5 comments about Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Loeb Classical Library No. 273).

1. This book explains a very thoughtful, rigorously worked out consideration of the following perplexing observation, which is one I think we all share: "I do not seem to know anything for certain." By having so carefully considered this issue, I believe that this ancient book represents a coherent and complete answer to the predicaments that modern skeptics so worry and strain themselves over; for example, it achieves Sartre's own goal, which was to "work out a coherent atheism," and did so 2000 years before Sartre was born.

   The Outlines, like the other extant works of Sextus Empiricus, is largely a recording of teachings attributed to a Greek philosopher of the 4th c. B.C. named Pyrrho of Elis. Pyrrho is a shadowy figure and himself left no extant writings, but is believed by longstanding rumor (preserved most quote-ably by the Roman historian Diogenes Laertius) to have been influenced by Buddhism during his travels with Alexander the Great to India.

   Pyrrho's thought influenced middle and later phases of Plato's Academy and flourished there for some centuries, where it was intensely worked and re-worked. Indeed, Pyrrho's thought ultimately exerted such great influence in classical civilization that his name became synonomous with the modern technical meaning of the word "skepticism" (in fact, the title of this work, which in Greek is "Pyrrhoniae Hypothesi," is sometimes translated as "Outlines of Skepticism").

   Ancient skepticism fell into obscurity following the fall of Rome and languished in obscurity for nearly a millennium. Fortunatley, however, the works of Sextus were rediscovered during the Italian Renaissance and from there enjoyed wide attention in Europe for some centuries, impacting the works of such notable figures as Montaigne and Walter Raleigh.

   Nevertheless, ancient skepticism again fell out of academic view in more recent times. This is peculiar and unfortunate; this body of thought was no less influential than Platonic, Aristotelian, and other classical movements now effectively canonized in Western culture and was kept well in the forefront of academic thought for many centuries, but is now largely a curiosity seriously studied only by specialist philosophers and classics scholars.

   What is most interesting to me about ancient skepticism is that I think everything that could possibly be said by modern doubters -- the phenomenologists, the existentialists, the mass of usually unthinking and poorly educated oafs who call themselves postmodernists -- was already said by the ancients. Indeed, the absolutely key points that a doubter must make in order to render his doubts even coherent all appear in the Outlines, in my opinion, and I see nothing in the supposedly radical works of modern day doubters that is really more radical than what is contained in Sextus.

   Finally, there is no better introduction to ancient skepticism than the Outlines. Sextus is unbelievably straightforward and easy to understand, especially if you have any experience reading other works of skepticism.

   Personally, I think the Barnes & Annas translation, available in an in-print Cambridge University edition, is better because it is better suited to modern readers and is copiously annotated. However, this or any other edition will do for a non-specialist looking for an understanding ancient skepticism.




2. This work is a classic; it largely is a recording of the otherwise unavailable teachings attributed to a Greek philosopher of the 4th c. BC named Pyrrho of Elis. The reason I wrote this, however, is that the "synopsis" presented by Amazon summarizing the book is seriously faulty. First of all, I can't imagine why it says that this book considers "th[e] theory as set forth" by Sextus that "certain knowledge is possible--that the physical world and ideas formulated about it could be given solid foundations unaffected by the varieties of mere opinion." Sextus, and Pyrrho, the man of whose teachings Sextus is mostly just a scribe, believed precisely the opposite. I think the synopsis may just have been poorly written, but in any case it gives an incorrect impression.

   Second, it is deeply false to call Sextus the "founder of the 'skeptic' school of thought." Though no one is sure when Sextus lived, it was several centuries after Pyrrho, and even Pyrrho couldn't be called the founder of Skepticism. His teacher Anaxarchus taught a reasoned and systematized series of arguments that explained his epistemological doubts. Moreover, Plato's work "Theatetus" also sets forth detailed epistemological skepticism, and that work predates even the lifetime of Anaxarchus. "[S]keptic school[s] of thought" had flourished for centuries in Greece and Rome before Sextus was even born.

   The synopsis is misleading and inaccurate.




3. This is "without a doubt" the best book ever written for those who sincerely want the truth. Empiricus does an outstanding and brilliant job on describing skepticism. He shows that a true skeptic doubts everything, and not just the paranormal and "fringe beliefs". The book is a how to manual for being a skeptic. The author shows why doubt is necessary to establish truth. He shows why we can never know something for certain,and that all beliefs are only probabilities. After reading this book, one will get a better understanding of unorthodox beliefs. One will see that people who believe in unusual things may not be irrational at all but hardened skeptics who may in fact be wise. This book should be required reading at all schools including doctoral levels of learning. If people were more skeptical of everything including the orthodox teachings of science and established "knowledge", we may come closer to truth and wisdom instead of believing things that are not true.



4. This is one of the best books ever written on skepticism. The author takes the position that dogmatists are sick and in need of a cure. This cure is skepticism. He then attacks beliefs in dogmatic positions such as belief in God, the certainty of knowledge and so forth. This is the one true book for the skeptical position. Skepticism as presented in this book is as skepticism should be, that is, a double edged sword. Empiricus attacks everything, including other skeptics. This is as skepticism should be, not the watered down version practiced by most skeptics nowadays. For instance, most skeptics believe in atheism and evolution, wheras their are major objections against these positions, that clearly refute them. A true skeptic looks at both sides of the issue. An excellent book.



5. This is one of the best books ever written on skepticism. The author takes the position that dogmatists are sick and in need of a cure. This cure is skepticism. He then attacks beliefs in dogmatic positions such as belief in God, the certainty of knowledge and so forth. This is the one true book for the skeptical position. Skepticism as presented in this book is as skepticism should be, that is, a double edged sword. Empiricus attacks everything, including other skeptics. This is as skepticism should be, not the watered down version practiced by most skeptics nowadays. For instance, most skeptics believe in atheism and evolution, wheras their are major objections against these positions, that clearly refute them. A true skeptic looks at both sides of the issue. An excellent book.

3 comments about Shanghai Legacy.

1. Author Cuba takes a little-known chapter in Jewish history and writes a very worthy novel. The device is a diary; Maya finds the diary of her mysterious mother Hannah after Hannah dies. Now some of the mystery of Hannah's life unfolds for Maya, and she learns of her mother's struggles, bravery and difficulties while she examines her own life through new eyes. Hannah escaped Germany and went to Shanghai and ultimately ended up in America. The story of her flight and her struggles is the backdrop for the novel, and as the mystery of Hannah unfolds, Maya learns a lot about her own life and her own attitudes.
   
   The diary is the most fascinating part of the book--the refugees in China mourn the loss of their comfortable life in German and they live in squalor in Japanese-occupied China. Shanghai is dirty and cold. Diseases are rampant, yet the Jewish refugees hear stories of Treblinka and realize that though life is hard, it is far more horrible in Germany. And the survivor guilt sets in, for the victims of the Holocaust, for those left behind when Hannah goes to America.
   
   This is a very good novel; the interleaving of Maya's life is typical of novels today that twine two lives together and show their relationship and contrasts. But for me, the diary was so poignant and real, it almost overshadowed Maya's story. However, alone it is almost too much to read and together with Maya's tale, you can almost walk her part and with her, begin to untangle the lives that affected you from the past, lives with struggles that we can hardly know.
   
   A terrific book. Recommended.



2. Cuba does a sensitive job depicting the complicated life of Hannah, a German Jewish teenager in World War II era Shanghai. This gripping page turner is as exciting in its flash-forward story of her adult daughter years later in Manhattan as it is of the highly perilous years of Hannah's youth in China. I only regret that I cannot read it again for the first time.



3. "Your mother," she repeats, dipping her nurse's cap toward Hannah's room again, "she is like a melon that will never ripen, Miss Silver," is what the nurse tells the dying woman's daughter, Maya.
   
   That unripened melon, Maya soon discovers is her mother's diary dating back to 1938, when approximately twenty thousand European Jews escaped Nazi Germany to Shanghai and created a unique ghetto. Why Shanghai? It was the only city in the world that accepted foreigners without any entry requirements.
   
   Marion Cuba's debut novel, Shanghai Legacy, draws her central character, Maya, into the private thoughts and secrets of her mother Hanna, whom she never fully knew, and whose childhood had been lost amidst the life-changing hardships she had endured while a refugee in Shanghai.
   
   Maya is hungry to explore an era that was never spoken about in their household and of which she was ignorant. Moreover, Maya realizes, objects such as diaries, hold meaning, as they reveal an individual's aspirations and dreams, as well as their eventual relationships with family members.
   
   All of this becomes vividly possible by the discovery of Hannah's German diary recounting her teen-age experiences in Shanghai. The diary is translated to Maya by an antique dealer Sam Ascher, whom she hires to appraise her later mother's furniture. Sam is a former attorney, who has taken over his father's business, and as Maya subsequently learns, is a child of Holocaust survivors.
   
   Interwoven into the narrative is Maya's discovery of herself and her cold and difficult relationship with her husband, Harold, who is a prominent ophthalmologist, and very much wrapped up in himself and his profession. Maya challenges Harold's repressive hold over her when she decides to keep her mother's home that she has inherited. This leads to her frequent stays in the house, while it is being renovated. However, it also causes some guilt feelings, as she questions herself playing house alone and not even thinking of Harold, as well as her life in Chappaqua.
   
   There is a good story here; unfortunately, it is jumbled up in the roots of a much longer tale that needs to be told. How much richer would it have been if there was more detailed exploration of just how much Hanna's life affected that of her daughter's. Nonetheless, the author shows a great deal of promise and the novel certainly deserves a read.
   
   
   Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures
   
   
   
   
   
   

2 comments about The Beggar and the Professor: A Sixteenth-Century Family Saga.

1. Readers should understand that this is not a historical novel, but a detailed narrative about Europe during a period of great religious, political, social and cultural upheaval. Tracing the lives of the Platter men, Thomas and his two sons, Felix and Thomas, Jr., the author reveals a society often overlooked by modern readers. While most historians deal with the political side only, LaDurie focuses on the religious turbulence that ultimately resulted in a new Europe. The fact that Thomas Platter, Sr., an illiterate peasant, was able to rise to a position of respected teacher and publisher, one who was a contemporary of Calvin, and published his Institutes, tells us much about the opportunities for social advancement during the period. Felix's experiences in southern France and his relationships with Spanish Jews sheds a great deal of light on another portion of "hidden history." The influence of the "New World" is also beginning to be felt across! the continent at this time. For any student of social geography or religious history, this book is an absolute treasure chest.



2. Although there are interesting facts about life in the Sixteenth Century, they are few and far between in this book. Probably a good doctorial thesis, this is a tedious, at times redundant, read

5 comments about Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire.

1. So much of our American history is not taught in our schools, so when we become adults, we must self-study especially contributions of Black Americans. This account of A. G. Gaston's life by his niece and grand-niece is well-paced and informative. Gaston took advantage of every opportunity made available to him and his suberb work ethic allowed him to flourish in many business enterprises. Many of us know a lot about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but how many of us know A.G. Gaston was the man who bailed MLK Jr. and others out of the Birmingham jail? This is a must read. I've already ordered copies for my parents and my local library. Enjoy!



2. This book is not a civil rights manual and its not guide to getting rich. This book offer a glimpse into the life of a man that was successful in business when Black folk in business was virtually unheard of especially at the level that he operated. If you keep an open mind and read this book you will learn something about the civil rights movement and getting rich.



3. This book is AWESOME and a MUST Read! The authors definitely did their research not only about their grandfather, but also about the history/activities that took place during that era. I was so happy that my mentor, recommended this book to our book club. I am a black woman and I NEVER heard about Mr. Gaston. I didn't even know that we had any millionaires and influencers during this time. This book should be a supplement to African American literature, as well as business courses. The Black Titan should be right next to those books written about J. D. Rockerfeller, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Sam Walton, etc.



4. Actually most of the information from this book was taken from Green Power ( written by the man himself) and the rest was stretched. Actually, I know the authors. Neither of them truly new him and as far being related, they were nieces only by marriage. I just think they are trying to make a quick buck on something that they know nothing about.



5. As a child I participated in and won the A.G. Gaston spelling bee on the state level two years in a row (1957-1958). It was a stepping stone for me and enabled me to go on and do more rewarding things as an adult. I remember staying in his motel in Birmingham with my sponsor and god mother, Mrs Tempie Horton. This is a piece of history that I share with my grand kids. My name is (maiden) Lois Jean Scott and I attended Calvary Jr. high school in Huntsville, Alabama. I am grateful for Mr Gaston and his wife, whom I met on several occasions, for giving me this opportunity.

5 comments about Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, And The Death Of America's Most Scandalous President.

1. The Washington Times wrote a terrific review of this book, which follows:
   
   A President Of the Peephole
   By Carl Sferrazza Anthony
   Special to The Washington Post
   Sunday, June 7, 1998
   
   Fearing revelations about his illicit affair with a young campaign volunteer - which included sex in an Oval Office hideaway while under the guard of Secret Service agents - the president realized that stonewalling was ultimately futile. He stunned a private party of reporters at the National Press Club by confessing his carnal desires.
   
   "It's a good thing I am not a woman," the president said. "I would always be pregnant. I can't say no."
   
   In this administration, the scandals never seemed to end. There was the strange suicide of an administration official, made even more mysterious by a note that disappeared. Then came an investigation into payoffs and coverups connected to a notorious land deal. The president's friends launched smear campaigns against his perceived foes. Dossiers were compiled; private eyes and snitches deployed. Affidavits were drafted in which various women denied liaisons with the president. Jobs were arranged to keep people quiet.
   
   Through it all, a steel-willed first lady kept the press at bay and did whatever was necessary to defend her husband's reputation - even if it meant destroying evidence.
   
   The scandals erupted at a time when technological advances in communication were feeding a nation hungry for distraction, and the economy was booming. Sex sold - and the ravenous press corps was all too happy to name names and offer seamy details. The president and his wife boosted their public image by bringing Hollywood stars to the White House; they knew the value of glamour and the power of celebrity. It also helped that he was a genial populist and inveterate shaker of hands, fond of golf and cards, a man of the people.
   
   Ladies thought him virile and handsome; he photographed well.
   For some reason, all of this seems familiar. Whatever else may be said of Warren Gamaliel Harding - whose tenure as 29th president ended with his peculiar, premature death in 1923 - he was a truly modern politician. His administration, which reeked of corruption, offers a prototype for Washington scandals. Whitewater, Iran-contra and Watergate are better known today, but the granddaddy of them all was Teapot Dome, a political maelstrom that broke 75 years ago this month and is still hard to top in terms of sheer outrageousness.
   
   Harding, a small-town Ohio newspaper publisher, was uniquely unsuited for the job of president - and he knew it. "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here," he once said. But he "looked like a president," as one major backer put it, and his wife, Florence, was instrumental in shepherding his political career. (The press considered Florence, known as the Duchess, to be the power behind the throne; one cartoon depicted the couple as "The Chief Executive and Mr. Harding.") Harding, a one-term Republican senator, won the job by promising Americans a "return to normalcy" after World War I.
   
   Though his legacy was soiled, his domestic achievements were substantial: the 40-hour work week, improved health care for new mothers, the first balanced-budget bureau, a focus on technology. And we have to give Harding credit for establishing a venerable institution: the Washington gossip mill. Based on new documentation, here's a reprise of the Harding era.
   
   I love your back, I love your breasts
   Darling to feel, where my face rests,
   I love your skin, so soft and white,
   So dear to feel and sweet to bite. . . .
   I love your poise of perfect thighs,
   When they hold me in paradise. . . .
   -- A Harding poem to one of his mistresses, Carrie Phillips
   
   No president had more "women scrapes," as his attorney general put it, than Warren G. His first affair, three years into his marriage to Florence, was with Susie Hodder - his wife's best friend from childhood - resulting in the birth of a daughter. His second affair was with Florence's closest adult friend, Carrie Fulton Phillips. It lasted 15 years. His third enduring mistress was his Senate aide, Grace Cross.
   Number four was the most infamous and the first presidential mistress to write a memoir: In the large Oval Office closet, the president had at least one tryst with Nan Britton, a campaign volunteer who had started having sex with Harding when he was 51 and she was 22. Their assignations, facilitated by Secret Service agents James Sloan and Walter Ferguson ("Harding hated to have them around, for he despised being watched," reported the chief usher), came to an abrupt stop when another agent, Harry Barker, tipped Florence off, and she ran down for a confrontation.
   
   It was in Harding's Senate office, late one night in the winter of 1919, that Britton claimed she conceived their daughter, Elizabeth Ann. They disrobed because Harding wanted to "visualize" her while he worked there during the day. Britton worried that they lacked the "usual paraphernalia which we always took to the hotels . . . and of course, the Senate Offices do not provide preventive facilities for use in such emergencies."
   
   He had assorted other flings, including one with Rosa Hoyle, said to have conceived his only illegitimate son, and one with Augusta Cole, whose pregnancy by Harding was terminated. He bedded a Washington Post employee known as Miss Allicott, and former chorus girls Maize Haywood and Blossom Jones - all procured by Harding's crony, Washington Post publisher and owner Ned McLean. And then there's the string of "New York women" - including one who committed suicide after Harding wouldn't marry her, and another who had a stash of incriminating love letters purchased by Harding loyalists.
   
   The president even publicly ogled Margaret Gorman, the first Miss America, in Atlantic City, days after her crowning.
   
   Follow the Money
   
   Just weeks after his inauguration in 1921, Harding approved Interior Secretary Albert Fall's request to transfer oil reserves from the Navy Department to Fall's control. Fall then secretly leased the reserve at Elks Hills, Calif., to oilman Edward Doheny and the one at Teapot Dome, Wyo., to Harry Sinclair - in exchange for a "loan" of cash and stock worth nearly $400,000, delivered in a small black satchel, and a "gift" of $100,000 from Doheny. Fall became the first Cabinet member to be thrown in prison.
   
   Col. Charles Forbes, the first director of the U.S. Veterans Bureau, created by Harding, was particularly close to the first lady. She saw to his appointment, and entrusted him with $450 million to build hospitals and provide decent medical care for the thousands of disabled veterans of World War I, on whose behalf the Duchess was a national activist.
   
   Instead, he bilked tens of thousands out of building contractors and medical supply companies. He was eventually imprisoned - but not before Harding personally throttled him against the Red Room wall in the White House.
   
   Although Attorney General Harry Daugherty, a Harding crony and campaign manager, eluded conviction on a variety of pardon-selling and influence-peddling charges, his Justice Department was riddled with malfeasance, kickbacks and payoffs. One of the department's central tasks was to intimidate any Harding mistress who threatened the president with blackmail.
   
   High Officials
   
   Evalyn McLean, the Post publisher's wife, was a confidante of Mrs. Harding and an admitted intermittent morphine addict. Despite Prohibition, she also was a heavy drinker and speakeasy regular - but then, so were her husband and other ranking government officials: Albert Fall, Col. Forbes and the president's chief aide, George Christian. In the Veterans Bureau, stories eventually broke about flapper secretaries and young officers having a regular cocktail hour, with shakers and glasses at the ready, overseen by Forbes.
   
   The president served liquor freely in the present-day Yellow Oval Room to his guests. Alice Longworth - a regular at poker - recalled that the first lady mixed the drinks. "No rumor could have exceeded the truth. . . . [T]rays with bottles containing every imaginable brand of whiskey stood about," she remembered. And, according to recently declassified FBI reports, Harding was drunk on whiskey during an Oval Office confrontation with railroad union leaders during their 1922 strike.
   
   At the center of the capital's most elite bootlegging service was Jess Smith - who, even though never an employee or even a volunteer at the Justice Department, used official letterhead, cars and staff, and sat in on private meetings with FBI Director Billy Burns. Smith enjoyed these perks as the bachelor companion of the attorney general. Smith also served as the first lady's favorite escort and arbiter of her jaunty '20s fashions.
   
   Through the Justice Department, Smith had access to whiskey supplies confiscated by Prohibition agents, and some of the booze went directly to the White House, and to the McLeans, while the rest was kept for parties at the "Love Nest," the small house shared by Smith and Daugherty, complete with a pink taffeta bedroom.
   
   Hollywood Values
   
   Working closely with Republican National Committee Chairman Will Hays during the 1920 campaign, Florence Harding conceived of recruiting Hollywood movie stars to support her husband. Al Jolson was drafted to head the Harding-Coolidge Theatrical League, and on Aug. 24, 1920, the marriage of politics and entertainment was forged forever when Jolson brought 40 movie stars to the Harding home for a campaign rally.
   
   The White House became a little Hollywood. On any given day, D.W. Griffith, the Gish sisters or Tom Mix might pose for newsreel cameras with the Hardings. When Hays left his job as postmaster general to become president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, he developed a "project to link the White House with the motion picture industry" by providing a movie library. All of this was nothing short of immoral to old society. The religious press took even greater offense to Florence's ringing the stately halls with jazz for the first time. The Biblical Recorder excoriated the Hardings for "setting a bad example by joining in the modern dance with its 'jazz' music."
   
   Squelching the Bimbos
   
   There was a good reason for Jess Smith having a vaguely defined association with the Justice Department. In this way, he was able to act at the implicit direction of the attorney general and FBI director and carry out a systematic intimidation of Harding mistresses who threatened to do as Carrie Phillips did and demand blackmail for their love letters. At one point, in exchange for apparently small amounts of money, affidavits disclaiming rumors of their liaisons were wrestled out of Evelyn Ruby, Augusta Cole and Cecilia Hoyle, and made their way to the first lady.
   
   In April 1921, Ned McLean officially became an agent of the FBI, and did his utterly unethical best to destroy any anti-Harding efforts he heard about as publisher of The Post. Such responsibilities included ripping the blouse of Nan Britton to try to snatch letters she claimed to be carrying - in the privacy of his editorial office.
   
   Even on the eve of his inauguration, Harding was providing more trouble for his troubleshooters. He had arranged a late-night rendezvous with Grace Cross, his Senate aide, in a Willard Hotel room. Some of his friends, recalled Olive Clapper, a reporter's wife, "ordered her to pack and get out of town, threatening to put the FBI on her trail if she didn't go at once. She was so frightened she left immediately."
   
   Psychic Guidance
   
   Mrs. Harding's diary, discovered last year at an Ohio barn auction, revealed her to be a true believer in crystal ball readings, the zodiac and clairvoyance. In February 1920, as a Senate wife, she had her first consultation with capital society's seer, "Madame Marcia." The psychic predicted that if Harding ran for president that year, he would be nominated - but that if he won the election, he would not live through his full term and instead die of "sudden, peculiar, violent . . . death by poison."
   
   Knowing that the blackmail price of $25,000 demanded by Carrie Phillips for the love letters could never be met unless her husband became a presidential nominee, Florence pushed him through the primaries on to the nomination, ignoring the ominous prediction. During the Harding presidency, Madame Marcia was regularly fetched by the first lady's Secret Service agent, brought through the back entrance and escorted to the presidential bedroom for zodiac updates. Madame Marcia also did horoscopes for the president's public appearances; the first lady was trying to protect him from numerous assassination and bomb threats.
   
   When Florence got early inklings of the Teapot Dome, Veteran's Bureau and Justice Department scandals, she asked Marcia to do astrological charts of Cabinet members - and used the results as evidence to remove some of the crooks from the administration.
   
   Blackmailers' Delight
   
   Newly discovered documents now prove that Harding was the only president successfully blackmailed by a mistress. Once he was nominated as the Republican candidate, the national GOP committee paid off Carrie Phillips's lump-sum demand of $25,000 and monthly stipend of $2,000, funneled through a secret bank account kept, apparently, under Jess Smith's name (the records were burned by Attorney General Daugherty).
   Once Harding became president, Phillips returned from an all-expense-paid trip abroad and demanded that her brother and son-in-law be given federal posts. It was done. Harding even circulated the name of Phillips's husband to be ambassador to Japan - before word got out why he thought a dry-goods salesman from Marion, Ohio, deserved the post and the idea was quashed.
   
   One night, when he was a senator, Harding had such a row with aide Grace Cross that she cut his back and the police were called. Thereafter, Cross went around town talking about a "birthmark" on the president's back that she could identify - undoubtedly the wound - which became part of her arsenal in unsuccessful attempts to get blackmail money. However, former Democratic attorney general Mitchell Palmer would later use his knowledge of the Cross affair to force Harding to drop a Justice Department prosecution against him.
   
   Crossing a Friend
   
   After a failed attempt to frame Cross with a phony affidavit claiming she was a liar and blackmailer, Smith approached Bertha Martin - a friend of Cross's - to try to get possession of the aide's love letters from Harding. Martin said she would turn on her friend on the condition that she was given the job of society editor at The Post. Smith went to McLean, who gave his nod. Martin took Cross to lunch, asked to see the letters, snatched them away and bolted out of the restaurant. She was made society editor - and still managed to stay friends with Cross, taking her on a European vacation, courtesy of the secret blackmail fund.
   
   Deadly Sins
   
   During a party at Smith and Daugherty's "Love Nest," some New York chorus girls were brought down to entertain a stag party. In attendance was the president. When glasses and bottles were being flung off the table so the dancing girls could perform, one Washington prostitute, identified only as a Miss Walsh, was knocked unconscious. Harding was hustled out. The woman died and was buried in a potter's field.
   
   In recently discovered transcripts of her taped revelations, Evalyn McLean recalled that the FBI director "railroaded" the woman's brother into St. Elizabeths mental hospital when he suggested a blackmail payment.
   
   Censorship by Book Burning
   
   "The Strange Death of President Harding," written in 1930 by the notorious perjurer and former FBI agent Gaston Means, implied that Florence Harding poisoned her husband in retaliation for his adultery, but the book has long been dismissed as a fabrication. New evidence shows that while Means lied in details, he told general truths. He said that he was part of an FBI effort to seize and destroy a small, privately printed book, "The Illustrated Life of Warren Gamaliel Harding," that revealed Harding's affair with Carrie Phillips, the RNC blackmail payoff and Florence's out-of-wedlock child by a common-law first husband.
   
   This turned out to be the only book suppressed by the government in peacetime. The entire action was illegal, and thus the boxes of books and updated manuscript inserts were taken not to any government property but to the McLean estate, where they were all burned. Well, not all: An original with the author's notes sits with none other than Evalyn
   
   
   Spying
   
   Among Gaston Means's other sensational charges was that he spied for the first lady on Nan Britton. In fact, it was probably Grace Cross - for at least one letter sent to her from the president's office was purloined and found its way into the file on Cross in the McLeans' private papers. Post reporter Vylla Poe Wilson later admitted that both "Mrs. Harding and Mrs. McLean were very jealous women, and they hired Gaston Means to follow Harding and McLean and report on their actions." In congressional hearings on the Justice Department, it was confirmed that Agent Means not only spied on Cross but the president's physician, Charles Sawyer, and his mistress, the first lady's housekeeper.
   
   Suicides
   
   Congress first heard tales of gross corruption at the Veterans Bureau in February 1923. Col. Forbes's colleague in kickbacks, Charles Cramer - the bureau's chief counsel, and the purchaser of the Hardings' Senate home - wrote out a letter to the president in his dining room, then stood before the bathroom mirror and shot himself. The letter mysteriously disappeared.
   
   At the start of the summer, the first big Harding scandal broke with the news that Jess Smith was found in his room with his head in a trash can, and a bullet in his head. The official word went out that it was a suicide due to health and emotional problems. Bertha Martin of The Post recalled that it was "noised about" town that Smith was a known homosexual, and that he was heartbroken over Daugherty's sudden rejection of his friendship when the president learned of Smith's nefarious activities. Others, like Evalyn McLean, simply believed Daugherty, Means or Burns had Smith killed because he knew too much. As for Martin, after a second career bootlegging whiskey to embassies, she was found dressed in her fur coat, pearls and white gloves with her head on the gas range, another alleged suicide.
   
   Negligent Homicide?
   
   Beginning on June 20, 1923, the Hardings sought to escape the heat and scandal of Washington on a 15,000-mile transcontinental train trip and voyage to Alaska. The president was 57 at the time. The recently unsealed diary and notes of naval physician Joel Boone reveal Boone's grave concerns about the president's heart condition. The warnings were ignored by longtime Harding homeopath "Doc" Sawyer, who made no effort to stop Harding from speaking in the blistering heat, driving the golden spike to complete the Alaska Railroad, or doing other arduous tasks. In this Sawyer had the absolute approval of the first lady, who was now enjoying the height of her national popularity and didn't want the trip canceled. She viewed the incompetent Sawyer as her own Rasputin, who'd miraculously kept a chronic kidney ailment from killing her.
   
   When Harding suffered a bout of food poisoning from tainted crab meat at Cordova, Alaska, Doc Sawyer ultimately weakened the president's sick heart by treating him with heavy doses of purgatives to flush out the toxins. On Aug. 2, 1923, when Boone was out of the sickroom in San Francisco's Palace Hotel, Sawyer plied one too many purgatives - in Florence's presence - and Harding died. There was a quick coverup regarding who was in the room and at precisely what time the president died. Mrs. Harding refused to permit an autopsy or a death mask, protecting her beloved Sawyer. "Now that is all over," she told Evalyn McLean after Harding's death, "I think it was all for the best."
   
   Evidence Destruction
   
   At the McLean estate, aptly named Friendship, Evalyn permitted the widowed first lady to bring from the White House wood crates full of government documents (which may have been incriminating to Harding) and helped burn them. Even though Mrs. Harding was being spied on and her phone was tapped during the congressional investigations of the scandals, she was able to keep destroying documents within the privacy of her Willard Hotel suite.
   
   Four months after leaving Washington, Florence died at age 64 in Marion, Ohio. She was staying in a cottage on the grounds of the Sawyer Sanitarium "for the treatment of nervous and mental diseases," amid signs that read: "Please do not stare at the Patients."
   
   This article is adapted from Carl Sferrazza Anthony's just-published biography, "Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President" (Morrow).



2. The Harding administration is buried in 20th century obscurity. Aside from the words "Teapot Dome", which few laymen know anything about, and the overriding scandal that dogged Harding's reputation after he left office, there are few people who would even know the name of the first lady.
   
   Florence Harding portrays the image of a plain, dowdy hayseed, but the author brings her to life in the context of an amazing time in our history.
   
   The 1920's were a time of a burgeoning economy, a rich underground economy with speakeasies, amazing jazz, racial awareness, and a recovery from World I. Florence Harding worked behind the scenes to prop her husband up to the challenge of the presidency. Recent revisionist historians have re-examined his presidency to look at his leadership, and his vision beyond the republican side of the aisle.
   
   Florence Harding welcomed in the Jazz Age, consulted "spiritual advisors", and looked at feminist causes long before many of her contemporaries. She also loved and adored her husband, looking past his infidelities, and his out-of-wedlock children.
   
   Warren Harding was in over his head as President. He was an innocent idealist who was thrust into a dark horse candidacy by unscrupulous men who he believed were his friends. He was also a popular and beloved President at he time of his death.
   
   This book, however, is about his wife. She was a tirelessly driven woman, cannily intelligent, with a strength that propelled her to the pinnacle of American leadership.
   
   It is a story few would undertake to tell, and it is riveting. While Florence Harding never comes off as likable, she is portrayed as loyal, admirable, and visionary beyond her time. There is a touching passage, as she sits next to Warren's open coffin, when she tells her husband "nobody can hurt you now, W'urrn".
   
   She clearly understood the power of the office, and the damage it had done to her husband.
   
   An engrossing biography, on an unlikely subject.



3. Writer Carl Anthony has composed an outstanding biography in his work Florence Harding. Harding Florence Harding been one of the more easily understood or admired First Lady's in this nations history, this book would have been written years ago. However, Mrs. Harding's legacy has been in the past told and retold more as a tabloid story than factual account.
   
   When approaching this book, one needs to understand how Mrs. Harding's legacy was tainted by three men, none of which was her husband Warren G. Harding. First, Gaston Means - a grifter and one time low level FBI agent - did a master job at maligning the deceased Mrs. Harding in his book, The Strange Death of President Harding, a ghost written work that was penned by a tabloid jouranlist who sued Means when he failed to honor his obligations to the writer. In this book, Means paints the picture of Mrs. harding that is pervasive in American Pop Culture: that Mrs. Harding was clueless love lorn hag, who spent her time with mystics plotting the Presidents next moves in star charts. This is an image that the public bought, hook, line and sinker.
   
   The other two men who betrayed Mrs. Harding were her doctor, Charles E. Sawyer and his son Dr. Carl Sawyer. The Sawyers held Mrs. Harding in their sway - she believed that they were great medical doctors, however it was the elder Sawyer's mis diagnosis of President Harding's heart condition as food poisoning. When Charles Sawyer discovered that the widowed First Lady's kidney ailment acted up, he travelled to Washington DC and demanded that Florence return to Marion Ohio for treatment at his private Sanatorium rather than seek treatment at at the better suited facilities in Washington. Mrs, Harding was placed in a cottage at the facility, and then kept at the facility by Sawyer's son Carl after the elder Sawyer died. Following Mrs. Harding's death, Dr. Carl Sawyer assummed total control of the Harding Memorial Association and maintained an iron grip on the Harding legacy until his death in the 1960s. As with all great dictators, Carl Sawyer controlled all aspects of the Harding legacy. As a result, the public never had a fair opportunity to study the Harding's, but rather were fed a steady stream of "approved" information about the couple.
   
   Anthony's work goes the distance in seperating the negative myths from the honest truths in her life, which by any standard was not charmed. However, the author does take liberties in communicating his emotions about Mrs. Harding. He believes that she has been mis-portrayed and his passion about correcting that sometimes overstates her case. However, his book is very well documented by copious endnotes and reliable first person accounts and primary documents.
   
   This book will never be a New York Times best seller - the public would rather believe that Harding Myths inseatd of the facts - but for those who care to learn more about the truths of the 29th President and his most remarkable wife, this is a satisfying and accurate book to read.



4. How to make a fairly dull and unpleasant like Florence Harding come alive is a difficult enough feat, however the author does a splendid job of doing it! Expertly researched and pleasantly told, Mrs. Harding comes off far better than she has ever been depicted before - and perhaps even better than she deserves.



5. I found this book hard to put down. I had not realized all the things this obscure first lady was involved with in her life. She looks like somebody's stern grandmother so when I idly looked through this book, I was surprised to find myself drawn in immediately. It is a large book, but I read it very fast as I just could not put it down. This is how a biography should be written, it is well researched and yet still reads almost like a novel.

3 comments about A Muslim in Victorian America: The Life of Alexander Russell Webb.

1. This look at the life of Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb, one of the first American converts to Islam, is well researched and written in a language that captivates one and takes you on a journey with Mr. Webb on his many travels. People in the West still view Islam as a late entrant to the scene in the US but as muslims continue to integrate in the American social life, one will read and hear (and see hopefully) more and more stories of how muslims have always been a part of the fabric of America. Some estimates say that almost 30% of the slaves brought over to the US were muslims and we have Alex Kronemer coming up with a documentary on the life a African slave who was a Prince and how he fought for and won his freedom after 40 years of slavery here to go back to Africa (The Prince among slaves). Dr. Abd-Allah is educated from Columbia, Cornell and the Univ. of Chicago and taught at King Abdul Aziz university in Saudia for 18 years. He has been back in the USA since 2000 and is the head of a non-profit organization called the Nawawi foundation based in Chicago which is dedicated to provide relevant, meaningful Islamic teachings to America's growing first and second generation Muslims - teachings firmly rooted in authentic scholarship and taught in a way that is dynamic and applicable to the modern world (See website www.nawawi.org). Dr. Abd-Allah is and has always been a voice of moderation amongst muslims scholars and is dedicated to more interfaith dialogue amongst people of various faiths. He has always been a proponent of peace and he has many Audio CD's out in the market dealing with various issues affecting muslims and has made his feelings on extremism and violence quite clear. Mr. Rubin needs to check his sources (if any) before making comments on Dr. Abd-Allah.
   
   
   
   Read the book, you will like it. It is a book about a man of his times, who lived in a time of turmoil and great change in the USA, andshould interest any student of American and Islamic history.



2. Abd-Allah, chair of the Chicago-based Nawawi Foundation, an organization promoting education about Islam, explores the life of Alexander Russell Webb (1846-1916), a convert to Islam who started some of the earliest U.S. Muslim periodicals.
   
   Abd-Allah traces Webb's early life to look for his inspirations for his subsequent conversion. He grew up in upstate New York at the time of the Second Great Awakening, exposing him to an active theological discourse. The Civil War dominated his teenage years. Abd-Allah blames the religious establishment for "beat[ing] the drums" of war and suggests that the destruction wrought might have turned Webb against traditional religion. He also grew disillusioned with post-Civil War materialism and sought solace in other spiritual movements, opening the door to his eventual conversion to Islam. After years of activity in Missouri journalism and support for the Democratic Party, Webb received a presidential appointment to be consul in Manila.
   
   While the Catholic church dominated the Philippines, Webb learned about Islam through Indian merchants and the writing of Indian Muslim intellectuals. It was not long before he converted to Islam. In 1891, he entered into correspondence with prominent Indian scholars and, the next year, resigned his post to travel around India to study and raise money to support a proselytizing mission in the United States. In 1893, he returned to the United States and established a mission and publishing center funded first by Indian and later Ottoman patrons. In 1901, he became the honorary Ottoman consul in New York.
   
   Webb submerged himself in his new faith and wrote that, among Indian Muslims, he had found a society superior to Western civilization. Upon his return, he did not shy away from public lectures but found study circles and, especially, publishing a better investment of time. Eventually, though, neither Indian nor Ottoman patronage could keep Webb solvent. His missions collapsed under a mountain of debt.
   
   Webb's story may have resonance with Abd-Allah, who converted to Islam after reading the biography of Malcolm X. Abd-Allah subsequently drifted from the Nation of Islam to radical Saudi interpretations of religion; for more than fifteen years he taught at King Abdul-Aziz University in Saudi Arabia. Like Webb, he is an American convert to Islam who seeks to propagate its spread.
   
   While Abd-Allah produces a well-researched work, making full advantage of Webb's myriad papers and publications (but not State Department or presidential archives mentioning Webb's mission), his sympathy may lead him to avoid critical questions. What does Webb's abandonment of his diplomatic post say about the compatibility of Islam and U.S. government service, especially after his acceptance of work for a foreign government? Is propagation of Islam dependent upon foreign subsidy? How does Webb compare to those today who drift from liberalism to "spiritualism" and, then, immerse themselves in Islam? For this, the reader will have to wait for another author to examine Webb. For those following Abd-Allah's path, though, the narrative will provide solace.
   
   Michael Rubin
   Middle East Quarterly
   Summer 2007



3. In 1887 Alexander Russell Webb was made the American counsul in the Phillipines, at the time a Spanish colony largely Roman Catholic, but with a Muslim minority. Mr. Webb apparently experenced the Muslim faith at this time and in 1888 he converted. Upon his return to the United States he became active in promoting the Muslim faith including the writing of articles and the creation of study circles in various cities.
   
   Webb could well be called the father of the Muslim movement in America and he lived a life that reflected the best of what the Muslim religion could be. After his death in 1916, he was largely forgotten and the center of Muslim religion in the US moved to Noble Drew Ali in Chicago whose early writings implied that he knew or at least had heard of Webb. After Drew Ali's death the Muslim faith in American split into many factions.
   
   This is the first ever biography of Webb.

5 comments about Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography.

1. I am not much of a reader of biographies as many of them read like text books. Meade has managed to do a superlative job in creating a biography that I found myself unable to put down.
   
   I have read the critics stating the book is more fiction than history. Without personally researching every document Meade used to develop her book (a task I am sure the critics did not perform), I felt able to easily understand where Meade made conjectures about Eleanor's thoughts and motivations for the actions that she took, most of which were well documented by Eleanor's contemporaries - particularly in the accounting department. It is apparent to me that Meade's conjectures were based on these solid facts along with a good dose of understanding what it much have been like for a women of means and will to be constantly under the thumb of men.
   
   Critics also state that Meade painted a woman without faults. Obviously they did not read the book. The description Meade gives of Eleanor's second attempt to regain Toulouse with her land hungry second husband shortly after a friendly truce with her ex-husband was gained, amounted to Meade basically stating in so many words, "What was she thinking?"
   
   Rather than faultless, Meade gives a detailed description of a complex woman; a woman of intelligence, but also a woman easily succumbed to flattery; a woman of independent will consistently struggling against a society clipping her wings.



2. "Meade's history [of Eleanor] is full of color, but based on facts," a reviewer wrote in 1999. As indeed it should be. Those qualities are not antithetical: history is often colorful and always based on facts. Reading reviews of Marion Meade's "Eleanor of Aquitaine: a Biography" (1977) is to discover that this writer is defending Meade's book against comments such as: "[It's] a very good read, but one suspects it is a poor history." And, under the heading "Entertaining fiction, not history" a reviewer describes Meade's book as, "indeed entertaining, and paints a vivid portrait... one that many readers have complained is missing from other biographies of this most fascinating queen." But then the reviewer changes direction, adding: "A substantial proportion of that portrait is conjecture."
   
   Some conjecture is essential to a quality biography from a faraway time. (Where would a jury be without connecting facts?) Meade's book is readable, superbly researched--as one expects from an accomplished journalist--and colorful. It is what a lengthy biography of an amazing woman should be, especially when the adventure of that long, exceptional life was so extraordinary.
   
   Marion Meade's diversity of interests is intriguing. She has written biographies of Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, Dorothy Parker, and tales of the roaring twenties under the title "Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin." On the other hand, here is this well-researched, compelling biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, a rebellious life, to be sure, but a life pushing forth from the stony soil of the straightened, misogynistic twelfth century. Eleanor's life and times clearly made an impact on the author. Two years later (no doubt using some of the same hard-won research) she gave us the tale of Eleanor's near-contempory in "Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard." Eleanor may have heard Abelard preach in Paris. Like Heloise, in Meade's capable hands Eleanor of Aquitaine comes across as the mistress of her life--even, be it said, of her life's many frustrations.
   
   Robert Fripp, author of
   "Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine"



3. This book provides a detailed, insightful and thorough examination of a woman whose life would have been radical by modern standards. However, Eleanor lived nine centuries ago, in an age when patriarchial attitudes, values and mores were completely dominant. In such a world, Eleanor not only survived, she thrieved. The wife of two powerful Kings, Eleanor was a match for any man. She floutted convention, wearing armour and riding a charger on crusade, Eleanor remained sexually attractive enough to have the King of England, a man fourteen years her junior, marry her without regard for her lack of the normal virginal requirements of a queen consort.



4. This was a wonderful book. I would read as much as I had time to each day and then spend time thinking about Eleanor until I could get back to her story. I have read other accounts, one historical, of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but this one brings her to life more than anything else I have read about her. She truly was a remarkable person by any standards and Meade made me feel as though I was right there watching it all unfold. I would highly recommend this book, particularly, if you have not read anything else on Eleanor and I guarantee you will want to find out more.



5. This is a comprehensive story of one of the most interesting women in history. Marion Meade gives us everything we would ever want to know about Eleanor of Acquitaine. Of course, what makes the book more interesting is the huge cast of supporting players in Eleanor's life. The story begins with her father and his castle of courtly romance. We then see Eleanor married to Louis Capet, King of France. He takes Eleanor on crusade to the Holy Land where their marriage falls apart. This sets the stage for her marriage to Henry Plantagenet - one of the greatest kings of England.

   We get the full story of Henry's struggle with Thomas a Beckett. We see the gradual dissolution of his marriage to Eleanor, and we see the famous children they sire - especially Richard Coeur de Lion.

   This is a long book but it is a well-written and fascinating read for anyone with even the most casual interest in history.

No comments about John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought.

1 comments about King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography (Blackwell Ancient Lives).

1. This is a great biography of an important king of ancient Mesopotamia. The book puts into a historical context the life and times of the King who created the famous "Law Code of Hammurabi". If you are interested in the ancient history of a region unfamiliar to most people, I would recomend this book.

2 comments about A Lifetime Ago: Before the Death of Childhood.

1. My wife and I passed this book between us until we had devoured it cover-to-cover. Despite the dire subtitle, it left us hopeful. Maybe a book like this can make a difference.
   
   Retired teacher Jeremy Joyell gives us a memoir with a strong message that's also a wonderfully-engaging story. Call it "Tom Sawyer in the City" or "Huck Finn Goes to Town." I don't think Mark Twain would mind.
   
   "A Lifetime Ago" is the story of the trail that took little Jerry Joyell to the classroom of Jack Delaney. It's every kid's unknowing quest for mentor and role model. It's a tale of passage -- from a child's craving for approval to a first sense of self-worth, and it's also a fond recollection of a time when such passage was less complicated than it is today.
   
   There are large questions asked. What instills in a child a sense of responsibility? How grows a perception of self-worth anchored in reality? Is it possible in our day for a child to acquire such values?
   
   If you grew up in urban America in the mid-20th century, Joyell serves up a feast of nostalgia. Get ready for recollections of Tom Mix and The Lone Ranger, of box tops and decoder rings, of the seeming endless parade of alliterative balladeers: Joni James, Gogi Grant, Patti Page, Doris Day (many more).
   
   But beneath the innocent pop culture, Joyell uncovers a structured society, geared to nourish its young. We are taken into a home where learning is respected, into schools where teachers are given latitude to teach, into a social (and media) environment protective of childhood.
   
   The author wonders if children today can survive in a society where such supports have so badly decayed. His subtitle, "Before the Death of Childhood" suggests not, but, to recall Mark Twain again, it may be a case where rumors of death have been greatly exaggerated. In Joyell's story, boy meets hero, is motivated to earn his respect, and in doing so, gains a true sense of self-worth. Where there are Jack Delaneys, there is hope for our kids. Did such role models exist only "A Lifetime Ago." I don't think that Jeremy Joyell would have bothered writing this book if he thought so. I think he is inviting us to look in our mirrors.



2. This was a thoroughly enjoyable book. The author's recounting of his own childhood juxtaposed with his thoughts on today's childhood experience creates a thought provoking story. While he touches on childhood in general, much of the book is focused on school and the student. Mr. Joyell brings both his own schooling as well as his years of teaching to the table; this 'double view' gives unique weight to his musings and theories regarding "The Death of Childhood".
   While reading it, I often thought "my child's principal/teacher should read this" or "I wonder what my neighbor/husband/friend would say about that". I can't wait for my husband to finish reading it so we can discuss it together!
   I think this would make a great book for any book club - there is so much to debate and upon which to reflect!