I follow the book thread in the Lounge a bit, but I've been reading mostly political books and don't want to get into politics in there.

I.F. Stone In a Time of Torment

Izzy Feinstein Stone was a convinced to adopt the professional nom de guerre I. F. Stone in order to mask his Jewishness. He regretted doing that. It was for naught; he ended up being blacklisted all the same. He was a leftist radical journalist and despite not being a member of the party and being a virulent anti-Stalinist, was baselessly accused of being a Soviet agent and in the days of the red scare (which are still with us to some degree) he could not get published in a major newspaper or even get access to "official sources" in the government.

His struggle turned into our windfall. Instead of reporting what is granted to those favored with access, he rooted through what was hidden in plain sight. Scouring sources like the Congressional Quarterly he uncovered what was overlooked and could not be contested solely because of his reputation. He also did his own investigative research, traveling many times to the Mid-East, SE Asia and Latin America. He published these articles in his own small paper I. F. Stone's Weekly from 1953-1971.

I.F. Stone In a Time of Torment is a selection of articles by Mr. Stone from 1960 to 1967. This certainly isn't timely; it's an old book. The Vietnam war is over, civil rights have evolved and Kennedy, Johnson, Goldwater, and Nixon have all passed along with Izzy. But, many of the same issues are with us today and many of the political figures mentioned and events will leave you with a very strong feeling that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

(I was going to do a longer review and get into some specifics, but the library closed and I was there to return the book. Maybe next time I'll do better. I will add that it's pretty entertaining. This book would make a good companion piece to The Impossible H. L. Mencken. The Goldwater-Trump similarities, both in them personally and in the conditions leading to their emergence are particularly striking.)