5 comments about Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House--1911 to 1980.

1. I passed this book by many times before finally breaking down and buying it. Somehow, its title and dust cover just didn't grab me. Besides that, having already read several biographies of the Reagans and the Reagan family members, I was fairly well convinced that the book couldn't possibly contain much of anything new. Even after buying it, I still wasn't much inclined to read it. What finally convinced me to do so was when I read in the prologue that Colacello was a personal friend of Nancy Reagan and that Nancy had arranged for him to have unprecedented access to her personal files and to virtually all of the Reagan's living friends and associates and/or their children. How could I resist? This had to be a spectacular source of inside information. And it was!
   
   The early part of the book traces the lives of Nancy Davis and Ronald Reagan in parallel chapters. This section is interesting primarily for the light it sheds on Nancy's early life; her relationships with her mother, Edith Davis, and her adoptive father, Dr. Loyal Davis; and for the in-depth background provided concerning both Edith and Loyal.
   
   The book really takes off, however, in the mid-sections where it deals in depth with Reagan's and Nancy's film careers; Reagan's military service; his marriage to and divorce from Jane Wyman; his actions while president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), particularly in combating the Communist attempt to take over Hollywood's film industry; his, and other's, testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) - who was who and what was what; the members of "The Group" who induced Reagan into politics and the subsequent "Kitchen Cabinet" members (mostly wealthy, conservative, high-powered friends of Nancy or Edith) who guided, supported, and, it might be said with some degree of truth, made Reagan Governor of California and President of the United States; Reagan's abortive run for president in 1968; and the rationale for his run in 1976. From that point on, the book is hard to put down.
   
   In summary, this book contains inside information which can't be found anywhere else, making it a vital historical document. The information doesn't always reflect well on Ronald Reagan or Nancy, but it dispels a lot of myths and misinformation, and certainly provides a great deal of insight into what it takes for even a great leader, such as Ronald Reagan, to become President of the United States.
   
   The book certainly rates five stars for content. It loses something for readability, however, due largely to its repetitious descriptions of parties and dinners, including: who was invited; what foods and wines were served; what gowns the women wore and who made them; who were the women's hair stylists and what were their hair styles; etc. But that was a small price to pay. I give it four stars.



2. Some friends of ours in Australia started to read this on an Asian cruise last Fall and asked us to bring them a copy when we visited Cairns in August.
   
   They loved it and so did we, when we got to look at it prior to giving it to them.



3. As a Reagan supporter, I really wanted to love the Reagans and to see Nancy Reagan's reputation vindicated. Nancy, in her elder years, is very admirable. It is a bit creepy to read that Ronnie always called her Mommie, but no one can deny their mutual love. Bob Colacello is quite thorough in his research,fair and honest - no whitewashing here...the endless sniping and self-aggrandizement of Nancy's pals, like Betsey Bloomingdale et al? These women were all intimate friends, but were clawing at each other for primacy in the Reagan inner circle. Bloomingdale brags about her caviar parties and hobnobbing with the Paris set of sophisticates, but gets caught evading customs duties for lying about how much she paid for a new couture outfit in France. The other graceless, snobby chums of Nancy also seem like the idle, witless, rich that P. G. Wodehouse skewered in his books. The Kitchen Cabinet husbands are scary and only a tad less obnoxious. The book makes one feel queasy; Ronnie and Nancy seem bought and paid for by their cronies. Nancy herself comes off as self-deceiving and controlling - a shallow and manipulative social climber who rewrote her personal history;possibly she is portrayed as second only to Joan Crawford as Mommie Dearest. Ron takes up ballet as an adult. Patti has herself sterilized at 24 because she's afraid she'll be like her mother??!
   
   The book proves what most of us assume - being well-connected helps a lot with success and acts as a powerful "deodorant". Colacello is due to write a second volume on the Reagans. I will read it for the writing, the history and my belief in redemption.



4. Colacello deconstructs the Reagans like no other author has. He starts with the premise that their personal and social lives were inseparable from their political ambitions, and an essential factor in Ronald Reagan's rise to power. He goes on to explore how the couple's social milieu and interpersonal relationships influenced Reagan's political ideas and governing style.
   
   A fascinating portrait of Nancy emerges as well: Colacello sees her as supremely focused and determined to advance her husband's political career, but motivated by pure adoration of Ronnie rather than any overriding desire for control and power.
   
   The writing flows easily and is peppered with enough interesting anecdotes and revealing quotes to make the reader forget at times that this is, in fact, a serious political biography. A great read from cover to cover.



5. The perfect mix of gossip and history. Meticulously researched and carefully observed. You won't be able to put it down.

3 comments about John Quincy Adams (American Profiles (Madison House Paperback)).

1. John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, the second President, was one of America's greatest diplomats. He made a name for himself as the country was being formed, especially with his defense of "the rules of law" against the will of the majority. He was one of the last of the old Federalists. He was a foreign minister to Holland, Portugal, and Prussia, and was Secretary of State under Monroe (where he was the main force in establishing the Monroe Doctrine). He became the sixth President in a controversial election that was decided in the House of Representatives.
   
   Parson's short (272 pages) but thorough and well-written biography of Adams is a job well done. She details the accomplishments of his life, but focuses primarily on the man himself. Adams was a stern man (his portrait reminds me of some evil Dickens character, Marley perhaps), and not well-liked by the public. He believed that one should not "run" for a political office, but should just accept it if offered (imagine that today!). He hated Andrew Jackson and slavery, and fought hard against both. This is an excellent book on an interesting man.



2. After reading this well written biography, I experienced the sorrows, joys, and accomplishments in the life of one of our country's greatest statesmen.



3. Lynn H. Parsons has written a biography that is blessedly free from 'academic speak' or the sense that he is only writing for other historians. This is definitely a biography for even the most casual lover of history. Parsons' familiarity with JQA allows him to introduce us to that prickly character as one would introduce an eccentric friend--always aware of the eccentricities but never apologizing for them. Adams (and his father) are two of the greatest of America's early statesmen and two of it's worst politicians. Parsons presents the genius and the folly and allows us to weigh our opinions--tho' its clear where Parsons' affections lie. It is hard to imagine that anyone will (or could) write a better one volume popular biography of JQA. Parsons clearly could tell us much more, but he chooses not to bog his narrative down in the kind of historical detail that glazes the eye of the casual reader. For serious historians this is a valuable book because it doesn't get lost in its own importance--the writing is direct, succinct and keeps the reader aware of the difference of the attitudes of Adams and his contemporaries to our current sensibilities. Parsons ends with a note that JQA's only monument in Washington is a small plaque in statuary hall in the Capitol. I would argue that Adams' best monument in DC is the one he would be proudest of--the Smithsonian Institution he fought so hard to help establish. I highly recommend this book.

5 comments about Woodrow Wilson: World Statesman.

1. I am reading all the presidential biographies in order and just finished this book.
   
   Overall, I thought it was just "okay." I like my books to be in chronological order. This book was organized loosely chonological, but by topic. It made following the chain of events rather difficult. Also, the auther wrote the dates like this: 29 March 1917. Rather than March 19. That was a stumbling block and a distraction.
   
   This read more like a textbook than a biography, which made it rather flat and dull. He devoted page upon page to the intracacies of war finance, but breezed over and barely mentioned the death of his wife and his debilitating series of strokes in the twilight of his administration.
   
   If I can identify with the subject of a biography and feel as if I KNOW the subject, I can say "this is a great book." And, as corny as it may sound, I feel sad at the end when the president dies. In this book, there could have been several instances where I could have "felt" the book -- when his first wife dies, when he dies, etc. I didn't feel that at any point in the book, which means I didn't get close to Wilson.
   
   If you are reading all the presidential bios like I am, this is a good book to get a general idea of what Wilson was like so you can move onto Warren G Harding. You'll probably need to go back and read the multi-volme bios available on Wilson to really FEEL him or to undertsand the complexities of the events leading up to and including WWI.



2. The writing in this book is good, but in places it jumps around in time. It is also slow paced and not light reading. However, it covers Woodrow's life pretty well for a one-book volume.



3. "God helping her...she can do no other!"

   Unlike our current prez, Wilson was no war monger. He earnestly sought peace even as he committed our boys to the 20th centuries first horrific war. This is his story and I highly recommend it.




4. Kendrick A. Clements "Woodrow Wilson" delivers what it promises -an excellent introductory study of our 28th president - in just 223 pages of text. Some readers may want more intimate details about Wilson and the people in his life; for them there are 11 additional pages of pertinent bibliographical information. Clement's brief book, nevertheless - billed as the 'best available one-volume biography' on Wilson - provides the reader with that essential information that prompts many historians to rank Wilson in the top tier of U.S. presidents. We learn, for example, that Wilson (our only Ph.D. president) was one of just a handful of our truly intellectual presidents - i.e., he loved books and ideas and was a voracious reader of books and a prolific writer of books. He was the son of a Presbyterian minister who'd instilled in him a love of his fellow man and a desire to serve his fellow man. Wilson - like Theodore Roosevelt before him - came to believe that the federal government is an organ that must be involved in helping those unable to help themselves. As president he pushed through legislation that protected workers, women, and children from abuse and exploitaton in the workplace. He believed in the capitalist system and in the prerequisite free market conditions; consequently, he fought against any practices employed by business or industry designed to create monopolies or restrict free competition. As president he felt obligated to be deeply involved in both legislative and executive branch activities - in order to better realize his domestic and foreign affairs goals. Wilson was a decent man with a wide range of significant accomplishments: after acquiring his Ph.D. (political science) at Johns Hopkins University, he distinguished himself in a number of capacities - as a college/university professor, university president (Princeton), governor (New Jersey) and U.S. president (2 terms). While he was in office women got the vote, the Federal Reserve Bank was established, the mechanism for funding government activities was changed (the graduated income tax was adopted to suplement less effective tariff and excise tax revenues). When U.S. entry into World War I became unavoidable, Wilson vowed that the war should end with something positive - namely, with a non-punitive peace (provided for in his '14 Point Plan' for peace)and with the creation of an organization that could prevent world wars in the future (he proposed the League of Nations). Because U.S. congressional opposition was more powerful Wilson failed to achieve these goals - but he did win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Nevertheless, Wilson was correct in warning the world that a punitive peace would cause serious trouble in the future (aka Adolph Hitler), and he was correct in predicting that the world would eventually be forced to create a collective organization of nations (aka the United Nations) to resolve international disputes and to punish nations who violate international law. We now see that Wilson was also important as the transitional president who helped the United States abandon its 19th Century isolationist positions - and he did his best to push the country into the modern era (20th Century) when it would eventually accept and assume its duties and responsibilities as a leader among nations.



5. Woodrow Wilson. Here was a president who put himself in the middle of European power politics in order to achieve the goals he had in mind. This book helps to suggest a man of action and persuasion at a time when most Americans were fed up with affairs that didn't concern them. Woodrow Wilson is regarded with respect, but at the time he was proposig the League of Nations as the answer to the world's problems, he was criticized left and right. We now know that his policies for peace and security were right, and if Wilson was president today, we could be made certain that the world would be at peace. This book, which was written in such a way as to paint a picture of a daring, courageous president, is by far one of the better books on Wilson that I have ever read. I would recommend this account of our 28th president to both the serious student of American Presidential History, and also to the laymen reader. This book is more of an outline of alreay well-known facts, and serves as an introduction into the life of one of our country's greatest presidents.

3 comments about Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln.

1. With Herndon's Informants Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis have made a tremendous contribution to Lincoln scholarship. Much of what we know of Lincoln's pre-presidential years, especially, was compiled through interviews and correspondence by Lincoln's last law partner William H. Herndon. Although many of these items were published decades ago in Emanuel Hertz's anthology The Hidden Lincoln, that collection's limitations have long frustrated Lincoln students. The only alternative was the expensive and awkward-to-use microfilm verison of Herndon's papers available from the Library of Congress.
   
   Now, however, Wilson and Davis have made this treasure trove of firsthand information available in an affordable and convenient format. Moreover, they have carefully tried to reproduce texts exactly, retaining oddities of spelling and punctuation, a feature entertaining to ordinary readers and valuable to scholars. The book's presentation of documents in chronological order is welcome. Scholars will probably be the main consumers using this product.
   
   This volume is a major contribution to Lincoln studies.



2. Forget authors, historians with agendas. Read what the people who actually knew Abraham Lincoln said about him.
   
   Before Lincoln's body was cold, William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner for 17 years and friend for longer, began interviewing Lincoln's friends, family members, enemies, acquaintances, neighbors, etc. His goal was to collect as much information as possible about his friend, so he could write a completely truthful biography. "Warts and all" Herndon said. Unfortunately, Herndon soon realized he could not use some of the information he collected because it was very personal and Lincoln's image would be tarnished. Fortunately, some of this information he could not use you will find in this book. While 98% of this book contains very interesting information about all aspects of Lincoln's life. It is the remaining 2%, the unsavory stuff, that is so fascinating! For instance, I was surprised to read about the number of Lincoln's friends who told stories about Lincoln's involvement with prostitutes (before his marriage). Some friends even speculate about Lincoln maybe having one or two illegitimate children. This book contains information I never learned in school about Lincoln!



3. In the preface to his "Life of Lincoln", William Herndon expounded that when writing the history of Lincoln's early life "the whole truth concerning him should be known" and there should be "nothing colored or suppressed." Having set the standard Herndon failed to follow it, for there were something's even Herndon must have felt should not be put into print. Scholars wishing to explore Lincoln's early life beyond the insights offered by Herndon's biography had to turn to examining the letters and notes collected for over a twenty year period by himself and his collaborator Jesse Weik. This often proved to be a daunting task. As the editor's in their introduction noted even though available on Micro roll film specific documents are "very hard to locate" and even if located are "very hard to read." To further complicate matters the index to the Herndon collection prepared by the Library of Congress is "neither accurate nor complete." What Editors Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis have done in their "Herndon's Informants" is to transcribe all of the known Herndon, Weik letters and notes into a readable and properly indexed Documentary Edition. What they have also done is create a masterpiece of scholarship that will be used by students of Lincoln for decades to come. "Herndon's Informants" offers the student the complete Herndon collection, unabridged and un-editorialized. To anyone who has a strong interest in learning more about Lincoln's early life this is just about all that is available and it simply must become a part of your personal library.

No comments about Lincoln's Men: The President and His Private Secretaries.

5 comments about Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets.

1. One of my college history professor's once told me that a secret in international affairs means that it is something you only tell one person at a time. The perfect example of "secrets between friends" is FDR and Winston Churchill. They kept secrets from everyone, their staff, the people the led, and even their own families. However, they had few secrets with each other. Thus David Stafford's book "Men of Secrets" is a fitting title for the special relationship between two of the greatest leaders of all time.
   
   Stafford traces a very good outline of the secret services during WWII and how both FDR and Churchill played an intricate role in creating and developing both nation's intelligence services. Colorful characters abound, see anything relating to "Wild" Bill Donovan, in FDR's burgeoning spyring and in Churchill's the dashing Ian Flemming (author the James Bond novels).
   
   What I found most interesting about the book is the relationship between FDR and Churchill. There are many conflicts of personality and political ideals of the two leaders. For example, FDR championed the freedom of British India; yet ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps. Similarly, Churchill espoused civil liberties in England while attempting to crush rebellions in Ireland.
   
   In conclusion, Stafford provides a great overview and introduction into the world of espionage during WWII. He also gives extraordinary insight into the minds of FDR and Churchill. Arguably, FDR and Churchill had profound affect on the course of WWII and the secret they had an upper hand in the struggle.



2. Very informative, but not "a good read". I enjoyed "Franklin and Winston" much more.



3. I really enjoyed this book, not because I enjoy reading about FDR all that much, but because it gives so much new information about how he prosecuted the war -- and because it does the same for Churchill, one of my most favorite flawed heroes. The author makes many points about what each knew, but would not tell the other, how at times both men knew that the other knew, but withheld, information, etc., and how they played their parts (and one another) in the delicate diplomatic dance in light of these things.

   While admiring much about FDR's service to America and the world in WW2, I have a general antipathy to FDR's character and the way he did some things; but I do give him credit for having known how to move the American people by degrees, almost imperceptibly when that was necessary, into position to crush the Nazis, and this book reveals more about how he accomplished this. His foresight, diplomacy, and preparations surely shortened the war and saved untold lives. Having Churchill woven in as an equal on the world stage and in relation to FDR gave it a very savory counterpoise.




4. In the beginning of the war, Roosevelt sensed that Churchill even before he became Prime Minister would be important to the war effort. As time went on these men united by a fear of Hitler these men became friends as well as comrades in arms. This book explores there relationship though a rather unique perspective their intelligence departments. It explores how they got their intelligence and what they did with the knowledge that they gained from it. Despite their friendship the used it to advance the agenda of what they wanted for their own countries. At times their intelligence departments actually came into conflict as they both had different hopes and ambitions. As the war progressed these difference became more important.

   I found the book very easy to read. Full of information that although I am a WW2 fanatic I have never seen before. I can recommend this book if you want to learn about the relationship of between these two men.




5. An enjoyable account of the circumstances that brought the two men together, and the relationship that they forged.

   Often political friendships form out of necessity and mutual self interest. And that is obvious in this case.

   But the fact that the two most remarkable and influential men (in a positive sense) were to forge such an important relationship makes for great reading.

5 comments about Mussolini.

1. It seems like I have been studying World War II all my life, but a glaring deficiency in my education is my lack of knowledge concerning the intricacies of Fascist Italy. This caused me to pick up a used copy of this book the other day and I wasn't disappointed. I will say though that I thought the font on the paperback edition was too small, and I share this here just in case anyone else is really annoyed by small print. Bosworth's accounting of Il Duce was complete and fascinating. His narration skills are strong although his contempt for Mussolini definitely comes across in these pages which is really the only criticism that I have. Clocking in at around 430 pages, this text packs a serious punch and provides a brimming overview of the man and his times. The panorama he gives on Italy and the Italian people also made it well worth the money. Mussolini was more than a brutal clown, and Bosworth's study of him allows us to realize this.



2. RJ Bosworth makes an interesting attempt at writing a positive biography of Mussolini. This book does a decent job of summarizing parts of the Duce's life but does jump around quite a bit. Many of the things that make this book useful are in relation to how it reacts to other biographies and accounts of Mussolini. Bosworth glazes over many of the foreign policy decisions which are where so many other biographies are highly critical of Mussolini. It is noteworthy to try and write a biography that puts Mussolini in a different light and when combined with Dennis Mack Smith's biography of Mussolini (which is pretty negative) the reader can get a great sense of Mussolini himself. Bosworth is one of the premiere Italian historians and his work is always insightful and well done. The only compliant I have with this book is the jumping around and skipping over areas. The Brenner Pass meeting is not covered in this book and that is one of the pivotal moments in Mussolini's life and Italian history. I still would recommend this book through as long as it is being read with other sources to get a more complete picture.



3. Richard Bosworth is an academic specialized in modern Italian history, who improbably teaches at the University of Western Australia. After reading his spin-off of this book, I decided to read this book.
   
   Bosworth doesn't disappoint with this exceptionally well-written biography of one of the more unpleasant individuals to rule Italy. Anyone who was expelled from school for knifing a fellow student, who accepted foreign money for influencing his country's politics towards bringing it into a disastrous war, who didn't shy from using violence and murder to advance his political ends, who openly and flagrantly dishonored his marital vows, who used racial and religious animosities for political ends, and under whose command poison gas was used against Ethiopians cannot be a statesman, and ought have no place in politics. In this book the strong impression arises that Bosworth went out of his way to be fair to the "duce" but that there just was little that was flattering to be said for him. However, when Bosworth describes Preston's biography of Franco as "authoritative," and compares him to the other unelected European leaders of his time, I am not persuaded that Bosworth was as meticulously fair-minded.
   
   Bosworth describes himself as a proud product of 1789, and writes that he is quite open to hearing criticisms that his politics color his historiography. I do believe this to be the case: Bosworth is quite willing to describe the pathology of the duce, but doesn't ponder why Italians were willing to tolerate such a loathsome individual as their leader. A possible explanation, whose omission is easily explained by Bosworth's unabashed identification with the fateful year of 1789, is that Italy was not so much a single country, as several countries which had uneasily been united during the Risorgimento. Milan and Turin were completely different from Sicily and Calabria, and the former Papal States between them were yet different again. Perhaps the Italians of his day were initially willing to let a demagogue and thug bind together "the Italies," to use Bosworth's words, because their country was far too heterogeneous to withstand the centrifugal forces democracy can unleash. I believe an approach more along the ideas of Edmund Burke would have far preferable to trying to force 1789 onto a rather fractured country. Better eight solid and slows steps forward than twelve rapid steps forwards and sixteen tortured steps backwards.
   
   Bosworth writes that any historian of Italy must take pains to ensure that he doesn't absorb preconceived notions about Italy, and it is clear that Bosworth does his utmost to avoid this trap. I suspect that it is precisely in this endeavor, that Bosworth comes to the conclusion that if Italy had only been more like other liberal European countries, none of this would have happened. In my opinion, Italy was Italy, because it was different, and it would have been preferable not to try to overcome, but rather to make use of, Italy's differences.
   
   I would strongly recommend this impressively-written and quite sobering look at Mussolini to anyone who can distinguish between Bosworth's laudable historiography and his less authoritative political views.



4. Unlike most biographies, Bosworth's book actually starts from late in Mussolin's life, specifically his last 2 years alive 1944-45 and later resumes with Mussolini's birth and childhood and moves on to his adulthood as a teacher and writer and traces his political beginnings which were actually as a socialist. Later on it describes how Mussolini turned to fascism, gained power, and the prewar years and World War II. I was a little surprised at how much damage Mussolini did to Libya and Ethiopia as well as the magnitude of the killings of the local populations in those areas carried out by the Italians. The book includes a section of photographs as well as maps, footnotes, and bibliography. The last chapter even gives an account of the travels of Mussolini's corpse after he was executed and put on diplay in Milan. As much as this was a biography of Mussolini, it also seemed to be an analysis of fascism as a whole and how much harm that ideology and Mussolini were for Italy and the Italian people, as well as the above mentioned areas of Africa, and Europe. All in all, it was an interesting read, however, one can only pity the Italian people for having to put up with such poor, damaging, and detrimental leadership for such a long time, during an especially critical part of their history. I believe the fact that Mussolini is mentioned in the same breath with such a harmful leader as Hitler is indeed fitting and appropriate.



5. This book should have been better edited (to 200 pages), with its numerous typographical errors, and it comes across as more an attempt by the author to show off his knowledge of "Liberal" (pre fascist) Italy (it boggles the novice's mind as to what political beliefs marked one as a Futurist, syndicalist, Giolottian etc) than his insights into Mussolini as a bombastic philanderer, gangster politician, habitual liar, hollow pedant, lifelong coward ( he was discharged from the Army, as a conscript, not war vlounteer, after being wounded in the arse by an accidental grenade explosion in the barracks) and depraved knave.
   
   Packed full of petty details and tedious to the extreme, whilst blissfully ignorant of the wider picture, we are bombarded with rubbish that Mussolini is cultivated in arts, music, philosophy, well versed in journalism, pedagogy,self taught and fluent in English, French and German (instead of being the typical village fool that he is) and that he has been vastly under estimated by contemporaries and historians alike.
   
   The last years of Mussolini are barely covered in the book, which then digresses to random, irrelevant rantings on post war Fascism, and De Felice's monumental rubbish that tries to restore and repair the bruised reputation of Mussolini, as if he ever had one that matteed.
   
   I recommend Denis Mack Smith penetrating and coincise biography on this ass of a man instead.

5 comments about Franklin Pierce: New Hampshire's Favorite Son.

1. This book is a much needed contribution to the study of the presidency in the ante-bellum era generally, and of Franklin Pierce, the nation's 14th chief executive, in particular. As reviewers of the author's first volume have noted, Wallner is the first author to provide a significant work on behalf of Pierce since the 1930's. Wallner's task is made all the more difficult by the fact that Pierce apparently did not save many of his letters.
   
   On the postive side, there is a lot of very good material here relating to the minutia of administrative governance and the challenges facing Pierce in the turbulent 1850's. Internationally, Pierce faced a Great Britain illegally recruiting Americans in America to serve as soldiers in the Crimean War and encroaching upon American interests in Latin America, all of which Pierce ably and honorably resolved by the end of his term. Domestically, Pierce faced a splintering Democratic Party whose leading factions were not favorable to Pierce's equitable patronage policies or to the president's determination to squash the actions of American speculators and adventurers filibustering throughout Latin America. Nor did Pierce's support for Senator Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act--which at the demand of the southern states, overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 with its prohibition of slavery in the northern districts of the Lousiana Purchase--increase the president's popularity. While the bill passed by large margins in Congress, northerners fervently opposed it, a response that soon lead to the creation of the Republican Party and the election in 1854 of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The southern states, meanwhile, faulted Pierce for not successfully insuring that Kansas would enter the nation as a slave state. As with his patronage policies, Pierce's policy of accommodation in the territories ultimately pleased no one, helping to ensure that one of Pierce's own diplomats, James Buchanan, would succeed him in 1856. As Wallner notes, Pierce was the first president to seek, but fail to receive, the renomination of his party for president while occupying the office.
   
   On the negative side, much in the narrative smacks of Manichaeism--Pierce's intra-party opponents are "corrupt" "turncoats" while his inter-party opponents (mostly abolitionists, along with Whig-Republicans) are derided as "radical" "agitators" acting only from a spirit of "partisanship" and malice. Only Pierce exists above it all, he alone acting in the interests of the nation and in keeping with the Constitution.
   
   Similarly, the author doesn't do Pierce much justice in attempting to account for the former president's tunnel-blindness regarding the south's complicity for the Civil War. Again, in keeping with the book's Manichaeism world view noted above, Pierce--and apparently the author as well--can only see Lincoln's "abuse of executive power" and "unconstitutional" "coercion" and infringement of civil liberties in the aftermath of southern secession, the seizure by the south of Government installations, and finally the attack on Fort Sumter.
   
   Finally, to the extent Pierce, on account of his views of the union, fell into disrepute during the Civil War, the former president had only himself to blame. After Lincoln's quite lawful election, Pierce wrote that only "immediate" capitulation by the north to additional southern demands for a repeal of all (unnamed) acts that "have nullified the Constitution" would prevent war or secession, or both. Otherwise, he penned to secessionists in Alabama in December 1860, "If we cannot live together in peace, then in peace and on just terms, let us separate." (page 334). One wonders what, besides the Kansas-Nebraska Act's overturning of the Missouri Compromise's 34-year precedent, and the Taney court's declaring any attempts by congress to regulate slavery in the territories un-Constitutional (as in the Dred Scott decision), just what more the union could have done for the South.
   
   In short, while Pierce was a more capable and ethical chief executive than most superficial historical accounts have given him credit for, neither should it be said that Pierce was any kind of martyr, much less a martyr for the union, except his being perhaps a martyr in his own mind or in the service of the Lost Cause.



2. Peter Wallner has followed up a tremendous first volume work on this "forgotten" President with yet another meticulously researched book on Pierce's Presidency and sad final years. This second volume completes a dynamic re-assessment of Pierce's life and Presidency with new insights that heretofore had not been brought to light. Wallner, as in the first volume, has left no stone unturned with a highly readable text.



3. For those who have interest in studying tough, stong, capable men who achieve our highest office but yet fail to achieve anticipated heights of power and glory, this brief, taut biography gives insights into a northeastern political power who harbors quiet sentiments for the South's "peculiar institution" and who fails due to the dichotomy of constituent demands.
   
   An interesting human drama played against a transitioning political background.



4. It has been nigh on to 100 years since there was a complete biography of Franklin Pierce published and in that time there have been many changes in the way historians look at things. Revisionism and Counter-Revisionism and all sorts of isms have swept through the historical community but until now no one has thought to take another look at Franklin Pierce. Back in my college days I sat through classes during which the professors only mentioned Pierce in a negative light and in one class I had as a textbook a book that was very hard on Pierce and the notion that he was a horrible president and person just never seemed to be challenged. Finally in this book those notions are beginning to be challenged and in a forceful and thought provoking way.
   
   The basis for most of the Pierce bashing comes from the idea that he was not only pro Southern but also pro-slavery and neither could be farther from the truth. Of course this book doesn't deal with his presidency or the Civil War but just with his life up until his first night in the White House but the author proves quite satisfactorily that Pierce only supported the South in matters where he believed that the Constitution was on their side and that he deplored slavery but felt that it was protected by the Constitution and to Pierce nothing was more sacred than the Constitution. The Constitution in Pierce's mind was the only thing that stood between the common man and absolute domination of the country by the rich and powerful and he wasn't willing to sacrifice that for any cause no matter how noble.
   
   The author also does an excellent job of explaining Pierce's dislike for abolitionists above and beyond the fact that he felt that they were a threat to the Union. Pierce spent most of his life fighting for the common man and especially for religious liberty including a court case where he put his popularity on the line to defend the Shaker sect from persecution. Many of the people who sought to persecute the Shakers were abolitionists and also many abolitionists were violently anti-Catholic and Pierce began to see most abolitionists as religious bigots, which in fact many of them were. In Pierce's mind racial bigotry and religious bigotry were equally noxious and he came to detest all abolitionists because of their association with this intolerant attitude. To Pierce those who chose to lie down with dogs most certainly got up with fleas.
   
   Mr. Wallner has done an excellent job with this book and although he has to some extent fallen into the biographer's trap of becoming too enamored by his subject he has at least backed up all of his ascertains with good research. This is a well-written and very enjoyable book that gives the reader a good look at Franklin Pierce's pre-presidential life both private and public. A lot of President Pierce's policies may look bad in hindsight but thanks to Mr. Wallner one can easily see where his core beliefs came from. Any student of the presidency will want to pick up this book as will any Civil War buff but just keep in mind that while history has not been kind to Pierce Mr. Wallner may have been a bit too kind to him. I very much look forward to volume two.



5. For years Franklin Pierce has been ill-served by the nation's historians, nearly all of whom repeat the same things about him--that he was an alcoholic, a coward in the Mexican-American war, pro-slavery and one of the reasons why this country had a Civil War.
   
   Unfortunetely such judgements are basedly largely on biased accounts written decades ago, such as Allen Nevin's "Ordeal of the Union," an enormously slanted work on the events leading up to the Civil War; thus repeating for succeeding generations the same tired old myths without bothering to take a new look at where those myths originated.
   
   In recent years the most important attack on Pierce came in the form of an essay written by William W. Freehling, who admits he borrowed from Nevin, in a guide called "The Presidents: A Reference History." In it, Freehling delivers what could only be described as a personal attack on the 14th president, calling him, among other things, "an inconsequential charmer," a "pleasant nonentity," and "a non-actor clinging to more powerful statemen's actions as if they were his own."
   
   Freehling's very brief scholarship on Pierce's years after the White House are the most disturbing and incorrect. He claims, without providing any documentary evidence, that Pierce sank "deeply into an alcoholic haze," and died in 1869 "almost unnoticed, once again almost unknown."
   
   In fact, Pierce's death was a day of national mourning called for by President Ulysses S. Grant (even the U.S. Supreme Court suspended activities), with his controversial life and career vigorously debated and amply covered by the nation's most important newspapers: The New York Times, the New York Herald, the New York Tribune and the Washigton Star, among others.
   
   I am the author of a book called "The Expatriation of Franklin Pierce: the Story of a President and the Civil War," which mostly focuses on Pierce's activities as an ex-president during the Civil War years, when he fought against President Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and urged the government to enter into negotiations with the Confederacy.
   
   Far from sinking into an alcoholic haze, Pierce remained remarkably active and vigorous in retirement, engaged in contemporary debate, and compiling a record of political participation that is perhaps only equalled by Harry Truman in the decade or so after he left the White House in 1953.
   
   For a much larger look at Pierce and his complex rise to the top during his New Hampshire years, Peter Wallner's book is a welcome addition. Unlike Freehling and others, Wallner has actually gone through the Pierce papers (the vast majority of which are available in the archives of the New Hampshire Historical Collection and through the Library of Congress' presidential papers microfilm series).
   
   The end result is a work of solid scholarship that in no way serves to apologize for anything that Pierce does, but effectively dismantles the "non-entity" noose that others have tried to hang him with. Wallner copiously explores every aspect of Pierce's career leading up to his landslide election in 1852, and the result is a profile of a politician who was remarkably good at what he did.
   
   Incidentally, Wallner finally puts to rest the idea that Pierce was plucked from hinterland obscurity when delegates to the Democratic convention in 1852 named him as their presidential nominee. In fact, Pierce angled for months behind the scenes to get the nod, and adriotly figured that if the other, more well-known candidates cancelled themselves out, he would have a real shot at being nominated in a later ballot.
   
   Pierce's cunning and guile in just that contest alone, as amply demonstrated by Wallner, showed that he was actually an astute and capable political strategist.
   
   What Wallner will tell us about Pierce as president, and whatever other myths he may effectively demolish, can only be imagined. His style is quiet and respectful, slowly building a case that casts historians like Freehling, who have appraoched the Pierce presidency a bit too breezily, in an unfavorble light.
   
   Surely the second volume of Wallner's biography of Pierce will effectively (if the first volume has not already done so) establish him as the preeminent Pierce scholar of our time, doing for the 14th president what Arthur Schlesinger did for FDR.
   
   Garry Boulard, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

No comments about President Theodore Roosevelt's Conservations Legacy.

5 comments about George Washington's War: The Forging of a Revolutionary Leader and the American Presidency.

1. One of the better histories of Washington's role in the Revolutionary War. Convincingly argues that without Washington, we would very likely still be an English colony today. Absorbing read!



2. The title is misleading, I assumed a book titled George Washington's War, would be a book about the his military exploits,tactics, and descriptions of the battles fought.....right? Wrong.
   
   I should have realized that this wasn't a military/warfare book by the fact it didn't have any battle maps, actually there are no maps at all. By the 4th chapter I realized what I bought. An extremely comprehensive and detailed account on the struggles of the incredibly hard task Washington faced with everything from logistics, inflation, small pox, half naked soldiers, famines, lack of ammunition, Loyalist, greedy merchants, etc, etc....
   
   It does start off with promise. The detailed information was fascinating about life in the military camp and showcasing Washington's incredible genius to be an administrator and his perserverance in dealing with extreme adversity. Then it falls flat.
   
   At times I thought I was reading the same exact page word-for-word from a previous chapter. I expected him at some point to go back and describe in any detail at all, the battles of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker's Hill, his retreat throughout New York, Battle Of Brandywine creek, etc,etc. But instead it is the same scenario over and over on the difficulties the soldiers faced, logistic nightmares, his numerous problems with Congress, lack of money, etc., chapter after chapter.
   
   The author is well informed and has a great depth of knowledge, but he loses the audience with the incredible amount of repetitive details and too many people who are irrelevant to the story. This book is not for those who want any type of military narrative or details on the battles that were actually fought. They are only talked about as a passing thought. There is no build up to anything, the detailed information becomes so repetitive it is hard to finish reading.



3. Every kid in high school should be REQUIRED to read this book, Our founding father went through pure hell to fight for our country, establish democracy, freedom, and break from the British tyrants. The soldiers went through starvation. Eating the bark off trees, eating their dogs-anything to stay alive. Many times the Continential Army were at the breaking point, but the steady determination of George Washington, Nathaniel Greene, and countless leaders were determine to have victory at any cost. I could not lay this book down. It is very well-written, and you feel drawn into the book as if you were a part of the action. The winter's at Valley Forge & Morristown were harsh, and the epidemic of small pox would have destroyed the army if not for General Washington's orders of quarantine.
   War is Hell, but the price of freedom is not cheap!



4. There are great overviews of the American Revolution: Angel in the Whirlwind, there are great analyses of critical moments: Washington's Crossing and there are many great biographies: John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, The First American. This tries to be all three fails miserably across the board. No insights, no new news and poor editing make this a real slog.



5. This book was excellent, if for no other reason, because it showed the true bravery and heroism of not only General George Washington, but those who followed him faithfully into the very jaws of oblivion! Such men as Knox (Washington's artillery commander -- whom the famous fort is named after) and Greene followed Washington through the war and faced a terrible and bloody end if they were captured by the British. What drove these men to follow one man on a quest for such an unheard-of dream?
   
   "George Washington's War" chronicles the reasons why George Washington was so victorious not only in winning the American Revolution, but also in getting the men around him and those in the Continental Congress to put enough faith in him and grant him enough power to get the job done! As well, it shows how these very achievements were brought, by the glorified commander-in-chief, to the position of President of the United states several years later.
   
   If you are a fan of the Revolution, you will find this book entertaining. However, if you are interested in how our nation's most celebrated office formed, and what that office trully stands for and is intended for, this book will be both entertaining and enlightening. Indeed, it made me yearn for politicians who thought the way this brilliant man did!