READ. WRITE. LISTEN.
Read. Write. Listen to Journalists, Activists, Bloggers, News Analysts and Truth Seekers.
This is a place to learn about what our friends and neighbors are reading and listening to in these tumultuous times.
We encourage you to share your preferred sources for information.
Read
Hayes, C. (2025) The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. Distraction, loss of focus, losing the boundary between public and private – sound familiar? Chris writes, “Sirens are designed to compel us and now they are going off in our bedrooms, kitchens at all hours . . .” We need to wrest back control of our lives, politics and our future.
Richardson, H. C. (2023) Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America. Heather Cox Richardson relates contemporary events to historical developments to examine the roots of racism in American history leading up to the backslide that many worry will bring an end to American democracy.
Eugene M. Fishel (2022). The Moscow Factor: U.S. Policy toward Sovereign Ukraine and the Kremlin (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies). Paperback. Eugene M. Fishel is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Security Policy Studies of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is a 30-year veteran of the Department of State, where he has focused on the post-Soviet region. He has also served as Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, as Special Advisor to the Vice President (National Security Affairs), and Assistant National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.
Johnston, D. C. (2016). The Making of Donald Trump. Melville House. The investigative journalist who saw Trump as a fraud in the 1980s and spent 30 years chronicling Donald J. Trump for the New York Times. From the Trump family fortune through gambling and real estate dealing to his election as President of the United States. Deeply researched and shockingly full of details – reviewed as “a searing indictment” by Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.
Mayer, J. (2016). Dark Money. The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right (First). Doubleday. https://go.exlibris.link/lsNn0lFD
Burgin, A. (2012). The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Great Depression Harvard University Press. The history of neoliberalism and how we got here. Tracing the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of our market-centered world.
Phillips-Fein, K. (2010). Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. W.W. Norton. In the wake of the Great Depression high-powered individuals and titans, along with European thinkers joined together to fight the “nanny state”, encourage their peers to form a political force, and preserve their profit margins. The “American Way” of doing business found a spokesman, Ronald Reagan.
Arendt, H. (1973). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. A detailed exploration of fascism after World War II that is chilling today. Beginning in the 1800’s with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe and continuing through the outbreak of World War I. Hanna Arendt discusses the evolution of the classes, the role of propaganda and the use of terror as preconditions for total domination. She recognized Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia “two sides of the same coin.”
Democratic US Attorneys General Pushing Back Against Trump Illegal Executive Orders
- A second federal judge has ruled to block the Trump administration’s spending freeze – read article
I Left My Old Life Behind to Fight for Ukraine. Here’s What Trump Isn’t Telling You. – Story by Sergii Gavryliuk
Reporting
- Founded in 1848, the AP is an American not-for-profit news agency known for accuracy. Operating 235 news bureaus the AP is in 94 countries
- The Intercept: Journalism as an instrument of civic action.
- ProPublica.org: State of the art investigative journalism
Journalists to follow:
WRITE
US Senator Jack Reed
https://www.reed.senate.gov
1000 Chapel View Boulevard, Suite 290
Cranston, RI 02920-5602
US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov
170 Westminister Street, Suite 200
Providence, RI 02903
US Representative Gabe Amo
https://amo.house.gov
1070 Main Street, Suite 300
Pawtucket, RI 02860
RI Senator Dawn Euer
sen-euer@rilegislature.gov
Rhode Island State House
82 Smith Street, Providence, RI 02903
RI Representative Alex Finkleman
rep-finlelman@rilegislature.gov
28 Bayberry Road
Jamestown, RI 02835
Jamestown Press Letters to the Editor
news@jamestownpress.com
93 Narragansett Avenue
Jamestown, RI 02835
LISTEN
Blogs and Podcasts
Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and professor of history at Boston College. Steeped in the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era and the American West, she focuses on the health of American democracy.
Hosted by Kevin Blackistone, Journalist and professor of history at University of Maryland and Robert Greene II who set out to discover the historical background on key societal issues in the South. Presented by the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC.