Post-election reading list: books to encourage and discourage

I noted earlier this week the question that was on my mind on the eve of the election: “How can one be a good person when living under the rule of a bad emperor?” I concluded: “There is no question about one thing: the ‘emperor’ for the next four years will be bad. We, the citizens, however, don’t have to be.”

That’s certainly an important mission for all of us to live by. Regardless of who is in power, it is up to us to safeguard virtue in our hearts and homes, to care for the vulnerable, and to love the good, the true, and the beautiful in our homes and communities. And yet, the anticlimactic denouement in an election in which one inadequate candidate defeated another, thus inviting the Tacitean analogies to bad emperors, invariably invites some dreaming—of better American politics, or at least better presidential candidates.

Here is a short, idiosyncratic, and utterly eclectic post-election reading list of books that might encourage you in such dreaming—or, in the case of some, discourage you—as you think about this election and its results.

1. Tacitus, Annals of Imperial Rome – “At the beginning, kings ruled Rome.” Then there was a Republic, and Tacitus races through its unfortunate rise and demise in a mere paragraph, all to get to the death of Augustus. That is the moment when the Roman Empire succeeded the Republic. Bits and pieces of this work survive, narrating the rule of Tiberius (bad), Claudius (maybe worse), and Nero (definitely the worst). The Republic, long dead by the time of Tacitus’s birth, is his dream, gone never to return.

2. Tacitus, Histories – only the first five books survive from what was meant to be a much larger work. In it, Tacitus takes us through just a single year, AD 69, also known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Yes, there were four emperors who vied consecutively for control of the Roman Empire that year. About the first of them, Galba, Tacitus famously quipped that he would have been a great emperor—had he never ruled.

3. Perpetua, The Passion of the Saints Perpetua and Felicity – a prison journal of two young women who were martyred for their faith in Carthage in AD 203. Both were mothers—one had given birth hours before her martyrdom. Both loved their children dearly, but also felt a calling to be martyrs. Their stunning story, worth reading in full, became an inspiration for many readers ever since for supporting women’s dignity.

4. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy – the 1500^th anniversary of Boethius’s death was last month. His best-known work, written in prison while awaiting execution for a treason he didn’t commit, is a reminder of something we sometimes forget: our character matters, whether we win or lose.

5. Alexey Navalny, Patriot. Russian dissident Alexey Navalny survived an attempted poisoning in August 2020, only to be killed in prison this past February. His memoir just came out this October, the day before the 1500^th anniversary of Boethius’s death. It seems appropriate. Here was another man who was effectively executed by a ruler dissatisfied with him. But perhaps the similarities end there. For one thing, we would like to think that we are over secret prison-cell assassinations these days. But then, think again—at least in Russia.

6. Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Schweik. Maybe a military satire about WWI is not quite so directly relevant to our present moment, but then who doesn’t like a genuinely funny book about the underdog who somehow manages to survive mishap after mishap inflicted upon him by leaders who are clearly incompetent. Well, maybe there is a relevant political lesson here yet again.

7. But to conclude on an encouraging note, the scholarship of Josiah Ober has dedicated his career to examining how democracies do the work of “going on together.” Such work is never easy (spoiler alert). He considers questions about the Classical Athenian democracy that are no less relevant for our own: how do people in a democracy figure out different ways to work together? What makes a democracy succeed in times of difficulty–and what do such times of difficulty tell about the democracy in questions? What makes a democracy survive over time? And so, I recommend Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People, and Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, and Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going On Together.