My daughter and I were touring colleges last summer when we happened into a bookstore one evening. A few works on democracy sat on a table, so I picked up a copy of a small book with the simple title: e.b. white on democracy.
I am so glad I did. Martha White, the granddaughter of the legendary late New Yorker contributor, has compiled a book of insightful essays, letters, and poems from her very readable grandfather that speak directly to our contemporary world. Never mind that White, who joined the New Yorker in 1927 and remained there for almost six decades while authoring such children’s classics as Charlotte’s Web, wrote the majority of these pieces during the middle part of the last century. (He wrote the latest ones in the 1970s.) E.B. White’s observations on democracy and freedom during a time of world war, economic calamity, and the rise of communism address some ]of the underlying tensions we face today.
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