Joe Kennedy III and Ed Markey

Dear Commons Community,

Sen. Ed Markey won the Massachusetts’ Democratic Senate primary yesterday, defeating a member of one of the most powerful families in Democratic politics in a show of force for the party’s progressive wing.   According to the New York Times,  this result was the first loss by a Kennedy in a Massachusetts election.

Progressives, led by the Sunrise Movement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), rallied behind Markey in his race against Rep. Joe Kennedy III, spurring a come-from-behind victory. The left hopes its decision to go all in to defend Markey could spur other Democratic senators to venture into progressive waters, knowing they’ll have political backup.

Sen. Ed Markey will face the winner of the Republican primary but would be heavily favored to win reelection in November.

Kennedy reportedly called Markey to concede the race at 10:15 p.m. on Tuesday night. This is the first statewide loss in Massachusetts for a member of the Kennedy family.

Kennedy, 39, the grandson of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was initially heavily favored in the race. Markey, a 74-year-old veteran congressman who won a lightly watched special election in 2013 to move up to the Senate, was little known in much of the state and was thought to have little chance against the latest representative of the Kennedy dynasty. 

But Kennedy struggled to articulate a reason to oust Markey, who worked with progressive groups to rebrand himself as a warrior on climate change and other priorities of the Democratic Party’s left wing. A Markey campaign video, made by the Sunrise Movement and released in early August, went viral and racked up more than 4 million views. 

While Sunrise, Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive groups helped fire up young people and ideological progressives to Markey’s cause, an endorsement from the Boston Globe proved critical to reassuring more moderate voters that they had little reason to oust the incumbent in favor of Kennedy.

The race ended up exaggerating the ideological differences between the two men, who hold identical views on most major issues: Both support the Green New Deal and “Medicare for All,” for instance. 

The contest also scrambled the traditional generational and ideological alliances in Democratic politics. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, stuck with Markey; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed Kennedy. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg backed Markey, while Kennedy had the support of both Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Mark Pocan and moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). 

Markey will face lawyer Kevin O’Connor, who won the GOP primary Tuesday, in November but will be heavily favored against the Republican nominee in bright blue Massachusetts. 

This is a stunning win for Markey and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The video above shows a 3-year-old girl swept high into the sky after a streamer became tangled around her neck during a kite-flying festival in northern Taiwan this weekend.

Dear Commons Community,

Some residents in Kenosha fear a planned visit by President Donald Trump after unrest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake may stir more emotions and cause more violence and destruction in the southeastern Wisconsin city after several days of peace.

The city’s mayor, and the state’s governor, also said they believed Trump’s visit comes at a bad time. But others welcomed the president’s trip, when he will tour damage and meet with law enforcement. Trump’s visit comes as demonstrators are calling for the officer who shot Blake to be fired and face attempted murder charges, and more than a week after authorities say a 17-year-old from northern Illinois shot and killed two protesters.

Asked yesterday whether he feared Trump’s visit could stir more violence, Kenosha County Executive Jim Kreuser said: “We’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”

The tension began Aug. 23 after a video showed a Kenosha police officer shooting Blake, a Black man, in the back while responding to a call about a domestic dispute. All last week, Black Lives Matter protesters held events to call for changes to policing. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called a special session of the Legislature for Monday to take up a host of police reform measures, but Republicans took no immediate action.

Authorities said they had resources in place to protect the bedroom community between Chicago and Milwaukee, including more than 1,500 National Guard members.

Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said more than 200 people have been arrested since the protests began. Of those, more than half were from outside Kenosha, he said. Many arrests were for curfew violations, and included possible charges for burglary, possession of illegal drugs and carrying concealed weapons without a permit, officials said. The Kenosha Police Department has said more than 20 firearms were seized.

Beth also said that “outside agitators” have used social media or made phone calls to churches and businesses to scare people and spread false rumors.

“I want the people of Kenosha to know there’s a huge amount of resources here to protect you,” Beth said.

Family members say Blake, 29, is paralyzed, and a lawyer said most of his colon and small intestines were removed. His family led a large peaceful protest Saturday, just before Trump announced his plans to visit.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said yesterday that Trump has no immediate plans to meet with Blake’s family when he’s in Kenosha.

Trump told reporters that he spoke with the Blake family pastor about speaking with the family, who insisted that their lawyer take part in the phone call.

“I thought it would be better not to do anything where there’re lawyers involved,” Trump said. “They wanted me to speak but they wanted to have lawyers involved and I thought that was inappropriate, so I didn’t do that.”

The White House later confirmed that Trump spoke with The Rev. James E. Ward, Jr., founder and lead pastor of Skokie, Illinois-based INSIGHT Church. The Associated Press left and email and voicemail seeking comment Monday evening from Ward.

Ben Crump, an attorney for Blake’s family, told CNN that Blake’s mother “was ready to receive the phone call, but for some reason the call never came, and we now understand why.”

“I don’t know why the president wouldn’t want the family to have their lawyers on the phone,” Crump said. “He seems to have lawyers with him when he talks to people.”

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke with Blake’s family last week.

Blake’s family planned a Tuesday “community celebration” to correspond with Trump’s visit.

“We don’t need more pain and division from a president set on advancing his campaign at the expense of our city,” said uncle Justin Blake in a statement. “We need justice and relief for our vibrant community.”

On Sunday, Evers sent Trump a letter urging him not to come, saying the visit “will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together.” But Kenosha County Board supervisors urged him not to cancel.

“Kenoshans are hurting and looking for leadership, and your leadership in this time of crisis is greatly appreciated by those devastated by the violence in Kenosha,” a letter from seven supervisors said.

Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian reiterated Monday that he believes Trump’s visit is coming at the wrong time.

“I think that Kenosha, at this present time, needs peace and needs to heal and needs people to allow us to do that,” he said.

Trump showed no signs of backing down, tweeting about the unrest in Kenosha and saying, ” I will see you on Tuesday!”

Diana Kreye, a 60-year-old resident of nearby Brighton, said Trump is exploiting the conflict.

“I don’t like that this has all become political,” said Kreye, an undecided voter.

Angel Tirado, 42, however, thinks Trump’s visit could help. “I hope he says something that can calm us all down,” said Tirado. “Maybe he’ll bring us together.”

Others doubt the president had any intention of closing divisions and pointed to his recent tweets and history of making racist comments.

“He’s not coming down here to heal,” said David Sanchez, 66, a retiree and Kenosha resident who expects thousands of people to show up to protest Trump. “He’s coming to Kenosha to start more trouble. I don’t care what he says.”

“He has done nothing over the last three years to bring people together,” said Raymond Roberts, 38, a data scientist and Afghanistan War veteran. “This is a bellwether county in a bellwether state. It’s all about his reelection.”

Trump has throughout the summer sought to cast U.S. cities as under siege by violence and lawlessness, despite the fact that most of the demonstrations against racial injustice have been peaceful.

Joe Biden (see video below) said yesterday that Trump “fans the flames” of violence in the country and will do so again by his visit to Kenosha!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Earlier last week, The Daily Beast reported that President Trump had one thing on his mind heading into his Republican National Convention. 

The president was telling his closest aides that he was determined to beat his rival Joe Biden in the TV ratings. He was requesting daily ratings for the Democratic National Convention and insisted that his RNC spectacle would demolish their “pathetic” numbers, according to a senior administration official.

In the end, apparently not even all of the unethical pomp and circumstance of a Trump-branded White House as the backdrop of his big speech Thursday night could draw more viewers than Biden’s solemnly rousing speech to an empty auditorium. 

According to initial Nielsen numbers, President Trump’s speech Thursday night drew 14.1 million viewers across the three broadcast networks and three major cable news networks. That is  three million fewer viewers than the 17.5 million who tuned in to watch Biden’s speech one week earlier.

When those numbers are expanded out across nine broadcast and cable networks, Biden still beat Trump by a fairly wide margin, 23.6 million to 21.6 million.

At 70 minutes, Trump spoke close to three times as long as Joe Biden, whose DNC speech clocked in at 24 and a half minutes. It was the second-longest convention speech in modern American history—after the 75-minute speech Trump delivered at the 2016 RNC. 

Biden’s DNC beat Trump’s RNC across the board on all four nights, starting with former First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech on night one, which drew about 18.7 million viewers compared to 15.8 million for Donald Trump Jr., Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and others on the first night of the RNC. Night two was closer, but headliner Jill Biden still edged out First Lady Melania Trump, 18.6 million to 18 million. 

On night three, Vice President Mike Pence not only lost viewers compared to the previous night but also came in far behind the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris. While approximately 15.7 million viewers watched Pence, about 21.5 million viewers tuned in to Harris. 

Trump must have had a fit when we saw these ratings.

The above was forwarded to me by my colleague, Frank Delly.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Friday, Elon Musk presented (see video above) a working demo of his latest technology moonshot, a new kind of implantable chip for the brain. And he did, but it wasn’t with a human subject: Rather, it was with a pig named Gertrude.  As reported by CNN.

The presentation came a year after Musk first introduced his plan for a new kind of implantable computer chip. Last July, he sketched out a vision of a computer chip connected to extremely slim wires with electrodes on them, which would be embedded in a person’s brain by a surgical robot. The implant would connect wirelessly to a small, behind-the-ear receiver that could communicate with a computer. 

Musk says he hopes the implant could one day help quadriplegics control smartphones, and perhaps even endow users with a sort of telepathy. Like existing brain-machine interfaces, it would collect electrical signals sent out by the brain and interpret them as actions.

The demo, which Musk had teased on Twitter by saying it would “show neurons firing in real time” and was mainly a recruiting effort to attract new employees, included more details about the implant Musk eventually hopes to implant in people’s brains. He said the company scrapped the idea for a behind-the-ear receiver in favor of a fully embedded implant about the size of a coin that would be placed below the skull — a plan that sounds more invasive than what Musk unveiled last summer. He showed off a prototype of this so-called Link, which he said would include many of the sensors in your smartphone, such as a six-axis interial measurement unit and temperature and pressure sensors. The device uses Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate with a computer.

The demo also featured the second version of a surgical robot that Musk introduced last July, which is meant to insert the Neuralink implant into the brain.

There have been less than enthusiastic reviews of Musk’s demo mainly because he used a pig instead of a human being but many medical breakthroughs begin with animals such as rats and monkeys.  I believe that Musk or someone else will deliver an implantable brain chip.  The critical question is not whether but when?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, analyzes the Trump family, especially Ivanka,  and their “malarkey” performances at the Republican National Convention (RNC).  Anyone who has been following Trump since becoming president would agree that the family presented an alternate universe of the Donald.   Entitled, The Princess vs. the Portrait of Trumpworld, Dowd focuses on Ivanka who may be prepping for her own run as president in 2024.  Here are several excerpts.

“The most dramatic tableau Thursday night was not the president’s somniferous speech, but Ivanka’s scorching moment with the Day-Glo-garbed Melania.

After her speech, the first daughter strode past the first lady to greet her father. Melania, who had first smiled broadly at Ivanka, suddenly went stony.

The exchange was particularly loaded given the context: Melania’s former BFF and aide, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is beginning to dish on her new tell-all about the first lady, which includes accounts of conversations in which Melania mocks Ivanka.

It has been reported that Melania calls Ivanka “the princess” — Trump singled out his favorite child in his convention speech — and Ivanka has reportedly called Melania “the portrait.”

….On Ivanka’s other flank is Don Jr., who was never as favored by their father but who has morphed from family dunce to one of Trumpworld’s most effective battering rams.

…The Trump kids’ speeches could have been given by anyone, they were so devoid of humanizing anecdotes.

Even worse, they were trying to sell a version of Donald Trump that was a total fiction. The plan, with the family and other speakers, was to push the idea that Trump is caring and informed behind the scenes — “colorblind and gender neutral,’’ as Ivanka said at the last convention.”

The entire column is below.  It is provocative, insightful, and sadly true!

Tony

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New York Times

The Princess vs. the Portrait in Trumpworld

By Maureen Dowd

Aug. 29, 2020

WASHINGTON — As long as the Trumps were hijacking the White House for their convention finale, they may as well have built a golden escalator from the Truman Balcony to the South Lawn.

That way, Ivanka could have made her power move with true Trumpian flair. In every other sense, she went for it. With her blond mane rippling, she was full-on MAGA, shoving the amped-up Don Jr. and fortissimo Kimberly Guilfoyle out of the way and positioning herself as the heir to her father’s political dynasty.

The night was so Borgia, it made sense to end it with opera. (Or they could have just played the “Succession” theme song.)

The old joke that if Trump became president, he’d slap his name on the White House almost came true during the egomania jubilee, when fireworks spelled out the name “Trump.”

Ivanka must realize now that she and Jared can never go back to their life as New York society darlings. So why not double down on Washington and lay the groundwork for a presidential run of her own?

Now that her father has turned the Republican Party into a political machine bearing her last name, she must feel entitled to jump into the driver’s seat when papa is done with it.

Her speech Thursday night was about him but it was also pointedly about “I.”

“Four years ago, I introduced to you a builder …” “Tonight, I stand before you …” “When Jared and I moved with our three young children to Washington, we didn’t exactly know what we were in for …” “I’ve seen in Washington, it’s easy for politicians to survive if they silence their convictions …” “I couldn’t believe so many politicians actually prefer to complain …” “I was shocked to see …” “I am more certain than ever before …” “I’ve been with my father …” “I sat with him in the Oval Office …” “I was with my father when …” “I promised that …” “I said that Americans needed …”

“Four years ago, I told you I would fight alongside my father, and four years later, here I am.’’

Yes, there she was, daddy’s little girl, on her imaginary escalator. The pungent aroma of the S.N.L. Ivanka perfume, “Complicit,” wafted across the lawn on the balmy night. All the dynamics that make Donald Trump’s administration, and the way he runs the country, so chaotic — the backbiting, the warring factions, the grifting, the neglect, the power grabs — were echoed in the family portrait on display this past week.

The most dramatic tableau Thursday night was not the president’s somniferous speech, but Ivanka’s scorching moment with the Day-Glo-garbed Melania.

After her speech, the first daughter strode past the first lady to greet her father. Melania, who had first smiled broadly at Ivanka, suddenly went stony.

The exchange was particularly loaded given the context: Melania’s former BFF and aide, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, is beginning to dish on her new tell-all about the first lady, which includes accounts of conversations in which Melania mocks Ivanka.

It has been reported that Melania calls Ivanka “the princess” — Trump singled out his favorite child in his convention speech — and Ivanka has reportedly called Melania “the portrait.”

After many tugs of war, Melania has resigned herself to the fact that Jared and Ivanka run the White House. The basic view in the building is that Ivanka has wrestled Melania to a draw.

Wolkoff writes that Melania was so annoyed by her stepdaughter’s attempts to, as she saw it, infringe on her role in planning the Inauguration that she launched “Operation Block Ivanka.”

“Melania was not thrilled about Ivanka’s steering the schedule and would not allow it,’’ Wolkoff writes in a New York magazine excerpt. “Neither was she happy to hear that Ivanka insisted on walking in the Pennsylvania Avenue parade with her children.’’

The Portrait decided to try to exclude the Princess from the portrait — the “special moment” of the swearing-in.

“Yes, Operation Block Ivanka was petty,’’ Wolkoff writes. “Melania was in on this mission. But in our minds, Ivanka shouldn’t have made herself the center of attention in her father’s inauguration.”

On Ivanka’s other flank is Don Jr., who was never as favored by their father but who has morphed from family dunce to one of Trumpworld’s most effective battering rams.

Junior, as Jason Zengerle writes in The New York Times Magazine this week, “is wagering that by going all in on his father’s presidency and the tribal passions it has unleashed, he can claim his own durable place in American politics.” He has come to represent “the emotional center of the MAGA universe,’’ Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, told Zengerle.

The convention speeches from Trump’s other children, Tiffany and Eric, lacked the sort of warmth and affection seen in the sweet and personal video of Joe Biden’s granddaughters.

The Trump kids’ speeches could have been given by anyone, they were so devoid of humanizing anecdotes.

Even worse, they were trying to sell a version of Donald Trump that was a total fiction. The plan, with the family and other speakers, was to push the idea that Trump is caring and informed behind the scenes — “colorblind and gender neutral,’’ as Ivanka said at the last convention.

As W. did at his convention in 2000, Trump offered a panoply of Blacks and Latinos — though some of them have said they did not know they were going to be a part of the Trump convention. With W., you could look out at the audience and see the falsity of it, since the audience was full of white fat cats. Republicans were fortunate that for the first three nights, they did not have an audience of delegates, donors and apparatchiks that would pull the curtain back on the party’s hypocrisy; though you could see a front row of white fat-cat men during Thursday’s speeches at the White House.

With hilarious euphemisms, the family also painted the potty-mouthed patriarch’s outrageous behavior and degrading language as simply colorful.

“We all know Donald Trump makes no secrets about how he feels about things,’’ Melania said. “Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking.’’ And that, she said with a straight face, is because he’s “an authentic person.”

Ivanka chimed in: “Dad, people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real.”

It was impossible for this to ring true, given that the president’s own sister was heard describing Trump in secret recordings made by his rogue niece, Mary Trump, as “a brat” and a liar with “no principles.” (Or, as Trump’s children would say, a totally honest people’s champion with strong convictions.)

In New Hampshire on Friday night, the president considered his dynastic possibilities. “I want to see the first woman president also,” he said, but called Kamala Harris “not competent.”

“They’re all saying, ‘We want Ivanka,’’’ he said.

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading,  A Black Women’s History of the United States, by Diana Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross.  Berry is a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, and Gross is a professor of history at Rutgers University. It is an engaging book that documents how “African American women put their bodies and souls on the line for the cause of freedom.”  Berry and Gross detail well the contributions of African American women from the age of exploration in the 1500s to the present day.  While I was familiar with many of the women depicted in the 20^th century such Shirley Chisolm, I knew little about those in the earlier centuries.  I was grateful to Berry and Gross for filling a gap in my knowledge.   As one reviewer stated:  “It is an essential, important, and fundamental account that is a must-read for anyone to know the history of the United States in its fullest, truest, and most gut-wrenching reality.” 

As an aside, I read this book at the same time I was reading, Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language by Nicola Gardini. While both dealt with history, these two books could not be more different in subject matter and had my head swirling at times.

I have added A Black Women’s History… to my recommended readings in a graduate course I am teaching at Hunter College.  Below is a review courtesy of Long Star Literary Life.

Tony

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Long Start Literary Life

By Chris Manno

A Black Women’s History of the United States

February 4, 2020

If you think you had a pretty accurate picture of United States history—and I thought I did—this book will make you think again. Because like most, I did not know about significant blind spots, gaps, and omissions in what passed for US history before this meticulously researched and entirely accessible history crossed my desk. After reading this compact yet compelling book, I’m a believer: this is an essential, important, and fundamental account that is a must-read for anyone to know the history of the United States in its fullest, truest, and most gut-wrenching reality.

The focus is United States history—really, North American history, from the start—with the added dimension of black womanhood in all the critical and pivotal waypoints in seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century life on the continent. Black women enduring the early years of US history did so against a daily existence of bondage, disenfranchisement, injustice, and inequality, a crucial part of the colonial narrative heretofore largely ignored by historians.

The asymmetrical racial power balance was appalling, the reality of enslavement draconian, and the heartbreaking, unyielding oppression inhumane and soul-crushing. This history restores the historical voice to many courageous, relentless black women who resisted enslavement and colonialism to advocate freedom for their succeeding generations.

The authors chose a unique historical methodology that offers rich detail and layers of research-based narrative, then lets the reader draw conclusions. Rhetorical questions follow the clearly drawn history: How could a black woman feel about herself and her children in the face of rape, murder, denial, oppression, and inhumanity that was the colonial order which persisted for centuries? How would anyone feel—particularly the reader—newly apprised of the atrocity unmentioned or barely spoken of in conventional histories of the United States?

The narrative is heartbreaking mostly, hopeful certainly, and a fitting, long-overdue tribute to the largely nameless, faceless, but powerful and unrelenting black women whose stories leap from the pages of this history. The reader loses the blinders inherent in the typical US history’s narrow account of the inhumanity black women in particular had to bear: their reproductive life was commodified as a saleable labor source by slaveowners. The authors carefully and effectively link this atrocity to another—infanticide—in a way that transcends typical US history and underscores the loss of humanity in a country that tolerated slavery for centuries.

The only troublesome narrative issue I encountered was a question of viewpoint, not history: in chapter three, the historian’s voice is overshadowed by personal bias when the authors intrude in their very well-supported history with a statement regarding enslavement of black people by black people. “This is a difficult history to report,” the authors state, “as many of those who read it will place blame on black people for contributing to slavery.” This forces the history into the background and foregrounds a misplaced, at least in the historical voice, concern over a desired conclusion they wish to induce. But should historians have a rhetorical agenda? And should that overshadow the history itself at any point?

Regardless, A Black Women’s History of the United States is a rich, vital, and must-read addition to basic US history. “African American women put their bodies and souls on the line for the cause of freedom,” the authors tell us, and their thoroughly detailed history foregrounds that reality poignantly, uniquely, and accurately.

Dear Commons Community,

In high school (1961-1965), I completed a four-year Latin sequence in three years and translated the works of authors such as Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil.  Every night, we were assigned a passage in Latin to read and had to be ready to discuss it the next day in class. For some reason, I took to this exercise and enjoyed the challenge of breaking down the declensions and conjugations that are the basis for Latin grammar.  It was very helpful later on in life especially as I studied other languages namely Spanish and French.  Also the Latin vocabulary provides the roots for many English words.   

About a month ago, I decide to read Nicola Gardini’s Long Live Latin:  The Pleasures of a Useless Language.  Gardini is a professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford and knows his subject well.  In this book, he shares his deep love for Latin and tries to make the case for why it is still important in modern times. He focuses on its beauty, organization,  and logic. I found it full of insights into language in general and it kept taking me back to my high school days.  Anyone who has ever studied Latin, will find Gardini’s treatment a deep yet fun read.  For those who haven’t studied Latin, it will be tough going.  Below is a review that captures a lot of this book’s essence.

Tony

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National Review

Why Study Latin?

By Diane Scharper

Oxford professor Nicola Gardini urges people to read and study Latin. He believes that Latin is the antidote for the modern age, which seems transfixed by the spontaneous, the easy, and the ephemeral.

His new book, Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language, argues that Latin combines truth and beauty with the timelessness of art. People should study Latin for all the reasons people should read literature.

In his Confessions, St. Augustine (354–430 C.E.) “placed the learning of Latin under God’s purview,” Gardini writes. Augustine believed Latin drew a child closer to God, “the truest truth.”

Gardini argues that Latin contains the logic and precision of math. He uses Caesar’s De bello Gallico as an example of language trying to “re-create the world mathematically and geometrically, its sentences organized according to precise cause-and-effect relationships.”

The syntax of Latin stimulates logical reasoning, Gardini says. Its morphology jogs memory. Most important, Latin is the language of civilization. “The western world was created on its back. . . . Inscribed in Latin are the secrets of our deepest identity.”

According to Gardini, those secrets are concerned with the power of words to enhance thought. Words, he says, are humanity’s greatest gift, and literature heightens the value of that gift. Referencing Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Gardini says that Latin is able to link the smallest blip “to the cosmic order, which . . . invests all with . . . a profundity that stretch[es] beyond the terrestrial.”

Early on, Gardini discusses Nicolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) and his warmly felt connection to Roman literature. Author of The Prince and the father of modern political theory, Machiavelli, Gardini says, occasionally took a break from politics and read the Latin classics.

As Machiavelli describes it, he didn’t just read, he encountered the authors of these ancient books: “I speak to them without inhibition,” he wrote in 1513 to a friend, “and [I] ask them the reasons behind their actions; and in their humanity, they reply.”

Machiavelli’s approach evidently inspired Gardini, who crafts each chapter so that it feels like an encounter. Offering numerous personal anecdotes from his own life, Gardini’s writing is warm and conversational yet scholarly.

His text considers the form, style, purpose, influence, and themes found in the works of these authors; quotes liberally from their work; and offers Gardini’s own translations while noting the rhetorical devices and figurative language appearing in the original Latin.

Calling his book both an ode and an essay, Gardini defends Latin from those who consider the subject superfluous. He is especially drawn to Latin’s poetic qualities and frequently comments on the musicality of the language with its figures of sound as well as its metaphors, which he says have an almost magical effect.

Studying Latin, Gardini says, taught him the importance of discrete sounds and syllables. It showed him “the importance of musical language, the soul of poetry.” Words he used every day began “disassembling in my mind and swirling around like petals in the air,” Gardini writes in a nod to poetry

Gardini suggests that his book is for a general reader—especially for young students. But it’s hard to imagine many young students from the U.S. responding well to the “critical and aesthetic genius” of a writer like Horace (65 B.C.E.–8 C.E.) or to his Ars Poetica, excerpts of which Gardini translates and discusses. As Gardini observes, “There’s nothing easy about Horace’s Latin, even when it’s dictated to by occasion.”  Yet Horace’s advice for poets would resonate in today’s university writing courses: “Poetry is like painting: some things catch you / more if you stand in front of them, other things from a distance.”

The book is somewhat hard to follow because Gardini doesn’t present his material in chronological order. The authors don’t appear as they would in a history of Latin literature. Instead, he shows them in media res, in what he calls, “linguistic instances, . . . as examples of what Latin has gained at a certain moment . . . and handed down to its long—and still living—tradition.” But this is a quibble with an important and informative book.

Currently, Gardini teaches Renaissance literature, which he describes as heavily dependent on Latin. Given that college semesters consist of approximately 22 classes and that Gardini is a visiting professor (at Oxford University, Columbia University, etc.) it’s conceivable that this book, which contains 22 chapters (each focusing on one writer or one quality of Latin), was inspired by a syllabus that he created for a Latin literature course.

Latin, as Gardini points out in the early chapters, is used in science, law, and formal documents—and in religious worship, which is where Gardini first heard the language when his mother recited the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and other prayers. Gardini, though, doesn’t appreciate church Latin as much he does literary Latin, which is the focus of this book. He emphasizes the influence that Latin literature had on figures as diverse as St. Jerome, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Castiglione, Dante, Milton, Nietzsche, J. D. McClatchy, Margaret Atwood, and others.

Gardini is passionate about his subject and tends to be wordy. Wishing to inspire passion in his readers, he repeats himself several times, each time becoming (metaphorically) louder. He seems fond of alliteration and points out that this figure of sound as well as repetition were favorites of Roman poets. He seems to prefer the Roman poets over its prose writers.

Gardini begins with a discussion of Old Latin authors, mentioning the playwright Plautus (250–184 B.C.E.), whose comedies influenced dramatists through the ages including William Shakespeare (in The Comedy of Errors), George Bernard Shaw, and Bertolt Brecht. Gardini also notes that Cato the Elder (234–149 B.C.E.) produced a vast body of work, but only a farming manual, De agri cultura, survives. Gardini considers the work the beginning of Latin literature and an influence for “the giant Virgil” and his Aeneid.

Poetry, Gardini says, represents the human word at its finest, and in a chapter on Virgil’s Eclogues, Gardini argues that the word “umbra,” meaning “shadow,” is “the most beautiful word in the Latin language.” In the word, he says, “the semantic and emotive ambivalence of Virgil’s Latin finds its most eloquent symbol.”

Gardini admires the poet Catullus (87–54 B.C.E.), considering him to be one of the greatest influences on Western poetry. Today, only 116 of his poems survive, including “The Death of Lesbia’s Sparrow,” which Gardini calls “one of the most celebrated texts in Western literature.”

Although Gardini mentions the inspiration of goddesses, the only woman quoted here is Sappho, whose poetry influenced the father of Latin (and all) poetry, Ennius (239 B.C.E. –169), who is noted for the epic poem Annales. Gardini calls Ennius “the linguistic conscience” of Latin poetry.

“Of all the ancient writers,” Gardini says, Seneca (4 B.C.E.–65 C.E.), “the Stoic philosopher, is the one who has most taught me how to live.” Gardini uses as testimony excerpts from Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius. For example: “All we are surrounded by is one and it is god; and we are its allies and its limbs.”

“Virgil [(70 B.C.E. to 19 C.E.)],” he continues, “moves me; Tacitus [(56 to 120 C.E.)] draws me toward cruelty; Lucretius [(94 to 52 B.C.E.)] sends me whirling and drifting and sinking; Cicero [(106 to 43 B.C.E.)] has me dreaming of perfection in all—thought, speech, behavior. Seneca teaches me happiness.”

Looking at Cicero, Gardini notes that Petrarch considered him “the supreme father of the Latin language.” Cicero’s Latin, according to Gardini, is “self-describing and self-analyzing”; it debates and speculates while thoroughly examining every aspect of a discussion. Cicero disdained excessive imagery but appreciated the just-right metaphor—“stimulating our imagination and engaging . . . our senses, particularly our vision.”

Above all, Cicero advocated clarity of expression, as can be seen in his advice to writers and orators: “Oratio . . . lumen adhere rebus debet.”

Or, as Gardini translates it, “Language must shed light on things.”

Dear Commons Community,

NBC News and ABC News are reporting that several hundred former aides to President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain announced yesterday that they are endorsing Joe Biden for president.

“Given the incumbent president’s lack of competent leadership, his efforts to aggravate rather than bridge divisions among Americans, and his failure to uphold American values, we believe the election of former Vice President Biden is clearly in the national interest,” they said in a letter.

As president, Biden would lead a comprehensive effort to contain the coronavirus in the U.S., they said.

Some of McCain’s former aides who signed the letter include Mark Salter, the senator’s former chief of staff; Christian Ferry, who was deputy manager for McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign; Joe Donoghue, the senator’s former legislative director; and Mike Murphy, a GOP political consultant who was a strategist on McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign.

Trump and McCain frequently clashed, including over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

This endorsement, the latest in a string of GOP statements of support for Biden, comes two days after the two-year anniversary of McCain’s death from brain cancer.

Earlier this week, than two dozen former Republican Congress members backed Biden for president, and at the Democratic National Convention last week, several other Republicans endorsed the former vice president. They included former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, former eBay and Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman and former Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, who was among those on the list the Biden campaign released Monday.

Tony