Mark Lennihan/AP

Traders at the New York Stock Exchange watch President Donald Trump in a televised White House news conference on March 18, 2020. Mr. Trump has touted tax cuts and tougher tactics toward China and other trading partners as boons for the economy. He has been unable to forge a deal in recent weeks for a new round of pandemic relief for Americans.

Even before he officially took the reins of office, Donald Trump has sought to use his presidency to rebuild hope in blue-collar America.

There were the jobs at the Carrier air-conditioning factory in Indianapolis that, as president-elect, he “saved” from going to Mexico; the huge Foxconn deal in southern Wisconsin – the “eighth wonder of the world,” President Trump called it – that would bring TV manufacturing back to the United States; and U.S. Steel’s $1.5 billion investment in southwestern Pennsylvania that would bring state-of-the-art steel casting back to U.S. shores.

They are shimmering symbols for the president’s vision for a once and now great again America – bright because of the rhetoric Mr. Trump employs, shimmering because the results are, at best, hazy. Has he really changed the economy – and in a way that helps blue-collar workers? 

All presidents, of course, have limited control over the economy. Global forces and unforeseen events, such as a pandemic, can sink any president’s agenda. And a fractious Congress can stymie new efforts. For several months the economy’s need for new coronavirus relief has gone unmet, partly due to Mr. Trump’s own negotiating tactics but also because of the disconnect between a Democratic-controlled House and Senate Republicans with a distaste for more stimulus packages. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump sent stock markets skidding after tweeting that he was ending stimulus discussions with House Democrats, then sent them soaring Wednesday with tweets suggesting a narrower stimulus could still be passed.

This week’s volatility could be an apt symbol of this presidency’s course on the economy. In some ways it may prove transformative – such as in trade relations with China. On other fronts, his efforts may not prove pathbreaking but rather a last gasp of ideas like massive tax cuts, which are now under strain. 

Some policy experts even say his tenure could be one of those rare end-of-an-era presidencies in which a leader has a foot in the past as well as in the future. 

“Part of their genius – and I wouldn’t exclude Trump from this at all – is their understanding that the old established regime has lost control,” says Stephen Skowronek, a Yale political scientist. 

Hoover, Carter ... and Trump?

These presidents break some norms to try to meet new and unanticipated challenges: Herbert Hoover used federal spending to try to stimulate the economy during the Depression; Jimmy Carter started deregulating industries and appointed an inflation-fighter to head the Federal Reserve and fight the era’s stagflation, rather than someone in the New Deal tradition committed to preserving jobs.

Often they are outsiders who tout their non-Washington credentials and unique skills to revitalize increasingly creaky coalitions. But their reforms are too timid because they’re still tied to the old regime, argues Mr. Skowronek, author of a forthcoming book, “Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive.” 

Just as Hoover heralded the end of post-Civil War laissez-faire Republicanism and Mr. Carter was the last of the New Deal Democrats, so Mr. Trump may well signal the end of the Reagan revolution. These “disjunctive presidents,” as Mr. Skowronek calls them, tend to become failed one-term presidents who give way to transformative presidents who build a new coalition around a set of ideas often foreshadowed by the policies of their predecessors. 

Franklin Roosevelt boosted stimulus spending far beyond what Hoover dreamed; Ronald Reagan made deregulation a central part of his movement to get government off people’s backs.

In the case of President Trump, the failures are visible: The Carrier factory eventually moved some of its production to Mexico and now employs fewer workers than when the president intervened. U.S. Steel has delayed indefinitely its investment in the Mon Valley Works. And the Foxconn project, originally intended to create 13,000 manufacturing jobs, has so far created only about 800 and has been dramatically scaled back to become a technology hub with assembly and packaging operations – hardly the eighth wonder of Wisconsin, let alone the world. 

Yet, it would be a mistake to dismiss his economic vision, economists and historians say. 

The Trump rhetoric hits home with workers that have been passed by by the New Economy. For decades, administrations on both sides of the political spectrum left factory workers in the cold, saying in essence that globalization was here to stay, that their jobs were no longer valuable, and to get the education and training to do something else. If the president hasn’t realized the dream of a U.S. manufacturing revival, he has put their concerns on the map. 

A shift on China

One of the administration’s key achievements, for example, is how it has fundamentally changed Americans’ views on China. While his predecessors viewed it as a country that, with some prodding, would gradually open its economy to Western goods and services, Mr. Trump has recast the vision as a U.S. rival whose ways are incompatible with Western economic practices. To counter it, he has employed punishing tariffs, turning conservative free-trade policies on their head.

“The president has been a game-changer there,” says Douglas Irwin, a trade economist at Dartmouth College. “It will be difficult for any future administration to pull back those tariffs without a major agreement on China.”

In fact, China poses an unprecedented geopolitical challenge to the U.S. – both an economic and national security rival – which presidents will have to grapple with for decades to come, says Iwan Morgan, professor of U.S. studies at University College London.

But a new trade stance toward China, and other manufacturing nations, remains a work in progress. Mr. Trump struggled to reach even a first phase agreement with China while threatening more tariffs against close allies, making it more difficult for him to create a coalition of nations to counter Beijing. 

The president’s tax cuts represent another signature achievement, yet far from a clear win for average workers. Besides cutting individual tax rates, which primarily benefited the wealthy, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act also lowered corporate tax rates to globally competitive levels – something previous Republican and Democratic administrations had tried but failed to do.

The tax cuts link Mr. Trump with the supply-side philosophy of President Reagan, yet have added to a U.S. national debt that is now being further expanded by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Millions of workers struggling

And although unemployment for Black Americans fell to historic lows just prior to the pandemic, on other fronts the president has failed to address economic concerns of an increasingly diverse America. 

His 2017 tax law created “opportunity zones” to encourage community development. Yet the zones aren’t creating the many jobs they were intended to, says Jorge González, a research analyst with the Urban Institute.

The pandemic downturn has certainly reversed the gains of racial minorities since 2016. Yet Mr. Trump in July repeated, “I’ve done more for Black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.”

“It is not only inaccurate, it’s cringeworthy,“ says Darrick Hamilton, a professor of economics and urban policy at the New School in New York. “It’s hard to take President Trump seriously, but it’s also dangerous not to take him seriously.”

In Mr. Hamiltion’s view, African Americans have fared worse under President Trump because his tax cuts have starved federal revenues that could be used for job creation and direct help to households, opportunity zones may lead to gentrification and more inequality, and the wealth gap has continued to widen.

Now the pandemic has widened gaps in the U.S. economy still further, along lines of race, gender, and whether livelihoods are based on in-person services like restaurants or theme parks. Even in coal country, early job gains under the current administration have evaporated. 

Just because President Trump may fit a historical pattern doesn’t mean he’s bound by it, Mr. Skowronek says. He could break the “disjunctive” mold by being reelected. Perhaps more significant, win or lose, history suggests that parts of his economic vision will remain relevant.

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

From his new home in Berlin, Khalil Sharaf recalls the war-torn town of Daraa in Syria that he fled in 2015: the crash of bombs, regular street battles, the seemingly random arrests of neighbors.

One day the police came for him – he was an outspoken lawyer – and threw him in jail. He spent a traumatic month in a jam-packed basement cell watching people around him suffocate to death every day from overcrowding.

“Every human has 2 feet and there wasn’t even enough space for that,” says Mr. Sharaf. “We carried kids on our shoulders so they could breathe.”

But he was one of the fortunate ones. Eventually, he made it to Germany, and today, five years after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened her country’s doors to a flood of refugees like him, Mr. Sharaf has put down roots. He has been granted political asylum, learned to speak German, found a job helping other refugees integrate, and been reunited with his wife and children.

Though he has experienced hardships peppered with false starts, his story, and countless others like it, illuminate a pattern of success in fitting more than a million refugees into Germany’s everyday economic and social life.

“My kids are in school now. They speak German. They have so many friends,” Mr. Sharaf says. “I have German friends. Me and my work colleagues, we are like family.”

A “welcoming culture”

To be sure, a far-right political party won seats in parliament in part by riding a backlash against the largest flow of refugees Germany had seen since World War II. And the coronavirus pandemic has challenged refugees just as they were getting on their feet.

Yet, five years on, roughly half the new arrivals have quietly found work as armies of German volunteers assist the rest with everything from language classes to finding jobs and housing.

“Compared with Germany’s 1990s intake of migrants from the Balkans, this integration is more successful, longer term, and more sustainable,” says Ulf Rinne, an economist with the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a private research group in Bonn.

“We have a split society, but the group that welcomes refugees is in the majority,” adds Dieter Filsinger, a sociologist at Saarland University of Applied Sciences. “We’ve seen an unprecedented rise in volunteerism, and so much engagement from communities and from individual Germans,” Dr. Filsinger says, referring to the Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) that has become part of Germany’s lexicon.

Ursula Breidbach began teaching German classes for new arrivals back in 2015. The Berliner also collected and distributed food and clothing to refugees from her comfortable home in a quiet, upper-middle-class suburb.

Ms. Breidbach is typical of “the people who were always two steps ahead of the politicians,” says Günther Schulze, whose neighborhood “refugee welcome alliance” enticed Ms. Breidbach to join their ranks. “The ones who are against refugees are loud and are heard. The quiet people doing the work are the really important ones for our society.”

Every week, Ms. Breidbach taps a wide network of acquaintances to “find the right people with the right answers,” she says. This network helps with everything from visa and legal advice to assistance finding housing. Sometimes, a new arrival simply needs a friend.

Klaus Peters/picture-alliance/dpa/AP/File

German language teacher Piotr Olejniczak reads from his old school book, which helped him to learn German 30 years ago, to his students. Mr. Olejniczak is teaching German language classes to refugee children from Syria, Afghanistan and Russia.

“They’ll say, ‘I’d like to find new friends to practice my German,’” says Ms. Breidbach. “So I send out an email, such as ‘Here’s Ayisha and she’s 21, from Afghanistan, and she likes swimming.’ Someone raises a hand and says, ‘I like swimming too, I’d like to meet her.’”

“In the best case, they become friends.”

Learning from the past

Thousands of such volunteers have emerged across Germany, adapting their services to meet the changing needs of the new arrivals. Refugees who arrived in 2015 who have managed to secure permanent status in Germany are no longer living in gyms and struggling to find their bearings; they are confronting next-level needs and wants.

The volunteer army has itself morphed, too, from “a lot of fantastic elderly ladies in the beginning distributing clothes and so on,” says Mr. Schulze, “to a lot of younger people now who have their own ideas. They’re also more political.”

The German government also learned from the Balkans experience that institutional language-learning support is critical; asylum programs now pay for or subsidize 600 hours of German classes and a 60-hour course teaching German law, society, and culture.

Ammar El Halabi, who was imprisoned twice for demonstrating and speaking out against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was one of the beneficiaries of such a program after arriving in Germany in 2012.

A former soldier who also trained as a baker, he worked odd jobs for a few years while he got the hang of the language. “It was like being a child and learning to walk when I got here,” he remembers.

After a few failed attempts to get on his feet, he is now fluent in German and has opened a bakery in Neukölln, a district of Berlin known for its international feel. He sells Syrian-style baklava and other sweets, which he proudly says “contain less sugar than the Turkish version.”

When asked, eight years after his arrival, how he’s settling into his new life, Mr. Halabi doesn’t sugarcoat his words. There have been challenges. But look at the plight of Syrian friends who emigrated to the United States, he points out.

“They aren’t doing well,” he says. “They always have to work under the table and do terrible jobs. They don’t really get much support.”

A 50% solution

Even in Germany, with its warm volunteer embrace and government aid, a lot of refugees are still struggling to make their way. Many are working in unskilled jobs or professions other than the ones they were trained for. They can also come up against racism and discrimination, says Dr. Filsinger of Saarland University.

“Migrants who have the exact same grades and experience as Germans have a much harder time getting employment than Germans,” he says.

Mr. Sharaf remembers his battle to find his feet those first years in Berlin. “I didn’t speak anything,” he says. “So I started practicing [German] with YouTube and with people on the street.”

Hard-pressed to find work, the trial lawyer turned to building playgrounds as a volunteer. “This was super strange because I’m not a construction worker,” he laughs. “But I get it. I can’t just jump back into being a lawyer again. So, I said, ‘who cares!’ And I built this playground.”

Now he has a paying job, helping refugees like himself make their new lives in Germany. His wife and young son – who required therapy to overcome a habit of hiding under beds from the trauma of hearing bombs – have joined him in Berlin. An English teacher back in Syria, his wife is working to become an educator in Germany. Volunteers helped them find an apartment, and the couple has had another child.

German society has become noticeably more open since he arrived in Berlin, remarks Mr. Sharaf.

“In the beginning, they thought we are coming just to sit and sleep and take money,” he says. “Then they see we are engineers, lawyers, doctors just like them. We want to work. I miss a lot in Syria, but I feel 50% at home in Germany.”

James Dalman remembers his days at Army infantry boot camp nearly 25 years ago with impressive clarity.

There was the night privates in their bunks were doing impressions of their drill sergeant, and he overheard them.

He marched the new recruits outside and “smoked us” for 3 1/2 hours. “He was yelling something like, ‘Humor leads to communism, communism leads to evil.” We were like, ‘What’s he talking about?’ Was he joking? I still don’t know.” 

There was the time, too, the drill sergeant convinced recruits they were due an evening of relaxation, with a big spaghetti dinner and movies. “We ate and ate, then he took us outside and PT’d us” – physical training in military parlance – “until everyone threw up. He got into a little trouble for that,” Mr. Dalman recalls, reflecting, “It was a little bit abusive.” 

Mr. Dalman’s experience inspired him to post online tips for new recruits, alerting them to the fabled “shark attack,” in which “sometimes half a dozen drill sergeants will gang up on you and be absolutely relentless. Some people will cry.” 

“DO NOT make eye contact,” he implores. “Get used to staring off a thousand miles into the distance. This is your safe spot!”

Today, the shark attack is no more. The Army’s storied Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, announced in September that it was ending the attacks, a move military officials say had been in the works for some time – but was hastened along by the inadvisability of yelling in people’s faces during a pandemic. 

This recognition is one of several shifts in strategic thinking about how to more effectively prepare soldiers for combat that the Army has put on display in recent months, including promoting “naps to restore wakefulness,” in a newly updated fitness training manual that also encourages journaling and reflecting on the “interconnectedness of all things and people.” 

Derided by some critics as evidence that the military has gone soft, defense officials say these moves mark a recognition that wars have changed – and so have the troops fighting them. The military’s new measures will actually build stronger soldiers, they add, and better prepare them for the intellectual and moral challenges they now face. 

“People with Smokey the Bear hats yelling at you – none of the things in the shark attack are setting an example of anything you’d ever want to instill in terms of leadership. It’s the opposite of what you’re trying to instill,” says retired Gen. David Barno, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and co-author with Nora Bensahel of “Adaptation Under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime.”

In a video announcing the change, Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Fortenberry explained, “The cornerstones of the event were to establish dominance and authority using intimidation and fear. Drill sergeants were charged with assessing the trainees’ ability to handle stress, singling out perceived undesirables by enveloping them in a manner that emulated a shark attack,” he said. “This activity, however, does not instill the spirit of the infantry. It betrays the innate trust between teammates – and worse, betrays the crucial bond of trust with our leaders."

Training for today’s wars

Historically, it was generally agreed that “all a soldier had to do was march straight and shoot a rifle,” says Richard Lacquement, research professor and former dean of the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. Today’s troops routinely use computers, radios, and drones at remote outposts that require them to be more technologically adept and make quick decisions. “It’s an evolution of our expectation for enlisted personnel, how much we rely on them today to be intellectually capable and morally fit.” 

The morally fit piece has come into sharp relief after nearly 20 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, where troops in combat have been more spread out, placing “a lot more reliance on the individual to act in a way that’s consistent with our values,” Mr. Lacquement says. The question becomes, “Can I trust them to do the right thing? And it’s harder to trust them if they don’t trust you.” 

The new basic training model aims to build that confidence with training exercises that will emphasize “belief in one’s self, belief in your teammates, and a belief in the leaders with whom they serve,” Command Sgt. Major Fortenberry said.

Instead of barking at new recruits scrambling off buses, for example, drill sergeants will formally introduce themselves and quiz soldiers on facts they’re expected to memorize about the infantry. It’s part of an effort, he explained, to help new soldiers “realize this journey in the infantry is one that we’ll never take alone, and it is defined by leaders’ willingness to share in the hardship.”

This has long been the approach to the education of officers, if not enlisted service members. When he was a plebe at West Point in 1980, Mr. Lacquement and his fellow students were expected to memorize word-for-word Maj. Gen. John Schofield’s 1879 address to the military academy: “The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army,” he warned the Corps of Cadets. “It is possible to impart instruction and to give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey.”

“That made perfect sense to me as a cadet,” Mr. Lacquement says. “They were tough on us, they critiqued us, but no one ever laid a hand on me. The stress came from trying to perform up to their expectation.” It is perhaps past time that the officer model of training is carried over into the enlisted ranks as well, he adds.

A new kind of drill sergeant

The new basic training model builds on a belief that has become increasingly pronounced in the post-Vietnam era, when the thinking was that while draftees had to be coerced, volunteers needed to be persuaded. The stereotypical “Full Metal Jacket” drill sergeants were working with conscripts who were unwilling to be in the military from the beginning, notes General Barno. In the modern Army, “Recruits have gone through a lot of wickets just to show up on the first day of basic training,” he says. “The Army has worked hard to get these folks in there. You want them to succeed.”

For Sgt. 1st Class Cynthia Velarde, picking up the new recruits on their first day of basic training was her favorite part of the job. “You’re the first NCO [noncommissioned officer] that those soldiers will see. You have the potential to leave a lasting impression on them for the rest of their careers,” she says. “By the last day, maybe the kid who could barely pick up a bag or barely do a pushup or never fired a weapon is confident to do that, or the ones who wanted to come in the Army and be pushed, physically pushed, are out there rucking for 10 miles.” 

She recalls eating in the mess hall when one former trainee approached her just to say that she had been his senior drill sergeant years earlier. “He was standing at parade rest. You run into these kids and they give you the customs and courtesies that we teach them over and over for weeks. The way you carry yourself – they don’t forget it.” 

That said, the new changes don’t preclude the occasional lambasting, particularly when lives are on the line. “Does leadership mean we have to yell at people? No,” Sergeant Velarde says, pausing. “I mean, sometimes you do have to yell at them. You do. I don’t think it’s demeaning if you yell at an individual when you’ve told them five times that maybe you need to point your muzzle in a safe direction. There’s going to be yelling after that.”

Alex Brandon/AP

President Donald Trump adjusts the microphone after announcing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee for the Supreme Court at the White House on Sept. 26, 2020. The timing of the nomination, just weeks before the election, has sparked ire among Democrats.

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States has stirred a cyclone of frustration among congressional Democrats. Threatening recourse, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly told his caucus that "nothing is off the table for next year.” 

For some, that may mean reshaping the table itself. Some Democrats are considering trying to increase the number of seats on the high court. Such “court packing” plans may be feasible but are highly controversial.

Why are there nine justices?

There haven’t always been. Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which describes the judiciary, is so spare that the court’s purpose and size has morphed over time.

“It's rather striking how little there is in the Constitution about the courts as opposed to about Congress or the presidency,” says Adam Levitin, a professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington. “It's like it was an afterthought for the founders.”

The number of justices began at six, proportional to the number of circuits – or regions – in the judiciary. Each circuit had its own justice, and as the country expanded the court did as well. 

The court grew to its largest during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln added a 10th justice. Afterward, Congress chose to shrink the court by one justice rather than cooperate with the besmirched President Andrew Johnson. The court has since remained at nine. 

No changes in structure were again considered until the Supreme Court struck down several of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s marquee New Deal programs in 1935 and 1936.

With more programs on the line, Roosevelt proposed a two-part bill to get his way. One provision reinstated pensions for retiring justices. Another would have added a seat to the court for every justice over 70-and-a-half who didn’t retire – potentially inflating the court to 15 seats. 

Though Democrats held enormous majorities in the House and Senate, Congressional leaders considered this scheme an overreach and passed only the pension plan. That alone enticed one conservative justice to retire, and some believe the entire debate encouraged the court to rule more favorably on FDR’s programs – though this fabled “switch in time that saved nine” is debated. In the next few years, Roosevelt appointed seven of the nine justices on the court.

In part due to the backlash against this plan, changing the court’s size wasn’t seriously considered again until Republicans blockaded Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2015.

What are the implications of new calls to pack the court?

Ordinary legislation is enough to change the Supreme Court’s size. But such political meddling is a dangerous venture. It was disastrous for FDR and it could be for Democrats again today, says Lucas Powe Jr., a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and former clerk for Justice William O. Douglas.

Even with public outcry over perceived minority rule, such a change would “leave some bitter people – sore losers,” says Professor Powe.

That resentment could provoke a game of Congressional brinkmanship, or “an endless cycle of tit-for-tat court-packing accompanying successive changes in party control of the political branches,” writes Barry Cushman, University of Notre Dame professor of law, political science, and history, in an email. 

It could also blight the court’s legitimacy, he writes, and perhaps tear apart fragile coalitions in Congress today.

Are there alternatives to court packing?

Yes. Politicians on both sides have suggested imposing an 18-year term limit on justices, so that two would be replaced every four-year presidential term, bringing predictability to the appointment process. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, in September proposed such a bill, though experts question whether it would require a constitutional amendment.

Congress could also curtail the court's jurisdiction through a rarely used constitutional power – effectively letting Congress declare certain laws unreviewable by the high court. But doing so would be certain to launch new legal battles. 

And in a more sweeping reform, Professor Levitin has proposed expanding the court to 33 justices and randomly picking three-justice panels for each case. This plan, he says, offers a bipartisan path from the winner-take-all structure of today’s court and could help mollify the now-contentious nomination process.

HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster

“The Cold Millions” by Jess Walter, Harper, 352 pp.; and “Eleanor” by David Michaelis, Simon & Schuster, 720 pp.

While October novels brim with exciting plots and winsome characters, this month's nonfiction titles are dominated by biographies of a popular first lady, a beloved actor, a troubled poet, and a noted gastronome. Their lives open a window onto the times they inhabited. 

1. The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Jess Walter, of “Beautiful Ruins,” returns with a tale of the wild Northwest. Labor unrest in 1909 Spokane, Washington, provides the backdrop to this spectacular adventure. Walter stocks the novel with drifters, cops, activists, millionaires, and more, and his humor balances out the noir aspects.  

2. Bright and Dangerous Objects by Anneliese Macintosh

An ambitious dream of living on Mars could actually come true for Solvig, a deep sea welder who’s caught between her longing to have a child with her partner James, or possibly leave Earth and never return. Anneliese Mackintosh’s imaginative and sensitive story tells of a woman’s odyssey to reconcile competing desires for independence and fulfillment and family. 

3. A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo

Grove Atlantic

“A Lover’s Discourse” by Xiaolu Guo, Grove Press, 288 pp.

What is it that confers identity? Is it nationality? Language? Where we call home? In this beautifully written novel, Xiaolu Guo explores identity through fragments of conversations between a graduate student from southern China and a landscape architect raised in Australia whose parents were British and German. When their paths cross in London, a romance blossoms as each wrestles with what it means to belong.

4. The Prince of Mournful Thoughts by Caroline Kim

Caroline Kim’s absorbing debut is a rarity among first collections: Throughout her dozen stories, she maintains enviously superb writing as her characters navigate generations, geographies, and cultures in search of acknowledgment and connection. 

5. Veritas by Ariel Sabar

In 2012, a religion scholar announced a discovery: an ancient papyrus fragment that suggested that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene may have been married. Expanding on his 2016 article for The Atlantic, Ariel Sabar digs into the story of the papyrus and the couple who tried to pass it off as real. Read our review here.

6. Ice Walker by James Raffan

In a rapidly changing Arctic, a polar bear named Nanu follows nature and instinct as she takes her yearly life-or-death migration across ice, snow, and sea. Author and explorer James Raffan offers a bear’s-eye view of humankind’s impact on the natural world.

7. The Man Who Ate Too Much by John Birdsall

John Birdsall’s juicy biography of James Beard serves up a multilayered portrait of the man who’s been called America’s first foodie. Birdsall chronicles how the great gastronome channeled his robust appetite and encyclopedic knowledge of food into a celebrated, influential career, but also highlights how, in an era of rampant homophobia, Beard had to hide a part of himself. 

8. Cary Grant by Scott Eyman

Simon & Schuster

“Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise” by Scott Eyman, Simon & Schuster, 576 pp.

Biographer Scott Eyman exhaustively and entertainingly chronicles the unlikely transformation of Archie Leach of Bristol, England, into legendary Hollywood leading man Cary Grant. The actor was celebrated for the style and ease he brought to his roles in screwball comedies and Hitchcock thrillers, but Eyman asserts that he never got over the loneliness and deprivation of his childhood.

9. Eleanor by David Michaelis

This riveting, cinematic biography of America’s longest-serving first lady spans Eleanor Roosevelt’s lonely childhood, her frosty marriage to FDR, their eventful White House years, her intimate relationships outside their marriage, and her widowhood, during which she became a forceful advocate for human rights. Read a Q&A with the author here.

10. Red Comet by Heather Clark

The full, complex scope of poet Sylvia Plath’s life and writing is given a bracingly thought-provoking reexamination in this massive – and massively absorbing – biography. 

AP

Voters wait in line to cast ballots in Noblesville, Ind., Oct. 7.

For most Americans, worrying about voter intimidation or electoral fraud is what other countries face. Not so this year. A sharp rise in both early voting and the expected number of partisan poll watchers, as well as concerns about postelection legal challenges, has raised anxiety about the integrity of the results.

Yet in spite of these concerns, or perhaps because of them, Americans appear more determined than usual to keep their democracy intact.

This week, as early voting started in earnest across most of the United States, there were signs voters are responding to the unique circumstances of casting ballots during a pandemic and heightened unrest. Florida, for example, extended the deadline for voter registration to accommodate a surge in applications. The state’s online system crashed repeatedly under the strain of some 1 million registration attempts per hour. In Indiana, voters waited peacefully for more than two hours to cast ballots Oct. 6 when polling stations opened.

The United States Elections Project, a voting-trends tracking site maintained at the University of Florida, estimates that more than 5 million Americans have already cast ballots in the 35 states reporting early voting statistics. At the same point four years ago, the site counted fewer than 75,000 ballots cast. These numbers suggest two things. First, voters are heeding calls to give states more time to process an expected increase in mail-in balloting due to the pandemic. And second, that overall turnout this year may reach historic highs.

Professor Michael McDonald, who manages the site, estimates 150 million Americans will cast ballots, or what would be a record raw number and the highest turnout rate since 1908. This means civic-mindedness may also be at a high point.

Experiences in other countries show that electoral divisions can be overcome, especially with more inclusiveness, greater voter participation, or outside pressure.

In South Africa, an 11th-hour decision by a key faction to end its boycott of the country’s first-ever democratic election in 1994 was key to breaking four years of grisly preelection violence. Turnout at the polls was nearly 90%, giving the new government a more durable mandate. In Kosovo, prior to its first post-independence election in 2008, officials wisely held local elections to boost minority participation and build credibility for a future national government.

In societies without deep democratic traditions, election monitoring has become a mainstay of international diplomacy. During a tense audit of elections results in Afghanistan in 2014, the two rival candidates agreed to a U.S.-brokered deal to form a unity government. They recognized that a dispute over electoral fraud was undermining the country’s already fragile stability. The pact had its faults, but it eased immediate threats of wider conflict.

Americans are hardly in a civil war but it is well to recall President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 visit to Gettysburg where he defended the nation’s founding ideals and the sacrifices made in defense of them. In divided times, politicians have often used the Pennsylvania site for similar purposes. In 1963, then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson journeyed there during the civil rights era to proclaim a vigil of racial justice. On Tuesday, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden spoke at the Civil War battlefield about the ability of fair elections to reconcile Americans. “The power to vote,” he said, “is the noblest instrument ever devised to register our will in a peaceable and productive fashion.”

Just by itself, the shared experience of voting is a strong signal that Americans want to join together in improving the country as a whole. “Love is the only force powerful enough to overcome those incredibly powerful forces that are pulling us apart. You can’t love the country without caring about all of our fellow Americans,” said Bob Boisture, president of the Fetzer Institute, told The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Concerns for the 2020 election process are already being lessened as more voters and more state officials step up like never before. Americans can wear two hats at once – partisan voter and democracy protector. At this point, the latter hat appears bigger.