Guest Post by Brittany Waite

The current pandemic has impacted many aspects of our lives, especially our ability to interact with one another. There are many on social media who publish humorous portrayals of extroverts suffering under these conditions. At the same time, I feel that many introverts, shy and quiet in nature, feel a guilty sense of relief for this opportunity to stay cooped up in the comfort of their home.

In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain takes it upon herself to uncover these reserved figures and dive deep into their consciousness, exploring the individuality of their inner-minds. Using examples from history, concrete anecdotes, and years of research, Cain promotes the importance that introverts have in society and writes with the intent to show them the power they are capable of. So, whether you’re an introvert or not, Quiet will broaden your understanding of these reserved individuals, who they are, and what they can do.

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Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Broadway Books, October 2019.

Reviewer bio: Brittany Waite is a college student born and raised in Hawaii. She enjoys writing flash fictions but hopes to expand into other genres.

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Guest Post by Elizabeth Basok

In We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast, Jonathan Safran Foer argues that the science is in: we know that animal agriculture is destroying our planet. Rather convincingly, Foer makes an argument for a plant-based diet stating that this one small change in our lifestyle could positively impact the climate crisis. He is able to create concise, effective, and easy to understand arguments throughout the book, breaking up his points into bite sized pieces that can easily be regurgitated by everyday people that find themselves in a discussion about climate change or the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. The author aims to drive home the most effective actions we can take against climate change, claiming four notable things we can do: eat a plant-based diet, avoid air travel, live car free, and have fewer children.

Part two of Foer’s book is packed with facts about “The Greatest Dying,” which is an extinction that is taking place right now. While there are many mass extinctions that have happened, Foer states that this extinction is the first to be the result of a climate crisis. He adds, “Humans are now adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere ten times faster than the volcanoes did during the Great Dying” (one of the six mass extinctions).

Foer acknowledges that adjusting to a vegan diet can be challenging. He admits that, even though he has written now two books advocating for a plant-based diet, he has succumbed to eating a burger from time to time. Foer suggests eating vegan for breakfast and lunch, while eating vegetarian for dinner (if a full vegan lifestyle is out of the question), saying “Not eating animal products for breakfast and lunch has a smaller CO2e footprint than the average full-time vegetarian diet.”

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We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, September 2019.

Reviewer bio: Elizabeth Basok is a lecturer at The Ohio State University. Her Instagram is @lizbasok.

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Guest Post by Eron Henry

Eight men became American presidents without being elected to the office. All acceded to the role after the incumbent was assassinated or succumbed to illness.

In Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, Jared Cohen provides historical details of their achievements and failings. Most were unprepared for the top office because they were uninterested, though a few coveted the presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman were extraordinarily successful. The former succeeded William McKinley Jr. who was assassinated, and the latter Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who died of longstanding ailments. Except for the Vietnam War debacle, some believe Lyndon Johnson would be among the greatest presidents ever. He became president after the assassination of John Kennedy.

The most disastrous was Andrew Johnson, who became president after Abraham Lincoln was gunned down. The first to be impeached, Johnson reversed policies by Lincoln to help the nation heal after the bloody civil war. He set the stage for Jim Crow, initiating a century of intense discrimination against African Americans that boiled over into the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Cohen demonstrates the importance of presidents choosing able persons as their deputy.  Not all vice presidents were chosen for their ability but as a compromise candidate to appease interest groups or various constituencies in their party.

In the times we live, Cohen’s Accidental Presidents may prove especially insightful.

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Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed Americav by Jared Cohen. Simon and Schuster, April 2019

Reviewer bio: Eron Henry is a communications consultant. He blogs at https://oletimesumting.com.

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Guest Post by Laura Plummer

When I first read Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness in 2010, Obama was in the beginning of his first term as president. Many white Americans believed his election was a sign that our country was now post-racial, that equality had finally been achieved. But that was a myth, as Alexander explains in painstaking detail. Using the statistics of the day, she lays bare the racism embedded in our criminal justice system, which she likens to modern-day slavery.

This year, I decided it was a good time to dust off Alexander’s work, to see how its distressing statistics had improved over the past ten years. The answer was, tragically, not enough. Blacks still face more discrimination than other races in every phase of the criminal justice system—from stops and arrests to sentencing and parole. They are still the primary targets of the fictional “War on Drugs,” which was invented as a legal means to put large numbers of Black people behind bars. They are still locked in to what Alexander calls a “permanent undercaste.”

The New Jim Crow came out before the 2013 killing of Trayvon Martin birthed #BlackLivesMatter, before the 2014 killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It was before the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans sparked worldwide protests against racist policing, before Black Lives Matter became a global movement. While the discrimination against Black people in America is much the same as when the book was published, the public support for protecting and defending Black lives has grown exponentially. The ground is fertile for all Americans who value justice to demand a new reality. To quote Dr. King, no one is free until we are all free.

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. 2010.

Reviewer bio: Laura Plummer is an American freelance journalist and writer from Massachusetts. Read her work at lauraplummer.me.

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