1 comments about Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady (Modern First Ladies).

1. Gil Troy's book is well researched and written. It is full of interesting insight and wit. Buy and read it today. Support quality historical writing!

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.

No comments about John A: The Man Who Made Us (Life and Times of).

3 comments about The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (American Presidency Series).

1. The years before 1860 were a period of increasing cold war in the United States. From the perspective of over a century after the conclusion of the internal war, we tend to lose the knowledge that there was more to the separatism than the disagreement concerning slavery. While the North/South dispute over slavery was paramount, other regional differences such as the role of the frontier led to a political fragmentation that prevented any faction from being able to govern and solve the growing problems. Several new parties arose while the formerly powerful Whig party was dying. This fragmentation is the main theme of this book and Gara states it very well. With the modern emphasis on the slavery question, the other divisive forces in the nation are often overlooked, which leads to historical inaccuracy.
   Gara explains in great detail how the political fragmentation prevented any real attempt to resolve the issues. One point in particular that is often ignored is the three-fifths representation. For census purposes a slave was considered to be three-fifths of a person, even though they were also property. This absurdity caused a great deal of resentment in free states, as it concentrated more political power in the slave states than the size of the free population should have allowed. This caused more representatives to be elected from the southern states, which altered the outcome of some of the votes in favor of the south. Deeply resented by many in the north, it points out the inherent absurdities of slavery and is well documented and explained.
   The federal government was still largely a weak institution with most of the power held by the states. With all of these problems, it would have taken an extraordinary president to alter the course of history. Franklin Pierce was no such man, and the best that can be said is that he muddled through without any great catastrophes. More than anything else, it was his handsome, presidential appearance that earned him the white house. His rise to the presidency was largely an accident, as he was a compromise candidate after the better candidates were somehow disqualified. His administration also began on a tragic note, when one of the Pierce children was killed before the eyes of his father and mother. Being largely untested on the national political arena, Pierce also wore a colossal political tin ear, often making basic errors that made things worse.
   Given all of these problems, it is surprising that the Pierce administration did as well as it did. As the author points out, his presidency is ranked somewhere above a failure, but nowhere near a success. In reading about all of the problems of the country at that time, it is hard to see where a great deal of improvements could have been made. The country was expanding rapidly and the industrial revolution with associated social changes was just beginning. Slavery was a historical anachronism, clearly in the process of being eliminated and had it not become the symbol of the rights and tradition of the southern states, it would have naturally ceased to exist. Even the ardent proponents of slavery referred to is as the "peculiar institution."
   In retrospect, the forces that led to the regional split were so powerful that it is hard to envision any way that it could not have led to a civil war. Those forces were stronger than any man or political party and in this book you learn about the actions of a man who landed in a job beyond his talents and yet avoided being a total failure. Given the complexity of the circumstances, his time as president was close to the best that could have been done.



2. This is very dry reading. As well, there is almost no mention of Pierce! Instead, the author focuses on the issues/characters that shaped the times. These are crucial to understanding the political atmosphere surrounding Pierce's presidency, but a biography should focus on the individual. We learn next to nothing about Pierce.



3. THE AUTHOR, LARRY GARA, SETS THE STAGE FOR FRANKLIN PIERCE'S EMERGENCE TO THE PRESIDENCY BY DELVING INTO THE POLITICAL SURROUNDINGS OF THE 1840'S AND '50S. PIERCE WAS AN OBSCURE CONGRESSMAN WHO SAID NO TO BECOMING PRESIDENT. HIS WIFE SUFFERED FROM DEPRESSION.THE FAMILY EXPERIENCED THE TRAGIC DEATHS OF FAMILY MEMBERS AND PIERCE DRANK A LITTLE TOO MUCH. THE FAMILY PROBLEMS WERE ENOUGH, BUT BECAUSE CONGRESS' VIEW OF THE PRESIDENCY BEING THE PERSON WHO EXECUTED CONGRESS' WISHES, THE TRUE LEADERS OF THE TIMES COULD NOT GET ELECTED. FACTIONS ABOUND!! THE NEW YORK HARDS AND SOFTS, DEMOCRATS AND WHIGS, THE NEW REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT, FREE SOIL, THE NATIVISTS AND MANY MORE SPLINTERED GROUPS THAT CAUSED SETIONALISM. THERE WERE NO MAJORITIES. PIERCE WAS DOOMED TO FAILURE. IF YOU ENJOY AMERICAM POLITICS OF THE 19TH CENTURY THIS BOOK WILL PROVIDE GREAT INCITE.

1 comments about George Washington, First in War (The George Washington Bookshelf).

1. This short volume (only 73 pages, including more than a dozen illustrations) is a good military biography of George Washington, the Soldier.
   
   Author David Palmer, a well known and respected Soldier and Historian, divides Washington's military career into four parts - Aspirant, Colonel, General, and Commander in Chief and concludes with a brief examination of Washington's legacy, which was considerable.
   
   Indeed, at the end of the Revolutionary War, Britain's King George himself stated that if Washington voluntary surrendered the immense power Congress had given him during the war, he would be the greatest man of the Eighteenth Century and one of the greatest men that had ever lived.
   
   Palmer, however, mythologizes Washington, giving him too much credit for the success of others. The reality is that the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army had to learn the business of war against the British the hard way and suffered defeat after defeat in the first two years of the war. Had it not been for the likes of brilliant general such as Benedict Arnold, Nathanael Greene, Ethan Allen and others - and the repeated bungling of battle after battle by a long line of less than competent British generals - the war might have well been lost.
   
   There is, however, no denying that Washington evolved into an extremely effective military strategist and field commander later in the war, maintaining an army in the field under almost impossible conditions and then defeating the British (with considerable help from his French, Spanish and Dutch allies) again and again.
   
   Still, those who know little about George Washington the Soldier and Commander and Chief will find this small and inexpensive volume a good read!

3 comments about Milosevic: A Biography.

1. The author's admission to the press that "I never met Slobodan Milosevic, although I wrote a biography of him" sums up the credibility of this book.
   
   LeBor misleads readers throughout his book. When describing Milosevic's ascent to power (pg. 79-84) he says that a crowd of unruly Serbs attacked a predominantly Albanian police force in Kosovo Polje in 1987. LeBor claims that Milosevic took the crowd's side and said, "No one should dare to beat you again!" LeBor relies heavily on his version of events to advance his thesis that Milosevic incited Serbian nationalism in order to attain power.
   
   The only problem is that LeBor's version of events is totally wrong. As the events unfolded in 1987 The New York Times reported that THE POLICE ATTACKED THE CROWD in a botched attempt to clear the area of demonstrators -- and that the crowd RETALIATED by throwing rocks at the police. LeBor's assertion that the police were attacked by the crowd is made even more laughable by the fact that the federal Yugoslav Interior Ministry scolded the policemen involved in the incident for their conduct. On top of getting the fact that the police attacked the crowd wrong, LeBor misquoted Milosevic whose actual words were "you will not be beaten" given in response to complaints from the crowd that the police were beating people.
   
   This is all easy enough to verify because there's a videotape of the event. It was broadcast on TV when it happened in 1987, and it's a publicly accessible exhibit from Milosevic's trial at The Hague. I personally suspect that LeBor's 180 degree inversion of established fact and his misquotation of Milosevic's words was a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers, but even if it wasn't malicious it's still proof that LeBor's research was sloppy.
   
   I'm not going to write a refutation of the entire book here; suffice it to say that the example I gave above is one of many that I could have used.



2. I found the first few chapters of this book to be the most interesting. They were the only ones where you seem to dip into Slobo's personal life. Descriptions of his home life, his meeting with Mira [they met at 15 and stayed together until his death at 65] and his rise through to positions of power are all very interesting. It's odd how he seems to have been a fairly normal person in his pre-politician years.
   
   Comments from Mira are referenced throughout the book, and the rest of it seems to tell you more about her personal life than his. Some of these comments are quite amusing; she really is quite an oddball. The best was the one just after Slobo had been arrested, which went something like "No-one has betrayed him. He knows that no-one has betrayed him. The only one who has betrayed him is me." [not exact words]
   
   After reading up on the topics, it seems to me that the case against Slobo has been made too one-sided by our media. Lebrun admits this at times. Anyone who knows about Slobo's regime knows that he cannot be called a "dictator"; far from controlling everything that went on, he was often hardly in control of anything. This makes judicial proceedings very difficult when he could have been responsible for everything or for nothing. However, the evidence seems to suggest that he was much more moderate than other people in Serbia. The main domestic opposition to his regime in the 1990s were hardcore nationalists, and they tended to see Slobo as a man who was selling out Serbia. When Slobo met with the Bosnian Serb militia leaders, they refused to shake his hand. During the Dayton Peace Negotiations, the Bosnian Serbs seemed to hate the Belgrade government as much as they hated the Muslims and Croats. Mira has often written condemnations of the actions of Bosnian Serbs, and called them "not even men". Could it all have been a craftily-constructed public front? Perhaps, but that seems very unlikely considering how nothing is ever organised in Serbia. Lebrun also details Franjo Tudjman's crimes and his great ideas like renaming the memorial to the victims of the Croat W.W.2 genocide as "The Shrine of Croat Heroes" or something like that. Lebrum could do with subjecting the K.L.A. to the same expose that he gave to Tudjman.
   
   Lebrun also seems to be a bit unfair to Slobo at times. Perhaps, he thought that he needed to do this, or the biography would just be dismissed as unacceptable by everyone and the points mentioned above would have never been put into the circulation of ideas. Some parts seem to speculate on Slobo's motives and fill in the gaps in ways that are arbitrary. I say this because no sources are provided to back up the speculations. Examples of this include:
   
   1 Why Slobo supported independence for Slovenia. Lebrun thinks that he only did it for his long-term interests and not out of any principle. Sounds a bit of an obscure motive to me.
   2 Election fraud. A case when the Serb opposition claimed that elections had been fixed in some places saw the parliament call in international observers. These observers claimed that the results had been fixed, and parliament accepted their findings. Lebrun seems to think that Slobo himself fixed the elections and then decided to change his mind and let inspectors in. There needs to be some resource to back up this accusation of schizephenia.
   3 Apparently, Slobo deliberately gave a scarey speach to a meeting of Serb liberals so that they would all leave Serbia. Really? Sounds a bit of a risky strategy when they could have just as easily decided to vote against him.
   4 Lebrun suggests that the ousting of Stambolic was all a clever plot and the accusations were fabricated by Slobo's supporters. He then used his influence in the parliament to get the fake accusations upheld. This seems a bit strange when Stambolic was much more powerful than Slobo at the time.
   5 Every time that Slobo is seen to be nice, Lebrun dismisses it as just him being two-faced. He even met with the leader of a student anti-government demonstration once, had a good chat with him and made a few concessions. Not ever seen Tony Blair do that, I must say.
   
   Lebrun claims that Slobo had great loyalty within the party. He apparently had his men everywhere and had the republic of Montenegro firmly under the will of Serbia. Again, he never gives any evidence for this. If it is true, then I would be very interested to know how he built up this influence. People don't just become loyal to anyone. Slobo was not a particularly charismatic politician nor was he someone with very clear principles to always stick to. He seems a very unlikely candidate to inspire such loyalty in so many people. Is it so unreasonable to think that people just voted the same way Slobo did because they thought that he had a reasonable argument? Or that Montenegro just agreed with Serbia off its own free will? If you deny these, you have to explain it. Serbia was not a regime with a secret police that arrested anyone who dissented. There are also odd moments when Lebrun seems to paint the ultra-nationalist opposition to Slobo in a more favourable light than I am confortable with.
   
   What is clear is that he was guilty of some domestic crimes. He was certainly involved in corruption as regards public funds and allocation of public positions. He ran the economy very poorly. It also seems likely that, at some point, he sold weapons to Bosnian Serbs. This is not a good thing, but please show me a government anywhere in the world that has not, at some point, sold weapons to people who have gone on to use them in massacres. At the time of being published, it also appeared that Slobo had had a role in the assassination of Stambolic, but the court in Serbia has subsequently cleared him of such a role. Lebrun can't be blamed for not knowing the future though.
   
   All in all, it is worth reading. However, I'd advise that you read resources like http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org as well to get a balanced picture. To get the hardcore anti-Slobo case, just look through back copies of any Western newspaper. Also, it is a shame that Lebrun didn't go into more detail as to Slobo's private. For me, that is the most important part of a biography.



3. The disintegration of Yugoslavia into a horrible series of wars and battles that pitted formerly peaceful neighbors against each other is a very important part of modern European history. It tested the relationship between America and Europe on all levels. And it was where the strengths and weaknesses of the NATO alliance have been most clearly illustrated.

   Getting your head around this incredibly complex situation can only be done by examining the man who methodically tore a once-proud country and people to shreds: Slobodan Milosevic.

   How was this drab functionary able to completely destroy a prosperous nation? How was he able to create civil wars between villagers that had lived peacefully side by side for generations? Why was he supported and even admired by the Western politicians while simultaneously overseeing some of the worst atrocities against humans since WWII?

   Through interviews with all of the key figures that surrounded Milosevic - including his wife Mira Markovic! - Adam LeBor paints a vivid picture of the man at the center of this terrible tragedy.

   As a reporter in the Balkans during the wars, Mr. LeBor saw first hand the results of Milosevic's terrible reign. As a proven history writer, he has managed to take his first hand experiences and meld them with historical perspective, so we wind up with an incredibly sharp picture of the key events themselves, but framed within an understanding of the event in the overall historical narrative.

   This book is the only work I have seen that makes the Balkans understandable to the common Westerner, and is important for that very reason. However, it also resonates particularly clearly in the world we live in post 9/11, where we again are partnered with NATO and involved in wars in foreign lands with tribal people in a land and culture that are driven by a web of beliefs and interconnectedness that we do not understand.

   Read this book to understand what the world lost when Yugoslavia disintegrated, and how it happened. And read this book to gain an understanding and insight into our current conflicts. And finally, read this book for Mr. LeBor's skill at writing. You will not be disappointed.

No comments about Journal of Colonel George Washington, Commanding a Detachment of Virginia Troops.

1 comments about El gran engano: Fidel Castro y el narcotrafico internacional.

1. Un libro excelente que explica la relación histórica que Fidel y Raul Castro han tenido con le narcotráfico. Este libro además explica a fondo algunos de los personajes más interesantes que han acompañado a los hermanos Castros desde los principios de la revolución cubana

No comments about The Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

No comments about Mao Tse-tung (Grandes biografias series).