This week I finished: Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum: I read, listened, and watched a lot on the gulag system while reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. This book came up a lot, after all it won a Pulitzer. Compared to Solzhenitsyn, it's more scholarly and researched, less personal and biting. I think only survivors could include humor like his. Applebaum said she was prompted to write this book in part based on seeing USSR memorabilia sold to tourists in Eastern Europe, noting that no one would consider buying and wearing Nazi memorabilia. She commented what many have and what these works have led me to conclude: Americans don't know or understand enough about what happened in the USSR. Many people consider The Gulag Archipelago essential…

This week I finished: Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies, by John Adams: This pamphlet is shorter than some blog posts, but covers a major part of what became the Constitution. Adams wrote it in the spring of 1776, after Common Sense and before the Declaration of Independence, which Adams helped write. I understand that Adams was mailing people his ideas of how a republic could work and endure. He wasn't the first. Colonists up and down the coast were taking on that challenge. He promoted three branches with two legislative bodies, checks and balances, limited terms, and more that found its way into the Constitution. If you're curious how the Constitution formed, this document shows how people thought…

This week I finished: The Arcadian, by podcast guest Steven Pressfield: The book's cover describes it as genre-bending and it is. I'm scheduled to record a second episode with Steven this week, so look for the recording soon. I found it hard to put down. Steven makes the details vivid---of one character's toes gripping the grass or the size of the splinters of a piece of wood being broken. I kept imagining how to make it visual if made into a movie. After a while, it becomes clear that the main characters are in a cycle of rebirth. That concept would seem to me Hindu or Buddhist, but it's western: Christian, Roman, Pagan, a bit of Jewish. I'm not sure the meaning or value of…