5 comments about Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive.

1. The author, Celia Sandys, is the subject's granddaughter. As such, she had access to papers, people, and places that few individuals have. She presents a view of the early Churchill (age 20-25) that gives one an objective glimpse of his early life, ambitions, and personality. She has done much field research by access to original papers, actual locations, and descendants of those who knew Churchill in his early 20s. Much of her research is centered in South Africa where the young Churchill had a yen for being where the action was in the Boer War, and having an inordinate amount of luck escaping death and danger. Additionally, she gives detailed maps of his movements, and tries to bridle some of his self-sustaining writings that could not be independently verified. This work should give any reader an understanding that Churchill's early years were a prelude to his more famous leadership role during the dark days of World War II. An excellent read.



2. This is the first book that I have ever read about Churchill, so I was very surprised to read example after example of his arrogance and his "at all times" sense of entitlement. His granddaughter (an obviously biased author) recited many of Churchill's actions during the Boer War as examples of his bravery and courage. I, however, interpreted these actions in quite a different manner. One example of Churchill's "bravery" was when his train was ambushed by Boer troops. The author described his behavior as brave and heroic, whereas I viewed his actions as a very calculated tactic for self-advacement. In fact, it was Churchill's fault that the train went so far into Boer territory in the first place--he wanted more information for his newspaper, and his subsequent actions only put the British troops in more danger. The book was also not well written or organized; it reminded me of reading a high school book report.



3. This time last year, appropriately enough, I was reading this book of Churchill's epic escape from the States Model School in Pretoria, an event that had happened 100 years earlier to the very day.The 12 December 1999 was also a day in which I lost a friend in a road accident, thus, the centennial anniversary date becomes etched with the personal. Churchill was clearly a larger-than-life figure all of his life as his grandaughter and author Celia Sandys clearly shows in this historical work in which she followed in his footsteps, visiting campsites, battlefields etc and speaking to descendants of friends and foes alike. Contrary to the assertions of some other reviewers it is a well written and enjoyable book. Some of the interesting vignettes include the detective work the author did on tracking down the gold watches that Churchill had sent to various people for their assistance in his escape from the Boers (or Afrikaners as they are known today). At the time of publication Mrs Sandys had located 6 of the 8 watches. Mrs Sandys is not afraid to challenge Churchill's assertions that he was captured by Gen. Louis Botha himself (later the Union's first Prime Minister, 1910-19)and she rightly dismisses talk that there was ever a romantic entanglement with Helen Botha , the General's daughter. The author is partly correct when she records that Churchill's "huge political ambitions demanded a wife who would be a political asset..." However, that would cut both ways, something Helen Botha alluded to 60 years later when she said it was unlikely that she could fall for him as she was "a Transvaaler." Her father and Churchill may have "got along famously" but it is the author who is disingenous, not Helen Botha, in considering that a personal political rapport could see the leader of the Afrikaner volk, or a member of his family, contemplate such a marriage -particularly after the deaths of some 26,000 Boer women and children in the world's first concentration camps - British concentration camps. Nevertheless, this is a good read about a remarkable soldier-stateman in his younger days. Enjoy.



4. This book presents several interesting vignettes relating to Churchill's life and activities during the South African "Boer" war, but overall I was disappointed, and finished wanting more. Overall, I thought this was rather superficial, and I didn't feel as tho I had gained any substantial insight into the life of one of the giants of the late 19th/early 20th century.



5. I am a great admirer of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, and so being I read nearly every book that is published. As I write this Mr. Churchill was on the cover of one of our National Magazines last week, and the title was "The Last Hero". A man who is completing another biography of Mr. Churchill's life wrote the story inside.

   A book by his Granddaughter Celia Sandys could be easily dismissed as a biased treatment, a work lacking objectivity. I believe The Authoress did a remarkable job of adding to the Historical Record without being a revisionist in her Grandfather's favor or to his detriment.

   I have read Churchill's own accounts of the adventures contained in this book, and many other books written about this amazing story and I still would recommend it be added to any existing collection of Churchill books.

   Mrs. Sandys manages to bring to light new bits of information that at times reinforce the contemporary accounts, and at other moments confirm what might have been an Historical Embellishment passed down through the years. She portrays her Grandfather with candor, and shares the information she collected while reconstructing herself the trip that her Grandfather made so many years ago.

   Sir Winston Spencer Churchill M.P. has already taken his place in History. He was a man who seemed to know what destiny held for him, and also what History would say. He once said, "I know how History will remember me, as I shall write it." He once described the human race in the following terms, "We are all worms, but I believe I am a glow worm."

   A well written, balanced account of a small part of a life that was full of momentous moments. Mr. Churchill is unique as he is not just part of our History, he is History. That he is still quoted almost daily, new books continue to be written, and a College is to be built confirm this is true.

   When confronted with "if you were my Husband I would put poison in your soup", the retort, "if you were my wife I would eat it." Oh to be at that dinner.

   Thank you Mrs. Sandys.

No comments about The Cuban Republic and JosZ Mart': Reception and Use of a National Symbol (Bildner Western Hemisphere Studies).

2 comments about Miles Gone By.

1. This is just a wonderful parting gift from WFB. He reads essays (unabridged) from his literary autobiography , using decades of writings to illustrate the course of his own life.
   
   You simply cannot get his unique voice and cadence out of your head after listening to this. And not surprisingly, you find he speaks it with a bit different emphasis than you would think upon reading it - added value.
   
   The best thing I can say, is that listening to these discs gives you the palpable feeling that Bill and you are sitting in Stamford on the Long Island Sound as he tells you all about his life.
   
   An absolute treasure for those who loved him.
   
   Ave Atque Vale



2. MILES GONE BY is a compilation of William F. Buckley essays, columns and anecdotes which tell the story of his life. His writings are so prolific that the better parts of his life had already been chronicled, by himself no less, prior to his death.
   
   I began reading National Review in 1978 as a young liberal college student. Buckley was my cure for liberalism along with the practical demise of liberal theology under Carter. He was also a mentor and hero as the Reagan Era rushed in and changed the world. I dug deep into Buckley's lore reading the Blackford Oakes novels, his journal at the United Nations, and his sailboat chronicles (AirBorne and Racing Through Paradise).
   
   WFB was a classic conservative voice at a time when conservatism had few national voices. Goldwater, Reagan, Milton Friedman, Gingrich and others would emerge as leaders but Buckley was always the apologist for the right. His bully pulpits were the National Review and Firing Line television program. At times I wondered if he befriended people like John Kenneth Galbraith to keep them busy while conservatives were busily furthering their agenda.
   
   Besides being the voice and conscience of the conservative movement in America, Buckley will be remembered for his civility. He was a gifted host and debater who confronted and entreated opponents with grace, tact, and utmost civility. He raised the national debate to a higher level of discourse. It would be difficult ot find another personality who so delighted in the excellence of communication. He positively thrilled to witty, bright, clever conversationalists like Galbreath, Muggeridge, and other intellectuals of the day.
   
   America is poorer for his passing.

2 comments about Henry Steele Commager : Midcentury Liberalism and the History of the Present.

1. In 1950, Henry Steele Commager was one of the best-known and most widely-read historians in the United States, and he would eventually be honored with over 40 honorary degrees. Today, he is virtually unknown to the public and, I dare say, is rarely read even by professionals in his field, American intellectual history. What a difference 50 years makes in the life of a historian's reputation and influence! The explanation may lie in part in a useful distinction, drawn early by Neil Jumonville, professor of history at Florida State University, between scholars, who write for professional audiences, and intellectuals, who write for the general public. Jumonville makes clear that Commager trained to be a scholar but, notwithstanding long appointments at New York University, Columbia University, and Amherst College, spent a good part of his career practicing as an intellectual. As a result, he was very popular in his own time but had relatively little lasting influence on scholars in his field.

   Jumonville takes Commager's life from birth to burial in this wide-ranging and solid, if not entirely stimulating, biography. The ultimate issue for any biographer of Commager is: Why did he become passé, even while he was still teaching and writing? (Commager died at the age of 95 in 1998.) Jumonville posits several explanations for Commager's quick descent from national authority to obscurity. The first is that much of Commager's scholarly work had encyclopedic breadth but lacked analytic depth; his opinions and judgments were intuitional rather than carefully deductive and simply have not withstood the test of time. Second and not unrelated, Commager clearly, if unconsciously, showed a preference for being prolific rather than profound. His insistence upon writing, lecturing, and speaking to a large audience, largely for financial reasons, enhanced his popularity but may have contributed to limiting the impact he made on his professional peers. According to Jumonville: "Commager as a popularizer was not a major influence on the direction taken by intellectual historians." Although Commager aspired to recognition for a high level of scholarship, "he was not a research scholar." Commager preferred anecdotes, biographical sketches, and narrative over searching analysis. According to Jumonville: "Many historians felt [Commager's] work lacked appropriate sophistication." Third, some historians clearly resented the "breezy manner" in which Commager wrote, although that was not necessarily a criticism. Commager believed that "history is a branch of literature," and even critics of the substance of his oeuvre tended to admire his style. Fourth and finally, I believe, is the fact that he lost his intellectual curiosity and ceased to read his professional peers, which is an essential activity for scholars in any field. In the middle decades of the century, Commager was nationally known as an activist in "liberal Left politics." In particular, Commager was an outspoken foe of McCarthyism, and this brought him into sustained conflict with conservative commentators. (William F. Buckley once inquired, puckishly if not maliciously, whether Commager's middle name was a tribute to Stalin. It was, instead, a family name.) Later, Commager was an energetic critic of the Vietnam War, and he tended to be sympathetic to the student protesters of the 1960s. One of the issues which Jumonville attempts to address is whether Commager was a consistent Jeffersonian liberal. In my opinion, Jumonville spends too much time attempting to locate Commager along the liberal-conservative political continuum, although, in fairness to the author, Commager spent a lot of time thinking about it, too. This exercise would be profitable if it were necessary to explicate hidden biases, but Commager was an outspoken liberal in most senses of the mid-20th century use of that term. Furthermore, it also must be noted that, although Commager enjoyed engaging in public discourse about contemporary issues, his scholarly books were not partisan. Is professionalism in the writing of history inconsistent with partisan advocacy in public discourse? Or, as Jumonville puts, it: Must there be a clear dividing line between "the role of the historian as a scholar and as an activist intellectual"? Commager's life indicates that the answer is: Not necessarily. But, in purely practical terms, there may simply not be enough hours in the day to perform both functions well. Time magazine criticized one of Commager's books for lacking in thoroughness and suggested that he was a dilettante. That was unfair, but the tendency to write and speak glibly, which punditry requires, does not serve the scholar well because depth of insight is what proves the professional historian's mettle. Jumonville's Commager is likeable, if somewhat eccentric. When friends were invited to his home to dine, his wife entertained them during the cocktail hour, while Commager continued to work, and, when dinner was served, Commager joined them for the meal and conversation, invariably with himself as chief conversationalist. Although he was an energetic teacher, he rarely learned the names of his students. And I especially enjoyed the anecdote during which Commager was arguing with a colleague about the author of a line of Scottish poetry; when Commager could not find the line in an anthology, he concluded that the book was incomplete and tossed it out a window. On the other hand, Jumonville's periodic discussion of Commager's long friendship and correspondence with historian Allan Nevins is interesting but not especially revealing. And Jumonville's frequent references to Commager's relations with the New York Intellectuals do little, in my opinion, to add to Jumonville's thesis. Some readers will not find this book very exciting. But to the extent that intellectual history is a spectator sport, it is more akin to golf than football. I believe this book is a major achievement, but I also suspect that there still is room for another, more searching intellectual biography of Commager, especially one which examines his scholarly output in greater detail. What I am suggesting may be the equivalent of "inside the Beltway" political analysis, and, were he alive, Commager might object to this narrow focus, but it is the standard by which every professional historian is ultimately judged.




2. Flatly written and repetitive, this book misses many chances to illuminate the life and work of one of the most significant public intellectuals between the 1930s and the 1980s. Jumonville keeps calling Commager a Jeffersonian liberal but seems to have no idea about the difference between Jefferson's thought and the way that thought was understood in the era of the New Deal. Also, though Jumonville stresses that Commager used history to justify political arguments, he is silent on Commager's place in the 1960s controversy about historians writing contemporary history, on which Commager wrote extensively.

   The sad thing is that this book is just scholarly enough to seem to occupy the field, but not scholarly enough to be the treatment that the subject deserves

No comments about The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, Volume 13: 1 June-31 August 1793 (Papers of George Washington).

1 comments about Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography of ANC leader Joe Slovo.

1. excelent book all about slovos fights with apartheit. the only white leader of the a.n.c A FIGHTER TO THE END.

No comments about Eminent Edwardians: Four Figures who Defined their Age: Northcliffe, Balfour, Pankhurst, Baden-Powell.

5 comments about Billy Carter: A Journey Through the Shadows.

1. Excellent book. Very well written and a pleasure to read. I hope Buddy Carter will take the time to write more about his historic family. This individual has a real talent!



2. I only thought I had heard about Billy Carter. This is a wonderful book, written by a sensitive, loving son of a famous man. Buddy Carter is a thoughtful, intellegent author who gives an unvarnished account of his battle with and affection for his dad. I recommend this book to all of us who struggle to understand our relationship with our parents. Buddy Carter and his book are a gift.



3. This is a magnificent book. It is often painful and yet also very funny. Buddy Carter's relationship with his father is reminicent of the struggle many children go through for approval, while striving for independence. I am buying copies of this wonderful story for family and friends. Buddy has not only told his story...he has told the father/son story of many, including me. This is a must read!



4. This is one of the best books I have ever read. Buddy Carter writes with a style that is poignant, funny and very touching. This tale of pain and forgiveness touched my soul and I will recommend it to everyone. Buddy Carter is quite a writer and I am sure BOTH of his parents are quite proud of the way he brought forth this wonderful family story.



5. I could not put this book down, I think Tuesday's With Morrie was the last book I was so touched by. What a wonderful and revealing portrait of a complex and interesting man. I suppose because I grew up in the South I so related to this book...a wonderful tribute to a father I always say the most we can hope for our children forgive us... Buddy seems to have been able to do just that...a loving tribute not only to Billy but Sybil as well.

5 comments about In His Own Right.

1. Palermo's study of RFK on his own is well-researched and well-written, but it pays scant attention to the issue which dominated Kennedy's senatorial career - his attempts to do something about poverty in the U.S. While Vietnam is what drew him into his presidential run, poverty is the issue Kennedy spent more time on.



2. "In His Own Right", describes Robert Kennedy's political journey in the years after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Robert Kennedy suffered through a time of deep sorrow and grief after the death of his brother, and began a struggle to find his own political voice. RFK was in a unique position of national prominence, and many people looked to him to take the place of his slain brother. This book tells the story of how his political views began to change and evolve through very turbulent times both at home and abroad. Robert Kennedy had always been in the shadow of his brother, but he gradually began to stand in his own right. His own unique heart and spirit began to emerge, and it ultimately revolved around a sense of compassion and justice. By the time that he ran for President in 1968, there was much that Robert Kennedy could have given to America and to the world. This book explores that final political campaign, and the path that RFK always strived to find and follow.



3. While reading this fine book, I found myself immersed in the politics and social upheavals of the 1960s. My understanding of Robert F. Kennedy's role in the mid-1960s as a leader of a coalition of social movements was greatly enhanced. It was a joy to read!



4. Palermo's book is intriguing because it takes a closer look at how Bobby's campaign really began with grassroots politics. As a reader I found myself rallying behind the campaign that was abruptly and tragically cut short. I look forward to further exploration into the motivations behind Bobby's campaign.



5. The role of Robert Kennedy in Cold War politics is becoming a popular topic in academia and the media. At a time of growing disillusionment with American government and politicians I find Palermo's research an inticing and important step towards reviving interest in grassroots approaches by politicians. This book was well-written and deserves a reading because it explores the political philosophies and actions of an amazing man and truly caring politician.

4 comments about Che for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book.).

1. This is an excellent summary of Che Guevarra's life, but this book is "NOT AVAILABLE." "Chomsky for Beginners" another book about a controversial man is also "NOT AVAILABLE. This is my experience that AMAZON.COM has been starting to stop distributing many books that are too much to the Left on the spectrum of "American Politics." Maybe it's the time for me to start supporting the independent book stores and stop buying at AMAZON.COM



2. This book is okay for its size; It inspired me to check out a copy of _Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life_ by John Anderson from my local library. There are several good "Che" bios out there, I think...I'd like to learn more about which biographies are considered the best among historical scholars; I appreciated the other reviewer who pointed out innaccuracies, etc...I also noticed the aforementioned date error of Che's debacle in Bolivia and knew it had to be the 6os not the 50s, etc. I would like to learn more about this flamboyant Argentenian (and Cuban hero)...I am a leftist but only really discovered Guevara when I started learning the Spanish language.



3. Although "Che for Beginners" is published in a comic book format, that shouldn't relegate its content to fiction and historical inaccuaracies. In a positive light, the book does provide a (very) basic grounding in the story of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, which may be a good starting point for the uninitiated. As line drawings go, the artwork is great for helping the reader to visualize the story. However, I think a little more research and attention to detail could have been applied to make this book more accurate and informative. To cite a couple of examples: Page 9 gives the date of Che's capture in Bolivia as October 8, 1957 (actual date 1967), and page 19 provides his birthdate as June 14, 1928. Now as his birth certificate does indeed indicate June 14 as his date of birth, he was actually born on May 14, but in order to remove any stigma attached to the fact that his mother was pregnant before she and his father were married, the birth certificate! was falsified. These are the types of historical inaccuracies that indicate a lack of research and attention to detail that greatly detract from this book's ability to inform the reader. There are other inaccuracies as well. In summary, I would recommend this book as a starting point for a young person but would definitely not recommend it for the serious student or knowledgable reader.



4. This is a great place to start if you want to know more about Guevara, Cuban politics, or Communism in Latin America. This book gives insight into Guevara's life with respect to changes in world politics during his lifetime.