5 comments about The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan.

1. In Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, a young adventurer named Daniel Dravot penetrates feudal Afghanistan disguised as a cleric. In this nonfiction account with a similar title, MacIntyre, a columnist for The Times of London, tells the story of the real life adventurer who may have been Kipling's inspiration. He describes the life and adventures of Josiah Harlan (1799-1871), a young Quaker from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who set sail for China in 1822, telling his fiancée that they would marry when he returned. Upon reaching Calcutta, Harlan received a letter announcing that she was marrying another man. He resolved never to return home.
   
   So began his adventures. After a failed stint in the Indian army--an action for which the Quakers excommunicated him--Harlan met Shujah al-Mulk (1792-1842), an Afghan king exiled to India in 1809 after just six years on the throne. Harlan offered a deal: he would raise an army, subdue Kabul, and restore the kingdom. In exchange, he would become vizier, the equivalent of prime minister. The deal struck, Harlan began recruiting native troops, using the U.S. flag as his own. In 1827, he and his army began their long march. But he soon had second thoughts about his army's loyalty. He picked a trusted team, paid severance to the others, and launched his Plan B: dressed as a dervish, he made his way to Kabul, arriving in 1828 just as an epidemic of cholera ravaged the city. Years passed and Harlan changed his allegiance to Shujah's rival, King Dost Muhammad Khan (1793-1863), to whom he became aide-de-camp. This Afghan king granted Harlan's wish for power. The itinerant Pennsylvania Quaker and stilted lover became prince of Ghor, today a province in central Afghanistan.
   
   Harlan's story is riveting. MacIntyre describes his adventures, disillusionments, and eventual return to the United States as the only Afghan general to serve in the U.S. Civil War.
   
   Harlan was not alone in his adventures. In the nineteenth century, a handful of men made dangerous journeys through Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Tibet. Not all survived. Author Peter Hopkirk has chronicled their stories.[1] But it is rare that so much new material surfaces in one book, and for this MacIntyre deserves special credit. After learning of this curious American from cursory references and footnotes in old travelogues gathering dust in the British Library, MacIntyre made it his mission to uncover the saga of this historical Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. His quest took him to Punjab and Pennsylvania, Kabul and California. He scoured through the official records of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore and poured over the intelligence archives of imperial India, whose agents were suspicious of Harlan's plots and schemes. Finally, in a Chester County museum, MacIntyre found a long-lost manuscript replete with love letters and sketches. Explanations of historical and cultural context weave together in his fluid prose. The result is impressive and well-worth reading.
   
   Note
   
   1. See for example, Great Game (London: Murray, 1990); On Secret Service East of Constantinople (London: Murray, 1994); Trespassers on the Roof of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
   
   Michael Rubin
   Middle East Quarterly
   Fall 2006



2. A fascinating read in every respect. Macintyre is a fluid writer and the book is a real page turner. Apart from vivid details of the remarkable adventures of the first American in Afghanistan; the intrigues, machinations and sheer depravity of virtually all the players in the great game are in plain sight. The book also provides rare insights - via Josiah Harlan's prism - of British mendacity, misrule and astounding arrogance. Harlan's account of British shenanigans may have a tinge of exaggeration owing to his eventual deep hatred of the Empire and many of its emissaries but the substance of Harlan's writings can be corroborrated in other accounts such as the Great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham (another British author) and in more substantive form with relevant data in Angus Maddison's The World Economy. Macintyre deserves considerable praise for presenting the unvarnished truth, albeit through Harlan's pen, about the largely negative legacy of the British Empire. It is a shame that Harlan's story, despite this wonderful book, remains largely unknown both in the US and the East.



3. Most people who pick up this book will already have read some of the travelogues of the "mad dogs and Englishmen" who wandered through Central Asia in the 19th and early 20th century: Burnaby and Nazaroff's memoirs, as well as any of Peter Hopkirk's books on the era.
   
   But here we have a real fish out of water story, and a fascinating one at that: an American Quaker leading, or joining, armies through Afghanistan and elsewhere in the name of, variously: the sitting ruler of Afghanistan, the deposed predecessor, his Sikh neighbor, the British Empire, and arguably himself as "Prince of Ghor."
   
   The tale is fascinating because it's so poorly-known, despite the fact that Kipling's fiction, which I understand to be inspired by Harlan and other adventurers of the time, is so well-known.
   
   Undoubtedly, Harlan's own financial misfortune and quiet death contributed to the obscurity of the narrative, but Macintyre does a great job of weaving the scraps together, and keeping the story's pace. An interesting read, and a bit of history which has earned its place in Central Asian lore.



4. Considering all that's happening in Afghanistan today, this is a timely and fascinating story of an American who travled there in the early 1800's. Fast paced book that's hard to put down and it gives a glimpse into early 1800's life in a country that most people still don't understand today.



5. If you enjoy history, especially military history, then you will enjoy this book. Written in much the same style as Byron Falwell's "Armies of the Raj," this amazingly true yarn about a Quaker who becomes, if not a king, the Prince of Ghor will keep you wondering just what is going to happen next. I absolutely enjoyed the book. My only negative comment is that the later years of his life are glossed over rather quickly, but, that is understandable since the last years were no where near as exciting as the first 40. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history or biographies. Enjoy.

5 comments about A Diary From Dixie.

1. Mary Chestnut's diary received great exposure as a result of Ken Burns' documentary on PBS. It is well worth reading because 90% of the history we read of the American Civil War focuses on the military campaigns and the politics. Ms. Chestnut tells us more about the social impact of the war than we get from most authors. On top of that, she was a highly intelligent woman who was writing things in confidence that she would be unlikely to say outloud. She had a unique window into the workings of southern society and Confederate politics and she was completely honest in her evaluations. What we get here are very carefully worded opinions that no self-respecting southerner would have dared to admit in 1863. On the topic of slavery, Ms. Chestnut declares, "Ours is a monstrous system." Amid newspaper reports blasting Union General Grant for his brutal tactics and lack of finesse, Ms. Chestnut observes, "He has the disagreeable habit of not retreating before our irresistable veterans." All in all, hers is one of the most honest and well-written accounts of civilian life in the south during the Civil War.



2. C-Span did a series called "American Writers" in 2001 and although I consider myself well read it was the first time I had ever heard of Mary Chesnut.
   
   This story of the Civil War, told from the perspective of the civilians at home, was a real eye opener. Mary Chesnut, the wife of a Confederate general, was well off, but even Mary and the ladies in her circle couldn't get shoes to replace their worn ones and could only afford the outrageous prices for food because they had money. One can only imagine the suffering of those less fortunate. Life for civilians was severe and the news from the front, often heartbreaking, added to their woes. This is a unique first person account of the Civil War.
   
   I remember reading that the author of "Gone With the Wind", Margaret Mitchell, did about five years of research before she actually started writing her book. I feel it is highly likely that she read Mary Chesnut's book as part of that research.



3. Mary Chesnut's diary of life in the South during the American Civil War is possibly the best of all American diaries. You could spend weeks making your way through the labyrinth of events -- trivial and important -- and personalities found in the diary.
   
   This edition of the diary is superseded by a better one: "Mary Chesnut's Civil War" edited by C. Vann Woodward which won a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982. Woodward's edition offers a more complete text and is heavily footnoted with explanatory material. The text in Woodward includes many interesting passages excluded from "A Diary from Dixie" because of limitations of space and because some of them reflected unfavorably on the South and Southerners.
   
   One virtue of this edition is a fine foreword about the diary by literary critic Edmund Wilson, but Wilson's foreword can also be read in his book "Patriotic Gore." I recommend you read Woodward's "Mary Chesnut's Civil War" instead of this book.
   
   Smallchief



4. This book deserves 5 stars for educational value alone. While it does have its slow points, I can say that I have learned more about antebellum culture and Southern war perspective from this book than any other I have read up to this point. The book gives us a glimpse into the mindsets of a demographic of the Southern population we can rarely find anywhere else, and it's incredible to believe that this work was almost thrown into the fire for fear of capture when McClellan's forces dwelt a mere six miles from Richmond's door in early 1862.



5. This primary source document is one of the best windows we have into southern society during the American Civil War. Mary Chestnut was a southern aristocrat, married to the man who was the first to resign his seat in the US Senate before the war. She knew many prominent Confederate leaders well--Jefferson Davis, John Bell Hood, and Wade Hampton among them--and was acquainted with nearly all of the major players in the war (she even spent several occasions in the company of Robert E. Lee and Joseph Johnston). Because she knew so many people, she was in a position to cast a very revealing light on the war from the southern point of view.
   
   Besides knowing so many influential leaders, Mary Chestnut also lived in both Confederate capitals--Montgomery, Alabama and Richmond, Virginia--while they were the government seats. Her husband's plantation was in South Carolina, and in fact her home in Columbia, South Carolina lay right in the path of Sherman's destructive march through the South. As such, Chestnut is poised to offer very interesting commentary on the fire that burned much of that city. Mary and her husband gave their all to the Confederacy, and lost much of what they had because of the Civil War.
   
   Several things in this journal are unique and worthy of mention. First, Chestnut and her friends are living the high life for much of the war, having parties, dinners, and luncheons and more-or-less living it up, even when the Yankees are approaching Richmond. They live comfortable lives, and, though Mary has a very insightful perspective into the suffering of her soldiers, she often spends as much time complaining about some minor inconvenience (such as being without her maid for a week) as she does deploring the sorry state of the starved and ill-clothed soldiers. Mary does what she can, and helps in many ways, but she is not willing to give up her parties, even when her husband repeatedly begs her too.
   
   This diary also provides a unique view of slavery. A staunch abolitionist, Chestnut hated slavery less for the cruel treatment of the slaves than for the insolent behavior of many of them. Her husband's slaves were well taken care of, and did less work than they consumed in goods. Mary recounts many horrific tales of what happened when the slaves were set free--a story of a white family going along a road and picking up a wagonload of Negro infants which had been abandoned by parents enjoying their freedom, for example. She never questions that slavery is wrong, but she does argue that Harriet Beecher Stowe's account of slavery was the exception, not the rule. This is an interesting perspective, whatever the truth of it.
   
   All in all, this is a great diary, and a splendid resource. Thank goodness this book has been reissued. The edition edited by Ben Ames Williams contained unsatisfactory notes, including some in which Williams shamelessly engaged in self-promotion of his novel. This book is indispensable for anyone looking for primary accounts of the human aspect of the war between the states.

5 comments about Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (Great Lakes Books).

1. I found this book on the coffee table of a friend in northern Michigan. I started to read a few pages of it, and within an hour I knew that I was going to buy it when I got home. The author tells the tale in a way that
   you don't hear your own voice as you read, but the author himself. He tells
   a story with some political commentary, but you understand the issues from his perspective as he proceeds. He begins at about 1900 and moves to about World War 1. Many anecdotes about the Civil War as well. I perceived some current event relevance that are note worthy, (he who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it). All in all a very pleasant book to sit down and read to relax.



2. Bruce Catton made a name for himself writing some of the most comprehensive books on the Civil War. As an educator and writer, his career will forever be viewed by formal academic standards. However, in Waiting for the Morning Train, the formalities and objectivity are swept away, and we are left with a wonderful story of a boy growing up in rural Northern Michigan. He captures a moment in time, not only in the historical sense, but also from the perspective of a young man coming of age. He substitutes facts and discipline with observations and thoughts, and along the way, creates what is my favorite piece of his work.



3. This book is generally considered a memoir of growing up in rural northern Michigan in the early 1900's, and it is; but it is also a lament for the 20th century. Catton contrasts the optimism of the America of his youth--it's faith in progress and in the future, it's belief that Americans could solve any problem with hard work, right thinking, and the guidance of Divine Providence--with the reality of national and world events that transpired from World War I through the Viet Nam era.
   
   The mood of the book is reflective and even melancholy at times. I felt Catton was a concerned and discouraged man as he wrote this. He saw unlimited technological power as a frightening development and he had little faith in the ability of America or humankind in general to exhibit self-discipline in the use of such power.
   
   It's a very thought-provoking book, and extremely relevant to today's world even 35 years after publication.



4. I never met Bruce Catton, but I corresponded briefly with him in the mid-1970's. The same qualities that marked him as a correspondent--courtesy, graciousness, and gentle humor--illuminate this lovely memoir of a great historian.

   Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, "a city upon a hill," as he correctly notes, very close to Lake Michigan, where the old certitudes held seemingly invincible sway over virtually every aspect of one's daily life. Catton's father was the superintendent of Benzonia Academy, whose main building is now Benzonia's library.

   The memoir, which recalls the years between the author's birth and his graduation from high school, is a series of reflections on what it was like to be a boy just as Michigan's logging era was drawing to a close, when sleepy Benzonia, along with the rest of the nation, was about to drift into the maw of the violent twentieth century. Catton writes of boyhood ambitions and boyish pranks, of the rich history that made Michigan's Lower Peninsula what it was, and especially of the Civil War veterans whose stories would later prompt Catton to devote years of his life to recording the history of that great conflict in rich anecdotal detail.

   Though unabashedly nostalgic, "Waiting for the Morning Train" is neither saccharine nor bitter. Catton was far too experienced a writer and historian to let his emotions get the better of him. This is, nonetheless, a rich and moving memoir of a time which, though it may seem virtually within reach, we will never see again.

   I recommend this book highly as a gift for yourself and, perhaps, for that reflective friend who can appreciate personal history told with universal appeal. Bruce Catton was, quite simply, one of the greatest writers and historians this country has produced, and in many ways this deceptively modest little volume represents the zenith of his literary achievement.




5. Bruce Catton was born in 1899 in Bezonia, Mich., a town of about 300 people then and now. Catton tells a lot about lumbering, tho he himself had little to do with lumbering. He graduated from Bezonia Academy in 1916, there being 11 in his class. The Academy closed in 1918. The book ends when Catton goes to college. It is a pleasant book to read, since Catton is a fine writer. But Jimmy Carter's book on his rural childhood I thought a more fetching read.

1 comments about Civil War Hospital Sketches (Dover Evergreen Classics).

1. This book was short and gave some insight, but was a little disappointing since I had just finished reading Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes. Both Louisa May Alcott and Hannah Ropes were assigned to the same hospital. Hannah Ropes' book is more in depth with the day-to-day details and her feelings than Hospital Sketches. Louisa May Alcott's book makes you think it was written specifically for a certain reading audience in mind and was found lacking in some respects.
   (signed LAS)

5 comments about Bedford Forrest: and His Critter Company (Southern Classics Series).

1. Andrew Lytle was the dean of Southern writers, and in this work -- one of his earliest -- he not only brought to life America's greatest military figure, but an age and a people as well. It was Lytle's aim to make the times of Nathan Bedford Forrest come alive for the reader. He devoted himself to intensive research of the Tennessee where Forrest was born and the Mississippi where he lived.
   
   In reading this book we not only learn about the marvellous -- indeed, often incredible -- feats of a military genius, but we learn at the same time about the people, the places, the morals, the values, and the way of life of a people long gone now. (Lytle's subsequent book, A Wake for the Living, deals more pointedly with how much of the good of those days we have lost.)
   
   This book, although a worthy history, reads like a novel. It truly is one that is hard to put down once you get started.



2. In terms of his impact on modern warfare, no general of the Civil War had more than Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. Not Grant, not Lee, not Longstreet or Sherman. This is the man. No less a general than Erwin Rommel studied Forrest's tactics and implemented them with modern weaponry when his Afrika Korps marched all over Libya and Egypt in World War II.

   The reason I say this book isn't for the "politically correct" is that it was written some 70 years ago, by a man of the old South who obviously idolized Forrest and everything he stood for. As you know already, not everything Forrest stood for was good. He was 100 years ahead of his time as a soldier, but stuck in 1860 in his personal beliefs.

   But...getting into the book. He was a brilliant commander who never had enough men under his command to turn the war in the South's favor. Still, he was a hero to the people of the Tennessee river valley where he won most of his victories, with good reason. When the Union troops overran these areas and placed them under military rule, Forrest made sure they treated the citizens decently. Once he even saved a group of innocent men from a flaming death at the hands of vengeful Union soldiers whom he was defeating in battle. Reading these and other stories makes you understand why he was such a hero to the author, who would have heard first-hand accounts of Forrest's exploits.

   Lytle believes that the South would have won the war if Forrest had been placed in command of the main Confederate army in the west, and he's probably right. Forrest was an extraordinary individual who had more impact on the 20th century than any other Civil War general.




3. I never fully appreciated the intellect of Forrest until I finished this book. It peels away the myths about the man, and tells about what he was really like. I loved it, and often flip around in it from time to time. A must for Civil War buffs!



4. Cunning as the Devil was Nathan Bedford Forrest and this book indicates just how quick and clever this military genius was. Little wonder then that Lee considered this dark knight to be his finest soldier, above even the legendary Stonewall Jackson.



5. Great book and a fast read with lots of information. After reading this book I was left with the feeling that bragg was working for the yanks! If only we had a little extra money a couple thousand more men, supplies and had listened to the likes of Longstreet and Forrest . How things would be different in todays politics. Let's hope that one day movies depicting true southern patriots and the real causes concerning the war for southern independence will light up the screens. END

5 comments about Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (Modern Library Paperbacks).

1. Read this for graduate American history course. There are a few rare instances in American history when a court case grips the passions of its citizens and serves to define people's political or social beliefs based on which side they believed was in the right. The Sacco and Vanzetti case of the 1920's, the Rosenberg espionage trials of the 1950's, and the O. J. Simpson case of the 1990's were to some extent examples of this phenomena. However, the Hiss perjury trials of 1949-50 were the epitome of this phenomenon, and helped to create a divide between liberals and conservatives in American politics that is still evident to this day. During the Cold War era, one could easily identify the political persuasion of a person simply by asking them whether Hiss or Chambers had told the truth. Simply put, the innocence of Alger Hiss was embraced by liberals. If Hiss, a well respected New Deal advocate and important Roosevelt administration member, had actually been an American Communist spying for the Soviets since the 1930's, then a whole mass of conservative accusations would gain legitimacy, and all of FDR's New Deal programs and his foreign policy decisions at the Yalta Conference would become suspect. In addition, Hiss' guilt would call into question security breaches in the Truman administration, which was already being besieged by questions of "Who lost China." It is against this historical backdrop, that Sam Tanenhaus wrote Whittaker Chambers: A Biography; whose purpose was to make the first serious examination of the life and motivations of one of America's most contentious figures in the last half of the twentieth-century, Whittaker Chambers.
   
   Tanenhaus' description of Chambers' early life is an excellent insight into his psychological profile. Born Vivian Jay Chambers on April 1, 1901, (April Fools Day), he came from a middle-class family of meager means. Add to the mix a father who was bisexual and spent much time away from home, a mother who was paranoid, a grandmother who was insane, and his brother Richard who committed suicide, it is no wonder that you have the formula for a man who developed into a tormented soul and was generally estranged from the world and the people around him. In fact, throughout the book, Tanenhaus illuminates his theme, which is to examine Chamber's tormented life at key junctures; such as, when he joined and left the Communist party, when he became a reluctant informer against Alger Hiss and when he distanced himself from the political right near the end of his life. Chambers, who attended Long Island's South Side High School, showed himself to be academically brilliant and an exceptional writer. His parents had big dreams for their son's future. Chambers had dreams too but they did not involve college. Being too young to fight in World War Two, he decided to run away with a friend to see the world. They bummed around and worked their way to New Orleans--a city he fell in love with. "Chambers had discovered life as Hugo described it, a kind of prison, harsh and cruel, but lit from within by tender sentiment and from without by sudden shafts of illumination" (18). After a few months of life on the seedy side and running out of money, he returned home and changed his name to Charles Whittaker but went by Whittaker, and within six months entered Columbia University.
   
   A new world was opened to Chambers at Columbia with which he became enamored. He took English composition with Mark Van Doren, who later in life became a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Van Doren quickly saw in Chambers a very talented writer and later remarked that he was the best writer among his undergraduate students in the 1920's. Chambers especially enjoyed the friendship of fellow students, mostly Jewish, whom he found brilliant such as Lionel Trilling, Meyer Schapiro, and Mortimer J. Adler to name a few. "It was the ernste Menschen" (serious men) "who shaped Chamber's idea, never altered, of the intellectual life" (22). However, academic bliss was not to be for Chambers. He ran afoul of the school administration for a play that he wrote which was deemed profane, and thus became despondent and quit going to class--eventually dropping out and never finishing his university education. He tried to travel to the Soviet Union to help build a new nation on the advice of Van Doren, but he only made it to Germany before returning home. He took a job at the New York Public Library which fed his autodidactic nature, and he started to consort with many women. It is at this stage in Chambers' life in 1925, that he joined the 16,000 member Communist Party of the United States, (CPUSA). "So much the better. He was used to being outnumbered. He had at last found his church" (46).
   
   Tanenhaus paints a portrait of a man who dove into his new life as a Communist with a religious fervor. Chambers became a much-respected writer for several party newspapers, which brought him to the attention of party apparatchiks in 1932. Chambers also met Esther Shemitz a Socialist, and they married in 1931. It was after his marriage that he accepted an assignment to go underground and actively spy for the Party. He was made the courier of the "Ware cell" in Washington D.C., whose mission was to pass sensitive information from Communist party members who had infiltrated various departments of the U. S. government to Boris Bykov, a Soviet intelligence agent. One of the best-placed spies in the "Ware cell" who provided information to Chambers, then using the alias George Crosley, was Alger Hiss. However, Chambers became so disillusioned by Stalin's purges and his nonaggression pact with Hitler, that in 1938, he quit the party. Fearing for his life and his family's safety, Chambers turned informer and confessed all of his activities to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle, Jr., who forwarded his notes of the meeting to the FBI, which did not follow up on the case until several years later. In addition, an old friend recommended Chambers for a job at Time magazine, which he was elated to have since he was broke. Tanenhaus once again shows that Chambers' literary acumen and zeal for any new project he took on, propelled him to become one of Time's top editors in the 1940's. The magazine's owner Henry Luce said, "Chambers was the best writer Time ever employed" (165). While a writer and editor at Time, Chambers became a most vociferous anti-Communist.
   
   Soon after Stalin reneged on his Yalta Conference promises, a conference that Alger Hiss played a key role in for the State Department, the U. S. government finally moved to ferret out Communist infiltrators in the government. The FBI finally conducted extensive interviews with Chambers. This led to Chambers becoming a government informant in one of America's most dramatic congressional hearings and court cases of the twentieth-century. Tanenhaus' research shows Chambers' denouncement of Alger Hiss was a stinging indictment of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, since it cast doubt on American liberals' willingness to conduct espionage investigations during the war years. The contrast between Hiss and Chambers could not be starker. Hiss was a Harvard graduate with impeccable looks and a sterling reputation as a government servant. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. His character references included Justice Felix Frankfurter, and John Foster Dulles, who was to become Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration. Chambers was an overweight plain looking man who did not dress well, a self-confessed Communist and government informant. Tanenhaus did not write about the relationship between Hiss and Chambers until he wrote about the Hiss perjury case, near the end of the book, which made the book a bit awkward to read. However, Tanenhaus does a good job of retelling the facts of the perjury case and Chambers' testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as well as his extensive cooperation and long and friendly relationship with Richard Nixon. One finds that Chambers was much more revealing of his own motivations in his critically acclaimed autobiography Witness, which was written in 1952 after the Hiss perjury trial. It was also disappointing that Tanenhaus did not cover more of Chambers' writings and views about Stalinism and his very prescient views of the Soviet-American confrontation that led to the Cold War. Tanenhaus' research does agree with other historians work. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, in their book Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials That Shaped American Politics, written some ten years after this book, proved that their was a preponderance of evidence showing that Hiss was a Communist and did commit espionage against the U. S. government. Hiss was not charged with espionage because the statute of limitations protected him. The first Hiss perjury case ended in a hung jury. The second ended on January 20, 1950 with his conviction on two counts of perjury and a sentence to serve five years in jail--he only served forty-four months. Hiss went to his grave denying the charges against him. Haynes and Klehr wrote that he gained much sympathy with the political left again in the wake of the Watergate scandal claiming, "that a government conspiracy had forged evidence and coerced false testimony against him."
   
   Although Chambers was vindicated by Hiss's conviction, Tanenhaus showed that Chambers entered into a self-imposed exile on his farm in Maryland. However, for the rest of his life Chambers was visited by a small coterie of friends with whom he enjoyed lengthy discussions about world affairs. "Still convinced he had left the winning side for the losing one, Chambers foretold a global Communist victory. Gloomy as his predictions sounded, he was not devoid of hope" (450). He believed that the primary way the West could defeat Communism was with morality and religion and not militarily. Needing to earn money, Chambers went back to what he did best. He wrote his autobiography Witness, which occupied the top of the New York Times best seller list for several months in 1952, and gave him the financial security he desired. More importantly, Witness was an anti-Communist manifesto that for Chambers described, "a struggle between the force of two irreconcilable faiths--Communism and Christianity." Witness was a powerful exposé of Communist activity in America and changed the life of one future president, Ronald Reagan. Reagan remarked that Witness was his favorite book and pointed to, "Witness as the book that would shape his political outlook." In 1984, President Reagan posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The other person of note that Witness made a huge impression on was William F. Buckley, Jr., who befriended Chambers and offered him the position of senior editor of his fledgling conservative magazine National Review. Both men maintained a very friendly relationship up to Chamber's death in 1961. Though Chambers would write articles for the National Review, he turned Buckley's offer down due to his poor health and his growing reluctance of the tactics that the political right was using--especially those of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Near the end of his life, Chambers became friendly with another former Communist and imminent writer, Arthur Koestler. Koestler wrote of Chambers upon receiving news of his death: "I always felt that Whittaker was the most misunderstood person of our time. When he testified he knowingly committed moral suicide to atone for the guilt of our generation. The witness is gone, the testimony will stand."
   
   In all, Sam Tanenhaus did an excellent job using primary and secondary sources, trial transcripts, and personal interviews to write an engaging biography of Whittaker Chambers. In his book, he provides informative notes and a thorough index; all of which helped to provide readers with a better understanding of the political mood in the country at the time of the Hiss-- Chambers case. The book would have been better organized had Tanenhaus placed the Chambers Hiss relationship information in its proper chronology and not moved it from the 1930's into the Hiss trial period of the 1950's. That small criticism aside, Tanenhaus' biography of Chambers is an important scholarly work for anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of CPUSA activities in U. S., the work of HUAC, and especially its star member, Richard Nixon, and the political left/right divide that was at the center of the Cold War era.
   
   As a graduate student in philosophy and history, I recommended this book for anyone interested in American history, foreign policy, Cold War history.



2. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for understanding the state of American politics, past, present and future. The inner turmoil of Whittaker Chambers is revealed to the world, leaving the reader without a shadow of a doubt as to his courage and greatness. His bitter childhood, his years as a Communist spy, his homosexual inclination, and ultimately his redemptive love for his wife and family, all lead to the climax of Chambers' courageous stance against Communism, which he wins despite all odds. This book fills in the gaps of Chambers' remarkable autobiography, "Witness," which I also recommend as essential political and moral reading.



3. I grew up under the cultural shadow of Alger Hiss, stupidly thinking the term "commie" was a funny way to mock anyone concerned about the threat of Communism.
   
   But, being a victim of bad education, I knew nothing of the epic, mid-twentieth century showdown between Hiss (now known to have been a communist spy and traitor, though still, ludicrously revered as innocent by left intelligentsia) and Whittaker Chambers, the moral lodestone of the twentieth century ,who offered up his own life as a sacrifice of sorts to unmask and quell the poison tentacles of communist Russia that reached high into the U.S. Government of the New Deal era. And Chambers was not only a former communist spy himself, but a burgeoning literary icon. This is the history of a clash of ideas, submerged in the clash between two men caught up in the rush of modern history. The truth, as always, is right in front of us. Only ideological dogma can prevent one from pretending not to see it.



4. Chambers' autobiography "Witness" had left me speechless. It was a magnificent book, but unknown in most circles. I was hungry to learn more about Chambers' own life and times. It didn't take me long to get to Tanenhaus's fine biography, which gave me an outside perspective and did not disappoint. Tanenhaus is at his most valuable recounting Chambers' post-Hiss-Case life, not covered in "Witness"; in fleshing out the HUAC cast like Nixon, Mundt and Hebert, putting their careers and ambitions into perspective; and in covering the seamier sides of Chambers' personal and family background in even greater detail than Chambers had.
   
   In "Witness", Chambers focuses on his spiritual journey, managing to keep a reader fascinated when that might easily have become eye-glazing. Tanenhaus pounds facts, availing himself of documents and accounts not available to Chambers in 1951. He remains objective about Chambers but ultimately finds little to criticize. Chambers was a man who put his career and life on the line to expose a conspiracy, as he saw it, threatening the world and eating away this nation from within. Despite circumstances strongly suggesting his veracity - would anyone throw away a lucrative career, as he did, to falsely accuse someone? - few believed him. History proved he was telling the truth - one worth hearing, since Chambers was the second-ranking U.S. man in the Communist underground espionage network.
   
   Certain striking aspects of Chambers' character emerge here, some suggested by his autobiography but better to have confirmed independently. He was one of the great intellectuals of his time, the equal of better known friends and contemporaries from his Columbia days - Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling and Clifton Fadiman among them. His command of languages was exceptional. (Fabulous piece of trivia: Chambers translated the novel "Bambi" from the German in the 1920s, later inspiring the Walt Disney film.) His command of the classics, ditto. This was a man who never finished college - when he died, he was enrolled in a local college attempting to finish - but who dropped Dante quotations into interviews with ham-and-egger newspaper reporters. He was one of the greatest writers Time magazine ever had, writing first-class cover stories on philosophy, religion and other intellectual pursuits beyond most journalists. I was inspired to search out an available collection of his magazine work.
   
   Chambers' continuing intellectual and political development did him credit. He became a father figure to the modern conservative movement, inspiring those like the young Bill Buckley who shaped it. But Chambers refused to follow them where his own conscience and intellect did not dictate. He wouldn't pursue a scorched earth policy against Republican moderates like Eisenhower in the mid-1950s, unlike Buckley and others, despite Chambers' personal closeness with them: Buckley had more or less rescued him from professional and financial oblivion in the 1950s. Chambers regarded the struggle against Communism as far more important than a Republican civil war over doctrinal purity. He backed Sen. Joseph McCarthy initially, but ultimately broke with him, fearing his recklessness "would lead him and us into trouble," jeopardizing the entire anti-Communist movement, Chambers wrote in declining to endorse Buckley's pro-McCarthy book.
   
   And Chambers was willing, in his later years, to seek a politics that did not rationalize away the world's woes in favor of purist conservatism. It would have been easy for a man treated like Chambers was - who had seen the blindness of liberalism up close in the 1930s and 1940s, and had felt the savagery and hypocrisy of its backlash during the Hiss case - to become more extreme in his rejection of it. But he did not. Chambers expressed, in dealings with young writers, a fascination with the Beat poets then emerging. He saw in Columbia-tied bohemians like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg a reflection of his own distant youth. Very unBuckleyesque.
   
   Tanenhaus treats the Hiss case conservatively, letting the record speak rather than relying on Chambers' detailed account of it in "Witness". Chambers drew vividly his and his wife's close relationships with Alger and Priscilla Hiss, placing it chronologically in the 1930s when it happened. In contrast, Tanenhaus's treatment of Chambers' life in the 1930s mentions Hiss only in passing. He instead takes Hiss on in the context of the hearings and trials, as the two sides jousted over whether Hiss and Chambers, from very different walks of life, knew each other at all. The question was a proxy for the greater question of espionage, although Hiss was never tried specifically for that charge. He was, however, convicted of perjury in denying he had given Chambers government documents, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.
   
   It is sad we have had to wait so long to have this case studied in such fine perspective. The Hiss case put the New Deal itself on trial, asking whether its leadership was pervaded with Communists; whether those leaders had followed the Communist Party line in shaping U.S. policy; whether they had tainted American war and China policy during and after World War II. And whether liberals were either so blind to these problems or so secretly sympathetic to them as to forever render them incapable of loving and protecting their homeland as it was.



5. I found this book endlessly fascinating. Whittake Chambers emerges as a complex, torn figure, one who is driven by an overwhelming sense of what's right -- but all through his own perspective. There is no smarmy, politicized cheerleading or criticism, just the poignant portrayal of a complex man who placed himself at a vortex of American history. A wonderful, wonderful story, and an amazing accomplishment. It is rare that I cannot put down a biography, but this is one.

1 comments about The Diary of Opal Whiteley.

1. A lovely and unique book but there's unfortunately lots of evidence that she didn't write it till she was a lot older: see Opal: A Life of Enchantment, Mystery, and Madness. Still worth a read but please take it with a grain of salt.

1 comments about From These Beginnings, Volume 1 (8th Edition).

1. The idea implemented here is an old one. Dating back centuries. Where earlier books might have been biographies of famous people. To inspire youngsters to such heights. In reflection of our more enlightened times, the authors give biographies of a diverse set of Americans. The traditional ones are here. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. But so too are Frederick Douglass and Christopher Columbus. Technically, Columbus was not an American. The word is an anachronism in his case.
   
   The inclusion of Douglass and Lee in the same volume makes for interesting comparisons. Their careers and causes were point and counterpoint.
   
   The chapters are quick reads. The questions deliberately try to raise the reader's interest and involvement in understanding the subjects' lives and their times.

1 comments about America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War.

1. Milne's biography of Rostow demonstrates the futility of creating a independent state without having any support of the native population. Rostow thought that is possible to end the Vietnam War by merely bombing North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese fearing for their industry would stop supporting the Viet Cong and bring NVA troops across the border and thereby an independent South Vietnam could be preserved. But this theory backfired and the North Vietnamese will strengthened and chaos erupted in South Vietnam. Still Rostow stayed true to his theory and persuaded Johnson to ignore offers of a bombing halt by Harold Wilson, Henry Kissinger, and members in Johnson's own cabinet. The only weakness of this book is that Milne ignores the influence of Thomas Schelling on members of the Johnson cabinet and their decision to bomb North Vietnam. Nevertheless one can see elements of Rostow's theory about bombing in order to create a stable state in John McCain's rhetoric about bombing Syria and Iran in order to create an American backed Iraqi state.

4 comments about Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War.

1. Stephen Oates is an outstanding narrative historian and a first-rate biographer. In this volume, he explores the life of one of the most remarkable woman in American history. Clara Barton was absolutely unwilling to accept the limited, simplistic role 19th Century society designed for women. Well-educated and dedicated to public service to the detriment of any personal life, she accomplished more in a lifetime than most women would a century later when opportunities were much easier for them to find. One of the finer qualities of Oates' writing is a complete unwillingness to pass judgement. Viewed from the perspective of her time, Clara Barton was pushy, ambitious, and entirely too willing to do things that were inappropriate or "unfeminine" in the pursuit of her goals. Viewed from a more modern time, these qualities are less objectionable, but at times she still seems to be an overpowering force that many men today would find difficult to endure. Oates offers few if any opinions on Clara's personality but gives us a completely honest and utterly objective look at a woman who was absolutely unwilling to conform to society's expectations. One can only wonder to what heights of government service she would have aspired if she were born in the 20th century. I suspect from reading Oates' account of her personality and ingenuity that she would have won my vote.



2. The book is wonderful. Every woman should read it. It shows that anyone can stand out in a crowd and lend a hand no matter what form it takes. An inspiration to women everywhere! A very real account of her life, feels as if you are there with her. Please read it!



3. As a nurse I have heard and read about Clara Barton for years. This book finally reinvents the tired images - melodramatic icon of female self sacrifice and courage, angel on earth and of the battlefield - and offers the reader a compelling, warm and very real picture of the person and personality of this famous individual. We see all aspects of Clara's character and the impact of the many choices she makes. We even get to see a few of the skeletons in her closet. Without this book, I doubt we would know that there were any! The amount of detail - and it is considerable - is so beautifully woven into the historical narrative that the story, like the Civil War, sweeps the reader from one new experience to the next. Read this and you will feel the jolting of army wagons along rutted roads, struggle to rest as the canvas flaps of your tent crack and strain in storms, gallop with joyful abandon along the beaches at Hilton Head - and much more. I purchased my copy at Gettyburg and it is the best "souvenir" purchase I ever made. Bravo to Stephen Oates!



4. Mr. Oates has done it again. You will know Clara Barton ambitions, downfalls, her emotions as well as her eager drive and personal duty to serve those who suffered so much during the Civil War years. The contents of this book will jump out at you and you'll feel that you're right next to the personalities involved. Oh, what women had to go through to pursue a dream or an ambition to contribute to society. Clara has a heart of gold as her patients in and off the field well knew, yet she was being torn apart on the inside by the constant fear that she wasn't doing enough for "her boys". Her personal life was put on the back shelf as she persued her one desire, to help those who were less fortunate. You'll follow Clara as she goes through the blood, sweat, tears, agony and the horrors of the war. This is a true story of a dark chapter in our american history when brother fought against brother literally. It is also of a dream turned into reality that Clara Barton followed with a sincere robust ambition to pursue the betterment of her fellow man. By caring for the soldiers on the battlefield, she proved to the Union Army that those suffering needed love, compassion and of course medical care where it was most needed - on the front lines of battle. This is a must read book for those interested in hero's, Civil War history or nursing history. Stephen B. Oates is the author of other fine books in history and ranks right up there with the big boys in the writings of history