5 comments about Scott Fitzgerald.

1. I prefer Bruccoli's work in terms of tone and literary criticism, but Meyers work has a gossipy quality that many 21st c. readers might like for its occasional shock-value.



2. F. Scott Fitzgerald fares rather badly in this biography by Jeffrey Meyers. He comes across as self-absorbed, ego-driven and immature; author of not only a body of respected literary works but of his own downfall and misfortunes.
   
   I'm not familiar enough with Fitzgerald's life to comment on the credibility of this presentation but it rings true enough, even though it does little to enhance the man's reputation. That he could write and was one of the better ones in the America of the twentieth century is beyond dispute. But his works often smack of that same immaturity and self-centeredness that drove him to fritter away his health, his talents and the money he earned from these. His stories are often marred by crass commercialization as he strove, through them, to maintain a lifestyle that was unrealistic and beyond his capacity to maintain.
   
   Zelda, his wife and fellow traveler in the life of dissipation they had jointly adopted, went mad and Fitzgerald himself fell into alcoholism as his literary skills faltered. In the end he was insulting and bumbling his way through Hollywood, struggling to make a comeback as a screenwriter, a milieu for which he seems to have been quite unsuited, and falling more and more deeply into alcoholism. Even after having made something of a financial (if not an artistic) comeback in pre-World War II Hollywood he seemed unable to live within the means this afforded him and continued to fritter away his resources, failing to cut critical expenses (expensive private schools, parties and limousines) and put money aside for the less prosperous periods that might follow.
   
   Meyers' writing, as he describes all this, is a bit dry and I found his frequent repetitions of the same events and quotes throughout the book somewhat tiresome. But on balance he does a decent job of documenting and describing the literary fall from grace of a writer who never seemed to have it in him to grow up in a world that demanded he do just that. One doesn't get much of a sense of the grandeur and accomplishment of Fitzgerald's work here but at least we see the man, however unpalatable that is, in the end.
   
   SWM



3. Meyers has an excellent biography of Fitzgerald, based heavily on letters, journals, and other writings. Meyers also gets pretty into an analysis of each of Fitzgerald's books and some of his better short stories. I will say that the first couple of chapters are slow going, but it gets better when Fitzgerald meets Zelda. And Meyers gives a pretty good portrait of her as well. This is really a first rate biography.



4. While a good biography should give us insight into what a person was like, Meyers apparently thinks himself qualified to tell us what Fitzgerald was thinking and feeling throughout his life, and those mind-reading attempts ring false.

   Fitzgerald once said that all the characters in his novels were based on him. Meyers seems to believe the reverse - that Fitzgerald's personality can be illustrated almost entirely by the characters in his novels. Thus, Meyers provides the reader with a shallow caricature of Fitzgerald - where all his faults are enhanced and the real person underneath is passed over completely.

   For a better glimpse of the person F. Scott Fitzgerald was, I strongly recommend F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters.




5. I found Jeffrey's Meyers' biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald dismaying. Not that Meyers' doesn't write well (he does), or capture the essence of Fitzgerald's dissipation, but the book seemed a deliberate hack job. It is largely a continuous stream of references to Fitzgerald's obstinacy, egotism, inferiority, outrageousness, drunkenness and worse. I don't know where anyone got the idea that Meyers' wrote with any compassion in this biography. This work only makes Fitzgerald look pathetic. Of course, in many ways he was...but I see no scholarly effort to recognize the quality and enduring value of much of his work. While they pull few punches themselves, I'd recommend Mizener's The Far Side of Paradise, and Bruccoli's Some Sort of Epic Grandeur for a more balanced perspective.

5 comments about Kentucky Lion: The True Story of Cassius Clay.

1. Maybe only a great character actor could write about a great American character with such warmth and passion. Maybe it's because Richard Kiel spent over a quarter of a century in putting this story together. No matter the reason, KENTUCKY LION is truly a grand story. The characters come alive in this womderful piece of story-telling; even if it wasn't 95% true, I feel like I got to know Cash. I can't wait to see the movie!



2. I just got a copy of this book and upon opening it I could not put it down. Richard Kiel has done an astounding job of recreating in colorful details the life and adventures of this true gentleman. It is a page turner indeed! Once you start it you will see just how wonderful it is and just how hard it is to put down. I highly reccomend this book to anyone and I truly believe it should be included in a list of mandatory reads. There is much to be learned from this book. The authors have done an astounding amount of research into the life of this greatly overlooked individual. Richard and Pamela have created a true gem with this book. A masterpiece telling of the true life of Cassius Clay. A++



3. 
   What an incredible account that until now has gone uncovered! The astonishing true story behind the Cassius Clay story. Captivating and enlightening read.



4. Kentucky Lion: The True Story of Cassius Clay
   This is an amazing book about one man who would not give up his fight for something that he believed in, despite many things being thrown in his path. Once you start reading it, you will not be able to put it down. I had never heard the name 'Cassius Clay' before reading this book, and now I will never forget him or the story of his life. It's definitely a book that everyone will find interesting given the many aspects of his life that are brought to life throughout the pages of the book.
   
   A definite MUST READ!



5. Excellent...This is a must read. This historic american novel will make a great movie or mini series for television. Richard Kiel and Pamela Wallace tell the life story of Cassius Clay with passion, romance and intrigue. I started reading this on my flight from California to Texas and could not put it down. The history that was researched for this book is truly amazing. It's a great story of a great american hero.

No comments about Winter Quarters: The 1846-1848 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards (Life Writings of Frontier Women, Vol 1).

5 comments about Frank Sinatra: An American Legend.

1. No wonder this book is so thick- it's filled with numerous photos of Frank Sinatra, his family, and friends over the years. I love looking at these pics, and so will any other Sinatra fan. There is detailed info throughout the book as well. This is one worth having in your collection.



2. Here is Sinatra stripped of everything who leaves me knowing he has deserved my love and admiration all these years. With Sinatra, he drove himself through life going after whatever he wanted and risking the consequences. We get to look at his ups and downs and his prides and his falls. We see him suffer at love and sing about it. We see him finally, after all the aborted tries, finally sink himself into a relationship with his last wife that kept him happy until he died.

   Life for Sinatra was all or nothing at all and he did life his way and fell into lots of tender traps and led some into his own tender traps, like one famous movie star I will let you discover on your own.

   What so special about Nancy's book is that she is amazingly organized and objective in her account of her father's life. And the CD, well the CD is everything. You get to hear Sinatra on Sinatra, unabashed.

   Everyone on the planet needs to buy and read this book to learn what life can be when you go for it all every day!

   Kudos to Nancy for a biography well, well done.




3. This book has excellent pictures with the most vital information for a biography project. A great buy and great read for interested fans of Ol' Blue Eyes.



4. This scrapbook is a real treat to any true SINATRA fan.It is full of pictures of everybody who was important in his life from his parents to collaborators like arrangers NELSON RIDDLE; all his wifes from NANCY to BARBARA;the legendary LOUIS B. MAYER etc.Better than most biographies because it is based on facts not rumours.The early pictures from his beginnings are alone worth the price.I was fortunate enough to get this book at the third of it's price and i went through it very fast because once you open it, you simply can't take your hands out of it.If FRANK became the singer of the past century, it's not by accident, he worked hard at it.I was particulary touched by his loyalty to his true friends.FRANK SINATRA is a mirror of his country. He was the son of immigrants who lived the AMERICAN dream to the fullest.Where is the AMERICAN dream today now that it's last legend is gone?Let's not complain too much ,because everything that FRANK SINATRA ever recorded is now available on cd.Nostalgia when you think of it is a very good thing.SATURDAY is not the loneliest night of the week anymore thanks to the chairman of the board.If you are not already a fan, this book should do the trick.



5. I had to get this book after seeing how low the price came down.The original price was 40 dollars. Nancy Sinatra's book on her Father has everything in here.I couldn't believe Frank weighted 13and a half pounds when he was born on December 12,1915.The Doctor ripped and scarred his ear,check,and neck,plus puncturing his eardrum.Frank wasn't breathing,so his grandmother Rose held the baby under cold running water until he gasped his first breath and cried.This book is like a Diary.It goes from year to year,sometimes month to month.All of Franks movies,records,concerts,TV shows,songs,and the name of the songwriters are in here,plus hundreds of pictures,starting with Frank's baby photo, ending with a touching family photo taken in 1996.There's a wonderfull picture of Marilyn Monroe taken with Dean Martin sitting ringside at the Sands..All of the stars are in here,and family pictures we've never seen before.If you are a Frank Sinatra fan,you have to get this Book.Its huge,and the pictures are fantastic.

1 comments about Terrible Swift Sword: The Legacy of John Brown.

1. John Brown the abolitionist (1800-59) defied the ruling assumptions of the anti-slavery movement by taking up arms against proslavery forces, blending his own brand of militancy with a devout Calvinist piety that many historians still find difficult to comprehend. In the nearly 150 years since his failed raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry, [West] Virginia, and his subsequent execution in December 1859, the nation has been divided over the real meaning of John Brown to the United States, and often the line that has been drawn between his critics and supporters has been nearly identical to the color line.
   
   Sensitive to the renaissance of interest in Brown that became apparent in the 1990s, Peggy Russo, assistant professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at Mont Alto, developed and hosted a wonderful multidisciplinary symposium entitled "John Brown: The Man, the Legend, the Legacy," held on her campus in July 1996. A guiding presence at the conference was Paul Finkelman, now the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School. Among other works, Finkelman had already edited a collection of scholarly writings on Brown entitled HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON, published in 1995 (University Press of Virginia). A decade later these two scholars have published TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD: THE LEGACY OF JOHN BROWN (Ohio University Press, 2005), a collection of twelve essays gathered from the contributions of conference participants.
   
   The book is prepared in an attractive paperback format and includes some classic illustrations and a basic chronology of Brown's life--the latter being somewhat helpful although marked by a number of errors in dating. The editors have divided the essays into five sections: contemporaries and supporters of Brown, Brown defined, behavioral analyses of Brown, literary representations of Brown, and Brown and cultural iconography.
   
   By far the best section is the first, which features excellent historical research by Dean Grodzins, who provides insight into the social and political background of one of Brown's most notable supporters, the Rev. Theodore Parker. Likewise, Hannah Geffert, an expert on the theme of black participation in the Harper's Ferry raid, shatters conventional assumptions about the interest and support shown by local enslaved people in Brown's efforts. Jean Libby, perhaps the foremost documentary scholar on Brown since the late Boyd Stutler and Clarence Gee, provides insight into the life of Thomas Henry, a leading black clergyman that Brown tried--and failed--to contact and enlist in his efforts.
   
   Other notable contributions are made by Israeli scholar, Eyal Naveh, who explains how and why Brown's image as a martyr was undermined in the post-Reconstruction era, and by Charles J. Holden, who shows how Southern writers in the post-Civil War used their hostile portrayal of Brown to justify the defeated South and its lost cause. On the other hand, William Keeney provides an equally fascinating discussion about the use of poetry by Brown's admirers just prior to the Civil War, and how their literary efforts were designed to circumvent what they found to be difficult questions concerning Brown and his methods.
   
   Editor Russo likewise makes a most enlightening and entertaining contribution in discussing Raymond Massey's cinematic portrayal of Brown in two Hollywood classics, "Santa Fe Trail" (1940) and "Seven Angry Men" (1955). As Russo shows, the former portrayed Brown quite negatively, raising some scholarly criticism. However Russo does not mention that one of Brown's direct descendants actually tried to bring a lawsuit against Warner Brothers for maligning her forebear, and it was undoubtedly "Santa Fe Trail" that Malcolm X later criticized for having made Brown look like a "nut." Russo shows how the social and political context had changed between 1940 and 1955 when "Seven Angry Men" was released, and although Massey reprised his role as Brown in the latter, it was a very different film for reasons both positive and negative.
   
   
   Notwithstanding these notable essays, TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD is a multidisciplinary collection and therefore bears the burden of contemporary perception and interpretation, some of it trendy more than grounded in thoroughgoing research. Most notable in this regard is the unfortunate section featuring behavioral analyses, the contributions of which are so decidedly biased, unfair, and to a degree meretricious that they have no value to those genuinely interested in studying the life of John Brown the man who lived.
   
   Of course by including such contributions, editors Russo and Finkelman have remained faithful to their intention of presenting the range of views and interests coming out of the Mont Alto conference that, in my opinion as an attendee, included a degree of creative writing and visceral John Brown bashing. Still, the book's subtitle (The Legacy of John Brown) may be misleading since TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD is really more about the legacy of a fascinating and well-produced conference than about the abolitionist himself.
   
   Multidisciplinary collections like this have their place, but their value for serious students of Brown's life and times is quite limited. For too long John Brown has suffered--perhaps far more than most controversial figures in American history--precisely because the image of him created by novelists, journalists, and others has been too readily embraced as factual. After a century-and-a-half of politically charged diatribes and sloppy characterizations, this biographer hopes that the 21st century will finally mark an era when John Brown receives the kind of fair-minded attention by historical researchers that he deserves. Despite the valuable insights of its editors and several of its contributors, TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD unfortunately extends the legacy of "knowlege production professionals" whose biases and unstudied presumptions have made a mess of John Brown historiography.
   
   Louis A. DeCaro Jr.

1 comments about Six Weeks in the Sioux Tepees: A Narrative of Indian Captivity.

1. Sarah Wakefield, being an educated doctor's wife in 1862, had a lot more than many of the people who lived through the 1862 Uprising/Conflict, she was able to relate in a logical way what happened to her, without anger. She tells of the way she and her children were taken care of by Chaska and his family. How their lives were spared because of the Dakota family. Her words show another side of the story, how whites were saved by the Dakota. When many were saying they had been abused, Sarah told of care. When Chaska was hanged on 26th December she was understandably distressed, here was her saviour, who she had promised would be spared as she was, dead, through a quirk of fate. In 1997, I and another woman working on a Native American Committee to honor the dead of the conflict in Minnesota wrote to President Clinton asking for a pardon for Chaska, on Sarah Wakefield's behalf. Chaska's name should be cleared. It has been 136 years and he is still known as a man who abused women and children during a six week war. Read this story and if you feel the same way, please write to the President as well. Chaska saved Sarah's life, his name should at least be cleared of wrongdoing.Thank you.

3 comments about Bull's-Eyes and Misfires: 50 Obscure People Whose Efforts Shaped the American Civil War.

1. General James Ripley's efforts as Chief of Ordnance put more reliable, mass produced, and effective weapons in Union Soldiers hands than any before or after him. Ripley did not (like so many claim without really looking at all available sources) stand in the way of innovation, but rather the chaos and confusion of non-standardized arms and ammunition. Ripley inherited a department that in 1861 had 600 different types of artillery ammunition, more than forty different types of cartidges for shoulder arms, and barely produced 14,000 weapons a year. By 1863 Artillery ammunition was reduced to only 140 different types, and the Springfield Armory was producing over 218,000 weapons yearly. As to Ripley turning down the Spencer rifle, Ripley's judgement was sound and right on. First, the Spencer was never really able to be mass produced like the Springfield. By June 1862 three promised deliveries had not been made, so the order was cut from 10,000 to 7,500. The reason for the delays were obvious; the gun still needed modifications to work properly. Problems obtaining skilled workers, machine tool parts, and raw material also delayed the Spencer. In all only about 12,000 Spencer rifles were delivered during the War. Of the M1860 Carbines, almost half of those produced never made it to the hands of troops before the South surrendered. General Ripley was an ordnance officer since 1814; he was an expert, and understood that breech loading was the next step in weapons evolution. He just did not feel that any one weapon had this principle perfected enough to be mass produced. Dependable ammunition for these guns was still several years away from full development and he knew it. It wasn't the Ghost of Ripley or something "strange" that made the standard weapon of the Cavalry the Model 1873 Springfield carbine. It was the fact that it worked well and the Spencer didn't. S.E. Whitman writes in The Troopers: "Because of the demonstrated faults found in all repeating carbines available at the time, the Ordnance Department reverted to a foolproof weapon of its own design, the Model 1873 Springfield carbine, which was to be the mainstay of the Cavalry until the 1890's."
   At the time Ripley left as chief of Ordnance, the .58 Cailiber Springfield rifle was the standard weapon of choice for the Army. There was no shortage of these reliable standardized weapons or their ammunition. Ripley accomplished this by making his department a production agency for standardized, reliable, time tested weapons rather than a research and development facility in time of war. In my judgement this accomplishment hastened the Civil War's end, not prolonged it.



2. Although I am no "buff," I consider myself fairly well read on the Civil War and I only recognized about ten of the fifty names here and almost none of the stories discussed. The author's research makes it clear, though, that these people had a very important role in the war. You can object to his classifications - most people would think Colonel Gorgas was one of the best administrators either side had, not the "misfire" Mr. Johnson claims him to be - but challenging his judgments is part of the fun.



3. Compiled and written by Civil War Reenactor and enthusiast Clint Johnson, Bull's Eyes And Misfires is an unique anthology of true stories about fifty different people whose obscure and often overlooked roles had lasting impact on the course of the American Civil War. Ranging from how Joseph Anderson and George Rains efficiently kept the Confederacy supplied with cannon and gunpowder, to how Julia Grant helped her husband General U. S. Grant win battles, to "Crazy Bet" Van Lew who ran one of the best possible spy networks for the North, to a series of terrible and costly mistakes of judgment attributed to leaders on both sides, Bull's Eyes And Misfires offers a wealth of lore and evidence of how even small details can have great effects on the tide of battle and is very highly recommended reading for all American History and Civil War buffs.

No comments about Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.

No comments about The Levy Family and Monticello, 1834-1923: Saving Thomas Jefferson's House.

1 comments about COLLEAGUES: RUSSELL AND JOHNSON.

1. I first became aware of the friend of Lyndon John and Richard Russell after reading MASTERS OF THE SENATE. John Caro touches on the relationship and as a result I was interested in finding out more about these two masters of the senate.

   Goldsmith, who was a Washington insider, depicts the rise and fall of the friendship and shows how in some respects it disentigrated because of the passage of time and the failure of the two men, especially Russell to adopt to change.

   Goldsmith's LBJ is much less of a "user" of Russell than Caro's and Goldsmith's Russell is much for fragile than the one portrayed by Caro. But for those interested in the LBJ years and the beginnings of the war in Viet Nam, this is a meaningful work. LBJ is once again seen as a somewhat tragic figure. Russell was very much a father figure to him, but yet in the end he did not attend his funeral or visit him in his last illness.
   For those interested in the legacy of LBJ it is well worth the fairly quick read.