May 22, 2020--Books

Everyone knows Trump doesn't read.

Surely, not Foreign Affairs, not The Atlantic, not even Golf Digest where there are lots of pictures.

But now we know who in Washington and New York do read--every guest appearing on programs on CNN and MSNBC.

Because of the pandemic, guests phone in from home offices via Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime and invariably their home offices include their book cases, which serve as an attractive background.

Jon Meacham, an NBC Contributor who is also a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, not surprisingly has more books on display on his elegant shelves than anyone else.

Often more interesting to me than hearing what Eugene Robinson has to say about Trump and China, is what I can see he has been reading. I was especially tickled when I saw one day that he had on the shelves the same edition as I do of Ron Chernow's biography of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Sad to say when I snooped around to see what the Fox News hosts and guests have on their bookshelves, I've been discovering that few have bookcases as part of their home TV studios and there are no books in sight. On mantels, though, on display, most had a few airport-art tchotchkes.

What's this all about, I wondered. It didn't, though, take more than a moment to figure it out. America is divided I many ways.