Christian Science Monitor on UNION

Thanks to the Christian Science Monitor, which this week first named Union to their list of the Top Ten June Books, and now has this excellent review from Steve Donoghue.

The review concludes with:

"Woodard describes facets of “an intellectual battle of the highest possible stakes” that raged over the rough century his book chronicles. The stakes are nothing short of determining how a nation thinks about itself, how it teaches posterity about itself. In “Union,” that battle sprawls out of the narrow confines of academia and embroils the entire country – and the fight is ongoing."

Spot on.

For some prepub reviews of Union, check out this post (Library Journal, American Scholar) and this one (Kirkus, Booklist.)

My next virtual book event is June 28 with Politics and Prose (and NPR's Tom Gjelten interviewing me) from Washington. Details here. (I got to know Gjelten after reviewing his excellent book on the ramifications of the 1965 Immigration Act, A Nation of Nations, in the Washington Post.)

From U.S. cities, some lessons in protecting liberal democracy

This year's presidential election has exposed a long festering crisis: that tens of millions of Americans are ready to endorse a candidate who has pledged to use extra-constitutional means to solve the country’s problems, including the jailing of his opponent, an erosion of first amendment protections for the press, and ethnographic tests for federal judges.

Authoritarianism now has a sizable constituency in American politics, one that won’t be going away on Nov. 9, regardless of who is president-elect. The next president and congressional leaders will still preside over a country that is politically polarized, with differences that are geographic even as they are ideological, but the risks of inaction have grown.

In the new weekly print edition of my old journalistic home, The Christian Science Monitor, I have

the cover story on how we move forward and shore up our liberal democracy. This is the topic of my most recent book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, but it's been reinforced by what I've seen on the ground as I've travelled the country this year for POLITICO, observing successful innovations of various sorts in cities from Utah to New Hampshire.

The story -- which appears in the print edition dated Nov. 7, but went up online yesterday -- explores how people can balance the individual freedom and the need to build and maintain the social and physical infrastructure that allows it to exist.

It's been a few years since I last wrote for the Monitor, but I'm a past Eastern Europe, Balkan, and Global Affairs correspondent for that paper, having written hundreds of stories from dozens of countries between the early 1990s and 2010 from bases in Budapest, Zagreb, Washington, South Texas and Maine. It's nice to be back in its pages again after a long hiatus.

[Update, 12/31/16: This story prompted editorials in both the Des Moines Register and the Roanoke Times.]

Shedding light on New Brunswick's powerful, secretive Irving family

In today's Maine Sunday Telegram I write about New Brunswick's Irving family, who over four generations have built a powerful vertically-integrated conglomerate that controls much of that province's economic and informational life, including Irving Oil and forestry entity J.D. Irving (Maine's largest private landholder and the 10th largest on the planet, excluding monarchs), all of the province's English-language dailies, most of its weeklies, railroads, shipyards, oil tankers, hardware store chains, bus companies, paper mills, a refinery and an LNG terminal.

It's also an enormously secretive clan whose company spokespeople rarely respond to media requests and whose own control of the provincial media market ensures little scrutiny at home. But a new book by New Brunswick author and journalist Jacques Poitras -- Irving vs Irving -- has pulled the curtain back a bit. I talk to him about the book, the Irvings, and their sway over that province.

I last wrote about the Irvings for the Christian Science Monitor in 2008; nobody outside its newspaper division would return calls. Ditto for this 2011 Monitor story on tidal energy, which the Irvings had just pulled away from. They didn't respond to inquiries for this story either.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune on American Nations, Woodard on popes

I was pleased to see the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's Sunday feature on my recent book, American Nations. Staff editorial writer Jill Burcum's piece, "The United States -- a nation of nations", draws on both the book and a recent interview.

Here's a snippet from the piece:

"Woodard's book is grounds for optimism. That we've stuck together for so long despite vast differences and previous secession threats (not just from the South) is remarkable -- especially now that we see how precarious the European Union is. What may make America truly exceptional is that our nations chose to weave themselves together relatively early in their histories. History shows that retrofitting unity onto nations with identities calcified for centuries doesn't work over the long haul."

The Star-Tribune, "STRIB" to its subscribers, also published my Bloomberg View essay on the 2012 elections back in November.

In an unrelated matter, I was surprised by the pope's announcement that he was resigning, as I thought that just wasn't done. Back at one point when John Paul II was thought to be dying, I went to Vatican City and filed this story on likely papal successors for the Christian Science Monitor. I'm curious how many of the names surface as successors this time around. (Notice Ratzinger didn't make the expert's short list, which shows how hard it is to read the intentions of the College of Cardinals.)

My Monitor review of Callum Roberts' Ocean of Life

My first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, aimed to alert the public to the unfolding crisis beneath the seas. Twelve years later, most problems have only gotten worse, yet they're receiving little more attention.

Thankfully one of the world's top marine scientists is taking up the task. I had the pleasure of reviewing Callum Roberts' new book, The Ocean of Life, for The Christian Science Monitor, and the review appeared there today. Enjoy the review, and the book.

For more oceans related reporting, try these posts.

American Nations in Christian Science Monitor, News & Observer, the Yukon

A few more media "hits" for my new book, American Nations:

The Christian Science Monitor reviewed it yesterday, giving it positive marks, though the reviewer was looking for a slightly different book. On Facebook, some of my friends and I played around with crafting the inevitable pull-quote from the review. The reviewer's punchline was: "a fascinating new take on our history – but not enough insight into our future." I suggested editing it to just "a fascinating new take on our history...", but cleverer colleagues suggested "A fascinating new take on our history... insight into our future" and -- my personal favorite -- "‎fascinating...but not enough." In any case, enjoy the review.

Meanwhile, a columnist at the Raleigh News & Observer has used American Nations to demonstrate some of the ironies of the current immigration debate as it relates to the region I call El Norte. Good stuff.

Finally -- and I know you've all been waiting for it -- here's my interview with CBC Radio in Whitehorse, Yukon. Yes, the Yukon.

Eastern Maine: the Kitty Hawk of Tidal Power

The Bay of Fundy has the world's highest tides, so perhaps it's not surprising that a new and more promising generation of tidal energy generating devices is being tested there. But within the moon-wracked estuary -- most of which is in Canada -- it's a company in eastern Maine that's become the apparent front-runner, beating out older, larger European competitors.

My story in the new weekly print edition of The Christian Science Monitor has the details on the Ocean Renewable Power Company, their tests to date, and what the Fundy tides did to their competition. It's also just come up online, for the cellulose averse among you.

Canada: Despite Wikileaked cable, Canadian TV Producers say they don't hate America

Reading the U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, I've generally had the same reaction voiced by many commentators: they show U.S. diplomats to be capable, professional, well-informed and sometimes even witty.

So on a recent reporting trip to Canada, I followed up on one of them: a 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa warning that the television dramas and sitcoms aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were engaged in "anti-American melodrama" and "insidious negative popular stereotyping" of Washington officials. This, the diplomats warned, either reflected or perhaps cultivated anti-American feeling in the Canadian public, with potentially serious long-term consequences.

Heady stuff. But, as my story over at The Christian Science Monitor reveals, largely off-base. (Headline: "Canadian TV producers: We don't really hate America.")

A few items that didn't make it into the story. In initial reports on this cable, many journalists mistakenly attributed it to then-Ambassador David Wilkins, whose name appeared at the end of the cable. Wilkins subsequently denied it, and experts pointed out that the name at the end of each State Department cable doesn't denote authorship, but rather the highest level official on station at the time the cable was sent. The real authors, Wilkins told CBC's As It Happens, were staff with "too much time on their hands."

Also, in the course of reporting the story, I got a chance to watch some of the shows in question, and to interview their creators. For American viewers: Little Mosque on the Prairie evokes Northern Exposure in both tone and its "fish out of water" premise. Intelligence - now available instantly at Netflix -- is a complex crime-and-espionage drama that's been compared to The Wire, with the refreshing twist of being set in Vancouver, and written with a Canadian audience in mind.

Maine's "Tea Party coup": a full report

I spent much of yesterday reporting a proper story on how the historically moderate Maine Republican Party came to pass a new Tea Party-backed platform at their convention this weekend. Curiously, it appears largely a spontaneous act by the delegates, many of whom had never had a chance to read it prior to its presentation to the floor.

You can read what I learned over at The Christian Science Monitor.

Here, also, are links to the new Maine GOP platform (Word document) and the old platform (which had been proposed for renewal.)

[Update: 1600 EST: Mainers may be interested in this peculiar side note from the Forecaster regarding how the group that sponsored the new platform -- the Knox County Republicans -- conducted themselves in the public school classroom they were loaned during the convention. Also, later, Bill Nemitz comments in his Press Herald column.]

[Update: 1700 EST: A sampling of national blogospheric thinking on this story from The Week, Red State, Politico, Washington Monthly, and Matthew Yglesias.]

POTUS in Portland

President Obama was literally in my neighborhood yesterday, giving a speech in defense of the new health care reform law. Here's my story on it in The Christian Science Monitor.

Monitor national desk stories have to run 600 words or less, so there was plenty that couldn't be wedged in, but there's full video coverage of the speech itself here.

Many of Maine's leading Democratic Party figures were in attendance, including Gov. John Baldacci, Reps. Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud, and power broker Severin Beliveau, whose son, Emmett, is Obama's Director of Advance, responsible for staging events like this one worldwide. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins were not in attendance; Snowe's press secretary didn't respond to an inquiry on the topic; Collins' reported that his boss was headed for Qatar with a bipartisan congressional delegation.

Also, there were reports that as many as 1000 ticket holders were turned back at the door, many of whom had waited for hours in the rain Wednesday to obtain their tickets. There apparently was no explanation given. The Expo had quite a bit of standing room left in the back of the room after doors closed. [UPDATE: WMTW reports this was due to the President's early arrival -- presumably a security perimeter issue -- and that the woman who was first in line (at 1 am Wends.) was among those turned away.]

For fellow Portlanders: the Portland Public Market House's own Bill Milliken got an extended plug from the leader of the free world. "In exchange for this publicity," the President said, "I hope that I'm going to get some samples of the beer." Get on that, Bill.

Czech Republic: How Zlin kept its groove

During my recent trip to Central Europe, I was able to revisit Zlin, the "model city" created in the early 20th century by the self-made Czechoslovak shoe tycoon, Tomas Bata. The provincial town in Czech Moravia is something of a pilgrimage site for enthusiasts of prewar industrial design, as Bata built nearly the entire place from scratch via a central, standardized plan. Along the way he created the world's largest shoe company, and exported the model just about everywhere else.

As you can read in my story now up over at The Christian Science Monitor, his legacy lived on in the Zlin region even during the Communist Era and many credit his (self-aggrandizing) social engineering with the city's relative prosperity and entrepreneurial spirit. (New to me was the tale of a Bata-inspired collective farm that managed to conduct a surprisingly capitalistic operation in the midst of the dour Brezhnev-era Warsaw Pact.) And his brother's famous office-in-an-elevator is still there, restored along with the Bata skyscraper to its 1930s glory.

Photo (c) 2010 Colin Woodard. All rights reserved.

Austria's banking worries

I was in Austria recently in connection with a series of stories on how the Great Recession is playing out in East-Central Europe. There many countries had only just emerged from their post-Communist recession when they got whacked hard by an uber-Capitalist one.

One of the casualties has been Austria, whose banks loaned heavily to the region during the go-go years, so much in fact that many experts say the country is vulnerable to a Greek-style meltdown. Read my piece on this topic in the Christian Science Monitor to find out more.

One thing to be aware of: reporters generally don't write the headlines and subheads that go with their story, and the ones the Monitor wrote for this piece don't accurately reflect the article. A better headline would have been "Austria fears wave of bad banks loans tied to Eastern Europe" and the subhead should have focused on the Hypo bank failure (in December) rather than the Austrian state's massive bank rescue (more than a year ago.)

Memo to journalists: always ask to see headlines and captions beforehand.