Opinions

ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU COLUMNIST DAVID SANDERS -- A SUMMER FOR THE BOOKS -- WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2008

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 11:36 PM CDT

Last week, while on vacation away from life’s normal hustle and bustle, I crossed off a few more titles on my summer reading list.

Here’s where I’ve been and where I’m going on this summer’s reading journey:

“American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic” by Joseph J. Ellis: Earning the Pulitzer Prize for his 2002 tome “Founding Brothers,” Ellis, who has written or edited several volumes analyzing the country’s Revolutionary era, once again drops his plow into the fertile soil that is the American founding. The reader is treated to mostly evenhanded and unvarnished view of the space and time between 1775 and 1803.

This work successfully challenges conventional views, one held by academia’s limited class, which tends to project modern sensibilities onto the era, thus downplaying the significance of the American founding, and the other, which has become the tendency to elevate the founders to near-god-like status. Ellis’ narrative approach illuminates the driving forces behind Washington’s steady resolve, Adams’ excitability, Jefferson’s ambition and Madison’s wholesale pragmatism, while chronicling the ironic and sometimes less-flattering twists that occurred during the republic’s early high and low points. If you are a student of history or one who has recently come to enjoy the new-found popularity of this genre, this book is a must-read.

“Nearer My God” by William F. Buckley Jr: Since his death earlier this year, I have committed to reading (and in many cases re-reading) the 57 works, both fiction and nonfiction, he penned.

Although it was written much earlier, Buckley challenges the militant atheism popularized by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, which places reason and religious belief in opposition to each other. For Buckley, faith and intellect were not mutually exclusive and thus is a valuable read for both the Christian and the unbeliever.

“Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era 1829- 1877” by Walter A. McDougall: While the roots of the Civil War were set shortly after the nation’s founding, this work examines the era, which includes expansion of a young nation, the war that separated it and the great pangs of putting it back together. This thick exhaustive work, which is the second in a series following his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Freedom Just Around the Corner,” captures the events and interested parties, which often were in competition for dominance during these important years. If national pride is a roughly hewn board, then McDougall is the sandpaper wearing down its jagged edges, revealing the depth of the grain that is the country’s perseverance through trying times.

“Memorial Day” by Vince Flynn: This modern-day spy novel follows the front-line forays by CIA “operative” Mitch Rapp who operates in the country’s new era, realized after 9/11 and the subsequent start of the “War on Terror.” Flynn’s popular character, the subject of his other best-selling works, uncovers, and then attempts to unravel, an al-Qaeda plot to detonate nuclear devices in New York City and Washington D.C. Flynn holds the reader’s attention with twists and turns, as well as his attention to detail. It’s a fun read.