The Zorg by Siddharth Kara
Wow. I’d never even heard of the Zorg before, let alone understood its role in sparking the abolitionist movement in England and the United States. In 1781, the crew crammed the ship with 442 enslaved people on a voyage to Jamaica. After a series of events—bad weather, navigational errors—the ship veered off course, and supplies began to dwindle. What happened next is almost impossible to comprehend. In an effort to “save lives,” they began throwing people overboard, starting with women and children. Shackled together, often in pairs, people were dragged to the edge of the ship, screaming and begging for their lives, and thrown into the ocean to drown. It was the systematic murder of 133 people. Why? Mostly money. The slaves had been so malnourished and mistreated that they would likely sell for far less than expected. And because they were insured “property,” they’d be worth more dead than alive. When news of the massacre spread, it forced people to confront the true brutality of slavery. True to form, pro-slavery activists used the Bible to defend it. Reverend Raymond Harris “asserted that, ‘the slave-trade . . . appears in perfect harmony with the principles and decisions of the word of God,’ and that Jesus ‘never once condemned, reproved, or even hinted the least disapprobation of the practices of slavery . . . not even in his divine Sermon on the Mount.’” Another slavery supporter, William Gregson, argued that financial catastrophe would occur if slavery was abolished. To which I wrote in the margins: then you be a slave. It’s a hard book to stomach. But the storytelling and historical detail make it readable and unforgettable.
Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In by Louis Zamperini
My good friend recommended this, and I’m so glad she did. Most people know Louis Zamperini’s story on the surface: Olympic runner, World War II bombardier, prisoner of war. What he endured is almost incomprehensible. What I loved about this book—a collection of advice written near the end of his life—is how he remained cheerful through it all. He laments how you can’t watch sports today without seeing someone lose ungraciously. He talks about hatred and, like Etty Hillesum, believed hatred was a ruse. “You hate and hate and hate, and think you’re getting even by hating.” But you’re really just destroying yourself. That’s the trap. After everything he went through, maybe the hardest part wasn’t surviving. Maybe it was deciding what to do with it all: Carry it? Or put it down and free yourself? And maybe that’s what “not giving up” really means—not just surviving what happens to you, but like Etty—refusing to let it turn you into someone you don’t want to be. Refusing to let jerks turn you into a jerk. Really, really great book.
Football by Chuck Klosterman
Oh my goodness, this book was so much fun. This guy is one of the weirdest, most interesting thinkers I’ve read. He overthinks everything in the most entertaining way. He takes football and uses it as a launching pad into bigger questions about time, culture, and what we choose to value. This isn’t really a book about football. It’s a book about how we think about football. And from there, how we think about everything else. This guy has thought about football in pretty much every context you can imagine. He even argues—convincingly—that Jim Thorpe was a greater football player than Tom Brady. And there’s not even video footage of Thorpe playing football!He said NFL football will continue to grow in the U.S. over the next 15–20 years, but eventually it will become too big. And when that happens, it will break. As obsessed as Americans are with football now, he suggests that in 50 years, it will probably be irrelevant. This sounds ridiculous at first, but he has valid points. And this got me thinking. If something as massive as football can eventually fade into irrelevance…what does that say about everything else we chase? Fame. Legacy. Being “the greatest” at the expense of our happiness. Not only will you not be able to enjoy your legend status because you’ll be, you know, dead, but the people who think of you as a legend will in turn be dead themselves. The next generations probably won’t even know your name, let alone what the thing was that you were great at. This is all to say: nobody cares what you do. So do things that are meaningful to you. Spend time with your parents. Take the vacation. Explore. People talk about hustling 24/7 like it’s a good thing. They hustle just to do more hustling! (Usually it’s because they don’t know what else to do with themselves.) It reminds me of something Marcus Aurelius wrote: “You’re afraid of death because you won’t be able to do this anymore?” In other words, what you do matters, but not nearly as much as how you live.
What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes
This war memoir is epic. I couldn’t put it down. It’s so well-written that I had to order another book of his, Matterhorn. Marlantes warns about what war does to a person internally. He argues that we do a great job physically preparing soldiers for war, but a terrible job giving them the tools to survive mentally and spiritually. He talks about the guilt and anger and confusion of trying to reconcile being a “good person” with the atrocities the war enables one to commit. I just love how brutally honest he is. And while I didn’t agree with everything he said, I still think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s raw, insightful, full of action, and reflective. I think you’ll love it too.