happened because my mother ran into our family room, shouting "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!" at the TV, which was momentous in my little world because she was *not* a woman to swear or curse. Not long after that, and just as momentous in my little world, my teenaged sisters came home early, excitedly chattering to each other...a thing they never did...so it was a Day of Wonders indeed.

It was astounding how much changed that day, and how deeply felt that event was even in my household. My parents were politically to the right of Hitler, had never said a single good word about Kennedy, and my Texan mother despised LBJ, "a damn communist" to her New-Deal-hatin' self. (She was a teen, and later a new mother, in the run-up to WWII.)

I think Author O'Donnell is around my age, her parents were a bit younger than mine and she was born in about 1956 as far as I can tell. O'Donnell père died in 1977 after his first wife died of complications from alcoholism, a problem that took his life as well. So I read his book aware that the writer was approaching it as more or less a family history, a chance to know her dad better. Enviable access to primary written sources aside, her name and pedigree opened doors to people who might otherwise not have bothered to speak to an historian from outside the Kennedys' charmed circle.

LBJ would've known that feeling well. He needed O'Donnell père's insider status to get his staff-running feet under him as he focused his initial efforts on healing his traumatized country. O'Donnell, no fan of LBJ, was nonetheless an honorable sort. He helped craft LBJ's startlingly successful assumption of JFK's ambitious, previously doomed, social agenda. It was partly his planning and partly LBJ's long Senate career that taught him where the bodies were buried and who buried 'em that came together to launch one of the twentieth century's most sweeping and successful reforms of sclerotic Federal social spending agendas. I'm not inclined to uprate the book because it is less about the nuts and bolts of the effort and more about the personalities...it falls into a kind of gauzy "weren't they something special" attitude that grates on me, smacks of worshipful attitudes I don't share.

It is largely Johnson's legislative success that is being dismantled today. It was won by the blood of one not-very-honorable man and the sweat of several very honorable ones, eg Kenneth O'Donnell. We sit passively watching as the current administration and its partisan GOP lackeys destroy the greatest society we could create.

Resist.