THE FIRST DAY of the new year brought the news of the death of Joe Neal, Nevada’s first Black state senator, at age 85. The first Monday of the new year also brought news of MGM Resorts offering $11 billion to take over the British gaming company Entain. If you heard thunder overhead, it was Neal, reacting.
Joe Neal was, hands down, the most liberal member of the Nevada Legislature for the 32 years he served in Carson City. When the state senate numbered 20, the Democrat learned his nickname was Ol’ Nineteen-to-One. He didn’t mind being the lone dissenter, but he also knew how to get things done, and he did.
Las Vegas Weekly
Books
1.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson Wilkerson writes really big books, both in pages and scope. The follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Warmth of Other Suns posits that caste, a system of societal hierarchy seen in other parts of the world, is manifested most profoundly in the treatment of Black Americans through historical and contemporary oppression.
2.
A Promised Land by Barack Obama This first of a two-volume memoir reminds us that words matter, and they can be eloquent, too. Get off Twitter and savor these 768 pages slowly, because there’s no release date yet for the second part.
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