Reading, Watching 09.22.24
This is a regular feature for paid subscribers wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been reading and/or watching. Hope you enjoy!
Happy Autumnal equinox from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves & Wooster:
First off, a little shameless self promotion. I was very pleased to see When the Clock Broke reviewed by Edward Luce in the FT Weekend supplement because I think the Financial Times is one of the best newspapers in the world:
History is written by the victors, says the cliché. Invariably they pay more attention to themselves than they merit. It is often more enlightening to ask the vanquished what happened. Because history keeps going, the losers could always become future winners. We should thus pay greater heed to the ghosts of battles lost. That is the premise — and brilliant insight — of John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke, a revisitation of early 1990s America.
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Among its virtues, the greatest value of Ganz’s book is that it delivers history in its richest context. When the Clock Broke is not simply a political chronicle enlivened by cultural criticism — though it is both. The book is a genuine social history. It is all the better because the author resists overdoing that time’s warnings to the present. Those blanks are ours to fill in.
I’d also like to recommend Jessica Pishko’s The Highest Law in the Land, her often terrifying new book about the “constitutional sheriffs” movement. If you’re not aware, this is a far right subculture that believes that the county sheriff is essentially above the law. Troublingly, it’s a kind of institutional and ideological nexus between the militia movement and law enforcement. The origin of this idea, which has gone considerably more mainstream, is in Posse Comitatus, a social movement launched in the 1960s by the Neo-Nazi William Potter Gale. On Wednesday, September 25th, I’ll be joining Jessica at the Word is Change bookstore in Brooklyn to discuss the book. Also be sure to check out Jessica’s Substack, Posse Comitatus.