Over in Prince George’s County, Maryland, I felt I had to check out two of those Little Free Libraries, and I got a handful of books to browse.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, by Trevor Noah (Spiegel & Grau, 2016)

I’m no fan of Trevor Noah’s smug, snarky take on conservatism, but I thought it would be good to take a look at his biography. I saw it as a sort of homework assignment in cultural education, but I found myself fascinated by the narrative, beginning with the dedication (“For my mother. My first fan. Thank you for making me a man.”) and a recitation of the anti-miscegenation law of 1927 (making Trevor, the issue of a black woman and a white man, “illegal”), continuing on through chapter one. Therein, I met his devoutly Christian mother, who engineered his three-churches-on-Sunday upbringing, and who struggled mightily to keep him on the straight and narrow.

I was particularly struck by his account of the enmity between the two leading tribal groups, the Zulus (“warriors”) and the Xhosa (“thinkers”; pronounced “coe’- suh”). The strife was longstanding and bloody before the Dutch instituted Apartheid, and picked back up with violence once Apartheid disintegrated. It tends to undermine romantic notions that “colonialism” is essentially and uniquely ruinous, for things were pretty awful before and after the colonizers were in power, at least in South Africa.

The Art and Politics of Science, by Harold Varmus (W. W. Norton, 2009) 

Varmus, along with Michael Bishop, won the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes.” No one would have predicted this since Varmus’s student days were marked by disappointments in pre-med coursework and his academic zeal showed itself more clearly in the humanities. But once he caught fire in the sciences, he was extraordinary.

Down the way, he became the Clinton/Shalala choice for fourteenth NIH director, a slot that opened up when the new administration “excused” Bush senior’s director, the first woman to hold the title. Though Varmus was to be the first Nobel laureate to hold the position, his administrative resume was slim: He’d only supervised a lab group of 25, and now he would have 20,000 employees, with over 30,000 grant recipients; and he’d only worked with a million dollar research budget, while the NIH budget ran to $11 billion. But he got the job, which he held from 1993 till 1999. (President Obama appointed him as director of the National Cancer Institute, with his term of service, 2010-2015, beginning the year after this book was published. And, and yes, the Clinton/Obama appointments reflect his political orientation.)

What with all the wear and tear over COVID origins, mandates, and such, I was interested to see whether NIAID director, Anthony Fauci, and NIH-director Francis Collins showed up in the story. (Varmus was director #14, Collins #16.) Fauci gets a single mention, regarding his joining Varmus to brief the Clintons on African medical concerns—AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—before the couple left on their 1998 trip to the continent. But Collins gets a bit more attention as he’s commended for his “eloquence” in advancing the cause of the Human Genome Project. The second reference to Collins is not so flattering, though his misstep was forgiven. Turns out that a researcher under their purview disregarded strictures against embryonic stem cell research and was fired. But nobody bothered to notify Varmus, who first heard about it while at a malaria conference in Dakar. So it was awkward for them both to explain the blunder before a Congressional oversight committee.

Of course, things would get a lot more awkward for Collins (a professing Christian who proved less than discriminating in some takes on theology and ethics). He was party to proscribed “gain of function” research funding through a Chinese lab, meant to gin up virus meanness to see if we could it whup it. But from Fauci and Collins, “Move on. Nothing to see here. And be sure to wear your mask.”

The Collected Stories, by William Trevor (Penguin, 1993) 

I’d not heard of William Trevor (born William Trevor Cox), but the 1,250-page tome with glowing cover blurbs suggested I should get acquainted. (“Trevor is probably the greatest living writer of short stories in the English language” (New Yorker) and this is “One of the best books of 1993” (NYT Book Review). He was born to a Church of Ireland family in Country Cork, but lived most of life in England. 

Of the 88 short stories, I homed in on “Another Christmas,” which pictured the fallout from a bitter disagreement over the justification (or lack thereof) for IRA bombings in England. After years of fellowship with their now elderly landlord on Christmas day, the Norah and Dermot faced a sadder occasion, for the relationship with Mr. Joyce had been torn. This Irish Catholic couple had moved to England from Waterford, Ireland (yes, the Waterford crystal place) so that the wife could become a shop keeper; the husband had settled in to his work as a gas company meter reader, and he was the one who’d offended their guest by arguing that the English had brought the terrorism on themselves. 

Trevor’s descriptions are spare but insightful:

She was middle-aged now, with touches of grey in her curly dark hair, a woman known for her cheerfulness, running a bit to fat. Her husband was the opposition: thin and seeming ascetic, with more than a hint of the priest in him, a good man.

I think I’ll read another, maybe “The Teddy-bear’s Picnic,” since it seems to connect to a favorite song from my childhood.

Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, by Dana Milbank (Doubleday, 2010)

This is a nasty takedown of the conservative broadcast personality by a commentator for CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR—a clear pedigree indicator. The title features a sexual slur directed at the Tea Party movement, and Chapter 6 reads “A Hemorrhoid on the Body Politic.” Beck has, to a great extent, asked for it. He’s been something of a mess. Regarding his past, he’s said, “I was a monster,” “I was a scumbag,” and “I’m a recovering dirtbag.”  But he’s also said some importantly true things which Milbank is in no mood to acknowledge. 

Milbank sneers, 

Beck’s spurious style of attack: Broadcast an outrageous allegation, qualify it by saying “I’m just asking the question,” and then assume it to be true because the victim of the attack doesn’t deny it. The joke was that if Beck refused to deny that he had raped and murdered a young girl twenty years ago, then, according to Beck’s own formula, it must be true.

Milbank savors Beck’s legal attempt to shut down a Web site called “GlenBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com,” one meant to mock his “spurious style of attack.” Milbank then joined the Web site owner in saying “Gotcha!” when Beck appealed to the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization for relief, the delight coming from Beck’s inconsistency in turning to an agency of the UN, an organization he’s vilified. Of course, to impugn the UN is not the same as impugning everything the UN does. He probably doesn’t have a problem with the International Civil Aviation Organization, which had codified protocols for accident investigation. 

Milbank also heaps contempt on Beck’s efforts to counter the notion that George Washington “like many other Founders” was “a Deist”—a believer in a noninterventionst God.” To make his case, Beck brought Peter Lillback, president of the Westminster Theological Seminary, on the program to argue that Washington “had a vibrant personal Anglican or Episcopalian Christian faith.” But Milbank somehow “knows better.”

At the back of the book, Milbank does a compare-and-contrast between Beck and Father Coughlin “the populist radio priest of the Great Depression whose denunciations of Franklin Roosevelt attracted millions.” Interesting.

Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin (Thorndike/Gale, Cengage Learning, 2012)

For one with presbyopic eyes, the availability of a large-print edition seemed a blessing. But it’s going to take some getting used to. There’s something aesthetically numbing about the layout. Perhaps there are too few paragraph breaks on the page. And I’d expect more photos in a bio, but there’s only one at the front.

Anyway, it’s a big book, and, as the site says, I’m just “browsing.” And in that browsing, I was interested in what lit his fire in music. He was stuck by the Beatles and by Sheb Wooley’s 1958 hit, The Purple People Eater. (Incidentally, the son of the president of Ouachita Baptist College, who lived across the street, gave me that record as a birthday present when I was ten.) And there were others, but the one who turned his world (and the world) upside down (in his estimation) was Elvis Presley. Hear Springsteen bliss out:

He was actually the forerunner for a new kind of man.  Everyone changed their ideas about everything after that. About race, about sex, about gender descriptions, what you could look like, what you could wear. It was outrageous . . . It was an early signal that you could just be different. And that the difference you may have already been feeling was not necessarily a handicap; was not necessarily inappropriate, wrong, or unsuitable. Suddenly there was some cachet just through your own uniqueness . . . He had this enormous, balls-out, unchallenged authority. It looked like he was playing, like a child is drawn to play. It looked like so much fun. Imagine throwing out all the self-consciousness that’s sort of like a blanket over you. What would happen if you threw all that off for two and a half minutes, three minutes, as a performer! It was an enormous key that unlocked your imagination and your heart and soul.

Then later, he added, 

There’s an element of early rock star that was simultaneously democratic, myth-like, and majestic. The King! Not the president of the United States. The King of Rock and Roll! So there was a fabulous sort of twisted aristocracy that said, This. Rules. Now. I’m the King! And you are all going to be subjected to the new rules that I have written.

Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass, by Murphy Hicks Henry (University of Illinois Press, 2013) 

Okay, very hard for a Nashville resident to pass up this book. So I didn’t. And, from the start, it was clear I had a lot to learn. Of the forty-plus women musicians (or groups of women musicians), I only knew a handful. Still, I was happy to see I was familiar with one from the earliest grouping (“In the Beginning: The 1940s”) and one from the fifth cluster (“Leaders of the Band: The 1980s”). I knew the names of others, but I’d enjoyed the music of these two:

First, Wilma Cooper. In my first fall of graduate study at Vanderbilt, I saw notice that Johnny Cash’s variety TV show would be taping at the Ryman Auditorium, with free tickets available. I grabbed one and spent an evening enjoying performances (sometimes with several takes) by Johnny, Mother Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters (including June Carter Cash), Glen Campbell, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins and the Tennessee Three, and Peggy Lee.  Quite an evening. And it served to introduce me to the Ryman, which I came to frequent in those days, taking in performances of the Grand Ole Opry. (I still do, but most of the shows are out on Briley Parkway in the new Opry house.) A number of those 1970s personalities have passed on, including Roy Acuff (Wabash Cannonball), Bill Monroe (Mule Skinner Blues), Little Jimmy Dickens (May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose), and Tom T. Hall (The Year that Clayton Delaney Died)—and, featured in the book, Wilma Lee Cooper, whom I heard perform with her husband Stoney back in the 70s.

In this collection, she’s remembered for her “gutsy, belt-‘em-out voice.” Her roots are bona fide—from Elkins, West Virginia, the daughter of a coal miner. Both parents (the Learys) “sang in church, where Wilma Lee’s mother played the pump organ, and the Leary Family performed gospel music at picnics, funerals, and camp meetings, generally for free.” Along the way, the Learys picked up a replacement fiddle player from nearby Harmon, West Virginia, Stoney Cooper, and things developed from there, with marriage, parenting, the formation of their own groups (eventually the Clinch Mountain Clan), radio-station employment from Grand Island, Nebraska, to Blytheville, Arkansas, and points between and beyond, recording contracts with Columbia and Decca, etc. 

A number of their favorite songs were grounded in their church backgrounds, e.g., Walking with My Lord Up Calvary’s Hill, Thirty Pieces of Silver, and Legend of the Dogwood Tree.” Indeed, Wilma once said, “As far back as I can recall, I always wanted to be a preacher.”

Stoney died in 1977, and Wilma continued to perform until 2001, when she suffered a stroke while on stage at the Opry: “Her mountain heritage and perseverance intact, she struggled to finish the song. Still, in her trademark crinoline skirt and high spiked heels at eighty years old, she left the stage to a standing ovation.” (She lived until 2011, many of her latter years in a nursing home.) 

As for the second singer, Alison Krauss, I much enjoyed her singing in one of my favorite movies, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Her voice shows up in three of the numbers, I’ll Fly Away, Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby (with Krauss, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch representing the “sirens” washing clothes in a stream), and one she wrote, Down in the River to Pray.

As I went down in the river to pray


Studying about that good ol' way


And who shall wear the starry crown


Good Lord, show me the way

O sisters, let's go down


Let's go down, come on down


O sisters, let's go down


Down in the river to pray . . . .

She started with classical violin lessons in Champaign, Illinois, but moved to fiddle, and with her voice, found herself receiving a batch of awards, singing with all sorts of stars from Dolly Parton to Sting to Brad Paisley, and so on and so on. And yes, she’s a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears), by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling (Public Affairs, 2020) 

I think this book is misnamed. You could just as well call it, An Anarchist Walks into a Bear. Maybe the author wanted to ding libertarians, so he attached the label to the stupidest people he could find. Maybe he’s a big-government Democrat, and he wanted to reduce small-government Republicanism to absurdity. Or maybe he just likes to tell a wacky story. Be that as it may, I quickly tired of this book, including the chapter about the worthlessness of the community church, recently purchased and served by some metaphysical airhead. I’ll just let the book jacket description tell the tale:

Once up on a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.

When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank; the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town’s thick wilderness.

The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton’s neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes frightening tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politiciana, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment—to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.

Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics, edited by Nathan K. Finney And Tyrell O. Mayfield (Naval Institute Press, 2018) 

In my Ethics of Work and Leisure courses at Wheaton and SBTS, I touched on the difference between a trade and a profession. In the former (e.g., store clerking; assembly line work; plumbing), “the customer is always right.” In the latter (e.g., physicians, professors, and pastors), the customer is often wrong—as in, “You’re too fat,” “You get a D on that paper,” and “Repent!”) The former is hired to please you, the latter to insult you. (Of course, the distinction is more nuanced than that, but this is a quick-and-dirty start.)

I’ve also taught Ethics of Peace and War, drawing in part on my 28 years in the Army Guard and Reserves. And in my training (and further study), I’ve gotten well-acquainted with the “Geneva Accords” and the “Law of Land Warfare.” So this book sits at the juncture of two of my big interests. It’s a keeper. (To the relief of my wife, who despairs over the absurd spread of my library, most of the books I got from these freebies boxes were returned.) 

I’ve just had a cursory look at the book, but already I’m keen to track with “Mike” Denny through his piece, “Professionals Know When to Break the Rules.” He starts with a real-life case starring himself, wherein he was serving as a young lieutenant in Afghanistan having to make a snap decision regarding the rules of engagement. The lead vehicle in a convoy had been destroyed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and there were four MAM’s (military aged males) a couple of hundred yards from the blast site, perhaps with weapons, perhaps hostile. His higher ups were preoccupied with other engagements, so he had to make a doubtful call on his own, whether to engage these four or not (which he did).

As for the profession-angle, a number of the essays address it. For instance, Tony Ingesson’s “When the Military Profession Isn’t,” plays off a standard definition, with, for example, the criterion, “Training is specialized and yet also systematic and scholarly.” But he then goes on to suggest there are special features to the military vocation, e.g., “Provide a unique and vital service to society, without which it could not flourish.” (Of course, you could say that of pastors as well.)

Anyway, just getting started and pretty sure I’ll be digging deep into this one.