Nonfiction Roundup

Class Warfare by Steven Brill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steven Brill has written another book about what's wrong with public education in the US and what can be done about it. Money hasn't worked. Charter schools show promise but can they be scaled up to the entire education system? Brill doesn't have the answer, and I respect him for that because I doubt there is one answer. But there are some things that are obviously making things worse and those things are fixable, starting with abolishing tenure. If just the bottom 5% of the worst teachers were replaced with mediocre teachers there would be significant improvement. Brill wrote the article, "The Rubber Room," about the hundreds of New York City teachers who were so obviously unfit for the classroom that they could not be allowed in one but who can't be fired because of the extremely powerful teachers' union. So they sit for years in a holding tank of sorts getting full pay. This book starts with that story and goes looking for solutions to this and other education problems. I spent a lot of time with this book, in effect reading it twice, and I recommend it to anyone who is in a position to do anything at all about our public schools.

2011 No 153

Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate by Juan Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Muzzled is Juan Williams' report on his much-publicized firing from National Public Radio, apparently because he said it was hard not to see people getting on a plane "in Muslim garb" and not be concerned that they identified themselves so strongly with their religion. This, said Williams, is a natural reaction but we mustn't let it influence our view of moderate Muslims. This is a fairly frank statement and I think it reflects well on the reporter that he is aware of his own prejudices and consciously tries to avoid them. NPR didn't see it that way and fired him, abruptly, over the phone after many years on the air. His former boss then implied he was mentally unbalanced ("he should talk about that with his psychiatrist.") The resulting controversy was immense. That a medium that pays a man to talk about what he thinks should fire him for saying what he thinks (on another network and in another medium) seemed to many a symptom of "the assault on honest debate," as Williams puts it in his subtitle. An excellent, well-balanced, non-self-pitying book that deals with a great deal more than the author's own problem. Williams, by the way, landed on his feet with a long and lucrative contract with a TV channel.

2011 No 154

In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir by Dick Cheney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dick Cheney's career in politics began when Donald Rumsfeld gave him a job despite Cheney's having flunked out of Yale which helps explain the reluctance of the Bush administration to ease out Rumsfeld when his performance as secretary of defense had become a political liability. But you have to go looking for that kind of enlightenment in this memoir of Cheney's years as vice president. He tells us a lot about his family and is clearly devoted to his daughters and their children. He is a westerner - a photo of his family on horseback at his ranch (with the Grand Tetons in the background), including 6-year-olds, demonstrates his attachment to the Wyoming way of life. But this is not a tell-all. No scores are settled although he does talk frankly about who he was comfortable working with and who he didn't get along with particularly well. And his description of the hours after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the pentagon is interesting. That unknown location that he was packed off to so that he and the president wouldn't be in the same place was . . . the vice president's house, Camp David, his ranch in Wyoming. He was not secreted in a vault under a mountain as some folks speculated. This is not the memoir to read if you want to know about the Bush years. (Neither is Bush's.)

2011 No 155

Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President by Ron Suskind
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We don't realize how important confidence is until it has been lost. Ron Suskind demonstrates that brilliantly in this book with its clever title, which can be interpreted two ways, both appropriate. Here's what Amazon.com has to say:

The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single, powerful, quintessentially American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, tapping brazen innovations over the past three decades, learned how to manufacture it.

Until August 2007, when that confidence finally began to crumble.

In this gripping and brilliantly reported book, Ron Suskind tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in “a new era of responsibility.” It is a story that follows the journey of Barack Obama, who rose as the country fell, and offers the first full portrait of his tumultuous presidency.

2011 No 156

Comments

[Thomas at My Porch]

In general I support unions (when they aren't being stupid) but teacher's unions really make me mad. If only they would focus on improving pay and conditions for good, or even mediocre teachers instead of trying to protect the truly awful ones. In DC, the city was forced to unfire 70 teachers who were 100% awful. The union claimed that the teachers weren't afforded due process in their firing. I say if a teacher doesn't show up for class repeatedly, the only due process should be a big ol' pink slip.

[Mary]

I agree with you entirely, Thomas. I have almost an awe of good teachers, who have to have training, experience, and a magic quality we can call talent. Teaching should be among the most respected of callings but as long as the unions continue to insist bad (and I don't mean so-so but bad) teachers remain in place the profession will not get the respect they deserve. Really good teachers should be better paid as well, but that can only happen if the bad teachers are removed. (End of rant.)