do not be overcome

Two of the books I read while on vacation were: 1947 Where Now Begins by Swedish journalist Elisabeth Åsbrink and On Tyranny Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. Both were extremely informative and enlightening.

1947 may be one of my new all-time favorite books. I think absolutely everyone should read it. The book examines the events of 1947 and the affect they had on the world we live in today. 1947 came out in Sweden in 2016 and is newly translated into English by Fiona Graham. The book compiles fragmented scenes from across time and space, ordered more or less chronologically. The months of the year serve as chapters, while cities and villages around the world are the characters. There is a sense that the past is never really past, that history has consequences that play out over years... and that history can play out in real time.

For example:

January, 1947, New York 

Now is a time without universal human rights. But has humankind missed something it didn't know existed? Have the world's  religions, seeking to shield that which is human as though it were a fragment of the divine, provided adequate protection? 

The world rises out of greasy human ashes. Here and now, in the United Nations' provisional secretariat in the aircraft factory at Lake Success, universal values are to be established: new thoughts, new premises for humankind, a new morality. A person's rights are not to depend on whether they are Christian or Buddhist, on whether they were born into a family with or without assets, or on their name, sex, position, country of birth, or skin color. 

Entering world history, a 60-year-old woman leads the deliberations. She has just lost her driving license for careless driving. Somewhere beneath the stream of day-to-day political happenings and her sadness at the death of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, somewhere beneath the layer of thoughts about aging, motherhood, and the fact that people are unused to a female leader, run the words that will follow the working party from this first day to the last, the same regardless of whether one reads the Confucian philosopher Mencius or the twelfth chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." 

Eleanor Roosevelt convenes her first meeting with the working party on January 27. There is a certain euphoria in the air. Never again, say the world's people to each other and themselves. Never again, say the members of the working party charged with creating human rights, who hardly grasp the magnitude of their task.

Get this book for the history buffs you know. Get this book for those who follow politics. 

Get 1947 Where Now Begins and you will surely learn something new.


In On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century, historian Timothy Snyder says "History does not repeat, but does instruct...  If we worry today that the American experiment is threatened by tyranny, we can follow the example of the Founding Fathers and contemplate the history of other democracies and republics."  On Tyranny instructs and illuminates a path forward.  Mr. Snyder provides 20 actionable lessons on preventing, or at least forestalling repression.

Every day we either succumb to or fend off the encroachment of tyranny.

In his book, Mr. Snyder devotes several of the lessons to the power of small decisions in the face of eroding democracy. “The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote,” he argues. “Our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.”

For example: defend American institutions and civil society groups by joining them. Advocate for groups, institutions, and the free press by supporting them financially. “Institutions do not protect themselves.” Also, "beware of loyalty symbols — be it a sticker or armband, or even a hat, I imagine — however innocuous they seem, because they are often used to exclude." 

From 1 to 20, take action daily.

Get this book for those you know who believe in the fierce urgency of now.