Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
A exceptional biography of someone I had thought I never heard of. I had read of an event in which he was a unwilling participant in. I had read something of the U.S. Senator who was badly beaten on the floor of the Senate but I did not remember his name, if I ever knew it.
Continue reading “The Great Abolitionist”
Both my parents grew up in New York City while Fiorello La Guardia was mayor. I can remember them talking about Mayor La Guardia when I was growing up. He seemed interesting but I never got around to learning much more about him. This book fixed that problem.
The book is “I Never Did Like Politics: How Fiorello La Guardia Became America’s Mayor, and Why He Still Matters” by Terry Golway.
Continue reading “I Never Did Like Politics”
Woodrow Wilson was a complicated man and he dealt with complicated issue so it seems fairly obvious that this biography must be complicated. In “Wilson”, A. Scott Berg tells this story well. There are some places where the complications and details slow down the reading but I think Berg gets about as close as you can get to a page-turner given the amount of material and complexity of material in some places.
He piqued my interest with an introduction about President Wilson’s journey to Europe to settle the terms of the peace after World War I. I was interested (otherwise I wouldn’t have even attempted the 800+ pages here) but this made me more interested.
Then Berg gives a more or less chronological account of his life giving you a better understanding of this man who would be President. I’ll not go into detail here but I will say Berg tells this well. You can probably find many short summaries of his life online.
Woodrow Wilson graduated from Princeton (Class of 1879) and would return there after practicing law, earning a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and several faculty positions. He was a respected academic and wrote extensively on government and politics. In 1890 Wilson joined the Princeton faculty and in 1902 became president of Princeton.
In 1910 the political bosses in New Jersey thought he was an electable candidate for Governor and could be easily controlled. He was elected and they were very surprised.
Then with about a year of political experience, he was chosen as the Democratic candidate for President. The bulk of the book describes the next 8 years as president and then his final years. Wilson is often rated among our greatest presidents. Read this book and you’ll learn why.
I enjoyed the book. It is a commitment to read book of this length but it is certainly worth it.
“J. D. Salinger: A Life” by Kenneth Slawenski is a good book. I had read “Catcher in the Rye” when in high school and re-read it as an adult. I had also read several books of his short stories. And then I followed his reclusive life in an occasional article. So I had an interest but fairly large gaps in my knowledge of Jerome David Salinger.
I had asked for this book as a Christmas present but I had asked for several books and it took me a few months before I tackled this one. The book was both more and less than I expected.
The less is no fault of the author. Since Salinger was a recluse for much of his life, there is much less biographical material than you would expect for someone of his stature. The more is discussed below.
Slawenski has devoted himself to the study of Salinger as both a man and an author. This biography is not just a biography of what was an interesting and unusual life but a study of the relationship between Salinger’s literary works and life.
As someone with knowledge of just some of Salinger’s works and the bare outline of his life I must admit the biographical aspects of this work interested me more. I found the coverage of his wartime experiences especially fascinating. I enjoyed some of the discussion of the relationship between life events and his literature but I must confess I read through these parts faster.
This book seems to me to be a very good biography, well written by an expert. I was less interested in the literary critique but I do agree with the author’s position that the life is not separate from the literature. I think the book does a wonderful job for those like me with a limited knowledge of Salinger’s life and works. I would think an expert would also find the literary analysis and biography fascinating.
So to put in in a sentence, the book is very good for someone like me but detailed enough to also satisfy the expert.
Here are a few blogs with additional reviews. These links open in new browser window (or a new tab in some browsers):
I enjoyed the biography of Andrew Johnson (see previous post) so much I decide to read a short biography of the next president. Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero by Michael Korda is a good short biography. It is part of “The Eminent Lives” series.
It is worth reading because although we usually think of Grant as a great general and poor president, Korda’s biography shows the decency and gentleness that paired with military genius to make Grant the leader he was. He also makes a great case that Grant was a much better president than is usually thought.
I read the new book on President Andrew Johnson by Annette Gordon-Reed. The author is best known for her books on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and has won a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for her work. She is also a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Humanities Medal and holds 3 appointments at Harvard.
Here is a partial quote from near the beginning of the book
… an assassin’s bullet would place the political fate of African Americans into the hands of a man who despised them.
Were it not so thoroughly steeped in mindless tragedy the first assassination of an American president, the destruction of the hopes of a people long treated as property who thought they were finally going to be able to live in dignity and peace, the lost chance to make the promise of America real to all who lived here one might be content to cast Andrew Johnson’s time in the White House as a form of cosmic joke. The gods were playing tricks on us, giving us Abraham Lincoln exactly when we needed him, having him cut down by an inconsequential person, and then giving us Andrew Johnson to teach us the folly of even imagining that we controlled our own destinies. But the effects of Johnson’s presidency were too profound, too far ranging — reaching into twenty-first-century America to be considered anything approaching a joke or trick, even one to teach an important lesson.
To be fair to Johnson, any man would have had a tough time following Abraham Lincoln, particularly under the circumstances that ended his presidency. …
Seems a very tragic thing that we went from Lincoln who is considered one of the best presidents to Andrew Johnson who is considered one of the worst presidents at a time of great national need. Like Lincoln, Johnson rose from very humble beginnings to the highest office in the land. Unfortunately, Johnson learned a very different lesson from the journey. The book documents his career which includes white supremacist beliefs and battles with Congress over Reconstruction of the defeated South.
My take on this is that the author has very strong feelings about the failures of Johnson as a President and events resulting from those failures. At a time the nation need unity and healing, a white supremacist became President and his failures have “haunted the nation ever since.” It seems to me that the author is very fair in her evaluation of events and documents those failures well. The book was extremely interesting and gave me insight into the first president to be impeached (and the only one before Bill Clinton). The Constitution provides for impeachment for “… high Crimes and Misdemeanors” but those offenses are not defined. There is an interesting discussion about various interpretations of that provision of the Constitution. The book has also made me want to learn more about the period after the Civil War and its implications for modern society.
This book is part of The American Presidents Series and if this is a typical example, I assume it must be a series of fairly short and excellent biographies.
I knew of Lawrence of Arabia from the movie of that name. I have a much better understanding of T.E. Lawrence now that I’ve read Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda.
The movie was great and so was the book. And the book certainly was more accurate and a much deeper portrait of the man known as Lawrence of Arabia. The movie is a much smaller investment of your time (long for a movie but still less than 4 hours) but it only tells part of the story. Reading the book takes much longer but if you’d like a deeper understanding of T.E. Lawrence and the events of the time, it is well worth your time. I’ve watched the movie several times but decided to watch it again after reading the book. I’d recommend doing that.
I first learned of this book while driving and listening to NPR. I forget which day it was but a search of the NPR website shows an interview with Michael Korda on T.E. Lawrence on “Talk of the Nation” on November 18, 2010. I am listening as I type and that interview sounds familiar. (But I did fail at multi-tasking this time as I stopped typing to listen intently.) You can read about it or listen to the whole interview.
Korda starts with Lawrence as a very junior British officer in Cairo during World War I. And he then manages to become a leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. This is the story told in the movie. But the book by Michael Korda fills in the rest of the story explaining how Lawrence got there and why he was who he was, gives more details on the Arab Revolt, and tells how he coped with his fame, successes and failures.
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia is a great success. Korda is a wonderful story teller and is a master at integrated quotes about Lawrence or by Lawrence into the story. I did like his use of footnotes to expand on some points or to explain important issues which did not fit easily into the flow of the story. In a few places I wished he had used footnotes more. On occasion he quotes French without translation and I would have appreciated a translation. I would have also liked to see an explanation of the strings of letters after names. I just assumed they were all various types of knighthoods and British honors but an explanation would have been nice. By the way, there is a good summary webpage on knighthood abbreviations (you’ll have to page down a little). Perhaps a few pages where you could easily refresh your memory as to who various characters are when they reappear would have made a nice addition.
But these are all minor quibbles. Hero is a wonderful book about a complex character and covers complex events. The partition of the defeated Ottoman Empire suited the European power politics of the time but seems to be the root of many of our problems in the Middle East today.
I thought it did bog down in details in a few places but in other places I was glad for the details and enjoyed the narrative. At times the book felt too long but at other times I was glad it was as long as it was. I would guess another reader might find the places I found slow to be enjoyable and some of the passages I enjoyed to be too detailed.
So this book is not only a good history and biography but it is very relevant to current events. I’d highly recommend it.
The reviewers can’t seem to say enough good things about How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell. If there are any negative reviews I haven’t seen them.
The Amazon.com crowd will usually let you know if they don’t like something and there are nearly always few negatives even if most folks like it. But when I looked this afternoon there were 22 reviews and 16 were the highest rating (5 stars). The rest were 4 stars. Have a look there. Read some reviews if so inclined and maybe even buy the book.
The Library Journal puts in among the Ten Best Books of 2010. The book has gotten rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. (It was released in England before the U.S.) There is a wonderful portrait of the author and the book in the New York Times. But enough about everyone else; what do I think?
Montaigne believed the best way to discover how to live was in the examination of everyday things and events and writing about them in his Essays. In doing so he seems to have invented a new literary form. And you might consider some bloggers as his literary descendants. Speaking of blogs and such, I am grateful that the author chose to talk about the Oxford Muse self-portraits. I was unaware of this and it looks like some very interesting reading.
This is an unusual biography. But then Montaigne was an unusual man. He did think of himself as usual, or maybe as unusual as everyone else, but what made him really unusual was that he wrote about life and himself. And he had a knack for shifting his perspective, imagining events through the eyes of someone else or even his cat. (Yes, that was a shameless attempt to lure cat lovers to my blog.)
Sarah Bakewell has constructed a most unusual biography of this proto-blogger and accidental philosopher. It is structured around 20 answers (or as she puts in attempts at an answer) to the How to Live question. Bits about his life are scattered in among the answers and this a very seems suitable way to tell the story of his life. We slowly to know him as we listen to some of his answers and learn about his life.
The book is an enjoyable read. I felt I was learning much about Montaigne, his life, his philosophy, and the 16th century world he lived in while enjoying a good story or series of stories. The book reads like a novel perhaps because she make the subject so compelling but I think the book is so complete it would also be useful as an academic resource.
Here are a few more links if you want to read a bit more:
Also I might mention that I rarely am impressed with the design on the dust jacket but the design on the US version by John Gall is very good (in my opinion, of course).
Enough about this book and my opinions. I’m off to read some Montaigne essays which I hear are about you (and me!)
Joseph Ellis has done it again. This combined biography of the most important husband/wife team of the era is a wonderful extension of his writing on early US history. I enjoyed 2 of his previous books on the American Revolutionary era. In my previous review of Founding Brothers and American Creation I thought that he covered that era well and in a totally enjoyable way.
His new book First Family: Abigail and John Adams covers the same time period but from a different perspective (and of course with much more detail on the Adams family). The book is based on the letters between Abigail and John which spanned the years leading up to the Revolution and the early republic. The gaps are filled in with Ellis’ knowledge of the era and some informed speculation to fill in missing details.
I read this on my Kindle and that has both advantages and disadvantages over reading a physical book. I’ll write a more detailed post on that later.
If you think you might be interested in this book, I would encourage you to visit the Amazon site (link below). You can read more reviews on Amazon or read samples of the book (see link below).