5 comments about Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush.

1. Even though tomes have been written on the American presidents, Dr. Smith manages to bring fresh insight as a result of painstaking research. ( It could serve as a model for any student looking to document his research) The book is not "light" reading....but the author writes with clarity and with as much impartiality as humanly possible. I found his distinction between the ways that these presidents' faith shaped their policies to be thought-provoking. This book provides a strong framework from which to examine the coming election season.



2. I encourage you to set aside a block of time each day as you loose yourself in the history and faith of each of these men. It is full of interesting faith facts that just a history of these presidents would never touch. I must confess it took me time to read and digest this book, but well worth the time. I look forward to reareading this book in order to grasp new facts that I did not glean from the first read. I would love to see it used in school class rooms everywhere. The research, notes and excellent writing of this work is outstanding!



3. A first-rate work in which eleven presidents are analyzed in terms of their religious beliefs and their actions. Solid framework of analysis. The work brims with new details, broad understandings, and sound and judicious conclusions. Impressive, varied bibliography. The copious notes, alone, are worth a close read. Sparkling writing and sound organization make this a page-turner.



4. If you are looking for fresh information about the role of faith and religion in the lives of some of America's greatest presidents then I highly recommend purchasing Faith and the Presidency.
   The author, Gary Smith has done his homework. His research is very thorough and his style of writing is clear and free of technical jargon.
   I thought the book presented a balanced view of democrat and republican presidents; and the author covers each president's religious affiliation without bias. After reading this book I finally understand why religion is such a hot topic during every presidential election.
   Reading about Abraham Lincoln and how his faith helped him address the crises of the civil war is the best I have read to date.
   Students, teachers of history, religious leaders and those with a love of presidential history need this book to complete their library. A must read for 2007!



5. Gary Scott Smith's Faith and the Presidency is fascinating to read and weighty in substance. Full of personal details drawn from the lives of various presidents as well as important observations about public policy and religious impulses, Smith hits the sweet spot between bold, exciting claims and strong supporting evidence.
   
   I was particularly persuaded by the book's observation that the foreign policy of presidents more readily reveals their philosophical commitments because the U.S. presidency has greater latitude abroad than at home.
   
   This is a book worth reading from cover to cover. Smith hits a home run with this exceptional book. A tour de force!

5 comments about The Reconstruction Presidents.

1. No study of Reconstruction has ever offered such a perceptive comparative analysis. The sole critic among these reviews appears to have something of an obsession with the author, as evidenced on the Yahoo Discussion Group "civilwarhistory2." That's unfortunate. Read and decide for yourself.



2. Anyone who knows anything about Reconstruction would agree that it began during the Civil War: Lincoln himself spoke of his Reconstruction proposals. Setting aside tripe from neo-Confederate propaganists and KKK defenders, I'd read the book and judge for yourself.



3. Reconstruction was AFTER Lincoln. Someone needs to point this out to Mr. Simpson. Andrew Johnson attempted to do the same type of Reconstruction Lincoln wanted, "let'em up easy". The Radicals hated Johnson, as Johnson turned out NOT to be their puppet, and he REALLY was a Democrat. Simpson feels the need to bash Johnson, as HIS HERO, GENERAL Grant,[look at his books] was the NEXT President. According to Simpson Grant was in fact one of the BEST Presidents!! (Right!!!LOL) Finally, Simpson pushes all the blame on those Southern people. Get real Mr. Simpson, contrary to your writing, (just because YOU write something, does NOT mean it is fact), the South was not wearing black hats, and the North was not wearing white hats. This book is full of anti-southern propaganda, hoping gullible readers will take it as fact. It's a waste of money. I give it only one star, as I can't give it a zero, which it deserves.



4. One of the most intriguing possibilities one can surrender to is the notion of how history may have differed if consequences were altered. The Reconstruction Presidents examines the lives of the 4 men faced with the challenge of tightening the newly formed knot of the once more Unified States. Beginning with Lincoln, who may have had the vision of the plan before a precise bullet wound dimmed it, Simpson ponders how reconstruction may have begun under Lincoln's reign. With the abrupt arrival of Andrew Johnson and his blatently racist views, reconstruction was lost during these formidable years. The torch passed to Ulysses Grant, who lives in infamy as one of the nation's least effective presidents. He was forced to clean up the damage and mistrust done by Johnson and unify not only blacks and whites, but political and demographic groups alike avoiding the chance of offending any particular group. Simpson poses the question, if Grant had not been in office, who would have and where would the country have gone? I enjoyed the notion of perhaps reanalyzing Grant's presidency. The least known, Rutherford B. Hayes, some would say was the benefactor of a nation willing to surrender and come together. Simpson presents a man who may not be remembered in history by the common citizen, but makes him no less important. An interesting viewpoint on a debated subject.



5. Simpson makes us wonder what Lincoln's post-war policies would have been, had a carriage accident kept him from his appointment at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. How would he have resolved the conflict between two of his goals, reconciling the (white) elites of North and South on the one hand, protecting the newly freed men and women on the other? What would "reconstruction" have meant to him? In his second inaugural address, Lincoln spoke of "malice toward none" and "charity for all." But that is an aspiration, not a program. Would it have been possible to act in a way that both the old plantation aristocracy and their former chattels would have regarded as charitable?! Simpson reminds us that by the end of 1865, President Johnson and the Republican Party had gone their separate ways. The leaders of the party, firmly in control of Congress, theorized that the states that had seceded had committed a sort of juridical 'suicide' and could only be restored to life when it, the Congress, thought they had proven their fitness. In the meantime, military occupation and control would continue. That was a difficult policy to pursue, though, if the commander in chief of that military thought reconstruction ought to end, the freedmen left to their fate in the face of the Klan. Congress tried to address this situation by ensuring that it had in the President's cabinet a friendly secretary of war, thus short-circuiting the chain of command. Johnson is in many ways the "heavy" of Simpson's reading of the period. Simpson is, accordingly, sympathetic to the difficulties faced by the leaders of that Congress and to their eventual decision to end those difficulties through the extraordinary process of impeachment and trial. All in all, this is not a perfect, but it is a fascinating, book.

No comments about Napoleon Bonaparte - The Little Corporal (Biography).

No comments about Churchill: Retreat from Empire.

5 comments about Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister.

1. Christopher Hibbert is one of the greatest and best-beloved contemporary historians. His biography of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is an excellent, informative, entertaining work that lives up to Hibbert's outstanding reputation. Disraeli is not easy to like. Though brilliant and highly talented, he is sarcastic, critical, and at times a bit of an arrogant snob. But Hibbert's prose is so fluid, and his skills so very well honed, that the book is a joy to read. I recommend it highly.



2. As those before me have said, DONT BOTHER. It's sad that so great an author as Christopher Hibbert was allowed by his publisher to put out this book which is just a rehash of a book he wrote about Disraeli 30 years ago. Except that mostly it's with a lot of additional material that is only excerpt from letters he wrote and those written to him.
   
   Soooo much of the book is wasted on discussions of people who meant nothing to him in his later life and seem like nothing but fill. If this was a student paper it would fail.
   
   There is a very good short bio by Edgar Feuchtwanger, and two monstrous volumes (over 700 pages) by Robert Lord Blake, and Stanley Weintraub.



3. This is not so much a biography as an itinerary. Benjamin Disraeli went to a country house in High Bascombe-on-Boring, the seat of Lord Irrelevant Nobody, and his wife, the daughter of Viscount Who Cares? and the cousin of the mistress of the architect of another country house Disraeli visited ten years later. Oh, and he was vain and self-promoting, but gave great speeches. Or so he says, in his letters, which (as noted in the other reviews) appear to be the author's exclusive sources. We don't know what they were about, but, boy, did he ever think they were great! I don't know what the author thought, either, about Disraeli, or why he wrote such a book. What puzzles me, and what I have yet to figure out, is, who is the intended audience? Who would ever want an utterly non-political book about Benjamin Disraeli? His only interest to posterity -- which is substantial yet ignored here -- is as a politician and statesman. Everything else -- and especially his travelogue and endless fetes with foreign dignitaries --is unworthy of our attention. This is an astonishingly lazy book by a writer who apparently only wanted to add another impressive title to his bibliography. Fine. But leave us out of it.



4. An embarrasing and lazy pastiche of quotes from Disraeli's correspondence woven with an old fashioned snobbish viewpoint. There is no historical context and no discussion of what made Disraeli the importasnt figure he was. Disraeli comes off as a self-serving, superficial and useless fop, lusting after high-class recognition. This bojk should have been rejected in manuscript. Whatever reputation Mr. Hibbert may have had, it is vitiated by this piece of sophomoric drivel.



5. A miserably rendered biography of one of the most complex men in British history. Hibbert writes from within his comfortable, unexamined cell of "Britishness." He superficially dismisses Disraeli's Jewish upbringing with a wave of the hand, showing not a whit of insight or interest into how it may have affected Disraeli's adult behavior--his choices of dandyism, novel writing, and even his peculiarly powerful oratory. Hibbert just neatly fits Disraeli into categories he, Hibbert, pulls out of his own experience from within what's normal and usual in British life. Moreover, the book quotes huge, unedited swaths not only of Disraeli's letters and journals (somewhat defensible) but also from other recent biographers. So it reads like the work of an undergraduate. Ultimately, Hibbert is not at all inquisitive about what led this man of many and great parts to find such a singular way to live, and to succeed in what, in the book's only success, we see was a terribly hostile social environment for a Jew(populated by powerful anti-Semites like Carlyle and Dickens, Trollope, etc.). This is poorly done work.

No comments about Oliver Cromwell (Routledge Historical Biographies).

3 comments about John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man (Signature Ser.)).

1. While her book is the best I have found on this former President, I find she is the best on the politcal side and presents him in a much better light than Nagal does in his book. When I compare the two books Nagal tries and fails to present Adams as a malajusted man who blames all his problems on his mother. To get a true idea about him you must read both books.



2. After seeing the movie Amistad I was curious about this president who was pretty much passed over in our history books. This Hecht book satisfied all my curiosities plus some I didn't think of. She covers the public and personal lives of JQA. All the public figures of the time, great and near great, American and European, walk through these pages. And, yes, the Amistad story is there. I have limited vision so I save wear and tear on my eyes each day in order to be able to read this great book in bed before I go to sleep. Minor criticism: I have to keep paging back to determine the year of given happenings. The author could have repeated dates a little more generously. Otherwise it would be a five-star!



3. After seeing the movie Amistad I was curious about this president who was pretty much passed over in our history books. This Hecht book satisfied all my curiosities plus some I didn't think of. She covers the public and personal lives of JQA. All the public figures of the time, great and near great, American and European, walk through these pages. And, yes, the Amistad story is there. I have limited vision so I save wear and tear on my eyes each day in order to be able to read this great book in bed before I go to sleep. Minor criticism: I have to keep paging back to determine the year of given happenings. The author could have repeated dates a little more generously. Otherwise it would be a five-star!

No comments about A Pictorial History of the U.S. Presidents.

2 comments about The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge (American Presidency Series).

1. This is an awful book for two primary reasons: 1. It portrays Coolidge in the unfair, stereotypical light that people have done for decades. (thus it lacks any new thought) 2. The book, mechanically speaking, is also poor. It is difficult to read, dry, and gives the reader no incentive to continue reading. The only reason I gave Ferrell a second star is because he is smart enough to pick a good topic to write his book about.



2. The thirty-second volume in the acclaimed American Presidency Series presents a complex man and his struggles to solidify the economy and use cautious diplomacy in foreign affairs. Contrary to popular opinion, Robert Ferrell argues that Calvin Coolidge worked vigorously to achieve successful legislation and his dedication to public service provided him with a good background for the presidency from 1923 to 1929. The author, however, does recognize that Coolidge sometimes waited out troubles, acted indecisively, and displayed inactivity in foreign relations. For example, Ferrell avers that the president and his ministers incompetently handled political problems in Nicaragua and economic instability in Mexico. Also, the author acknowledges that Coolidge did not grasp the economic currents of his time.

   Ferrell raises the question in this study: "Why did Coolidge not do more to deal with economic matters and consult with his advisors?" Perhaps the author answers this question in mentioning the Federal Reserve's reluctance to intervene in monetary policy and stock market speculation. In addition, Ferrell analyzes Coolidge's political philosophy on two counts: his opposition to governmental paternalism and belief in laissez-faire economy. In fact, Ferrell writes that Coolidge cut income taxes drastically; by 1927, 98 percent of the population paid no income tax.

   The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge judges the president in an objective manner and uses extensively researched primary and secondary sources. The author, however, does tend to use quotes excessively and this may irritate some readers. Besides, Ferrell gives a vivid account about society in the 1920s, but his information about automobiles appears repetitive at times in this book. Furthermore, Ferrell suggests that to blame Coolidge for lack of foresight in not preventing the holocausts of our time seems unhistorical. Yet, a historian does indeed judge people and historical events both diachronically and synchronically. Overall, Fer! rell admirably addresses Coolidge's strengths and weaknesses in an analytical framework. Finally, the photographs add a realistic vision about Coolidge and his times.

No comments about Leadership: Fifty Great Leaders and the Worlds They Made.