5 comments about Woodrow Wilson (Penguin Lives).

1. In the annals of American history, few presidents have a more interesting story to tell than Woodrow Wilson. Despite this truth, Wilson's legacy has produced such a terrible collection of biographies. This book is a continuation of that standard of trampling the legacy of the greatest idealist to reside in the White House.
   
   While this book is intended to be a brief biography of Wilson, this characteristic would seem to cause more focus on landmarks in Wilson's life. This does not stop Louis Auchincloss from going off topic for pages at a time. The author repeatedly references Bill Clinton, whose most striking similarity is being a democrat. There also seems to be a lot of speculation on the part of the author, such as speculating that Wilson's childhood illnesses were psychosomatic (p. 7). Like the original source of this fact, he lacks tangible support for his agrument. It is nothing more than an educated guess. Just like the guess that Wilson suffered from dyslexia (p. 6). The chapters on World War I are clumsy because of the digressions. The better chapters focus on Wilson's first and second wives, as well as his years at Princeton.
   
   I initially thought the author loathed Woodrow Wilson, but softened in this stance as the book progressed. Still I wondered why one would write a book about a seemingly undesirable topic? Not that I expected much from this book, but I, like many readers of history, am still waiting for an outstanding biography on Woodrow Wilson.



2. Enjoyed the taped version of WOODROW WILSON by
   Louis Auchincloss . . . it is a brief account of our 28th President
   that gave me insight into how a professor and then college
   administrator could make the leap into politics . . . hearing it
   reminded me a bit the Classic Comics that I read when
   younger, in that much detail was left out . . . however, you
   got just enough information . . . I'd recommend this book
   by Auchincloss, especially for the fascinating tale it told
   of how when Wilson became sick, his wife practically ran the nation.



3. Of all the men who have tried to fill the shoes of Washington and Jefferson, who was the worst? Our current crop of "Hallmarxist" professors consider anyone who would assign Wilson and FDR to the lower depths as deserving a quick commitment with Ezra Pound into loony bin of St. Elizabeth's, and for anyone to hold Lincoln among the worst invites being regarded a simple crank. But Thomas DiLorenzo's _The Real Lincoln_ has finally exposed Old Abe as well worthy of infamy, and Jim Powell's _FDR's Folly_ has corrected the omission of Murray Rothbard's _America's Great Depression_ by exposing FDR as really nothing more than - pardon the pun - Hoover on wheels.
   
   This leaves only Wilson, the man whom Mencken denominated _Doctor Dulciferous_ for his cooing blovations. The lack of a good biography of Wilson that reveals him for what he was - our worst president - or at least a book as good as DiLorenzo's on Lincoln- is not remedied by Louis Auchincloss (hereafter LA).
   
   LA for the first 64 pages gets his facts roughly right and his conclusions quite wrong. For example:
   - LA calls Wilson's claims to being a Southerner "factitious". This is putting it mildly: Wilson in his heart was an utter New England barn burner and witch-hunter, oblivious to the positive achievements of Calvinism (Milton, Rembrandt, and the Jansenist Pascal) and a perfect specimen of non-conformism's worst faults: obstinacy, a cocksure belief in one's moral correctness, a deluded sense that he was the agent of the Almighty, and that his opponents were tools of the Devil.
   -- Wilson's view of blacks can only be called sheer racist, even in a time when "racist" has become a word of cultural socialist McCarthyism - yet LA offers the lame excuse that everyone else from his background thought the same.
   - LA faults Wilson for appointing an Anglophile to the Court of St. James, yet LA's own facts prove Wilson the most Anglophilic of all. He tried to remake Princeton into the image of Oxford and Cambridge. He wanted American government to resemble Westminster, knowing full well that in Britain today the Prime Minister is a dictator, free of any checks. Wilson wanted the same for the President in a manner that would make even a Gaullist blush. Indeed, one of Wilson's many bad legacies is a chief executive out of control. Mencken was right to observe that the US State Dept. was simply an antechamber to the Foreign Office in Whitehall.
   - LA mentions Wilson's stokes, one after another it seems, and tries to blame them, wrongly, for his manifold shortcomings. In fact, I have yet to see in print what seems quite possible: That Wilson - and for that matter Theodore Roosevelt - were really unhinged.
   
   Wilson's 2nd worst foreign policy blunder was his treatment of Latin Americas - a treatment inept when it wasn't contemptible. LA tries to make Bryan the fall guy for Wilson's folly, and considers the Villa fiasco as "necessitated". I pray the Mexicans now flooding into the country have short memories. When it comes to economics, LA really shows himself wanting. He considers the Federal Reserve Act a "great success", giving us an "elastic currency", when in fact the fiscal solvency of the US -- relatively sound after Hamilton's schemes were put down and prior to Wilson - has been a shambles ever since. Need proof? Check the inflation monitor at the Commerce Dept website and see what a dollar in 1950 is worth now. And thank Woodrow Wilson. Desperate for something good to say about Wilson's domestic turn at the helm, LA chooses his tariff reduction - only on the same page to state, rightly, that the taxpayer was now to be equally robbed by the new Federal Income Tax (also a Wilson deed), that tariff reform was aborted by the Great War, and that it was repealed in 1922.
   
   LA never mentions Wilson's lasting effect on domestic US politics: Completing the work of Lincoln in the destruction of the Jeffersonian party in the US (I'm grateful to Thomas Dilorenzo and Clyde Wilson for this insight). Prior to Wilson, we had such a party, the Democrat Party - with support for minimal government, subsidiarily, states' rights, low tariffs, originalist construction of the Constitution, Anglophobia, gold standard (at least until Bryan), staying out of European affairs, and a healthy suspicion of banks. Wilson turned this party into a socialist party. In fact, now we really only have the choice between two socialist parties: The Hamiltonian version of the Republicans, and the 100 proof offered by the Dimmycrats.
   
   After page 64, LA offers a complete whitewash. Wilson's utter disaster - still visited upon all of us, and re-uttered in the inaugural addresses of Kennedy I and Bush II - was, or course, his entry into World War I, with all the suffering that this decision caused. LA can only find sympathy for Wilson's views, and wastes a whole chapter of this short book demonizing Lodge. I am reminded by the estimable Clyde Wilson (no relation, certainly!) that Woodrow Wilson was our only Ph. D. president. LA offers nothing better than the socialist and PHuddy-Duddy camorra presiding in our Potemkin universities
   
   So, as we wait for a good biography, anyone who really wants to know the truth of the Old Fool should save his money and buy instead Jim Powell, _Wilson's War_, and Thomas Fleming, _The Illusion of Victory_.
   
   Two stars for being mercifully brief with readable prose.



4. This is a reasonable brief introduction to the career of Woodrow Wilson. His upbringing and early academic career are disposed of in short order in the first chapter. Then one chapter deals with his presidency of Princeton, one deals with (or covers the same time period as) his governorship of New Jersey, and the remaining seven cover his Presidency, all in an engaging and chatty style.

   The book's strongest point is describing what happened, although even here there are some strange omissions. It mentions his break with Hibben in Princeton without describing the circumstances, noting that Hibben went on to succeed Wilson as President of the university, or exploring the parallels with his later breaks with House and Tumulty. All of this could have been covered in a single paragraph. In addition, there is no mention of the country's Caribbean adventures in 1915; none of the Red Scare of 1919; and, probably worst of all, nothing about the Sedition Acts and the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, and no discussion of why America behaved worse towards its own citizens during and after the war than either Britain or France did. The first time the book mentions the League of Nations, it doesn't clearly describe what its purpose was (and it would have been nice if it had mentioned that it was actually the idea of the British Foreign Secretary, not Wilson). Still, as an overview of the events of Wilson's life it hits most of the main points.

   The book has less to offer on why things happened. In trying to explain why Colonel Harvey picked Wilson for Governor of New Jersey, it gives two pages on what Harvey got wrong about Wilson, but nothing on what he got right. It also takes at face value the idea that Wilson was offered the governorship "without ... even lifting a hand". It describes Wilson's feeling of betrayal by House when he returned to Paris in March 1919, but not what House had actually done!

   As noted by another reviewer, the book also fails to put Wilson's international achievements in a broader context. His aim of a just, lasing peace with Germany failed; his aim of encouraging self-determination among smaller nations succeeded, and he is still looked on as a hero in many smaller nations of Europe. Some more insight and context, and a more detailed assessment of his legacy, would have been welcome.

   Woodrow Wilson was a fascinating and controversial President. This book helps explain -- and to an extent shares -- the fascination, but it doesn't do enough to help the reader assess the controversies. Still, it's an reasonable starting point for people who know little about Wilson.

   One final comment: I'd also have been interested to know how the author is related to the Gordon Auchincloss who attended the Versailles conference -- it's not that common a name, after all.




5. If you don't know much more about Woodrow Wilson than an overview of the important events of his life, this book isn't going to help much. There's very little political analysis, almost no attempt to portray what diffiulties Wilson needed to overcome, and no passion at all in the writing. Actually this book feels a lot like a high school term paper that someone knew they had to write and just wanted to turn in for a passing grade. Auchincloss talks a bit about the two Wilsons (one good one bad) and hints at Wilson's dependance on women, but neither of these positions is fleshed out or used consistently. Maybe Woodrow Wilson's life is just too large for a book this small.

3 comments about Fighting for Life.

1. Pennsylvanians had to wait 20 years for Governor Casey to come to office. On three separate occasions in the 1960s and 1970s, Bob Casey lost elections for the office of Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On the third such occasion in 1976, many observers attributed the election result to voter confusion in which many Casey supporters cast their votes for another person named Robert P. Casey who was a candidate for Lt. Governor. In 1986, he made another run for Governor, this time as "The Real Bob Casey," and he won. In 1990, he was reelected, receiving 68 percent of the total vote. Shortly after his reelection, Casey learned that he was suffering from a rare, incurable disease that sometimes affects persons of Irish ancestry who live in the Appalachian region. Three years later, Casey underwent a heart/liver transplant that enabled him to finish his term in office and write this autobiography. He died in 2000.
   
   This short (215 pages) book presents Bob Casey's vision of politics and government. Essentially, Casey believed that it is a function of government to help the weak and the oppressed in the community. Throughout the narrative, the Governor often mentions some segment of the population and then briefly describes the policies of his administration that provided that segment of society with assistance and support, be it in education, healthcare, job training, child support etcetera.
   
   Especially important to Casey was the subject of abortion, which "excludes an entire class of fellow human beings from our care and protection." In Casey's words, "Who speaks for the child?" When Casey sought to "speak for the child" at the 1992 Democratic Convention the convention managers refused to let him speak, all the while putting pro-abortion speakers on the program. Despite that public insult, Casey chose to stay with his Democratic Party and try to change its present posture from within. The book sets out Casey's thoughts on that subject and also explains his evolving view on the relationship between the Supreme Court of the United States and the chief executive of a sovereign state with respect to interpretation of the Constitution.
   
   Unlike most autobiographies, this one is not written in a sequential format. Instead, the heart/liver transplant is the main framework, spread throughout the book from beginning to end. From that main story, the book moves back and forth in time to cover Casey's family life, his early years in Scranton, his college years at Holy Cross, his law school years at George Washington, his early law practice and his political career. It is an unusual approach to an autobiography - but it works.
   
   It is an excellent book.



2. "Fighting for Life" is a unique book of alternating stories connecting one person. One story is that of a man facing a fatal disease, undergoing and surviving a rare heart and liver transplant, and returning to productive life. The other is the story of a man who facing adversities reaching his goal of becoming Governor and, on his fourth attempt, is elected and serves two terms. Both stories are of the late Governor Robert P. Casey, and this book is his autobiography.
   
   The one intermingled story is of Bob Casey's fight against Appalachian familial amyloidosis, a rare disease found only in a few people of Irish descent in Kentucky, West Virginia, Chicago, and then Pennsylvania. (Ironically, a similar disease would later prove fatal to both the Mayors of Pittsburgh and Erie.) It would be his Auditor General successor Catherine Baker Knoll who would get Bob Casey to read a book on transplants by Dr. Tom Starzl that would later lead Dr. Starzl to successfully perform this rare two organ transplant. This is a story of incredible medical work and a fighting patient who survived these procedures and not only would be only be return to work as Governor but continue to become a national leader on several issues.
   
   The other story is that of Bob Casey, the State Senator, Auditor General, and then Governor. Bob Casey would arise from political death after losing three races for Governor. In his first race, he won the endorsement of the Democratic State Committee, failed to respond to his opponent's "man against the machine" campaign, and discovered too late the mistake in not answering the charges as that slogan helped defeat him. In his second race, he distanced himself from the political machines, only to discover the political machines such as that of Mayor Jim Tate's in Philadelphia, who then distanced themselves from Casey. In his third race, he was hampered by the inclusion of other Caseys running on the ballot which may have cost him some votes in the confusion.
   
   Still, the name "Bob Casey" held some political magic, even if not initially for Robert P. Casey. Robert Casey, no related to the future Governor, was elected State Treasurer on the basis of having the same name. (Indeed, the Treasurer candidate avoided campaigning to allow the confusion over the two names to build.) Another non-relative named Robert Casey won the Democratic primary for Lt. Governor. Thus, when Robert P. ran for Governor the fourth time, he advertised himself as the "Real Bob Casey".
   
   Bob Casey is to be credited with upgrading the office of Auditor General. Prior to Casey's tenure as Auditor General, it was mostly a lesser functioning row office usually held by a relatively inactive politician. Bob Casey turned the office into an aggressive auditor, not only of government finances, but of government functions. This not only provided a more powerful check on executive branch functions, but it also prepared Bob Casey to learn how to become a good Governor.
   
   Finally, on his fourth try in 1986, Bob Casey hired Jim Carville, who had never managed a winning campaign, to be his campaign manager, believing that people who have tried hard without winning would work harder for victory. This proved to be the case as Casey finally won elected as Governor. Jim Carville went on to manage the successful Presidential campaign of Bill Clinton.
   
   As Governor, Bob Casey writes that he is proud that he put "family formation" on a similar perspective as "capital formation". His Administration fought dead beat dads and made Pennsylvania the top state in child support collections. He fought for and won passage of laws making it tougher to get abortions. He stopped efforts at bringing legalized gambling to Pennsylvania. He created a program that eradicated water borne diseases that had plagued parts of Pennsylvania, providing us all with safe drinking water that today we all take for granted.
   
   This book summarizes Bob Casey, the politician, and Bob Casey, the man struggling against a rare disease. This is a terrific autobiography that brings together Bob Casey, the person.



3. Governor Casey writes eloquently about his opposition to the violence of abortion, while trying to advance politically in a party that has wholeheartedly embraced unrestricted abortion on demand. His pro-life beliefs were only strengthened by his own life-threatening health challenges as he became even more convinced of the importance of protecting lives that others have concluded are not worth living (the weak, the disabled, the unwanted).

   At the same time he makes the case for protecting and respecting the innocent unborn baby, he insists that society must have great concern and compassion for the young women who find themselves in the desperate position of having an unplanned pregnancy.

   There are no easy answers to abortion, but Gov. Casey's prescription of love and compassion for BOTH mother and baby would certainly be a good beginning to a possible resolution to this tragedy.

No comments about Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman (Wit and Wisdom Series).

5 comments about Three Came Home.

1. After seeing the 1950 Claudette Colbert film version of this book, I was interested in reading the memoir on which the film was based. Agnes Keith was married to a British government officer when the Japanese took Indonesia during the early days of World War II. Keith and her toddler son were taken to a POW camp; her husband spent the rest of the war in a men's camp under even worse conditions. Keith's memoir describes the starvation, the cruelty, the inhumane conditions, disease, torture, hard labor and the women's superhuman struggles to keep their children alive and relatively healthy. The story is not only about survival, but about the power of love. In the book an occasional racist remark, typical of the times, creeps in, but she also occasionally inserts insights into the humanity found even in some of her captors, and certainly in the Indonesian people. The book ends with little bitterness, and primarily a plea for peace. The film was remarkably faithful to the book, sanitizing and softening some details because film audiences weren't expected to see Claudette Colbert fighting rats, living in abject filth, or dropping down to 80 pounds. The film is still very powerful; the book even more so. This is a well-bound trade paperback edition.



2. This is one of the best written book I have ever read. Very emotional A DEFINATE MUST READ BOOK



3. This book contains the wartime memoirs of Agnes Keith. In 1939, Keith published a book "Land Beneath the Wind," describing her life as the wife of a British colonial official in Northern Borneo. She and her husband Harry were on home leave in North America in 1939 when she finished writing the book. However, Harry was called back early to Borneo from his leave because of the war clouds on the horizon. Agnes, who was pregnant, soon followed, and several months later, gave birth to their son George in Sandakan. Although there had been talk of evacuating women and children from colonial outposts in the Pacific, no orders came through for evacuation before the Japanese invasion, and Agnes refused to leave Harry behind voluntarily. Thus, when the Japanese arrived, all three Keiths were still in Sandakan, and were soon interned in prisoners' camps for the duration of the war. In this book, Keith recounts the stories of how she, George, and Harry survived life in the camps. Her tale was so remarkable that it was made into a movie shortly after the war.
   
   Readers of Keith's earlier book will be stunned at the change in tone of her writing. In Land Beneath the Wind, Keith writes with an airy, scattered-brained style, almost as if she were afraid that otherwise, she would be taken too seriously. Indeed, it was perhaps her humor itself that made her first book popular. But the light tone is gone completely from this book. The nightmare of the prison camps, where random beatings were a certainty, but food was often unattainable, and hygiene nonexistent, took away her carefree nature and matured her overnight beyond her years. For more than three years, she struggled daily to find any kind of food for George, from wormy rice to just plain worms. This woman of colonial privilege traded family heirloom jewelry for a chicken, and learned to hoard night soil for use as fertilizer.
   
   From the start, the Japanese camp leader recognized her as a special prisoner, because he had read Land Beneath the Wind. He required her to keep a journal of her camp adventures for future publication to show how "humane" the Japanese treatment of prisoners had been. So every day, after she completed her required prison work, she had to write for this commander about how wonderful camp life was. When that was finished, she secretly wrote up notes describing what life was really like, and hid them in cans buried under their huts or in the latrines. The most amazing part of her experience is not only that she and George and Harry survived at all, but that through it all, she managed to come away from the camps without blind hatred for the Japanese. She recognized that some of the prison guards were evil, but that many couldn't help but obey their superiors. The years of captivity for the Keiths robbed them of their youth, their health, and the better part of George's childhood, but Agnes finds fault not with Japanese people, but rather with the idea of war itself.



4. Three Came Home is a well-written, true story of a woman and her son's internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Borneo during WWII. Agnes Newton Keith creates a vivid portrait of the conditions under which the prisoners lived and of their day to day lives. She also makes it clear that people are not inherently good or bad; they are often victims of circumstances. Her love for her son and hope that they will be reunited with her husband keep her going and morally-centred. An absolutely excellent book!



5. As much as "Three Came Home" is a story of war, it is a story of love. Mrs. Keith's love for her husband and son are paralleled with her hatred of internment. She balances the good in people, even the enemy, with the bad. The clear message is that war is what makes people bad. I enjoyed this book. It is beautifully written, with every sentence eliciting some kind of emotion in the reader. Mrs. Keith is an admirable woman for her literary accomplishments and her ability to share her experiences on a very personal level.

5 comments about Benjamin Franklin.

1. 1991 Penguin Books reissue of 1st edition (1938), 862 pages (of which 782 pages form the main body of the book).
   
   I read this book because of Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett's partner). Benjamin Franklin is the man Charlie Munger admires and has attempted to emulate most. Franklin's autobiography was one of the twenty books Munger recommended at the back of the second edition of Poor Charlie's Almanack (the most useful book I have read). After reading Franklin's autobiography I was very interested to learn more about him - which I'm sure was Munger's intention. Thus I was led to this biography (one of two on Franklin that Munger has recommended), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. I chose to read Van Doren's before Walter Issacson's newer `Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,' as I liked the idea of being able to see what new material might have been discovered since 1938.
   
   With each of the large biographies I have read over the last year, I have found it has taken quite a lot of reading before I really got into the book. This one was no different. It was only when I was about half way through, reading about Franklin's activities dealing with the appalling British government/monarchy in the run up to the American War of Independence, that I found myself gripped. That may have something to do with me having already read Franklin's autobiography, which was the main source for the early part of Van Doren's book (as the author said: `Plenty of other men could find materials for the story of his latest years. Only he had known about his obscure youth...').
   
   I suspect another significant reason was that up until roughly that point there was very little information on what Franklin was actually like and how he spent his days (as opposed to things he had done or places he had been). Without this information I find it difficult to mentally associate or connect with the subject. This is one of the two key areas of weakness I identified in Van Doren's otherwise admirable book and is also the reason why I preferred Ron Chernow's biography of Rockefeller, Titan to Joseph Frazier Wall's biography of Andrew Carnegie. From about halfway through Van Doren's book we do get very interesting snippets, from Franklin himself and also from other people, about what Franklin was actually like (on pages 405, 419, 521, 600 & 649/650, in particular). I wish there was more, but perhaps the material was simply unavailable.
   
   The second weakness was in the account of Franklin's finances. Franklin became quite wealthy through his printing activities before he left business and went to Britain. At sixty years of age, after many years of easy living and generosity, he found himself with money worries. His most important business partnership ended in 1766, depriving Franklin of a significant proportion of his income. He was also concerned that he might lose his position at the post office around the same time. Though this did not happen and he was actually appointed as agent to three further states, I was rather surprised that Franklin left a significant financial legacy when he was close to being hard up a little over twenty years before his death.
   
   He did not appear to live frugally for the latter part of his life and so I am not sure where the funds came from. I would much have preferred it if this apparent paradox had been resolved. It seems of particular importance here, as Franklin was a man who preached the gospel of frugality, but also said: `frugality was "a virtue I never could acquire in myself."'
   
   I suspect that Van Doren was correct when he said of Franklin: `That he talked about them [industry and frugality] so much made it clear that they came less from his nature than from his discipline.' So, after frugality had served its purpose he perhaps left it behind (though long held habits almost always leave a residue).
   
   With those caveats, Van Doren's biography of Franklin is an impressive piece of work. I am not surprised that `The final writing of the book called for almost daily use of the New York Public Library over a period of two years.' And that `This book, full as it is, is a biography cut with hard labour to the bone.' The difficulty (as well as the interest) in writing a biography of a truly extraordinary man like Franklin was that he was extraordinary in many different areas. He was a successful businessman, an absolutely pre-eminent scientist and philosopher, as well as a remarkable and successful statesman (and that in a place and era when rank by birth was of paramount importance).
   
   I am not paid for them and so write these book reviews primarily for myself. I thus like to include the most important things I have learned and that I wish to retain and include into my life and conduct. In this case - because of the subject - there are far too many to include here. And that is surely the reason why Franklin is Munger's biggest hero: he was not only successful but he was also wise, generous and benevolent with it. Unlike Rockefeller, for example, he seemed to really enjoy his life. And unlike Carnegie, who appeared to fail Solon's warning (I might rather call it Taleb's warning, as that is where I learned it) to Croesus to call no man happy until he is dead.
   
   I do not wish to be happy because I have a distorted view of reality, but because I have seen the world as it is and can accept it. Franklin's life is thus a message of hope: he saw the world with exceptional clarity and was able to love it anyway.



2. I'm a big Van Doren Bio fan, and a bigger Ben Franklin fan. Carl captures the essence of the scoundrel Franklin. This is a bigger than life, juicy life. I almost don't recognize the Ben I learned about in school. The dried up old husk of a man who was part of that long ago effort to free our nation. Read this and laugh at the ways Franklin manipulated and succeeded against many odds.



3. With this hefty tome, Carl Van Doren succeeds in authoring a compelling biography equal to the intellectual scope and achievement of his subject, Benjamin Franklin. The title 'renaissance man' was perhaps never more aptly bestowed than on Franklin, whose pursuits ranged from printing to (most famously) electricity to temperature patterns and ocean currents to politics.
   
   Following the sweep of Franklin's advancing renown, first in the United States and then in Europe, the narrative never descends to a mere recounting of the man's many achievements (though this would undoubtedly make for fascinating reading in its own right). Rather, Van Doren devotes substantial attention to the greater social context in which Franklin works; in particular, the thread of family life in Philadelphia and later in France helps to anchor the broadening pace of his scientific and political thought, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of republican government in America.
   
   Fittingly, the treatment of Franklin's death sounds only the faintest of elegiac tones. Van Doren recognizes the triumph of Franklin's life in the contributions to science, philosophy, and politics that would long outlive the man himself.
   
   A must-read.



4. I have not read Cabel's bio from 1918 on Franklin but this one by Carl van Doren might be the best. I tend to discount autobiographies as they tend to be highly partisan & even revisionist. The version Franklin's autobiography I read, & there seems to be dozens of them, was fairly modest.
   This is a whole life biography & is taken in large part from Franklin's own writings, letters to from & about Franklin. The unabridged audio version was a real treat & the amount of research must have been staggering, considering it was written in the thirties.
   This is a very through book. Where it treads lightly, whole books have been written. That is Franklin's lovers & the numerous children from these liasons, mostly in France. Mr. Van Doren is skeptical, keeping in mind when this book was written. Franklin loved woman & woman loved him but not nessarily in that way. He had many friends & "daughters" refering to his many, young female admirers. He keeps the wise grandfatherly image I had of him. In fact he was a neglectful husband & an absentee father to his own daughter deserting his wife during all those years overseas.
   There is so much to him, a true citizen of the world. He was a self-made wealthy merchant, inventor, scientist, philospher & statesman. The title he was most proud was master printer, an individual who started from nothing. He had many roles in life & van Doren covers them all.
   His most important years were spent in England & France. He loved London & Paris. He may have been tempted but he was always loyal to America, keeping her interest in mind. He was the face of America in Europe. He played the part expected of him; a rustic American philospher with a fur hat & was all the rage in the royal court of France.
   The colonies were fortunate to have Franklin in England before the revolution & France during & after. That is where with, Franklin's connivance, the major decisions concerning America were being made.
   His accomplishments ranged over various disiplines, as the inventor of the lightening rod, the Franklin stove used for heating, bifocals etc. He founded the first public library & fire department in America. He was the major contributor to the Albany Plan of Union in 1754. A document way ahead of its time, was a useful reference during the constitutional convention in 1789. He assisted Thomas Jefferson with key phrases in the Declaration of Independence. He was important in reaching consensus when the U.S. Consititution was being drafted.
   Had he stayed in Philadelphia, he may simply have remained a popular, loyal, prosperous printer & businessmen. He saw first hand the disdain King George III had for him & the colonies. To him America was merely a source of taxes without the rights accorded to all free Englishmen. This & the humiliation he suffered at the hands of British Parliment, turned him into a uncompromising (for one of the few times in his life) rebel. With his patience, gentle diplomacy, wisdom & sense of fairness, America was well served. With apologies to Washington who never left North America & Jefferson, Franklin may be the greatest founding father.
   While writing this review it occured to me that there are many similarities to Winston Churchill. Franklin was not a warrior as Churchill was but both men were visionaries & peace makers. Both were geniuses & prolific writers on any number of subjects. They were both statesmen & active in public service to a very old age. Both men dominated the times they lived in.
   Read or listen to this fine book, then move on to other newer biographies. They all add somthing to this remarkable man.



5. After reading "Benjamin Franklin", he would be the one person -- dead or living -- who would make the most fascinating dinner guest for an evening. His list of accomplishments is practically endless: printer, writer, philosopher, postmaster general, inventor, scientist, diplomat, statesman, traveler, and conversationalist. The majority of people who are ultimately successful have a key talent in one area, focus on that talent, and rise to the top. It is so inexplicably rare to find someone of such vast talent who also excels in all his (her) talents. Benjamin Franklin was such a gifted individual and, thankfully for our nation, focused much of his energy and time into serving the public. Carl Van Doren has written an incredibly well-researched biography of one of our key founding fathers. Van Doren's style can sometimes be dry and too academic, but keep in mind that this book was initially published in 1938. Today's reader may expect a more conversational tone and faster moving story. However, Carl Van Doren's biography is heroic in its effort and the author's admiration clearly shines through for Mr. Franklin.

2 comments about Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China: Revised Edition.

1. I enjoyed enormously this book: it doesnt try to sell a myth or an epic and doesnt "side" with Deng. The author is a former diplomat and an "old china hand" and the reader can fully benefit from a deep, thoughtful and unemotional analysis by an insider.
   The book is factual, doesnt try to prove any theory and gives you also an excellent overview of the whole Chinese history in this century. I particularly enjoyed the shrewd analysis of all the characters and of their motivations, as you would expect it from the eyes of a professional diplomat gauging his counterparts.



2. This is an excellent account of the numerous ascents and descents that characterized Deng Xiaoping's remarkable political life. Evans is ultimately telling us a story within a story. Deng's political life spanned the bulk of the twentieth century, and it is against this backdrop that Evans tells us his story. He does a fine job of illuminating how Deng spent his time during the Cultural Revolution, as well as informing the reader what the logic behind his reforms was. As a whole, I liked this book very much and would reommend it to anyone interested in learning more about contemporary China. The writing is consistently concise and to the point. This book does not confuse or bore the reader with lofty theoretical arguments that try to prove causation for various events in Chinese history, it lays out the facts as they are known. This book is both captivating and instructional. However, for those who are well read in Chinese history, much of this book will be redundant. Yet, its redeeming qualities are in ample supply.

No comments about The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois: Selections, 1877-1934 (Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois).

4 comments about Jackson's Way: Andrew Jackson and the People of the Western Waters.

1. For someone so supportive of Jackson, his policies and actions (even when Buchanan himself deems them "going too far"), Buchanan fails to support his arguments. Clearly the author is enamored with the former President. Even during his military career when Jackson frequently disobeyed orders or followed his own code of conduct, Buchanan argues that he has sufficient reason for doing so and his actions were justified. But where is the evidence? By arguing that the Monroe administration was acting covertly to takeover the Floridas, he fails to cite from where he gets such information. There are no references to Monroe's history.
   Buchanan has done his homework when discussing Jackson. He cites Jackson's papers and other credible biographies. He gives a well-rounded picture of the life and hardships Jackson endured and how electrifying his personality must have been. However, Buchanan goes a tad too far in arguing that Jackson, even when he broke the law, seized sovereign territory, killed two foreign residents, etc. was acting justly or on behalf of the administration where there is only evidence that he acted on his own accord. If those arguments are to be deemed credible in their own right, Buchanan needs to provide ample evidence that supports Jackson's seemingly arrogant decision-making process. He may have done his homework for Jackson, but the basis of his arguments seem based solely on his admiration for the man and not on historical facts or opinions of those present in that time. In other words, he acknowledges that there are those who call Jackson an Indian-hater or say he wanted to govern as a military dictator (ex. Napoleon), but fails to discredit those notions.



2. John Buchanan has written a most interesting book. Spanning the thirty year period 1780-1810 he covers a time of great uncertainty about just what to do with the existing and projected geographical definition of the fledgling United States. Aaron Burr was not the only person to think in terms of separation. Today, driving on Interstate Highways at 70 MPH through the Appalachian Mountains, it is difficult for us to understand just what an impenetrable barrier these mountains really were. No less a figure than Thomas Jefferson thought "whether we remain one confederacy or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies I believe not very important to the happiness of either part."

   No wonder then that the people of the west, as the west was then defined, drew so closely together and became such an interdependent, insular block. Surrounded by enemies (Great Britain on the North, Spain to the South and West and indifference from their own countrymen to the East), land locked with no natural outlet for their goods and agricultural products and at constant war with Native Americans, this, the fastest growing segment of the US population, was threatened with extinction. Thus, the setting was a tinder box with a truly separate people ready for that particular leader whose interests were not just aligned with but also coincident with their own.

   Andrew Jackson was such a man. This is a story of survival, a story of great personal courage, of a very independent people who hacked their homes and way of life out of a true wilderness. It is a story of how the foundations of the Jacksonian Era were so firmly laid that the 34 year history of the Virginia Dynasty was so completely crushed in American politics that it never resurrected. An oft overlooked, misunderstood or just plain ignored segment of American history, these thirty years in the west were pivotal to the development of early America. Andrew Jackson was truly THE man, a most amazing force to be reckoned with, and an American to the very core of his soul.




3. The reader gets two stories for the price of one in "Jackson's Way." The first 150 pages tell the story of America's expansion West to the Mississippi River with objective and rich detail about the conflict and trials of both settlers and Indians, but little about Andrew Jackson. The book is also a good balance between modern apologists and proponents of manifest destiny. The second story describes Andrew Jackson the soldier and general, mostly Andrew Jackson the consummate leader. I can list with the fingers on one hand the really good books about leadership, this book fits in that count. If you're tired of sniveling and self serving politicians and generals driven more by bureaucracy and pomp than fighting skill and tired of selfish chief executive officers raking in million dollar stock options while laying off thousands of workers without adequate severance compensation then meet Andrew Jackson as described by author John Buchanan. If you teach history and want to see students sitting on the edge of their seats instead of falling asleep then this book is for you too. The story describes in detail battles in the Mississippi River watershed during the war of 1812 culminating with the Battle for New Orleans (1814-15) when we whupped the British tail. Buchanan describes Jackson's leadership traits in a way that readers in virtually any profession can relate.



4. Jack Buchanan is a great writer! I was enthralled by this book from the moment 15 year-old Andrew Jackson swept onto the page. Buchanan brings to life the saga of the Old Southwest and the American pioneers. The most interesting element of the book is the portrait you get of Andrew Jackson, who was so loved men voted for him fifty years after his death. Anyone interested in the Presidents or the history of the Old Southwest will want to read this book.

1 comments about Eckhardt: There Once Was a Congressman from Texas (Focus on American History Series, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin).

1. I was the third Mrs. Bob Eckhardt, and it was the Texas Observer review of Gary Keith's biography of Bob that first set off alarm bells for me. Quoting Keith, Brant Bingamon writes that in the early 1960s, when I saw Bob eating at Scholz's, "cutting his bread with his pocketknife and plunging the bread into his gravy, swirling the bread around, then eating it with a look of immense satisfaction," I was "not amused."
   
   Quite the contrary. At the time I thought it a sign of the gusto with which Bob must live--rather like that wonderful eating scene in Tom Jones that seems to promise spectacular sex to follow. I could only marvel at Keith's being so mistaken. And wonder why.
   
   But I knew he had taken on a huge challenge: he would have to account for a long, vital, and controversial life, a complex political history in Texas and the nation, a wide range of issues, and an enormous cast of characters--all of which present organizational problems of no mean order.
   
   And I understood how tough his work had to be, for I've published four non-fiction books--the first with Harvard, the last with the Texas A&M University Press, and the middle two with distinguished commercial presses--and each time I'd wrestled with the need not only to be accurate, but to weave a number of themes into a clear narrative line. My hard work and obsession with accuracy paid off, however, for the first was co-winner of the Texas Institute of Letters' Carr P. Collins award. And only one correction has ever been brought to my attention: an episode involving John Silber's Introduction to Philosophy class in 1956 turned out to take place in the middle of a session rather than at the end, as I'd described it in my autobiography, Finding Celia's Place.
   
   Since Keith's book was published by the University of Texas Press and includes almost 50 pages of footnotes and a 15-page list of sources--newspaper stories, academic articles, books, and oral interviews--it would naturally inspire the reviewer to remark on Keith's "depth of research." The book would seem to be authoritative. And when I began reading, I found myself grateful to Keith for recording so many of the stories Bob told with such gusto, as well as his clever verses. I was even glad for the genealogy, which I'd never managed to get straight.
   
   Unfortunately, however, the parts of the book that include the years in which I was a front-row witness are riddled with mistakes, special pleading, and misleading comments. To be sure, Bob's private life occupies only a small portion of the whole, and that is a choice any biographer has the right to make. But Keith's commitment to truth regarding it must be no less rigorous than in the parts dealing with public matters.
   
   I don't presume to judge his narrative of the 70 plus years when I was not a part of Bob Eckhardt's life, but I see no reason to think the author's skills and techniques are significantly different in those sections. And a useful comparison might be made with Jan Reid's Texas Monthly piece, done in 1993 when Bob turned 80. Granted that less is required of a magazine article, everything in that piece rang true, and I wrote Reid that he'd not only done a splendid job, he'd made me laugh--despite the fact that the subject has a comic potential that ranks, for me, somewhere between the Holocaust and the Last Judgment. (Several years ago I had the pleasure of saying this in public, at the annual awards banquet of the Texas Institute of Letters, when I presented Reid with an award for the year's best magazine article.)
   
   Three subjects in Keith's book are crucial to my part of the Eckhardt story: Bob's dealings with money, the 1980 campaign, and his stroke in 1987. I wrote about all this in Finding Celia's Place, which Keith cites in his bibliography. In his hour-long interview with me, he did not challenge or comment on anything I'd written. Nor did he ask probing questions. He simply wrote the story differently, as though my account was beside the point.
   
   ****
   
   To begin with the election, the key question is why Bob lost while Jimmy Carter, an unpopular president, won in his district. I hadn't written in detail about the initial failures of the campaign apparatus because I didn't think most readers would be interested. I'd merely said that what Bob was doing during the fateful spring and summer of 1980 wasn't working and wasn't going to work.
   
   Keith, however, says that I had never liked Ann Lower, Bob's administrative assistant who was also responsible for running the campaign, and he writes as though this crippled our efforts. But the charge is flatly untrue, and not only I, but as many as 10 staff people who were available for questioning could easily have disputed it. In my first two and a half years in Washington, Bob and I did many things with Milton and Ann Lower, and they were often in our home.
   
   It was only in the late spring of 1980 that I became anxious about the way Ann was running, or more to the point, failing to run the campaign. A good many well-placed people in Houston were telling me that Bob was in trouble and that the campaign seemed a non-starter. They expected me to tell Bob, which of course I did. But he refused to take these warnings seriously.
   
   With Bob's blessing, however, I gathered well-wishers who were game to sit around making suggestions about what we could do to help Bob win in November. On the plane back to Washington I began telling him about the meeting, and he asked me to write the suggestions down. I did so and asked his executive secretary, Frances Gray, to give copies to him and to Ann.
   
   Ann, it turned out, was furious that she hadn't been invited, and for half an hour she sat in Bob's office yelling at me on the telephone--an act that in itself would have doomed a staff person in most congressional offices on the Hill. I said I hadn't invited my husband either: I'd wanted people to feel free to come up with a range of ideas--away from those who had the power to squelch or change them. She was not mollified.
   
   This stunning eruption of Ann's revealed the choke hold she had on the campaign: she wanted to run it entirely from the top, discouraging others from initiatives that might have the cumulative effect that makes for a successful campaign. When I called Congressman Mickey Leland, and said If you and the African-American community don't help Bob, he's going to lose, Mickey said I thought Ann Lower didn't want me there.
   
   Keith writes, further, that I "implored [Bob] to dismiss Ann Lower." Along with a number of other people, I tried to persuade him to shift her into another job so that she couldn't thwart the work of the campaign. Eventually he did this, but much too late.
   
   Curious about Keith's one-sided view of that campaign, I checked his sources and discovered that he repeatedly cites the Ann and Milton Lower Personal Papers, never suspecting, apparently, that these might represent special pleading. But any number of people would have told the story quite differently, as I had in Finding Celia's Place.
   
   Four members of Bob's congressional committee staff, for instance, took vacation leave to go to Houston and work in the campaign. Keith includes only one of them, Kathy Seddon, in his list of people interviewed, but Ms. Seddon says that she, along with several others, merely had lunch with Keith. They talked about Bob, but she didn't consider this an interview and at any rate he didn't ask her about the 1980 election.
   
   What Ms. Seddon found when she got to Houston on the Columbus Day weekend, in fact, was a basically empty campaign headquarters, and she fundamentally disagrees with Keith's characterizations of the volunteer effort. Two other staff people, Dick Frandsen and David Nelson, who came for the last three weeks, found that nobody had even prepared the necessary list of talking points for volunteers who'd walk the neighborhoods and rally people to the Eckhardt cause. According to Nelson, "The campaign was in shambles until the Steelworkers freed up Sam Dawson from his East side office to run the campaign from headquarters." * (*Milton Lower was the fourth committee aide to come. Keith doesn't list him among those he interviewed, but he uses his papers extensively.)
   
   Keith also failed to interview Ted Johnson, the talented media guy who was persuaded by Mark Raabe, staff director of Bob's oversight subcommittee, to fly down belatedly and cut TV ads for the campaign. So traumatized was Johnson by the disorder he found there that Raabe attributed this experience, only partly in jest, to the fact that he shortly thereafter dropped out of politics altogether and enrolled in an Episcopal seminary.
   
   These four were all talented, bright, hard-working people, two of them lawyers, who had an inside view of the 1980 campaign and no axes to grind, but they weren't called upon to give their insights and information for the record about this critical campaign.
   
   The truth is that at least a score of people warned Bob repeatedly as early as late spring, 1980, that his campaign wasn't working, but he did nothing to change that. Powerful forces were arrayed against him, and Keith describes those ably, but after Dawson took over the direction of the campaign a little more than two weeks before election day, it became clear that Bob could win it. So many people pitched in during those last two weeks that he came very close, but his loss was ultimately his own doing--a fact the reader is unlikely to carry away from Gary Keith's biography. Bob asked huge sacrifices of many others but failed to do the timely, necessary work to keep his side of the bargain.
   
   The campaign Keith describes was for the most part a campaign on paper. The reality was something altogether different.
   
   ****
   
   All through the book Keith scatters comments about Bob's convoluted attitude to money and the financial messes he left for others to resolve. He notes, for instance, that J. Edwin Smith, Bob's old friend and campaign treasurer, resigned after two years of imploring Bob to work with him to cancel the 1980 campaign debt. On the one hand Bob was notoriously mingy--witness the famously shabby clothes--and on the other he was extravagant: for all the years of our marriage he kept three horses and 18 acres of land in Houston, while his debt billowed and he refused to know even what it was.
   
   I wrote that Bob had an aristocrat's disdain for tradesman's bills, but this was little more than a footnote in a sustained description in Finding Celia's Place of the financial trouble that hung ominously over my marriage to Bob. Keith invariably refers to this trouble by pointing out that I was angry and quarrelsome on the subject. He never fully explains the context, and in some instances doesn't explain it at all.
   
   Bob and I were to be married in Washington in the fall of 1977 and had committed ourselves to buying the house he wanted there. I had already sold my New York apartment and sent my furniture down when I heard the terms of Bob's divorce decree from Nadine: he had given her two houses, which left him without the Houston residence he needed as the congressman from the 8th district. He'd committed himself to an amount of child support so much higher than I had gotten in New York, a far more expensive city, that it constituted alimony. And he had taken on the whole of their debt, which was about two-thirds of his annual congressional salary. (To replace the necessary residence he'd given Nadine, he would move a log cabin from East Texas that he insisted would cost only $12- to $13,000. By the time of our divorce, it had cost roughly $55,000 and still had no bathroom, no electricity, and no running water.)
   
   Having been raised by parents scarred by the Great Depression, I was terrified by what I'd gotten myself into. I had owned my New York apartment free and clear--one that within a few years would be worth nearly a million dollars--and would put the money I got from the sale into our Washington house, which we would own jointly.
   
   No reader could come away from my book without some understanding of the daily fear I lived with from then on for 10 years because of Bob's indifference to ordinary financial prudence, much less to my feelings. But not every reader will be sympathetic, and Keith's accounts typically read "Celia was disgusted," "Celia demanded," "Celia was irate," "the storms...would not abate." As he never really explains what the debt was at any particular time, or why I was frightened, I inhabit Keith's pages as a shrew.
   
   It was I who finally figured out Bob's debt after his stroke in 1987 made it necessary to close his office and settle such affairs as could be settled. The debt had been secured by the land in Houston, and whenever I'd tried to persuade him to sell enough to cancel it and then to live within his means, he invariably said I'd have a house and a lifetime pension when he died.
   
   After I told him how much he owed, however, he grasped at the notion of borrowing money on the house to address the debt, but as we owned it jointly, he couldn't do that without the permission I refused to give. He had squandered his money, and then squandered our money, and now he wanted to take mine. Hence the divorce suit. He didn't divorce me, as Keith would have it, because he'd wearied of our "nonrelationship." He divorced me for money, charging desertion.
   
   This claim was both false and insulting, as I'd just spent two months of 18-hour days tending him and getting his affairs in order, and his betrayal was the worst thing that ever happened to me. My 10-year marriage to Bob Eckhardt left me far worse off financially than when I married him, forcing me to give up a substantial part of my inheritance to keep my home. And because I'd spent so much of our time together being a politician's loyal wife--a job that doesn't fit on a resume--I was left in a far more precarious place from which to make a living.
   
   ****
   
   Keith's page-long description of Bob's stroke in 1987 (p. 319) is a muddle of times, names, and events that confuses even me, who lived virtually every minute of it. He writes, for example, "Friends, family, and former aides hurried to Washington to his side. Ronnie Dugger came in. Celia, Orissa, and Rosalind were there...." But Keith minimizes my role by throwing in a list of names. In fact, as I wrote in Finding Celia's Place (pp. 243-245), Keith's primary source, the hospital called me at four in the morning, and I raced there to find Bob alert but speaking gibberish. Over the next few hours I called in the extended family, who came and stayed for a few days but were gone by the end of a week. For the next two months, then, with the help of Gloria Cochran, who had been on Bob's office staff from the beginning, I was the one doing the work. Gloria is listed as one of Keith's interviewees, but she doesn't recall his asking anything about this period.
   
   ****
   
   Keith quotes Molly Ivins as saying that Bob was a wonderful man but no woman could live with him, but such a comment belies the seriousness of the question Why? What was it in Bob, who was very much in love with all three women he married, as they were with him, that made it necessary finally for them to leave him? Orissa Stevenson, his first wife, committed suicide, about which speculation is tempting but fruitless. Nadine Brammer, his second, is alive and well in Austin and can speak for herself. The tale I told in Finding Celia's Place was in the end full of pain, though also filled with the love and admiration he eventually killed in me.
   
   In playing down my devotion to Bob, and the thrill for both of us that marked so much of our time together, Keith has evaded one of the biographer's greatest challenges, which is to go deep. His most glaring, and therefore most telling "mistake" involves his substituting one word for another. He writes, "In New York, on the night of the [King] assassination, Celia Morris shoved Willie, screaming, `You southern boys have a lot to be guilty about!'" Keith has substituted the word "screaming" here for "said," which was the word in his source. And he has omitted the context altogether.
   
   Two observations: first, Keith uses much of the time he gives me to highlight what he clearly finds at best unpleasant in my behavior, invariably in the absence of context or real explanation. Second, we are forced to ask: What is this sentence doing in a book about Bob Eckhardt if not, simply, to help minimize Bob's unkindness as well as his folly? But taking Bob's marriages seriously, and asking the tough questions, would have made it ever so much harder to write, as Keith does in the Afterword, "He was a superior person, and his peers knew it."
   
   In his book about my first husband, In Search of Willie Morris, Larry L. King, who loved Willie dearly, told a surprising number of harsh stories about him that I know it pained Larry deeply to have to write. But he did that because his primary commitment was to telling the truth, and most reviewers observed that his was a very sad book. Gary Keith's book verges on hagiography, which is a lower form. Both Bob Eckhardt and the reader deserved better.*
   
   
   
   * I have filed an addendum of further mistakes or misleading statements in Keith's book with my papers at Texas State University. Anyone interested in knowing more can get it by contacting Steve Davis at the Southwestern Writers Collection in the Alkek Library there.

2 comments about J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime: An Historical Antidote.

1. This book was written to deny the claims of Anthony Summers that Hoover dressed in women's clothes at orgies. Given that the lack of corroboration, that claim is easily refuted (p.41). Curt Gentry's book told that Hoover's real crime was filing false expense reports. Athan Theoharis argues that Hoover's disinterest is organized crime was the result of a "lack of accountability"!! Hoover was not from a wealthy and powerful family, his career depended on pleasing powerful politicians by using his personal skills and talents (p.79). Hoover was first promoted under Wilson, kept his job under Harding, Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and then Franklin Roosevelt (who increased his powers). Hoover curried favor with powerful businessmen (p.40), and also sought information to stay in power (p.72). Hoover didn't investigate syndicated crime as long as the ruling Power Elite wanted that. Congressmen controlled the FBI budget, and Hoover got along by going along. [After the US Secret Service investigation sent a Senator and Congressman to jail, their budget was cut.] Naval Intelligence worked with organized crime during WW 2. Hoover's statement "no single individual or coalition of racketeers dominates organized crime across the nation" (p.17) is still true today; read that closely. Hoover collected scandalous news a necessary self-protection in the political jungle of Washington (p.72). If Hoover concentrated on left-wing groups rather than La Cosa Nostra he was just following orders (p.139).
   
   Chapter One discusses the personal character of Hoover, but not his family background. The charge of homosexuality was often "used by persons who wanted to smear someone" (p.27). One example concerns three high-level aides of Nixon (pp.30-31)! Hoover wanted "sworn statements" from them denying their homosexuality; did he get them? [Any chance to forge them?] Hoover quickly suppressed such rumors (pp.34-38). Could a "sex photograph" have existed in 1946 (p.47)?[Composite photographs are possible, and actors with make-up to double for real people.] Chapter Two tells about the collecting of personal information of a sexual nature and how it was used for political purposes. [That went on with the Founding Fathers!] Prominent personalities could be controlled and political agendas could be promoted with the possession of this knowledge. [Remember one of the "Honeymooner" shows where Ralph tells Alice she is a "Mrs. J. Edgar Hoover"? What did Jackie Gleason mean?]
   
   Chapter Three discusses the expanded Federal powers of the New Deal. [Actually, that started earlier with Prohibition.] The purpose of the New Deal was to save the Power Elite by triage of malfunctioning units (p.120). The failing economy was followed by a rising crime rate (p.121). The expansion of federal powers was presented as a moral conflict between good and evil, divorced from economic reality. Hollywood produced is melodramas (p.125). [No connection here between the end of a "well-regulated militia" and the rise of organized crime.] FDR re-assigned counter-intelligence from the US Secret Service to the FBI (pp.127-128). The FBI took an interest in politicians (p.135). FBI wiretaps immunized crime bosses from prosecution (p.141)! The justification for secret, illegal bugging practices is on page 150. The protection of organized crime by the Attorney General is on pages 151-152. Read it for yourself!
   
   Presidents, attorneys-general, Congressmen, and others cooperated with and benefitted from J. Edgar Hoover (p.160). Was the ACLU then controlled by the FBI (p.163)? The summary on page 164 only underlines Hoover's role as an enforcer for the Power Elite.



2. Academic debunking of Anthony Summers' scandalous "Official and Confidential" superbly researched and written by a noted critic of J. Edgar Hoover. Summers' bestselling volume used uncorroborated gossip and hearsay to "prove" the late FBI director was a closet homosexual and transvestite blackmailed into submission by organized crime. Theoharis, author of such previous works as "From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover" and "The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition", sticks to the facts and uses solid scholarship to dismiss the Summers book as baseless.