5 comments about Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman.

1. "Pam," as she was known by her friends, trading on her beauty, inquisitiveness and instincts, more than on her morals: again and again parlayed her feminine wiles into higher and higher orbits of class, wealth, international intrigue and a seat at the very table where high stakes policy was being shaped and made. Even one of her many lives would have been enough for an ordinary person to kill for, but being able to do it over and over again points to her very own special gift: being perfectly situated to marry older men of influence and then making them like it, as she "traded up " the ladder to better and better situations.
   
   Just her wartime activities alone, is worth the price of the book.
   
   Here, behind the scenes where the post-WWII world order was being shaped and fashioned, she played an important if unsung role as one of the king pin (or is it queen pin?) deal makers, that helped solidify the ties between the U.S. and UK, ties that eventually were responsible for bringing the U.S. into the war. She did this all the while being married to the notorious "bad boy" and son of Sir Winston Churchill, Randolph, and while "bedding down" one of her "husbands-to be," Averill Harriman. And she did this, all the while, if not with the full knowledge, certainly with the tacit knowledge of her father in law, the British Prime Minister.
   
   Just this part of the book alone is worth its price, but there is much more: all with the ring of truth, not with the ring of mere salacious gossip, which I admit, is all that I was really looking for. In the book "Nemesis," it had been reported as fact that Joseph P. Kennedy had raped Pam while she was an overnight guest of her friend the then Ambassador to the UK's daughter, Kathleen. I was unable to confirm this fact in this "unauthorized" version of her life. This omission, however, certainly does not mean that it did not happen, just that it could not be confirmed in this version of her life story. And even though I did not find what I was looking for, this is still easily five stars.



2. Reading this, more than decade after its publication when Pamela's primary skills were already passé, it was clear how much things have changed.
   
   Pamela came out of the 19th century British aristocracy where only the first born male was entitled to inherit the family's property and power and to call it what it is/was - human rights within a family. Pamela could not expect familial affection or support. Her family turned her over to nannies and decreed that education, no matter how great her ability or curiosity, would hinder her marriage options.
   
   Pamela made her own match (did not wait for family negotiations) and married what history made the ultimate commodity, a link through a male namesake, to Winston Churchill. She used this "child" and followed the cultural and psychological patterns of aristocratic women by supporting and living through her man with a modern twist--- he did not have to be her husband.
   
   WWII put a chink in the armor of the British class system and affirmed the American ideal of social equality. The super wealthy European men paid in cash and friendship for all she willingly gave. She wanted commitment, which due to European social codes, would not be forthcoming. No wonder Pamela was seduced (in the pure sense of the word) by America. In America she was able to achieve far beyond what her family or country c/would ever provide for her.
   
   She was Darwinistic about men/marriage. If a man's wife was not as fit as her, Pamela had no qualms about the wife, Pamela should have the "position". Her sympathy for her second husband's mother (over that of his children) who had abandoned her family may be testament to an understanding of her emotional situation.
   
   One can salute Pamela's achievements, but her treatment of others is too cold for sympathy. As presented here, her mothering of "The Child" and her stepchildren replicates that toward her in her own nuclear family. Her treatment of staff and other women is pure 1950's sexism and a workaholic's view of the world. She rose above the rigid role of her family and society had given her. Unfortunately, within her intimate family (birth and blended) she could not break the chain of creating emotional liabilities.



3. I had known one women who said: "Its better you ask for what you want,then to except what others offering to you."

   This can be related to biography of Pamela Harriman. SHe lived in extraordinary circumstances but what I find most compelling is the fact that she succeed to manage her life. Although, it was not always easy for her. She left and she was left. The biography is most interesting written and I read it very quickly.
   She maybe was in some way courtisan, but I think she wanted to enjoy in life nad she was led by it. SHe knew what she want and she was persistant. However, I did not manage to figure out was she open hearted as she was presented in some moments or little bit cold caculated as in the part regarding children of her husband Hayworth. But, for sure she was woman in complete sense of that word.




4. One can tell just from the photograph chosen for the cover of LIFE OF THE PARTY that author Christopher Ogden has constructed a fun read. Though his research is thorough and scholarly, LIFE OF THE PARTY flies by easily. (The title itself is a pun, alluding both to its literal meaning and to the fact that Harriman's generous donations gave new life to America's Democratic Party.)

   In crafting the biography of America's late Ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman, Ogden also provides a social history of the international "Jet Set" of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's. Pamela's journey through the decades was complete with English aristocracy, French nobility, Italian racing car drivers, South American polo players, Arab sheiks, Greek shipping magnates and members of America's monied elite. The link among them is that Pamela Harriman slept with members of each of these groups!

   In her own, less liberated day, born to obscure English nobility c. 1920, there is no question but that then-Pamela Digby would have been considered a--ahem--loose woman (to use a mild phrase) by those who knew her. Not only did she sleep around, apparently with blatant calculation of how her liasons would benefit her financially and socially, but she also conspicuously went after married men. With the exception of her first husband, the single thread connecting the men she chose was that they were not merely rich, they were filthy rich. And her first husband was the son of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England at the time of their marriage. Thus, that match was socially advantageous to Pamela, and she would use the connection as her entry into highest levels of the world's interconnected rich. Nonetheless, despite her apparent rapacity, it is obvious that her men found her... appealing, to say the least.

   Some of the affairs that Ogden documents were with the fabulously wealthy Frenchman, Elie de Rothschild, with the fabulously wealthy oil sheik, Aly Khan, with the fabulously wealthy Italian auto manufacturer, Gianni Agnelli, with a fabulously wealthy American, Averell Harriman and another fabulously wealthy American, William Paley. Yet she married the merely wealthy theatrical producer, American Leland Hayward, whose daughter openly despises Pamela to this day. (It seems clear that Pamela settled on Leland due to an urgent need to wed quickly as a matter of financial salvation.)

   Of course, Pamela was a serial bride. Decades after she first began her affair with him, Averell Harriman finally tied the knot with Pamela. He had been middle-aged when they first had met, and she had been a very young woman. By the time she captured him, she was middle-aged and he was old. Conveniently, he died soon after their marriage and, even more conveniently, he left her his huge fortune.

   She immediately put that fortune to use in inserting herself as a valuable player in the United States Democratic Party and as an early and generous supporter of then-candidate Bill Clinton. After he became President, Clinton rewarded Pamela by making her his Ambassador to France.

   Truly, if this book were a romance novel, it would be dismissed out-of-hand as being too implausible. As it stands, it is an examination of an exploitative and greedy woman, yet a woman whose lifestory makes for entertaining reading. For the major events of the mid-20th century, when Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman was not present, she probably was waiting in the bedroom.




5. What an interesting woman. Okay so she may have slept her way to the top and made a few bad personal decisions. A saint she was not. For all that she was determined to enjoy life and make the best out of what talents she had. She used her friends as we all do to better her causes and even berated her children when she disagreed withj them. As if she was the first mother to do that. She gave her total devotion to the men she married, apart from Winston, and expected the same.The irony is that had Pamela harriman been a man all her negative aspects would have been overlooked and she would have been remembered more for her her political and social acumen rather than the men she had slept with. A very interesting read about one of the more interesting characters of the 20th century. It will be a while before her like is seen again. She will be missed.

5 comments about No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner.

1. If you love politics this is a fun read but the title is a misnomer as Mr. Shrum is more than a little thin skinned. You do get a ringside seat to every Presidential election since 1972 and some of the insights are fascinting. Some of my notions about certain politicians might of changed because of what Mr. Shrum writes,one thing is for sure he's off the John Edwards Christmas card list. Having read about Mr. Shrum in other books I've enjoyed getting his side of the story about events over the last 30+ years. One thing I found very interesting is a man who can't type became one of the most famous speechwriters in history. All in all I enjoyed this book and if your a political junky you will to.



2. When I first saw Bob Schrum's book on the shelves at my local book store, I pulled it out, cracked the cover, and sat cross-legged right there on the floor, inhaling about 100 pages before my wife Holly caught my attention, and said we should be on our way.
   
   I bought the book that I'd already marked with my notes, and tabbed.
   
   I read it that evening, all the way through, couldn't put it down.
   
   If you like great writing, are somewhat of a political obsessive, and are dying to know what goes on in political campaigns, you should read this book. You won't be disappointed - except you'll find it went by too fast and want more. I did.
   
   To appreciate my point of view, you have to understand that I have always thought that Schrum could turn a phrase or see an argument in a way few could, and I've always thought that he did this with high-minded compassion for the underdog that has survived numerous campaigns and, even more challenging to his integrity, that has endured his own commercial success.
   
   I know there are folk out there who pulled out their long swords to cut at Schrum's revelations and the story he had to tell and that wish him ill. The most prominent of these you can find in Schrum's table of contents so you can see for yourself, if so inclined, precisely how Schrum dispatches the unworthy.
   
   Sour grape critics aside, if you want to get a sense of present politics and past history, this is a book that you must read.
   
   It tells you how Schrum realized his own appetite and skill for the political adventure that became his life story, whether it was his gift to merge the right word with the moment, or to turn the precisely correct argument into a rhetorical pirouhette.
   
   At his best, he takes you inside the back rooms when chaos and indecision must be ordered to figure out what to do next.
   
   He gives you a glimpse into Ted Kennedy, his first and longest lasting loyal devotion, and other presidential runs for the White House.
   
   If you want to know about the high strategy and drive-by slanders and back-biting king-of-the-hill wars on the campaign bus endemic to political campaigns since Brutus drove his blade into Caesar, you'll find a few recent chapters in that history right here.
   
   Schrum writes this as if it's his last memoir, and he's fading from the active political scene.
   
   It is interesting to observe, however, that, in his book, he favors only one candidate running for President on the Democratic side, Barack Obama.
   
   Schrum's direct praise of Obama's qualities, written when the field of candidates was crowded, shows his reading to be somewhat prescient of Obama's success.
   
   It also makes you wonder whether, if Obama gets the democratic nomination in Denver, whether Schrum will be on the talking head shows as an Obama spokesperson, rather than as a disinterested observer and old hand.
   
   Get this book. But don't clutter the aisles reading it on the floor - as I did.



3. For many, particularly in the wake of the 2002 and 2004 electoral disasters, Shrum represents the very epitome of what is wrong with the national Democractic Party.
   
   Having read many books crucifying the man, it was interesting to get Shrum's own story. Because the tale is certainly an interesting one - Kennedys, Clintons, Gores oh my!, and offers "lessons learnt" as well as interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout.
   
   It may not be an objective view of history - no autobiography ever is. But even if you are no fan of the man, the book itself is an interesting read, and offers lessons, not just in politics, but in life itself - academia, business, and just people.



4. Shrum proves that money and politics corrupts.
   
   Nothing he was written justifies the money he and his business partners garnered from just the Kerrey 2004 campaign. The fees totaled $5,000,000. This money consumption came at the same time that everyday Americans were being pressed to "send their contributions in as soon as possible" Many of these people were on limited incomes and still were being told that they held the key to win the election.
   
   Shrum should be ashamed. His "consulting" has been a total disaster and so much money from honest, everyday working people have been his prize. It didn't matter if the campaigns won or lost, he got the money anyway.
   
   I think one of my favourite moments in the 2004 campaign was when ex-Senator Ernest Hollings saw Kerrey with Shrum sitting at a coffee shop or restaurant and Hollings looked at them and said to Kerry something to the effect that "I thought you want to win this thiing" pointing to Shrum as his consultant. Hollings hit it right on the nose.
   
   Don't buy this book. Why make him even richer?



5. Shrum proves that money and politics corrupts.
   
   Nothing he was written justifies the money he and his business partners garnered from just the Kerrey 2004 campaign. The fees totaled $5,000,000. This money consumption came at the same time that everyday Americans were being pressed to "send their contributions in as soon as possible" Many of these people were on limited incomes and still were being told that they held the key to win the election.
   
   Shrum should be ashamed. His "consulting" has been a total disaster and so much money from honest, everyday working people have been his prize. It didn't matter if the campaigns won or lost, he got the money anyway.
   
   I think one of my favourite moments in the 2004 campaign was when ex-Senator Ernest Hollings saw Kerrey with Shrum sitting at a coffee shop or restaurant and Hollings looked at them and said to Kerry something to the effect that "I thought you want to win this thiing" pointing to Shrum as his consultant. Hollings hit it right on the nose.
   
   Don't buy this book. Why make him even richer?

5 comments about The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor.

1. RI is such a secular little world where everyone DOES know everyone else. Buddy played those connections to the hilt, rebuilding a city and lining his own pockets at the same time. This is a great study of a guy who, had he not been so affable, would have been regarded as the nastiest of crooks. But instead while he wallows in the Federal Pen, his legions of fans and supporters remain steadfast. Stanton does a superb job of capturing the uniqueness of Rhode Island; the Italianness, the corruption, the general air of "fuhgheddaboudit, they're all crooks". Don't rule out Buddy Part III, this is but the first installment of a very interesting man.



2. I know very little about New England or Rhode Island. I'm not terribly interested in politics. I came to this book in a roundabout way. I had never been aware of Buddy Cianci until I happened to see a musical at the New York International Fringe Theatre Festival in 2003 titled BUDDY CIANCI. While the musical wasn't very good, I thought the story was fascinating and that in Buddy Cianci the authors certainly had a character who was big enough to sing. Here was a guy who was a scary crook that everyone loved. Here was a mayor whose popularity was never higher than just after he was indicted a second time. He had been indicted previously, pleaded guilty to assault (he bound and tortured a man he claimed was his ex-wife's lover) and had to step down as mayor, only to run again and be re-elected! So of course I pounced when I saw this book in the bookstore. I was not disappointed. Mike Stanton's THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE is jaw-dropping reading as it traces Cianci's rise to power and his outrageous machinations to keep his power. Stanton's book is very detailed and objective. This is not a hatchet job. He gives equal time to all sides. In one chapter I would be rooting for Buddy and in the following chapter rooting for his enemies. This is that kind of book. Buddy Cianci is that kind of guy. The book has been sold to the movies and should make a terrific film. (But what actor could possibly do justice to the title character?) There are times when the book seems on the verge of becoming a Yankee MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (which I consider a compliment). THE PRINCE OF PROVIDENCE is consistently entertaining and has a lot to say about America and the times we live in. Four stars.



3. A fascinating view of a Mayor who engaged in boosterism to sell his city, and himself. Very helpful to those interested in studying styles of government and a great read.
   
   Jim Fiorentini Mayor, Haverhill, MA



4. 
   This book is a fascinating look at politics, corruption and the enigma of Buddy Cianci. Thoughtful and balanced, it shows both sides of a bright, funny, and charismatic mayor whose impact reaches beyond his city. It's all about good and evil in the same person. Charm, power, and political realities. A great read.



5. Well, perhaps not everyone does. But as this book outlines in great detail, Buddy was quite a character. He was the huge push (or battering ram?) behind the proverbial renaissance of Providence. PVD has a long way to go, but some would argue that it is definitely better off after Buddy's term in office. Besides, how many cities have had a convicted felon with his own marinara sauce in City Hall? Stanton has written a meticulously researched and engaging book about one of the most interesting mayors to come along in quite a while. Whether you're from Providence or just passing through (ahem college kids), pick this one up and learn about the man behind the myth.

5 comments about The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family.

1. For anyone who has read anything about the Kennedys, this is the ultimate glimpse into what it was like at the begining of the '60's. Shot soon after the election, the photographs illustrate the youth, the promise and the elegance of the incoming First Family.
   
   Knowing their fate makes each picture more poignant and almost heartbreaking. Caroline with her father, tenderly holding her brother or JFK tenderly caressing his son's infant head touch the hearts, even these many years afterwards.



2. I have been an admirer of the Kennedys for more years than I care to remember.They are both my heroes
   and I have read literally dozens of books on the family.This book was totally captivating.The pictures were taken in Palm Beach before the inaugeration .Its pictures were bittersweet and brought back waves of nostalgia.Caroline as a 3 year old toddler and John Jr as a tiny infant.They brought back feelings of that Golden Era and the hope for what might have been .There were pictures I'd never seen and I would Highly recommend this book.



3. If you're a photography lover like i am then you appreciate great coffee table books. This one just didn't do it for me. For anyone who finds the Kennedy's interesting this is a decent book with average pictures. I wish that i could recommend a different book to look at but this is the only one that i have. Look around, i'm sure there are better out there.



4. Not inpressed and was disappointed in the book. It's good if you want a record of the Kennedys. I found the photos too stiff and lacking in feeling. They left me cold. Avedon could have done better this was handled too much like a fashion shoot.



5. I have read nearly every JFK-Jackie book ever printed. This one was beautiful. I especially loved the baby photos of John and Caroline.

2 comments about Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 And the Rise of the Right (American Presidential Elections).

1. I thought this was a fair, nonbiased look at the 1980 Presidential election. The author covers all aspects of the campaign, from the summer of 1979 when it looked like Ted Kennedy was a shoe in to beat Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Nomination to the eventual Reagan landslide in November 1980.



2. This little book is a disappointing analysis of the presidential election of 1980 by a conservative scholar of American politics. Even though it contains somme interesting insights about the political dynamics of the late seventies and about presidential campaigning at the end of the party era in presidential politics, the book does not add much to the existing litterature on these topics and suffers from its unmistakable -however hypocritical-conservative bias.

No comments about After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan.

5 comments about Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey.

1. This is the best political memoir I have ever read. The author is an extremely skilled writer and presents an account of his journey from a far left leader to a conservative activist in a compelling way. It feels strange to say this about a non-fiction political book, but I had a hard time putting it down. This memoir was well organized and flowed very easily. The author gives an especially personal expose of the criminality of the Black Panther Party. This book should be must reading for students entering college to inoculate them against the left-wing indoctrination by their professors. It explains so much about the failings of the left.



2. I read this book over 7 years ago and found it to be the foremost manual on how the 1960's generation completely destroyed this country. We are suffering from their antics today as some of the most immoral and unethical people in the Federal, State and Local governments are children of the 1960's. David Horowitz has to be the left's most hated person as he grew up in an "intellectual" communist/socialist family and then did a 180 turn around. His parents supported Stalin whole-heartedly only to be destroyed when the world found out that Stalin had murdered over 30 million Soviets in the Russian gulags. As a young man Horowitz was in the middle of the riots in Berkeley and Columbia Universities. Horowitz goes through a radical change in his thinking due to the death of a good friend whom he recommended for a job with the Black Panther Party in Oakland. His radical change involves not only leaving the left, but realizing the damage that it has inflicted on the very fabric of this country's fundamental morals and ethics.
   
   The reason I write this review seven long years after reading Radical Son is to congratulate David on his bravery and honesty in exposing the hate of the left. On September 11, 2008, The New York Times (lefty newspaper) printed a story about a man named Morton Sobell. Morton Sobell was convicted in 1951 along with Julus and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. The Rosenbergs were executed and became the martyrs of the left for years and years. Martin Sobell spent 30 years in prison denying vehmently that he along with the Rosenbergs was innocent. In the article published in the New York Times on September 11, 2008, Martin Sobell, now 91 years old, admitted that he along with Julus Rosenberg was guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. In the article, Robert Meeropol, son of Julus and Ethel Rosenberg states that if Morty said it then it must be true. Thank you David for staying with it - you knew all along that Joe McCarthy was right.



3. I had always been disappointed by the memoirs of political figures on the left because of their inability to reflect on themselves---to even attempt to understand why they had seen the world the way they had, and how their visions had affected who they were. I did not think this omission accidental. If radicalism was a displacement of personal grievance, it wasn't surprising that radicals could not confront their interior lives. "The Left, the author eventually realized, "lived by its radical myths, which were crucial to its sense of moral superiority, of being chosen as humanity's moral vanguard." "When I looked into myself, I saw how integral my radical views were to my sense of myself and the world around me." The above words, bereft of quotes, are not mine, incidentally, but the author's too, explaining why he wrote "Radical Son": "The collapse of this faith had been inseparable from the collapse of the life I had lived. I could not conceive of an autobiographical work that would not attempt to plumb this connection." Mr. Horowitz was the child of Communists, was inculcated into this faith, as it were. The real bounties his parents had achieved in America, the author states, hardly impressed them. "Success like theirs was so common that they took it for granted. What my family longed for," rather, he writes herein, "was an impossible fantasy: that mankind would be released from history, which included individual success and failure; their ambition was that poverty and inequality would disappear from the earth. To realize this fantasy they dedicated themselves to the Communist cause."
   
   Mr. Horowitz's parents were Jewish, and like Marx and Spinoza were "of Judaism but not in it" and whose outsider status had led to their revolutionary views."
   
   It's interesting moreover how many Marxist sympathizers were Jewish as well. It was believed by such folk that "Socialism would `solve' the Jewish question by eliminating Judaism, along with other ethnic and national identities." "What we had to ask ourselves,' Horowitz once explained at a public forum, "was whether Marx wasn't a self-hating Jew, and whether socialism was anything more than a wish to be included."
   
   "Fusion and unity---this was the cry of my father's Communist heart, writes the author herein, "His unquenchable longing to belong."
   
   For many years Mr. Horowitz was also a Communist, becoming eventually a prominent writer and figure of the 1960s Left, himself focusing as he did "on the issues of equality and freedom that once inspired [him] as a radical." Khrushchev's secret speech in 1956 shook many Communists, but Horowitz states that, at the time, "I was not sure what to make of it all. Monstrous crimes had been committed, and much else had gone terribly wrong. But did this mean it was necessary to abandon socialism? I was not ready for that," he writes herein. "The socialist vision provided the only way I knew of looking at the world that would distinguish right from wrong that gave hope for a better future. Socialism was the desire for justice. I did not see how I could give that up."
   
   So it wasn't surprising when he took another leap of faith when a "New Left" began forming out of the ashes of the old; participants like Horowitz, doing so, "out of the conviction that the original passion could be born again, and that we could create a new socialist vision free from the taint that Stalin had placed on the movement our parents had served."
   
   Interestingly, a lot of this generation, its leaders I'm speaking about specifically, were born in red diapers, that is, were born to members of the socialist vanguard that existed in the 1920s 1930s. Hence the commonplace phrase: "Like many radicals, he was a self-exiled son of the middle class."
   
   "He was a vociferous opponent of America's war in Vietnam and any American intervention anywhere. JFK was "an arch Cold warrior, a liberal agent of the imperial ruling class," in his view. He "harangued students about the dangers of radioactive fallout, and the dark forces in Washington that were leading us to `a universal grave.'" Horowitz was also an editor of "Ramparts," the magazine of the "New Left."
   
   But the Left didn't rise up because of the Vietnam issue. Rather, the author has a different take on this topic: "My speech illustrated the real importance of Vietnam to the radical cause, which was not ultimately about Vietnam but about our own antagonism to America, our desire for revolution. Vietnam served to justify the desire; we needed the war and its violent images to vindicate our destructive intentions."
   
   The arrival on the scene of an organization such as the Black Panthers reinforced this view. Mr. Horowitz knew these people and when asked by a Panther's member to suggest someone that could help a community center run by the Panthers manage their finances he recommended fellow leftist Betty Van Patter. Betty, some speculated later, asked too many questions about the Panthers' money and as a result disappeared. "When her body finally turned up and the future was no longer unknown, I,' admitted the author, "was forced to confront myself in a way I never had to before." "I had to understand my relation to this deed, this murder of innocence, committed by my political comrades." Because the Panthers "had been made the symbol of the revolution, they could not be condemned without negative consequences for everything we stood for and had said." "I had schooled myself in Hegel and Marx, and where had they led me? I had worshipped the gods of reason, and they had delivered me into the company of killers." "Until now, my political comrades had felt like a family I could trust. We had all been recruited from the same tribe of sentiment, raging with common indignation over the injustices we perceived, and sharing visions of a retribution that would make things right." "But a mother of three, who was also one of us, had been murdered by people we knew." "There were dozens, if not hundreds, of activists with direct links to the Party...who were aware of what happened to Betty. Yet no one came forward." "This silence was more than unusual for people who normally felt compelled to protest injustices---even those that took place at the far ends of the earth." But for Betty "there was only silence." "The incident had no usable political meaning, and was therefore best forgotten."
   
   "We thought of ourselves as self-effacing, but in fact we were arrogant. We regarded ourselves as better than others from our privileged caste who were unwilling to perform the deeds we did. That was why we didn't listen and couldn't see. Like all radicals, we were intoxicated by our own virtue."
   
   And what about the media, why didn't they investigate this murder, or other murders by the Black Panthers? Or expose the issue of who filled the jails of Cuba, or Russia? Well, because, as the author eventually realized there exists an odd operating principle within the Left: "The responsibility of progressive journalists was to suppress facts that hurt the progressive cause, and to print only those truths that served it."
   
   Thus Jimmy Carter's "decision, in 1979, to let the Sandinistas take power in Nicaragua without American intervention" was cheered by journalists and those on the Left in general, but not by Mr. Horowitz. When it came time to choose between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan in 1984 (another Orwellian moment, this time in Nicaragua) the author had had enough, and voted for the first time in his life for a Republican, this while a new generation was organizing "solidarity committees" to support the Sandinistas. It was one thing to support Castro when he promised everything under the sun for Cuba but, unlike other Leftists, Mr. Horowitz couldn't continue to support Castro after it was apparent to all but the blind that "Cuba had been transformed into a totalitarian state, its economy ruined by socialist plans, its jails filled with political dissenters." "Nor was the tragedy of Cuba unique. Every socialist state created by Marxists had been transformed into an economic sinkhole and a national prison. There were no exceptions."
   
   And the Sandinistas were Marxist protégés of Castro, after all "This time, "he posited, "I could not plead ignorance of what was going to happen if radicals had their way."
   
   Having watched history unfold he came to the view "that socialists had contrived to demonstrate by bloody example what everyone else already knew: Equality and freedom are inherently in conflict. This was really all that socialist efforts had shown, over the dead bodies of millions of people. In talent, intelligence, and physical attributes, individuals were by nature different and unequal; consequently, the attempt to make them equal could only be achieved by restricting---ultimately eliminating---their individual freedom." He reflected on his own children: "The four children we had spawned were all so different in character and disposition that they posed a challenge to my radical worldview. The belief that environment shaped human destinies, and that therefore human character could be molded in some fundamental way, was essential to all utopian schemes. You could not change the world if you could not change the people in it."
   "Socialism could not even achieve the general welfare that its adherents promised. Socialist efforts to create economic equality invariably led, in practice, to the imposition of poverty on society as a whole, because socialism destroyed the incentives to produce. There were entire socialist libraries devoted to the confiscation and division of existing wealth, but not a single article on how people were motivated to create wealth. Socialists did not know how to make a society work. That was the lesson of the Communist debacle, which the Left had refused to learn. "The revolutionary failures of the Twentieth Century had demonstrated the wisdom of the American founding, and validated its tenets: private property, individual rights, and a limited state."
   
   "The idea of original sin---that we are born flawed, that the capacity for evil is lodged within us (no matter how our consciousness may be raised)---would have instilled in me a necessary caution about individuals like Huey Newton, [of the Blank Panthers] and movements like ours."
   
   "If evil was a choice that any individual could make, then human beings would always pose a danger to each other, and there could be no `withering away of the state'. There would always be a need for law above individuals, for police to enforce the law, and for prisons to contain those who broke it." After all, "how could we dispense with `bourgeois' law, the best system of rules and institutions yet devised to protect individuals from the predations of their government and each other?"
   
   Horowitz, because of this book and his outspokenness, has been demonized for having had second thoughts and has been subjected to savage personal attacks by his former comrades. The "problem" is that the world "is (and must remain) forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age."
   
   Mr. Horowitz includes several pages of personal photographs in "Radical Son." The last page of these, interestingly, shows Mr. Horowitz with his mom, a picture of his dad alone (indicative of his lack of personal closeness with his father perhaps), and a photo of the author receiving an award from Ronald Reagan in 1991. In a way, the pictures seem to suggest the author's life; an estrangement and lack of closeness with his Marxist father, a father who never gave him his approval; a Marxist mother who eventually put family before politics; and finally, the individual, happy to accept a teaching award from a retired American president, that the author himself ultimately became.
   
   Thereafter he "become involved...with the idea of doing something of immediate benefit for people in the community." "I was tired," said he, "of pouring energy into grand abstractions like `the revolution,' and longed to see my efforts lead to practical results."



4. I wish I had read this years ago! As cultural history, Radical Son is as monumental as the Diary of Anne Frank - but Horowitz' autobiography is a literary masterpiece in its own right. Most importantly, Radical Son is one of the few honestly historical accounts of the campus movement that changed America from the inside out - and left Marxism as the official religion of our universities.
   
   If you wonder what our current presidential candidates mean when they call themselves "progressive" - then you really, REALLY need to read this book.



5. It falls short of classic, but frankly this is one of the most mind-altering things I've ever read. It's the closest I've ever gotten into the mind of a conservative (I'm a proud center-liberal), and it makes utterly believable a thesis I would have formerly thought ridiculous: that the bases for modern liberal thought, that universal human unity is necessary in order to avoid environmental or nuclear extinction, are lies manufactured by homegrown agents of Soviet Communism who populate modern journalism and academia.
   
   Horowitz never explicitly makes this claim, and that is the supreme flaw of the book. He leads you convincingly enough through his disillusionment with 60's student radicalism, and presents a detailed case that its roots lie with children of communists, like Horowitz himself. His account of the Black Panthers and the experience that would become his turning point make riveting reading. But, as others have pointed out, the narrative breaks down toward the end of the book. I was with him up to the point where he is coming to an acceptance of the inevitable persistence and humanity of markets, hierarchies, inequalities, etc. But the path out of the center left to the far right pronouncements of the latter third of the book is frustratingly spotty. The incendiary David Horowitz of Front Page Mag. fame pops up infrequently delivering party line zingers almost out of nowhere.
   
   This is especially frustrating for me, as Horowitz' growing fascination with the right during the 80's and 90's parallels a time when my parents were moving away from Reagan toward the left as they felt the growing influence of the similarly radical (as Horowitz admits) Goldwater republican movement. The appeal that this movement would have for Horowitz is strangely missing from the book. Horowitz briefly but memorably recounts the rebirth and justification of his firebrand rhetorical style, but doesn't expound on the conviction behind his latest ravings. He mentions authoritarian puritanical goons within the conservative movement, and never really retracts those statements, but, if they are really goons, why does he not distance himself from them? It's almost like a Straussian secret writing. So either he's paid or threatened to write his current outrageous stuff, OR
   
   ... and here I assume the thesis above. Horowitz ignores most of the arguments of the contemporary left, because they inevitably originate in an international community of academics and journalists who want America to be a socialist state simply because they grew up sons and daughters and friends of communists. The thing is, he might just be correct... and from now on, my life is going to be dedicated to finding out. If he isn't correct, I hope he lives long enough to be jarred once more out of a beautiful political dream.

5 comments about Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe: A Memoir of Life on the Run.

1. As an inhabitant of a house filled with those for whom the lessons of history matter more than the scramble of today's news, I was pulled into the story of Mike O'Connor's life and family more forcefully than anything I've read in recent years. (In my home, the mere mention of J Edgar is enough to spark a rampage of argument and rage for a few hours. Add in that era's anti-Red crowd in Boston and throughout the U.S., and you pretty much need to cancel the rest of your appointments for the day.) O'Connor's straightforward rendering of his family's life in the ominous period of anti-communist America reminds us of how close history is to our lives today.
   
   But this is not a political screed. Nor is it weighed down with pages of historical facts. "Crisis, Pursued by Disaster ..." is about what happens when the peculiarities of families and individuals are absorbed and amplified by the world they live in.
   
   Most important, be aware that O'Connor not only can knock out a fine line of text, he can tell a complete story. His remembrances may make you cringe at times, but his skillful mix of humor, irony and frank reporting about the preposterous situations he and his family encountered (and often created) is too magnetic to pass up. I was left fulfilled by the literature but worried about lingering effects on him and his family -- and concerned for all of us about the lessons of history being ignored. When you read this book, be prepared to think about your own life and family as deeply as O'Connor has considered his own.



2. The roads they traveled - through Italy, England, Canada, Mexico, Texas, Boston, California, Maine, Afghanistan - chart a fascinating multi-generational journey. While the fabric of this family is not unlike many other American families: immigrants and soldiers, bootstraps and traditions, expectations and disappointments, the paths they took together and individually toward, and mostly away from, their hopes and dreams are nothing short of bizarre.
   
   Told from a boy's desire to make sense of his chaotic world, this is a story of a mother torn between her love for a man with big plans and a hidden past, and for their children, who at first blindly accept, then secretly question, and finally uncover the truth of their lives on the run. This forced dynamic lays the groundwork for the narrator's journalism career and his discovery of the real and imagined forces that propelled them into perpetually unknown territory. However, the non-stop fear it imposed on their lives is a frustrating and eye-opening American tragedy.
   
   That a church was a false sanctuary, a crib became an arrest warrant, or a family pet could potentially cause children to be torn from their parents - the unimaginable real threats they faced blurred their perception of innocent events so that the slightest trigger would send this family packing. The lengths to which over-zealous authorities and unforgiving traditionalists would go to keep these people in line with their dogma are mind-boggling.
   
   If we were to just take a step back - when faced with political or family crises - and imagine for a moment the effects of unbending adherence to one perspective, we may find ourselves with far less societal and family dysfunction.
   
   The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
   [[ASIN:B000GFR9OE Conversation in the Cathedral]
   The Known World
   The Kite Runner (Riverhead Essential Editions)
   The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
   The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness
   Looking for History: Dispatches from Latin America
   Fall of Baghdad, The
   Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
   Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible



3. A great read. This is a riveting story - with a very unlikely ending. I recommend it highly.



4. A former PBS reporter investigates "family secrets". Seemingly innocuous events trigger havoc in otherwise loving and caring parents. The mysterious Auntie from Boston visits from time to time. A war time romance gives a hint? Take this book to the beach this summer and pass it around.



5. This is a wonderful book about a family, a boy, and precarious times in the not too distant past that carry an uncomfortable resonance today. It is a tense, often scary read that's hard to put down. The motivations for all the secrets in this story are both uniquely personal and powerfully relevant. Even as the forces behind the fear and running are revealed, the experiences of a boy trying to cope with the palpable tension that clings to his family remain the unforgettable heart of this story.

5 comments about The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton.

1. Joe Klein takes a detailed, dispassionate look at the Clinton Presidency. He takes great pains to put it in perspective, both generational (Baby Boomers take over from the WWII Generation) and international (pre-9/11). He acknowledges that it took Clinton a while to get a handle on being President, and bemoans how much was opportunity was squandered because of the President's own failings. Yes, Klein opines (and I agree) that Bill Clinton is one of the most staggeringly bright and naturally gifted men to ever hold the White House. But he also nails Clinton on character issues, even beyond Monica Lewinsky (once referring to the President as "a bimbo when he comes to flattery"). When you're done with the book, you appreciate all the nuanced things Clinton accomplished, but you're heartbroken over what he could have done, if not for the inexcusable distractions.



2. This short, fast-moving book on Bill Clinton forsakes a historian's detailed and measured treatment to get at the essence of this man's presidency. Because it's more like a magazine article than a doorstop, you're likely to actually read it, maybe in one sitting.
   
   The book has become timely again, in light of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. The "Hillaryland" liberal faction split the White House of her husband, elected as a "Third Way" moderate. Her premature insistence on addressing health care was the most grievous policy error of her husband's presidency. And Hillary's unbelievably complicated proposal, concocted in secret, showed no political sense. Aides described how Hillary could drive Bill, with a phone call, from a good mood to a staff-chastising tantrum, and how they distinguish those tantrums by the tone of his shouting.
   
   She comes across as the more conspiratorial and paranoid of the two, an uncompromising liberal true-believer pursuing a scorched-earth policy against enemies. Sort of like, uh, that president she helped impeach, Richard Nixon. You wonder how she, and this country, would fare with her in the Oval Office.
   
   Klein does not see this as a sham marriage, though. While ever aware they might be playing him, he sees them as devoted to each other.
   
   One of his best chapters describes how Washington's culture of political warfare began with Watergate, intensified through the endless Iran-Contra investigations and the attack-ad era and culminated in the Gingrich speakership and the relentless Whitewater, Paula Jones and Lewinsky investigations.
   
   Clinton failed his potential for several reasons. The placid Nineties were too tame for a truly great presidency. After the healthcare miscalculation, he never seized another opportunity to remake major domestic policy. And the impeachment scandal fatally distracted him in 1998 when he had the budget surplus and standing with Congress to make a real mark by fixing Social Security.
   
   Like a charcoal sketcher, Klein has a fine eye for quick but telling detail. He sees Clinton as needy of praise and human contact. He'd keep dazed listeners awake into the wee hours, talking more and more intensely, unwilling to let the moment go.
   
   Klein describes bowling with him one midnight just before the New Hampshire primary, after the candidate enters but finds the emptied-out joint devoid of hands to shake. Klein, awaiting his turn in the lane, would find Clinton standing so close he pressed up against him, seeming to crave human contact. Clinton's intense but flawed humanity is what makes him interesting, and endlessly so.



3. The book shows that a journalist wrote it. That wasn't meant to be as backhanded as it seems. The stories about Clinton et al are those we can recall, this isn't a back room exposé full of conspiracy theory.
   A good journalist (at least) writes as if he has something to tell you. Only in the last chapter does Klein really subject the reader to an opinion piece.
   If you were alive at all for the eight years of Clinton's presidency then...no, none of this is really "new" or "insightful" but I, for one, found it none the less interesting.



4. I have to admit that Klein's book about the Clinton presidency is one of the most objective accounts of Clinton I have ever seen. Although friendly with the ex-prez, Klein pulls no punches and presents Clinton's presidency warts and all. In the end we all know what Clinton did, but Klein gives us more insight as to the "whys" of his actions. Is Clinton the greatest president of all time? No. Is he the worst? Not even close. If all books on presidents were written as objectively as this one, we would all have a better understanding of what makes these men tick.
   Is Clinton a better president than W? You tell me: peace and prosperity vs. war, a declining stock market, and skyrocketing gas prices.



5. I got the impression that Mr. Klein just threw together a bunch of odds & ends he had left over from another book and notes -- the way they made the movie "Midway" out of edit-outs from "Tora, Tora, Tora!"

No comments about The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.