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First Sentences

“Here’s a book very unlike the others I have written—very much shorter, for one thing, as some readers may notice—but its intention is to share some experiences I’ve had while doing the others, and thoughts I’ve had about what I’ve been trying to do with those books.” Robert A. Caro, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

“I like to think I know what death is.” Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.

“It was no place for a harbor.” James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America.

“She never called her mother Mom or Mommy or even Mother.” Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel.

“On March 18, 1990, the city of Boston—and the world—suffered a profound loss when two men dressed as police officers commandeered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and pulled off the greatest art theft in world history.” Stephen Kurkjian, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist.

“Day 1,299 of My Captivity: Darkness suits me.” Shelby van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

“As the judge banged the gavel, William Dampier hung his head in disgrace.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late.” Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian.

“My family’s story is a particular one, but it is also a story that millions of families tell about their past.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“The rainy streets of Dublin on a cold winter’s day were no place for a young boy to dawdle, unless that very same boy had his nose pressed up against the window of the most fascinating bookshop.” Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop.

“The room felt like the bottom of a grave.” Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia.

“Although I don’t consider myself particularly vain (except perhaps for considering myself more often than I should), I was pleased to have conceived such an expert murder, especially since I had never previously considered committing one.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“We tend to think of measurement as something taken from the world: as knowledge extracted from nature by means of scales, gauges, and rulers.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“When I was 12, I remember holding hands with this girl—I want to say ‘Patty,’ but I am guessing here—and something about the way she held hands was just . . . wrong.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Here’s a book very unlike the others I have written—very much shorter, for one thing, as some readers may notice—but its intention is to share some experiences I’ve had while doing the others, and thoughts I’ve had about what I’ve been trying to do with those books.” Robert A. Caro, Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing.

“I like to think I know what death is.” Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing.

“It was no place for a harbor.” James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America.

“She never called her mother Mom or Mommy or even Mother.” Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel.

“On March 18, 1990, the city of Boston—and the world—suffered a profound loss when two men dressed as police officers commandeered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and pulled off the greatest art theft in world history.” Stephen Kurkjian, Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist.

“Day 1,299 of My Captivity: Darkness suits me.” Shelby van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures.

“As the judge banged the gavel, William Dampier hung his head in disgrace.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The Old North bell tolls the hour, and I realize that I’ll be late.” Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian.

“My family’s story is a particular one, but it is also a story that millions of families tell about their past.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“The rainy streets of Dublin on a cold winter’s day were no place for a young boy to dawdle, unless that very same boy had his nose pressed up against the window of the most fascinating bookshop.” Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop.

“The room felt like the bottom of a grave.” Mike Dash, The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia.

“Although I don’t consider myself particularly vain (except perhaps for considering myself more often than I should), I was pleased to have conceived such an expert murder, especially since I had never previously considered committing one.” Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer: McMasters Guide to Homicide.

“We tend to think of measurement as something taken from the world: as knowledge extracted from nature by means of scales, gauges, and rulers.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“When I was 12, I remember holding hands with this girl—I want to say ‘Patty,’ but I am guessing here—and something about the way she held hands was just . . . wrong.” Paul Reiser, Couplehood.

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Snippets–Inaugural Edition

The inauguration was moved indoors because of extremely cold weather. What is your joke on hell freezing over?

Does this have any relevance today? “One left an encounter with Winston certain that Winston was the most interesting person alive; when one left a meeting with [Lloyd George] one convinced oneself of being the most interesting person alive.”David Reynolds, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him.

I wonder if RFK, Jr., has been like me and thought that bacteria is the rear entrance to a cafeteria.

At least as defined by Mark Twain, the new president does not have good breeding, which Twain said “consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”

I am frequently struck by Trump railing about a problem that he considers caused by Biden when the problem also existed during Trump’s first term. But as a wise man said, “Among the things that enable a person to be self-satisfied is a poor memory.”

Now that Elon is on the scene, I wonder if what Abraham Riesman wrote in RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America continues to be true. Reisman said that Vince McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” Trump is a member of McMahon’s wrestling Hall of Fame. Will Elon enjoy the same access?

This is not just inauguration day; it is also the day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. There must be a site somewhere where I can bet how many times, if any, Trump mentions MLK today. We tend to think that King gave his great “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, but the complete name of the rally was the March on Washinton for Jobs and Freedom. Six decades later, the demands of that day are still incompletely met. For example, the March was asking that the Fair Labor Standards Act cover agricultural workers. That act still only partly encompasses those who till and pick our food. The rally also sought to increase the minimum wage to $2 an hour. We fall woefully short of that today. Two dollars in 1963 is the equivalent of about $20 today, and the federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour. The minimum wage was $1.25 in 1963, which would be about $13 today. We would honor King if we at least thought about how we treat the working poor. (And we should remember that when King was murdered, he was in Memphis to lend support to a sanitation workers’ strike that aimed to change some of their horrendous working conditions.)

I am anything but a Trump supporter. I think many of his policies will do harm to this country, but I hope that I am wrong. Although not expecting it, I wish him success. There is much in this country that could use improvement. I could make my list. You, no doubt, could make yours. But instead, I give you what David Leonhardt said in Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream (2023):

“We live in the only high-income country that does not provide parents with paid leave. We live in one of the stingiest countries for daycare, preschool, and the resources devoted to children. A typical thirty-year-old man is not much more educated than his parents were. The United States remains the only rich country without universal health care insurance. American women are more likely to die in childbirth than women in many other countries. American babies are more likely to die, too. Income inequality is higher than in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, South Kores, or Australia. Almost two million Americans wake up each day in a prison or jail. Our children consider it normal to spend time at school preparing for a mass shooting. Our opioid death rate leads the world. Our roads are more dangerous than in other affluent countries, which was not true only a few decades ago. In 1980, life expectancy in the United States was similar to that in other high-income countries. We have become a grim outlier.”

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First Sentences

“The story begins with a voice on the radio.” Dan Callahan, Bing and Billie and Frank and Ella and Judy and Barbra.

“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.” Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

“On the edge of a typical Minneapolis coal yard in the 1930s was a wooden shack known as a doghouse.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“When the Toyota Avalon bumped down the dirt road out of the woods and across the railroad tracks, Parker put the Infiniti into low and stepped out onto the gravel.” Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), Dirty Money: A Parker Novel.

“Between Europe and the great, mature civilization of China and India lies a belt of over three thousand miles, dominated by desert and stony tableland, where rainfall is relatively little, frontiers are contested, political unity has rarely existed, and where as the late Princeton historian Bernard Lewis claimed, there has been no historical pattern of authority.” Robert D. Kaplan, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China.

“According to legend, the first unethical science experiment in history was designed by none other than Cleopatra.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The old man with the droopy right eye sat slumped on the witness chair pretending to be a nobody.” Matt Birkbeck, Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino.

“In the Spring of 1889, when an event whose only comparisons were biblical descriptions of the awful Last Day of Judgment came rushing into Johnstown, few people in the valley knew for certain who belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the private retreat up the mountain, with its marvelous, sparkling artificial lake.” Al Roker, Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster.

“I was quite young the first time I saw the river; it was probably in 1928.” Frank Dale, Delaware Diary: Episodes in the Life of a River.

“The first measurement, like the first word or first melody, is lost to time: impossible to localise and difficult to even imagine.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“The only impartial witness was the sun.” David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“Reporting, like detective work, is a process of elimination.” David Grann, The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession.

“Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, is known for his resolute personal integrity.” Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II.

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Chasing Waterfalls (continued)

I had hope for Trump’s presidency because he promised vast improvements in our infrastructure. I knew that the GOP would block such spending, citing deficits, if a Democrat had been elected, but I thought that perhaps a Republican president could get Republicans to maintain and improve many needed things around the country. That, of course, has not happened. Instead we got more tax cuts and ludicrous promises. We were told that the tax cuts would benefit the middle class more than the rich. False. We were told that tax cuts would pay for themselves because they would turbocharge the economy, windfalling tax receipts. Independent analysts said that would not happen. The Congressional Budget Office said that even with a better economy, tax cuts would add $1.9 trillion to the deficits. Even so, conservatives ignored these expert opinions and maintained that tax cuts would pay for themselves. Instead, deficits are up by nearly 40% over pre-tax-cut days. The conservatives eschewed learning from experience; the deficit increased after Reagan’s tax cuts of 1980s and George W. Bush’s of 2000. This was also true in Kansas when that state slashed taxes a few years ago.

The Trump tax cuts were also supported by arguments that they would lead to increased capital spending by corporations and this would lead to jobs. This, too, was a surprising argument because even before the tax cuts, corporations had been making large profits. They already were sitting on bundles of cash. If they weren’t making capital investments, it was not for the lack of money. Not surprisingly, the tax cuts have not led to a surge in corporate capital expenditures. But now income inequality is greater now than ever recorded before in this country.

Perhaps a trip chasing waterfalls to Mt. Morris and Letchworth State Park is more than just an opportunity to see natural wonders and paintings done several generations ago. Perhaps it was also to be a lesson that the government can improve this country in temporary and lasting ways that might be better than reducing taxes. Our bridges and roads need work. Our broadband needs expansion. Our energy grid is frightening. Our elections need security. If these needed things can’t be done because they will lead to deficits, then perhaps we should think about the wisdom of our tax cuts.

And a recent column about a new book, Triumph of Injustice, by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, professors at Berkeley, reveals something more that is shocking about our tax system. Now the four hundred richest families in this country pay a combined federal, state, and local tax rate lower than any other income group. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html) The overall tax rate for this group is only 23 percent. The first half of the twentieth century saw increasingly progressive taxes, and the overall tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was seventy percent in 1950. Since then we have increasingly cut taxes on the rich. Their overall tax rate was forty-seven percent in 1980 and is now half that. The pitch for slashing taxes on the rich has almost always been that the economy as a whole will benefit and everybody will be much better off. (Of course, those who advocate slashing taxes on the wealthy don’t call them rich people. Instead other terms are used, such as “job-creators.”)

The rationale has been hogwash. David Leonhardt, the columnist, states, “The wealthy, and only the wealthy, have done fantastically well over the last decades. G.D.P. growth has been disappointing, and middle-class income growth even worse.” As was true in the years before the Great Depression and now, “The American economy just doesn’t function very well when tax rates on the rich are low and inequality is sky high. . . . Which means that raising high-end taxes isn’t about punishing the rich (who, by the way, will still be rich). It’s about creating an economy that works better for the vast majority of Americans.”

(continued October 21)