#craig fehrman

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how to get politically savvy in a few easy steps

Today’s podcast, which actually came out last night, is a July 4th Address that’s hopefully still pertinent as your holiday weekend extends into its third day.  For the past few months I’ve been reading about politics and American history for the first time in my life, biographies too, and these are exactly the sorts of books that I always avoided because I thought they’d be too intimidating,…

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Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote by Craig Fehrman https://amzn.to/2PyOufG

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Barrack is Back, and He’s Here to Stay

 Since the end of his term, Barrack Obama has been hard at work on his memoir ‘A Promised Land,’ which was recently released on November 17th. The first of two volumes intended for release, it conjures to mind two main questions: Why has Obama chosen to write a memoir? And why now?

 Obama has described his memoir as ‘an honest accounting of… my time in office… my take on what I got right, and the mistakes I made, and the… forces that my team, and I had to confront, and that as a nation we are grappling with still.’

 Subsequently, a perceived aim of Obama’s memoir, like previous Presidential memoirs, is self-reflection (whether that be criticism, or justification of his actions, and policies), seemingly aiming to provide both an outlet for the ex-president, as well as insight into his actions as President, something that made the first real Presidential memoir by James Buchanan so successful. Somewhat uniquely however, Obama also appears to want to tell of his ‘personal journey,’, and the ‘human side,’ of the Presidency, something largely ignored since Calvin Coolidge’s memoir (1929).

  Arguably though, the memoir most importantly seems to be intended as guide for the future. As stated by Historian Craig Fehrman ‘we want to know what they [the Presidents] believe… we want to use that information as voters.’ This arguably explains why Obama chose now to release the book. With increasing polarization within America, ever more divisive social issues, and a shift in power following the 2020 election Obama knows  the future rests in the balance, and still aims to steer that future in what he believes in the right direction.

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Get local news delivered to your inbox! Brothers Gabe and Mateo Perales work in a garden on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s East Campus as part of the university’s Indigenous Food Sovereignty Program. More than 20 Native American students from Lincoln Public Schools are spending Saturdays at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln learning about Native American farming beliefs and practices. Launched by UNL’s Native American Coalition in fall 2021, the Food Sovereignty Program merges western science with traditional Native American teachings through education and practice. Students meet with Native elders, Nebraska Extension, faculty from the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, master gardeners and others on Saturdays year-round to learn how to garden and feed their families while respecting the land from the Native American perspective. Each session begins with breakfast and a traditional prayer. Students work in a community garden with crops such as zucchini, strawberries, watermelon and the three sisters, which is a traditional Native pairing of corn, beans and squash. The crops were chosen by the students. Along with sharing traditional worldviews, the program aims to increase food security for the students and their families and familiarize them with UNL’s East Campus, where most agricultural and horticultural programs are taught. “What’s missing from western science classes is the Indigenous worldviews,” said Tribal Extension Educator Ted Hibbeler (Sicangu Lakota), who leads the program. “Our relationship with the earth and the plants is missing.” Robert Perales, a Native American student advocate for Lincoln Public Schools, said the program is a good way for urban Native Americans who haven’t grown up on reservations or attended reservation schools to stay connected with their culture. “It’s a really good way for them to see the traditions and keep those alive,” Perales said. “It’s something the kids really enjoy.” SHARE Omaha has launched a resource to help give used items a new purpose. People purging possessions can now connect to local nonprofits who can put these items to good use. At SHAREomaha.org/used there is a new directory of organizations that can accept items such as used car seats, loved books and pre-owned sports equipment. Givers no longer need to guess which nonprofits will accept specific used items with this continuously updated list sorted by item category. Renae Bush, Katie Fehrman, Heather Craig and Kris Weland sort used items at Heartland Hope Mission. SHARE Omaha hopes that gathering this information in a central location will make it easier for donors to identify where they can send their quality items to make a difference, rather than the landfill. One organization represented is Partnership 4 Hope, which helps provide for the material needs of former foster youth through their donation center, Youth Mart. Young adults can utilize the free shopping center to set up their first home. The donation center offers things such as used furniture, household goods and baby items in good condition. Clean, ready-to-use items show respect to the young people Partnership 4 Hope serves, helping to launch lives of independence. “Quality donated items truly help us meet our mission. Partnership 4 Hope is grateful for the community’s support through our donation center, Youth Mart, located on the campus of Omaha Home for Boys. It wouldn’t be possible without the community,” said Stephanie Niverson, Partnership 4 Hope board secretary. At Heartland Hope Mission, families can access donated clothing and household items at no cost, as well as food and hygiene items. The pantry and clothing center has recently seen a 45% increase in Omaha families needing access to free resources. Used items such as kids’ clothing, work boots for men, t-shirts, and pots/pans are frequently requested. Amanda DeVries, Heartland Hope Mission volunteer coordinator, said, “People struggling to make ends meet often do not have the resources available to purchase needed clothing and household items.

When you donate quality used items, you help Heartland Hope Mission bridge the gap between homelessness and self-sufficiency by providing families with the basic necessities they need to get back on their feet.” Go to SHAREomaha.org/used to find which local nonprofits can put used items you no longer need to good use in our community. The Ironhawk Juniors Triathlon Club has been back to a full season of swimming, biking and running and that means a full day of excitement today. More than 100 girls, ages 8 to 14, will put together all the skills they learned this summer and complete a triathlon. Ironhawk Juniors is about empowering girls through the sport of triathlon. For eight weeks, the Ironhawk Juniors learned the fundamentals of triathlon by swimming, biking and running on the campus of its partner, College of St. Mary. Family and friends will be at the finish line to give the girls their medals. The girls made inspirational posters this summer to bond with their teammates. Since its inception in 2018, 120 girls have learned how to swim, 115 how to safely ride a bike and more than 600 have crossed the finish line of a triathlon. There is no fee to participate. “Because we have generous sponsors, we provide free gear and lessons to give the juniors the tools they need to succeed,” Erin Sullivan said. “Our juniors come from throughout the greater Omaha metro area and surrounding communities. The vision of Ironhawk Juniors is moving young people, changing lives. We teach the participants the values of honor self and others, teamwork, accomplish the impossible, be kind, and empowerment through triathlon. If interested, contact Sullivan at 402-238-6920. Girl Scouts Spirit of Nebraska has elected five new members to its board of directors. The board is composed of committed community leaders and professionals, who believe in and promote the Girl Scout mission. The new members: Joyce Cooper, Omaha, director of diversity and inclusion at OPPD; Hannah Frey, Omaha, attorney at Baird Holm LLP; Rachel Hays, Columbus, director of sales and marketing at Behlen Manufacturing; Louise Pickens, Papillion, president at OBI Creative; and Larissa Johnson, Gretna, audit and assurance partner with Deloitte Consulting LLP. The Child Saving Institute Guild will host its 15th annual PurseOnalities fundraising event on Nov. 3 at 11 a.m. at the Hilton Downtown Omaha. Funds raised during the event will positively impact children and families who have experienced abuse, neglect and trauma. This year’s “Share Your Story” themed event features a silent auction of extraordinary purse packages and the opportunity to shop on-site from some of Omaha’s most popular boutiques, with a portion of their event proceeds being donated back to CSI. The luncheon will feature inspirational speaker and author Genevieve Piturro. Piturro was a successful television marketing executive in New York City for 20 years when a little girl’s question changed the course of her life forever — and she jumped off the corporate ladder. She began delivering pajamas and books to children in shelters and in 2001 founded Pajama Program, a nonprofit which has been recognized nationwide for both its success and Genevieve’s story. An international speaker, personal strategic coach and author, Piturro has made it her mission to inspire men and women across the globe to listen to their heart-voice connection in pursuing their passions to achieve success. Event chairs are Jordan Peterson, Lyndsay Ruma, Sarah Dukich and Yolanda Delgado. Honorary chair is Nancy Edick. Individual event tickets start at $80 and table sponsorships start at $1,500. For additional information or to purchase event tickets or sponsorships, please visit childsaving.org or contact Julie Oberlies, development coordinator, at joberlies@childsaving.org or 402-504-3634. Pull Up and Vibe Open Mic Festival will be held at 3716 N. 24th St. on Aug. 6 from 3 to 10 p.m. Keiria Marsha, local artist and curator, will be the host with

support from Fabric Lab, North Omaha Trail, Icon One Recording Studios, Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Cultural Endowment, Partners for Livable Omaha, and Omaha Mobile Stage. Artists are given an opportunity to showcase their talents in front of other creatives and community members. Music and spoken word are the popular areas of interest, but all performers are welcome. This event is presented on the Omaha Mobile Stage, a mobile, community venue for performing artists of all ages, and a teaching venue to train the next generation of creative workers. The lineup features these artists: Dawaune @dawaune.one; Darren Renfrow @lucid_dreamer0126; AA Monet @aamonetpoetry; Semaj @xxl0stcausxx; TherealrapperKG @therealrapperkg; Ty Gordeaux @tydoesalot; Jus. B @jusbmusic; Syranda Leigh @syrandaleigh and Kaija and the experience @kaijajeanae. Allison Pulaski hula hoops in the crowd at Maha Festival on Friday night. Sasha Quattlebaum and Kirsten McCormack show of their rollerskating skills at the entrance of Maha Festival on Friday night. Maha Festival 2022 wraps up with headliner Beach House on Saturday. Princess Nokia, an American rapper, dances on stage on Saturday at Maha Festival. Festival goers watch Friday's headliner Car Seat Headrest perform at Maha Festival. Tony fish lay dying in a puddle in a mostly dry Platte River bed underneath the Highway 81 bridge south of Columbus, Nebraska on Thursday. Nick Soulliere, right, poses for a portrait with his daughter Kennedy, 11, Highway 81 bridge south of Columbus, Nebraska on Thursday. They were four-wheeling in a mostly dry Platte River bed. Jaren Frost picks up a fish from a puddle underneath the Highway 81 bridge in a mostly dry Platte River south of Columbus, Nebraska on Thursday. Frost was hoping by moving it to a deeper puddle to the east, he could spare the fish from the fate of the one behind him. A car heads south on the Highway 81 bridge over a mostly dry Platte River south of Columbus, Nebraska on Thursday. People used beach towels to mark spots early in the morning at Memorial Park before the Sheryl Crow concert that night on Friday. A butterfly drinks nectar from a flower at City Sprouts Community Garden on Friday. The property has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as an official Backyard Wildlife Habitat site because it provides the four basic habitat elements needed for wildlife to thrive: food, water, cover, and places to raise young. A family of ducks swims across the pond at Fontenelle Park on Saturday evening. A man fishes at Spring Lake Park on Saturday. Barrels remain at the site the site of Nox-Crete located at 1415 S 20th which burned to the ground on May 30th, 2022. A newly renovated building at 24th and Ohio Streets is part of the historic North 24th Street business district that is undergoing a revitalization. CharDale Barnes poses for a portrait next to his business, Stable Gray, in a newly renovated building at 24th and Ohio Streets on Tuesday. Dr. Sarah Woodhouse with the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium gives Vera, a 5-year-old tiger, a COVID booster shot at the safari park. marjie.ducey@owh.com, 402-444-1034, twitter.com/mduceyowh Get local news delivered to your inbox! Marjie is a writer for The World-Herald’s special sections and specialty publications, including Inspired Living Omaha, Wedding Essentials and Momaha Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @mduceyOWH. Phone: 402-444-1034. description Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. In addition to the exhibit, Douglas County Historical Society has planned a “year of fun on four wheels” to celebrate our car culture and history. Brummel had most recently served as associate curator of modern art at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The Durham Museum is searching for the official tree for its annual Christmas at Union Station celebration. Brothers Gabe and Mateo Perales work in a garden on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s East Campus as part of the university’s Indigenous Food Sovereignty Program.

Renae Bush, Katie Fehrman, Heather Craig and Kris Weland sort used items at Heartland Hope Mission. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. source

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Our presidents’ love of detective fiction has an august history. Craig Fehrman follows the clues.

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How the University of New Hampshire spun blowing a frugal librarian's donation on a  stupid football scoreboard

In September 2016, we learned that the University of New Hampshire was going to use $1 million that an incredibly frugal librarian saved while working as a library cataloger for 50 years to buy a new scoreboard for its stadium.

Now, an enraging investigative piece by Craig Fehrman in Deadspin reveals how the university cynically planned to spin its decision to blow $1m of this librarian's generous gift on a useless frippery for its ill-starred football team while only directing $100k of his donation to the library he loved.

New Hampshire spends less per student in its state colleges than any other state in the union, and UNH's tuition is among the highest in the state, thanks in large part to the enormous spending it diverts to the campus football team, whose games are sparsely attended.

UNH clearly believes its future is football, and so when the Morin made his rare unrestricted gift of $4m (which he had saved by eating microwave meals, never going out, rarely buying new clothes, and restricting his hobbies to activities he could do for free) to the university, they immediately earmarked $1m to buy a giant scoreboard for the stadium.

But according to internal documents obtained under public records requests, the university understood that this wouldn't play well, so they came up with an elaborate plan to explain how this was honoring Morin's intentions because he sometimes watched football games on TV while he was dying of colon cancer. In reality, Morin spent his last days assuring his visiting co-workers that they wouldn't have to worry about funding for his beloved library.

Fehrman's piece also offers some insights into Morin's character, which was delightfully eclectic and wonderful. Truly he was a fine human being who was betrayed by an institution he gave his life to.

https://boingboing.net/2017/10/11/late-stage-sportsball.html

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NPR News: Can A Presidential Memoir Really Give An Honest Picture?

Can A Presidential Memoir Really Give An Honest Picture? Historian Craig Fehrman says yes; his book Author in Chief reveals little-known and unknown stories of presidents and their writing. Fehrman's pick for a good read: Calvin Coolidge's memoir. Read more on NPR

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All the Presidents Penned Announce a political marketing campaign, write a guide. This two-step is a nationwide pastime. In “Writer in Chief,” Craig Fehrman dives deeper into the books which were written by presidents, earlier than or after they had been in workplace, together with Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia” and Ronald Reagan’s little-remembered 1965 autobiography “The place’s the Remainder of Me?” Fehrman calls John Adams’ unpublished autobiography the primary instance of a president attempting to put in writing “his personal legacy,” in a manuscript that was “terribly private and pathologically petty.” Barack Obama revealed his memoir “

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All the Presidents Penned

By BY JOHN WILLIAMS In “Author in Chief,” Craig Fehrman examines the books that American presidents have written before and after they were in office. Published: February 9, 2020 at 07:00PM from NYT Books https://ift.tt/2uxjK7l via IFTTT

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It’s Thursday, February 13. In today’s newsletter: John Kelly speaks his mind about Trump. Plus: Which U.S. presidents were the best writers?

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« TODAY IN POLITICS »

(EVAN VUCCI / AP)

The retired four-star general, former White House chief of staff, and former secretary of homeland security let loose about his old boss during a speech at Drew University in New Jersey. Kelly called out the president’s retaliation against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, criticizing Trump’s strategy on North Korea, questioning the president’s language about migrant families, and defending the press.

My colleague Peter Nicholas, our White House reporter, was in the room for the remarkable comments:

When Vindman heard the president tell Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was tantamount to hearing “an illegal order,” Kelly said. “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’”

Throughout the appearance, Kelly laid out his doubts about Trump’s policies. Trump has held two formal summits with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, hoping to scuttle the country’s nuclear program through personal diplomacy. Kelly said the effort was futile.

Kelly kept quiet for much of his tenure in the Trump administration, speaking more freely after he put some distance between him and the White House. But the criticism may be too little, too late, Peter writes, this latest unburdening convincing no Americans of anything new.

Kelly’s indictment of the president is also striking, given that many others in the military community have chosen to keep mum. (Military officials must weigh calling out what they see as unprecedented, destructive behavior, against preserving the apolitical nature of the military. Retired officers face the same calculus, as my colleagues Kathy Gilsinan and Leah Feiger reported in their piece on this slow-boil revolt.)

Call it the James Mattis rule: “There is a period in which I owe my silence. It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever,” the former secretary of defense told Jeff Goldberg last year.

Read the rest of Peter’s dispatch on the former chief of staff’s speech here.

—Christian Paz

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« OTHER CANDIDATES »

(SCOTT EISEN / GETTY)

When They Go Joe

Tump’s impeachment trial ended in acquittal and Joe Biden flopped in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Was there a point to Trump’s pushing for investigations into the Bidens?

“The president got himself impeached and wasted valuable time in the frantic pursuit of an also-ran,” David Graham argues. If Biden is knocked out of the primary, that will ultimately prove to be a hollow victory for Trump, who bears the stain of impeachment.

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« EVENING READ »

(THE ATLANTIC)

Which presidents were the best writers?

After leaving office, presidents write books, memoirs. Most of them were … mediocre. James Parker writes:

Books by presidents ... it’s a vexed and miscellaneous genre. The heavy buttocks of history sit upon it. Literature rarely has anything to do with it. So credit to Craig Fehrman for the compendiousness, readability, and general exuberance of his Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote.

There were arguably only three notable writers among them. The first is John Quincy Adams.

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Today’s newsletter was written by Christian Paz, a fellow on the Politics desk, and edited by Shan Wang, who oversees newsletters.

You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments, or send a note to politicsdaily@theatlantic.com.

Your support makes our journalism possible. Subscribe here.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/3bFkAjs

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Historian Craig Fehrman says yes; his book Author in Chief reveals little-known and unknown stories of presidents and their writing. Fehrman's pick for a good read: Calvin Coolidge's memoir. https://ift.tt/2vkb6Jz

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NPR News: Can A Presidential Memoir Really Give An Honest Picture?

Can A Presidential Memoir Really Give An Honest Picture? Historian Craig Fehrman says yes; his book Author in Chief reveals little-known and unknown stories of presidents and their writing. Fehrman's pick for a good read: Calvin Coolidge's memoir. Read more on NPR

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In “Author in Chief,” Craig Fehrman examines the books that American presidents have written before and after they were in office.

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In “Author in Chief,” Craig Fehrman examines the books that American presidents have written before and after they were in office.