It’s one of President-elect Joe Biden’s favorite anecdotes about his formative years in the Senate.

Not long into his 36-year career there, the young Senator Biden was greatly disturbed to hear conservative GOP Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina excoriate Sen. Bob Dole’s Americans with Disabilities Act. 

“I can’t believe anyone could be so heartless, and care so little about people with disabilities,” Senator Biden told Democratic majority leader Mike Mansfield at the time. “It makes me angry.”

Senator Mansfield replied with a story. Several years before, Senator Helms and his wife had seen an item in the local paper about a young man “in braces who was handicapped at an orphanage,” as Senator Mansfield put it. All the boy wanted for Christmas was to be part of a family. So the Helmses adopted him.

“Joe, never question another man’s motive,” Senator Mansfield cautioned. “Question his judgment, but never his motive.”

This lesson, described in Mr. Biden’s farewell Senate speech in 2009, frames his approach to politics. Over the course of his career, he became friends with some of the most unlikely senators, including segregationists Strom Thurmond and John Stennis – people with whom he deeply disagreed on many points, but with whom he could also find common ground. He eulogized both Senators Thurmond and Helms, who was known as “Senator No,” at their funerals.

And that’s just it. Many of the friendships that Mr. Biden forged in the Senate were with people who have since retired or died. The same is true of the Senate he knew – one built on personal relationships and trust, even if glaringly deficient in other ways, such as gender and racial diversity. Those hallowed halls were invaded Jan. 6 in a shocking, violent attempt by President Donald Trump’s supporters to stop Congress from counting certified Electoral College votes confirming Mr. Biden as the winner of the presidential election. Five people were killed in what Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described as a “failed insurrection” by a mob that was “fed lies” and “provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Now President-elect Biden is trying to pick up the pieces and glue the country – and Washington – back together. He faces a daunting task in a divided Congress that Democrats only narrowly control, and where a significant number of House and Senate Republicans voted to object to the election results. Complicating matters is a historic post-presidential impeachment trial of Mr. Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” Characteristically, Mr. Biden plans to start his presidency with outreach – inviting all four Democratic and Republican congressional leaders to a church service with him on the morning of his Jan. 20 inauguration.

“Biden is counting on his relationships in the Senate to help him move his legislative agenda,” says Jim Manley, former spokesman for then-Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. “One of the problems, of course, is that the good old days are long gone.” Only 31 senators remain who served with Mr. Biden. While personal relationships still count for something in the Senate, he says, “I’m afraid that given how partisan things have become, it doesn’t mean as much as it used to.”

Mr. Manley says that after watching 139 GOP House members and eight senators “vote to steal” the election hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, he has a hard time believing things will change anytime soon. He describes “a poison” coursing through the Republican Party that may take years to eliminate and which will make it very tough for Mr. Biden to move legislation, such as his proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus plan to fight the pandemic.

Personal relationships may “mitigate conflict a bit,” says Ross Baker, an expert on the Senate at Rutgers University. “But are they game changers? Probably not.”

Yet others are more hopeful – including, apparently, Mr. Biden and the record 81 million voters who supported him. His history of reaching across the aisle, of befriending polar opposites, of spending hours sitting with someone like Senator Helms and going over the Chemical Weapons Treaty word by word, is real, according to allies.

“This is the way he’s conducted himself. He’s not coming up with some newfound toy,” says Bobby Juliano, a longtime friend of Mr. Biden’s who is now an independent consultant with strong ties to organized labor. The lesson of congressional politics, he says, is less about making permanent friends than being sure not to make permanent enemies.

“People may disagree with Joe on one or two or even 10 issues, but nobody finds him disagreeable,” noted Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, in a Senate tribute to him in December 2016. She recalled the time she brought her younger brother to a White House holiday party. They ran into the vice president just as he was leaving. But instead of heading home after a long day, he gave them a 45-minute private tour of the West Wing. “I still remember the shocked look on the face of the Marine at the situation room when we arrived there.”

One of the most important Biden relationships on the Hill will be with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware – his “eyes and ears” with both parties, as Mr. Juliano puts it. The two are close, and Senator Coons now holds Biden’s seat, serving on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees, the same ones his mentor once chaired.

Rob Carr/AP/File

Vice President Joe Biden (left) and Delaware Democratic Senate candidate Chris Coons applaud while attending a rally for the Delaware Democratic Party ticket, Nov. 1, 2010, in Wilmington, Delaware.

In Biden fashion, Senator Coons makes a point of getting to know Republicans, and is viewed as Mr. Biden’s emissary to GOP senators. In an interview last month, he told the Monitor that media commentators are underestimating the hunger for civility and normalcy in the Senate – not to mention the country.

After the storming of the Capitol, Senator Coons called for GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to resign for leading the charge to overturn the election. In a statement, he said that he believes in reconciliation, citing the example of the late civil rights icon John Lewis. But “true reconciliation only comes after repentance. I’m looking to see whether my colleagues reflect on the violence of January 6th and take any responsibility that can lay the groundwork for reconciliation.”

He also said that reporters are mistaken in believing that Mr. Biden’s relationships in the Senate ended when he left. He points to his friend’s eight years as vice president working with members of Congress, plus all the campaigning he has done with Democratic Senate candidates over the years – driving to events, working rope lines with them, flying to the next stop. “That means he’s got real relationships,” he said last month.

A key one will be with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who will become the majority leader of a 50-50 Senate where former Sen. Kamala Harris – as vice president – will be the tie breaker.

Senator Schumer, who is in discussion with Senator McConnell about a potential power-sharing agreement, is “cut from the same cloth” as Mr. Biden, says Matt House, a former Schumer spokesman. They are both “pragmatists and progressives” and have a “very good” relationship, says Mr. House, in an interview last fall. Their legislative careers overlapped, and when the New Yorker was a freshman senator, he discovered he was claiming an issue – college affordability – that Senator Biden had already staked out as his own. In no uncertain terms, Senator Biden’s office told Senator Schumer to back off, until one day on the Senate floor, the senior lawmaker placed his arm on his junior colleague’s shoulder and said, “Go ahead, take the issue. I know what it’s like for new senators to carve their own path.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York speaks during a press conference on March 26, 2019, in Washington, D.C.

Still, as Senator Coons reminds, “Whether he’s the majority leader or the minority leader, you can’t move anything through this body without Mitch McConnell.” The relationship between Mr. Biden and Senator McConnell “has been strained by what happened during the Obama administration,” when the Kentucky Republican took up his position as chief Obama blocker, including denying even a hearing for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland – now Mr. Biden’s nominee for attorney general.

Still, Mr. Biden and Senator McConnell were able to work through the very serious fiscal crises during the Obama administration.

“Obviously, I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him implicitly,” the Kentuckian said during his 2016 tribute to the vice president. “He doesn’t break his word. He doesn’t waste time telling me why I am wrong. He gets down to brass tacks, and he keeps in sight the stakes. There is a reason ‘Get Joe on the phone’ is shorthand for ‘Time to get serious’ in my office.”

Indeed, in the Obama White House, Mr. Biden was known as “the McConnell Whisperer.”

“Trust begets trust,” says Patrick Griffin, former congressional liaison for President Bill Clinton. If the White House – be it the president, a Vice President Kamala Harris, or any other key figure – can talk with congressional leadership off the record and in confidence, parameters of a deal can be set and embarrassments can be avoided, he says. “You can be candid about what you can and can’t do.” 

President Clinton, being an outsider, had a couple of buddies on the Hill, says Mr. Griffin, but “nobody who would die on the cross for him.” President Obama – still a freshman senator when he was elected to the highest office in the land – went on golf outings with former House Speaker John Boehner, the Republican from Ohio. But “he was doing this more as a grim exercise, rather than a real effort to have recreational time with a congressional leader,” notes Professor Baker at Rutgers.

President Trump may have phoned plenty of lawmakers, but these were transactional relationships, often based on fear. The “gold standard,” says Professor Baker, was Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. As former Senate majority leader, he interacted daily with the Republican minority leader, Everett Dirksen. As president, he phoned Senator Dirksen multiple times a day, and the two often ended their days together over bourbon – either at the White House or in Senator Dirksen’s office. President Johnson could not have passed civil rights legislation without Senator Dirksen’s help.

But Senator McConnell is not going to be influenced by cocktails at the White House, says a former Republican leadership aide. For him, “It’s about the policy. It’s not the personality.” If Mr. Biden wants to work in the middle, Senator McConnell will work there, too, the former aide says.

He points to a major transportation bill that Senator McConnell negotiated with former Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2015 – one of the more productive years in recent Senate history, when Senator McConnell became majority leader at a time of divided government. “The two couldn’t be more different, but they had a common interest in getting a deal done, and neither one could say their party won.” He added: “I don’t think those two ever spent five minutes together in a room before that deal.”

The former GOP aide suggests the new president’s relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be the one to watch, because of the historically narrow margin she has with her caucus. Indeed, Mr. Biden will have to keep an eye on his left flank, which is going to require a delicate balancing act, says Mr. Juliano.

“The Bernie Sanders crowd and the ‘mod squad’ will be pushing for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the Republicans will be pushing him for nothing, nothing, nothing,” he says.

Mr. Juliano believes Mr. Biden can restore Washington to a more civil, cooperative period, something that Mr. Biden appears to believe in his core. He talked about just such transformation in that same Senate exit speech, when he related an unexpected encounter with retiring Mississippi Sen. John Stennis, whose office Senator Biden was going to take over.

Senator Biden had entered his future office to check it out. Unknown to anyone, the retiring senator was there in his wheelchair. Despite their stark differences over segregation, the two men had become friends, deepened by a time when they had shared a hospital suite at Walter Reed.

Talking to his younger colleague, Senator Stennis touched an enormous mahogany table which he used as his desk, telling him it was “the flagship of the Confederacy,” where the Southern segregationist senators had gathered every Tuesday in the 1950s and 1960s “to plan the demise of the civil rights movement.” He said it was time for the table to pass from a man who was against civil rights to one who was for them.

As Senator Biden left to go, Senator Stennis said that the civil rights movement did more to free the white man than the Black man. “How’s that?” Senator Biden asked. “It freed my soul; it freed my soul,” Senator Stennis answered.

“I can tell you that by his own account, John Stennis was personally enlarged by his service in the Senate. That’s the power of this institution,” Mr. Biden told his fellow senators. “It opens a door for change. I think it opens a door for personal growth, and in that comes the political progress this nation has made.”

Andrew Harnik/AP

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021.

You might say that outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is leaving his successor and the Biden administration foreign-policy team a lengthy and hastily compiled “to-undo” list.

In just the past few days, Mr. Pompeo has: returned Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism – from which President Barack Obama removed the communist island nation in 2015; designated Yemen’s Houthis a terrorist group; ended decades-old restrictions on U.S. diplomatic contacts with Taiwan; and continued to pile on sanctions targeting the Iranian and Chinese governments.

Most are measures President-elect Joe Biden will likely want to reverse as quickly as possible in order to implement his vision for addressing the issues involved through diplomacy.

But undoing the recent actions adds a layer of unanticipated risk to the work of the new foreign-policy team, placing what experts call “land mines” in their path. Reversing the Cuba and Houthi designations, for example, will invite attacks from political opponents that the new administration is soft on communism and terrorism.

Mr. Biden, who takes office at noon Wednesday, was already going to be busy reversing some of President Donald Trump’s signature foreign-policy actions. He announced over the weekend that among his Day One actions will be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement – from which Mr. Trump withdrew the United States on his first day in office – as well as a cancellation of Mr. Trump’s controversial Muslim travel ban.

Mr. Biden has also pledged to return the U.S. to the Iran nuclear deal (from which Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. in 2018) once Iran commits to return to the limits the 2015 agreement placed on its nuclear program.

Unlike most presidential transitions of yore, when the departing administration focused on enabling a smooth transition to the next and significant last-minute foreign-policy actions were rare, Mr. Pompeo has taken a dizzying number of actions many experts say can only be explained as efforts to tie the hands of the incoming team and to make its foreign-policy path more onerous.

“It’s like pulling the pin of the grenade and rolling it into the room where the new administration is getting ready to try to deal with all of these issues in the ways they see fit,” says Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. “You’re setting them up for failure. It’s just making things worse,” she adds, “not better.”

Last-minute executive order

The last-minute measures demonstrate how foreign policy, once largely above the domestic partisan fray and more consistent than not from one administration to the next, has become as polarized and divisive as domestic policy, some experts say.

President Trump has also taken last-minute steps of his own to, if not tie Mr. Biden’s hands, then at least complicate his initial days in office. On Monday Mr. Trump signed an executive order lifting coronavirus travel restrictions for a handful of countries as of Jan. 26 – when he will no longer be in office.

Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman quickly tweeted that, given the gravity of the pandemic and following the advice of the new administration’s medical team, the restrictions would not be lifted.

Laura Buckman/Reuters/File

A young girl dances with an American flag in baggage claim while women pray behind her during a protest against the travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump's executive order, at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Dallas, Texas, Jan. 29, 2017.

One result of this politicization is more sidestepping of Congress and foreign policy by executive order, experts say, which has only encouraged what Ms. Conley calls the “swinging pendulum” of U.S. foreign policy.

Swinging the pendulum back takes time and energy on the part of the new administration, and complicates its path forward by increasing tensions with the countries involved.

But perhaps the most damaging impact of a zigzag foreign policy, experts say, is that allies and adversaries alike can no longer trust the United States to be a consistent and stable diplomatic interlocutor.

“You want your word to be credible, but it becomes hard for our allies and adversaries to commit to working with us or entering into agreements with us if they can’t believe what we’re saying or that it’s going to last,” says Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

“In international relations you have the idea that the parties ‘credibly commit’ to something,” he adds, but the recent changeableness of U.S. foreign policy “raises questions for many about the U.S. ability to ‘credibly commit’ going forward.”

Continuity is the norm

Mr. Drezner says Republican and Democratic administrations have for decades played a kind of ping-pong of enforcing and undoing what is called the Mexico City Policy. Since 1984 the policy has been implemented by Republican administrations to ban U.S. health aid to foreign NGOs providing abortion services or counseling including the abortion option. Incoming Democratic administrations, on the other hand, have quickly lifted what is also known as the “global gag rule.”

But other examples are hard to come by, Mr. Drezner says. He notes that President Bill Clinton negotiated late into his second term a free-trade accord with Jordan that included labor and environmental components that the incoming Bush administration opposed.

But in the end the Bush administration “swallowed hard” and went forward with the trade deal, he says.

As other examples, Professor Drezner notes that the Carter administration negotiated for the Iran hostages’ release right up to its final hours, and President George H.W. Bush sent troops into Somalia in December 1992 – just weeks before leaving office. But he adds that Mr. Bush kept Mr. Clinton, the president-elect, “looped in” on the Somalia troop deployment, while the hostage negotiations with Iran ended up providing a boost to the incoming Reagan administration.

“The difference is that these things were not intended as land mines to blow up under the new guys, they were more part of a seamless foreign policy that in many ways carried on from one administration to the next,” he says.

Noting that “foreign policy is now in many ways as polarized as domestic politics,” Professor Drezner says it’s not surprising that Mr. Pompeo would act on issues that “have domestic political resonance,” like Cuba, China, and terrorism.

Pompeo’s political ambitions

Mr. Pompeo, who leaves office touting as one of his major accomplishments the reversal of the “appeasement policies” of the previous Obama-Biden administration – toward Iran and China, for example – is assumed by many political observers to be laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2024.

Daring Mr. Biden to risk strengthening that “appeasement” image by reversing the terrorist designations of Cuba or the Houthis is widely seen as essentially a political move.

Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis may not be a hot-button issue in the U.S., but Yemen’s devastating humanitarian crisis is a rallying cry for many human rights and aid groups. Recognizing the reality that the rebel Houthis control most of Yemen’s territory, and thus the distribution of desperately needed food assistance, could prompt the incoming Biden administration to reverse the Houthis’ designation as a terrorist group, some regional experts say.

But such action could in turn prompt political opponents to label the new administration soft on terrorism, Professor Drezner says.

Some experts say there are still areas of significant and even growing consensus in foreign policy. China is one, says Ms. Conley of CSIS, noting that “if anything, we’re seeing greater bipartisanship and agreement on getting tough” with Beijing.

Indeed, when Mr. Pompeo announced Tuesday that the U.S. now considers China’s treatment of the minority Uighurs to be “genocide,” it was a rare instance of the administration endorsing a position already taken by Mr. Biden – who announced last year through a spokesman that he considered China’s Uighur policies to be “genocide.”

“China is a perfect example of our position in the world and our pursuit of national interests only getting worse when we are divided, so I think a lot of people are saying, ‘Let’s try a more bipartisan approach to China, clearly one of our major challenges going forward,’” Ms. Conley says. “The U.S. will be stronger globally when allies and adversaries alike know we’re unified, and can have confidence that we’ll have some stick-to-it-iveness in our policies.”

When a mob of protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, the world looked on in shock. But for many in Latin America – where caudillos, coups, and delicate democracies have emerged repeatedly over the past century – the violence in Washington felt uncomfortably familiar.

Although democracy has arguably strengthened across the region in recent decades, many Latin Americans have experienced anti-democratic leaders and violent protests firsthand: from the long, slow erosion of democracy in Venezuela, to a coup and contested elections in Honduras; or violent protests in front of Argentina’s presidential palace that forced the president to flee by helicopter, and demonstrators climbing on the roof of congress in Brazil.

The comparisons aren’t perfect. But as the U.S. debates how to move forward, with the rest of the world watching, some Latin Americans see an opportunity for reflection – and possible lessons for the United States from neighbors to the south. The U.S. may have arrived at the brink earlier this month, but it’s now facing a pivotal moment, they say, when decisions of politicians and citizens alike will determine the path ahead.

“It worries me because if this happens in the U.S., where are we headed?” asks Lourdes Ramírez, an award-winning Honduran journalist. “There need to be sanctions or some kind of accountability [for President Donald Trump], because there can’t be absolute power. That’s what I’ve admired about the U.S. – the checks from Congress and the Senate. That’s what allowed it to avoid what’s happened in Honduras.”

In the wake of the Jan. 6 unrest, some U.S. politicians were criticized for comparing the riots to what they’d expect to see happen in “banana republics” or the “Third World.” For many in Latin America, the subtext was the idea that U.S. democracy can’t fall prey to the same threats that have emerged in other parts of the world.

“What these analogies miss out on is that Latin American democracies have actually been pretty stable for the past 30 years,” says Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of “Americas Quarterly.” “As a matter of fact, some countries in the region you could argue today are more stable than the U.S.,” like Uruguay and Costa Rica, which have built strong institutions and electoral traditions.

Yet the U.S. and Latin America may have more in common than Americans like to acknowledge.

The attempts to overturn the 2020 election underscore “our countries are less different than we thought in a lot of ways,” says Mr. Winter, who has lived in and studied the region for two decades. “The polarization, the institutional decay, the rising inequality. All the things that have been in the headlines in Latin America for years, we’re now seeing in our politics in the U.S.”

The view from Caracas

Venezuela is a modern poster child for crumbling democracy: from years of extreme inequality, and firebrand Hugo Chávez’s rise to power, to multiple coup attempts, constitutional changes to allow his reelection, highly manipulated elections, and the decline of independent institutions.

After the Capitol riot, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted a statement that felt pulled from the twilight zone: “Venezuela expresses its concern over the acts of violence that are taking place in the city of Washington, USA; condemns political polarization and hopes that the American people can blaze a new path toward stability and social justice.”

Matias Delacroix/AP

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza speaks at a press conference regarding a U.S. court ruling authorizing a sale of shares of Venezuela's Citgo parent company, at the Foreign Ministry in Caracas Jan. 16, 2021. Mr. Arreaza tweeted a statement of concern after the Jan. 6 riot in Washington.

For many Venezuelans, watching events in the U.S. stirred up memories of their nation’s own missed opportunities, for citizens and politicians alike.

Like much of the U.S. in recent years, Venezuela was highly polarized by its former president, Mr. Chávez, who tapped into the media to rally his base and decry his detractors. “When you went to meet people for the first time, one of the first questions you were asked was ‘Are you for or against Chávez?’” recalls Mariano de Alba, a Venezuelan lawyer specializing in international relations. He sees parallels with stories he hears from friends in the U.S. of families and communities divided over their support for Mr. Trump.

“It became, really quickly, an us-versus-them scenario on both sides,” he says. “Obviously that climate of polarization leads to other troubling things that we’re also seeing in the U.S., like the media being attacked as not impartial, or people seeking out sources that will tell them what they want to believe.” U.S. citizens have a responsibility to build bridges where they can, he adds.

In retrospect, it’s easy to spot mistakes by Mr. Chávez’s opponents, Mr. de Alba says. Many people left government during his early years in office, and the opposition at times burned bridges instead of fighting to maintain them – such as with the military.

“So, when the conflict got to the point where in order for things to change you really needed a channel of communication with people with opposing views, it just didn’t exist,” he says. “It’s hard to come back from.”

Elsa Cardozo, a retired professor of international affairs at Venezuela’s Andrés Bello Catholic University, says this is a key moment for educators at all levels in the U.S. Teachers must cultivate not just knowledge about democracy and respecting its norms, but critical thinking and self-reflection. “That was something really ignored and overlooked for many years in Venezuela before Chávez” rose to power, she says. An engaged population that understands democracy, and its own political moment, is harder for politicians to take advantage of, she adds.

Reconciliation – or not

Polarization was the name of the game in Honduras in the late 2000s as well. Then-President Manuel Zelaya found success in speaking to a portion of the Honduran population that had long felt overlooked and ignored by traditional politicians. But his pledge to hold an unofficial referendum on whether to change the constitution to allow for presidential reelection led to a military-backed coup in 2009.

Less than a decade later, conservative judges overruled the constitution’s ban, allowing the political coalitions behind the coup to present a candidate for reelection. Institutional independence deteriorated, widespread protests became regular occurrences, and the 2017 reelection of President Juan Orlando Hernández was widely criticized internationally for irregularities.

Lester Ramírez, director of governance and transparency at the Association for a More Just Society, says one of the biggest lessons learned from Honduras’ 2009 coup, and the years of eroding democratic institutions and attacks on civil society that followed, was the need for reconciliation. “If we had had a reconciliation process in all of society, I think we would have avoided the type of leadership that we have right now,” he says. “We thought that by having elections we would start a new chapter. We did, but we’re still carrying baggage from the last chapter before it.”

Ms. Ramírez, the journalist, agrees. There was a truth commission following the 2009 coup, “but no one took the recommendations seriously,” she says, urging U.S. politicians not to do the same. “So we kept weakening our democracy and our rights.”

Mr. Ramírez (no relation to Lourdes Ramírez) says he’s rooting for the U.S.’s recovery from today’s deep divisions and animosity. If the U.S. can heal from this, perhaps that’s something they can “export,” alongside messages of democracy targeted toward Latin America. Given that economic and political divisions – and the leadership that plays into these divides – are challenges facing many Latin American societies, he’d love to see a solution in the U.S. that could be implemented internationally.

“I’d like to see a good counter-effect to populism and authoritarianism,” he says. “Something that can give people economic opportunities and a chance to share their voice.”

January is nearly always a great month for books, as readers emerge from the holidays eager to dive into fresh piles of books. And this year is no different.  

1. Better Luck Next Time by Julia Claiborne Johnson

Set in 1938 on a dude ranch catering to wealthy women seeking Reno divorces, Julia Claiborne Johnson’s novel channels Hollywood screwball comedies. Narrated 50 years later by a retired doctor whose job it was, in his 20s, to squire the guests, the book captures both the high jinks and heartache of his pivotal last summer there. Full review here. 

2. The Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Sadeqa Johnson’s novel is a layered look at the journey of Pheby Brown, a biracial woman born into slavery and, ironically, privilege. Johnson probes deeply into the roots of color, class, and gender in the 1800s. The book strips bare what it means to struggle to survive as an “owned” woman. Full review here.

3. The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Penguin Random House

“The Ex Talk” by Rachel Lynn Solomon, Berkley, 352 pp.

This satisfying romantic comedy tells of two 20-something radio producers in Seattle. Shay already has 10 years of experience while Dominic, fresh out of grad school, is certain that he knows more. Natural adversaries, they’re assigned to host a program that offers relationship advice from the vantage point of two exes. Of course, they scramble to maintain the ruse when the animosity melts and their romance begins.

4. No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush

Keisha Bush weaves an “Oliver Twist”-like tale of pain and faith drawn partially on her experiences living in Dakar, Senegal. Ibrahimah is a boy living an idyllic life with his family. That all changes one day when he and his cousin are sent to Senegal’s capital to study the Quran. Bush poses essential questions about free will and liberation. Full review here. 

5. The War Widow by Tara Moss

In postwar Sydney, Australia, war correspondent Billie Walker reinvents herself from a bereaved widow to private eye when she reopens her late father’s agency. With a crackling plot and vibrant prose, Tara Moss concocts a first-rate noir detective mystery.

6. Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour

Charlie Gilmour describes with wit and tenderness his unplanned adoption of a baby magpie, which becomes an object of fascination. He uses the episode as a springboard to a discussion of family bonds, principally his relationship with his absentee biological father. This absorbing memoir is touching, painful, and honest. Full review here.

7. Long Time Coming by Michael Eric Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson excavates the centuries-old mechanics of white supremacy and lays them bare. Five chapters, written to Black “martyrs,” chisel out the bedrock of American mainstays such as police brutality. Dyson asks a necessary but difficult question: Are we really ready to talk about race? Full review here.

8. Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule

Macmillan Publishers

“Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause” by Ty Seidule, St. Martin's Press, 304 pp.

Ty Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general, doesn’t just knock his boyhood idol off the pedestal. He issues an uncompromising, searing, full-throated indictment of Robert E. Lee as a historically misrepresented figure and denounces the many institutions that have given currency to the “Lost Cause” mythology through the years. Full review here. 

9. The Eagles of Heart Mountain by Bradford Pearson

Bradford Pearson delivers a meticulously researched and powerful history of Japanese American internment during World War II. He highlights the absurdity of the imprisonment with the tale of an undeniably all-American football team created at the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp in remote Wyoming. Full review here.

10. American Baby by Gabrielle Glaser

Gabrielle Glaser tells the heartbreaking story of Margaret Erle, an unwed teen coerced into surrendering her infant son to an adoption agency in 1961. The empathetic account alternates between Margaret and her son David, up through their poignant reunion, while also illuminating the disturbing history of adoption in postwar America. Full review here.

AP

Amanda Gorman will recite an original poem at the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

In picking a theme for his presidential inauguration – “America United” – Joe Biden was surely appealing to the heart more than the head of his fellow citizens. Fewer than half of Americans say he will make the right decisions on policy, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. How can Mr. Biden put the “united” back in a divided United States? One clue was his invitation to a young Black poet, Amanda Gorman, to recite a heartfelt poem for 5 minutes during the swearing-in ceremony.

Poets everywhere seem to be responding to the challenges of these times. Ms. Gorman’s verse certainly fits the playbill for a new stage in national politics. She promises a message of “joining together” with dignity and integrity. Samples of her previous work may help explain why Mr. Biden chose her as the sixth poet ever to grace an inauguration platform:

The question isn’t if we will weather this unknown, but how we will weather this unknown together. So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend. Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend.

let every dawn find us courageous, brought closer; heeding the light before the fight is over. When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing in testing times, we became the best of beings.

Together again and again we will stride up every mountainside magnanimous and modest. We will be protected and served by a force that is honor and honest.

This is more than protest. It’s a promise.

Much of today’s poetry aims to soothe both heart and mind. “Poetry demands you calm down and slow down,” Montana’s co-poet laureate Melissa Kwasny recently told the Independent Record in Helena, Montana. “It’s not like reading the news. It requires your presence. It requires you to be there.”

She and her co-poet laureate, M.L. Smoker, believe “poetry is a necessary – a crucial – medicine for these times, because it is the language of the heart, of feeling, of connection between one’s life and another’s.”

In Philadelphia, a “healing verse” telephone hotline (1-855-763-6792) connects listeners with a new poem each Monday. The city’s poet laureate, Trapeta B. Mayson, established it as an antidote to disturbing news of political unrest, pandemic, and racial injustice.

Ms. Mayson purposefully chose a telephone hotline as her medium so that even those without access to a computer could be comforted by another human voice. Each week a different poet offers a healing message. One recent poem, for example, spoke of how “music gets my heart up off the floor” and how the speaker is lifted by “this little pleasure of song.”

Poems can also wake up readers. A poem written three years ago by Nebraska’s state poet, Matt Mason, recently gained thousands of new readers when The New York Times republished it. Called “The Start,” it tells how a few words or a tiny action, if fueled by hate, can explode into aggressive acts. 

Poets hunt for ways to clarify and express their thoughts and emotions, to better understand and deal with them. Some of the simplest poetry can be the most effective. It needn’t require a graduate degree in English to understand.

Poems can express a simple deep desire, even a prayer. In “To My Mother” mid-20th-century British poet George Barker addresses the war-torn world of his time. He concludes:

and so I send

O all my faith, and all my love to tell her

That she will move from mourning into morning.

Thinking like a poet can help people, David Kirby, an American poet and professor of English at Florida State University, told Deseret Magazine. “Like poets, then, we need to be clear-eyed, careful and confident,” he writes, “and we also need to get out there and stumble around until we come across the people who can help us, even though we don’t know who they are yet.”

In Robert Frost’s poem “Choose Something Like a Star,” written during the depths of World War II, he looks to the heavens to find stability and peace. He ends with a thought that resonates today:

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry praise or blame too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

From Walt Whitman to Robert Frost to Amanda Gorman, Americans have long looked to poets to provide light for the nation’s heart. Even 5 minutes of uplifting verse can do what prose and politics cannot.