Editors Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas, in their introduction to Losers: Dispatches From the Other Side of the Scoreboard (Penguin Random House, 2020), write: “The locker rooms of winners are crowded. … The locker rooms of losers are desolate and awkward. The players are somber, quiet; some shrink into the stalls. People ... keep their distance, as if losing is a contagious infection.” So true.

We’re hearing lots of pessimistic talk about the state of media and public opinion in America, with the suggestion that we’re in worse shape now than ever before. Much of that concern is warranted, but I should point out that it’s nothing new. Walter Lippmann, one of the founders of The New Republic in 1914, was an influential journalist and columnist for more than half a century, with unofficial titles like “the father of modern journalism.”

Great Society by Amity Shlaes received an honorable mention for Accessible History in WORLD’s 2020 Books of the Year issue. We ran an interview with Shlaes in our June 27 issue, but here are some additional questions and answers we didn’t have room for.

What are the main lessons from Great Society for 2020?

In one sense, Daniel Chirot learned about international politics as a baby: Born in Vichy France during World War II, he (with his family) evaded German roundups of Jews. Chirot made it to the United States when he was 6. This month he retires from his professorship at the University of Washington after 45 years of teaching and research. 

The election’s over, but COVID-19 is still with us. The Price of Panic, by Douglas Axe, William Briggs, and Jay Richards, has a clear subtitle: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe (Regnery, 2020). But a pandemic is a catastrophe, and a big question concerning it is like the question of global warming: How much is man-made and how much is way beyond our control? The three authors rightly contend that local empowerment is better than the heavy hand of presidents and governors. But was it all panic?

Dec. 14 will be the 100th anniversary of the death of college student George Gipp, nicknamed “The Gipper.” He was a halfback, quarterback, and punter on the 1920 Notre Dame football team coached by Knute Rockne. Cause of death: a streptococcal throat infection and pneumonia. Cause of his being remembered: Ronald Reagan played him in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American and ran for president with “The Gipper” as his nickname.

Accessible History
Book of the Year

The Year of Peril: America in 1942 is our history winner in another year of peril, 2020. Although I know the end of the 1942 story, author Tracy Campbell made me feel I was reading a novel in which it wasn’t clear that the hero would survive. It’s hard for us to believe now, but in 1942 War Production Board chairman Donald Nelson had good reason to say, “The awful realization was slowly coming over the country that America was losing a war.”