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CHURCHILL
AND ORWELL
by Thomas E. Ricks
Churchill and Orwell proved their age’s
necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and
Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of
the 1940s to triumph over freedom’s enemies.
And though Churchill played the larger role in the
defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell’s reckoning
with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal
Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the
Cold War for its fifty-year course, and continues
to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this
day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks’ masterful
hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the
power of moral conviction and to the courage it can
take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. What’s
special about this audiobook is the comparison of
the two men, with both similarities and differences.
Personalities were different, too, as was public perception.
Churchill didn’t read much fiction, and dismissed
Henry James, not knowing or caring who he was. Meanwhile
Orwell’s star began to rise as a prophet of
the future, with many pithy quotes written as if penned
today, like, “The very concept of objective
truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into
history,” and “all issues are political
issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions,
folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” Or “Nationalism
is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”
Or “Sports is war minus the shooting,”
and “Big Brother is watching you.” He
did not believe that the object of life should be
happiness, but rather truth. Interesting is the quote,
“The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human
being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.”
Churchill was more about perseverance in the face
of overwhelming odds. “Never give up. Failure
is not fatal; it is courage to continue that counts.”
And: “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning
I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”
Author Thomas E. Ricks is a national security adviser
for a think tank, has written for the Washington Post
and Wall Street Journal, and is author of Fiasco,
a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Narrator
James Lurie is an award winning stage and
TV actor, with a gift for clarity and direction in
non-fiction, too.
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James
Fallows is a writer and journalist for The
Atlantic. He was Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter,
and won the National Book Award in 1983 for National
Defense. He has since written about China, business,
technology, and the military in both books and articles.
A Rhodes scholar at Oxford in economics, he also went
to Harvard, where he was editor of the Harvard Crimson.
He later worked as an editor at The Washington Monthly,
Texas Monthly, and U.S. News & World Report. In
addition to holding a number of honorary degrees,
he is also a licensed pilot, and once, long ago, worked
as a mail carrier for the USPS. Given this experience,
it is perhaps befitting that his latest book is written
with his wife Deborah, and is titled OUR TOWNS:
A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America.
Jonathan
Lowe: Describe your book tour. Whom did you
meet?
James
Fallows: Over the past four months, my wife,
Deb, and I have spent most of our time on the road
across the United States, talking with readers --
and a wide range of other citizens. We've met business
people, teachers and librarians, mayors and other
political leaders, immigrants and refugees, artists,
nurses and doctors, police officers and judges, architects
and construction staffers, farmers and shop owners,
reporters and local news staffers, entrepreneurs,
brewers and distillers, truckers and delivery drivers,
and the others who make up a modern community.
Jonathan:
Impressions of America between the coasts?
James:
The more we've continued to travel, the more humbled
and impressed we've become by the breadth and intensity
of the renewal efforts already underway in communities
large and small. Every American is aware of the problems
and failures of the current United States, from bitter
division at the level of national politics to economic
dislocation and stagnation, and drug-addiction scourges.
But not enough people are vividly enough aware of
how much innovative energy is being applied toward
solutions.
Jonathan:
How do you think this will all turn out?
James:
We can't be sure -- no one can -- of how the balance
between national-level bitterness and local-level
practicality will turn out. But the more we've seen,
the more convinced Deb and I have become about the
importance of sharing these stories and letting today's
Americans know about the solutions their fellow citizens
are discovering.
Jonathan:
You and your wife recorded the audio version of this
book, reading the alternating passages each of you
wrote. What did you learn from the experience?
James:
We benefitted from the guidance of a skillful producer
/ director of the recording, Gordon Rachman. Deb says
about the experience, “Gordon was a great coach.
He turned a famously arduous process —(think
of going to the dentist!) — into one that was
as pleasant and rewarding as could be. Think of the
happy gas!” I agree with Deb, and found the
recording process both more demanding than I expected
and also more satisfying…in contrast to the
tolerance for half-slurred words we get in normal
life. Deb and I were trying to tell the story of what
we had seen city-by-city as we went across the country.
Telling those stories aloud, finally, seemed like
the right and natural way to deliver the message.
Although I couldn’t help copy-editing myself
as we went along, or thinking, “Gee, there could
have been a clearer way to make that point!”
I am a huge fan and customer of audiobooks, and so
I was all the more gratified to be able to participate
in this part of the writing and publishing process.
From
the Publisher: “For the last five years,
James and Deborah Fallows have been traveling across
America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting
dozens of towns, they have met hundreds of civic leaders,
workers, immigrants, educators, environmentalists,
artists, public servants, librarians, business people,
city planners, students, and entrepreneurs to take
the pulse and understand the prospects of places that
usually draw notice only after a disaster or during
a political campaign. The America they saw is acutely
conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation
to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting
solutions, with a practical-minded determination at
dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national
politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level,
reform possibilities have often arisen from the local
level. They describe America in the middle of one
of these creative waves. Their view of the country
is as complex and contradictory as America itself,
but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and
compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many
who are in the midst of making things better.
Our Towns is the story of their journey—and
an account of a country busy remaking itself.” |
