notanotherbookreview

A Thinking Woman's Icon, HANNAH ARENDT, celebrated in Ken Krimstein's witty and profound  new graphic novel. THE THREE ESCAPES OF HANNAH ARENDT : A Tyranny of Truth (Bloomsbury September) I read Hannah Arendt's book  Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil, about the former vacuum cleaner salesman,  German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. He  made sure the trains to the gas chambers ran on time packed with passengers. Arendt's account of his trial was a stunning inquiry into the man and the political system he served. Her coverage was controversial, because she depicted  not a monster, but a man frighteningly average.  Ahrendt was an intellectual, a brilliant philosopher, when she fled from Hitler's  terror--from Germany to Paris, from Paris to America.  Coincidentally, it was The New Yorker who asked her to report on the Eichmann Trial and it's the New Yorker cartoonist, Ken...

"Everyone has had at least some experience with the health care system, and advocates on either side of the debate are passionate and vocal about their cause. For more than a century and a half there have been bitter struggles over advancing health care access and improving delivery of care in this country. So how did advocates of health reform and health equity in 2010 achieve the most significant milestone in United States health law and policy?" So writes Daniel Dawes in his preface to his new classic, 150 YEARS OF OBAMACARE, the only book to explain the huge achievement of the Affordable Care Act. While the public may think health care reform is a new concern of one president, it's actually a the culmination of an effort toward health equity that began in 1792, when President John Adams signed into law the Act for Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen. Dawes, a health care attorney and advocate for health equity, says that like most advocates, his "Aha...

You're Not as Crazy as I Thought (But You're Still Wrong) : Conversations between a Devoted Conservative and a Die-Hard Liberal by Phil Neisser and Jacob Hess published by Potomac Books. This book, in my opinion, should be read by every American who might possibly be sick of the "punch & judy show" we call national politics. This is the rare nonfiction book I'm reviewing, because I think it's important (not because I do book pr, though I choose books I think are valuable). Jacob Hess and Phil Neisser are the Conservative and Liberal, who engage in dialogue about “hot-button” issues seeking not agreement but understanding. And it hasn't come easily. The two met at a conference on dialogue. Jacob was one of the few conservatives presenting, Phil had recently published a book, saying how Americans no longer knew how to disagree constructively. Though Jacob, a religious Conservative of Mormon background, has convictions tota...