Top Ten Books of the Year 2016

Over the course of the last year, I've read a lot of books.  These are, in order, the top 10 books I read in 2016 - a list that spans multiple genres.

10. Red Moon Rising - Pete Grieg

This is the second or third time that I've read this book, and it never fails to inspire me.  Grieg is one of the founders of the 24/7 prayer movement and its offshoots, which have spread like wildfire around the world (especially Europe).  If you ever feel like your prayers are futile or wonder if prayer actually changes anything, you need to read this book.  It will motivate you and drive you.  It will change the way you think about prayer.  I can't say enough about this book.  The only reason it's not much higher on this list is that this not my first time reading it.

9. Hillbilly Elegy - J.D. Vance

Vance tells his story of growing up in a mining town in the Midwest United States.  It is hard to describe that story - at times, Vance's story is exhilarating; at others it is heartrending.  Overall, there is a reason why this book has been billed as a key book for understanding why Donald Trump was able to win the presidency.  This is an important book for understanding life in what is often dismissed as "flyover country."

8. Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey

This book is an account of time spent in the back country areas of Arches National Park in Utah in the days before visitor centers, paved roads, and other modern conveniences.  Abbey's memoir is filled with breathtaking descriptions of beauty and poignant cries against the declivitous destruction of places like Arches.  Abbey makes you want to visit the Arches he describes...and he also makes you realize that the Arches he describes is already gone forever.

7. Destiny of the Republic - Candice Millard

The election and subsequent assassination of President James Garfield is a fascinating story.  Millard tells it beautifully, switching between the story of Garfield's meteoric rise and the psychotic descent of his assassin, Charles Guiteau.  Shining light on a surprisingly little known moment in our national history, Millard's book was adapted for an episode of PBS' American Experience.  As with most film adaptations, the book was better.

6. Galileo's Daughter - Dava Sobel

Galileo's daughter was a nun.  She went by the name of Suor Maria Celeste.  She also exchanged a significant number of letters with her father throughout his life.  Using these letters as a starting point, Sobel explores the life of Galileo, from his first forays into making telescopes to his relationships with the Medici family to the writings that would eventually see him condemned as a heretic.  Through it all, Suor Maria Celeste stayed firmly in her father's corner.  Their story makes for good reading.

5. The Oregon Trail - Rinker Buck

Imagine if someone decided, in the 21st century, to retrace the path of the original Oregon Trail.  Not in a car, not by hiking, not by train, but in an actual covered wagon.  This is the basis of Rinker Buck's book.  At times, it reads like a buddy comedy, as Buck and his friend/co-traveler narrowly avoid hilarious missteps.  At other times, it reads like an adventure novel.  Along the way, Buck meets a cast of characters that is hard to describe in a single paragraph.  You'll have to read it for yourself.

4. Barkskins - Annie Proulx

I'm a sucker for well-written historical fiction, and Proulx's latest fits that bill to a tee.  In a tale that stretches from colonial New England to almost the present day, the lives and fates of Rene Sel and Charles Duquet and their families weave into a narrative tapestry that is richly imagined and lovingly detailed.  But that's not what makes this one of the best books I've read this year.  The forest is what elevates Barkskins to that level.  Proulx manages to make trees into a major character in this book, and to do it beautifully.  Read it and see for yourself.

3. Brilliant Beacons - Eric Jay Dolin

Lighthouses are romantic places, places of serene beauty during the calm and places of violent beauty during the storm.  Eric Jay Dolin tells the story of these romanticized sentinels which stand to keep safe the many mariners who travel to and from our nation's shores.  This book is filled with tales of the construction of lighthouses, and their destruction; of the role lighthouses played in war and conflict; of the heroics of lighthouse keepers who, as a matter of course, would risk their lives to maintain the light or save shipwrecked sailors.  A book on the history of lighthouses might not sound thrilling, but Dolin makes it so.

2. Jungle of Stone - William Carlsen

Without the journals of John Lloyd Stephens and the drawings of Frederick Catherwood, we would know a great deal less about the ancient civilizations of Central America.  These two men traveled throughout all of Central America in search of Mayan ruins, in effect "discovering" them as places of historical importance and bringing them to the rest of the world.  Carlsen has told the story of these two real life Indiana Jones-es so well that the reader wishes he or she could be along for the journey.  This book is not only beautifully written, it is beautifully designed and laid out.  If you want the full experience, make sure you pick up the hardcover.

1. The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wulf

There was never any question which book would be at the top of the list.  The Invention of Nature is the only book I read this year that I would put in the category of best books I have ever read.  I bought this book because I thought the cover was beautiful and because I had never really heard of its subject, Baron Alexander Von Humboldt.  I am so glad that I did.  Wulf writes this biography of Humboldt - an explorer, author, scientist, all around polymath who, for all intents and purposes, invented the modern science of ecology - so well that it is hard to put into words.  The mark of a good biography, in my opinion, is when the author can make you feel a genuine sense of loss at the death of the subject, even though you knew when you started that his death was coming.  Wulf does that.  She makes you feel a real tinge of grief when Humboldt dies.  If you are inclined to take this top ten list as a recommendation and can only read one, read this one.  You won't be disappointed.

#__________livesmatter – Reflections on a Catchphrase

This coming Wednesday, July 13, will mark the third anniversary of the founding of the international activist movement known as Black Lives Matter.  Most of us probably became familiar with this movement just shy of two years ago, when the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri gave rise to civil unrest that spread to other locations where other black men were killed.  

Rather quickly, the movement became identified by its twitter hashtag, #blacklivesmatter, which became the slogan of the groups protesting violence against the black community.  Importantly, though, #blacklivesmatter is not merely protesting police involved shootings of black men and women.  They are protesting an entire system that is unjustly biased against the black community.  They are agitating for change.

Over the course of the last two years, I have seen many “counter” protests to #blacklivesmatter as a movement and, in particular, as a slogan.  The most popular of these is to transform the slogan into the more benign and inclusive #alllivesmatter.  Well-meaning people have repeatedly asked me why it is necessary to emphasize that it is black lives that matter, as opposed to all lives.  Other well-meaning people have suggested that the intent of #blacklivesmatter is to communicate that black lives matter more than other lives – say, those of police and other law enforcement officers.

From reflection on the issue and from conversations with friends, I have come to believe two things to be true.

1. #alllivesmatter is a copout, a way of ignoring the pressing issue of systemic and institutionalized injustice.

2. We need slogans like #blacklivesmatter.

Let me explain.

#Blacklivesmatter, as a slogan, is not a statement about the superiority of one life over another.  Every person I have ever known who is involved with the Black Lives Matter movement would easily and completely affirm that no one life matters more than another.  With their slogan, they are not attempting to stir up violence against law enforcement, against white people, or against any other race.  Rather, their slogan is intended to force us who live in the white majority to ask ourselves some difficult questions.

When we say or write #alllivesmatter in response to the killing of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile or in response to the unthinkable murders of five law enforcement officers in Dallas this week, we are affirming a core truth.  All lives do matter.  Black lives, white lives, male lives, female lives, gay lives, straight lives, law enforcement lives, even criminal lives – they all matter.  It is unquestionably a good thing to affirm that we believe that all lives matter.

When we make that affirmation, though, #blacklivesmatter is there with a question: “Do they really?”  What I see and hear when I read #blacklivesmatter is a challenging question – are black lives really included when I say that I believe that all lives matter?  That’s a question we all need to hear, because too often we resort to #alllivesmatter as a way of distracting and distancing ourselves from the very real problem of systemic injustice in America.

Of course, most of us in the white majority are quick to respond to the question presented by #blacklivesmatter with an indignant insistence that OF COURSE black lives really matter.  We feel insulted and perhaps even personally attacked by the insinuation that we are racist or prejudiced, that we value one life over another.

To which #blacklivesmatter replies with another question – do our actions match our words?  Do the things we do affirm that black lives are included when we say that all lives matter, or is it just words that we say to make ourselves feel good?  And to be clear, it’s not really about what I do in my day to day life, though that matters.  It’s about what I do to combat and change systemic injustice.  Do I exercise my vote in line with my insistence that all lives matter?  Do I spend my money in line with my insistence that all lives matter?  Do I insist that my legislators and my government stop offering only “thoughts and prayers” and instead begin to work to change the broken and unjust systems?!

These are uncomfortable questions for anyone who, like me, is a part of the white majority in our country; for anyone who, like me, benefits in ways that I do not choose, but have not opposed, from the very real thing called white privilege; for anyone, who like me, who struggles to find a way to respond both to the injustice of the Philando Castile and Alton Sterling deaths and to the senseless murders in Dallas.  This discomfort that #blacklivesmatter makes us feel is, I suspect, why so many of us respond viscerally against the slogan.  It is also why we desperately need to see it and hear it and read it again and again.  Without that discomfort, nothing will change.

Of course, there are other slogans we need, other hashtags that ask pressing and uncomfortable question of us.  We need them too.

If we are angrier (or feel a deeper sadness) today at the deaths of five police officers than we were yesterday at the deaths of two black men in police custody, we need to hear the message that #blacklivesmatter.

If, on the other hand, we are angrier about the two black men who were killed in police custody than about the five officers who were murdered in Dallas, perhaps we need to hear the message that #policelivesmatter.

If we, collectively, care more deeply about the 7 lives in the news the last two or three days than the 200+ lives that were lost in Iraq this week, perhaps we need to hear the message that #iraqilivesmatter.

If our fear of attack and wariness of the other drive us to demonize women and children who are seeking safety in our midst, perhaps the message we need to hear is that #refugeelivesmatter.

If our opposition – however justified it may be - to a way of life means that we feel differently about the Orlando night club massacre than about other attacks, perhaps we should heed the questions raised by #gayandlesbianlivesmatter.

It is true that all lives matter, and we should never stop affirming our belief in that truth that is fundamental to our human identity and to our American identity.  It is also true that, once we strip away the rhetoric, we have systems in place that do not affirm that truth; we have systems in place that say that some lives matter more than others.  And until we – all of us – get angry enough at the injustice that we demand (with actions more than words) that it stop, we will continue to hear from our black brothers and sisters the questions posed by #blacklivesmatter.