3 comments about Jefferson the President: First Term 1801 - 1805 - Volume IV (Jefferson the President).

1. What can be said about this monument to Jefferson scholarship? I am sure that somewhere in universities around the United States there are "scholar squirrels who want to put down this invaluable resource in Jefferson studies. It is always the way that mice attempt to gnaw at lions. This is not a perfect work (and my remarks refer to all of the books in the series as a whole), there are somethings, namely Sally Hemmings references which are wrong and will not sit well with American 21st century mores. There is the issue of slavery which was handled much differently 50 years ago than it is now.
   Jefferson is not worthy of our interest because of Sally Hemmings and because he kept slaves. Jefferson is great because of the Declaration of Independence and his fight for the rights of man. While it may have been hypocritical to preach liberty and keep slaves, it is doubtful that slavery ever would have been abolished if Jefferson had never gained the prominence that he did. This book and the others that follow show why we should continue to honor the public man even though his private side may have been wanting.



2. Jefferson: The President second term 1805-1809 is the fifth volume in a series of six, by Dumas Malone and brings us into the last four years of Jefferson's Presidency. I found that the author worked harder to bring out Jefferson the man in this volume... maybe because of the actions of others, (Burr and Marshall), but it is apparent that the author worked hard on this volume.

   Jefferson sponsors the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Congress gives Jefferson a little slack, but Arron Burr takes the domestic heat. The Barbary pirates are delt with, but the political views of Jefferson and Marshall heat up to a boiling point. But, Jeferson's second term seems to hit a nadir and he is longing for his Virginia mountain top home where he can finally retire after forty years of service to government.

   I found the scholarship to be impeccable, balanced, seemly sympathetic. The overall narrative is detailed and at times engrossing and engaging. Even though we can see Jefferson's excitement with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, we also see heartbreak with Burr and vituperation with Marshall.

   Overall, this volume brings us to one of the most interesting times of Jeferson's life... that of retirement. This is one of the most interesting of the volumes so far as we see Jefferson working out the problems that others have wrought upon him.




3. Dumas Malone (1892-1986) devoted his academic career to studying Thomas Jefferson, and this superbly researched volume reflects that lifelong scholarship. This book is one in a six-part series examining the life of our third President. I read this book for a college class and immediately grasped the unending pressures that President Jefferson faced in his second term. Malone examines the decision-making options available to Jefferson, usually (and perhaps too often) supporting the eventual route that the President decided upon. This volume's research and analysis is worthy of five stars, not to mention the 1975 Pulitzer Prize the series captured. Unfortunately, Malone's stilted prose - the weakness of most academic historians - produces a rather laborious read. Thus, four stars overall.

1 comments about Jacob Hamblin His Life in His Own Words.

1. My ancestor, Jacob Hamblin, wrote this book. Originally title "My Life with the Indians" it was edited in the late 1800s. Elders in the Morman Church removed the references to his only Indian wife, a Paiute woman, my great grandmother. They were married in Utah, and moved to New Mexico, where my grandmother was born.
   
   Other than some things that were edited out, this is one of the most accurate
   accounts of life in the Southwest that I know of. They also edited how
   how Jacob testified after finding an entire tribe slaughtered on a horseback ride he made back from Arizona. A valley full of woman and children who had been killed. Later, as a result of Hamblin's testimony,
   three Caucasian men were hung in Utah, the ones who led the massacre on their own accord, not under any military instructions.
   
   Jacob Hamblin was a hero in American History and for that reason, this book is important. He negotiated the first peace treaty between the Ute and Navajo tribes successfully. He is probably best known for that accomplishment.

No comments about The Papers of George Washington: Volume 1, September 1788-March 1789 (Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series).

5 comments about The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

1. Unlike most of the reviewers here, I did enjoy Shand Tucci's biography. He has a genuine interest in getting to the "touchy" parts of biography which I find rewarding to have read. The older biographies are very dated hagiographies and really don't prompt an interest in anything but the conventional. This book has interesting things to say about James, Sargent, Bourget, Wharton, Berenson, and others. The style is a little like the gossipy, chatty, whispering voice of a turn of the century Bostonian so it fits well with the idea in the title. This book is certain to lead the future books that come out about Gardner and hopefully people won't continue regarding her as the Byzantine goddess of the Sargent portrait, but a woman of flesh and blood with strengths and weaknesses.



2. When one has chance to visit Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a unique cultural institution that should not be missed. One of the nation's most eclectic and idiosyncratic private museums, it represents the personal vision of its namesake, Isabella Steward Gardner, a woman with the means and confidence to assemble an art collection of enormous breadth and exquisite quality. At the same time, her wealth and influence gave her the ability to live life on her terms, despite the steady drumbeat of ugly gossip.
   Although I have a beautifully detailed volume on Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) and her museum Fenway Court, in my library, it was an "authorized" book, and as such that was left out of the story. However, it is a "warts and all" book that Douglas Shand-Tucci has written despite being in sympathy with his fascinating subject. Gardner married into wealth and she used her husband's cash to collect art - and people. Despite her marriage into the Gardner family, who were influential Boston Brahmins, she carried on scandalous affairs and surrounded herself with gay artists and aesthetes. Many of these relationships were ambiguous at the time for homosexuality had to remain far beneath the surface in the 19th century. John Singer Sargent painted Mrs. Gardner and their relationship was used as the model for Eleanor Palfrey's novel "The Lady and the Painter."
   The expatraite art historian Bernard Berenson advised her on her purchases, which included Vermeer's gem-like "The Concert" and Titan's great "Rape of Europa." She collected some of Sergeant's major works including the massive "El Jaleo" and he painted a famous portrait of her, as did Whistler and the Swedish artist Anders Zorn. She seemed to collect almost everything including Asian art, which she successfully mixed with the European paintings when she built Fenway Court, her Venician palace close by Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which was constructed at the turn-of-the-century.
   Shand-Tucci's book is carefully researched and despite the fact that Gardner burned her letters, he seems to have sorted out the tangled web of relationships between the patroness and her friends, lovers and in turn, their relations with each other. This is no small accomplishment, as Garnder knew almost everyone who was anyone in America and Europe. In addition to close relationships with Sargent and Berenson, she knew George Santayana, Richard Wagner, Edith Wharton, Charles Elliot Norton, Henri Matisse, Henry Adams, Henry James and William James.
   "The Art of Scandal" recreates as era of elegance, taste and affluence, of the long, languid decades before the hell of "The Great War" when the leading families of Europe and America began to intermix, and the treasures of Europe made their ways to our homes and museums.



3. when i set out to write a research paper about Isabella Stewart Gardner, i decided to read her biographies. i opted to read them in chronological order, starting with Morris Carter's published in 1925. i was having a ball learning about such an interesting woman, until i got to the Shand-Tucci biography. this book confused me so much, not only because of it's writing style, but also because of it's content. Mr. Shand-Tucci presents information completely opposite to the info in Morris Carter and Louise Hall Tharp's biographies. these differences were so extreme that i ended up writing my research paper about them. no joke. three thousand words later, and i still feel i could write more on the faults of this book.

   Just a side note, i talked to a friend who works at the Gardner Museum, and they stopped selling this biography in the museum shop because its allegations against Mrs. Gardner are so farfetched. if you want to read a good biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, i highly recommend "Mrs. Jack" by Louise Hall Tharp.




4. I am an avid reader and I find the subject of Bella Gardner fascinating, and I was incredibly excited to find yet another book about her amazing life! Yet, little did I know that it would take me almost three weeks to slog through this terribly written piece! With little organization and darting from one thought to another, it is barely held together. But, dear reader, the worst is yet to come. Let me give you an example of just one of the "typical" sentences that make up the writing found within, and remember this is just one sentence: "Perhaps her most vivid counsel ever as muse and mentor, into which central venue of Isabella Gardner's life first James and then Crawford and now Sargent have conducted us, that advice reflects the fact that just as it has been argued of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's friendship with Arthur Hallam that although their relationship lasted a mere four years, those "four years probably [were] the equal in psychic importance to the other seventy-nine of Tennyson's life," so with act one of Gardner's and Crawford's affair, which lasted barely two years."
   Now I realize how incredibly terrifying this is, and believe me, I have left punctuation, wording and phrasing exactly as they are found in the book. This is but one of three hundred pages of such dismal phrasing. Get the point...



5. Just returned from a trip to Boston...during a dinner party in Cambridge, the following was overheard:

   Harvard professor: "...my wife was reading a book about I.S. Gardner, but said it was so bad, she couldn't go on..."

   It sounded familiar, and then I recalled this awful book. Sure enough, it was the same.

No comments about The Papers of George Washington: Volume 2, April-June 1789 (Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series).

1 comments about The Lincoln Reader.

1. A tremendous, authentic account of Lincoln's entire life, without modern interpretation. Furthermore a window into the quality people of the time. The authors include cabinet members, personal secretaries, even adversaries. The first parts may be more academic, but as the 179 selected accounts of some 65 period authors progress though the Civil War and to his assassination, the book is a tremendously fascinating chronicle of the tremendous qualities of this man. It only gets better and deeper to the very end; and at the end is a surprise worth reading the entire work for -- the account of his own dream, which presages his assassination. In my opinion, one of the most important books I have ever read. After reading the last chapter several times, I started again from the beginning, with a whole new outlook on the entirety of the work. A great book, providing an indispensable perspective of one of the most troubling times of history.

No comments about Skirts That Swept the Desert Floor: One Hundred Biographical Profiles of Nevada Women in History.

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

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



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



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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

5 comments about The Contender: Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946 to 1952.

1. The Contender is by far the most objective, well-researched, and best historical work on Richard Nixon. Instead of focusing on the slurs and character assasinations that make up most of the present works on Nixon, Dr. Irwin Gellman has restored some integrity to the discipline of history by producing history based on facts (what a concept, hey?). Instead of writing a politically motivated book, Dr. Gellman's goal was to produce a history of Nixon's early campaigns. The chapters on Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas are extremely sensible and its surprising that it has taken academia this long to figure out the truth about the two campaigns. Instead of the "sinister" Tricky Dick using smoke and mirrors to win seats in Congress and the senate, we have a hardworking, sometimes naive, idealistic, and dedicated young man who wants to make a diference by entering politics. After reading The Contender, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that Voorhis and Douglas lost because they were out of touch with their constituents, their own party abandoned them, and Nixon was a part of a new political movement that wanted to discontinue the excesses of the new deal but keep its practical programs. The left-wing myths created to discredit and smear Nixon will never hold weight again.



2. When you read this book, you should be prepare to be challenged on what you have heard about Nixon before. This book undoes--or purports to--all of the early Nixon myths. It appears to be exhaustingly researched, and Nixon haters can take comfort in the notion that Nixon became the Nixon they hated after the 1960 Presidential Election.

   Still, Gellman does sugarcoat some things Nixon does, and appears to draw some charitable conclusions without any backup. It is an interesting read, and a portrayal of what by any accounts is a remarkable journey from unknown to Vice President.




3. Though there were shades of the later Nixon in the young man, he was not nearly as visceral, vulgar or mean-spirited as he was to become as President. There were tinges of guilt in his make-up when he stepped over the line of decency, and such signs were utterly absent in President Nixon. Gellman is a fluid writer who is painstaking in being fair to Nixon and presenting him as a fairly likeable, though monstrously aggressive Congressman. He maintains that the young Nixon was a good father and attentive husband, thought he evidence for this is grossly lacking. He was the quintessential absentee father who spent almost no time with his daughters. Gellman conveniently ignores this.

   More troubling is that Gellman almost seeks to exonerate Nixon from two of the most mudslinging and tawdry campaigns of all time: his 1946 run for Congress against the hapless, though decent Jerry Voorhis, and his inhumane hatchet job against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. Nixon's brutal character assassination of Douglas in conveniently skirted, or excuses are made for RN. Because Gellman frequently falls into the habit of glossing over Nixon's destructive impulses, the book never reaches any grandiose literary heights.

   Nixon has been the subject of much nonsense, particularly of the psycho-babble genre. Gellman thankfully doesn't attempt any of this and the book is a better product for it. Ultimately, this is a readable, balanced (overly balanced!) portrait of a young man driven by demons and a lust for power. For anyone wishing to understand Nixon in his 30's, this is an essential study.




4. The book is well-written, it is effective in presenting details of Nixon's early career, and it bends over backward to be fair toward him. It does not bend over backward to be fair to everyone else: Gellman finds it too easy to lump New Deal liberals with Socialists and Communists - making it seem the only difference that he sees between them is shades of pink. That makes it hard to accept his arguments about red-baiting - arguments that are important to Gellman's treatment of Nixon as an honorable, ethical lawmaker ... Still, this is a stimulating work and one that taught me a lot about one of America's most fascinating political characters.



5. I have never been very knowledgable about Richard Nixon. When I picked up this book, I was pleasantly surprised by what I learned. This book is an honest and factual portrayal of a man who served his country, and not the poobah of Watergate scandals.It is so refreshing to learn about the man and not just read criticism after criticism. Nixon's great character and accomplishments are in this book, and I recommend it to any student of political science or just fans of the genre.

1 comments about Sanctified Trial: The Diary of Eliza Rhea Anderson Fain, a Confederate Woman in East Tennessee (Voices of the Civil War Series.).

1. Dr. Fain has done an excellent job of compiling and editing the diary of Eliza who wrote of her experiences and feelings during the Civil War.