A "sympathetic" but NOT uncritical bio of Charles. Smith notes his stubbornness, his New Agey angles on alt medicine, GMOs and more, aVery solid book.
A "sympathetic" but NOT uncritical bio of Charles. Smith notes his stubbornness, his New Agey angles on alt medicine, GMOs and more, and aside from that, his PR battles with the Crown.
But, even if Charles' take on his childhood wasn't totally accurate, she at the same time notes how his perceptions could have developed.
As for Diana? I learned a fair amount here. (This may be why many readers, whether here in the US or elsewhere, lower-starred it.) First, her older sister also had anorexia and bulimia. In both cases, that could have been in part a reaction to their parents' divorce. But, it could also be an indication of a strong genetic predisposition toward anxiety.
Next, although Diana wasn't ready to marry into the "Firm," Smith notes how, from her first meetup with Charles, she was, to put it bluntly, determined to "land him."
Anyway, there's lots of good stuff beyond that. Smith notes how the prince has pushed the envelope repeatedly on constitutional issues, while at the same time working to modernize the Firm, and the Crown for whenever he succeeds Elizabeth (if he doesn't die first)....more
First, where was I? Senior year in college. I remember CNN doing almost endless loops of the explosion. (Arguably, this was one of its first big boostFirst, where was I? Senior year in college. I remember CNN doing almost endless loops of the explosion. (Arguably, this was one of its first big boosts.)
As for the book? As a few others have noted, it may not be as much about McAuliffe as some people would hope. But, the title says it's about her and the disaster both. And, given the degree to which her hubby kept his and the kids' post-disaster life private, he and her parents burying her in an unmarked grave, etc., that's not necessarily Cook's fault. I was on the 4/5 star fence in part due to this, but went 5.
That said, I'm not sure how much of the story is "untold" and how much I just hadn't heard before, but, I will admit the details of the last minute of the shuttle crew cabin after the explosion of the booster, and how the astronauts likely died, and the apparent effort to try to land the beast after all, are new to me.
The investigation and Feynmann's crucial role? All known to me, except the leak about O-ring concerns to another committee member, Air Force Gen. Donald Kutyna, but knowing it was serious and real, passed it on to Feynman. (He, it turns out, got it from Sally Ride; passing it on put an extra "layer" on it.)
At the same time, much of this info, per Wiki, has been out there for years. In fact, it still appears we don't know for sure whether depressurization or ocean impact killed the seven.
So, this isn't "unknown." Only the author's semi-novelistic touches on the astronauts' last minute or two of life is new to writing, but not "unknown." With that, we're down to 4 stars again for sure.
And, he gets one basic science issue wrong. Sublimation is NOT when a liquid turns to a gas; it's when a solid turns to a gas, like dry ice. (Snow, especially in dry climates, will sublimate, too.)
The book also doesn't note that Sally Ride was the THIRD woman in space, letting readers infer she was the second. She was after USSR cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (1963) and Svetlana Savitskaya (1982) and it's possible that Savitskaya's ride spurred NASA to get Sally Ride out there sooner. (A year later, in 1984, Savitskaya became the first woman to spacewalk.)
And, not liking false headlines, and although I learned stuff from here, I could have learned it elsewhere, I drop to 3 stars. Again, since we don't get half stars, I would do 3.5 if I could ......more
No, it's not Bob Caro's multivolume tomes on LBJ, but given the subject and everything, a 4.5 star that I am bumping up because of low ratA fun read.
No, it's not Bob Caro's multivolume tomes on LBJ, but given the subject and everything, a 4.5 star that I am bumping up because of low ratings and because I gave Idle's bio 4 stars and this is better overall, from my memory.
This book is mainly a bio of John Cleese. It is NOT mainly, or even close to it, a history of Python. In fact, it leaves off, except for an epilogue about their lawsuit-forced reunion at the O2, shortly after the founding of Python. And, that said, you get John Cleese the man behind John Cleese the Python troupe member.
It also does not talk about his post-Python career except a few references to Fawlty Towers and a couple to A Fish Called Wanda....more
Too New Agey and too based on logical fallacies for me.
I agree that developing hope and resilience are good. I think anecdotal stories can be a part oToo New Agey and too based on logical fallacies for me.
I agree that developing hope and resilience are good. I think anecdotal stories can be a part of this. But, the background thoughts, the framing? Not for me.
On the former of the two things mentioned in the first paragraph? The "spark that's in everything" is where Goodall started losing me. Claiming trees communicate pretty much sealed the deal.
Reality? Trees don't even "communicate," re the example she used that's all the rage in non-critical-thinking biologists today. Rather, fungi on the roots of one tree "communicate" (and scare quotes needed, because they don't actually communicate, either) with the fungi on the roots of another tree. The two, or more, trees have nothing to do with directing, or "directing," this. They're just free riders.
The logical fallacy? Bullseye fallacy, file drawer fallacy, whatever you call it. For every person that survives horrifying child abuse, civil war, etc, at least one more doesn't. Not telling their stories, especially when you are presenting from a New Agey angle, can — even if not intended — guilt trip survivors into "why can't I be more hopeful?" Barbara Ehrenreich covered this perfectly on her book about cancer survival.
I wavered between two and three stars but ultimately went with two.
Related to this? Unless I'm missing some trick, this is a shortcoming of Goodreads vs. Amazon. I can't just click on a link to show only 3-star ratings, or only 2-star, or whatever. Ditto on reviews. I can, at the top of reviews, click on the little bar graph and get details on how many reviews there are for each star, but that's it....more
After I recently read Kai Bird’s somewhat disappointing bio of Jimmy Carter, I saw other reviewers of it mention Jonathan Alter’s bio as better. Well,After I recently read Kai Bird’s somewhat disappointing bio of Jimmy Carter, I saw other reviewers of it mention Jonathan Alter’s bio as better. Well, I’ve not read that, but my library had this book, and so I checked it out.
And, it is better indeed.
This book is at its best on two issues: The “malaise” speech and the Iranian hostages. I’ll give the basics of both without full-on detailed spoilers.
On the speech, he first notes Pat Caddell’s Rasputin-like hold over both the Carters. And, yes, he uses the word “Rasputin.” Then he describes where the “malaise” came from, since Carter never used the word. It was in Caddell’s notes and talking points, that eventually got to Elizabeth Drew at the NYT.
As for its effect? Eizenstat says Carter initially boomed UPward in public polling. 17 percentage points. What happened? Carter’s Cabinet firings and how they were done undercut this.
(All probably needed to go, but only Schlesinger out in the cold. Michael Blumenthal? Find another economics position for him … assistant head of the Fed? Califano? Move him inside the Oval as a White House counsel; in some way, clutch the scorpion closer.
On the hostages? He notes that the biggest failure, after they were taken, was Carter making an ironclad “no harm” commitment to their families, closely followed by too personalizing their situations. Both became lead anchors on his political future.
On how this happened? Ignoring both Ambassador Sullivan and George Ball, who I did not know before had been involved with analyzing the situation before Khomenei solidified control. Before the Shah vamoosed, even, Ball, like Sullivan, recommended reaching out, and QUICKLY, to non-theocratic opposition and cutting a deal.
After the hostages had been taken? Eizenstat says their continued holding wasn't so much an FU to the US as it was pro-Khomenei Islamic Republic types wanting to get the upper hand over the quasi-secular, theoretically official government. He notes US efforts to negotiate with government officials went nowhere, even when seeming to go somewhere, because none of them had Khomenei's sign-off, an issue that continues with Iran's dual government today.
This relates to the taking of the hostages, Eizenstat says. He says that from what we can tell, Khomenei did not order this, but knew it in advance. Although Eizenstat doesn't use the US presidential phrase of "plausible deniability," it seems this is exactly what was at stake.
On domestic stuff? Eizenstat is right on Carter’s legacy on energy, and the difficulty in getting his energy policy bill passed. He’s right on not wanting national health care without cost controls, still an issue today. He’s right on Ted Kennedy refusing to compromise with Carter any more than he had with Nixon, and being wrong there.
He also praises to the point of overpraising on airline and truck/railroad dereg. On the former, dereg is not the only reason airline costs dropped. On the latter, some things should have been retained; don’t just blame Reagan and others later than Carter.
The chapter on how Andy Young, and his promoted deputy, influenced the 1980 Dem primary is interesting. Had Kennedy not won New York, he would have dropped out, but the US supporting an Arab resolution at the UN, falling through several cracks, backfired.
The book is also good overall on Carter’s personality and his political personality and the probjems it caused.
Although five-star overall, it misses addressing two of those problems from the previous paragraph. One is that Carter’s engineering micromanagement personality, not just wanting to be the anti-Nixon, is why he refused to have a chief of staff for two years. Related? Despite being warned about it, he hired both Vance and Brzezinski because, IMO, he thought he could engineering-manage both of them. If we could half-star, I'd cut to 4.5 because of not going deeper into just how self-injurious Carter really was.
==
Oh, Alter's bio, overall, is worse than Kai Bird's and definitely worse than this....more
This book gets an overall three-star rating, which itself is a complex of three subratings and some downward rounding. (I was probably at 3.5 stars ovThis book gets an overall three-star rating, which itself is a complex of three subratings and some downward rounding. (I was probably at 3.5 stars overall, but with every full review here on Goodreads going 5 stars and the total of all ratings at 4.5? Nope. Needed some evening out.)
First, I give an easy 5 stars on his discussion of the Principate and imperial administration in the whole latter half of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Drinkwater shows how any Princeps did not rule alone. A consilium, with various segments, from official imperial administration, through personal friends, and through senators more closely tied to the leader, and on to trusted military leaders, were part of the circle of governance. In Nero’s particular case, this was Agrippina in the leadership for his early months, along with Pallas, and Pallas continuing on, then Seneca and Burrus, then Tigellinus and Poppaea through her death and the Pisonian conspiracy. But, things started falling apart after that, to some degree, though Drinkwater says they weren’t that bad until after Nero’s return from Greece and Vindex rising up in the name of the Republic.
Second, something of close intellectual interest to me? Nero, the Great Fire, Tacitus’ chapter in the Annals, and just who may have been persecuted, or not. Drinkwater gets 3 stars here, and that may be generous. I agree with Drinkwater that the fire was an accident. I agree that Tacitus seems to have seen it that way. I disagree on who, if anybody, was scapegoated.
I will address this issue in MUCH more detail in one or more posts at my philosophy and critical religion blog. And, that main post is now up. But, the nickel version? First, Drinkwater claims, riffing on the book of Acts, that “Christians” were first called such NOT at Antioch, but at Rome at this time. I strongly disagree, first on grounds that there probably were no more than 600 Christians in Rome at this time (Drinkwater seems to be in the general ballpark on numbers HE postulates) and so, out of a population of 600,000 could not even have been on Nero’s radar screen, and second on grounds that Christians weren’t separated from Jews at the time enough to be separately identified. Beyond that, he’s making an argument from silence, and he knows that. I don’t accept that from Christian mythicists and I don’t accept it from him.
Given what Tacitus writes, the word he uses for “Christ” being an itacism in Greek, and other things, plus what I mention above? There are two options besides Christians being persecuted. One is that Messianic Jewish rebels were blamed …. “a certain ChrEEstos” χρηστός (the itacism for Christos Χριστός) being “HaMosiach,” or Jewish Messianic rebels. Suetonius claims Claudius booted Jews because of this same person (CHREStus was also a name adopted by freedmen), and I find it laughable that, if there’s truth behind that, that Suetonius is referring to Christians, though Drinkwater appears to think he was.
The second option more likely to me than actual Christians is that Tacitus is repeating another scurrilous story, like the ones he repeats about Christians in his own time, and figures he can “bank shot” a smear of Christians and a smear of Nero for his barbaric ALLEGED executions making them look sympathetic all at once. (Remember, if there was no separate identification of Christians, there was no execution of them as such.)
Part three is 3 1/2 stars.
I agree with much of Drinkwater’s revisionist history (which is not sui generis by any means on Nero but is part of a trend). I think that Brittanicus likely did die of natural causes. Agrippina was not placed on a rigged boat, but was traveling on her own on a normal military boat supplied by Nero, which had an accident. He was apparently with Burrus and Seneca, and they were glad and he downcast when they thought she died and reversed when she appeared to have survived. They then framed a messenger from her as a would-be assassin and things went from there. Drinkwater makes a good case that Poppaea’s death after miscarriage was not an intent to kill her or even an intent to cause the miscarriage, as Nero had no heir.
At some point, however, Drinkwater’s revisionist history apologetics. In this, it becomes so after the Great Fire, and especially after the Pisonian conspiracy.
Essentially, Drinkwater ignores, as much as possible, people and incidents that undercut him. Tigellinus’ growing unpopularity is one. Sporus is another. Drinkwater passes up no opportunity to attack Suetonius when he thinks he’s wrong. But, he never addresses the claim that Nero had Sporus castrated. Instead, he repeated refers to “Sporus / ‘Poppaea,’ “ exactly as written with Poppaea in scare quotes, and says nothing else. Silence gives assent, per the old proverb. (Dio Cassius also refer to the full Sporos story, which means Drinkwater couldn’t reject it away so easily.) I also find this continued dual referencing simply weird. Yes, to Nero, Sporos may have looked like Poppaea. But he wasn’t Poppaea. And, if he was, then that’s a sign of mental illness. And, if Nero really doubled down on make-believe? Ditto.
Drinkwater also contradicts himself at times. He says alcohol may have contributed to his violence against Poppaea, but elsewhere says Nero, even at the end of his life, had no real problems. He also ignores that Nero could have been alcoholic but not immediately have been overcome by it. He does in the Introduction admit that Nero seemed to have had some sort of “breakdown” on his return from Greece, but in the body copy, doesn’t discuss that in more detail.
He also doesn’t discuss how much coercion of Greek cities and the administrators of various Greek games was done for Nero to win his trophies.
One other note, on something in his conclusion: The apparent distinction between Principate and the Dominate/Tetrarchy autocracy of Diocletian is somewhat arbitrary. I also think he overstates the continued Principate as a driving cause for third-century emperors during the Crisis to continue to come to Rome to seek Senate approval.
Finally, a brief side note. Drinkwater’s choice on when to use modern names, when ancient, is puzzling. He uses “Anzio” instead of “Antium,” for example, but “Vesontio” instead of “Besançon.”
No, finally finally a second side note. Drinkwater’s an academic historian, yet uses “AD” rather than “CE” (and when needed, “BC” rather than “BCE.” I had noted it earlier, but given how wrong I think he is about Xns and the Great Fire, it may just have been the tipping point down to a third star, inasmuch as I now wonder if it’s something related to his thoughts on Tacitus. OTOH, Adrian Goldsworthy does the same; maybe it’s imperial hubris of older British historians?
So, overall? Fairly to pretty good, but could have been better, albeit given that Drinkwater is set in some of his revisionism, and his claims about early Christianity, it almost certainly couldn’t have been better from him. Barrett’s “Rome is Burning” is probably not better. Drinkwater makes a good case that Rome was NOT in financial crisis under Nero, that the currency was carefully realigned, not debased, and other things, contra Barrett....more
Could have been better without literary conceit, more
(Note: This is a decade-old review copied over from Amazon.)
The literary conceit I mention?
Sides,Could have been better without literary conceit, more
(Note: This is a decade-old review copied over from Amazon.)
The literary conceit I mention?
Sides, through most of the book, refers to James Earl Ray by the alias he used at this time, Eric Galt.
But, it just doesn't work. First of all, anybody who brings more than a modicum of awareness to the book knows "Galt" is Ray. If they don't, then the literary fiction could be confusing. Second, by using this "device," Sides appears to be giving credence, however small, to conspiracy theorists.
And, that's one big reason why this book falls well short of Gerald Posner's "Killing the Dream." On its own merits, considered alone, it might well get another star. But in light of Posner (and please don't mention "Vanity Fair" to me; it in no way detracts from either "Killing the Dream" or "Case Closed") as well as its over-rating by others, I cut it to three stars.
That said, there's other reasons for doing that.
1. The relative paucity of photos, especially with no glossy plates. 2. The lack of an index! How can a serious, or putatively serious, 400-page history not have an index? 3. Sides' being a Memphis native. He could have done more with local color than he did. He did do more than Posner, certainly, but, even though he was just a few years old in 1968, he certainly could have leaned on his parents' recollections, etc. to expand this. ...more
I had never read a bio of Hatshepsut, but browsing the biography section of my library, and having seen the "Hatshepsut: The Female Pharaoh" travelingI had never read a bio of Hatshepsut, but browsing the biography section of my library, and having seen the "Hatshepsut: The Female Pharaoh" traveling exhibit at the Kimbell in Fort Worth 15 or so years ago, picked this up.
It's generally somewhere between good and very good, but ... the author doth protest too much, methinks, in the end.
First, the good to very good?
A good setting on the background of Hatshepsut's dynastic family, what she would have done in the service of Amen and other things. Also a good setting on royalty lines in the New Kingdom etc.
Good on extrapolating from Hatshepsut's monuments to reasonable guesses as to how she expanded her rule, re-imaged herself, etc.
Also good on how and why Thutmose III likely decided to eventually largely obliterate her legacy from public discourse.
Speculations about her inner life etc. aren't hugely wild and are acceptable.
That said, no, I don't think Hatshepsut is ignored because she's a woman who wasn't a harridan, virago, termagant, etc.
No, this has happened to men at times, too.
I immediately thought of Imperial Rome and the "good emperors." Trajan gets plenty of biographies due to his many wars. Hadrian for consolidating the empire, the second Jewish revolt and Antinoos. Marcus Aurelius as an author himself, plus generally wrongly attacked for naming Commodus as successor.
Who's missing?
Try to find a bio of Antoninus Pius.
That itself would be OK.
But, around pages 156 ff, she bluntly states that Hatshepsut was NOT "fabricating" a 30-year reign with the Sed event. Really? Why not just say she was, then note that male Pharaohs did the same, where documented. That was enough to tip it back to four stars.
Couple of minor public health issues.
Yes, bubonic plague existed in antiquity. But the first actual "plague" of it, as in epidemic, is the one under Justinian, at least that we know of. Also, while schistosomiasis was indeed likely a problem, it was probably less an issue than in modern Egypt, post-Aswan Dam....more
I've said for sometime that Eichenwald is a "cuck" politically, as it plays nicely on his name. And, no, I'm not alone; many left-liberals and leftistI've said for sometime that Eichenwald is a "cuck" politically, as it plays nicely on his name. And, no, I'm not alone; many left-liberals and leftists have little use for him.
Well, after reading this book, I'm ready to at least partially remove the qualifier "politically" from his cuckdom.
His story of epilepsy, and the traumas he went through in getting it property treated are indeed sympathetic, but ....
And, yes, what "but" can mean psychologically.
First, a detour that will actually lead us to the point.
No index on this book.
About halfway through, I noticed that. My normal deduction for that is one star. Maybe Kurt could have gotten 3/4 a star because of his sympathetic story, have no other major issues and hold on to a four-star rating.
Not quite. Not close to quite.
While there's no index, I did see that the back of the book has a list of "dramatis personae," with a "where are they now."
Well, Cuck aliases the medical professionals who harmed him the worst, starting with the research neurologist who first examined him. Yes, the names have been changed to protect the guilty, to riff on law and order TV.
I do NOT think there's legal reasons for this; he provides a real name for the Swarthmore psychologist who led the charge to have him expelled AND who lied about his research credentials AND who had his own misdiagnosis.
Protecting the guilty is itself bad enough. When they're still alive, and, for example, the research neurologist is now working or consulting for a company that peddles food additives to allegedly battle Alzheimer's, it's worse.
At a minimum, this guy is ripping off wallets. At a more severe level, he's also abusing trust and undermining emotions. At the worst level, if people believe these supplements can render actual medical treatments nugatory, he's hurting people.
And, C. Eichenwald is enabling him.
WHY?
Don't know. C. Eichenwald doesn't explain. And, again, I do NOT think this is for legal reasons. (I also think he let former Swarthmore dean Janet Dickenson halfway gaslight him.)
So, we're definitely down to three stars there. Maybe 2.5.
But, he redeems himself a bit.
I've long been suspicious of St. Ralph of Nader. Eichenwald, from a brief time working for him at Nader's then outfit, the Center, shows that Nader is a big fat hypocrite, at least related to AAA. Nader got on a takedown vendetta against AAA because it once insulted him, and this was after it resisted officially partnering with him as consumer advocated for car buyers. AND, newbies in Nader's office, reportedly the ones they wanted to push into quitting, had to work on updating St. Ralph's non-takedown screed against AAA.
A smaller bonus point is that he confirms what I already knew to be the case at most magazines. At major newspapers, too, editors essentially do as much writing of a piece as the reporters whose names are on the byline.
However, the book then had two lacuna.
One is what I mentioned with Michael J. Fox's third autobiography, re his Parkinson's. Both these people, alleged librulz, talk about how fortunate they are. Neither uses their platform to advocate for national healthcare.
Eichenwald also could have advocated for better mass transit — and buses first, light rail a DISTANT second (it's for upper-class white people in the burbs), given his own travel restrictions, and did not.
I finally decided to give him a gentleman's C of three stars....more
Non-fiction might be a generous claim for this book. While Henderson clearly touts up all the Peary expedition instances which indicates he almost cerNon-fiction might be a generous claim for this book. While Henderson clearly touts up all the Peary expedition instances which indicates he almost certainly did not reach the North Pole or even come THAT close (87.5 north??), he consistently refuses (that's the only word) to take the same critical eye to Cook.
First and foremost, which Henderson doesn't mention, is that later people trekking up Mount McKinley in addition to Edward Barrill recanting his claims, proved Cook didn't get there, and by rephotographing some of his shots, showed just how far south he fell short. Robert Bryce, David Roberts and several other authors who have critically examined the race for the North Pole have covered this already, and shown how the people who proved Cook to be a fraud over McKinley had no connection to Peary.
In other words, Cook was a proven fraud before Peary. And, given his federal conviction decades later for fraud, he was a proven and convicted fraud after Peary was in his grave.
Second, contra the national book reviewers, while it's technically true that Henderson makes no hard-and-fast claim about who reached the Pole first, or at all (probably neither did, nor did Admiral Byrd in his plane; in any case, Roald Amundsen in a dirigible beat Byrd if Byrd made it), it's clear, with the bread-crumb trail he lays out, on the one hand, and the way he stacks the deck, on the other, who he THINKS did it.
In short, this is a hack job.
And, while it's disgusting to see that Smithsonian mag, four years later, has printed an excerpt from this book, rather than one of the ones I mention above, it's not surprising about Smithsonian anymore, either, I said at the time I reviewed this on Amazon. (Smithsonian has actually gotten better at times since then.)
In short, as I've said occasionally with other authors, not only can I not recommend this book, I can't recommend reading Henderson at all....more
The bottom line is the post-authorial line, and that's that Boehner is a hypocrite, having announced at about the time the book came out that he votedThe bottom line is the post-authorial line, and that's that Boehner is a hypocrite, having announced at about the time the book came out that he voted Trump in 2020.
And, he had options, of course. Following both the Lincoln Project grifters and more honest Republicans than them, he could have voted Biden.
Or, done like some other Republicans and not voted.
Or voted Libertarian or something.
The key is that, Trump's one of HIS crazies, and Boehner would have voted for him, to riff on Edwin Edwards, even IF he had both a dead woman and a live boy in bed.
Boehner's a party-line Rethuglican, and won't admit it.
That said, the book's not 100 percent bad.
While I disagree with his take on disliking all the policies of Obama and Pelosi, I think his take on them as politicians is pretty much spot-on. On the "Squad," he's even less right on why he opposes their politics, and his analysis is somewhat more lacking, too. Pelosi doesn't appear to have caved on anything. (We'll see, if Dems keep the House after the 2022 elections, if she honors her pledge not to stand again as Speaker, and what the Squad and allies do if she breaks it. Ditto in a sense if they're the minority and she doesn't step aside and instead considers standing to be minority leader.)
And, since I know how much #BlueAnon hates this part of the book, as well as the Freedom Fries Caucus and #MAGAts type hating that part, that's another reason for not one-starring.
Finally, it does give some background on his life.
But, the epilogue finished off any chance of three stars instead of two. Not foreseeing Trump's role in Jan. 6? Claiming that Mitch the Turtle would work with Biden on anything, after Merrick Garland? Someone who advanced to lead the House should have better political acuity than that. Or, maybe he does and this is an additional installation in being a hypocrite....more
I had heard a bit about Krulak, and as part of continuing my education about the Vietnam War, when I saw this book at my library, decided to grab it.
AI had heard a bit about Krulak, and as part of continuing my education about the Vietnam War, when I saw this book at my library, decided to grab it.
And, ye gads it was horrible. It had errors and stereotypes even before we got to Krulak’s story starting.
1. ignores wilson the fake neutral ppg 4-5 2. German stereotypes of Hindenburg & Ludendorff, 7 (292, he extends this stupidity, which comes off like 18th-19th century Brits, in talking about the dour countenance of Mountbatten giving away his Germanic birth.) 3. Petain was really NOT devoid of imagination (and earlier probably saved the French Army after the disastrous Nivelle Offensive) 7
Some later errors are connected to this.
4. Wrong about Prussian/German genl staff causing loss of WWI / II. Wilson the fake neutral caused loss of WWI, augmented by Genl Staff and Kaiser resuming sub warfare, but ... an understandable gamble. Hitler caused loss of WWII (setting aside Genl Staff toadyism). 5. Goes in in this wrongness, 160FF, to claim that JCS 1478 was a secret plot to remove civilian control of the military as well as unify all armed forces under the American equivalent of a German General Staff. Flat –out lies. In this, he exemplies exactly what Harry Truman said: “They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's.” 6. In reality, the “National Military Establishment” created by the National Defense Act of 1947, in its original form, still would have retained a civilian Secretary of Defense. 7. The new bill, in original form, might indeed have reduced CONGRESSIONAL oversight. But, that’s not the same as reducing CIVILIAN oversight. From the start, from what I know from my own reading, and what even Coram admits, a secretary of defense replacing/superseding the old Secy of War and Secy of Navy was part of the package. And, as a Cabinet secretary, of course subject to Congressional confirmation.
But wait! It gets worse.
Coram apparently things the US could have “won” Vietnam. He cites Lewis Sorley and Mark Moyar to this end. I looked at Sorley and Moyar on Amazon. “Revisionist history” is right and not in a good way. Sorley fellates the legend of Creighton Abrams, among other things. Moyar, by some of his screedish books about things like Obama’s drone warfare and “defense cuts,” appears to be a neocon wingnut. Plus, a lot of Vietnam vets say he’s full of shit. I say he’s full of shit if he claims with a straight face that Diem was an effective leader. Sorley was in Nam and retired a Light Colonel. I guess that, unlike Hackworth and others, it wasn’t for refusal to play military politics. He went on to work with CSIS, etc. He’s also refuted by better analysis of Abrams’ career in Nam, which says he changed little in actual operations from what Abrams did.
And, THAT is why, I guess, Coram wrote this book.
He’s full of shit, too, if he claims Vietnamese leaders were, “compared to other Asian leaders, men of relative probity.” Uncle Ho was MUCH more full of probity than Diem. As for Brute’s ideas about Nam? He’s less than fully right on population dispersion; a fair amount of South Vietnamese lived in the central highlands. As for targeting the coast? South Vietnam’s coast is almost as long as California’s. Target it where?
As for some of the things he may have otherwise wanted? Later on, LBJ did step up bombing on Hanoi, but carefully selected, pseudo-precision targets. Nixon mined Haiphong. North Vietnam still won.
I was originally going to rate this book two stars, because of:
1. The truth it tells about Krulak, including how big a liar he often was. 2. The truth it tells about the author.
But by the time I got through the chapter on Vietnam, I couldn’t even do that.
Weirdly, though, Coram appears not to have been a Marine or even to have served in ANY branch of the armed services....more
This is a generally sympathetic but by no means uncritical bio of Powell.
I had known the bare bones: Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist, eventual CongressmThis is a generally sympathetic but by no means uncritical bio of Powell.
I had known the bare bones: Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist, eventual Congressman, the expulsion and the Supreme Court case, and something of the womanizing.
This gives a good background to most of that: Powell's grooming to succeed him in the pulpit by his dad; Running for city council first, after proportional representation was established; Then, on to Congress, once he pushed for a Harlem-friendly district to be created; Details of his time in Congress — the good, the bad, and the ugly, with the bad including likely payroll padding, personal junkets on the Congressional dime and other things. But? White Congresscritters had already been doing this. Haygood notes that, when the case reached the Supreme Court, Earl Warren indicated to the House's lawyers that he thought it was about race, very much. (I think it was, from some Members of Congress; besides, Warren's ruling was right on the Constitutional merits.)
That said, the junketing was arguably among the worst in Congress, and his absenteeism, it seems by Haygood's painting, was as bad as Jack Kennedy's. Add in that he was facing the remnants of a libel suit that was self-inflicted back in NYC and he probably should have pulled his horns in sooner.
That's especially because of all the good he did after becoming chair of the Labor and Education Committee, especially after LBJ became president.
===
There are a couple of minor errors, and two larger issues that Haygood didn't really deal with that make this not perfect, even though five-starred.
The errors are tiny. Fort Huachuca is misspelled and Wayne Morse was not from Oregon.
There is one larger error. Haygood says that Powell was of German background on the white side of his father's family. Wiki notes that while Powell Sr's mother may indeed been asserted to have been enslaved by a white man named Llewellyn Powell, and he the father of Adam Sr., both the first and last names are very much associated with Welsh ancestry and really not at all with German ancestry. Also note the start of the previous sentence. Specifically mentioning Haygood and this book, Wiki says there's no documentary evidence for that. In fact, it says that Powell Sr.'s mother refused to ever divulge his father's name. To me, per what's on Wiki, it seems likely that William Bush, the man she married two years after Adam Sr.'s birth, and also identified as mulatto, was Adam Sr's father.
So, why did this "local legend" start? And when? Given that Powell Jr. himself regularly played off it, how much did he encourage it? And, although Haygood notes Jr's propensity for finding the darkest-skinned Black in a room and identifying with that person, nonetheless, was this claim to Germanness (remember "Kultur" before WWII and especially before WWI) a self-promotion, too? Haygood doesn't address that at all. I don't know if a newer biography does.
The issues? Powell claimed that, at a fairly young age, his dad taught him pretty much everything about the birds and the bees. OK, that said, without being too voyeuristic and noting this bio is about the son, did Powell Sr. also have a wandering Jones? We're not told.
Second, while Haygood does note that Powell was often out the outs with the NAACP, then, after King formed it, the SCLC, he doesn't tell us exactly when Vietnam entered his radar. I get the feeling it wasn't as an early bird. So, was this, too, political opportunism?
These things aside, if you've heard Powell's name but don't know much more, this is a very good read....more
Per reviewer Bill, with whose similarly long review I agree?
"Too hagiographic" is the bottom line and what keeps this from five stars. (I've not read Per reviewer Bill, with whose similarly long review I agree?
"Too hagiographic" is the bottom line and what keeps this from five stars. (I've not read the Alter bio mentioned by him and one other 4-star reviewer, but it sounds like I maybe should.)
When I saw this book at the library, being familiar with Kai Bird in general, and having loved “American Prometheus,” the bio of Oppie that he co-authored, I said “Gimme that.”
At the same time, by the title, I was worried that Bird might put lipstick on our first neoliberal president.
Well, my worries were somewhat unfounded.
But, NOT totally unfounded.
That said, some of those worries were partially offset in the epilogue.
Bird, from back in his Georgia gubernatorial days, does sometimes gush over Carter. And, while he picked up a bit already then on Carter’s management style, he doesn’t really delve into the issue of whether this was THAT big a problem or not.
In his early presidency, he doesn’t address the “phony” issue. For example, some Secret Service agents, in those tell-all books, have claimed that the “own bags” that Carter insisted on carrying? That luggage was empty. (The main one of such books says that Poppy Bush was, overall, the most considerate to the Men in Black and to White House staff.)
Related, on the phony issue? He never addresses whether that smile was a real one, or whether it was often a practiced, rehearsed version of a fake smile or a real Duchenne smile. And, there are doctors who could relatively easily have told him that. Personally, I think about half his smiles, maybe more, are real. But all of them?
He does address deregulation issues. (I made sure to hit the index before I got past the prologue, to make sure he did.) Bird does note the negative side on trucking, and somewhat on airlines, but there, he doesn’t tie Carter’s dereg there to the PATCO strike in Reagan’s first year. Nor, other than noting in a general way that this was a matter of concern to northern liberals, does he dive into just how anti-union Carter may have been.
As for Carter the president? This quote is illustrative: “No president since Lyndon Johnson had achieved more legislative victories in his first year in office.” That actually says very little, of course. First, there were only two presidents between LBJ and Carter. Nixon was only a plurality president in 1968 and faced Dem majorities in both houses of Congress. (The GOP did gain five seats in both the House and Senate.) Ford, of course, was unelected and soon hung the Nixon pardon albatross around his own neck.
The book is “interesting” in other ways. There’s little about the 1976 general election and NOTHING, other than a passing note that Scoop Jackson was one of his opponents, about the 1976 primaries. I mean, this was the last major party presidential primary run until the 2016 GOP where the eventual nominee took less than half the vote. Carter was actually a smidge under 40 percent, and Jackson only finished fifth in popular vote; even if you throw out California favorite son Jerry Brown, he was still a distant fourth. That said, Wiki’s piece on the 1976 Dem primaries is weak tea. Yes, I know this book is mainly about his presidency, but he covers Carter’s time as governor with more depth by far.
OK, on to Carter’s two big presidential issues.
Bird is very good overall on the Camp David Accords and everything leading up to them. He notes that Begin snookered Carter at the end. He had pledged that he would accept some written document sidebars, including one that spelled out details of a settlement freeze. Then, surely knowing everybody was in a hurry and Carter was in a rush to get back to D.C., gave Carter’s assistants a substitute document and never would submit what had been agreed-upon orally.
Bird doesn’t get into analytic history and ask if this, plus the fact that Camp David was going to produce an Egypt-Israel deal, whether Carter should have pulled the plug on the whole thing. Yes, it eventually led to Oslo, but because Oslo gave Arafat three-quarters of a jelly roll, but denied the one-quarter that’s the sweet jelly, it was doomed to failure. (That’s my analogy on half-loaves of bread.)
The other, of course, was the hostages. Here, Carter was both ill-served by others and ill-served by himself.
If he was going to let the Shah into the US, then, at a minimum, given the earlier temporary hostage seizure, at least all remaining non-essential embassy personnel should have been evacuated. In reality, probably the whole embassy should have been.
On the rescue attempt? Carter didn’t ask enough questions of Zbigniew Brzezinski on the big picture, or Col. Beckwith on the tactical details. Operation Eagle Claw was Delta Force’s first operation, after all. Special Command didn’t exist then. It was complex enough without all that as well.
That said, Bird claims that the Shah would have lived for years more had he not been subject to bungled surgeries and “poor medical treatment at the hands of Rockefeller’s high-priced doctors,” claiming this is what actually killed him. He’s right, and why heart surgeon Michael DeBakey was doing a splenectomy is …. Interesting. Maybe the Shah asked, seeking a celebrity surgeon? But, Bird ignores that it wasn’t just Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and David Rockefeller saying the Shah needed US-level medical care. Doctors in Mexico said so, too. And, before that, French doctors in Zurich saw that he had been given the wrong medication, and that his condition was worsening. Wiki’s entry on chronic lymphocytic leukemia says its five-year survival rate is 83 percent. Well, it was 5 years (or more) past diagnosis, and probably more than that since its inception. He probably would be at the 70 percent rate today, and even less than that in 1979. Per this piece, the Shah DID seem to be showing “progression” by the time of start of his exile. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/... He was already on chemotherapy, his dosage had been raised, and he was told that, if he stayed in Mexico, the isotopes would have to be flown there. And, by the time DeBakey did do the splenectomy in Cairo, both the liver and pancreas reportedly had tumor nodules. Even without the damage to the pancreas, the Shah likely had only a couple of years left. Had the Shah been better served with less secrecy BEFORE his exile, he might have indeed lived a number of years longer. But, by the time we’re to early 1980, not so likely. So, Bird was less than fully right there.
And, with that? Zbig vs Cy Vance. Bird does note early in the book that Carter was warned not to make both part of his administration, but he did anyway.
(Carter was also advised to hire an actual chief of staff, but didn’t for three years until Ham Jordan got the job. Shades of Slick Willie, but for different reasons, on this issue.)
Until Vance forced the issue by his own resignation over the attempted hostage rescue, the two had been at sixes and sevens, with Zbig getting more and more the upper hand the second half of Carter’s term, especially after Afghanistan. It was Zbig, who before the second 1979 revolution and Soviet intervention, who first started arming the mujahideen, but had little appreciation for the nuances of Afghanistan, including why the Soviets backed the second revolution. (We also supported the coup against Afghanistan's king before that, which helped destabilize the country.)
And, Bird, even in the epilogue, doesn’t explain why Carter didn’t fire him, except noting Carter bemoaning Vance’s lack of loyalty.
In reality? This appears to be another installation of Carter’s “smartest man in the room” arrogance.
To wrap up? The title of the book is true. Carter, vis-à-vis the Washington establishment was an “Outlier” — and an “outsider.” Clinton was not totally either one, even at the start, and still got trashed. And, especially on Carter’s 1970 gubernatorial campaign, Bird omits a lot of stuff, like how Carter went right, and hard, in the Dem runoff against Sanders, like attacking him for supporting MLK.
Summary? Bird has a lot of depth over the presidency itself, but lacks some elsewhere. Between that and some lack of analysis? Between that and not always fact-checking Carter? Can’t give him the fifth star....more
First, contra one-star screeds on Amazon — they are — and, if any similar ones arise here, Burlingame has excMary Lincoln with the bark off — WAY off.
First, contra one-star screeds on Amazon — they are — and, if any similar ones arise here, Burlingame has excellent research skills and shows it by the amount of material he cites, as well as by pointing out BAD research (and that might be charitable) by previous Mary Lincoln biographers. And no, he's not a misogynist. Citing national statistics about how many men are victims of domestic abuse is not misogynist.
Now that that's out of the way, let's proceed to the book, shall we?
Burlingame thoroughly documents just how much of a "problem" Mary Lincoln was. Having read many Lincoln bios as well as the one about Robert Lincoln that came out a few years ago, I still have to say that a fair amount of this was new to me.
Contra a reviewer here, and exactly to overturn the one-starrers at Amazon and those previous bad biographers, yes, Burlingame needed to refer extensively to all the research he had done. He also puts the lie to the claim that Herndon was a lifelong hater of Mary Lincoln.
Now, just how bad? Mary assaulted Abe with both hot coffee and hot tea, with stove wood, and repeatedly with a broom. She drew blood on one occasion. I had heard only about the stove wood.
Tying back to Bob Lincoln? I knew that Mary was severely depressed after Willie's death in 1862. I don't know that I had before heard that Abe himself had talked at that time about the possibility of institutionalizing her.
Nor had I heard of the full degree of mental/emotional/verbal abuse she heaped on him, from shortly after they were married to, essentially the end of his life. Burlingame documents this with many comments from women as well as men in Springfield. He also has comments from or about servants that Mary ran off due to her abuse of them.
Next, the grifting and grafting as First Lady. Again, I'd read a fair amount of this before, but not THIS much. Essentially accepting bribes to push people on her husband for nominations to a variety of positions, especially ones with opportunities for graft, like about anything related to the Collector of Customs for the Port of New York. And, I'd heard nothing before about the payroll skimming scheme. That's enough, to avoid spoiler alerts.
Then, there's the issue of the start of the marriage itself. Lincoln wanted to save his honor after breaking the engagement. Burlingame offers circumstantial evidence that Mary helped him help himself out by seducing him, with Abe being a semi-willing partner. (The circumstantial evidence includes Bob being born less than nine full months later, and the wedding being a rushed affair and not in a church.)
In his appendix — and don't you love it when academics squabble? — Burlingame throws several biographers of both Lincolns under the bus. The name probably best-known today is that of the "venerated" David Herbert Donald. In essence, Burlingame said they had much of the material available to them that he had (some of the items he used were only released in the middle 1990s), but took a powder.
BUT?
While it purports to be well-researched and gives every impression of that? No footnotes or endnotes. And, unlike some modern nonfiction, I'm not even referred to a website where they might exist. Kirkus Reviews talks about footnotes, but as I just told it on Twitter, ain't none in my copy.
So, it loses a star.
That's too bad, in light of the one-starrers, but it is what it is. And that "is," is inexcusable in a book that the author surely knew would be controversial both with the general public and with his fellow academics. There's also no formal bibliography....more
First, to qualify myself, I'm not old enough to have seen the Andy Griffith show live, but am old enough to have seen it not too long afteInteresting.
First, to qualify myself, I'm not old enough to have seen the Andy Griffith show live, but am old enough to have seen it not too long after reruns started.
Second: I wasn't big on it ... or other late 50s-mid 60s reruns. When I was growing up, my after school TV was Looney Tunes, then Flintstones, maybe Jetsons, then Lost in Space. I watched Andy, as well at Leave it to Beaver, etc., but on occasion. (We had cable, and got, IIRC, early TBS and WGN as well as a couple of LA stations plus the Albuquerque network ones that serviced most of New Mexico.)
Nonetheless, one couldn't be ignorant of either Knotts or Griffith.
Without too many spoilers? Knotts off the screen was much like on — neurotic, with the additional touch of being hypochondriac.
Andy Griffith was nothing like Andy Taylor though. He WAS a fair amount like Lonesome Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, or then some. Bent his elbow a fair amount. Had a temper. And, thoroughly documented in the book? A lifetime holder of grudges....more
Schilling gets partway behind the 8-ball in the prologue, when he repeats as fact the “Here I stand” legend — and This was kind of tough book to rate.
Schilling gets partway behind the 8-ball in the prologue, when he repeats as fact the “Here I stand” legend — and legend it is — from Worms. He states it again when the time comes to discuss Worms in more detail. I was ready to 4-star and no higher for that reason. At the same time, he clearly rejects stuff clearly considered legend, like the story of throwing the inkwell at the devil. Elsewhere, he tries to split the difference on Oct. 31, 1517, claiming that Luther or somebody had a copy of the 95 affixed somewhere, but not the door, at the Castle Church, while ignoring what Luther may have done in the days before that to speed their dissemination.
He further behind, tho not as egregiously, when in the first section, he seems to indicate a certain chunk of educated people besides Columbus weren’t sure the world was round. I’m sure he doesn’t directly claim that of the Portuguese court, but it was a bit verstimmeled here. In reality, after the Spanish rejected him the first time, the Portuguese rejected him because they knew his distance estimates were off. I’m not sure if Eratosthenes’ guesstimates of the Earth’s size had come back to light yet, but I have no doubt that by the 1480s, Portugal had sailed far enough south in nearly a straight line that they knew Ptolemy was off.
But, he also has some very good stuff. His framing of two main, important issues, led me to be ready to given him the benefit of the doubt on the above and five-star him.
Here’s some lesser things I either learned or had refreshed for me that aren’t mentioned in the two other major Luther bios of the last 40 years that I’ve read in the last year, namely, Oberman and Roper.
He early on the number and variety of vernacular translations of the bible long before Luther. Notes many of them were lay driven, like with the Waldensians, which has issues for Luther’s “priesthood of all believers” not being quite in line with the Predigeramt, which then gave him room to smash down lay-led Anabaptists. (That said, Schilling does touch a bit on Luther backtracking from his true “priesthood of all believers.”)
Notes the family name of Luder and how Luther, pulling a humanism, Graecizied it to Luther based on Eleutherios. He had “tried on” Eleutherios as a new, humanist surname, but soon let it go again.
Luther the hypocrite? Twenty years after supporting bigamy for Philip of Hesse, accuses Spalatin of supporting incest by OKing a widowered pastor to marry his dead wife’s stepmom. (Apparently our Old Testament scholar hadn’t read up on levirate marriage and other things, nor did he recognize how Rome’s ever tighter rules on marriage had led to the incipience of something like the “nuclear family.”)
He notes Charles did not officially send a copy of the post-Worms Imperial bann to Elector Frederick, therefore it never had the force of law inside of Electoral Saxony. This, in turn, is why Luther went halfway to Augsburg in 1530. He went to the southern border of Electoral Saxon land.
Better than Oberman or Roper on Luther vis a vis the Reformed, though not by much on the Sacrament. Still no depth, nor whether Luther ever had an answer for Karlstadt on Greek grammar. Does note that in Germany, or maybe Europe-wide, Lutherans and Reformed came to an agreement in 1973 in Leuenberg, Switzerland. (LCMS doesn't discuss this! Nor, seemingly, does the ELCA in detail. It led to a United Protestant Church in France and was 13 years in the making. It covered other doctrinal issues as well, and led to a fellowship of Lutheran, Reformed, and Prussian Union type churches in much of Europe, which also included … Waldensians! Besides the Eucharist, other areas of discussion and eventual agreement included Christology [remember the old “the finite is not capable of the infinite”?], predestination and justification. European, including British, Methodist churches joined in 1997)
Doesn't father-figure psychoanalyze Luther, unlike Roper does at times (but not all the time by any means). Simply portrays him as obstinent, and increasingly so with age, and not just due to torments of aging. Says this was the case after Worms onward.
That said, per the subtitle of “Rebel in a Time of Upheaval,” Schilling nailed Luther’s psychology quite well. Per a Sherman T. Potter comment on a M*A*S*H episode, he was just a stubborn Missouri mule and got more that way the older he got, especially from the Peasants’ Revolt on. It’s why he addressed Zwingli and other Reformed at Marburg and elsewhere with as much vituperation as he addressed at popes.
That said, Schilling doesn’t extrapolate this to its conclusion.
Luther essentially as an individual acted just like he said the popes and councils he deplored acted: As though being infallible.
Spoiling for a fight with Erasmus yet biding his time?
Schilling is definitely good on Lutheranism emerging as a territorial church vis-a-vis the various Calivinisms that sought, rather, to take over the state, or the Separatist types who sought to be separate. This relates to one of two main issues he gets better than Roper or Oberman, or maybe somewhat to both.
Schilling, as a professor of early modern history, rather than one of theology, is good at Luther’s Sitz im Leben, the actual transition to early modernity. At times, he contrasts the Luther of the 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th and 500th birthdays, at least as celebrated in Germany states in the first three cases, united Germany in the fourth and East and West Germany in the fifth, vs. the reality of Luther’s stance on economics and other things. He ties some of this to the development of Lutheranism vs. Calvinism.
The other item that he was good on, and stressed a lot in the second half of the book, was Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms.
Well, at first. He was great about talking about Luther on the two kingdoms on paper, but NOT as this played out, or mis-played out, in reality.
In other words, there’s a WHOPPER of a misfire on Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms vs Luther’s reality, namely in his comments about Jews and Turks. Luther’s comments about the Jews are well-known, including his willingness to invoke the power of the state against them. And, that’s highly contradictory to his professed doctrine. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...
And, a lesser failure, IMO, of claiming Luther showed his two-kingdoms theology by leaving war against the Turks in the secular hand. If Luther had not peddled every Christian PR line about Muslims, would he necessarily have called for the Imperial state to wage war against the Ottomans primarily because they were Muslim, not because they were a threat to the Empire? After all, Francis I of France made an alliance with them.
Then claims that Luther’s focus re the Jews was only a religious anti-Judaism but later admits Luther talked about Jewish blood at the end of his life. Related: Jewish occupational stereotypes, if not about “blood,” are about culture and not religion.
Schilling tries to defend himself here as writing a historical presentation, not a critical history. To me, it comes off as an apologia, in its theological and related use, as in a 1531 Lutheran foundational work, rather than a historical presentation.
So, three bottom lines:
1. This is a more uneven four-star than Roper for sure and maybe than Oberman. 2. Of the three, Roper is best. She’s arguably a 4.5 star, but still leaves enough off the table to not get the bump. The two gents don’t cross 4.0 stars. 3. The back of my mind wonders if Schilling is a member of the “free” Lutheran Church in Germany. ...more
I read this so you wouldn’t have to, like Custer died for your sins.
The Obama memoir, from 200-plus pages in? 3-star bland neoliberal dreck. Just likeI read this so you wouldn’t have to, like Custer died for your sins.
The Obama memoir, from 200-plus pages in? 3-star bland neoliberal dreck. Just like his presidency. Or, so I thought at first.
I eventually decided to drop it yet another star.
First?
Missing from the new Obama memoir:
Almost all stuff pre-presidential Sheila Jager Almost nothing about his complicity of sharp elbows in the state Senate run Almost nothing about what he actually supported in the state Senate
See David Garrow’s book for more. Speculate as to why this isn’t in there.
Obama’s previous memoirs did get us through his state Senate years, but not really his brief span in the U.S. Senate. And, of course, he’s never talked about No. 2, and little about 3-4.
So, what IS in here?
Chides protestors for Bush “war criminal” signs on Jan. 20, 2009
Shows that he early on had a bromance hard-on for “bipartisanship”
At this point, I decided to check the index, given the man Status Quo Joe decided to invite back to run USDA again, Vilsack.
And? No mention of Shirley Sherrod.
(Remember, this is a man who, BEFORE he got played by Breitbart over Sherrod, later got played by James O'Keefe — via Breitbart, no less — over ACORN. Oh, that also is not mentioned in the book, nor is the fact that our "constitutional law scholar" prez signed into law an unconstitutional bill of attainder against ACORN. [The district court got that right; the Second Circuit, overturning on appeal, got that wrong.])
From there? The stimulus. Doesn’t talk about compromising away the compromise in advance in public. Doesn’t talk about trying to get the initial numbers higher. Doesn’t talk about problems with HARP.
Anwar al-Awlaki does get one mention, but only as someone who stirred up Fort Hood’s Maj. Nidal Hasan, not as an American citizen Obama had drone-assassinated. The process by which Obama decided to knock him off, and the feedback, and Obama’s feeling about that pushback? Not here.
AS for the US recovering from the Great Recession faster than Western Europe? Neoliberal and left-neolib analysis says it wasn’t the stimulus funds nearly as much as looser US bankrtuptcy laws plus ‘no-recourse” mortgages. This couples with different homeownership rates, especially between the US and continental Europe, and what triggered the recession, in part. (None of this excuses austerity within the EU by Germany, the UK and elsewhere. But it does say that Obama’s “American exceptionalism, stimulus division,” ain’t quite that.)
Talks about UN’s “one-sided condemnations of Israel.” Doesn’t even discuss Resolution 242. Doesn’t discuss the Security Council’s one-sided silence toward Palestine.
Talks about “Chinese surveillance capabilities were impressive.” Ignores US ones. That said, and I know this is just Volume 1, before the man became president in 2013, but it’s interesting Xi Jinping is not mentioned.
The Paris Agreement was not a “breakthrough.” It was Jell-O. (We won’t actually get there until Volume 2, of course, but since he talks ahead about it in discussing the Copenhagen climate summit, it needs to be mentioned now.)
Claims Volcker Rule replaced substantive parts of Glass-Steagall.
Claims Holder et al did fine with bank/bankster prosecutions. Ignores no criminal sentences.
Through much of this, ignores pre-inauguration claims that he asked the “left” to push back against him as needed and that he then got bitchy when it happened. The closest he gets to this is talking about Samantha Power’s idealism.
Near the end, comes close to accusing Al-Jazeera of fomenting terrorist. Direct quote? “Al Jazeera, the Qatari-controlled media outlet that had become the dominant news source in the region, having built its popularity by fanning the flames of anger and resentment among Arabs with the same algorithmic precision that Fox News deployed so skillfully with conservative white voters in the States.”
I was leaning further and further away from three stars. And, I know that Al Jazeera America isn’t exactly what’s seen in the Gulf world. Nonetheless, this is over the top and was a ratings tipping point.
It’s still on the 2/3 star border because it does illustrate the one constant good about a memoir vs. a biography, especially when the biography is NOT an “authorized” one. A memoir will show the author-subject’s true beliefs, even when they’re self-delusional or close to it.
At the same time, seeing Dear Leader peddle an autographed deluxe edition for nearly one thousand large confirms the two-star rating. This book isn’t for plebians....more
From Voltaire on, Genghis Khan has gotten a bad rap in the Western world. Jack Weatherford, in a follow-up to his original volume on the Mongol conqueFrom Voltaire on, Genghis Khan has gotten a bad rap in the Western world. Jack Weatherford, in a follow-up to his original volume on the Mongol conquerer, has rectified that.
Genghis Khan was no more bloodthirsty than any other world leader of his day and age, and possibly less so. He was certainly no Tamerlane.
Weatherford has covered some of this, and some of Genghis Khan's influence outside his empire, in his previous volume. Now, he takes a look at Genghis Khan and his interaction with several of the great world religions from the cockpit of Central Asia.
For the unfamiliar, Nestorian Christianity had penetrated here centuries before Islam. Jews were also here. And, within the Muslim world, the panoply of divisions within Sunni and Shia were here by this time also. Then, as Temujin's conquests led due south and southeast, he had to sort through Buddhist, Taoist and (not a religion) Confucian plays for his allegiance and support in China.
Khan generally navigated these shoals well and refused to commit himself to any one religion, while supporting freedom for all to operate.
The epilogue is worth a read all on its own. I already knew a fair amount of Veep Henry Wallace's nuttery; I didn't realize that, during WWII, he flew into Mongolia to see Genghis Khan's home grounds as part of a quest for the mystical Buddhism into which Tibetan Buddhists had "incorporated" him, courtesy of a successor who founded a short-lived empire that included part of Tibet in the early 1700s. This explains the background to the Roerich Letters, which did not become public until 1947, but were known by leading Dems and Repubs in 1940 and is part of why FDR was pressured to drop him in 1944.
That said, it's a stretch to say Khan "gave us religious freedom," and I'm assuming Weatherford had a hand in the subtitle himself. While the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin may have referenced him as an icon of religious freedom, what gave the US religious freedom was several other things. They include: 1. The general Western European horrors of religious war after the Thirty Years War; 2. Different Protestant stances in different US colonies, plus the Catholicism in Maryland and Quakers in Pennsylvania leading the Constitutional Founders to prescribe freedom of religion for FEDERAL laws and candidates. (Some New England states had "state religion" well into the 1800s.) 3. Related to the above, the lack of a state church because of the lack of a monarch, in part.
I'm also sure that Weatherford is not the only western scholar to see Khan's "Great Taboo." Since we still don't know exactly where he was buried, nobody could see that. As far as the general area, Ikh Khorig was opened to Western (Japanese included as the first) archaeologists and other scientists starting in 1989.
So, the book is "nice." It's not all that. I would consider 3.5 stars if available....more
This is good overall, but it loses a star on Lincoln and colonization. With Oakes, it's more a throwaway than a full-throttled claim like that of DaviThis is good overall, but it loses a star on Lincoln and colonization. With Oakes, it's more a throwaway than a full-throttled claim like that of David S. Reynolds in "Abe-Abraham Lincoln and His Times," but Oakes claims Lincoln stopped discussing abolition after 1862.
(Update: Book lost a star due to email exchange with Oakes:
You have to be obsessed with colonization to give a shit about this. I’m not and I don’t.
Here’s why:
Q. Of the four million slaves emancipated by the Civil War, how many did the federal government colonize outside the United States?
A. Zero
I’m interested in explaining what happened, not what didn’t happen.)
My response: I'm "obsessed" with historical accuracy. I guess you're admitting you're not.
PLUS, you knows it "goes to motive" on explaining persona of Lincoln.)
This is half-true by the letter, at best, and totally untrue in spirit, as he allowed the Emigration Bureau to discuss Belize colonization in 1863, asked AG Bates in 1864 if colonization was legally still on the table, and reportedly discussed the issue with Spoons Butler just before his assassination.
Given this, and that Oakes like Reynolds tries to "soften" old Lincoln statements from charges of racism, it's no wonder Reynolds blurbed it. Add to that the fact that they're peers at CUNY and even both went to Berkeley and there probably was some cross-pollinization.
As with Reynolds' book, were the five-star elements in it not fully five-star, the book would have gotten three stars because of this willful and egregious failure. (As with Reynolds, it is both; I know he knows the history I just cited.)...more
Socraticgadfly
>
Books:
biography
(272)
Loading...
