A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. 

Book Review: This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History, by Beverly Gage (2026). A professor of American history at Yale, Gage won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for her biography of J. Edgar Hoover (G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century) which I own but have yet to read. I recently watched an interview of Gage which, like most author interviews I consume, was fascinating. She explained that the Hoover book took her a decade to write so as a follow up she was looking for something simpler and more streamlined. With this being the Semiquincentennial and given her fascination with historical sites, she decided to do something that combined the two. She organized it in 13 chapters, one for each of the original colonies. The places she chose were eclectic and her observations combined historical context, current day information about the sites, and a personal journal of her travel experiences. Given my interest in historic sites, I’ve always enjoyed this type of book. Here are the places she visited:  

1. Pennsylvania (Philadelphia and the Declaration of Independence; Valley Forge; Brandywine)
2. Virginia (Slavery and the Virginia Presidents; Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings; Colonial Williamsburg)
3. Tennessee (Andrew Jackson; Indian Removal; the Trail of Tears)
4. Texas (The Alamo; Davey Crockett; Mexican-American War)
5. New York State (Frederick Douglass and Rochester; Seneca Falls and women’s suffrage; The “Burned Over” District; Erie Canal)
6. South Carolina (Fort Sumter; John Calhoun; Beaufort and Reconstruction)
7. Mountain West (Custer and Little Big Horn; Chinese exclusion; Teddy Roosevelt and the strenuous life; Mount Rushmore)
8. Chicago (George Pullman; “The Jungle”, Eugene Debs)
9. Atlanta (Coca-Cola and the New South; Confederate Memorial Day)
10. Detroit (Henry Ford and the auto industry)
11. New Mexico (Oppenheimer and Los Alamos; Death Valley)
12. Alabama (Martin Luther King; Rosa Parks; Selma; Civil Rights Trail)
13. California (Disneyland;  Orange County; Nixon and Reagan)

Article: “After landing Brown, Sixers are a legitimate threat in the East” by Tony Jones, The Athletic/NYT, July 3, 2026. I’m still ambivalent about sports these days, but I have been a fan of Jaylen Brown of the Celtics and was sorry to see him traded away although it seemed there were irreconcilable differences between him and the team. I’m highlighting this article rather than something from the Boston press (which unanimously sees the trade as awful). This writer says this one move has transformed the Philadelphia 76ers from a team on the playoff periphery to a legitimate contender for the championship next year. Here’s what he wrote about the player the Celtics gave up: “Brown is durable. He is a three-level scorer. He is someone who has been an NBA finals MVP and a champion. He is also polarizing, thoughtful well spoken, outspoken, expensive and had apparently fallen so out of favor with Brad Stevens and the rest of Boston’s front office that he was traded for relative pennies on the dollar.” I remember Brown once posing for a picture with Bill Nye The Science guy and being thrilled to have met his “childhood hero.” Brown also funds STEM organizations in Boston (aka Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Not your typical pro athlete profile. Maybe he said some odd or off putting things but he was a smart, durable, dependable player while he was here so it’s baffling that he’s now gone. 

Article: “All EV bet unraveled for Honda” by River Akira Davis, New York Times, July 2, 2026. Five years ago, Honda’ chief executive, Toshihiro Mibe, pivoted the company towards all electric vehicles, saying that his vision was to completely eliminate any gasoline-engine Hondas by 2040. This article says that plan has fallen apart, in large part because the US EV market has substantially retrenched. That’s partly due to the regime’s elimination of EV tax credits which cut on average $7500 of the cost of a car, but also because American car buyers seem more interested in hybrids than all electric vehicles. Perhaps that’s because of the still limited range – relatively speaking – of EV batteries. I tend to keep a car until it wears out so I’m not in the market and even though I rarely take long roadtrips, here’s my calculation: If I wanted to drive from Lowell to NYC say (why anyone would drive to NYC rather than take other types of transport is another issue), if I had an EV, would I be able to make it all the way without recharging? I think the answer is no. However, since most of my driving is local, a hybrid would seem to be the best option for me. Maybe some day recharging stations will be as fast and ubiquitous as gas pumping service stations but until then I think many people will be hesitant to go all in on EVs.  

Watch: Boston Pops Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, July 4, 2026, on Channel 7 in Boston. For the past decade, my traditional Independence Day observance includes a quiet day at home with a special meal of summer food favorites capped by watching the Boston Pops show from the Esplanade on TV. Shortly before this year’s show was supposed to begin, my newsfeed said they were evacuating the Esplanade due to a coming storm. The TV broadcast started promptly at 7pm, but it was the recording of the previous day’s rehearsal intercut with past performances. The musical performers were pretty good. Among the performers were Trombone Shorty, Su Yavuz, Chance the Rapper, Megan Hilty, and Lainy Wilson. Additional performers included the Boston Children’s Chorus, Boston Crusaders Drum and Bugle Chorus, Middlesex County Volunteers Drums and Fifes, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the USS Constitution Color Guard. Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson premiered his “Song of Massachusetts” poem and Emmy-award winning actress Jane Lynch was the host. One thing that seemed unusual this year was that no uniformed personnel of the U.S. military seemed to be present in the crowd. Usually some active duty sailors in uniform line the front row and are prominently displayed on camera but not this year. However, the Massachusetts Army National Guard did provide a battery of 105mm howitzers to boom off some rounds during the 1812 Overture. One of the highlights for me was the drone show which lit up the sky with images of Paul Revere, Old Ironsides, Bunker Hill Monument, and other Patriotic Images. The evening ended with fireworks which are not my things so I called it a night at that point.  

Newsletter: Jared Bernstein on Substack. “Grocery Prices: If Not An Emergency, Then a Pretty Big Headache.” This writer is an economist who was an advisor in the Biden Administration. He writes several times each week on the Substack newsletter app on  economic matters (and doesn’t charge for it). A regular topic is grocery prices. I think he and the Biden people got burned in the 2024 election by repeatedly going on TV and saying inflation had stabilized for groceries but then having regular people say they were full of sh** and vote for Trump. Bernstein is now mildly amused because the Trump people are doing the same thing and getting the same negative backlash. He’s spent the past 18 months trying to understand why this all is so and now offers an explanation. The economists all look at the rate of increase of prices. When those increases stop or stabilize, economists declare victory. But shoppers recall what groceries used to cost before the pandemic and they’re a lot higher now and are even a bit higher thanks to Trump’s tariffs and war with Iran. People might not expect the prices to roll back but they do expect government officials to understand how high prices are and why that’s a concern to people. I can attest to this phenomenon from personal experience. I’m the one in our household who does the food shopping which has been the case for more than 30 years. I recall in the summer and fall of 2024 coming home from the store each time and saying, “the prices are very high” but then hear a high government official say prices had stabilized which made them seem out of touch and not caring. The prices have certainly stayed up there and I’ve recently noticed them bump up even more. Bernstein didn’t offer a strategy to reduce prices which is unlikely to ever happen, but he suggests people running for office do a better job of talking about affordability if they want to win over voters.