5 comments about Eisenhower.

1. Simply put, this biography is average. I read a lot and while this isn't the only Perret biography book I've read, I can't help but feel that the author has no respect for his readers. I myself, enjoy an author who treats the reader as an equal and I can't help but feel that Perret views all of us as literary-morons with a third grade reading level. I feel the prose is substantially lacking in grace and eloquence in addition to the most important thing: subject matter. Eisenhower was a player on the world's stage at some of the most crucial moments in human history (ex: D-Day) yet after reading this book I didn't feel that my curiosity about Eisenhower's life was satisfied. I couldn't really tell you what I learned after reading this book besides coming to the conclusion that I wasted my time flipping through some dull page-filling text. There has to be a better biography of Eisenhower out there, this one just isn't worth the time or minimal effort required to read it.



2. In "Eisenhower" Geoffrey Perret gives an outstanding biography of a very interesting and important historical figure. Here we meet Ike from birth to death.

   The reader is treated to an introduction to the Eisenhower family, to the father who could never be close to his sons, the mother who had little influence over them and the brothers with whom Ike grew up and continued his mutually supportive relationship through their highly successful careers.

   The relationship with Mamie, their lost son, and son John, all reflect Ike's personal strengths and limitations.

   Perret does equally well in telling the stories of the junior officer and the commander as well as those of the President and senior statesman.

   Eisenhower's evaluations of many of the characters who crossed his path add to the allure of this book. Ike's admiration, followed by his contempt for MacArthur, his dislike of FDR, his lack of respect for Truman and his lack of affection for Nixon, all add to the insight into Ike's times. Omar Bradley, George Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Henry Cabot Lodge and Joseph McCarthy are just a sampling of the world characters who played on Eisenhower's stage.

   Perret thoroughly reports each phase of Ike's life in a way as to maintain interest throughout. He comments on Eisenhower's rights and wrongs in a way which provokes thoughts, without seeming to be opinionated. I believe that this is what makes this biography superior so many others..




3. In "Eisenhower" Geoffrey Perret gives an outstanding biography of a very interesting and important historical figure. Here we meet Ike from birth to death.

   The reader is treated to an introduction to the Eisenhower family, to the father who could never be close to his sons, the mother who had little influence over them and the brothers with whom Ike grew up and continued his mutually supportive relationship through their highly successful careers.

   The relationship with Mamie, their lost son, and son John, all reflect Ike's personal strengths and limitations.

   Perret does equally well in telling the stories of the junior officer and the commander as well as those of the President and senior statesman.

   Eisenhower's evaluations of many of the characters who crossed his path add to the allure of this book. Ike's admiration, followed by his contempt for MacArthur, his dislike of FDR, his lack of respect for Truman and his lack of affection for Nixon, all add to the insight into Ike's times. Omar Bradley, George Marshall, John Foster Dulles, Henry Cabot Lodge and Joseph McCarthy are just a sampling of the world characters who played on Eisenhower's stage.

   Perret thoroughly reports each phase of Ike's life in a way as to maintain interest throughout. He comments on Eisenhower's rights and wrongs in a way which provokes thoughts, without seeming to be opinionated. I believe that this is what makes this biography superior so many others..




4. This biography, written with an obvious affection for its subject, focuses largely on Ike's activities in WWII and immediately after. I would have liked a little more about his early life - Perret uses only about 1/5th of the book to get to Ike as a senior officer preparing for US entry into the war in 1940. That was, after all, the first 50 years of his life. By moving through them so quickly, I don't think that Perret gives as much insight as he could into the man.

   The war years and just after are covered well. Perret gives sketches of the other major figures Ike dealt with. MacArthur is portayed as an egomaniac and comes off rather badly; Patton and Marshall are seen more positively. Perret is rough on Ike's alleged lover, Kay Summers, who he concludes lied, but he's roughest of all on Bernard Montgomery, who is presented as insubordinate, afraid to commit troops to battle, and incompetent to use them properly when he does. I don't recall anything positive that Perret has to say about Monty.

   The post-war years are interesting, but I was not really satisfied with the coverage of the Presidential years. The story hits the main points - Little Rock, the Sherman Adams scandal, the Checkers speech, Sputnik, the U2 incident, but doesn't give enough of an insider perspective to give any new insight on most of them. One thing that is covered fairly thoroughly, and the only real surprise I got from this section, is finding out how weak Ike was in standing up to McCarthyism, even when McCarthy and his supporters went after Ike's old friend George Marshall.

   In summary, this is hardly a great biography, but it is easy to read despite the considearable size, and has enough value that you'll get a good return for the time spent reading it.




5. Very well written, it lends itself to being read in a few days. It portrays Ike as a very complex and multifaceted man, much more than I had expected before reading it. I remember, not being able to wait until Ike goes to war in Europe. But actually the African Campaign is the most tedious reading in the book. The most entertaining part of the book, was the political intrigue of the presidency, which I enjoyed immensly. Still, I wish that there had been more about Ike's relationship with Nixon and more explanation of his mysterious final address, in which he spoke of the growing power of the military-industrial complex.

5 comments about Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer.

1. Podhoretz has received the Presidential Medal of Honor.
   He's a bit too old for this silliness and smearing, but smearing is what he does well.
   A juvenile, 'National Enquirer'-worthy account of wealthy, so-called intellectual, low-lifes.
   It is an account of the exchanges of Zionist traitors who influence US government.



2. Norman Podhoretz was a New York intellectual in the 1950's-60's, once editor of Commentary magazine. A left-leaning writer then, in the early 70's he began leaning right and became one of the "founding fathers" of neoconservatism. He was an anti-Communist who rebelled against the anti-American bent of the 60's radicals. (The thought of Jane Fonda all decked out in her love beads sitting down with the North Vietnamese leadership to trash all things American still gives neocons the heebie-jeebies.)
   
   This was when he began breaking with old friends, such as the ones named in the book's title. Most of these people (taken from Podhoretz's viewpoint) are not very pleasant. (Is there anything more vicious than an intellectual scorned?) But Podhoretz is very much on the defensive, and like the "lady who protests too much," makes the reader wary. Whether you go along with his politics or not, I thought it was a pretty interesting book anyway.



3. Norman Podhoretz is one of the most important American intellectuals of the Post- War period. His shift away from the Left toward a Conservative position helped mark a new period in American intellectual life. In this memoir he writes about the ' friends' of a former time, each of whom is a distinguished 'name' by themselves. Allen Ginsberg, Hannah Arendt, the Trillings, Lionel and Diana, Lillian Hellman and Norman Mailer. Podhoretz blends the personal anecodote with the ideological quarrel in explaining his estrangement from these friends. At one point he talks about how their radical indulgence in their own appetites led to a kind of moral chaos which he understood as destructive and damaging.
   There is a question raised by many readers of the morality of turning on old friends in this way, and writing as if one were the only righteous man among a bunch of misguided moral morons. Other readers point out the possible envy motive given the fact that all the people he writes about are probably considered by most to be more important ' creative figures ' than him. Certainly Arendt, and Mailer fit this category.
   Podhoretz however should not be underestimated and he as a critic , and as a moral and literary guide is a person of considerable weight and stature. I would not say that everything here suits my taste, but there is a great deal of interesting writing about the intellectual life of the American fifties, and of some of its major characters.



4. Podhoretz, the man who recently said what's the big deal about a few thousand dead G.I.'s in Iraq considering what's at stake (without having a clue that nothing is at stake), Norman disparages the artist/intellectual/egotists of the 60's/70's that don't fall in line with his ideology while today he lauds the conservative egomaniacs that have brought our country to its low level of intellectualism and turned a nation founded by intellectual deists into a Disneyworld of McReligion. But it's all fine so long as we make the world safe for democracy. Norman seems to think there is something hypocritical about professing social justice and being a small time celebrity, when in fact, as Freud said, the partial motivation of any "artist" is fame and the love of women (speaking I assume of male artists). Einstein enjoyed the limelight; everyone enjoys the limelight and everyone has his or her weaknesses. Have you ever read Einstein's poetry? YUK! So to disparage the ones you don't happen to like is a bit disingenuous. The true irony is that only an attention-seeking egotist would write a book about such trivial nonsense. But this is all in keeping with a man who explains what writers should be writing if they only knew better, ex., he applauded James Baldwin's early career because he was on his way to being another Henry James; he condemns him when Baldwin's attention turned to racism in America. Imagine that: a black writer distraught over racism in America. The very idea! I think Norm's whole problem can be traced back to his youth, which he relates in his autobiography "Making It," talking about taking the subway from culturally challenged Brooklyn to Manhattan, growing up as a nice Jewish boy, the son of modest working class parents, attending college, and rising among the ranks of the intellectual New York crowd. Nowadays, Norm is comparing the invasion of Iraq to the invasion of Normandy, and explains that Iraq will become democratic by using as an analogy post-WW II Germany's quick transition to a modern democracy (of course, with the help of 2 1/2 million allied troops occupying it). How did this guy ever have friends to begin with???



5. This highly readable book is going to be despised on the far left for exposing some of the key intellectual icons/godparents of the movement as insidious buffoons. A useful and brief companion book written years ago for some context would be Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic/Mau Mauing the Flakcatchers.

5 comments about A G-Man's Journal: A Legendary Career Inside the FBI- FROM The Kennedy Assassination to the Oklahoma City Bombing.

1. The nice thing about freedom of speech is that it helps one to learn the truth. I recommend this book for a well written viewpoint and a non-abusive style from the former Assistant Director of the FBI (with the help of Dwight Williams). Presumably his "nemesis" under Clinton, Director Freeh, has a book written by himself somewhere, and it will only be fair to compare the versions of the two books. In fact, I think that an outstanding Management Course could be made by assigning Revell's book, Freeh's book (or future book - I don't know if it exists), and Bonanno's book giving one of the more enlightened Mafia viewpoints (see my review of the latter). Revell appears to have been an outstanding manager from this book, and some readers may not understand why. Revell has a military type discipline viewpoint with an exceptional respect for justice and fairness rather than firing senior employees arbitrarily or because of political orders or downsizing attempts. It's the type of discipline that Field Marshall Montgomery had (see my review of his book), and to some extent General Eisenhower. Whether he violated law for patriotic reasons I do not know, and whether he is right about Freeh's motivations - that, only comparisons between sources of evidence can reveal. His strong opinion that J. Edgar Hoover was not a homosexual is quite interesting, since Great Britain has found for example that freedom of speech without respect for the public can lead to very erroneous conclusions, innuendoes, etc. As for Bonanno, his idea that the Mafia should not sell dope is quite an honorable proposal (it seems to me).



2. It is an informative novel which gives exciting insight into one of the most famous law enforcement agencies of America. Not only learning about the cases that Oliver Revell worked on, but knowing how others in the FBI, including J. Edgar Hoover, thought and said is purely fascinating. This is a must read to anyone interested in the FBI, law enforcement, or federal government agencies.



3. Revell, in this co-authored book, believes in the philosophy "never say in 350 pages what you can say in 570."
   The events are apparently purely chronological, and almost stream-of-consciousness. There's a lot of jumping from subject to subject, with little transition or unifying theme. While the book has a bibliography and index, it's lacking a glossary, which would be helpful for those of us who don't use acronyms like OSG, JSOC, CSG, and CISPES on a daily basis.
   The book would be less cluttered if there wasn't a compulsion to include every incident in which Revell wished to claim credit, or rebut an allegation of misconduct against him. For instance, the liner notes claim that Revell "participated in ... the JFK assassination [investigation]." It turns out Revell wasn't even in the FBI at the time; he was a Marine who was liaison to FBI agents who were interviewing Marines who had known Oswald during Oswald's Marine service.
   It is an interesting account of agent Revell's career, and FBI history and lore, mainly from within the FBI bureaucracy looking down, and contains some almost-hidden nuggets of insight on personalities and events you probably won't find elsewhere.
   Read _No Heroes_ by Danny O. Coulson for a street agent perspective on many of the same events.



4. I'd like to set the record straight about the rebooking of Chris Revell's flight and the speculation that his Father "saved his life" and not others. Chris Revell's flight plans were changed at least two weeks prior to Thanksgiving that year in early or mid-November. Chris had more leave-time than he had first thought and asked me to get him a direct flight from Frankfurt to Washington D.C. so he could spend more time at home. We had been apart since the beginning of August and I can assure you it wasn't anticipated terrorism that was motivating him to return early. My In-Laws were in Australia at the time and my Father-in-Law was in no way involved in our decision to change Chris' flight. Sorry, but the situation just wasn't as sinister as some would like it to be.



5. I know and work with Buck Revells' brother Dennis and Dennis told me that it was a good read. I knew that if Buck had his brothers integrity and analytical thinking process, that this indeed would be a good read. I was not disappointed. This book gives an excellent insight into the FBI, which given the number of times Buck & Sharon Revell moved stands for Forever Being Inconvenienced. Good facts about the cases involved but not too much given away. It is a good "guys read", fast paced with detail it never gets boring. I enjoyed this and can whole-heartedly recommend it to all.

5 comments about Walk on Water: A Memoir.

1. This is a penetrating story written gracefully and honestly by a courageous woman. Its compelling and essential messages are delivered with exquisite subtlety, so that our appreciation for the earth, for the people in our lives who lift us, for the waters that cleanse and renew us, and ultimately, for ourselves, is heightened and sharpened by each flowing page. What's more, Hemingway's Southern wit, charm, and guile make this book a heck of a lot of fun to read.



2. WOW! I didn't buy this book expecting much. Yes, I knew it was written by the granddaughter of the Ernest Hemingway and yes, I know it was about 'fishing'....but I really had no idea. Really..no idea how this woman's words would grab me. Knowing that she lives in the same city where I work, I'm hoping to one day stumble across her and just tell her how much impact this book had on me. A co-worker just went through alcohol de-tox and this book gave me some vague notion of what he went through. Thanks for that! I'm not a fisherwoman....but I love fish and I work with dead fish parts daily as a science-lady, and this book is full of fish-wisdom, honesty and beautiful, true words. This book is full of all that. Humor, honesty and love. Again, WOW!



3. Forget all that you've read about redemption and the bad girl made good, if you like to live in the real world and to fish, this book is for you. Not to mention that it's pretty damn well written to boot. Good Stuff!



4. For anyone who has ever witnessed a loved one do the slow dance with alcoholism, Lorian Hemingway's memoir is waiting for you. Yet another lesson that life is best described with four letter words: love, hate, hope and dirt. I laughed out loud at her hilarious drug hazed antics and cringed as she began her long drawn out fall. Her honesty is astounding: no regrets, no finger pointing, no pass off of responsibility of her actions. Thank you, Lorian, for this memorable book.



5. The book was recommended to me by a friend and I thought it would be a great lazy day reading book. Was I wrong! Once I started, I couldn't put it down. The book grabs your soul from the beginning and by the end, you can't believe it's over. It iis truly the ultimate in survivor stories and it proves the adage.."What does not kill you, will make you stronger." Obviously, the author is (at the end) a stronger, resiliant woman .

No comments about The Life of Woodrow Wilson 1856-1924.

No comments about George Stoneman: A Biography of the Union General.

No comments about Blue & Gray at Sea: Naval Memoirs of the Civil War.

1 comments about First Ladies: From Martha Washington to Laura Bush.

1. Betty Boyd Caroli has written a concise cultural history of our First Ladies. But her observations on how each era shaped the next was only mildly insigthful if not predictable hindsight.

   I was disappointed there was less information about our early first ladies than there was on our more recent ones. Either some of our first ladies did not leave complete records or Coroli simply felt the more recent ones deserved more attention.

   Overall, First Ladies is 80% hard research and 20% gossip of the day which will keep you turning the pages. And if you like, chapters can be read as separate essays. I found this a good book to leave out in guestroom or bathroom!

1 comments about Love Across the Color Line: The Letters of Alice Hanley to Channing Lewis.

1. While renovating an old house, a person found a lace stocking filled with love letters from a woman to a man. Also enclosed is a photo of a black woman. Instead of being correspondence between two blacks, it turns out that these letters were written by an Irish-American woman to her black male lover.
   
   History buffs and amateur genealogists should love this book. Outside of the interracial context, this book answers how do you find more information when you come upon a historical artifact. The answer is to look at old census documents, old maps, old magazines. Also, let people know what you found and see if someone may know helpful third parties. Just as modern techniques show that we leave our DNA everywhere, for approximately 150 years or so, Americans have left photographs and writings everywhere. Your reality can be found, even a century after the fact.
   
   The editor of this book said that the contributors knew this book must be a collaboration from the start. I actually think a historian with a background in women's history, African-American history, and local Massachusetts history could have written this book all by her- or himself.
   
   The extant letters were written by Alice to Channing; there is no existing two-way correspondence here. However, the book stated that when relationships fell apart, women often asked their paramours for their letters back. So while I thought that Channing may have kept these letters, it was actually Alice who did so. In that same vein, the book uncovers much more about Alice than Channing. In fact, it stands out that the chapter devoted to her is deep whereas the one devoted to him is scant. Still, you gotta work with whatcha got.
   
   This book is inspiring in that it proves such relationships did exist before Loving v. Virginia. However, that is where the inspiration ends. This relationship was riddled with abuse, jealousy, "gold digging," and misogyny. Just as Frederick Douglass wed a different white woman than the one to whom he wrote love letters, Channing never divorced his white wife to marry Alice. Patricia Hill Collins has soundly condemned the idea that this pairing is Root's "love's revolution." That stands out here. In fact, modern census figures show that couples co-habit interracially much more than they wed interracially.
   
   While this book does mention Smith College at several points, it never brings up that Northampton is now nicknamed "Lesbianville, USA" by its own residents. Greenwich Village was known for its tolerance toward interracial couples and gay couples. The authors here never state whether Northampton residents of that era would have been equally open-minded.
   
   This book does leave some questions unanswered. Alice was 32 when she wrote to Channing and 40 when she married another man. Did she pursue Channing because she didn't want to be an "old maid"? Channing was obviously literate, but the authors never suggest how he learned to read. They mention several times that the Civil War was a close memory for all involved. During the slavery era, it was illegal to teach blacks to read. This book never answers how Channing became one of the exceptions.
   
   Critics have complained that books don't bring up issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality enough. Well, this book juggles all of those balls. In fact, this book spells out ways that the interracial component of this duo may have been the smallest worry of the couple's concerns. Alice never brings up race in her letters, but the authors suggest that clearly race was a salient issue at this time. I am pleased that I found this book.

No comments about The Biggest City in America: A Fifties Boyhood in Ohio (Ohio History and Culture).