The web home of professional digital marketer, content creator, and communications expert Matt Sammon
Book Reviews
While I single-handedly can't save the world from the downward spiral of social media content, I can try to make my social media followers' experience a little more pleasant by virtually opening up my personal library to them. My hope is by sharing what I am reading, I may inspire other to read books-- any books. Picking up a physical book provides a much-needed break from the constant strain on our eyes, brains, and emotions. I also make it a point to share books I have bought at local libraries or my favorite book selling app, Thriftbooks.
I started doing this around 2018 on Twitter, and then moved it over to Facebook after I sunset my Twitter account in 2022. With Facebook reducing fact-checking beginning in 2025, I will be sharing more here on my website.
The Latest Reads
There’s an old saying for the partying type: don’t mix your alcohol. Generally speaking, drinking beer and liquor in the same setting is a bad idea. Likewise for sampling a little bit of everything in the liquor cabinet at once. My reading habits are similar to this rule of alcohol consumption: read a sports book, then read a political or history (or political history) book. One is beer, one is liquor, keep the two apart from one another. I tend to follow this because the depression of a contemporary political book or the drabness of some history books needs a lift from the normally light sports book.
It’s a good practice, in practice. Yet if you knew me in college, you know I didn’t always follow that sage advice about consuming my different alcohols at the same time. So allow me a Rock House beer chug followed by a swig of Captain Morgan spiced rum here, as my latest read mixes sports with politics. Unlike my college keg conquests, this is one I didn’t regret the next day.
First, let’s get some important clarity out of the way. This story involves the Washington NFL team, now known as the Commanders, but for 87 years known as the Redskins. Given we’re talking about that time period of the team, I will refer to them as the Redskins or simply the “Skins” with no malice intended. Second, the title of this book is actually very misleading. John F. Kennedy had very little to do with the integration of the Washington Redskins, and in fact with a lot of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s as he chose not to upend his entire agenda by infuriating southern white citizens and their legislators by putting civil rights first on the to-do list. I’ll leave it up to you to do your homework on JFK and his reluctance to jump into race relations, but suffice to say it really wasn’t until the culmination of several egregious and tragic racist acts in 1963 that finally moved the nation (and the president) a little closer to addressing the issue. After JFK’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, new president Lyndon Johnson took the easy win, and bent enough elbows in congress to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
While JFK was mostly hands off in this issue with the Redskins, he and his administration did encourage former Arizona representative and (then) current Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall to force the issue. That issue was made easier when the opponent to integration was noted racist and antisemite George Preston Marshall. Marshall had made a family fortune with a chain of laundromats in the Northeast, and he invested that fortune in 1932 with the new Boston Braves of the NFL. The team would change its name to Redskins in 1933, and despite quickly building a championship caliber club, the city of Boston in 1930s Depression America kindly took a pass. Feeling slighted by the lack of support, Marshall moved the team to Washington D.C. where it promptly won the 1937 NFL championship.
The NFL was a very different league then compared to today, and it was surprisingly progressive at first as there were a handful of black players in the late 1920s and early 1930s. But as the league grew, national habits settled in and black players mysteriously were not invited to camps regardless of their talent level. Much like Major League Baseball, there was an unwritten rule that the sport was open only to white athletes. That would change in 1946, and as NFL teams with black players tended to play better and win more championships, waddya know teams were a little more open to integrating. A similar occurrence played out in baseball, and I am a big believer in Hank Aaron’s observation that one reason why the National League won way more All-Star games in the 1950s and early 1960s (and later started winning more World Series than the American League) was the proliferation of black players on NL clubs instead of the rival AL teams.
The league integrated, with the exception of the Redskins, who despite being a mostly terrible team throughout the 1950s bypassed black stars at the annual rookie draft such as Rosey Grier and John Henry Johnson for mostly mediocre white players. Part of this was Marshall’s business plan to capitalize on then being the southernmost NFL team. With a large radio network mostly in the south, having a lily-white team was appealing to southerners, and Marshall even changed the words of “Hail to the Redskins” from having the team “fight for old D.C.” to “fight for old Dixie”. In addition to blatant racism, Marshall was an overbearing owner who often overruled his coaches, sometimes appearing on the sidelines to call plays during a game. After finishing a woeful 1-12-1 in 1961 (in fact, not winning their first game until the last game of the season against the equally inept second-year Cowboys), the Skins had the first pick in the 1961 draft. This was when Udall saw his opportunity.
Pressure had been building in the black press as well as from long-suffering fans for the team to sign black players for years, but the 1962 season would be the first for the team in the brand new state-of-the-art DC Stadium (later rechristened RFK stadium following Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968). Marshall was expecting a windfall of new revenue in the larger and cleaner suburban stadium that was an upgrade from the aging Griffith Stadium on the outskirts of the Howard Univerity campus. But DC Stadium was built on public land, thus owned by the district which was managed by the federal government. Udall, backed by the Kennedy administration, challenged Marshall’s ability to play in the stadium with a segregated team. If Marshall didn’t sign black players, Udall and the federal government would terminate the stadium’s lease with the team. Obviously Marshall didn’t take this well, but over the course of time he saw the writing on the wall and eventually drafted Ernie Marshall out of Syracuse before trading him to Cleveland for Bobby Mitchell and Leroy Jackson in an attempt to win now and not later.
The Redskins were moderately better on the field over the next few seasons, and in a tragic twist the team won the trade outright when Marshall died from leukemia in 1963. All was not well for the Redskins though, as a series of strokes rendered Marshall unable to do much (not the least, be in the much-coveted public spotlight) for the final several years of his life. Call it poetic justice or karma, but this hell-on-Earth method of slow death does seem like just retribution for Marshall who always played the role of the victim in his younger years. Despite his claims of doing the “greater good” for black residents of the district by hiring many as Griffith Stadium ushers or by not segregating the Griffith Stadium seats during games, it was a real estate ultimatum that finally moved the needle.
While integration didn’t instantly make the Redskins a better team, they finally moved past their racist (to blacks) past and eventually built a contender. Doug Williams piloted the Redskins to their first Super Bowl championship in 1988, becoming the first black starting quarterback in the NFL to accomplish the feat, with the assistance of black superstars Darrell Green and Ricky Sanders to name a couple. In 2020, under intense public and corporate pressure again, the team dropped the Redskins name, finally erasing most every connection to Marshall in the team’s history.
Despite the inadvertent credit given to JFK, this is a great read on how the administration and in particular one government leader used legal means prior to the Civil Rights Act to force a stubborn white supremecist to get with the times. It’s a much-needed reminder that government can do good things through means that put the opposing side in a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation. And it serves as a reminder that history really does treat the people on the wrong side of it rather harshly, even if that doesn’t placate one’s present-day desires.
Previous Reads
I don't recall the exact topic of the article, but I recall reading a story in the Guardian UK in November or December that mentioned this book. It raised an eyebrow, and I went to my trusty Thriftbooks app and ordered a copy, not even looking for a deal but paying full price for a new book. That's how you know it was an important book! I got a reminder that it was a hot book when Thriftbooks actually refunded my purchase because somehow the last copy was sold between when I bought it and when the app tried to ship it. So I waited a few more days and grabbed the next copy.
Some books I read are "must reads" because I think they may be interesting or entertaining to a niche audience or to everyone as a whole. I don't grant that status to just any book, just like I don't just issue a 100% to my college students for a pretty good final project submission (just ask them, they know). So when I say you should go out and get a book, you know that's quite an endorsement.
Well, my friends in America and "the West", you need to go get this book. Buy this book. Check it out from the library. Share it with a friend or a family member.
If you're wondering why you need to get this book and get it and read it and think about it now, the short answer is it can help explain what is going on in this country today as well as other democracies around the world. Peter Turchin created a data model which he explains with plenty of depth and insight (I recommend jumping to the appendices after chapter 3, then returning to read chapter 4 as he suggests to get the whole scope of where his model comes from). Turchin uses data of the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires, and societies since the Roman empire. His analysis shares in a numeric way what I've said-- history doesn't repeat, but it has a fat backbeat. If you can't think of history as music, Turchin will make you see it as a series of waves-- repetitive yet consistent. With that in mind, it shouldn't surprise anyone that America is going through one of those waves-- the coming down from peak point of the wave is where we're at. And I regret to say we're probably not near the valley of the wave at this point in time.
Turchin diligently describes how America is at the end of an average historical cycle, a pendulum that always swings from prosperity and actions that benefit the greater good of a society, to the bottom falling out as those with wealth and power try to lord both over the common people. The last time this happened in America, was from 1830-1860, as the aristocracy of the southern states was challenged and then defeated by the aristocracy and industrial strength of the northern states (who needed southern state agriculture to build such aristocracy and strength). Perhaps you know that endgame as the U.S. Civil War. The pendulum eventually swung back in the 1930s, after the disastrous Great Depression, where the rich and powerful were undone by closing banks, sky-high tariffs, and a working class that was sick and tired of being abused. For the next 40 years, there was an unwritten agreement between the (white) working class, business owners, and the federal government, to create safety nets that lifted everyone (New Deal agencies followed by Great Society agencies). But then in the 1970s, the pendulum started going the other way.
Turchin argues that what America is dealing with today isn't solely because of the actions of Donald Trump, or Ronald Reagan, or even politicians in general (although all three are partially to blame). What has continually raised up nations and later brought them down-- elites, counter-elites, and the working class-- have been working against each other over the past 50 years. Real wages are flat, the next generation is not better off than the previous one, and the rich get insanely richer. The question is, does a major disruptive event like The Great Depression shake everything to its core, and return people to their senses to help lift all the boats in the harbor? Or is the major disruptive event more akin to the Civil War, which in the 2020s would be far bloodier and perhaps less binding than the results from 1861-65?
Turchin won't predict exactly what happens-- he is after all a data analyst and not a soothsayer. But he does mention more than a few times in the book that he predicted (with data and his model) that America was heading for a rough patch in the 2020s, and he did so in 2010. Turchin does occasionally sprinkle in a little bit of Nate Silver smugness about his models vs. others, but you can't really argue with what he has discovered with historical cycles and how they compare to events in America over the past 200 years. You can argue some of the same strains are being seen in Canada, which up until recently seemed to be destined to elect a metric version of Trump as its new prime minister. You can argue the same is happening in the UK, in the aftermath of Brexit, as the UK tries to stay relevant in the post-EU world. And with the Afd winning 20% of the vote in Germany, it's hard not to see the same thing happening there. There are plenty of contemporary examples, and it's hard not to see this explanation fitting most or all of them.
The only thing that is certain is the uncertainty. At the very least, this book gives you a new perspective on how we got here, and some potential outcomes. Some are good, many are bad. The big mystery is how bad it will get, how long it will last, and sadly how much blood will be spilled in the meantime.
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You may have never have heard the name Eddie Waitkus, but there's a good chance you've heard of Roy Hobbs. Hobbs is the protagonist of Bernard Malamud's 1952 book The Natural. The book became a movie in 1984 with Robert Redford playing the star role, and both the book and film are considered baseball classics. A plot device in The Natural is Hobbs getting shot by a deranged fan, Harriet Bird. That plot device was very likely pulled from an actual event in 1949, as Waitkus was shot by a schizophrenic obsessed fan, Ruth Ann Steinhagen. While Waitkus' brush with death was a key part in the story of Roy Hobbs, from there the similarities end. Thankfully this book dives into the tragic life of Waitkus to give a much-needed backstory to a human being who for the most part has been relegated to a footnote status in both the book and film.
There's no doubt Waitkus' life was affected by the encounter with Steinhagen, but author John Theodore does an excellent job in sharing the other details including Witkus' traumatic three years of service in World War II, featuring an interview with one of Waitkus' foxhole buddies who also witnessed the horrors of war. In addition to wartime PTSD and the PTSD of the attempted murder, Waitkus had to fight the usual "average player" battles to stay relevant in Major League Baseball. Pushed out of Wrigley Field by a "change is good" GM and owner, Waitkus was integral in the 1950 "Whiz Kids" Phillies pennant team before a falling out with his manager. Constantly relegated to a backup role, Waitkus bounced around to Baltimore and then back to Philly before getting cut in 1955 at the age of 36.
All of this drama made an already introverted Waikus even more introverted, and he brought the stress level down by constantly smoking cigarettes and drinking at the hotel bar. Increasing alcoholism and isolation eventually ended Waitkus' marriage and further strained his relationship with his kids. Drifting throughout much of the 1960s, Waitkus was thrown a lifeline by Ted Williams who hired him as a hitting coach at a Ted Williams youth baseball camp. Waitkus found his feet and his calling, before his life ended too soon due to cancer in 1972.
Theodore not only covers the quick rise and numerous falls of Waitkus, but he also tracks down the sotry of Steinhagen who after being institutionalized briefly lived a mostly quiet life with her family in northern Chicago before passing away in 2012. Preferring not to relive the details of the shooting any more than he already was, Waitkus decided to not press charges.
This is a great book not only for baseball fans, but for fans of American cinematic or literary classics, as the story brings a lot of context to a real "Natural".
I have long been a proponent of reading and studying history, not only because it interests me, but also because you can learn so much about today and have a window into tomorrow by looking at the past. One of my favorite sayings is, "History doesn't repeat, but it does have a fat backbeat". I've found that to be true more often than not. My recent Thriftbooks purchases, which I'll be reading and reviewing over the next several months, have been heavily focused on the run-up to the U.S. Civil War, the end of Reconstruction, and the demise of democratic societal norms in a battle of elites and non-elites.
I'm sure it's all a coincidence given current events.
But to be honest I bought this book in September or October, and I had my eye on it for a while as I learned about it when author and NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep was promoting a more recent book Imperfect Union (which I will also be reading and reviewing soon). I figured now was a good time to read this, as Andrew Jackson was arguably the first populist president who still has his fans and followers two centuries after he was in office.
So what does Andrew Jackson have to do with American politics today? Consider:
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He was a man who was easily the first political leader to not come from politics. While he shares a similar background as George Washington in earning much of his fame from the battlefield, Jackson was not an "originalist" politician like the previous presidents were. He was very much the first "outsider" to become a president.
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He was filled with vengeance from a closely contested presidential election, as he felt (and it could be argued he was correct in thinking) that the 1824 electoral win for John Quincy Adams was stolen by a contingency election engineered by his rival Henry Clay. He rode that "stolen" election claim to victory in 1828 and re-election in 1832.
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He was a grifter, as Inskeep points out he deftly managed to take control of former indigenous land near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and sold it to land speculators who were helping the country grow out to the west.
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He hated government infrastructure, most notably the central federal bank. If there was the alphabet soup of federal programs in the 1820s like there is today, he would very likely try to break them up.
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He forcibly removed people seen as "foreigners", the native Americans (referred to as "Indians" in the book) who many Americans felt were just as problematic as Black slaves. These people were hardly seen as people, and the population generally felt that the Indians were not equals and thus needed to be swept away elsewhere.
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He defied the law, including the rather infamous alleged declaration that the Supreme Court made a decision, so the court would have to enforce it.
Sound familiar?
Inskeep does a great job documenting not only Jackson's moves, but also the parallel moves of John Ross, the chief of the Cherokee Nation at the time of Jackson's presidency. At the heart of the two men's battles, was land. The white Americans needed more of it, as the nation's Manifest Destiny demanded westward expansion. The Cherokees, settled in much of northern Georgia and the Carolinas in the Appalachian mountains, were looking to keep the land they had cultivated while not getting swept up in the forced westward movement of other tribes during the prevalent Indian Removal acts of the time. Ross had the best of intentions, but often made tactical errors that played into Jackson's (and the nation's as a whole) hands, ultimately leading to the botched Trail of Tears from Appalachia to land west of the Mississippi River. After following both Jackson's and Ross' paths, Inskeep concludes the book with a note that the Indians are still very much here despite Jackson's cruelty and efforts. The natives are very much still here, but so are other telltale signs of what was happening 200 years ago that haven't totally vanished from the environment.
The best example is the recent musing of whether someone in the government can and should defy a federal court order. The comparison to Jackson reportedly saying the Supreme Court could go enforce their ruling dates back to an 1832 case (Worcester vs. Georgia) where the state imprisoned white missionaries who were influential with the Cherokees for occupying Cherokee land. It's not that the rogue crew of "guardsmen" cared about protecting Cherokee land, but rather that the land remain "owned" by the Cherokess until the federal government eventually forced them out, leaving the cultivated land for white squatters to move in on. The case was brought to the U.S. Supreme Court after Chief Justice John Marshall personally reached out to the defense's lawyer (sound familiar?) with guidance on how to bring a case to the court for a ruling. Marshall ruled that only the federal government, not an individual state, could negotiate or enforce land agreements with tribes.
Inskeep notes that there is no record of Jackson actually saying the exact words many people today are connecting him to, although there is plenty of evidence Jackson said similar thoughts to other people while clearly feeling the Court could go enforce its ruling if it so desired. Jackson was busy winning re-election in 1832, and by January 1833 he and the state of Georgia slow-walked the verdict long enough to where the newly-elected governor of Georgia released the missionaries without Jackson or the state needing to take any action to enforce or deny the ruling. As much as Jackson despised any oversight of the executive branch, even he knew that defying the ruling would be cataclysmic for the nation. He was also nuanced enough to pick his fights, as this brush-up in Georgia would pale in comparison to the nullification attempts ongoing in neighboring South Carolina. And there's the little detail that imprisoning innocent American citizens who may be blocking a lucrative land grab while removing the previous inhabitants was just incredibly cruel and clearly unconstitutional.
As history would play out, true Indian autonomy would get wiped out in the late 19th century. While there have been many reparations and reservations since then, due to a flood of recent executive orders the short-term fate of Indian citizenship in the states is once again in the air. The cruelty is the point, as is the hope to grab more land and to flex more power whether it is deserved or not. It happened nearly 200 years ago, and it continues to happen today, even though we'd like to close our eyes and wish it isn't happening here.
Do you hear that backbeat? It's the same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
This is a great read for those trying to get a read on where we were, where we are, and well... how did we get here?
A nice find on Thriftbooks as this is a nice collection of stories from one of the best baseball broadcasters of all time. Even though I was a fan of the Blue Jays, a division rival of the Tigers, I always enjoyed hearing the barritone voice of Ernie Harwell. This book was published in 1985, capitalizing on the Tigers' championship 1984 season, and well before the Tigers screwed Harwell into a season of exile with the Angels before returning to the corner of Michigan & Trumbull for the remainder of his Hall of Fame career.
Harwell recounts his start in broadcasting with the Atlanta Crackers in the early 1940s, and how he got a big break in New York City just a few years later. I enjoyed his stories about his first few years as a radio voice of the Dodgers and Giants, including his anticlimactic turn on TV during Bobby Thompson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951. He also shares his legendary story where he was traded (as a broadcaster) for a minor league catcher, and his years in Baltimore which I'd venture to guess a lot of people didn't know he did. He also gives his side of the controversial Jose Feliciano national anthem incident in 1968.
Some details of stories get repeated, which either makes Harwell sound like an old man, or in need of a better editor. Regardless, as you read these stories you can almost hear Harwell narrating them which makes them even better. A good pick-up for any baseball fan, but certainly for any long-suffering Tigers fan.
This was one of many finds for me at a book sale about a year ago at one of my nearby libraries (Maricopa County Public Library System). This is an interesting arrangement of stories as it eschews the typical chronological recounting of one of the nation's most celebrated Civil War generals. Instead it breaks up Sherman's story into three parts: the general lifeline, his relationship with his soldiers, and his relationship with his family. While this makes the book a little bit of a different type of reading adventure, it unfortunately means some storylines are rehashed in the second or third chapter which makes you wonder why you're reading it again.
That said, the storyline is interesting because we all know of the Sherman who marched to the Atlantic (via Atlanta) to deliver a crushing blow to the Confederates in 1864. What you may not know is Sherman was practically orphaned at the age of 9, then taken in by the influential senator and Whig politician Thomas Ewing. This new paternal relationship opened doors for Sherman, yet he failed at pretty much every opportunity. He was a terrible cadet at West Point who never saw combat in Mexico or elsewhere. Then he became a failed banker in San Francisco and New York, although that was mostly the fault of ill-timed bank panics.
When Southern states were seceding, Sherman tried to ignore the issue while also signing up to be part of the Union Army. Abraham Lincoln took a liking to him, even though Sherman had a low opinion of the volunteer troops or the upcoming battles he was trying to ignore. Once in the field, his troops were slaughtered in multiple surprise attacks at Shiloh, pushing him to the brink of a nervous breakdown. Yet his lack of "traditional" warfare experience in Mexico helped him during the Civil War as technology and tactics changed. He got a major lift with the siege at Vicksburg, then the march to the sea started which then elevated him to celebrity status (and in some cases higher than fellow general Ulysses Grant). Unlike Grant, Sherman stayed out of politics, and remained in the Army where he lead the country's brutal attack on Native Americans through the 1880s. In the end, there's a mixed bag of success after repeated failures early in life, and an ignominious stance on natives that obliterated that population. He also wasn't a huge fan of the plight of Black people, and may or may not have been party to some attrocities during the march to the sea.
Despite the odd layout of the storytelling, it's a compelling story to read that will definitely shed some more light on the person behind the legend you've heard about in history class. Highly recommend for history nerds.
