Seven Books – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part I
by Kansas Reflector columnist Max McCoy
https://kansasreflector.com/2024/07/07/seven-books-for-the-7th-of-july-a-reading-list-to-save-democracy/?emci=542b4462-e83b-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&emdi=a4c99c4c-3f3c-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&ceid=116925 (Edited and used with permission.)
One day last week, I went to a coffee shop downtown to meet a friend. I had a hardback book tucked under my arm to give to the friend, a historian who shares my interest in the twisting and sometimes tortured arc of American democracy. I was early, so I ordered a lemonade — it was approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside — and as I waited for the iced drink, a young woman who worked there noticed the book beneath my arm and tilted her head sideways to better see the title.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
The question was asked with a certain curiosity, an earnest thirst for knowledge, I hadn’t heard in some time. The woman was in her 20s and explained that she’d been looking for books about democracy and fascism to share with her family and friends and the title of the book had caught her eye: “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.”
“Wow,” she said, “Have you read it?”
I hesitated for a moment, fearing that I might launch into a lecture on history and culture that was sure to bore, if not alienate, a stranger. Then I was moved that a young person would ask my advice on what she should read — because, let’s face it, I’m not the most approachable of people — so I tamped down my urge to hold forth and said yes, my wife and I had read it several times.
I asked the woman if she had heard of the author, Rachel Maddow, and she was unsure. She said she was interested in learning about fascism but didn’t know where to start.
“This is one of perhaps two books I would start with,” I said.
“Prequel” is about the largely forgotten rise of fascism in America in the years before World War II and how the movement was defeated, in order to better understand the threats we face today. My wife, Kim, and I had heard Maddow speak in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the final stop of her book tour last year. Some of the historical characters in the book — the Rev. Gerald Winrod, the “Jayhawk Nazi,” for example — have been subjects of this column. But I didn’t tell her any of that. I just said if she wanted to learn about fascism in America, she should read the Maddow book.
The young woman took a cellphone photo of the book cover and said she’d check it out.
“Thanks,” she said.
Standing there, I had an epiphany about how important it is to connect with others in person. We spend so much of our time by ourselves, even in a crowd, blinkered by screens. But here I had made a connection with someone who was searching simply be being receptive to a question about what I was reading.
I thanked the woman for her courage.
“It wasn’t easy to ask a stranger,” I said. “But this is important, this sharing hand to hand. Find the book and give it to your friends when you’re finished. Discuss it and keep investigating. This may be the only sure way things change for the better.”
Before I had even left the coffee shop, I was thinking of lists I would make for those who wanted to learn more about democracy, fascism, and the tortured arc. Prequel is near the top of the list. But there were many others.
During the last eight years, we have done heavy reading about American democracy, and it is from that reading I’ve pulled a few books which might help get us through the summer of 2024. It isn’t beach reading, but it isn’t all doom and gloom, either. My reading tends to the broad if not shallow themes in American culture and embraces fiction as well as popular histories.
The titles tend to look back rather than forward, sort of like how T.H. White’s Merlin lived his life in reverse, because that’s the nature of knowledge: the past unspools like a ribbon of steel behind us while the future is as changeable as next week’s weather forecast.
If you’re interested in owning any of these titles, visit your nearest independent bookstore. If you don’t have a bookstore near you, consider going to bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores. Here’s a Wired story about how Bookshop supports independents. Also check your local public library, and if they don’t have these titles — ask for them.
Finally, let me add this. The day after the young woman stopped me in the coffee shop asking me what I was reading, I returned and gave her a copy of Prequel along with the graphic edition of Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
Read them, I urged. Then pass them on.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. A Kansan, he started his career at the Pittsburg Morning Sun and was soon writing for national magazines. His investigative stories on unsolved murders, serial killers and hate groups earned him first-place awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors and other organizations. McCoy has also written more than 20 books, the most recent of which is "Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River," named a Kansas Notable Book by the state library. "Elevations" also won the National Outdoor Book Award, in the history/biography category.
