by ANDRU VOLINSKY, InDepthNH.org
February 16, 2024

How did NH get to its current state of affairs in education? In three parts. Part 3-the Pledge

by ANDRU VOLINSKY, InDepthNH.org
February 16, 2024

From ‘A Book, an Idea and a Goat,’ Andru Volinsky’s weekly newsletter on Substack that is primarily devoted to writing about the national movement for fair school funding and other means of effecting social change. Here’s the link:  https://substack.com/@andruvolinsky?utm_source=profile-page

Catch up on Parts One and Two:

Part ONE: https://indepthnh.org/2024/02/04/how-did-nh-get-to-its-current-state-of-affairs-in-education-in-three-parts-part-one-a-failure-of-economic-development/

Part TWO: https://indepthnh.org/2024/02/09/how-did-nh-get-to-its-current-state-in-education-in-three-parts-part-two-fleeing-busing-and-the-influence-of-william-loeb/

By ANDRU VOLINSKY

“Taxes” as a Fighting Word

            In prior newsletters (see links above)we discussed two forces that make school funding unfair: the failure of economic development and privilege protecting privilege.  This week, we discuss how New Hampshire does taxes in terms of politics and reality. 

            New Hampshire has a political slogan called, “the Pledge.”  It’s not the Pledge of Allegiance or some other kind of pledge to God, country or high ideals.  It’s a political pledge to William Loeb’s hatred of broad-based taxes which he defined as a state income or sales tax.  Loeb’s pledge originated in the 1972 gubernatorial primary between the Republican incumbent, Walter Peterson, and a nasty, pre-Libertarian tax-hater, Meldrim Thomson.  Thomson had an “0 and 2” losing record to Peterson until newspaper publisher William Loeb took up Thomson’s cause and pummeled Peterson and his teenaged daughters with front page editorials in his statewide paper, the Manchester Union Leader. Thomson won and New Hampshire politicians took notice.

            Loeb was upset with Peterson because Peterson proposed a broad state income tax.  Peterson’s proposal wasn’t that unusual as New Hampshire was one of only seven states without an income tax and Pennsylvania and Rhode Island had recently enacted state income taxes. 50 years later, the Pledge remains a cornerstone of New Hampshire politics and both Republican and Democratic enforcers threaten those who ignore it. 

            Like many states, New Hampshire in the 19^th Century funded state and local government with a property tax.  The property tax was a progression from the poll tax which was simply a flat amount charged to every village inhabitant.  The poll tax was fair because it predated the accumulation of personal wealth.  The property tax wasn’t the same as what we think of as the modern-day tax on real estate.  New Hampshire’s property tax initially applied to all property: land, inventory for sale and machinery to make goods.  The tax was roughly based on a taxpayer’s ability to pay.  A farmer’s wealth was tied to the value of his land, a miller’s wealth was tied to the value of the mill equipment.  The approach was a fair one.  Perhaps the taxing philosophy was influenced by the New Testament, Matthew 25:15 (from each according to his ability and to each according to his need). Of course, this is also Marxist theory but don’t tell anyone.

            Over time, as the Industrial Revolution took hold in the U.S., the property tax became less fair because people earned wages and some gained enormous intangible wealth.  As well, anomalies developed in the assessment of property.  A well-known N.H. auto dealer who owned car lots in towns with different property tax rates, for example, would move his cars from one town to the next on assessment day and move them back quickly thereafter. 

            At about this time, the 16^th Amendment which allowed for a direct income tax by the federal government was ratified in 1913.  After having first rejected ratification in 1911, New Hampshire ratified the 16^th Amendment in 1913.

            As to the beginning of New Hampshire’s income taxes, in the 1970s, the state introduced a Business Profits Tax (BPT) and the 1923 Interest and Dividends tax was set at five percent.  (Yes, Virginia, New Hampshire has income taxes.) The BPT taxed the “profit” or “income” of large businesses, and the Interest and Dividends Tax taxed a narrow slice of personal income derived from stocks, bonds and other forms of distributions.

            By 1990, the state’s largest employer, a tech company called Cabletron, paid ten percent of all the BPT revenues collected by the state and its founders, Robert Levine and Craig Benson, sued because the BPT failed to uniformly tax all businesses in the state.  Cabletron’s lawyers used the same tax clause in the New Hampshire Constitution in their suit that we used in the Claremont school funding cases.

            Governor Steve Merrill personally approached Benson to settle the suit when it became clear the state would lose.  The two agreed to resolve the case with the adoption of the Business Enterprise Tax (“BET”) which taxes wages paid by small and medium sized businesses.  Michael Kitch helped Bill Ardinger work out the details of the BET. Benson recalls that he and Merrill realized that taxing wages in the hands of businesses was taxing income just before it was distributed.  They settled on the BET anyway.

            Merrill, of course, had taken the Pledge when he ran for governor in 1992 and in 1994.  Benson took the Pledge when he ran for governor in 2002.

            The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that the way New Hampshire funds its schools was unconstitutional in 1997, just after the governorship transitioned from Merrill to Jeanne Shaheen.  An enlightened, and perhaps brave, group of representatives led by Liz Hager (R-Concord) and Cliff Below (D-Lebanon) proposed an income tax to solve the school funding problem.  Cliff Below, by the way, became the first Democratic senator elected from the Lebanon area since the Civil War while supporting an income tax.  Mark Fernald did the same from the Peterborough area.

            Shaheen, perhaps considering her political future, adamantly opposed the income tax based on the Pledge and ultimately defeated it.  26 years later New Hampshire is still in search of a fair school funding solution.  Vermont and Massachusetts, who had school funding lawsuits at roughly the same time as the Claremont case, solved their problems within a couple of years relying on multiple revenue sources and, with some tweaks, those solutions have generally worked.

            The Pledge also prevents discussions that would improve the revenue raising options that are permissible.  Maine and Vermont, for example, have substantial state-funded circuit breakers that limit the percent of income that homeowners and renters pay in property taxes.  Renters pay property taxes indirectly. Lost local revenues are replaced with state funds to even out the burden of foregone taxes.  The same happens with current use taxation to preserve open lands.  The state, not the local community, defrays the cost.  This is not true in New Hampshire where a small community like Boscawen loses tax revenues from almost 90 percent of its land.  Governor Janet Mills of Maine has also recently instituted a state-funded property tax loan deferral program that allows seniors to age in place.

            Governor Chris Sununu and the legislature support phasing out the Interest and Dividends tax while also promoting further reductions in the two business taxes. The ultimate loss in revenue from repeal of the Interest and Dividends tax will be about $130 million annually, more than the state contributes to the community college system. The tax cut heavily favors the wealthiest taxpayers in New Hampshire as over half the tax is paid by just the top 1,273 taxpayers in the state, each having more than $200,000 in interest and dividend income.  This income excludes earned hourly wages, salaries and profits from the sale of assets (capital gains).  The tiny group of Interest and Dividends taxpayers who benefit most from the phase-out each own more than $4 million in interest bearing or dividend issuing assets to earn $200,000 in qualifying income, assuming a five percent rate of return.

            In 1990, the year Claremont’s Stevens High School lost its accreditation, the state’s revenue came largely from three sources:  the BPT (31%), Interest and Dividends (11%) and the Meals and Rooms Tax, a sales tax, (23%). A second sales tax, on tobacco, and the BET significantly broadened state revenue sources and by 1998 the tobacco tax and the BET each brought in 11 percent or more of state revenues. 

            Over time, New Hampshire has dramatically eased taxes on the largest corporations and wealthiest people and transferred the burden to smaller companies, regular wage earners and property taxpayers. In 2000, Martin Gross, the lead lawyer at the time for New Hampshire’s dominant electric utility, aptly described the basis for New Hampshire’s tax system as “injustice.”  He complained that the state’s “Live Free or Die” motto is not good fiscal policy and that property taxes are regressive and inelastic.  The property tax collector, like the Sheriff of Nottingham, comes calling regardless of whether taxpayers have sufficient income to pay their taxes.   

            New Hampshire’s reliance on property taxes to fund schools is more extreme than any other state in America.  Each year, school boards who propose budgets to address rising special education and insurance costs have no choice other than to load up on property taxes and, as a resident of Hopkinton recently stated, this leaves taxpayers feeling like they’re looking down the barrel of a gun.  

            The way we fund schools becomes a point of resentment against public education as taxpayers with flat incomes get squeezed and see their counterparts in wealthy communities spend more money on schools while enjoying lower taxes.  The resentment fuels anti-public-school efforts like vouchers and divisive concepts laws.

            New Hampshire spends a lot on its public schools, on average. This sometimes confuses people. The high average hides the fact that the strong commitment comes so unevenly and is much more burdensome to those least able to pay.  New Hampshire earns an F in terms of how unfairly it funds its schools. We are among the least equitable in the nation. 

            If we are to answer the question of how to fund our schools fairly and sustainably, we must unshackle from the ghost of William Loeb and his hypocritically enforced Pledge and, as Walter Peterson used to say, have a frank discussion based on objective facts.  Perhaps start by asking your favorite candidate if she supports the Pledge and why.

Andru Volinsky is a former NH Executive Councilor who is currently flunking retirement by writing his first book, teaching a graduate course in public policy and practicing law on a limited basis.  He was the lead lawyer in the Claremont School Funding case. He lives with his wife, Amy, in East Concord.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Note: All errors are my own. Many thanks to all the people who are helping me to learn about this complicated and important topic.

To start, the phrases “It is confusing” and “It depends” are used a lot when discussing this issue.

1. NH’s primary source of revenue is from taxes on property. Many other states use taxes on sales, income, and property. This means that we have high property taxes when compared to other states.It also means that rising property valuations and assessments can have a surprisingly large impact on people, particularly those with lower or fixed incomes.
2. Very thorough property assessments in NH are performed every five years. A less thorough assessment is produced the other four years using statistical methods. Also, the town assessor can recommend an assessment more often than the state required every five years.The assessments that we just received are the five-year assessments. The increase in assessed value covers five years, not one year. So the 140% increase in assessed value of manufactured homes means that the value of the average (mean? median?) manufactured home increased by 140% over five years.
3. The New Hampshire Department of Revenue Association sets the tax rate for each town. It is dependent on numerous items including the county tax apportionment (depending on town valuation), school local budget levy, state education tax (based on the adequacy calculation for your community) and your towns tax levy (budget minus other sources of revenue, including state revenue). There is a very long document published by the State that provides details on every part of this process.
4. If the assessed value of your home increases significantly, the property tax for your town will likely decrease. But, the amount of property tax you pay will probably go up when compared to the previous year. That said, a large increase in assessed value does not necessarily translate to a large increase in the amount of property tax you will pay. Why? The State tries to set tax rates that match tax revenues to town budgets.In very simple terms:
   

   Town budget = property tax rate × total assessed property values

   If:

   Total assessed property values for the town increase
   And
   The town budget does not change

   Then:

   The town’s tax rate should stay the same
   Everyone will pay the same amount of property tax as the previous year

   But:

   Town budgets generally increase year over year.
   And
   Assessed property values do not increase at the same rate across all types of property

   This means:

   1. Owners of different types of properties will see different impacts on the amount they pay
   2. Comparing one town’s tax rate to another town’s isn’t quite an apples to apples comparison
   3. Paying attention to what your town spends money on is important, and voting is important
5. Language matters, a LOT.Properly using the terms “appraised value”, “assessed value”, and “estimated value” in discussions is important.
   • Assessed value: Tax bills are based on the assessed value, determined by the town board of assessors or equivalent. This is generally the most accurate measure of your property’s value but it can still be inaccurate.
   • Appraised value: Provided for a property by a professional appraiser, and is the most accurate reflection of the maximum price for which a property could be sold. That’s what you’ll use when you get a mortgage.
   • Estimated value: A calculation made based on someone’s idea of “comparable” sales in the area. That’s what you find on Zillow, and it’s someone’s SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) based on their own formula.

   Estimated values are the least accurate and will vary widely depending on whose estimate you use, when they are calculated, the accuracy of the inputs (number of bedrooms, for example), and comparables (i.e., what homes are considered to be similar to yours).

6. The town cannot raise or lower the property taxes for one type of property. Property taxes are based on the town’s property tax rate (set by the State) and the assessed value of the property. The tax rate applies to everyone equally, and the assessed value of the property is determined by a formal assessment process. The town can offer tax incentives and tax relief to certain types of properties in certain areas. Exeter’s tax relief programs can be found here: Exeter Economic Development Initiatives.

“`

It is property assessment season in New Hampshire. In overly simple terms, formal assessments of property are performed every five years in New Hampshire to provide the information for calculating NH taxes on that property. Almost all state, local, and school revenue depends on property taxes so this is of great importance to get right.

It is also disproportionately impactful on people living on fixed or limited income and people on the lower end of the income scale. The impact this year is particularly bad because the assessed value of manufactured homes in my town went up 140%. The next highest category, residential land, went up “only” 70%.

This is a serious problem because property taxes are one of several regressive taxes. It puts a much higher overall tax burden as percentage of income on lower income families and households on fixed incomes, even if they are renting.

I had to construct an example to truly understand the importance of this issue.

An Example of a Lower-Income Household

Meet Alex:

• Living Situation: Alex lives in a manufactured home.
• Property Value: Their home is valued at $50,000.
• Fixed Income: Alex has a fixed annual income of $20,000, which they receive from Social Security and a small pension.
• Property Tax Rate: The property tax rate in their area is 3.5%.

Calculating Alex’s Property Tax

Property Tax Amount: The annual property tax on their home would be:

Property Tax = Property Value × Tax Rate
Property Tax = $50,000 × 0.035 = $1,750

Percentage of Income Paid in Property Taxes:

Comparison with a Higher-Income Household

Meet Jordan:

• Living Situation: Jordan lives in a house valued at $750,000.
• Income: Jordan has an annual income of $200,000.
• Property Tax Rate: The same property tax rate of 3.5%.
• Property Tax Amount: The annual property tax on Jordan’s home would be:
  • Property Tax = $750,000 × 0.035 = $26,250
• Percentage of Income Paid in Property Taxes:

Analysis

Alex and Jordan both pay the same percentage of their property’s value in taxes (3.5%). However there is a disproportionate (i.e. unfair) impact on their incomes:

• Alex’s income is just enough to cover their basic living expenses. Paying $1,750 in property taxes significantly impacts their ability to afford necessities like food, healthcare, and utilities. For Alex, this $1,750 tax is 8.75% of their total income.
• For Jordan, the $26,250 property tax bill is also substantial, but their higher income allows for more financial flexibility. Even though Jordan pays 13.13% of their income in property taxes, they still have $173,750 left after taxes, which is more than enough to cover their expenses and maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

But It Gets Worse

The situation is even worse when the percentage increase in the assessed value of the higher value home goes up less than the percentage increase of the lower value home. (Note, this was originally created with the old 6% tax rate. It now uses 3.5%.)

The disproportionate increase in the assessed value not only has a greater impact on Alex’s percentage of income it also will likely force Alex to make very difficult financial decisions where Jordan probably is better able to absorb the financial impact.

Conclusion

This example illustrates that while the property tax rate is the same, the impact on Alex is very severe due to their lower fixed income. Although Jordan pays a higher percentage of their income in property taxes (22.3% compared to Alex’s 21%), they have a much higher income to begin with, which cushions the financial blow.

We are developing a small hardware device that consists of ESP32 development boards (~$50), 3D printed cases (~$3?), padded electronics cubes from Amazon (~$15), and a very light touch manual. Everything is rapidly evolving but since we want to track each device, we need to put a label on it with its MAC address and another identifier. And, if we’re going to go this far we might as well put a logo on there as well.

ptouch-print

Command line utility to send text and graphics to some of the Brother P-Touch label printers. I started with this MacOS fork: https://github.com/DavidPhillipOster/ptouch-print-macOS

This runs nicely on OSX but the various sites he references for the original source and documentation have vanished. This site offered the necessary instructions for using it effectively: https://github.com/HenrikBengtsson/brother-ptouch-label-printer-on-linux

To combine a logo and text you need to make them both into PNG files and then print them both with a bit of padding between them. This also allows you to print multiple labels by stringing PNGs together.

From a workflow perspective this actually works quite well. Unfortunately the resolution of the label maker is rather poor.

It would be easy to write some Python to read the values from a CSV file and create all the labels I need in one pass.

Dymo LabelManager 420p

This is a handheld label maker with a alphabetical rather than QWERTY keyboard. Since I’ll rarely be typing on it, the keyboard isn’t an issue.

I’m driving this with Dymo’s “Dymo Connect” software. It has very simple layout capabilities for text, barcodes, QR codes, and images. For my purposes, I put a logo and three lines of text into the layout, hit print, and received a decent label.

I’ve not investigated to see if I could drive this from a spreadsheet to partial automate the process. For low production volumes I am OK with copy/pasting the information for each label.

Still rather pixelated but a bit crisper than the Brother. This is what you get with 180 dpi.

blabel

https://github.com/Edinburgh-Genome-Foundry/blabel

This was the first recommendation for something that might meet my requirements. Command line driven, written in Python, can ingest CSVs to produce multiple labels, basic layout capabilities via HTML and CSS style sheet.

It was a bit clunky to get working and I think we found a CSS layout problem but we eventually got it to reliably produce PDF files. But, what do I print these small PDFs to? I think I’d need yet another label printer, one that took PDFs.

Present and Future

Ultimately, we need a higher resolution printer that can print to pre-cut waterproof (thermal printed plastic). But for the moment, the Dymo is good enough.

Other Options

I tried or thought about a few other things:

1. 3D printing the logo and identifiers directly on the case
   • This would be hard for just in time assembly
   • The available space is on the side of the case. We need to print the case lying on the top so the sides would be vertical. Printing fine text one layer at a time gets pretty ugly.
2. Various forms of printing to sheets of labels
   • I’m building 1-5 devices at a time. Populating the template and taking into account already used labels on the sheet was a bit annoying.
   • Waterproof (plastic?) labels in sheet form were not easy to find

I read a -lot- of fiction, and was feeling guilty about it. “I should be expanding my awareness of the world!”. (Rather than taking care of my mental health by reading novels for pleasure that allowed me to escape for hours on end….)

Part of the issue is that my recent efforts at reading non-fiction resulted in quickly losing interest and abandoning the book 25% of the way through. What to do, what to do?

Crowd source it. I’ve a fairly eclectic group of friends and the list below reflects that. I’ll add personal commentary as I finish a book, otherwise it is just title, author, and maybe a quick comment.

Please feel free to suggest additions!

Books I’ve Read and Recommend

• Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
  • I read this years ago and was captivated. It read like a world and time-spanning novel. It was a great and memorable read.
  • There are discussions about the validity of his approach which may be worth reading. Here is one – https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wd6jt/what_do_you_think_of_guns_germs_and_steel/
• Devil in the White City – Eric Larson
  • “Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson’s spellbinding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men–the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World’s Fair, striving to secure America?s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.”
  • It lives up to the quote on the inside flap. Go read it.
• A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson
  • I read this in my … 30s, I think … after spending a few years living in New England. His books are -fun- and captivating and educational.
• In a Sunburned Country – Bill Bryson
• The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice – Trevor Corson
  • I read this shortly after finding really good sushi in San Francisco. It tells two stories – the story of sushi’s history and the story of sushi in America. A good read for foodies, and for sushi lovers.
• The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean – Trevor Corson
  • A wonderful dive (get it?) into what the title says. A well researched story about something we think we know, but really do not.
• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character – Richard P. Feynman , Ralph Leighton , et al.
  • I read this many years ago and remember it fondly, though I do not recall any details of why. Go discover “why” for yourself.
• Any Given Tuesday – Lis Smith
  • She is a Dartmouth graduate, though was there after I left. She is also a political operative of the first order. Her character could have appeared on West Wing and fit right in with the passionate characters who believe in sacrificing much for “Democracy”. A great read.
• The Objective in War – Capt. B.H. Liddell Hart
  • I downloaded this paper just to find the context for the quote: “The object in war is a better state of peace.” I stayed because it was a very interesting read, and one still (or perhaps more) relevant now than when it was written in 1952. Among other things, it carefully de-mythologizes Cluasewitz (the author of “On War”) but it also covers the differences between political objectives and military objectives, military vs civilian (or infrastructure) targets, and why you might not want total victory. It is a short and quite readable paper, very much worth the time.
• Enough – Cassidy Hutchinson.
  • I’m listening to this as an audiobook. This is a superb first hand account of how our government functions from a first person view just before and then during the Trump administration. Cassidy comes off as incredibly capable, driven, and idealistic all while neatly avoiding even a hint of egotism. Very worth reading.
• Danziger’s Travels – Nick Danziger
  • I read this many years ago and it may have inspired me to read more “adventure travel” books, and to do some of it myself. Beautifully written by a guy who “… With minimal equipment and disguised as an itinerant Muslim, he hitch-hiked and walked through southern Turkey, and the Iran of the Ayatollahs, entering Afghanistan illegally in the wake of a convoy of Chinese weapons and then spent months dodging Russian helicopter gunships with the rebel guerillas. He was the first foreigner to cross from Pakistan into the closed western province of China since the revolution on 1949.”
• The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia – Peter Hopkirk
  • A must read for anyone interested in what is going on in Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. To quote a review: “The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road—both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to twenty miles at some points. Now, in the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is once again talk of Russian soldiers “dipping their toes in the Indian Ocean.”

The As Yet Unread Reading List

• Sapiens – Jared Diamond
• Collapse – Jared Diamond
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus – Charles C. Mann
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants – Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Gathering Moss – Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Redeployment – Phil Klay. Short stories on the military. “Incredible” 
• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation – Kristin Kobes Du Mez
• Preparing for War – Bradley Onishi
• How Civil War Starts – Barbara F. Walter
• Zero Fail – Carrol Lenning
• Inside Delta Force – Eric Haney
• The Federalist Papers
• Palenstine – Jimmy Carter
• Red Notice – Bill Browder
• Freezing Order: Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath – Bill Browder
• The Red Hotel – The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin’s Propaganda War – Alan Philps
• Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation – Joseph J. Ellis
• Preventable – Andy Slavitt
• The Breach – Denver Riggleman
• Blowback – Miles Taylor
• Enough – Cassidy Hutchinson
• Shattered Sword – The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway – Jonathan Parshall, Anthony Tully, et al.
• Moon Lander – Tom Kelly
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI – David Grann
• Innovators – Walter Isaacson
• Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History – Sidney W. Mintz
• The Prize – Daniel Yergin
• Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World – Mark Kurlansky
• Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky
• The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance – Henry Petroski
• 52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust – William Alexander
• The River and the Gauntlet – S.L.A. Marshall
• The Wordy Shipmates – Sarah Vowell
• Unfamiliar Fishes – Sarah Vowell
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States – Sarah Vowell
• Assassination Vacation – Sarah Vowell
• The Church of Baseball – Ron Shelton
• Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships – Elliot Rappaport
• Wilding – Isabella Tree
• The Wager – David Grann
• Guardians of the Trees: A Journey of Hope Through Healing the Planet: A Memoir – M.D. Webb, Kinari
• Fire Weather – John Vaillant
• The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next – Stephen J. Pyne
• Anything by John McPhee – (Start with The Founding Fish)
• Anything by Thomas Sowell
• The Aviators – Winston Groom
• Isaac’s Storm – Erik Larson
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson
• The Good Soldier Schweik – Jaroslav Hašek (Possible source for Catch 22)
• The Edge of the Plain- How Borders Make and Break Our World – James Crawford
• A Hawk in the Woods – Carrie Laban (Deeply creepy)
• Endurance. The Ernest Shackleton Story. (Fabulous tale of will to succeed and commitment as a leader.)
• Twilight of Democracy – Anne Applebaum (Not very well written but at only 95 pages, worth reading)
• Add these – https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/11/how-technology-building-plane-engineering-works-books/675905/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20231111&lctg=6050e71e4953a53f14887553&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily