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I feel productive when I finish a nonfiction book. Not a memoir mind you, but a real nonfiction book about history or ideas. I’m a fan of novels, so reading nonfiction feels a bit like school—a completed assignment.
Recently, I finished The Persuaders—a NYT bestseller by the American journalist Anand Giridharadas. It’s been on my list for a long time due to recommendations from friends who are more serious activists than me. I wouldn’t say I loved it, but it gave me some things to think about.
In 2022, I read a nonfiction book by the American journalist Mark Leibovich, who now writes for The Atlantic. Leibo is actually an old friend of mine from my post-college party years so I tend to read his stuff. I think he’s hysterical. I enjoyed every single word of his bestseller Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission. Highly recommend. It was an amazing poolside read. Even better with wine.
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That’s quite a cover! I have to admit I can’t bring myself to read anything directly about Trump. I’ll read things that are about our times or the world that brought someone like that into such influence, which this probably is on the whole?
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Actually, no. This is a direct accounting of “inside the beltway” groveling and subservience, much of it done at Trump’s DC hotel, but funny as SHIT. Leibo has so much access to the halls of power…it’s wild. He actually meets Trump after a lunch with Hope Hicks.
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Maybe I could try it, since it’s funny. That people allow him to ‘rule’ over them really turns my stomach tho.
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Yeah, it might not be as funny now as it was in 2022, (because he’s such a real threat again).
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Indeed. 😦
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I hope he’s hysterical in a good way 😊 Sounds interesting.
If you want to read an entertaining novel but on an almost literary level, I can highly recommend “Erotic Vagrancy” by Roger Lewis.
It took the author 13 years to complete. Tells the story about the insane love between Elisabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
My wife read it and would read entire passages to me from the book. Absolutely delirious reading, because of the research involved and the meticulously crafted language.
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Yes, Leibo is hysterically funny (to me)—curmudgeonly, a bit jaded, with cultural observations that are very GenX (we’re the exact same age)
Oooo….that book about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton sounds like something I’d really like. Thanks!
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I’ll check Mark Leibovich. You won’t be disappointed with this book. Have a good Sunday
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