I’m fortunate to be reading four books that I love and recommend highly.

The first is an amazing new novel and spectacular writing debut – There, There –  by Tommy Orange, an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

This is on my list of all-time best written  and most engaging novels, and I’m only two-thirds done. I was up until 4 a.m. reading this book, I literally could not put it down.It’s an extraordinary first novel.

Orange is the heir apparent to Sherman Alexie, who has written so beautifully about Native-Americans in America and has recently been disgraced by an avalanche of sexual harassment accusations.

There There is a funny, wrenching, angry and sometimes shattering portrait of twelve Oakland, Calif., urban Indians,  who are all headed for the Big Oakland Powwow. Orange writes with an equal mix of poetry and  despair about America’s first and continuous refugees.

We rarely read much of anything about Native-Americans in America, but even less about the urban Indians, whose despair and cultural identity is even more muddled than their forbears. I think the book is just stunning and it is written with great emotion and force.

Gripping is the word that keeps popping into mind when I read it.  I can’t think of a more powerful book that I’ve  read.

The characters are diverse and multi-generational and unforgettable. So, I think,  is this new novel.

-I’m also reading Henri Nouwen’s new paperback, The Spiritual Life, which includes eight of Nouwen’s previous titles. Nouwen is one of America’s premier and influential spiritual authors. He taught at Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame before moving to Toronto to become the senior pastor of L’Arche Daybreak, a community where men and women with intellectual disabilities and their assistants create a home for one another.

This is the author I like to read every morning when I wake up and hear the songbirds and watch the sun peering over the hills.

He is, for me, the new Thomas Merton, writing with clarity and compassion – and gentleness – about the search for a spiritual life. He writings have helped me greatly. He is one of those enlightened Christian writers I love so much, but he is never pedantic or hectoring. He doesn’t proselytize, he guides and inspires and  writes with a loving and very accessible hand.

-Jon Meacham’s new book The Soul Of America, The Battle For Our Better Angels, is beautifully written persuasive and helpful for anyone look to stay grounded and keep their perspective in confusing and divisive times.

He reminds us that the conflicts raging in America now are not only not new, but are an integral part of the American Experience. The more freedom there is, he reminds, the more backlash, and the better the demagogues do. History is essential to staying hopeful and steady amidst all of the noise.

There is nothing more grounding for me than history, in a sense, the country’s most enduring form of truth and perspective.

–The Reporter, by Seymour Hersh. Until the fall of journalism to digital media and cable news, Seymour Hersh was – is – the country’s premier investigative reporter. He came of age in a time when newspapers and magazines had the time and money to spend months, even years, to let journalist explore stories from MyLai to Abugraib.

His character portraits of the most famous and powerful and ruthless people on the earth are fascinating, this is not a dry or academic book.

He peels the curtain back on our powerful military leaders and politicians and is one of the few journalists ever to continuously penetrate what is often a thick curtain of secrecy and  outright lies.

He knows were all of the skeletons are buried, and many of them are uncovered in his memoir.

Hersh is not a 2018 journalist, he doesn’t prowl  Twitter looking for stories, or go on television to yell and shout. He just cultivate sources and does his homework and works day and night and care passionately about truth and facts. That makes him rare.

There are few places in journalism for him today, and very few journalists like him.

I love the book but it is a bit said – it reminds me of what we have lost. Journalism matters.

In The  Reporter,  reminds us of what an important check on abuse of power by government, and what we have lost in the age of screaming cable panelists and fake news all around. I will be candid, this book is riveting to me, I am a former journalist and a long-time admirer of Hersh, but if you don’t care much about journalism or have left it behind, it might not be relevant to you.

I don’t think anyone who cares about our country or the world would regret reading it.

Anyway, I’m likely to have four great books to be reading, I am tempted all the time to pick one up and read it for awhile. At the moment, I’m stuck on There, There. A good problem to have.