No comments about Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy: Pictures of Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (Clifton and Shirley Caldwell Texas Heritage Series).

No comments about A Month and a Day & Letters.

5 comments about Jackie: Her Life in Pictures.

1. Despite her need for privacy Jackie Kennedy was a major target of photographers when she retreated to private life. This is a great collage of her moments being herself in New York City and elsewhere. Whether she was just walking in Central Park or throughout Manhattan, Jackie's poise never left her. The pictures prove it.



2. The texts are good but particularity the photos, there are a lot buy it!!!The photos chosen by Spada are remarkable in their ability to portray both the remarkable strength possessed by Jacqueline Kennedy .
   Jackie: Her Life in Pictures" will be money well spent



3. This book had pictures that I have never seen before and I thought I had seen them all. Worth every penny



4. I was captivated by this book. James Spada has compiled several well-known photographs with many photos I had never seen. He does not try to analyse or to delve into the behind the scenes. He presents the photos with a paragraph or two, and lets us glimpse into Jackie Kennedy Onassis's life. I was entranced by the pictures of her youth and the pure beauty and joy in several ungarded moments. A beautiful tribute.



5. I really adored this book - it is so much more than yet another reprinting of the famous pictures of Jackie. The photos chosen by Spada are remarkable in their ability to portray both the remarkable strength possessed by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as well as her frailties that we can all relate to. While many people have seen the countless photos that have been published of Mrs. Onassis from her birth to death, Mr. Spada managed to select mostly photos that are little-seen, as well as photos that needed no text to give the reader a better sense of the people portrayed in the book. The text that does accompany the photos is well written and restrained. Purchasing "Jackie: Her Life in Pictures" will be money well spent.

No comments about Stone of Destiny.

5 comments about Is Our Children Learning? : The Case Against George W. Bush.

1. For all of you that voted for him because you were AFRAID OF CHANGE, you get what you deserve. Please by all means read about your emperor. No self respecting rocket scientist would would be caught dead at the same party. So when all you good voters see your social security checks, your lack of health insurance and a cobwebbed covered vehicle in your driveway that you cannot afford to drive, I think you know you is responsible. Like my mom said, "Just because you have money and priviledge does not mean you have brains and couth." Bravo, Mr. Begala.



2. I HAVE read the book and it is great. Don't review(8/9/04) a book you haven't read.



3. Well, here we are in 2005
   Freedom of speech is barely alive.
   Making his mark
   While most the world shudders
   We sit here silenced for fear of what's uttered.
   
   We tried to vote and save the day,
   But that is not the Diebold way.



4. I just bought this book because I thought it would have some funny Texas Bushisms. However, this book was written by Paul Begala (cohost of CNNs Crossfire) about why Bush should not be elected as President in 2000. This insightful book gives details on how Texas's surplus was pandered, a 125 year ban on concealed weapons was overturned (people are even allowed to bring weapons into churches!!) and public school funding was cut, tax cuts to the rich were given and many other things happened where the people of Texas suffered and rich people get very happy. Begala predicted all these same catastrophic events would happen if Bush was elected President. Now it takes guts to have all these assumptions of Bush before he became President in 2000 and Begala did. But what is even more devastating is that every single thing that Begala thought would happen - did!
   
   I wish this was just a horror novel, but unfortunately, it is all non-fiction.



5. Begala's tone is often disparaging and nasty, but it doesn't seem all that bad when you consider who's occupying the White House.
   I gave it four stars because I want to see Bush make for Texas as much as Begala does.

1 comments about Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice in the Balance (Women's Biography Series).

1. The second volume of the "Women's Biography" series, Sandra Day O'Connor: Justice In The Balance is the remarkable true story of the first female United States Supreme Court justice. From her humble beginnings on a cattle ranch, where she learned important lessons about hard work, self-reliance, and the greatness of the outdoors, to her studies at Stanford University, her struggle to find a job as a lawyer in an era when law firms did not want to hire women, the responsibility of juggling her career with marriage, politics, three children, and breast cancer, and her nomination to her judicial post of prestige by President Ronald Regan. A solid biography of the "quiet feminist", written for readers of all backgrounds, and especially recommended for school and public library collections.

No comments about William F. Buckley, Jr. - An American Conservative (Biography).

3 comments about The Other Mrs. Kennedy: Ethel Skakel Kennedy : An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics.

1. Personally, I thought the book was awful as most of the people interviewed were people(fired maids,disgruntled cronies/lackeys or employees who were not with them for long) with axes to grind against the Kennedy's or people who were mislead about the purpose of the book. He interviewed my father who was gravely ill at the time for the book and told him it would be a very nice portrait and it turns out to be nothing more than a slam piece on her which I think speaks volumes of his character and his desire to write or attempt to write a salacious book that didn't sell much so I feel vindicated in that respect.



2. Today's newspaper carried the news that Hickory Hill, the McLean, Virginia, home of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, has just been placed on the market for $25 million. I hope to heaven that the prospective buyers read this book before putting down a contract...

   Jerry Oppenheimer does a masterful job at detailing the life of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, daughter of a shrewd, self-made millionaire father and a mother who was both a compulsive spender and an extremely devout Catholic, a faith she passed on to her daughter Ethel. Neither Skakel parent expressed any boundaries and limits over the children's out-of-control behavior, which led to tragic results later in life.

   A number of family insiders trusted Oppenheimer enough sufficiently to open up to him for some startlingly frank interviews. Ethel comes across as a mass of contradictions: devout and rowdy, self-congratulatory about her parenting skills as well as blind to her children's unmet needs, arrogant and surprisingly insecure.

   According to Oppenheimer, Ethel Kennedy was forced to curtail her spending severely after her husband's death, and yet she did not. At one point, her sister-in-law Jackie Onassis bought a new roof for Hickory Hill--again, I hope whoever buys this famous American home has deep, deep pockets!

   A fascinating story of a woman who essentially isn't all that interesting herself.




3. Slapping maids? Calling them niggers? Spending thousands on the same belt in different colors? Driving cars into pools? I've always wondered about Ethel Kennedy and now I think I know all there is to know. Including the fact that she was a spoiled, uninterested, racist who was obsessed with her husband, and turned a blind eye towards his affairs. Any glamour I had attached to her is now gone and I'm utterly disappointed. Of all the Kennedy brothers I held Bobby in highest esteem because he was a tenacious man who fought hard to rid this country of many injustices. Now in light of his having married Ethel I question that. How could he love and marry a woman like that? She was reckless and had no respect for personal boundaries erected by others. She was a poor mother and left the day-to-day raising of her children to nannies, dogs, horses, friends, and whoever else happened to be hanging around Hickory Hill on a given day. I could appreciate to a certain extent, her love and devotion to Bobby. However, she was on the brink of being obsessed. She was horribly jealous of both Jackie and Joan and would make rude comments at their expense. In short she could dish it out, but was hard pressed to take it. It seemed as though she believed everyone was put here on earth to serve her. In light of her "I'm a princess" attitude and her strong religious beliefs, I cannot fully understand WHY she tolerated Bobby's infidelities. All in all, this book was disappointing as it revealed a side of Ethel I would have preferred not to see.

No comments about Watergate Prosecutor.

5 comments about Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, Fourth Edition.

1. Because of the way my brain is wired, I take a lot more interest in the historical than I do in the philosophical. Even though Marx spent a good chunk of his life sequestered away in the reading room of the London Library, I still find the narrative details of his life fascinating: his banishment from one country to another, his participation in the 1848 revolutions, the numerous petty squabbles he had with other 19th century revolutionaries, his involvement in the politics of the International, and his last great fight against Bakunin.
   
   It's always a struggle to find a good biography that focuses on the historical instead of on the philosophical. And after reading Isaiah Berlin's take on Marx's life, I am beginning to appreciate how good the biography by Francis Wheen was that I read this past summer.
   
   Isaiah Berlin does a good job of summarizing Marx's life in under 300 pages, but most of the book lingers on Marx's philosophical development, with whole long chapters devoted to topics such as "The Young Hegelians" and "Historical Materialism." I would have preferred more emphasis on the narrative sections, but when reading a biography of a philosopher, I suppose it is hard to get away from the philosophy.
   
   One thing Berlin does which I thought was very interesting was that he emphasized the paradoxes in Marx's legend. For example Marx lived during the age of romantic revolutions in which popular revolutionary figures like Herzen, Mazzini, Blanqui, and Lassalle commanded almost religious like followings. Marx spent most of his life in obscurity in the London library, and yet today his name is still known by almost everyone on the planet. Marx's central thesis, that historical material conditions and not ideas influence history, has been undercut by its very success.
   
   Or how the German and Austrian communists, who followed Marx's advice about organizing from the bottom up, were eventually overwhelmed by the fascists, where as the Bolsheviks, who committed the most un-Marxist act of a revolutionary coup, was the first (and for a time the only) successful Marxist revolution.
   
   Bakunin, as seems to be the case with any biography vaguely sympathetic towards Marx, comes off a bit badly here. I suppose that's to be expected. (When I was in my big anarchist phase at College, I used to read biography's about Bakunin in which Marx came off badly.)
   
   There is no denying that Bakunin had his flaws. Anyone who has read any piece of analysis by Bakunin knows he didn't have the brilliance of Marx's pinky. He was a romantic without a clear ideology, and he didn't share Marx's horror for Revolutions that went off half-cocked with no chance of succeeding. And, as every biography of Marx makes clear, he was an anti-Semite.
   
   And yet, he was right (well, not about the anti-Semite part). But history has shown all of Bakunin's criticisms of Marx to be true. And, to his credit, Isaiah Berlin does include some of Bakunin's extended quotations:
   "We believe power corrupts those who wield it as much as those who are forced to obey it. Under its influence, some become greedy and ambitious tyrants, exploiting society in their own interest, or in that of their class, while others are turned into abject slaves. Intellectuals, positivists, doctrinaires, all those who put science before life...defend the idea of the state and its authority as being the only possible salvation of society-quite logically, since from their false premises that thought comes before life, that only abstract theory can form the starting-point of social practice...they draw the inevitable conclusion that since such theoretical knowledge is at present possessed by very few, these few must be put in control of social life, not only to inspire, but to direct all popular movements, and that no sooner is the revolution over than a new social organization must be at once be set up; not a free association of popular bodies...working in accordance with the needs and instincts of the people but a centralized dictatorial power concentrated in the hands of this academic minority, as if they really expressed the popular will....The difference between such revolutionary dictatorship and the modern State is only one of external trappings. In substance both are a tyranny of the minority over the majority in the name of the people-in the name of the stupidity of the many and the superior wisdom of the few-and so they are equally reactionary, devising to secure political and economic privilege to the ruling minority, and the...enslavement of the masses, to destroy the present order only to erect their own rigid dictatorship on its ruins."
   
   Berlin gives a surprisingly hostile account of the Paris Commune, which he appears to have based completely off the Bourgesious press. And he also advances the interesting idea that Marx actually opposed the Paris Commune because it was more along the lines of Bakunin's revolutionary ideology, but once it was clear the Commune was going to fall, Marx embraced it for the cynical reasons of the desire to link his name with the most infamous revolution in Europe at the time. Berlin is the first writer I have come across who claims this, and well it certainly is not an impossible conclusion, it would be nice if he gave some more evidence for it.



2. David McLellan's Karl Marx: A Biography is a better standard biography. McLellan had access to much more material about Marx's life than did Berlin and he brings it all together in a satisifying package.
   
   Berlin's book, however, provides a superb discussion of the philosophical background to Marx's work. Because of that Berlin's book is extremely valuable.
   
   Readers of Berlin's book must be aware that his interpretation of Marx's social theory is colored by Berlin's anti-communist beliefs. Although many today reject that a close tie existed between Marx's social theory and the USSR, Berlin assumed that such a link existed when he looked at things in the late 1930s. As a result, a tone of worry and concern suffuses Berlin's discussion of many of Marx's ideas and Berlin tends to paint Marx as more of a potential authoritarian than did later biographers.
   
   Despite that, Berlin's book is well worth a read.



3. Rereading the fourth edition of this classic short intellectual biography of Marx, one finds it as interesting as on the first occasion, and the result is a crisp portrait of one of the most misunderstood figures of philosphical history. Marx lived in what was not only a rapidly changing social environment,but one in which the social ideologies of modernity where themselves undergoing shifts of paradigm. From the electric world of the now almost unimaginable period of the Hegelian tide, via Feuerbach and the Left Hegelians, we pass to the age of post-Comptean positivism, and the post-Darwinian world view. This divide is reflected in Marx's philosophic development itself, one of the reasons he is almost never properly understood. Berlin's deft account proceeds through this obscurities with a sure touch.



4. Isaiah Berlin's biography of Karl Marx is as erudite as it is compelling. Taking one of the more controversial and laborious men of the twentieth century as his subject matter, Berlin weaves the intricate and sometimes confounding thoughts of his subject into a patterned and complex whole.

   Karl Marx is treated fairly in this book--neither with sycophantic adulation nor with profound cynicism typical of other treatments of Marx and his philosophy. Perhaps because of the political consequences of Marx's ideas, the negative overview's of his life have emphasized his tempermental side, the irony of being funded by an aristocratic Engels, or the silliness of his labour theory of value premise (shared by David Ricardo). Meanwhile, on the other side, there are writings on the life of Marx that stick to his genius, his profound impact on the world, and further entrench his cult status.

   It is this latter part that I found most interesting in Berlin's work--the exploration of Marx's temper tantrums with anyone who should deviate from Marx's conception of how things must be. Proudhon, for instance, is castigated by Marx. So, too, is Feuerbach and the Young Hegelians (Berlin muses about whether or not this has to do with the mighty influence these have had on Marx's own thought and Marx's desire to be seen as a wholly original thinker). Bakunin does not escape public ridicule when they differ on the value of the State as a mechanism to be used by the proletariat. Bakunin, of course, did not believe in hierarchical orderings of any kind--whether in capitalist industry, or in the socialist state--and issued proclamations and gave speeches to that effect, explicitly cautioning people about the possibility of the government violating the freedom it was supposed to secure. Marx was not impressed, and consequently mocked him openly. Engels was perhaps the only man to escape the eventual polemical wrath of Marx, saving himself from such a fate possibly because he simply agreed with whatever Marx said, and indulged him in most everything else.

   Still, what comes across most forcefully is the life of a man steeped in ideas, and interested in the fundamental, radical underpinnings of society as a whole. Marx is often enough considered a genius of the highest calibre, with impeccable literary credentials to back it up. It is this attention to minute detail, and his incredible analysis of society (or rather, the historical 'movement', if you will, of human relationships which reciprocally interact with the concrete, material conditions of their existence) that makes this praise seem a bit understated.

   This singular fact--Marx as a man of ideas, and the fact of the practical consequences of his ideas--is touched upon in a self-conscious bit of irony by Berlin. For Marx explained that it isn't ideas that do anything, really, but are, instead, the consequences of material conditions, these conditions being fundamental. And yet it was the writings of Marx that sparked several revolutions and formed the primary cause of the one in Russia which stuck around for a while (no one is here implying a monistic view of history... the lessons Marx tried to teach are not entirely lost on me).

   What we're left with is an incredibly vivid picture of Marx, the man (not the myth, or the legend; although a little bit of both is tossed in for spice). Berlin does a masterful job, so anyone picking this book up should find it entirely enjoyable.




5. Let me say that if you are looking for a biography of Marx's life you had better look elsewhere. There are no long chapters about his school days, his relations with his Sisters, Mother or Father. You will not find detailed references to every argument Marx had or every aspect of his squallid and, at times, extremely personally irresponsible lifestyle. You must look elsewhere for those details.

   This book is about ideas and the struggle between ideas. It is about Marx emersed in the ideas of his time and how those ideas shaped his thinking, whether changing his ideas, borrowing or regjecting them outright Berlin has a wonderful, at times unique grasp of the issues and the ideas of the times that Marx lived.

   Starting with a broad description of the Rational-Empiricist debate and the Hegelian reaction to empiricism, Berlin describes Marx as a unique German Hybrid of British Empiricism married to a searching German Hegelian spirit, dissatisified with the traditional historical interpertations offered by Hegel and his German offshoots, the Young Hegelians.

   Along the way Marx comes across a uniques set of millenarian and social theorists of his time; Proudhom, Bakunin, Engels, Lasalle, Feuerbach and others, whom all, even though perhaps disliking Marx personally, respected his argument style, his learning, and his deep insight into the problems of the time.

   I would not classify this as a beginning book on Marx. There is a lot of ground covered here and if one does not have at least a thumbnail sketch understanding of the times, the social and political issues, then there will be a chance that the author will loose some of his readership. Berlin's prose has been described variously as dense and hard to understand. It may be for some readers. But Berlin is not excessively wordy (it is a slender volume), but he does have the ability to cover a lot of ideas and currents in a single sentence. It is this juggling and keeping in mind of a lot of ideas and concepts in a single sentence that may necessitate one to reread certain sentences, or at least know the concepts to which he is referring.

   If you do have general outline of the ideas of the age then you will love this book. I sat down thinking that this was my "serious reading." I fully expected it to be a labourious process to get through this book. Instead I was profoundly surprised by the breath and depth Berlin covers in his lucid prose.

   I found it hard to put the book down.

   There is no analysis of whether Marx was right or wrong. Of how his ideas become to become the bible of the oppressed on the earth or how it eventually was transmogrified in some cases to justify the mass killing of those who stood in the way of historical materialism. This is a book of ideas, and as such the ideas discussed of Marx, his contemporaries, and his intellectual primogeniteurs are a ripping good read.