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The Most Crooked River in the World

The Kankakee River was once the crookedest river in the world, flowing for 250 miles, but coming to its end at the Des Plaines River only 95 miles away from where it started. At one time it drained one of the largest wetlands in North America. But over time its channel was altered, to straighten its path and to allow acres of cropland to be drained for development. Its many pools and bogs, swamps and marshes disappeared as the “problem” they presented to agricultural interests was solved by engineering solutions. Advocates for draining and dredging made – and sold – the argument that the wetlands were a wasteland and that “improvement” was inevitable.

Lost in this process were vast regions that were rich in wildlife; this moisture-filled ecosystem had long been a diverse engine of biodiversity and a source of sustenance for centuries from trapping, hunting, and fishing as well as from tourism. Sometimes referred to as the “Everglades of the North,” the wetlands of the Kankakee are an underappreciated treasure.

In The Most Crooked River in the World: The Waters of the Kankakee and the Nature of Time, Jon Coleman sets out to help us understand what happened to the Kankakee by turning back the wheels of time and reversing the history of the river as if to run a movie of its life story backwards. It’s a daring move that puts the changes that were imposed on the Kankakee, and the changes that might be considered to remediate some of their impact, in a new and startling light.

Bright Lights, Biggest Cities

In 2020, urban residents represented 55% of the world’s population and their numbers were expected to reach 66% by 2050, even in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Between population growth and accelerating population shifts into cities, the ranks of city-dwellers will swell by 2.5 billion people. Meanwhile, the world’s rural population is shrinking, and over the next three decades it is set to decline, not only in proportion but also in total size.

Nearly 90% of the increase in urban residents will happen in Africa and Asia. And the largest nations in that region – India, China, and Nigeria – will be responsible for about a third of the growth. The United Nations projects that by 2050, India will add 416 million people to its alreadycrowded urban areas.

In her new book, Bright Lights, Biggest Cities: The Urban Challenge to India’s Future, Alyssa Ayres explores what this urban transformation means for India by looking at how seven megacities – Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad – are currently grappling with aspects of unchecked growth. Their stories – and their successes and failures – have much to tell us about the way this economic and social shift will play out worldwide.

The Chosen and the Damned

The national discussion about race in America has garnered a lot of attention, and deservedly so. But, as David Silverman points out in his new book, The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States, that discussion has not yet grappled with the place of Indigenous people in that four hundred year history.

A book that Professor Silverman has, in many ways, been writing for his entire career, The Chosen and the Damned is a gripping account that follows the ways in which systemic racism has informed the history of Native Americans since the very beginnings of European colonization. From the bloody wars that were waged across the colonies, to the racist roots of the American Revolution, to Jacksonian Indian Removal, and the war of extermination in the west that was justified by the ideology of Manifest Destiny, the threats against the existence of Indigenous people have been unrelenting. And the result has been pervasive oppression. Indeed, by any measure—among them education, health, income, voter suppression, crime—racism has been as insidious among Native Americans as among the members of any other community.

It is past time to add this narrative to the history of race and racism in this country. Our indigenous people’s story needs to be told in full.

The Lincoln Miracle

The leadup to the presidential election of 1860 found America bitterly divided, as the dominant Democratic Party broke up over the intense pressure of slavery, and the six-year-old Republican Party sought a leader who could win. The story of the convention to name the Republican Party’s candidate – eight days that led to Abraham Lincoln’s nomination – makes clear that Lincoln’s extraordinary quest to lead the party might have collapsed, with fatal consequences for the United States of America.

The convention was held in Chicago, although Lincoln himself waited for news from Springfield, far from the heavy drinking, humor, jealousy, political animosities, and angling for power that were the stuff of political life of the times. The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History plunges the reader right into the convention, to experience the sights, sounds and smells of Chicago in 1860. The tension-filled maneuvering of the political players and the candidates’ managers echo the forces buffeting the nation — particularly over slavery and Lincoln’s vision for ending it.

With its secretive and sordid horse-trading, the convention allows us to see Lincoln’s strengths as a political strategist. His plan played out perfectly against long odds, thanks to the hard work of friends whose extraordinary loyalty he had the gift of cultivating. The Lincoln Miracle opens a window on the tremendous political forces tearing America apart as it lurched toward the bloody and catastrophic Civil War.

Liberty’s Grid

Mastery over the vast spaces of the continent has engendered controversy ever since Americans began looking west. In Liberty’s Grid, The Mathematical Vision That Shaped America, Amir Alexander puts readers into the middle of a clash between two incompatible visions of American space. According to one vision, the American continent is empty, nothing but a vast unresisting terrain awaiting its settlers to make their mark. And according to the other, the land is already full to the brim, rich in wonders both natural and human, which settlers would disrupt at their peril.

Each of these visions left deep marks on the continent. Those who believed that America is a blank slate, and ripe for the taking, set out to mark it with an immense mathematical grid that covered both its rural and urban spaces. Those who believed that America’s strength lies in its natural wonders countered the grid at every step, instituting natural-style urban parks at the heart of rectilinear cities, leafy suburbs on their margins, and national parks and preserves throughout the rural grid. The struggle between these two conflicting yet intertwined visions has been going on for two centuries, and has informed not only the physical landscape, but the political one as well.

In his previous two books, Infinitesimal and Proof!, Amir Alexander chronicled the roles that mathematical ideas have played in the creation of the modern world. In Liberty’s Grid, he brings that story to America, and deepens our appreciation of the landscapes that we all know.

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