Nathan Bick

The second volume of Caro’s biography was shorter and more contained than the first. This was possibly the least important period of Lyndon Johnson’s life compared to his origin story in the impoverished Hill Country of central Texas, his time as Majority Leader in the Senate, or most certainly his presidency. These are the years from Johnson’s loss in his first Senate election in 1941 until his election to the Senate in 1948. Perhaps because rather than in spite of the comparable insignificance of this time, we enjoy a bit more quiet, can afford more concentration, and most of all get closer to the events. The outcome is a book that reads like an efficient thriller and enthralling western. Caro’s most moving and informative chapters are those that address some tangent or backstory that explains the main narrative of the biography - Johnson’s political career. The most memorable section of the first volume in my mind is about the condition of life in the Hill Country before and after e...

Poverty, by America seeks to both wholly describe contemporary poverty in America and propose solutions to abolish it. Desmond spends the first several chapters characterizing contemporary poverty across several dimensions in terms of its features and causes. He questions why there hadn’t been enough progress in fighting poverty over the past 50 years. Afterwards, there are several chapters that propose a program to fight and abolish poverty. For this review, I’ll focus on the proposals. There’s widespread cynicism about whether society can be changed for the better and whether government can be effective at all. There are periods like the New Deal and Great Society eras when the answers are a more clearly resounding ‘yes,’ but many would contrast that with the present era. However, as Desmond points out in his book, during the pandemic response in 202-2021, the federal government took extraordinary actions like increasing unemployment benefits, expanding the child tax credit, and send...