Bryan Cranston as LBJ in ALL THE WAY

Lyndon Baines Johnson once said, "Cast your bread upon the waters and the sharks will eat it." A consummate politician, a born political animal and a deeply flawed man, he makes for an excellent character and in All the Way, Bryan Cranston brings him to vivid life. All the Way is about LBJ
s fight to get the Civil Rights Act passed. And it was a down and dirty dog fight all the way.

A side note about Cranston.  When you live in Los Angeles, you're never more than one step away from practically any actor you see on TV or in the movies. There's David Caruso in the grocery line ahead of you; there's Steve Carell opening the door for you at the Firestone place; there's Kevin Costner banking at the same time. Or you live on a block next to an actor. Or you go to church with an actor.And on and on. And it doesn't take long before you learn which actors are d-bags. And which are the good guys. Bryan Crnaston is a good guy. His kids went to school with a friend of mine's kids and even before he hit it big with the role of a lifetime on Breaking Bad, people said nice things about him. And in L.A., the default option is to say nasty things about people. It's the whole reason TMZ exists.

The Most Important Article You'll Read Today if you didn't read it yesterday

"What can be causing Trumpism? We ask, and seek for an earthquake, or at least a historical oddity or a series of highly specific causal events. The more tragic truth is that the Trumpian view of the world is the default view of mankind. Bigotry, fanaticism, xenophobia are the norms of human life—the question is not what causes them but what uncauses them, what happens in the rare extended moments that allow them to be put aside, when secular values of toleration and pluralism replace them."--Adam Gropnik, "Why Trump is Different--and Must be Repelled" (New Yorker, November 3, 2016)

Gropnik's article is sobering. It's full of facts that counter what's become perceived wisdom. But he

also does something that I think cheapens his article. He uses this phrase, "...so infantile a figure as the orange menace." It's become a standard thing for news stories and blog posts and magazine articles to trot out the metaphors to mock Trump's perennial orange tan. It's often funny. As are the bazillion memes that mockery has generated. (Like the one on the right.)
But as Gropnik says in another part of his article, "there's nothing funny about it." Anything that trivializes Trump makes him seem less dangerous. People were not paying attention when he started his campaign. They enjoyed the spectacle. They laughed and pointed and couldn't get enough of him. And now...he's a heartbeat away from becoming President of the United States. We sowed the wind and we're reaping the whirlwind.

Read the article if you're thinking about voting for Trump. And then go Google "Bill Weld and Trump" to see what the Libertarian candidate has to say about him. (Here's a story from USA Today that includes a link to his appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show.)

The Ghost by Robert Harris

Robert Harris wrote Fatherland, a "what if" novel that wrapped a thriller plot around the premise that the Nazis won WWII. He also wrote Enigma (about the code-breaking machine), and Archangel, a thriller set in present-day Russia. He's also written a lesser-known non-fiction book called Selling Hitler, which was about the so-called "Hitler Diaries." Harris' novels always have a political subtext, and one of his best, The Ghost, was turned into a movie called The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. It's about "power, politics, and murder." Great stuff and just the thing to be reading four days out from the most important election so far in the millennium.

The Best and the Brightest--David Halberstam's dissection of a disastrous foreign policy

I was a huge fan of writer David Halberstam. I admired his prose so much I even read his book The Breaks of the Game, and I am not a fan of sports writing. (A great writer can make any subject riveting.) The Best and the Brightest is his examination of the way John F. Kennedy's cadre of intellectual advisors ("the best and the brightest") came up with a misbegotten foreign policy that led us into the Vietnam War. (Read it in tandem with The Pentagon Papers or John Paul Vance's A Bright Shining Lie.) The book feels particularly relevant to this election cycle because the personalities involved were all so very, very sure they knew more about things than people who actually had experience about things and against all advice, rushed into terrible, terrible policies.

My favorite book by Halberstam is probably The Reckoning, though. This is from the blurb: Told with panoramic detail and gripping insight, The Reckoning is the inside story of automakers Ford and Nissan—and the collapse of America’s industrial supremacy.  The book was originally published in 1986, but 30 years later, it still feels prescient as we look at the collapse of cities like Detroit.

An Election Day Reading List from Charles Pierce

This is a list of 15 books that includes everything from Robert Caro's monumental biography of LBJ to Twilight of the Presidency, one of the scariest books you'll ever read.Written in 1970, here's what the blurb says:

Former special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, George Reedy, examines the growing isolation of the president from the country's citizens, the air of unreality, and the virtually unchecked power that works to corrupt any man who holds the office of the President.  

check out the full list here.

A Week of Political Books: All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

We're one week out from what will be an historic election, no matter which way it turns out. America will never be the same no matter which candidate wins. I've got a whole reading list that includes Hillbilly Elegy and The Man Without a Face. II pulled that last book off the Guardian's list of ten must-read books about Vladimir Putin. Check out the list here.)  The book I've just finished is Rebecca Traister's All The Single Ladies.

This is the review excerpted on the book's Amazon page:

The New York Times bestselling investigation into the sexual, economic, and emotional lives of women is “an informative and thought-provoking book for anyone—not just the single ladies—who want to gain a greater understanding of this pivotal moment in the history of the United States” (The New York Times Book Review).  

It's an important book, I think.

New from Alexandra Sokoloff

The latest (number 4) in her "Huntress" FBI series is out. Yay. Check it out on her site.