How bad are things going for the Obama health care plan? JOHN NICHOLS comments on Obama’s bruising August — he’s Washington correspondent of The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.
Plus: FRIEDRICH ENGELS – “a foxhunting man, a womanizing, champagne-drinking capitalist” – and a lifelong revolutionary (and also collaborator of Karl Marx). Also, “far more adventurous than Marx when it came to exploring the ramifications of his and Marx’s thinking.” TRISTRAM HUNT explains – his eye-opening new bio is MARX’S GENERAL: THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF FRIEDRICH ENGELS.
Also: HENRY FORD’s Amazon colony: Ford’s greatest success of course was the auto assembly line; his greatest failure was an attempt to build a midwestern small town in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest. NYU historian GREG GRANDIN tells that story – his book is FORDLANDIA: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.
