Whatcha Reading?

I get asked all the time what I'm reading. I try to keep two or three books going at the same time. Doing so keeps my brain from moving into comfortable ruts and sometimes allows me to make interesting connections I wouldn't otherwise make.

Currently, I'm reading three books. One is Kevin Phillips' well-researched and rather brutal look at the Bush family, American Dynasty. Phillips, a one-time Republican thinker whose work in the late-60s and early-70s, anticipated the rise of the current GOP majority, is well-known among some for his longtime service as a pithy commentator on National Public Radio. (As you read his evocative prose in this book, you can almost hear Phillips enunciating each word.)

Like another Nixon era functionary, John W. Dean, Phillips is now a political independent and is highly critical of George W. Bush. He doesn't see Bush as a conventional Republican or conservative at all. Rather, he and the Bush clan are portrayed by Phillips as royalists who employ conservative rhetoric in order to pursue their primary ends: influence, cash, and power. It is a withering critique.

A second book is a revised edition of Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders. Whatever leadership a person may take on---whether as a pastor or a CEO, this book can be of immense help. Filled with wisdom about what it takes to lead, drawn primarily from the Bible, but also from History and other sources, this will help leaders lead with integrity, putting God's priorities first, one's ego last, and doing what is best for the people whom the leader is meant to serve. This is the second time I've read Spiritual Leadership and I heartily recommend it.

The third book I'm reading is part of the new Henry Holt and Company set, The American Presidents Series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The books of the series are obviously meant to provide thoughtful readers with quick, general introductions to the lives and presidencies of figures they may not know well. Schlesinger has also shown an interesting penchant for selecting persons to write the biographies you might not first associate with their subjects.

The volume I'm reading at present is Rutherford B. Hayes by Hans Trefousse. I selected this book to start my foray into the series because Hayes, an Ohioan like me, is a bit more obscure to me, although I have always been intrigued by his moral sensibilities and the connection to places in Ohio with which I am personally familiar. The book sometimes seems truncated, subjected to an editing process which leaves one with an impoverished sense of the man or his motivations. But it does give a good overview of his life and whets my appetite for learning more about him.