This book is just out: Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss.

Ten years in the research and writing, Presidents of War is a fresh, magisterial, intimate look at a procession of American leaders as they took the nation into conflict and mobilized their country for victory. It brings us into the room as they make the most difficult decisions that face any President, at times sending hundreds of thousands of American men and women to their deaths.

From James Madison and the War of 1812 to recent times, we see them struggling with Congress, the courts, the press, their own advisors and antiwar protesters; seeking comfort from their spouses, families and friends; and dropping to their knees in prayer. We come to understand how these Presidents were able to withstand the pressures of war—both physically and emotionally—or were broken by them.

Beschloss’s interviews with surviving participants in the drama and his findings in original letters, diaries, once-classified national security documents, and other sources help him to tell this story in a way it has not been told before. Presidents of War combines the sense of being there with the overarching context of two centuries of American history. This important book shows how far we have traveled from the time of our Founders, who tried to constrain presidential power, to our modern day, when a single leader has the potential to launch nuclear weapons that can destroy much of the human race.

We are reminded, of course, of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, by Rachel Maddow.

Speaking of Rachel Maddow and books on presidents and war, here is Rachel Maddow speaking with Michael Beschloss about presidents and war and books thereon.

The first thing you need to know about the Oxford Comma is actually a thing you need to know about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a special place on the internet where the conversation the rest of us are having about many topics can’t actually happen. In this case, Wikipedia has determined that the Oxford Comma is actually called the Serial Comma, even though nobody in the whole world calls it this. Somewhere in the history of the current Wikipedia article on this topic, somebody discovered primacy of the word “serial” and insisted that since that word was used first, in 1121 or something, it beats “Oxford.” This silly sort of thing is common in Wikipedia, and I’ve discussed it before. But, I digress.

The Oxford Comma, also known as the Harvard Comma, is that last comma in a list before the “and” or the “or.”

You need it in sentences like this:

“I took a picture of my parents the president and the first lady.”

There are different ways to put commas in that sentence. In one version of this sentence, I am Chelsea Clinton. In the other version of this sentence, I’m a visitor to the White House and the President and First Lady are standing there next to my parents, and I snap a photograph.

Most style guides for writers, including the Oxford Style Manual, the APA, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, Strunk and White, the USGPO and others mandate the use of this ultimate comma. It is less often used in the UK, but the Oxford guide does require it. Overall, the total number of words printed under stylistic guidance use it, though the Oxford comma is not accepted stock and barrel.

The AP style guide eschews the Oxford comma, and generally, journalistic style guides recommend against it.

The reason a style guide would require it is simple, in my view. A missing Oxford comma is an abomination. You can really screw up the meaning of a sentence by leaving it off. But it is hard to mess up a sentence by using it when it is not needed. Most of the time, the only reason to not use it is because you are short of commas. In the old days, when commas were an actual thing, made out of lead, maybe it was worth having a rule that helped conserve them. Perhaps that is also why American spelling tends to diverge from British spelling in the use of fewer letters per word. They had lots of lead type in Great Britain because of a longer history of of type use, or because they shifted to fighting all their wars overseas.

There are, of course, times when the Oxford Comma adds, rather than subtracts, ambiguity from a sentence.

“I am going to say a prayer for my dog, Jesus, and my cat.”

Am I praying for three entities (two of which exist), or am I praying for my dog, named Jesus, and also, my unnamed cat?

Which brings us to my own personal conclusion about the Oxford-Harvard comma. Which, by the way, is not too different from what each and every style guide actually says.

Most style guides say, “Use/Don’t use the Oxford Comma, unless you must, to make your meaning clear.”

My preference is to say, “Use/Don’t use the Oxford Comma as you please, just make sure your meaning is clear, unless, as a writer, you chose to be unclear.”

This sort of approach is true with punctuation generally. You really should start your sentences with Upper Case letters, and end them with periods. But, you don’t have to. You can be e E cummingS. How does a writer handle quotes within quotes? Up to you. According to many style guides, when you shift paragraphs within dialog, normal quotation rules fly out the window. But, you can do it differently if you want.

Some writers use a lot of semicolons; others do not. There is no rule that forces you to do so, but there are guidelines for when you could. Which you can ignore; I don’t.

Is your text meant to be read aloud, even if just in the head of the reader? Is there cadence that affects the way the words feel? If so, you might find yourself using, as needed, commas that technically should not be there. Or you might leave some off to change the sound your words make in someone’s head. That is your choice as a writer. Seriously. That is your choice, as a writer.

Non fiction that is actually published almost always has to pass through the style guide process, so writers are advised to know the guide they are working under, and adapt accordingly, even if it hurts. Fiction, even if processed by a publishing system, is more personalized. You should be able to argue for your own style because that is the whole point of getting a writer to write something instead of just doing it yourself. Right?

The truth about the Oxford, Harvard, or Serial comma is that there is always optional but usually recommended. Saying you can’t use it unless necessary will cause people to err on the side of caution with their editor, but against caution with their readers. Saves you commas, but in the long run, causes you more trouble than it is worth.

The US Southeast has a lot of nuke plants. Like this:

It is highly unlikely that a direct hit from the most energetic part of a hurricane would affect a nuclear power plant, as they are very well built. I don’t know what major flooding would do for any given plant. I suspect that most or all nuclear power plants in the region are not as well protected from floods ad they need to be, since a typical year now has flooding that no one ever thought would occur commonly. With climate change, 100-year and 500-year floods happen a couple of times a decade in some areas, and the hypercharged hurricanes we now have, with Houston style flooding (see how “Houston” replaces “Biblical” since we no longer have to imagine the epic flooding!), I think we simply don’t know what will happen at nuclear plants affected by three foot rainfalls in their upper catchments.

The biggest and most likely problem with nuclear plans is this. They need to be cooled. Cooling normally happens when they are operating and producing energy. But when the distribution and transmission grids they serve are obliterated, the plants have to shut down since they can’t send electricity out. They then have to cool themselves using alternative fuels. (I’m oversimplifying a great deal here but I assume people will chime in with plenty of distracting details).

Many, perhaps all, nuke plants in the US Southeast have over recent years (since the Fukushima disaster) upgraded their alternate cooling plans, which mainly involves big generators and supplies of liquid fuel for them.

This weekend may be the test of those upgrades.

A new edition of Impeachment: A Handbook, New Edition is available now for preorder.

Charles L. Black Jr.’s classic guide to presidential impeachment, now in an updated edition with new material by Philip Bobbitt

Originally published at the height of the Watergate crisis and reissued in 1998, two months before the second impeachment of a U.S. president, Charles Black’s Impeachment became the premier guide to the subject of presidential impeachment. Now thoroughly updated, it is essential reading for every concerned citizen.

Praise for earlier editions of Impeachment:

“The most important book ever written on presidential impeachment.”—Lawfare

“A model of how so serious an act of state should be approached.”—Wall Street Journal

“The best essay written on the subject.”—Jeffrey Rosen, New Republic

“A citizen’s guide to impeachment. . . . Elegantly written, lucid, intelligent, and comprehensive.”—Mary Ann Gale, New York Times Book Review

I have a feeling we are going to need this tidbit of grammar with increasing frequency over coming weeks or months.

It is said by grammar mavens that pleaded is more correct, but pled seems to be more often used in spoken language, and frankly, sounds way better to me.

I google N-gramed (or is that “Ned-gram”) the two words and got this interesting chart:

So, pleaded wins by a mile.

But what about that long term change over time? I’m thinking this means that the word “plea” in all its forms was being used in regular English text (“I plea you give no truck to the wasterel, me’lord,” and the like), where now it is mostly used in phrases like “Trump’s lawyer and fixer, wise-guy Michael Cohen, pled guilty to helping Trump fix the election,” or “Trump’s former campaign manager and well known wise guy Paul Manafort could have pleaded guilty and gotten a deal, but he may have been more concerned with being rubbed out by the Russians than about a few years in jail” or “Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pled guilty rather than stand trial” and so on.

Anyway, pleaded is more correct, pled is preferred. Now you know. Now, you can no longer plea ignorance on this question.

I’ve never read Terry Goodkind’s books. I’ve heard he is a very good writer, but also, politically on the iffy side. But a lot of people like his books, and they seem to fit with a signfiicant subset of readers of this blog. So, I’m here to tell you that a whopping load of Goodkind’s work is now available, temporarily, on Kindle, cheap. Now’s your chance!

The ones I know about:
Continue reading Terry Goodkind Books Cheap Right Now →