Today I am taking my second break from the book that I’ve been devouring, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. I bought it the night that Naomi Klein visited my town. She delivered a riveting speech to a packed lecture hall. It was her first public address since the November elections. Afterwards I just had to get a copy of her book since everyone has been talking about it. On the back cover there is a prominent quotation by Howard Zinn. He calls The Shock Doctrine, “a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time.”
During my first year of college, I was assigned to read the beginning chapters of Howard Zinn’s premier publication, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. It was electrifying to discover an historian whose writings were all about the experiences and resistance of the enslaved, the indentured and the indigenous, nevertheless, I didn’t read very far past the colonial period. Then a decade passed, Naomi Klein came to town, I read Part I of her book and then felt compelled to finish Zinn’s history before going any further. So that’s what I did.
People’s History was one of many excellent text books from my undergraduate days. There were plenty of not so good ones too, but the sheer volume of assigned readings that defined my college life led to some literary burnout. The mind and heart needs time to digest profound ideas, just as the stomach needs time to digest a wholesome meal. Most semester class loads didn’t allow for that kind of balance. If I lurched down the aisle to receive my diploma, it’s only because I was feeling more like a foie gras goose than a triumphant student.
2008 marked my full recovery from being burnt out on books. Through intentional searches and chance discoveries, I rediscovered my passion for works of history and historical fiction. Each one taught me something different, but together they reaffirmed that it is important to make time for ideas, and it is also important to take breaks.
