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Roger Bishop

NonfictionBiographyAmerican History

The Trials of Harry S. Truman

Review by Roger Bishop

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in April 1945, World War II was not over. His successor, Harry S. Truman, faced crucial choices both then and in the years to come. Some, such as the custody and use of nuclear weapons, had never been faced by another president. As Truman’s longest serving secretary of state, Dean Acheson, said of that period, “Not only is the future clouded but the present is clouded.” As president, Truman was forced to make quick and risky decisions in a time of war scares, rampant anti-communism, the beginning of the Cold War, stubborn labor strikes and petty scandals. When he left office after almost eight tumultuous years, his approval rating was 31%. More recently, however, historians have begun to consider him in the category of “near great” presidents.

Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, considers Truman’s achievements and misjudgments in the engaging and insightful The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945–1953. In Frank’s assessment, Truman was “a complicated man concealed behind a mask of down-home forthrightness and folksy language.”

Truman thought the point of being a politician was to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. Overwhelmed at times, he at least made some excellent cabinet choices, such as George Marshall and Acheson. At the beginning of his presidency, Truman needed to conclude the war and assist in the founding of the United Nations. Other milestones followed, including the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin airlift, the recognition of the state of Israel, the creation of NATO, the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur and more.

Truman’s two most controversial decisions, to use the atomic bomb and to enter the Korean War, are covered in detail here. On domestic matters, Truman worked for a national health care program but was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1948 he sent a civil rights program to Congress that included a Fair Employment Practices Act, an anti-poll tax bill, an anti-lynching law and an end to segregated interstate travel, but it also failed to gain enough support.

The first detailed account of the Truman presidency in almost 30 years, The Trials of Harry S. Truman is very readable. Anyone who wants to go behind the scenes of those pivotal years will enjoy this book.

In the first detailed account of the Harry Truman presidency in almost 30 years, Jeffrey Frank engagingly considers Truman’s most controversial decisions.
NonfictionHistory

The Founders’ Fortunes

Review by Roger Bishop

The Founding Fathers ended their Declaration of Independence with this solemn oath: “We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” In his superb The Founders’ Fortunes: How Money Shaped the Birth of America, historian and biographer Willard Sterne Randall explores in extensive detail the economic circumstances of the budding republic. It also offers a history of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, among others, as businessmen.

The need for money was a major factor for individuals and governments before the American Revolution, and its importance only increased throughout the war and postwar periods. English settlers had risked their lives and fortunes for many years to establish new colonies, which vastly increased England’s commerce. Yet, facing a huge debt, Parliament sought to gain even more revenue by taxing American colonists. Their opposition sparked the resistance that led to the Revolutionary War.

The 1764 Currency Act had outlawed all colonial currency. Lack of money for Washington’s troops was an ongoing problem during the war, as well as a problem for keeping promises to veterans afterward. When the war ended, the new country was in a depression that prevented them from being financially independent. In addition to these highlights, Randall covers smuggling, war profiteering and privateering, establishing a stable currency, economic diplomacy and much more.

The personal stories of the Founding Fathers’ wealth are especially interesting. For example, Washington and Jefferson were land rich but cash poor, despite their possession of hundreds of enslaved people. Randall explores less well-known figures, as well, such as three patriotic and wealthy men named Robert Morris, Silas Deane and James Wilson. They (and their money) played important roles in winning the war and securing America’s government, but each died in debt.

Randall is a biographer of Washington, Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, so he knows his territory well. The Founders’ Fortunes will hold readers’ interests with its carefully drawn portraits of personalities and insightful analyses of events.

The Founders’ Fortunes will hold readers’ interests with its carefully drawn portraits of personalities and insightful analyses of events.
NonfictionHistory

The Fifties

Review by Roger Bishop

We remember the 1960s as a time of social protest in the United States, with diverse groups demanding change. But some of those calls for change actually had their roots in the 1950s, led by a few lonely, gifted, stubborn “accidental activists” who would not or could not tolerate the injustices they suffered and witnessed. Journalist and historian James R. Gaines introduces us to some of these courageous individuals in his enlightening, powerful and intimate The Fifties: An Underground History.

One is struck by the differences in these activists’ personal histories, whether their cause was gay rights, racial justice, feminism or environmental justice. Pauli Murray’s experiences as a multiracial Black woman, for example, led to her long legal career making advances for women’s and civil rights, including the argument that finally persuaded the Supreme Court to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex. She was also the first African American woman to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. By contrast, Fannie Lou Hamer spent most of her life as a sharecropper in the Mississippi Delta. Her civil rights activism didn’t begin until she was 45 years old, but her strong leadership skills and charismatic personality were natural assets to the movement for voting rights. Gilda Lerner had an entirely different origin story. As a young woman, she barely escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna, but she went on to teach the first college-level courses in women’s history in the United States.

Rachel Carson and Norbert Wiener had nothing in common and probably never met. But in their defining works—“she in the living world, he in the electrical, mechanical, and metaphysical one—they converged on the heretical, even subversive idea that the assertion of mastery over the natural world was based on an arrogant fantasy that carried the potential for disaster,” as Gaines writes.

The ’50s were, among other things, a time of fear for many—when raising questions could lead to losing friends or jobs at best, or to jail time, beatings and even death at worst, just for doing what one knew to be right. The activists profiled here didn’t wholly achieve their goals during the “long Fifties”—the social, cultural and political uprising between 1946 and 1963—but they made significant progress that others built on in the future.

Gaines concludes that the people he writes about were authentic rebels, although they didn’t regard themselves as such. This excellent, well-researched and well-written book shows how far America has come and yet how very far we have to go to become the country we often think we are.

James R. Gaines introduces readers to the lonely, gifted, stubborn activists whose calls for change in the 1950s influenced the course of the 20th century.
NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistory

Looking for the Good War

Review by Roger Bishop

The iconic images that accompany the conventional narrative of World War II depict American military service as a force for good—like soldiers handing out candy bars to children. But to interpret World War II this way, writes Elizabeth D. Samet, a professor of English at the United States Military Academy at West Point, requires “a selective memory.” Terms such as “the good war” and “the greatest generation” were shaped by “nostalgia, sentimentality, and jingoism” after the fact, causing “the deadliest conflict in human history [to become] something inherently virtuous.”

In her compelling, enlightening and elegantly written Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness, Samet compares popular myths about World War II to the facts. She draws on a broad range of cultural expressions that came about during the war and the years that followed. Especially noteworthy are writings by veterans and other firsthand observers of war, which Samet uses to contrast their ambivalence at the time with how later generations understood the conflict. Legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle, for example, found little romance in war. As he traveled with the troops in 1944, he wrote, “I am sure that in the past two years I have heard soldiers say a thousand times, ‘If only we could have created all this energy for something good.’”

There was an increase in racial violence during those years, as well. In 1942, there were more than 240 riots and other racial incidents across the United States, and segregation was still the official policy of the armed services and in many other places. “One of the chief ironies inherent in the project of bringing democracy to the rest of the world remained the signal failure to practice it at home,” Samet writes.

After the war, violent crime films were the most commercially successful stories featuring veterans. The veteran with amnesia was a staple of postwar noir, even though it didn’t reflect the reality for most veterans who were trying to readjust to civilian life. A 1947 survey of ex-service members found that more than 50% of them said the war “had left them worse off than before.”

This richly rewarding and thought-provoking book splashes World War II history across a broad canvas, with insightful discussions of the works of Homer and Shakespeare and the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. Along the way, Samet convincingly argues that we should reflect on our current relationship to war in the light of wars past. “The way we think and talk about force will influence not only the use of American military might abroad,” she writes, “but also our response to the violence that has increasingly been used as a tool of insurrection at home.”

In her enlightening and elegantly written Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet compares popular myths about World War II to the brutal facts of war.
NonfictionBiography

The Chancellor

Review by Roger Bishop

The key to Angela Merkel’s extraordinary political achievements lies in her beginnings. The first half of her life was spent in East Germany, where she withstood the pressures of a police state. She learned that freedom of thought and action cannot be taken for granted. As the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, Merkel also believed in the importance of love as expressed by deeds, not just words, and in serving others. Although she became a brilliant physicist, she had wide interests and was quietly ambitious. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she welcomed the chance to pursue politics in a united Germany.

In The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, former NPR and ABC News reporter Kati Marton explores the public and very private life of the woman who served for 16 years as the head of the German state, which now generally reflects Merkel herself: stable, moderate and civil. Marton, who spent her childhood in Hungary during the Cold War under a totalitarian regime, is a perfect choice to write Merkel’s biography.

Merkel’s rise was spurred on by a combination of self-control, strategic thinking, passive aggression and luck. In 1991, she assumed a cabinet position in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s newly unified Federal Republic of Germany. In 1998, however, after a political scandal, she publicly opposed his continuing in office. When she became chancellor in 2005, she did not bring specific policies to the office. Instead, she brought a belief in Germany’s permanent debt to the Jews; precise, evidence-based decision-making; and a loathing for dictators who imprison their own people.

At an event for volunteers who had helped with refugee settlement, Marton asked Merkel which single quality sustained her during her long political life. Merkel responded, “Endurance.” Marton’s beautifully written, balanced and insightful biography should be enjoyed by anyone interested in global politics or a fascinating life story.

This absorbing biography explores the public and very private life of Angela Merkel, the woman who served for 16 years as the head of the German government.

Truman in the White House

Review by Roger Bishop

Harry Truman was ambitious, but his journey from a Missouri farm to the White House was largely the result of circumstances beyond his control. Once in the Oval Office, he faced monumental foreign and domestic policy challenges – the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, the founding of the United Nations, diplomatic recognition of the nation of Israel, revolutionary change in China, the Korean War and concern about Communists in the U.S. government; only a few presidents have had to make such crucial decisions with such long – term consequences. When he left office, Truman's popularity ratings were abysmally low, yet he is now regarded by historians as one of the great, or near – great, presidents of the previous century.

Historian Robert Dallek – who has written biographies of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy, as well as books on FDR's foreign policy and the Nixon – Kissinger relationship – brilliantly captures the life, times and achievements of this seemingly ill – equipped politician in Harry S. Truman, the latest volume in the outstanding American Presidents series from Times Books. Dallek notes that Truman loved political combat and besting opponents who underestimated him, as he did in his 1948 victory over his highly favored Republican opponent, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.

The most important foreign policy legacy of Truman's presidency was his adoption of the "containment" strategy, continued by his successors until the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. He agreed to U.S. leadership of NATO, the culmination of earlier actions to assist Western Europe. Truman established the CIA and the office of the secretary of defense. He introduced comprehensive civil rights legislation and desegregated the armed forces. His proposal for national health insurance eventually led to the establishment of Medicare in 1965.

Dallek is scrupulously fair in his account. He acknowledges numerous instances of Truman's missteps. All told, Dallek has given us an excellent introduction to a pivotal period in our history.

Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Harry Truman was ambitious, but his journey from a Missouri farm to the White House was largely the result of circumstances beyond his control. Once in the Oval Office, he faced monumental foreign and domestic policy challenges – the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, the founding of the United […]
History

A real American birthday party

Review by Roger Bishop

In his inaugural address on March 4, 1825, John Quincy Adams declared, "From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future." This was not mere political rhetoric. Our sixth president was, of course, the son of a key Founding Father who had served as the young republic's second president. But the son was an accomplished public figure in his own right, with a keen sense of history. As the country grew, he wanted it to reaffirm a connection with the generation of 1776 and the political ideals of its founders.

During that crucial formative period in the early 19th century, as settlers moved West and a series of canals helped to strengthen the country economically, "All Americans," according to historian Andrew Burstein, "agreed upon one thing, and it seemed, one thing only: that homage should be paid to their Revolutionary origins. It was that universal devotion which promised to preserve a language of unity and harmony and pure motives in an era of widely divergent tastes and purposes. Behind them lay glory days, ahead lay civil war. For them, as for us, the past was a comfort." In his rich new study, America's Jubilee, Burstein attempts "to uncover the soul of the (Revolution's) successor generation." To do this he introduces us to a wide range of personalities, some largely forgotten today, using a variety of sources private letters and diaries, public addresses, newspaper accounts to give us a vivid account of individual experiences, attitudes and thinking as the country prepared to celebrate its 50th birthday in 1826.

Burstein writes that a prominent figure in 1826, William Wirt, author of both fiction and nonfiction and U.S. attorney general for 12 successive years, "arguably did more than anyone else of his generation to link the Romantic movement in America with the Revolutionary spirit." Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, published in 1817, was not an objective biography, for the author wished "to restore the Revolution to living memory for his generation, even if his book had to take on a quasi-mythical character." It was Wirt who was selected to give a "masterful oration" in the U.S. Capitol on the nation's 50th anniversary.

Burstein explores his theme through the writings and public careers of such figures as Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Marquis de Lafayette and John Randolph. He writes in some detail about the remarkable coincidence of the almost simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on July 4, 1826, a symbolic passing of the torch to a new generation. He discusses the differing accounts of the last words of the two founders, who heard those words, and how they have been remembered by later generations. Among many public events associated with the deaths, a particularly moving one was Daniel Webster's address in Boston. Burstein describes it as a "message of national religious significance.

Some of the most enlightening chapters of the book concern writings by people who were not public figures. Ruth Henshaw Bascom of Massachusetts began keeping a daily journal when she was 17 years old and continued to maintain it for 57 years. Her father had helped to organize the Massachusetts militia and had fought with George Washington at the nearly disastrous Battle of Long Island. "The most perceptible emotion one recognizes in reading Ruth's adult years' writing is her devout acceptance of the fragility of life," Burstein notes.

Burstein convincingly makes the case that contrary to popular myth Jacksonian democracy did not arise and flourish only with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. It was already established before that. "In mid-1826 the now 'knightly' Hero of New Orleans loomed as the embodiment of the democratizing conscience. There is a better way to put it: the democratic conscience prevailed in America already, and only lacked a president who would resurrect Jefferson's convincing call for the restriction of privilege."

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

In his inaugural address on March 4, 1825, John Quincy Adams declared, "From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future." This was not mere political rhetoric. Our sixth president was, of course, the son of a key Founding Father who had served as the young republic's second president. But the […]
Memoir

A celebrated American life

Review by Roger Bishop

After his junior year at Harvard College in the 1930s, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. had a summer job in the Charlestown Prison where his assignment was to prepare case histories for prisoners about to appear before the parole board. We wrote our case histories out of court records, social workers' reports and prison interviews and assessments, he recalls. It was good training for an embryonic historian. We were understaffed and had to work hard to keep up with the flow. At the time, he noted, I rather like this sense of several balls in the air at once. Those words could well apply to the whole of Schlesinger's extraordinary life and career. He has been a major American historian, a public intellectual, a political activist, a special assistant to President Kennedy and, at all times, an elegant and insightful writer. Among many honors, he has received two Pulitzer Prizes, for The Age of Jackson in 1946 and for A Thousand Days in 1966.

Schlesinger had not planned to write a memoir, but, he says, I have lived through interesting times and had the luck of knowing some interesting people. He is aware of the potential hazards of such a project, and says, In the end, no one can really know oneself or anyone else either. Fortunately for all of us, he overcame his doubts and the result, A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950, is a rich, evocative and perceptive look at a man and his times. Schlesinger comments that as a historian I am tempted to widen the focus and interweave the life with the times in some reasonable, melodious and candid balance. He succeeds admirably.

From a happy early childhood in the Midwest, his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, when Arthur was seven years old. Not surprisingly, Of all childhood pastimes, reading was my passion. Schlesinger takes time to discuss his reading in some detail, to recall the profound excitement, the abiding fulfillment, books provided. At Harvard, he took classes with such respected scholars as Perry Miller, best known for his work on the Puritans, and D.O. Matthiessen, whose American Renaissance study of 19th century American authors was highly regarded. A third strong influence was Bernard DeVoto, whose composition class vastly improved Schlesinger's writing style.

Although Schlesinger's interest in reading did not decline, he did develop a singular intensity for the movies of the '30s. He says that Film . . . is not only the distinctive art of the twentieth century, it is the American art the only art to which the United States has made a major difference. Although the '30s did not produce the best films, it was a decade in which film had a vital connection with the American psyche more, I think, than it ever had before; more certainly than it has had since. Scheslinger writes of the political battles of the '30s that shaped his political outlook and how he remains to this day a New Dealer, unreconstructed and unrepentant. He points out that it was FDR's ironical achievement to rescue capitalism from the capitalists. The author devotes considerable attention to the three books he wrote during the years covered in this memoir. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Age of Jackson, he attempted to tell the intellectual history of a political movement. In responding to criticism that the work was an attempt to legitimize the New Deal by finding precursors in the American past, Schlesinger says, I did not, I believed (and believe), impose an artificial schema on history. My belief was (and is) that I merely discerned patterns others had overlooked. This superb memoir provides a unique window from which to view some of the important issues and influential personalities of the first half of the last century.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

 

After his junior year at Harvard College in the 1930s, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. had a summer job in the Charlestown Prison where his assignment was to prepare case histories for prisoners about to appear before the parole board. We wrote our case histories out of court records, social workers' reports and prison interviews and […]
HistoryAmerican History

The bonds that started a nation

Review by Roger Bishop

The crucial political decisions in the young American republic of the late 18th century were made by relatively few leaders. They knew one another personally, and their face-to-face interaction in social settings had a significant impact on the choices they eventually made. In the words of historian Joseph Ellis, these decisions with long-ranging consequences came about "in a sudden spasm of enforced inspiration and makeshift construction. How this worked is the subject of Ellis' magnificent new study Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. The author knows the terrain well. His American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson received the National Book Award in 1996, and Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams is regarded as one of the best books on our second president.

Ellis eloquently conveys the interconnected personal relationships and overriding issues that set the nation's course. The eight most influential leaders he focuses on are: George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Abigail and John Adams. The extraordinary mix of such diverse personalities with strongly held opinions helped check each other. Despite their differences, and particularly when contrasted with what was happening in France during the same period, it is noteworthy that the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804 was the only case in "the revolutionary generation when political difference ended in violence and death rather than in ongoing argument. The author says the Jefferson-Madison relationship "can be considered the most successful political partnership in American history. For many years, Jefferson provided the grand strategy and Madison was an agile tactician. In the 1790s, Madison managed the effort behind the scenes to oppose the policies of Washington and Hamilton and to prepare the way for Jefferson's presidential candidacy. Ellis contrasts Washington, the realist, and Jefferson, "for whom ideals were the supreme reality and whose inspirational prowess derived from his confidence that the world would eventually come around to fit the picture he had in his head. The author explores Washington's vision as expressed in his last Circular Letter as commander in chief of the army to the states in 1783 and in his Farewell Address as president. It is interesting to note that Washington, in his "Address to the Cherokee Nation, imagined the inclusion of Native Americans in the developing country. And, in contrast to Jefferson, "He tended to regard the condition of the black population as a product of nurture rather than nature that is, he saw slavery as the culprit, preventing the development of diligence and responsibility that would emerge gradually and naturally after emancipation.

John Adams is one of the author's favorite characters. "His refreshing and often irreverent candor provides the clearest window into the deeper ambitions and clashing vanities that propelled them all. Ellis shows how all other political leaders deserted Adams when he became president and Abigail became his one-woman staff. The author masterfully steers us through the Adams presidency and Abigail and John's reconciliation with Jefferson, which led to their 14-year exchange of letters, now considered the most important correspondence between prominent American statesmen.

This carefully researched, beautifully written overview of the "band of brothers and Abigail Adams who established our nation" should be enjoyed by a wide readership.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

 

The crucial political decisions in the young American republic of the late 18th century were made by relatively few leaders. They knew one another personally, and their face-to-face interaction in social settings had a significant impact on the choices they eventually made. In the words of historian Joseph Ellis, these decisions with long-ranging consequences came […]
NonfictionPolitics

Get perspective this election year

Review by Roger Bishop

On March 4, 1861, retiring president James Buchanan remarked to his successor, "Abraham Lincoln, If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home] to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed." Few of our presidents have assumed office with a more distinguished record of public service than Buchanan. But despite serving as secretary of state under James K. Polk and ambassador to Great Britain under Franklin Pierce, he did not have the understanding or the diplomatic skills to deal effectively with the divisive issues that confronted our country at that time. In fact, he left office with the nation very close to civil war.

Although Lincoln had little formal education and his performance as a one- term congressman had not been notable, he had been involved in public life for many years. He enjoyed grappling with difficult issues. As our only Civil War president, Lincoln expanded the role of the office in some areas but treated others, including foreign affairs, in the conventional ways of his predecessors. He is usually regarded as our greatest president.

Why have some presidents been successful in certain ways but not others? Why are some regarded as complete failures? What role have social, economic, cultural, demographic, and political factors played throughout the 42 presidencies of our history? Just in time for the presidential election year, an outstanding and provocative overview of the American presidents, seen in the context of their times, has just been published. The Reader's Companion to the American Presidency, edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, features authoritative and insightful essays written by many of our most distinguished historians on the lives and careers, and particularly the administrations, of each occupant of the office. As the editors note, It is not just the gap between image and reality that makes American presidents elusive and intriguing figures. It is also the problem that both contemporaries and historians experience in trying to separate the president as a person from the things done in his name. They point out that from the founding of the Republic it has often been difficult to separate a president's own actions and achievements from those of his associates and political allies.

It is fascinating to realize how close many of our elections have been. Thomas Jefferson did not become president for his first term until he was elected on the 36th ballot in the House of Representatives. Once elected, as historian Joyce Appleby notes, Jefferson turned himself into an agent of change profound, transformative change in the social and political forums of his nation . . . Indeed, because his eight years in office were followed by sixteen more from his closest associates, James Madison and James Monroe, it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that Jefferson was the nineteenth century's most influential president. We usually regard Theodore Roosevelt as our first modern president, but Walter Lefeber points out that the self-effacing William McKinley, who worked quietly behind the scenes, can claim that distinction. McKinley, not Roosevelt, was the first modern U.S. president, modern in the sense of being a pioneer in manipulating the new technology of telephones and movies to enhance his power; a trailblazer in exploiting the modern powers of the presidency, especially in foreign affairs; the initial chief executive when the nation turned from acting continentally to acting globally. As a congressman, McKinley became a powerful political force because of his mastery of the tariff issue. He recognized that the tariff was the key to both the creation of immense economic power by great corporations . . . that could be protected from foreign competition, and also to the unlocking of corporate wealth for the support of ambitious politicians.

Both Michael Kazin writing about John F. Kennedy and Robert Dallek on Lyndon Johnson agree that our direction in Vietnam would not have been different in a JFK presidency. Kazin says, In recent years, some writers have maintained that JFK at the time of his death was bent on withdrawing from Vietnam. If he had lived, goes the argument, the long ordeal in Indochina would have been avoided. The bulk of the evidence refutes that contention. Dallek notes that Kennedy was leery of America's growing commitment to Vietnam . . . There is some evidence that JFK intended to remove U.S. advisors after he won reelection in 1964. But most of what he said and did indicated a determination to preserve South Vietnam freedom from Communism. Michael A. Stoe notes that, contrary to historical myth, Herbert Hoover was a whirlwind of activity when compared to other presidents who served during economic depressions, including Martin Van Buren, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Warren Harding. Stoe points out that Hoover attempted to use the government to promote private and public action throughout his term to resolve the crisis sparked by the 1929 stock-market crash.

Its timelines, special features, important data boxes, and concise, well-written essays make this an invaluable reference. The Reader's Companion to the American Presidency offers historical perspective on the office in this presidential election year.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

On March 4, 1861, retiring president James Buchanan remarked to his successor, "Abraham Lincoln, If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning [home] to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed." Few of our presidents have assumed office with a more distinguished record of public service than […]
FictionPoetry

Great words and great poets

Review by Roger Bishop

One of the major literary events of the year is the publication of Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, an extraordinary portrait of his marriage to poet Sylvia Plath through 88 chronologically arranged poems to her. Hughes, since 1987 Great Britain's Poet Laureate, was married to Plath from 1956 until she committed suicide in 1963. The Bell Jar, as well as the posthumous publication of Ariel, brought her work worldwide recognition and acclaim. Hughes's reluctance to publically address Plath's death and his realtionship with her has been viewed by some as reprehensible. Their marrige has for years been the subject of intense scrutiny and has contributed in part to the mythology surrounding Plath.

Now, with Birthday Letters, the world is finally hearing Hughes's response. His tender, despairing poems make his grief evident and show a couple deeply committed to their work. "And we/Only did what poetry told us to do." But Plath was often troubled. "You were like a religious fanatic/Without a god unable to pray./You wanted to be a writer./Wanted to write?/What was it within you/Had to have its tale? . . . You bowed at your desk and you wept/Over the story that refused to exist."

Hughes acknowledges that Plath's troubles began before their life together, but does partially accept responsibility. He shows his failure to understand. "At that time/I had not understood/How the death hurtling to and fro/Inside your head, had to alight somewhere/And again somewhere, and had to be kept moving,/And had to be rested/Temporarily somewhere." In images tender and frightening, sometimes searing and powerful, we gain a sense of two creative people caught up in something they could not control. "You were a jailer of your murderer /Which imprisoned you./And since I was your nurse and protector/Your sentence was mine too."

This is only one side of the story. The reader may or may not accept it as the truth. As poetry, however, and as at least a partial truth, it succeeds magnificently.

Diane Ackerman is one of our finest writers about nature and the senses, the author of the bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, as well as A Natural History of Love, and The Rarest of the Rare, about endangered animals. She is also a prize-winning poet. Her long-awaited new collection, I Praise My Destroyer, has just been published. She explores nature and science with awe and praise but is always aware of the human dimension. In the title poem she writes: "Our cavernous brains/won't save us in the end,/though, heaven knows, they enhance the drama," and "it was grace to live/among the fruits of summer, to love by design,/and walk the startling Earth/for what seemed/an endless resurrection of days." In "We Die," her poem for Carl Sagan, and "Elegy," for John Condry, she speaks of the pain of loss, the reality of mortality. But she conveys joy and sensuousness in such poems as "The Consolation of Apricots." These poems are rich and intense.

In her acceptance speech upon receiving the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska said: "Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating, 'I don't know.' Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift, absolutely inadequate. So poets keep on trying . . ." Szymborska's work always questions searching for a different way to perceive things, another way to understand better what our lives are all about. She does this with an economy of language that is at once intelligent, philosophical, witty, yet always in touch with the real world. A major publishing event this month is her Poems New and Collected 1957-1997. This volume contains virtually all of her poetry to date, including all 100 poems from her popular collection A View with a Grain of Sand. An additional feature is the text of her Nobel lecture.

Szymborska reminds us: "After every war/someone has to tidy up./Things won't pick/themselves up, after all." And that "Reality demands/that we also mention this:/Life goes on./It continues at Cannae and Borodino,/at Kosovo Polje and Guernica." She notes: "We're extremely fortunate/not to know precisely/the kind of world we live in." In "The Century's Decline," she writes: "'How should we live?' someone asked me in a letter./I had meant to ask him/the same question./Again, and as ever,/as may be seen above,/the most pressing questions/are naive ones."

Three years ago poet Jane Kenyon died after a 15-month struggle with leukemia. Her husband, Donald Hall, himself the author of 13 volumes of verse, offers very personal poetry about her life and death, and life for him after her death, in Without. After reading these poems we feel that we know these people and have shared a range of experiences with them. Although this collection conveys sadness and agony and loss, there exists also courage and strength in these poems.

One of the major literary events of the year is the publication of Ted Hughes's Birthday Letters, an extraordinary portrait of his marriage to poet Sylvia Plath through 88 chronologically arranged poems to her. Hughes, since 1987 Great Britain's Poet Laureate, was married to Plath from 1956 until she committed suicide in 1963. The Bell […]
HistoryBlack History

Branch’s brilliant look at King continues

Review by Roger Bishop

The civil rights movement that began in the 1950s continued to grow in scope and intensity into the early 1960s. A series of non-violent protests in such places as Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma met with strong resistance but led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That legislation was crucial, but it was only part of a long and bitter struggle for full equality for all of our citizens. Although various groups and leaders emerged during this period, the charismatic and eloquent Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference stood, out and, among other honors, received the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. In the outstanding second volume of his projected three volume narrative history of the civil rights movement, Pillar of Fire, Taylor Branch reminds us how divisive the issue was and how difficult the period. The first volume, Parting the Waters, which begins in 1954, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. A third volume, At Canaan's Edge, will follow. A project the author hoped to complete in one book over three years has now taken 15 years and two books.

Although King is the major figure in the book, Pillar of Fire is not a biography. Instead, Branch is interested in a broad overview of the move toward equal rights. This involves exploring the relationships between individuals and groups, the actions and reactions that led, in some cases, to good, and in others to suffering. He demonstrates that the movement was not monolithic and that often even King and his advisers could not agree on appropriate courses of action. We follow Malcolm X as he breaks from the Nation of Islam and develops his own approach to racial issues. Branch skillfully shows us the tense and often frustrating relationship between King and Robert and John Kennedy until the latter's death and later with Lyndon Johnson. And although the FBI was eventually able to solve some of the worst racial crimes of our time, the Bureau displayed strong animosity toward King and his objectives, and, unknown to him, had him under surveillance for a long period and taped many of his private conversations.

Branch relates the stories of brave and courageous individuals who were not public figures or government officials but put themselves at risk because they believed strongly in equal rights, and he conveys how powerful the resistance to change was and how violent. He relates such incidents as the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, and the murder of Medgar Evers. He discusses the Mississippi Summer program in 1964 that brought many students to a part of the country they had never seen before. He details the events leading up to and following the deaths that year of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

The author's meticulous accumulation of detail upon detail helps us to gain a greater appreciation for what King, as a political as well as spiritual strategist, with the help of many others, accomplished. I was led to reflect on what the late Alex Haley told me in a BookPage interview in 1988. Haley, who collaborated with Malcolm X on his autobiography also conducted what is considered to be one of the most incisive interviews that King ever gave. Haley told me: "The thing that has always intrigued me about Dr. King and Malcolm was how easily either of them might have been the other . . . Dr. King would have made a tremendous hustler. And Malcolm would have made a tremendous theologian. Both of them were great powers in their own way. And so to me always the intrigue has been the two men are a case of Ôbut for the grace of God . . . ' And as a matter of fact, not enough recognition is given to the fact that Malcolm was most helpful to Dr. King. The way Malcolm . . . scared people. And what it did was shake people enough so that when Dr. King came along, speaking of turning the other cheek and the Gandhi principles, he was a lot less threatening . . ." Branch's magnificent work is a must for anyone who wants to understand a turbulent time that helped change the attitudes and practices of this country.

The civil rights movement that began in the 1950s continued to grow in scope and intensity into the early 1960s. A series of non-violent protests in such places as Birmingham, St. Augustine, and Selma met with strong resistance but led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

Partisans

Review by Roger Bishop

From the late 1930s through the early 1960s, Partisan Review was the most influential literary and cultural journal in the United States. The editors, Philip Rahv and William Phillips, and their circle of writers and critics composed the core of the group often described as the New York intellectuals. Contributors during those years included many of the leading writers of the day from this country and Europe. Among the many writers whose work was published there: T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Marguerite Yourcenar, George Orwell, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Penn Warren, James Baldwin, and Walker Percy.

PR was primarily a men's club, but there were some remarkable women who, through their extraordinary writing and ambition, were able to not only get their work published but also become prominent intellectuals. David Laskin explores the lives and careers of these talented yet different women in Partisans. Laskin focuses on the interconnected lives and careers of Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Hannah Arendt, and, to a lesser extent, on Diana Trilling and Jean Stafford. He also discusses the Southern novelist and short story writer Caroline Gordon, who was not part of this circle, but who, like her husband Allen Tate, had close ties to Northern intellectuals and had a significant influence on a new generation of writers.

The men who were editors, critics, partners, advisers, and husbands of these women included Rahv, Robert Lowell, Edmund Wilson, and Randall Jarrell. Drawing on correspondence, memoirs, and personal recollections, Caskin shows how complex their lives were. He does not romanticize them. They were all, in their way, crazy at times, he notes, mad in every sense but when they were sane they were extraordinarily brilliant, often charming people, most charming of all when they were with each other. They made serious mistakes in judgment, but, Laskin says, they had a zeal and idealism and originality that have all but vanished from the American political scene or migrated to its fanatical fringes. They were often fiercely competitive but they shared a sense of public responsibility.

How were women regarded by this group? In a sense the Rahv set had no women only wives and writers, and if a writer happened to be female, she became one of the boys. Being a wife in that crowd was a fate worse than death. Both women and men writers believed in marriage, but there was a contradiction. The men and women were intellectual peers and companions, but socially, professionally, and emotionally, the men came first. The husbands wrote; the wives did everything else the housekeeping, child rearing, entertaining, nursing, gardening and then wrote. And it never struck any of them to arrange things differently. The women's movement of the '60s changed things. For these women, they had won their first battle without fighting and lost the war without realizing there was one. They managed to get published and become famous, formidable intellectuals without challenging or offending the males who published them . . . But their unintended victory proved to be perishable, personal, bound up as it was with their own gifts, sway, charm, and intimate connections, powers of persuasion. This fascinating group biography gives us a most revealing look into the literary culture of a unique period in history.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

From the late 1930s through the early 1960s, Partisan Review was the most influential literary and cultural journal in the United States. The editors, Philip Rahv and William Phillips, and their circle of writers and critics composed the core of the group often described as the New York intellectuals. Contributors during those years included many […]

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