April 2025

 Hi friends,

April was a rough month for us. Dan went back to work, and Sarah started daycare. As expected, we were sick for most of the month after she started. I feel like I can usually cope with the overwhelm associated with working and taking care of my family, but when we get sick, things just tip the scale to overwhelmed and not coping very quickly. Thankfully, this too shall pass, and we’re all mostly feeling better.

On top of that, it’s always heart wrenching to leave your baby in someone else’s care, even someone that you trust. One teacher asked me if it gets any easier by the fourth, and the answer was no, it doesn’t. I’m still struggling to figure out what the best solution is for me and my family in terms of time spent working and time spent caring. I don’t know that there’s one right answer for our family, and I know there’s not one right answer for everyone. 

I did get to read some excellent nonfiction books that really changed the way I think about public policy and how I see the world and the events going on around me. I also read a few later entries in some scifi/fantasy series I’ve been enjoying. Let me know what you think of these books, and if you have suggestions for others. 

Best,

Tonya 

Who is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis 

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: As a federal employee, I was already inclined to like this book which compiles a series of essays highlighting exemplary public servants. This seems like a most timely moment for a bestselling book about dedicated, efficient, and in some cases, lifesaving public servants. Speaking from my own experience, now is a rough time to be a public servant. I feel like those who are supposed to be leading us are instead attacking us, and we are all dealing with much higher levels of uncertainty and ambiguity than we anticipated when selecting a career in federal service. I think that I have to recognize that my reading experience didn’t happen in a vacuum, and that the environment around me helped me feel even more grateful for the recognition that these public servants received. Each essay is authored by a different journalist and highlights the great diversity of careers one can pursue in federal service. One man dedicated his life to solving the intensely complex geological engineering problem of coal mine roof collapses, another provides the highest-rated customer service as the manager of national cemeteries for the Department of Veteran Affairs, and another worked in anti-trust for the Department of Justice. I think my favorite essay was the man who turned around the national cemeteries because I again have a personal connection here. My grandfather is buried in the Fort Logan National Cemetery, and I’ve only had positive experiences associated with my time visiting this cemetery and honoring my beloved and heroic grandpa. I loved getting an inside look into how the cemeteries function and all the millions of details that go into providing honorable and respectful resting places for our veterans and heroes. I highly recommend this book and hope that everyone can take some time to understand what the now-derisively used word “bureaucrat” really means. 

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: I’ve read all of Green’s books to date, and this one is quite a departure from his bestselling star-crossed teenage romance The Fault in Our Stars, but Green brings all of his considerable passion and emotional eloquence to bear against his worst enemy, the deadliest infectious disease in the world, tuberculosis. In this short nonfiction work Green intertwines the story of Henry, a Sierra Leonean teenager with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, with a history of the disease and its immense impact on human culture and progress. You might not know, but tuberculosis, which has been curable since the 1950s is the most deadly infectious disease in the world and annually kills around 1 million people. Green argues that this is because the disease is where the cure is not, and the cure is where the disease is not. Green doesn’t simplify the many complex reasons that a disease that is curable still causes so many unnecessary deaths. They range from expensive pharmaceuticals to inadequate health infrastructure, to lack of awareness, but Green also talks a lot about what can be done to eradicate tuberculosis, and the book has a hopeful note and cast. The story of Henry anchors the book and gives a human face to abstract stories, statistics, and unnecessarily mutli-syllabic drug names. I usually don’t feel gripped by a nonfiction story, but there were moments in this book when I fellt compelled to keep reading because I wanted to know what happened to Henry. Green highlights the great progress that has been made in reducing the number of tuberculosis deaths and improving treatment worldwide. The timing of this release is particularly unfortunate and also very appropriate. Unfortunate because of the increasing sense of dread that rises knowing that billions of dollars of funding to diagnose and treat tuberculosis has been ended with the dismantling of USAID, and appropriate as it inspires greater advocacy to restore and increase it. At the very least, we in the US should act and spend money to reduce the risk that the continued spread of tuberculosis could eventually create a bacteria that’s so drug resistant that none of the treatments we have today are effective. When that happens, it won’t matter if you live in Colorado or Sierra Leone, we’ll all be screwed again.  Preventing that would be putting America first, right? 

The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl #4) by Matt Dinniman

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review:  Number four in the Dungeon Crawler Carl saga delivered again. I love this series. Carl and Princess Donut continue their ridiculous romp through the post-apocalyptic, alien, reality TV show that has taken over planet Earth forcing them to fight for their lives against all manner of fantastical creatures, aliens, and sometimes other humans. I love watching how Carl breaks the game and sticks it to their hyper-capatilistic alien show-runners. Donut is particularly on form in this installment as well, and I love her more than I’ve ever loved another fictional cat. Carl and Donut are the perfect foils to each other. Like Leslie and Ron of Parks and Rec fame, Carl without Donut and vice versa would be nearly intolerable and uninteresting to read. Some of my favorite stories make use of this character trope, and Dinniman has struck gold here with this pair. I also really enjoy how Dinniman slowly dribbles out Carl’s back story. Even four books into this series, we’re still learning new things about Carl’s past and motivations. It’s a great way to write a character. At the same time, we see how the dungeon is changing both Carl and Donut, and despite Carl’s mantra You will not break me, I can’t help but wondering if or when he will. 

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress—And How to Bring it Back by Marc J Dunkelman

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: If you’re wondering why all of our public infrastructure from roads to electric lines to wastewater systems are simultaneously reaching the end of their lives, this is the book to read. Dunkelman, inspired by the infamous story of Robert Moses in The Power Broker reshaping New York City to his will from the 1930-1960s, asks himself if anything similar could happen today for good and for bad. He concludes that no. In an effort to push power down and out of institutions to prevent its abuse, the progressive movement has rendered it nearly impossible to build any large public interest project including those that are desperately needed to address the impacts of climate change and the enormous housing deficit. Dunkelman describes the instinct to pull power up to institutions and people as Hamiltonian and the opposite instinct to push it down and to the masses as Jeffersonian, and he describes the two as a pendulum that swung back and forth over the course of the 20th century. The Jeffersonian instinct has currently dominated progressive ideology to the point that every interest group now has a veto against any large public works project that may affect them. This means that dams don’t get built, public transit isn’t improved, wind and solar energy projects are stymied, and everyone lives in a subpar world. He advocates that we need to swing back moderately toward the Hamiltonian side of the pendulum and empower individuals to take all opinions and views into consideration, mitigates the concerns that can be addressed, and then makes a decision for the greater good. The timing of this message is a but suspect as I watch the new federal administration try to condense power back into the executive that the legislature intentionally disbursed to themselves and other organizations. If you support the policies that the administration is pushing, this would seem to be a plus, but if you don’t the negatives seem to outweigh the positives. Guess we’ll see what happens. 

The Standard of Truth 1815-1846 (Saints #1) by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: Since we’re studying The Doctrine and Covenants in Sunday school this year, it seemed an appropriate time to reread this first volume of narrative Church history. It was nice to understand more of the historical context behind the revelations that we’re studying weekly. The Doctrine and Covenants is the only volume of canonized scripture that lacks a narrative, and it can make it hard to engage in the revelations without understanding how new and novel the restoration was. I appreciate that the authors spotlighted a variety of members and their experience. I felt like it made the whole story of the Restoration more relatable and engaging. Of course, the restoration continues with us, and I’m equally excited to see how it will play out in the future. 

Ashes of Man (The Sun Eater #5) by Christopher Ruocchio

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: The fourth and fifth books in the Sun Eater series were one book that Ruocchio split into two at the urging of his editor. Unlike the previous installments, this book picks up right where #4 left off with no time jump. Hadrian is still recovering from the traumatic experiences of the fourth book, and we take a good amount of time at the beginning to allow him to heal and process everything that happened. However, since the Emperor can’t be done with his miraculous white knight, Hadrian is called back into duty in the centuries long war against the savage alien Cielcin who see humans as prey and pursue the destruction of the universe. Heavy stakes, I know. The setting is epic scifi space opera at its peak, and Ruocchio always delivers on world building and Hadrian’s character arcs. However, I found this one lacking in unique action sequences that were distinct from previous books and any kind of secondary character development. I was particularly disappointed with Valka. She literally just becomes Hadrian’s love interest sidekick, which seemed like a step down compared to her alien anthropologist badassery of previous books. That was disappointing. That being said, I still plan to finish reading the Sun Eater books because I just want to know what happens. 

Abundance by Ezra Klein

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes

Review: This was a good book to read as a pair with Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman. Both books talk about the failings of progressivism over the past 50 years and how the liberalism movement needs to change its ideology to adapt to challenges of the 21st century. Klein argues that America needs to learn how to build and innovate at scale. He says that to combat the conservative ideology of scarcity, liberals need to present an alternative of abundance fueled by the desire to build and expand. He says, “Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do. Conservatives talk as if they want a small state but support a national security and surveillance apparatus of terrifying scope and power. Neither side focuses on what scholars call “state capacity”: the ability of the state to achieve its goals. Sometimes that requires more government. Sometimes it requires less government. … But if you believe in government, you must make it work. To make it work, you must be clear-eyed about when it fails and why it fails.” As someone who still does believe in government, I totally agree. The new Trump administration has gone all in on the narrative that government is the problem and are dead set on purging its ranks and sowing chaos through change, but I’ve yet to see a replacement policy and ideology to actually solve the problems that they rant against. I think that liberalism has also failed to present a convincing solution to the many problems that plague government as well. Klein presents a range of possible policy solutions based on increasing the supply of technologies, housing, goods, everything. A policy of abundance. I think it’s worth a try.