This week I finished:

This America: The Case for the Nation, by Jill Lepore: I’ve seen Jill Lepore’s books at the top of bestseller lists and read pieces she’s written in the New Yorker and probably other places. Her work seems to overlap with authors I’ve found valuable: Akhil Reed Amar and Gordon Wood.

Her two big books These Truths and We the People are huge and daunting, though reviews say they’re wonderful to read. This book is shorter, so more accessible.

It describes the difference between patriotism, which describes liking your country or people, and nationalism, which implies putting down others. I read her as motivated by seeing Trump and other populists gaining support, put off by liberals who fear patriotism, especially after World War II.

She recounts the histories nationalism in the US, illustrating that loving your nation isn’t bad. I found it readable. I think I’ll try one of her two big books soon.

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, by Bjorn Lomborg: Following up on Green Tyranny and the Lomborg articles I read last week, I took on one of Lomborg’s better known books.

Liberals and environmentalists attack him as a denier and for not reaching academic standards. To his credit, I think he genuine wants to help humanity. I think he genuinely believes his approach is optimal.

He pays some lip service to other types of pollution and depletion and their effects, but focuses on climate change almost exclusively. He relies on its effect on GDP as an effective metric. He misses the effects, as illustrated by thinking that air conditioning will help more than trivially. He relies on irrelevant measures, like how many people die from cold versus from heat. He talks about mitigation as if everyone will cooperate, for example to build protection from rising sea levels. They might and I hope we do, but I expect that those with resources will use those resources preferentially to help themselves at the expense of those without resources, leading to civil unrest.

He approaches his work seriously and I don’t see him as a stooge for industry or free market zealot. On the contrary, he promotes plenty of government intervention. That conservatives seem to like him makes them look hypocritical, since they probably like that he opposes environmentalist rhetoric and overlook that he proposes solutions that oppose their values.

Despite his serious intent, as best I can tell, he misunderstands the issues, focusing on side issues without realizing his myopia.

Eve’s Bayou, directed by Kasi Lemmons: I came across an op-ed piece by Lemmons in the Washington Post while looking up a different op-ed piece from the pandemic, The best white statement to make right now may be to shut up and listen. Who doesn’t love to be told to “shut up and listen for the color of their skin? That piece linked to Lemmons, titled White Americans, your lack of imagination is killing us.

I looked her up, found very positive reviews of her movies and watched this one. I found it engaging with beautiful cinematography, but it required too many suspensions of disbelief. That two or three characters had magical powers that worked but people just accepted despite being magical made it less realistic and therefore different from life. The incest part also didn’t feel realistic.

I read and watched a few reviews and analyses that praised it. Maybe I missed something.

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