Pete Munsey > Recent Status Updates

Came across a quote from the book a few weeks ago so I got me interested. Beautifully written account of a family’s sudden loss.

Really interesting account of the several months after FDR’s election and the two minds of America.

“Ye start a fire in the bracken,” he said finally, “and there’s nae telling what it may consume.”

“When politicians reiterate a hallowed verity with mind numbing frequency, there is reason to suspect that it is no longer true.”

“For the more we think of ourselves as self made and self sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.

“For the more we think of ourselves as self made and self sufficient, the harder it is to learn gratitude and humility. And without these sentiments, it is hard to care for the common good.”

Well intentioned but ultimately disappointing. The author’s recommendation is that we try hard to overcome societal prejudices, which is laudable as platitudes goes but he offers no other concrete prescriptions, contrary to the book’s subtitle.

I wished I liked it more. Chang is unlikeable enough that I lost any motivation to keep reading.

“Hailing from every corner of Europe, donned in every shade of gray, they turned their backs on the Statue of Liberty and marched instinctively up Broadway, leaning with pluck into a cautionary wind, gripping identical hats to identical haircuts, happy to count themselves among the indistinguishable.” What a sentence!

“(Your life) does not belong to you alone but to all of us.”

Violet Bonham Carter to Churchill, 1940, advising him not the take undue risks.

The more things change...