The Last Ranger by Peter Heller

THE LAST RANGER is another mystery adventure story set near Yellowstone National Park written by Peter Heller (The River, Celine, and other best-sellers). It honestly took a little while to get into this story, but Heller’s writing is so descriptive and enjoyable that readers will ultimately feel as though the characters have become friends. In some ways that parallels the learning about the “lone wolf” and the sense of community which develops in packs. Hilly is a biologist who studies the local wolves, numbering rather than naming them, but still becoming attached and indirectly educating readers about their habits. Les Ingraham is a sometimes violent tracker with a checkered past and who, along with suspected terrorists, projects a threatening presence. Ren Hopper is the ranger, an arbitrator who investigates disturbances over campsites, handles traffic snarls, and rescue tourists from too close encounters with wild animals; “it was utterly draining, keeping the peace in one remote valley.” Despite beautiful, awe-inspiring nature, Ren often experiences anger or loneliness and muses about life (“Is this what happened as life went on? You got less sure about everything?”). THE LAST RANGER is a book to savor, just like the toasts Heller shares with his readers: from Hilly: “To life. … One part wonder, three parts pain.” Or from Ren and his friend Ray who “raised his cup: ‘Love, money, and the time to enjoy them.’”

End Times by Peter Turchin

END TIMES by Peter Turchin is fascinating … absorbing … captivating in part because of how it uses historical social science combined with mathematical modeling and statistical analysis  (what he and colleagues call cliodynamics) to illustrate important points about “Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration.” Turchin points to the rise of unlikely leaders (Trump, Lincoln, and Hong of China) as a society increasingly experiences elite overproduction (“too many superrich and ultra-educated people, and not enough elite positions to satisfy their ambitions”) and popular immiseration (“when the economic fortunes of broad swaths of a population decline,” resulting in discontent and anger). Turchin, a research associate at the University of Oxford and an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut, introduces other concepts (like precarity – or the precariat, a social class existing without predictability or security) and points to how power and wealth have long been associated in America (commenting that “before 1850, all American presidents were one-percenters (at the least).” He ultimately concludes, “Complex human societies need elites – rulers, administrators, thought leaders – to function well. We don’t want to get rid of them; the trick is to constrain them to act for the benefit of all.” In addition to several appendices, approximately twenty percent of the book is devoted to detailed notes. END TIMES appeared in the Next Big Idea Club Book List for June, and was reviewed in publications like The Guardian, and, along with The Fourth Turning by Neil Howe, in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If this topic interests you, then be sure to read a sample or listen to an excerpt on the publisher’s web site.  

The Injustice of Place by Edin, Shaefer, and Nelson

THE INJUSTICE OF PLACE by Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer and Timothy Nelson is a work of non-fiction which is all about “Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America.” Professors at Princeton and the University of Michigan respectively, Edin and Shaefer collaborated previously on $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Here, they are joined by Nelson (also at Princeton) in a thorough review of America’s “internal colonies,” including traditions of violence, political corruption, revolt and retribution, and the potential for healing. They have produced a fascinating study which focuses on place-based disadvantage. In addition to income, they look at low birth weights, life expectancy, and inter-generational mobility, creating an Index of Deep Disadvantage, intentionally named to reflect injustice and unfair circumstances. They found that many of the most disadvantaged communities were rural, predominantly Native American, and/or located in Appalachia, South Texas, or the Southeast and these researchers saw a pattern: “a history of intensive resource extraction and profound human exploitation not seen to the same degree elsewhere in the United States.” The effort by their team is impressive, including on the ground visits to “a total of 155 locations, more than 75 percent of the 200 [places of deepest disadvantage]” and extensive appendices with roughly one-fourth of the book devoted to notes. It is gratifying to see the positive comments about future policy implications and social science scholarship from economist Raj Chetty and award-wining author Matthew Desmond (Evicted and Poverty, by America). THE INJUSTICE OF PLACE also received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

The Overlooked Americans by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

THE OVERLOOKED AMERICANS by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett focuses on “The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country.” Currid-Halkett, the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California, writes “I am not trying to convince you of my perspective, but rather I want to share with you with the people in rural America are experiencing and what they're saying about the important issues of our time.” She laments the analysts who are “dismissing and illegitimizing the fact that, for many conservative voters, cultural issues were more important to them than economic ones.” Based on her work, Currid-Halkett argues that “the United States is a far less divided place than our media and politicians would like us to believe.” She may have a point given, for example, the recent returns on Issue 1 in Ohio where local news conceded, “Residents from extensive urban centers, as well as suburban and rural regions, joined forces to voice their dissent against the potential changes.” Currid-Halkett advocates for more listening and outlines a very complicated situation that should spark all kinds of discussion. She includes an extensive Bibliography and Notes which together account for roughly a fourth of the text. THE OVERLOOKED AMERICANS received a starred review from Kirkus, is a 2023 Must Read Book for The Next Big Idea Club, and would certainly complement the work that Judy Woodruff is doing for PBS on America at a Crossroads.

Added August 23rd: Just wanted to briefly make the connection between David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere (2017) where he talks about people who are “Anywheres” – comfortable around the globe – and those who are “Somewheres” – identifying with a very local environment. The Economist just published a super interesting piece (“Red giveaway”) which describes research that attempted to measure this and found that “moral values underlie voters’ choices.” Benjamin Enke, Steven Sun, Raymond Fisman, and Luis Mota Freitas looked at “particularism” versus “universalism” and found that both Republican lawmakers and Republican voters tended to favor the former, making speeches and giving to charities that favored those close to them.