On American Sketches
"Good narrative storytelling can bind us together, provoke shared sentiments, and evoke our common underlying values," said Walter Isaacson in the epilogue of his 2009 book, American Sketches.
Isaacson is one of my favorite storytellers. He's my favorite biographer. I was thrilled a few weeks ago when I found American Sketches. It's a collection of his best essays on significant American figures from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Clinton, Albert Einstein to Bill Gates, and Henry Kissinger to Colin Powell.
If you're interested in writing or New Orleans, the value from the introduction and epilogue justify the $15 price tag. If you're not a writer or a NOLA buff, many of the essays are still worth reading. They give you quick glimpses into some of America's most notable people.
Below are the chapters I enjoyed the most with a few insights from each.
Introduction: My So-called Writing Life
This is one of the best book introductions I've ever read. Isaacson talks for twenty pages about his entry into the world of writing and the key points he learned along the way. I was sad when those twenty pages ended.
Henry Luce, the co-founder of Time Magazine, had a simple philosophy: "Tell the history of our time through the people who make it." This is exactly what Walter Isaacson has done through his writing life.
As a young writer, Isaacson's first mentor was the novelist, Walker Percy. When Isaacson would ask Percy to explain the deep philosophical messages in his writing, Percy offered Isaacson an insight that shaped his career. "There are two types of people who come out of Louisiana: preachers and storytellers. It's better to be a storyteller."
Isaacson became a storyteller. In so doing, he's been able to teach some of the most valuable lessons of our time - lessons on the importance of compromise and the approachability of science - not through preaching, but through parable.
Franklin and the Art of Leadership
As a young man, Benjamin Franklin established a club in Philadelphia called the Junto. As part of the club, Franklin made a list of 12 values upon which he was trying to improve, and he would report on his progress every week. By making public his desired areas of improvement, he instantly applied pressure to make progress. It's a useful tactic for improvement in any area, and it's why the Twitter trend of "learning in public" has become so popular.
Three more lessons from Franklin:
Humility is an ever present challenge. Often, faking humility will suffice.
Leadership is 90% compromise and 10% taking a firm stand on important principles.
It's easier to accomplish things when you don't worry about who gets the credit.
Colin Powell, The Good Soldier
A recurring theme in American Sketches is the struggle between realism and idealism. A delicate balance between the two is one of the keys to America's success as a country.
In the context of the war on terror, idealists hoped the United States could bring democracy to the Middle East while realists were less optimistic and more concerned about America's strategic interests.
The Powell Doctrine, leaning more toward the realist end of the spectrum, says military intervention should have three pillars:
A well defined mission
Use enough force that the mission can be accomplished cleanly
A clear strategy for success and exit
We are a country of strong ideals, and this shouldn't change. But we must always remember to temper our idealism with an appropriate balance of realism to ensure we continue to thrive.
I'm Okay, You're Okay
This piece was a 2004 book review of President Clinton's memoir, My Life. Isaacson used a Mark Twain quote to convey his opinion of the book: "Like Wagner's music, it's not as bad as it sounds."
I enjoyed this article because Isaacson discusses other presidential memoirs and biographies. He dubs Richard Nixon's memoir, RN, the most underrated presidential memoir. He names Ulysses S. Grant's, Personal Memoirs, the best presidential autobiography. Grant's was edited and promoted by Mark Twain.
The article left me wanting to know more about President Clinton if for nothing more than learning from his likability.
Einstein's God
This piece is an excellent discussion of Einstein's nuanced and complicated opinion on religion. His belief in God stems from his knowledge of science and the awareness of his ignorance. There is too much in the world without explanation, he believed, for God not to exist.
When asked if he was religious, Einstein responded, "Yes, you can call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."
Einstein was also a determinist, but he believed the idea of free will is valuable to society. While the beliefs are contradicting, Einstein squared them in his mind. "I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime," said Einstein, "but I prefer not to take tea with him."
In Search of the Real Bill Gates
This was an excellent chapter. It felt like I was immersed back in Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs - a page turner I couldn't put down.
Originally published in Time Magazine in 1997, Isaacson's goal was to emulate the type of narrative, biographical, personal stories he believed should be the cornerstone of the publication.
He nails it.
Consider, as an example, a description of Gates, and my favorite line of the piece: "He rarely looks at you when he talks, which is disconcerting, but he does so when he's driving, which is doubly disconcerting."
Luckily, this piece is still available online. It's a good test for whether or not you should buy the book.
Our Century...and the Next One
This was written as an introduction to the Time 100, Time Magazine's profile of the 100 most influential people of the century.
It's great because it contextualizes where we were in the late 90s with where we were at the turn of the prior century. In the year 1900, "in America, cars were replacing horses, 42 percent of workers were in farming (today it's 3 percent), and the average life span was about fifty (today it's seventy-five)."
It's also great because Isaacson gave the century different labels and explained each one. Some of his labels included, The Century of Freedom, The Century of Capitalism, The Mass Market Century, and The Genocidal Century.
Finally, it's great because reading it today, 23 years after Isaacson wrote it, reveals how extremely prescient he was (and likely still is). He predicted the ubiquity of voice recognition technology. He predicted the challenges of the 21st century to be moral, not scientific. And he predicted political tribalism as well as radical environmentalism.
Epilogue
This chapter is largely about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It talks about how the city was rebuilt, the major influences in rebuilding, race relations, and the importance of storytelling for unity. As I mentioned earlier, the epilogue and introduction are worth the $15 Amazon charge on your credit card.
I don't want to spoil your own reading of the chapter, so I'll simply leave you with Isaacson's final quote from the book.
"Transcending tribalism and strengthening the weave of multiethnic societies is one of our great challenges today, as it has been throughout history. In this struggle, I think that there is still a place for those who pursue the so-called writing life, and I hope there will always be. Good narrative reporting and writing, I believe, can bring us in touch with our shared humanity by telling tales about people - tales we can all relate to, ones that evoke values and sentiments we can all share. It can also, at its best, help us find common ground, both by encouraging us to be open to the joy of different ideas, as Franklin did, and by striking chords that resonate in us all, as Armstrong did."
