The book focuses on the title month, April 1865, tracing the remarkable events that ultimately – but not inevitably – concluded the Civil War. From Lee’s surrender to Lincoln’s assassination, from Johnston’s insubordination to Booth’s capture; Winik faithfully reconstructs the tension and uncertainty that surrounded those upon whom the fate of the nation rested.

Despite the gravity of the book, it fit the bill for a quick easy read. Being juvenile fiction helped, too. I’ve got the second book, Catching Fire, on the shelf, and the final book, Mockingjay, is due out this August.

The basic premise: The world is getting better… it just won’t feel like it. Globalization is speeding up the rate of change in nearly every aspect of life. Fortunately, these changes are making life better for most people around the world. Unfortunately, the stress that constant change creates is making it hard to recognize that fact.

Per his usual style, Easterbrook writes well and with a fair dose of wit. He is too liberal to be liked by Republicans; he would support universal health care. Likewise, he is too libertarian to be liked by Democrats; I think he would argue most subsidy programs are a waste. This elusiveness is one of the qualities that draws me to him.

Read the book, and when the NFL restarts read the column.

NB – In Sonic Boom, Easterbrook makes the case that team sports, football in particular, make positive contributions to future academic and professional success. He cites things like cooperation, communication, and preparation as qualities encouraged by participating in sports.

All good points that I don’t disagree with, but following his line of reasoning it occurs to me that the pending Sonic Boom may just sow the seeds of football’s demise and soccer’s rise in America. The world is becoming decentralized. Global institutions are largely uncommanded. The rate of change is ever accelerating. In such an environment the ability to improvise and adapt is at least as important as the ability to execute – if not more so.

This describes soccer more than football. Football is a centralized game in which a team of coaches plan extensively and then equip their players to execute the plan to exacting requirements. During the game each play is chosen by the coach and dictated from the sideline. Any mid-game adjustments are devised by the coaching staff and implemented top-down.

Soccer, on the other hand, is essentially an improvisational game. True, coaches scout the competition, devise a game plan, run practices, and set the starting line-up. But once the game starts, there is very little a coach can do to influence the outcome. At the highest levels a coach can substitute only three of the eleven starting players, several of whom are unlikely to speak the same language. (This year, Liverpool FC were coached by a Spaniard and regularly played individuals from 14 nations and three continents.) To be successful, the players must coordinate and organize themselves. They must adapt to a rapidly changing game situation and determine the best route to success without the benefit of huddles and timeouts – all while their opponent is attempting to do the exact same thing! This sounds a lot like the Sonic Boom to me.

Sorry, Rantz.

Now, however, I’ve finally picked up one of the volumes and have finished it. I started with Beyond Civilization because, well, it was the shortest of the books. The Book of the Damned is really more of a booklet. (Alternative title – Booklet of the Slightly Naughty?) It’s arranged as a series of brief one page essays each flowing more or less into the next, almost as a conversation. Quinn makes a point or begs a question, then he goes on to develop the point or answer the question. While the essays didn’t always flows smoothly from one to the next – there were occasional leaps that seemed a stretch far – I have to say I’m glad I read it.

Quinn’s primary thesis is to advocate an abandonment of the civilization vision (my term, so far as I can remember). He might define civilization as the hierarchical social structure in which in which those in power seek to exert economic control over others. This contracts with tribalism, in which every member of the society exists in economic cooperation for the society’s mutual success. The civilization vision, then, are those memes – those undergirding values and myths – that set a particular culture on the path of upholding and supporting civilization.

Quinn argues that civilization is broken. It necessarily pits person against person, and ultimately we will find out that it is untenable in the long term. Today, there is some resonance with such statements. Economic inequality in the United States is approaching historic levels. I suppose it’s no coincidence that Quinn’s criticisms echo those levied by the socialists of earlier industrial eras or the democrats and liberals (go way back here, folks) of the American and French revolutionary periods. When a few have a lot and most have very little, people are bound to complain. Quinn distinguishes himself from these predecessors by calling for abandonment instead of revolution. Replacing those at the top of civilization don’t fix a broken system; it only gives you a new target at which you can direct your vitriol. Rather, Quinn says it’s time to lay down the memes of civilization altogether and move on to something better… or rather move back to something better.

The solution, Quinn says, is a return to tribalism. Or perhaps better said it is the resurrection of tribalism. Tribalism is rooted in a cooperative economic existence, where all members must contribute to the success of the society. I say resurrection rather than return, because Quinn’s new tribalism doesn’t necessarily imply abandonment of technology and related advancements. He isn’t calling us back to pre-Columbian living. But he is calling us away from civilization and its inherent ruling class who must be supported by the labor of others.

An altogether interesting book. At times, Quinn comes across a bit haphazard for me. He occasionally leaps a step too far, and strikes me as unnecessarily cheeky, but those are minor points. To me he doesn’t offer a complete picture. He doesn’t adequately explain why people would be content to remain “beyond civilization.” Whether it is ultimately sustainable or not, there is nothing in human history to suggest that humans won’t continue trying to “civilize” one another. Quinn points to a number of American civilizations, such as the Hohokam and the Anasazi, who developed advanced civilizations and appear to have abruptly abandoned them. But we don’t know how the stories of these people end, so we can only conjecture.

Despite these holes, I generally like what he says. I appreciate his take on the economic reality of cooperative living. The need to eat and be clothed are what tie most of us to the prevailing social structures, so any transformation must address these fundamental needs. Seems these are topics I’ve seen covered somewhere else.

Meet the “Now Reading” plugin. It powers the reading list you see in the sidebar, as well my library. I’ve only just begun using it, and I can already tell I’m gonna love it.

Grant that I, Lord, may not be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly; and even now, while I am placed among things that are passing away, hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives nd reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. [emphasis mine]

I’ve been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and I can’t help but draw a connection between this prayer, no doubt inspired by Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John to at least some degree, and the food chains Pollan describes in the first two parts of his book. He contrasts the industrial food chain, which in his words is largely floating on an ocean of oil, with alternative food chains that take their inspiration from the inherent rhythms and interdependence of nature. I’ve not finished the book, but I have a sense of where he is going.

Reading and praying… a dangerous combination, for they inevitably lead me to thinking and change. And change is hard; “ignorance is bliss” in some very real ways.

Yet I continue to read and pray. Passing more than a dozen chain restaraunts on my way to the local super-sized supermarket, I hear the echoes of the prayer reformulated as a question in my head: “Placed among things that are passing away, will I take hold of things that will endure?“

++ Lord, give me ears to hear. ++

Praying with the Church by Scot McKnight

A good introduction to fixed-hour prayer for the non-liturgical. I’ve been using The Divine Hours, compiled by Phyllis Tickle, sporadically for a couple years now; so I read the book having already been persuaded by the value of this prayer tradition that had largely been forgotten in the church circles I was born in. McKnight explores the historical roots of fixed hour prayer before surveying prayer books from four Christian traditions: the Eastern Orthodox, Catholicism, the Anglican Communion, and finally Tickle’s own more recent ecumenical contribution. These days I live in the tension of being pulled by both the liturgical and the organic. Wonder if I’m the only one?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

We have a new running joke in the house: Everything is made of corn. Read the book and you’ll discover just how disturbingly true that statement is, as least as it regards the majority of what we eat from supermarkets and chain restaurants. The book’s subtitle, “A Natural History of Four Meals,” lends a bit more information; Pollan follows the food chain of four meals back, back, back to their very disparate originals. This is one of those books I almost wish I hadn’t read, because having read it I now feel obligated to live differently.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I finally got around to reading it after having it on my wish list for a year or two. I enjoyed Vonnegut’s prose and the quirky way he meandered through the events. I was struck by what seems to be a powerful statement against war, though he doesn’t really come out and say much against war directly… just something about the dry presentation of events I think.

Marriage Fitness by Mort Fertel

I picked this one up for the marriage blog I write on recommendation from one of the readers there. While I don’t like the sales pitch hype Fertel employs in the introduction, I like both his overall thesis as well as many of the action steps he recommends. I’ll be blogging about this one more in the coming weeks over at Marriage Actually.

Because I absolutely love “Tock Tick,” I have had Slaughterhouse Five on my reading list for some time.

Because I finally remembered to pick up Slaughterhouse Five from the library, I am now reminded of this link at the God’s Politics blog culled from Mike Todd back in the early spring. So it goes.

The one hook both groups readily latched onto was the spiritual angle. There is a habit for Scripture to speak of spiritual matters through physical metaphors, and this is something we evangelicals seem to be good at catching onto. We read words like

He has demonstrated power with his arm; he has scattered those whose pride wells up from the sheer arrogance of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up those of lowly position; he has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he promised to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

and we see the spiritual realm. We see the spiritually hunger being filled with Living Water and the Bread of Life. We see the spiritually proud being cast down in judgment, while the lowly are lifted up. This we can identify with. We get spiritual hunger and poverty; we understand spiritual pride. This is how we understand such passages of scripture. Such an understanding is right… but incomplete.

Yes, passages such as this express hope for a spiritual liberation from spiritual poverty and hunger, but they also express hope for a physical liberation from physical poverty and hunger. It is yet another “both-and” of which I am so fond. So, how to we live in light of this double-edged perspective?

My suggestions in the class centered on seeing, serving, and shopping.

Seeing the Poor

For many of us this is the first step. We live in the burbs, work in the burbs, shop in the burbs, etc. We can go weeks without seeing our next door neighbor much less someone who suffers. Our media is sanitized, ever turning our eyes upward – no, not to God, but rather to those higher up the social ladder, those whom we are told we must strive to emulate.

Instead, we must be intentional in our efforts to see the poor. This means we must choose sources of information that will tell the stories of those who suffer. Newsletters from organizations such as World Vision or Compassion International, for example, open our eyes. On a smaller scale, but doing no less good, are charities like Tijuana Christian Mission, and the thousands of others who work quietly around the world lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry.

In the class I shared some stats from Global Rich List:

• The bottom 10% of the world’s population live on $400 a year
• The bottom 50% of the world’s population live on $850 a year
• In 2004, the US federal poverty level for a family of 5 was approx. $22K; that is in the top 11% of the world’s income
• My own income, approx. $45K, is in the top 1.5% of the world’s income

Seeing the poor and changing our perspective is the first step.

Serving the Poor

“The work we do may not save ourselves, but it might save another.”

The next step is action. It can be as simple as sponsoring one of those children you see at the aforementioned charity websites. Or, you can get local, and volunteer at one of your city’s soup kitchens of shelters. Next vacation, go on a mission trip instead of to Disney World. The impact of such an experience will last far longer than the souvenirs. To tease you into coming back (and to get me writing regularly again) I’ll tell you what I recently did in my neighborhood in another post.

[BONUS] Here’s one I didn’t share in the class, because I didn’t have my act together enough to put together handouts or slides. How about supporting the (Red)emption Campaign? I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s only $10… Canadian! Act now, and your donation will be matched dollar-for-Canadian-dollar.

A good friend of me has said something to this effect on more than one occasion: “The work we do may not save ourselves, but it might save another.” Words to live by there. In serving the poor we are allowing Christ to re-incarnate in our lives, and continue the work of ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Shopping Differently

OK, this last one I threw out there on a whim. We had just watched the Walmart movie, and so I wanted to see what kind of reaction I’d get. My goal here was to get people thinking about how they live and how that lifestyle might unwittingly be oppressing others. For example, have we ever wondered how Walmart (or any other big box suburban retailer) can afford to sell their stuff so cheaply? The same question can be asked of our restaurant food. (I watched Supersize Me last night.) This is an area I’m just just starting to explore, so I didn’t have any answers; mostly I was sharing the questions in my own head.