In Saturday’s Q&A at E-V.com there were several questions about books and the answers returned a wealth of book recommendations.

Here they are. Please note that I have not altered the book links which take you to Amazon without any accompanying associate ID, so nobody earns a fee if you end up buying any of these books.

I’ll have a few words to add at the end.

J.M. in Boulder, CO, asks: My daughter is a teacher at a very small private school for kids on the autism spectrum. She assigns a book per quarter for study and review. There are three classes—for grades 6-8, 9-10 and 11-12.

Several of her students have expressed an interest in studying a biography, possibly for one of our presidents. Can you suggest any good ones that would be accessible for them? She could use one book for each class, or the same one for multiple classes if that would work.

(Z) answers: I am not particularly equipped to align books with age groups, but these all strike me as being within reach for a high school senior, and most of them for someone younger:

The American presidents series. I have recommended this series before. The books are short, well written, and were produced by top scholars.

The Making of America series, all of which are by Teri Kanefield. There are six volumes so far, on Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thurgood Marshall, and the goal is to make those people’s stories accessible to younger readers without whitewashing them.

The Life of Washington (1800), by Mason Locke Weems. It might be interesting for younger students to get an introduction to how history is distorted and mythologized.

Washington: A Life (2011) and Grant (2018), both by Ron Chernow. These books are also hefty, but Chernow knows how to write. They were both bestsellers, and the Washington book won the Pulitzer.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1996), by Joseph J. Ellis. A character study of Jefferson, rather than a blow-by-blow account of his whole life.

Lincoln (1996), by David Herbert Donald. It’s on the long side (720 pages), but was a bestseller and is probably the most accessible biography of the 16th president.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship(2016), by Russell Freedman. This is probably most suited to the youngest of the three groups of students.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (2012) and The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2006), both by Candice Millard. The former is 50% biography, 50% true crime, and is about the death of James A. Garfield. It was adapted into the miniseries Death by Lightning. The latter is 50% biography, 50% adventure book, and is about Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition to map the last major unmapped river in South America, a challenge undertaken after his presidency.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (2007), by Barack Obama. All of the books Obama wrote about his life were meant to be accessible to a broad audience.

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K.W. in Albuquerque, NM, asks: Purely by coincidence, I was re-reading Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life the same day you quoted Plunkett on “honest graft.” Hofstadter quotes Plunkett about the importance in politics of not being educated or appearing to be educated. “Tammany”, he said, “might win an election every four thousand years” if its leaders were “bookworms” and the “dudes who put their name in the middle.”

Hofstadter held that America goes through cycles where well-educated people are denigrated by politicians and are shut out from political power. If he is correct, where are we in that cycle? Donald Trump and MAGA did not spring from nowhere.

As an aside, what does the history profession think of Hofstadter all these years later?

(Z) answers: Broadly speaking, there are two demographics in America where anti-intellectual sentiment is most commonly found. The first is religious people, especially fundamentalists, who see science/education/reason as being in competition with/hostile to faith. The second is blue-collar people, who see science/education/reason as being in competition with/hostile to lived experience and practical approaches to problem-solving. This is not to say that all religious people, or all blue-collar people, are anti-intellectual, merely that these are the demographics where you are most likely to find that sentiment.

I would say, and Hofstadter would agree, that anti-intellectual feeling is present in every era of American history. That said, it becomes most profound when a politician or political party unifies both of these anti-intellectual-skewing demographics, as Donald Trump has with MAGA. It is probably least profound when there is a broad sense that educated people have something useful to offer the nation, as was the case during the Cold War (We need scientists!) or when Barack Obama rose to power (We need someone to clean up the mess made by George W. Bush and his crew!).

Hofstadter’s book remains a towering work of political and intellectual history, and it would not be at all surprising for it to be assigned in a graduate-level course, even today.

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S.S.L. in Battle Creek, MI, asks: I’ll (hopefully) be recuperating from major surgery July 23rd onward. I’d appreciate a list of your favorite books. The more immersive, the better.

(L) answers: My favorite books tend to be non-fiction and mostly biographies. I’ll give 5 so as not to overwhelm:

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: Jared Diamond’s seminal work on how civilizations rise.
2. Alone on the Wall: A riveting book about the famous solo climber with even more detail and insight than the movie Free Solo (though I highly recommend the film as well)
3. Sense and Sensibility: I had to have one classic in there.
4. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas: An excellent chronicle of the rise of Clarence Thomas.
5. Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!: This makes me laugh out loud every time I read it; a really fun behind the scenes look at the making of this classic film and how the creators got their start.

(A) answers: I hate admitting this, but it’s the truth—I never read anymore. I used to be a voracious reader, but somehow lost the momentum many years ago. Here are my favorite books, as far as I can recall (in no particular order):

1. The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific: The real, hilarious, sometimes terrifying adventures of a man who suddenly moved with his girlfriend from Washington, D.C., to the Republic of Kiribati (“KEE-ruh-bass”).
2. The Phantom Tollbooth: “[T]he closest thing we have to a modern Alice in Wonderland.” — The Guardian. A bored boy goes through the looking glass a tollbooth, and on a grand adventure. This was probably the first novel I read, when my age was far from being in the double digits. Then, it helped me “think outside the box” and understand how different things could be from another’s perspective. I read it again once a decade or so, and now it’s simply a delight, despite being perfectly appropriate for young children.
3. The Vampire Armand: This was the last book of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles that I read (because when I read it, it was the last book in the series). My favorite thing about these books is the world-building, the extensive vampire history. It’s been a long time since I read this, but I think this is the book that covers the most ancient vampire history. However, a reader may be lost if they don’t start with the first, and unfortunately worst, book in the series—Interview with the Vampire—and read the series in order. Note: In case it isn’t obvious, the series is categorized as horror. Also, many books in the series contain depictions of sexual violence.
4. The Tale of the Body Thief: One of the main vampire characters in the Vampire Chronicles switches his body with that of a regular human (mortal), to experience being human for the first time in centuries. But the human he switched with doesn’t want to give his newfound immortal body back, forcing the vampire-mind-in-a-human-body, now relatively powerless, to track him down and steal his body back. This is more of a fun one in the series, but with the same warning as above.

(V) answers: I overlap some with (L).

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: Why Europe dominated the world after 1500 or so.
2. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal — An Iconoclastic Look at DNA, Genetics, and What Makes Us Unique: Another from Jared Diamond. Why people are different from bonobos.
3. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: How civilizations destroy themselves.
4. The 100: A Ranking Of The Most Influential Persons In History: Exactly what the title says it is.
5. The Hunt for Red October: A thriller; I couldn’t put it down.

(Z) answers: Like most of us here (with L the exception), I tend to gravitate toward non-fiction.

1. The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes: This is meant to be a reference work, along the lines of Bartlett’s familiar quotations. However, I stumbled on a copy at a coffee shop that was on sale for $1, and I read the 751 pages cover to cover. I have since re-read it three times. It was published in 1991, so no anecdotes from the last 40 years, however.
2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything—A Groundbreaking Exploration of Hidden Incentives, Behavioral Economics, and Unconventional Wisdom: I read this book, and the several others in the series, and I listen to the weekly podcast. I am, of course, well versed in the historian’s approach to research questions. It was, and is, very eye-opening to see the economist’s approach in action. I also incorporated the general approach of the book chapters into my teaching—they start each chapter with a hook, like “How is a nun like Bo Jackson?” and then the answer is revealed as the co-authors outline the main argument of the chapter.
3. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Every Sherlock Holmes collection is about the same, though I did link to the one I happen to have. In any event, it’s some of the best world-building in western literature—so good that people rarely even refer to Arthur Conan Doyle’s work in that way. Of course, he had the advantage of basically writing about the world in which he was living. I recommend pairing it with a book on “the game,” an approach to Holmesian literature that presumes that Holmes and Watson are real people, and that Doyle was merely their literary agent, who thinly disguised details of their real-life adventures. My favorite is A Sherlock Holmes Commentary, which is out of print, but is available used and/or in eBook form. Read a Holmes story, then read the commentary on that story, which tries to figure out the exact timeline, the exact locations in the story, how inconsistencies with other works in the canon can be resolved, etc. Obviously, Holmes and Watson weren’t actually real. However, I have no doubt that “the game” sheds light on the real-life inspirations for much of Doyle’s storytelling.
4. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations: I’ve been an Al Franken fan since I started watching old Saturday Night Live episodes in the late 1980s (they aired re-runs on my local UHF station). All of his books are good, and correlate well with my humor aesthetic, but this is the one I’ve re-read most frequently.
5. Catch-22: This also aligns with my humor aesthetic (Franken is sardonic, this book is surreal). Joseph Heller demands a lot of you, as a reader, but if you are up to it, it’s a brilliant book.

Note that this was supposed to run last week, but did not, due to an error on the part of (Z). We did send it to S.S.L. in Battle Creek before the operation, and we’ve already had news that the procedure went well, and recovery is proceeding well.

I’ve read several of the recommended books, including the David Herbert Donald biography of Lincoln (excellent in my opinion) and Ron Chernow’s Grant bio (ditto). I’ve also read most of Jane Austen’s novels and Sense and Sensibility remains my favorite. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard is terrific, as is the mini-series Death by Lightning based on it.

And Guns, Germs, and Steel ought be on everyone’s reading list.

I’ve read and enjoyed several Tom Clancy novels, but not the Red October one.

In the eighth grade I devoured most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I’ve re-read some of them with pleasure since then, although I never became the Sherlockian fanatic that some folks are. I have read one or two “biographies” of Holmes, though. And I used to have William Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes. And the same author’s “biography” of Nero Wolfe in which he postulates that Wolfe was the illegitimate offspring of Holmes and Irene Adler.

I read the original Freakonomics book, but none of the others, and the same with Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. I tend to enjoy watching Franken more than reading him, I think.

I’ve always meant to read Catch-22 but never got past the first couple of chapters. One of these days… 

That said, there are several book recommendations above that I want to add to my reading list. My ever expanding reading list…