Know Thine Enemy
Finding the perfect book is sometimes an accident.
Over the weekend, someone recommended I read the books of James Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers). I found three of his four books on Audible, but decided to search BARD, the download service of the NLS as well.
The search function on BARD is a little different from that on, say, Google, since it searches for each word in the search term separately and within several fields. in addition to books by the author I was looking for (a different three than those on Audible), the results also turned up, among others:
President James Buchanan: a biography
Klein, Philip Shriver. Reading time: 23 hours, 50 minutes.
Read by Bradley Bransford.
U.S. History
Detailed biography of the fifteenth president of the United States covers his forty-eight years in politics and traces his rise from Pennsylvania country lawyer to congressman and ultimately to the presidency. Explains his handling of the social and political problems which ultimately lead to the outbreak of the Civil War.
and
Fascism; the meaning and experience of reactionary revolution
Forman, James D. Reading time: 4 hours, 28 minutes.
Read by Bradley Bransford.
Social Sciences
Young Adult
Government and Politics
Chronicles the history of fascism, describing the social and economic factors that nurture it and the psychological realities it conceals. For junior and senior high readers.
The Buchanan biography doesn’t particularly appeal to me, though I may read it at some point.
What struck me as almost eerily apposite for the current moment was the book on fascism. It is well written, calm and dispassionate. Though the author clearly holds fascism in disdain, to say no more, he explains the circumstances that led to its rise, showing that though not inevitable, it was understandable. He also states several times that at various points in the rise of Mussolini and Hitler they could have been stopped. The author makes crystal clear that fascism and movements similar to it are evil and must be resisted.
Though I stumbled across it seemingly by accident, I highly recommend Fascism: The Meaning and Experience of Reactionary Revolution for anyone who wants to understand and resist the resurgence of the extreme Right in America today.
