More of Seven Books Plus – A Reading List to Save Democracy – Part III
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.)
Democracy Awakening (2023) by Heather Cox Richardson
The title comes from Walt Whitman, who wrote in 1871: “We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, unawaken’d.” In this book, Richardson reminds us that democracy has persisted throughout our history, despite many attempts to undermine it. And like other authors on this list, she quotes Lincoln often.
“Men like Abraham Lincoln recognized that such a struggle was not just about who got elected to the White House,” she writes. “It was the story of humanity, ‘the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world.'”
The Plot Against America (2004) by Philip Roth
In this alternative history, Charles Lindbergh of the America First Party is elected president by a wave of popular support from the south and Midwest. Jewish-American families like the Roths are driven to the fringes of American society by Lucky Lindy’s Nazi-influenced antisemitic policies. Roth, who was eight when World War II began, tells the story from his own imagined childhood point of view.
As I write, I have before me Kim’s copy of “Plot,” and it bristles with multi-colored flags. Its pages are thick with highlighting and marginalia. It is her reasoned response to the tale Roth has written, a dialogue with a cautionary tale, notes from someone who reads like a hunter tracking prey.
In one passage, after Lindbergh has been nominated on the last day of the Democratic Convention in 1940 at Chicago, the candidate embarks on a flying tour and, still in leather helmet, tells an adoring crowd: “Your choice is simple. It’s not between Charles A. Lindbergh and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It’s between Lindbergh and war.”
In the margin Kim has written two words. “Daisy Girl.”
The Once and Future King (1958.) by T.H. White
A collection of fantasy novels originally published between 1938 and 1940, White’s whimsical and anachronistic retelling of the Arthurian myth has the desire for good, as represented by the ideal of the Round Table, pitted against the wickedness of human nature, including black-clad fascists led by Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son. The cycle ends with an aging Arthur contemplating the coming apocalyptic battle with Mordred.
“The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea,” Arthur reflects before the battle. The outcome was not as important as the ideal which guided him, because there would surely come another time when the promise of the table with no corners would be fulfilled and the nations would feast there.
“The hope of making it would lie in culture,” Arthur thinks. “If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.”
Miscellany
Many other titles could have been included here but allow me to mention just three more: Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America, a reappraisal of American history and First Peoples; Kevin Young’s Bunk on the rise of hoaxes and lies; and Elaine Weiss’ The Woman’s Hour about the fight for female suffrage.
Kim Horner McCoy’s Democracy Reading List
Click here or on image to print PDF version of Kim Horner McCoy’s Democracy Reading List.
“Democracy: Eleven Writers and Leaders on What It is and Why It
Matters” (Aug 2024) by Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafik and nine others
“A Users’ Guide to Democracy: How America Works.” (2020) by Nick
Capodice and Hannah McCarthy; Tom Toro (illustrator)
How Democracies Die (2018) and The Tyranny of the Minority: Why American
Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt,
Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism (2023) by Rachel Maddow,
Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault From Within on Modern Democracy (2021) by Tom Nichols.
Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy (2020) Darryl Pinckney
Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (2023) by Heather Cox Richardson
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (2018) by Elaine Weiss
Daily Letters and Chats (free -Facebook & Substack by subscription) by Elaine Weiss
Democracy: A Very Short Introduction (2023) by Naomi Zack
Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (2002) by Garry Wills
Nixonland: Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2009) by Rick Perlstein
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.
