Best books I read in 2024, from the introversion of Ronald Reagan to the joie de vivre of the Puritans

[6] When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan by Peggy Noonan (his speechwriter)

A sentimental, sympathetic, hagiographic, nostalgic character study that is actually quite insightful, including on what has always been a struggle for biographers of Ronald Reagan: yes, he was extremely charismatic - the Great Communicator! - but why was he so distant with people who actually interacted with him? Noonan has a satisfying answer: he moved a lot as a child and could not deepen many friendships, he was terribly embarrassed and hurt by his divorce, and by the time most people observe this trait, he’s a national politician and most of his close peers (like his best man William Holden) are dead.

I especially enjoyed this, about Reagan’s mother:

“She's the one who saved him. She was a Christian of the evangelical school and pretty much her whole life was bringing the good news to people who hadn't heard it or maybe hadn't listened hard enough… She was busy and bustling and she believed completely in what was known as, in the title of a popular book of the era, The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. This was the secret: Jesus is with you, is aware of your life and fully engaged in it; God is in everything; He will let little befall you that will not be to the ultimate benefit of your soul. Sometimes He steps aside for trouble coming your way but only if it will refine you or prepare you to be with Him someday in heaven, where you'll know a happiness beyond all human understanding. So there is no cause then for sadness, only for joy. ‘Do not be afraid.’”

Noonan digs especially into what Reagan himself was most proud of: his fight against Communism as head of the Screen Actors Guild.

"Near the end of the Hollywood Communist battles, Ronald Reagan received the greatest review of his life. The actor Sterling Hayden, a hero of World War II who had won a Bronze Star for fighting behind the lines in Yugoslavia, had come home to America and joined the Communist Party, in part as an act of loyalty and support to those anti-Nazi Communists he had fought alongside. But soon he renounced the party. He was later asked why the Communists had not succeeded in winning control of the movie industry. Hayden said they ran into ‘a one-man battalion of opposition’ named Ronald Reagan."

And just in case you think politics is divisive today. His first political opponent, incumbent California Governor Pat “Brown ran a commercial in which he reminded a group of schoolchildren that it was an actor who shot Lincoln.”

Noonan discusses some policy, including some of Reagan’s not-especially-conservative actions as governor, but it is primarily a character study, so she dwells disproportionate attention on items like the assassination attempt of Reagan. "When [Reagan's] top staff all came in late in the afternoon [after the surgery to remove the bullet], he'd said, ‘Who's minding the store?’ And when they assured him the government was running as usual he said, ‘What makes you think that would make me feel better?’”

[5] Homeschool: An American History by Milton Gaither (academic specializing in homeschooling)

For much of American history, most children were homeschooled for most (or all) of their youth. This informative history tells that story, with fascinating elements along the way. For example, “until the middle of the eighteenth century child-rearing manuals were addressed not to mothers but to fathers” - dads were expected to take the lead on teaching their children how to read and be upstanding Christians. “If the Puritan father had a relatively equal teaching partner, it was not his wife, but his minister.” While there were some early legislative aspirations in the northeast to check to ensure every child was educated, they weren’t necessarily enforced.

What changed was the immigration of Catholics. Massachusetts school superintendent Horace Mann took inspiration from Prussia’s state institutions designed to produce loyal subjects and successfully campaigned for states to compel children to attend state schools, where they could all get an egalitarian, ecumenically Protestant education (critics pointed out that Mann was imposing his own Unitarian beliefs - and that he homeschooled his own children). But ministers and industrialists pushed for the change. Elsewhere, Jon Taylor Gatto notes the incredible statistic that literacy declined thereafter (perhaps because Mann rejected phonics). When some families challenged the new compulsory schools, courts found that they lacked standing because they didn’t suffer any harm - schools were for the betterment of their children. By the 1970s, homeschooling was illegal in nearly every state.

A combination of strict Christians and laissez-faire hippies pushed back and, through the litigation and lobbying efforts of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, parents can now homeschool their kids anywhere in the United States, subject to varying requirements. In my view, this is one of the few major, unambiguous victories conservatives have scored in the last few decades.

If homeschooling is of interest to you, check out my essays on the rich variety of ways in which kids can be homeschooled. You may also be interested in the Milton Gaither’s edited volume - the Wiley Handbook of Home Education - which is a survey of what academia has had to say about the subject (essentially: the available data says that homeschoolers over-perform those in institutional school academically unless they’re unschooled and that, contrary to stereotype, the homeschooled are thought to be at least as sociable as those in institutional school but are less peer-oriented). Also worthwhile: Centuries of Tutoring, Edward Gordon’s history of what is essentially homeschooling from ancient times to the 1980s.

[4] Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves (Reformed theologian in UK)

A wonderful short but deep book about how one of the central traits we know about God is that He has always been loving - because the Trinity has always existed, and thus He has always loved his Son. Indeed, He was loving before He was the Creator. We are made in His image and thus made to love as well - but sin is not disobedience so much as loving yourself or something else other than God. In this, embracing the love of Christianity does not always mean what people think.

Reeves is Reformed, but I’d think this would be embraced across Christendom. But if you’re interested in (predestined to?) knowing more about Reformed theology, check out R.C. Sproul’s What is Reformed Theology?, a primer which includes:

"We live in this world as outcasts, but we must remain loyal to our King, who has ventured into a far country. We await his return in glory, seeking to give him reality in his absence. Our mission is to bear witness to his reign, which he instructed us to do just moments before he departed for heaven. John Calvin argued that the church's task is to make the invisible kingdom of Christ visible. The essence of the ministry of witness is to make manifest what is hidden to the eyes of men."

[3] Not Stolen: The Truth about European Colonialism in the New World by Jeff Fynn-Paul (Historian based in the Netherlands)

Imagine for a moment that you lead a small, primitive group of people who enjoy access to a large, resource-rich land that would come to be known as New York. Some other people show up and want to buy from you a “swampy, humid, bug-infested island” - not a portion of your hunting ground you especially value and a small portion at that. They offer, not the infamous and miscalculated $24 worth of beads, but “firearms; textiles; metal tools such as axe heads, hoes, and kettles” and other incredibly useful tools of a civilization far in advance of your own. Would that be a worthwhile deal?

Jeff Fynn-Paul offers what he calls a restoration of the actual history surrounding European interactions with those they met in the Americas and, in doing so, restores the latter’s agency rather than relegating them to simply being victims. The exchange - and it was an exchange - over Manhattan offers an illustrative point. Fynn-Paul does not mention it, but there are other ways of reckoning value as well: what the compounded returns of investing the cash value of the goods would be over time v. undeveloped land; the fact that the Dutch lost Manhattan to the British and had the chance to get it back but did not think it valuable enough; the idea that Hong Kong was not destined to be some of the most expensive real estate in the world before the British acquired it and introduced their particular governance; or imagine what your great-grandfather would be willing to give up in exchange for an iPad.

Fynn-Paul does a deep analysis of the numbers for the entire set of interactions. In a single battle in 1519, Indian allies of Cortes killed more than “the total amount of Natives killed in massacres by whites during the entire history of the United States and Canada.” Indeed, “Very likely, more Europeans were massacred by Indians during the settlement period than the other way around.” While relations to the north were comparatively better, Fynn-Paul asserts: “People should be talking about the Pax Hispanica, which was brought to the peoples of Mexico and South America in the wake of the conquest—a peace that saved hundreds of thousands of people from capture, torture, slavery, human sacrifice, and refugee status.” Indeed, “Indians enslaved far more Indians than Europeans ever did.” And massacred more, too.

Europeans did not arrive to face a united, peaceful mass. They faced disunited, warring tribes that collectively constituted a fraction of the population of Europe (which had more productive agriculture). Indeed, “the Jamestown settlers arrived to find that Chief Powhatan had subjugated no fewer than two dozen tribes during his own lifetime via a combination of warfare, intimidation, and intrigue. In Massachusetts, the Mohawks, Narragansetts, and Wampanoag had all displaced one another, or were threatening to do so, within a generation of the foundation of the Plymouth Colony.” Yes, the Europeans were aided in their conquest by disease - though Europeans themselves had been wiped out in large numbers in the past by the black death and smallpox itself (and while Fynn-Paul questions whether smallpox blankets were really distributed, what is certain is that the U.S. government spent quite a bit of taxpayer dollars innoculating Indians from smallpox).

That’s not to say that Europeans were saints - not at all, though plenty attempted to note that all mankind was descended from Adam and Eve. Fynn-Paul discusses terrible incidents that I was unfamiliar with. But we should be clear-eyed about history, and this is useful to contrast against the latest ‘scholarship.’ Indeed, I’ve recently read some leftist revisionist history and I still wonder if there had been no European colonization whether Marxists would be demanding a massive property redistribution scheme in the Americas.

[2] Course of Study by Art Robinson (Renegade CalTech-trained chemist and homeschooling dad of 6)

When I was dating, I had a litmus test that I posed fairly early so that I set the tone for what I was looking for and could avoid falling in love with the wrong person: if this relationship went all the way, would you be open to our kids being homeschooled? My eventual wife said yes. I had only a rough idea then of what that might look like but now, having read multiple books about each of the most popular regimes, I can say that I learned the most from Art Robinson, a homeschooling dad who had to rethink the practice from first principles after the sudden death of his wife. Robinson’s book is not easy to procure - it’s basically only available through signing up for his curriculum - and even the book itself admittedly does not contain all the insight I’ve garnered from him in various media, including this year getting the opportunity to meet him and one of his sons (himself a Cal-tech trained chemist) in person. But his work is well worth knowing about, even if you only get a taste of it through my review - and even when I disagree with Robinson, I find his approach thoughtful and provocative.

Here’s a one paragraph outline: six days a week, with the occasional additional day off, for a total of about 275 days a year, first thing in the morning after waking and eating breakfast and milking cows, each child 7 years old and up worked through 30 math problems (selected to be pitched at the child’s level so he could consistently get at least 95% correct every day over about 2 hours). Each child 10 and up then wrote an essay of at least one page on any topic of his own choosing. Dad reviewed and circled grammatical and spelling errors - but did not correct them himself; the child figured out the errors and corrected them before writing the next day’s essay. Younger children might practice penmanship or copy passages from the Bible. And then each child spent two hours reading books. Every child had to work through, in order, a curated list of 150 books from age 6 to 18, with vocabulary flashcards that recalled the use of words in the books and, for some, an SAT-like exam to test comprehension. After about five hours of academics, the remainder of the day was consumed in (self-directed) chores on the Robinson family farm, free reading from any book in the (appropriately curated) Robinson family library, and free play (which often included HAM radio, piano) - concluding with a family Bible study before lights out at 9.30 PM. At the earliest end, children spent time memorizing math facts and learning phonics. At 15, they started regularly taking timed SATs and APs for practice. That’s it.

[1] Worldly Saints by Leland Ryken (Wheaton professor and Biblical scholar)

In modern parlance, ‘Puritan’ means something like excessively strict in moral judgment. But perhaps ‘modern’ should mean inadequately strict in moral judgment. Regardless, read this book to get a nuanced sense of these real people who married for love, worked hard, and lived with the constant companionship of God.

A modern may be surprised that the Puritans were decidedly not traditionalists, which they associated with Catholicism: instead of doing things the way things have been done, they wanted what was best and true. A modern might be further surprised by how much they enjoyed life, including a vigorous sex life within marriage. “The Puritans were serious people, but they also said such things as this: ‘God would have our joys to be far more than our sorrows’... ‘joy is the habitation of the righteous.’ Thomas Gataker wrote that it is the purpose of Satan to persuade us that ‘in the kingdom of God there is nothing but sighing and groaning and fasting and prayer,’ whereas the truth is that ‘in his house there is marrying and giving in marriage,…feasting and rejoicing.’”

The Puritans felt worship happened everywhere and in everything they did, and of course what they mostly did was work. God gave man gifts and called man to work, and so man’s work was in response to and a glorification of God - and thus must require all that man has to give. Puritan economics was profound: God allowed inequality to test both our mercy and our goodness. Poverty may be assigned by God but is not in itself a virtue or something to be sought; the poor are subject to their own sins, including possibly idleness or covetousness. Puritans believed that diligence was “God’s appointed means of providing for human needs.” The prosperous meanwhile must be fair and honest in all their dealings and save and avoid debt so as to help others. Wealth was merely on loan to you from God for you to steward during your time on earth.

And so were your children, of whom the Puritans had a lot. Puritans were incredibly devoted to education (they founded Harvard, and then Yale because Harvard was not faithful enough) because they wanted every child to be able to thoroughly understand God’s Word. Every family constituted a little church.

And what of Puritans’ famous (infamous) morality? In fact, “The word ‘moral’ was a negative term for the Puritans because it suggested works without faith.” And in faith did they ground everything, including all their hope: "Puritanism postulated a threefold view of the person: perfect as created by God and therefore good in principle, sinful by virtue of Adam's original sin imputed to them and their own evil choices, and capable of redemption and glorification by God's renewing grace."

Check out the Worldly Saints and consider how you might best make use of your gifts, your wealth, and your relationships.