Four Books to Read in 2019
The holidays provide valuable time to spend with family, friends and to re-charge our batteries as we enter the new year. One of the favorite holiday activities is reading a good book. I have the great pleasure of recommending four books that will provide valuable lessons and insights as we enter the New Year.
The Point of It All by Charles Krauthammer
Created and compiled by Charles Krauthammer before his death, The Point of It All is a powerful collection of the influential columnist’s most important works. Spanning the personal, the political and the philosophical, it includes never-before-published speeches and a major new essay about the effect of today’s populist movements on the future of global democracy. Edited and with an introduction by the columnist’s son, Daniel Krauthammer, it is the most intimate and profound book yet by the legendary writer and thinker.
The Case for Trumpby Victor Davis Hanson
In the Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the United States — and an extremely successful president.
Trump alone saw a political opportunity in defending the working people of America’s interior whom the coastal elite of both parties had come to scorn, Hanson argues. And Trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue this opening to victory, dismantle a corrupt old order, and bring long-overdue policy changes at home and abroad. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump’s. But after decades of drift, America needs the outsider Trump to do what normal politicians would not and could not do.
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe’s book on the history of the U.S. Space program reads like a novel, and the film has that same fictional quality. It covers the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager to the Mercury 7 astronauts, showing that no one had a clue how to run a space program or how to select people to be in it. Thrilling, funny, charming and electrifying all at once
Grant
Grant by Ron Chernow
Grant is one of the most important figures in American history. He was one of the most successful generals in the history of warfare. It was Grant’s focus and character as President that healed the wounds of the Civil War. Grant was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow, author of Hamilton.
The author states that “Ulysses S. Grant’s life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don’t come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.”
