Book Review: “American Dialogue” offers indispensable conversation between “then” and “now”
By Robert R. Thomas In assessing the here and now, history offers an indispensable perspective. American Dialogue is an enlightening example. As author and historian Joseph Ellis puts it, “The study of history is an ongoing conversation between past and present from which we all have much to learn.” Subtitled The Founders and Us, his book’s focus is a dialogue between America’s founding fathers and our current historical state. “We...
Review: “Poisoned democracy, poisoned water,” activists’ impact — themes of new Flint book
By Harold C. Ford “The lesson learned from the battle over the river was that the hardheaded resolve of even a small group of people could move mountains.” … from Flint Fights Back, Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis,by Benjamin J. Pauli, The MIT Press, 2019 A wonderful photo is conspicuously positioned at the front of Benjamin Pauli’s new book on Flint’s water crisis, in which a water justice activist is...
Central American turmoil and revolution highlight Flint author’s first novel
By Paul Rozycki It may have been St. Paddy’s Day March 17, but that didn’t stop a number of leading Hispanic leaders and their families and friends from gathering at Mott Community College Sunday afternoon to launch a newly published novel by Flint-based author Martin Barillas. About three dozen attended the event at the Regional Technology Center. Barillas’ novel Shaken Earth: A novel of Guatemalan life against Nazi influence is a...
“America: The Farewell Tour” by Chris Hedges: a review
Reviewed by Robert R. Thomas An unsettling childhood memory is that things were not as they seemed, and nobody was talking about it. My brother Alan succinctly described our childhood milieu as a “culture of silence.” While reading America: The Farewell Tour, by Chris Hedges, that childhood culture of silence revisited me. The book’s chapters—DECAY, HEROIN, WORK, SADISM, HATE, GAMBLING and FREEDOM—are lucid reveals about the fall of...
Review: “A $500 House in Detroit” a familiar, complex story for Flint readers
By Harold C. Ford “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.”- Eldridge Cleaver “What I learned…was that my goal wasn’t to build a house. It was to transform myself by building a house.”- author Drew Philp, A $500 House in Detroit, Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and an American City, 2017, Scribner Don’t buy Drew Philp’s book, A $500 House in Detroit,if all you’re looking for is how-to-do-it lessons on...
Book Review: “Winners Take All” pinpoints elites’ “helping and hoarding” while abetting unjust status quo
Review by Robert R. Thomas The recent successful Genesee County millage for-the-arts vote, which starting in January and for the next ten years will bring in $8.7 million/year of taxpayers’ money to a dozen nonprofit arts organizations, got me thinking about the mingling of private and public monies and how that business/governance hybrid works, especially the accountability factor. For some insight, if not answers, I turned to...
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