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| 0192854526
| 9780192854520
| 0192854526
| 3.75
| 471
| 1986
| Jun 07, 2001
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it was amazing
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Henry Chadwick in this excellent work avoids going into the biography of Augustine, sticking to his philosophy and how the mind of Augustine developed
Henry Chadwick in this excellent work avoids going into the biography of Augustine, sticking to his philosophy and how the mind of Augustine developed over his lifetime. The man was far more open minded even into old age than one might assume about a person completely dedicated to religion and was genuinely dedicated to finding the proper way to think about things for which there was, and still is, no clear evidence as we moderns understand it. Those, like me, who put little value in discussion of whether the Father and the Son are one and the same, or the nature of the three-in-one, the detailed handling of Augustine's theology may hold little appeal, but Chadwick doesn't leave it out because of its profound impact on the Church. Augustine is the very rock upon which Catholic theology has been built. We are told of the influences on Augustine that educated his thinking. He was a man of his times who did not develop his philosophy in a vacuum. What interesting times they were in the 4th century. Discussion of the various Christian sects, the tensions between them and between Christians and the authorities at a time when pagan practices were still popular I found fascinating. ...more |
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Aug 04, 2023
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| 0674613066
| 9780674613065
| 0674613066
| 3.98
| 139
| 1939
| Apr 15, 1982
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it was amazing
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A difficulty we all have with history is our inability to climb into the mindset of past times, so full are we of present ideas. In this quite lengthy
A difficulty we all have with history is our inability to climb into the mindset of past times, so full are we of present ideas. In this quite lengthy, very impressive and quite readable display of expertise, Perry Miller comes as close as the reader can hope to come to understanding the early 1600's in New England, the land of the Puritans. The Puritans were part of the Congregational branch of English Protestantism, closely associated with Calvinism, who fled the turbulent political climate of England that would result in the English civil war between royalists and parliamentarians (1642-1651). All of Europe was in an uproar as Catholics and Protestants fought to the death in the 30 years war (1614-1648) over who were the more authentic followers of of a man who preached non-violence. Death could easily come not only from following either of the two major divisions of Christianity, but from following some sect of Protestantism unacceptable to authority. How to keep the public under control and the how authority could be legitimate were under intense debate everywhere as all yearned to bring order out of chaos. The history that informed the political thinking of the founders of the United States was in progress. As one would expect, where authority was discussed the subject could not avoid spilling into the relationship of man to God, considered the ultimate authority. Martin Luther introducing Protestantism a century earlier had thrown open religious thought by stating that the Bible should be open to all without the Church as intermediary between the individual and the words of his creator. But what to make of a many authored book claimed to be the word of God? As any lawyer can tell you, words can mean just about anything you want them to mean. It was well known that the ancient Greek sophists made a living training the young to take any side of an argument. It was one thing for a pope to declare doctrine for the Church, quite another to set readers of the Bible free. Luther, taking great care to instruct new Bible readers, insisted that salvation would come through faith alone, not by good works. With Calvin came the idea of predestination, that the salvation of a soul was entirely up to God and was settled in advance. You were to be saved or not as God decided and there was nothing you could do nor know about it. Not surprisingly for this harsh reading that was hard to reconcile both with free will and with justice, there was reaction. The Puritans were, in keeping with the times following the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient Greek ideas, very fond of reason and believed that their interpretation of the Bible was completely logical. The New England Puritans highly regarded the work of Petrus Ramus (1515 - 1572), who authored extensive works of logic. Johann Alsted (1588 - 1638) had created an encyclopedia that claimed to cover all of human knowledge neatly categorized. Though the Bible was still the ultimate authority, the excitement and pleasure of using reason was everywhere. Religious sects proliferated in Europe. In New England, Anne Hutchinson had the idea that there was no need for all the intellectualizing, that each could have a personal faith in God that would bring undoubted salvation. She was banished from Massachusetts and ultimately killed by the Indians, assumed by those who had banished her to be a judgement from God. What became the very core of Puritanism in New England was known as the Covenant of Grace. To these New World Puritans, there needed to be some assurance of salvation, some relief from anxiety, an inkling that one was one of the elect, while conceding that at the same time God remained all powerful and knew everything in advance. God had to act in a way that would reassure people, so scripture was read (remember the importance of reason/logic) to support a most curious conception that another Puritan group in England (the Presbyterians) claimed had no basis in scripture at all. God was made to work as follows. Of His own will, He decided to make a deal with humanity. He would bind himself, as only He could do, to a contract just like a business contract between two parties that would assure people that if they would devote themselves to faith in Him, He would come through for them in the end. But how could this jibe with predestination? Well, He still was all powerful except that now he had voluntarily bound himself. Yes, he could still decide as he wished, but he would not do that because it would be unreasonable and would deceived his creation, something he would never do. As can be seen from this and as has always been true, far from being subject to an all powerful God, men design the God they wish to have which satisfies the societal needs of the times, that keeps order among the people and maintains authority over individuals through a cohesive idea. All of what I have written is a mere taste of The New England Mind. As you might expect, the elect, those who just knew they were chosen and were educated in theology, were in charge. The other 4/5th's of the population were not so educated but were expected to attend church and to obey the rules of the community as decided by the divines. Of course it was the divines that decided whether an individual could be admitted to the community and who should be expelled. One might become saved by grace and for the New England Puritans this was most likely to happen with sudden realization during a profound sermon being delivered on Sunday. It could also happen by an experience in nature; the Holy Spirit entering one while one is gazing at a beautiful sunset for example. Miracles no longer happened in the contrary-to-reason way they did at the time of Jesus. Once scripture came out, no more of that raising of the dead or walking on water stuff. God no longer will defy nature, but he may arrange something natural to happen, such as with Anne Hutchinson as mentioned above. Perry Smith states that the Puritan experience is a excellent example of the transition from what has been called the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason. The metaphysics of the Puritans was opening the way to reason taking over and faith retiring from the stage it had commanded for almost the entire history of civilization. It is the clarity of Smith's description of this change taking place that makes this book a masterpiece. To gain from this book, to be able to stay with it, you'll need to want to know about the fascinating and turbulent period that it describes in wonderful detail for a most important part of colonial America. It is an examination of rationalization like no other through intellectual charged religious practice. While it is true that one can never know a time like those who lived it, this epic work comes as close to doing so as I have encountered. ...more |
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| 1560008563
| 9781560008569
| 1560008563
| 4.11
| 123
| 1944
| Jan 30, 1995
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it was amazing
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This classic work goes into every aspect of the American shame - the comprehensive mistreatment of black people that has made a mockery of our claim o
This classic work goes into every aspect of the American shame - the comprehensive mistreatment of black people that has made a mockery of our claim of liberty and justice for all. First published in 1944, the book describes all of the malevolent practices that kept African-Americans from even approaching the American dream. Myrdal cites the attitude of respect for what he calls the American Creed that is universal among both whites and blacks in the United States, but that is held at the same time, and with little discomfort, with bigoted views by whites. Emphasis is of course on the southern states but the north was (is) not free of the prejudice that accepts racial equality in principle, but didn't want blacks in the neighborhood or workplace. The history of slavery is here as is the virtual return to slavery that was enforced by the South after the brief period of Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War. The great migration to the north by blacks in the southern states is recounted as is the Harlem renaissance. Labor relations, the closed door of most unions and the limitation of black employment to the dirtiest and most menial jobs is reviewed. The views of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois are examined in the period before the world had heard of Martin Luther King, Jr. The white mindset in the north and south is captured through extensive interviews throughout the country. The psychology that supports lower class white unity through bigotry is dissected. Myrdal, being white, had no difficulty getting whites to open up letting the reader understand how complete was the suppression of every attempt by blacks to take their place as equals. We get to see how the white primary, the poll tax, literacy tests and outright physical threats succeeded in keeping blacks away from the polls, denying them the very representation they needed politically to bring change. Myrdal didn't hesitate to write about the effects of slavery on the psychology of blacks. The subservience that made for survival in bondage, the endless attempt to escape from work without pay survived emancipation in habits that reinforced white appraisal of blacks in the not baseless accusations of laziness and slow performance. Times have changed since this book was written. Share cropping has disappeared as have poll taxes and the white primary. The famous Brown vs Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court was 10 years in the future in 1944. No longer do we see the "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" signs that I saw frequently in the South of the 1950's. Progress has been made, but not without endless struggle in court and in the court of public opinion. Incidents of executions of blacks by the police occur to this day. Nixon's famous "southern strategy" worked to gain votes through bigotry, shifting the historically Democratic South to the Republican Party we see today that consists almost entirely of white faces. Terrible carnage by gang members continues in the black ghettoes of large American cities, as does the disproportionate conviction and imprisonment rate for blacks. But it has our attention and concern. This book is a must read for white Americans, in particular because today white males have a legitimate complaint that they are discriminated against in the name of diversity. Today schools and businesses rush to show a rainbow student body or workforce. Balance is the watchword and because of this blacks at long last have opportunities that were traditionally denied them. Their complete rejection by society has been replaced by a very partial rejection by business of white males. This book makes clear that there is no comparison. It is difficult for this white male reader to see how any progress could have been made without affirmative action. A legitimate question now is how far it should go. I wish that every societal problem could be examined in the highly professional way this study was done. Because this has become a textbook, the price for a new copy is outrageous and a Kindle edition is almost $50. Check your local library and be on the lookout at yard sales for a 25 cent copy. ...more |
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| 0375406719
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| 0375406719
| 4.32
| 619
| Apr 22, 1947
| Apr 11, 2000
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it was amazing
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Rice and cotton growers in the New World had a problem. The crops required lots of manual labor that could not be done by machines in heat and humidit
Rice and cotton growers in the New World had a problem. The crops required lots of manual labor that could not be done by machines in heat and humidity that made working conditions terrible. (Anyone who has spent any time in the summer in the American south as I have would think field work there unbearable, even for pay and with limited work hours). With all the work to be done, paying anyone even a tiny amount would make profit very low if any could be made at all. At first whites and natives were tried, put in bondage to do the work. Since they were among their brethren who were free, running away was always an option and recapture very difficult. What if it were possible to put a kind of brand on slaves with few to none of those branded being free? Race offered the solution, black skin the brand, and cross-Atlantic commerce the technical means to get the victims to their places of work, far removed from their native land. Slave shipping from Africa began, the rice and cotton crops were brought in with big profits, none of which went to the slaves and all of which went to their owners. Though the large estates were few and many slaveholders worked alongside their human property, a horror was established that made mockery of those who called their country a democracy upholding human rights. It was a simple machine, the cotton gin, that threw open the road to riches for slave-owners by greatly increasing the efficiency of producing useable cotton from the crop. John Hope Franklin was a scholar and noted author who died at 94 in 2009. As a typical public school student in the 1950's and 60's, when my town was at long last ending segregated schooling, I was never made aware of him or exposed to anything more than superficial information on the plight of African-Americans in the New World. This masterful book could have eliminated the ignorance that I shared with the great majority of Americans, most of whom still retain that ignorance. One can't overstate the oppressive, destructive nature of slavery or of the appeal it had for those who saw profit in it. There is no limit to the blindness money makes possible. Slavery's example should be citied today against those who hold the opinion that profit-making enterprises should be left to police themselves. The depths of psychological harm done remains evident in the United States as does the refusal of far too many Americans to acknowledge the repulsive institution as a monumental injustice that has only recently been given the attention it deserves with such places as the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee or the recently opened National Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. To this reader, there is no more riveting story about the United States than that of slavery. The opening of the west pales in comparison as does the history of the formation of 13 colonies and their eventual union into one country. It is impossible to conceive of the mental and physical burden of slavery on those enslaved, but equally difficult to understand the equanimity of the slaveholders who went to the extreme of defending the institution as a positive good in the years leading up to the American Civil War. As this book makes clear, the Civil War did little to better the condition of those who had been in bondage. Slaves were freed only to find themselves virtually re-enslaved in the South following the very brief period of Radical Reconstruction. Even in the 21st century we hear too often of police killing unarmed African-Americans, shooting first then asking questions later. Franklin's work is comprehensive. Individuals are credited frequently. One reads of the KKK, of the Underground Railroad, of the willing, even eager participation of blacks in the wars of the United States, of the relentless effort to hold down blacks by whites as avenues for equality were only slowly opened with great difficulty, politicians helping to set up hurdles to voting and turning a blind eye to violent repression. The role of religion is presented throughout. The West Indies experience is included. This book, at last, has become established as a text in American history, though I am sure in some states it would still be considered unacceptable. While the third edition paperback I found at a yard sale for 25 cents fell apart as I read it, the latest edition, the tenth, goes for $165 at Amazon, the price a sure sign of it being a textbook. What irony this history of no and low wage laborers is a profit maker today. I checked local libraries and was pleased to see that most have at least one copy, so cost should not limit readership. Each new edition brings the story up to date. My copy ended in the mid 1960's. Franklin is not out to create heroes or villains, simply to document them. He states the facts, holding people accountable for what they did or did not do when the times demanded a stand be taken. That new editions continue to come out is testimony that the story is not over. One must still stand up for human rights 160 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. ...more |
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Apr 09, 2023
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| 055338063X
| 9780553380637
| 055338063X
| 3.76
| 3,930
| 1981
| Oct 05, 1999
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it was ok
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Tom Wolfe's specialty is skewering pretention. His masterpiece is A Bonfire of the Vanities, a timeless take down of wealth vs the rest of us, of publ
Tom Wolfe's specialty is skewering pretention. His masterpiece is A Bonfire of the Vanities, a timeless take down of wealth vs the rest of us, of public figures posturing and bathing in their own fame. Wolfe knows how to take the clothes off not just the emperor but his entourage as well. Bauhaus aims primarily at architecture, a field to which few pay attention though they live or work daily in its products, thus the book title. Wolfe shows how the field was once caught in the grip of one school of thought, Bauhaus, established by German born Walter Gropius. Its influence is long past though the products remain in big American cities. This book is a period piece. Wolfe shows how Bauhaus captured America and produced a flood of minimalist buildings devoid of character, destroying the urban landscape with boring boxes of steel and glass, whose architects haughtily refused any wishes of the building owners, enforcing a utilitarian concept that nobody liked. Wolfe is in good form with his gift for ridicule, using terms that the high and mighty create with profundity, to mock them. But the reader will have a more enjoyable read with Bonfire, My Name is Charlotte Simmons, or the hilarious The Right Stuff. If you are a student of architecture, Bauhaus is a must read. Not being one, I only got 83% through the book (thanks for that number, Kindle) before yawning and giving up. ...more |
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Apr 03, 2023
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| 0679723153
| 9780679723158
| 0679723153
| 4.04
| 1,804
| 1948
| 1973
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it was amazing
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In this masterful book, Richard Hofstadter gives the reader a look at the personalities of important figures in American history without, as he says i
In this masterful book, Richard Hofstadter gives the reader a look at the personalities of important figures in American history without, as he says in the introduction, engaging in hero worship. The subtitles of chapters are worth reproducing: Thomas Jefferson: The Aristocrat as Democrat Andrew Jackson and the Rise of Liberal Capitalism John C. Calhoun: The Marx of the Master Class Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth Wendell Phillips: The Patrician as Agitator William Jennings Bryan: The Democrat as Revivalist Theodore Roosevelt: The Conservative as Progressive Woodrow Wilson: The Conservative as Liberal Herbert Hoover and the Crisis of American Individualism FDR: The Patrician as Opportunist Hofstadter intends to show the complexity of personality that makes these men so interesting, the contrast between image and action, what they said and what they did. Insight that will cause the reader to pause and reflect are found throughout the book. Two passages are representative, the first about a type of man uncommon in any age and the second regarding a type that is found throughout American history and is certainly present in the 21st century. "Lincoln was chastened and not intoxicated by power. It was almost apologetically that he remarked in response to a White House serenade after his re-election that 'So long as I have been here, I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.' " Of the titans of the industrialization of America in a chapter he titles The Spoilsmen Hofstadter writes, "For the most part they were parvenues, and they behaved with becoming vulgarity; but they were also men of heroic audacity and magnificent exploitative talents - shrewd, energetic, aggressive, rapacious, domineering, insatiable." Free of the great quantity of minutia found in full biographies, this book gives strikingly intimate looks behind the personas by which the American people know our historical figures. ...more |
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Mar 31, 2023
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Mar 31, 2023
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| 0231183410
| 9780231183413
| 0231183410
| 4.15
| 13
| unknown
| Mar 08, 2022
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really liked it
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This book is documentary. As such it can be a dry read, but it is valuable in laying out the long history of a propaganda project that has been succes
This book is documentary. As such it can be a dry read, but it is valuable in laying out the long history of a propaganda project that has been successful. Israel, like the United States, exists on land taken in infamy. Both countries came into their territory by either force or theft or some combination of the two. Because early Americans were fleeing persecution in England and because Jews had been the victims of the holocaust are not justifications for going to a foreign land and taking it from the natives. Manifest Destiny and Zionism have much in common raising self-righteousness to the point of blindness. With the United States, propaganda had a role but it was brute force from start to finish that obtained the land. With Israel, propaganda along with networking among the rich and powerful have been vital tools for taking the land. This book takes the reader step by step through the decades as Hollywood stars, studio moguls and Israelis stir the propaganda pot to sway the American people into ignoring the native Arabs of Palestine in favor of white Europeans who could be portrayed as "just like us" with Paul Newman, John Wayne and a host of other big names lending a hand. Though the studio moguls placed profit first and were reluctant to use Israel for movie production when other places were cheaper, or thought scripts about Israel might have little appeal in the U.S., they did jump in from time to time, first with Biblical epics in the 1950's and then scoring a big win with the movie, Exodus as slanted a story and as lavishly produced as Hollywood could make. Any reader familiar with the plight of the Palestinians through the entire lifetime of Zionism, will see in this book how history can be manipulated, one side ignored and a story presented that makes heroes, builds self-righteousness to a fever pitch, presents a conqueror as victim and wins support through a carefully and continually promoted story successfully swaying the views of a nation of hundreds of millions in the interest of a country of a few million. Starting with the founding of Israel and ending its account at about 2018 with Israeli Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, the reader will find every big name in Hollywood singing the praises of Israel and only a very few risking all (seeing a career abruptly end and be called an anti-semite) to say something for the Palestinians. Only with Spielberg's Munich did a major production begin to admit another side was involved. As with a spoiled child, Israel has gone from bad to worse, moving ever further to the right due to unstinting support from the United States so that today the Israeli government contains fanatics who claim openly that all of the occupied territory taken by force in 1967 belongs to Jews only. Illegal settlements expand and thrive. Palestinian farmers are beaten and their olive trees destroyed by rampaging settlers. But it is modest homemade videos, not Hollywood, that are getting the truth out. Whereas Hollywood has almost without exception told "the story of Israel" as Israel would have it told, with Israeli officials often reviewing scripts and films for acceptability before release, many smartphone cameras are now getting the truth out offering the possibility that justice may be done for a people who have for too long been invisible or maligned on the silver screen. ...more |
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| 000686225X
| 9780006862253
| 000686225X
| 3.00
| 3
| Jun 01, 1991
| Jan 01, 1991
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really liked it
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We tend not to think of the ideas behind the way we live. Things are the way they are and accepted as the way they will be in the future. Over one lif
We tend not to think of the ideas behind the way we live. Things are the way they are and accepted as the way they will be in the future. Over one lifetime this isn't an unreasonable assumption, but over history ideas take fire, usually in two steps. First comes a philosopher proposing ideas and then a leader inspired by those ideas connects with a public receptive to change. There to Here examines two conflicting schools of thought about humanity. One, called natural law theory, dates back to Greek and Roman stoicism and was updated in the writings of John Locke. In this school, all individuals are considered equal in their personhood. Quite apart from the obvious differences in physical and mental abilities or of needs and desires, each of us as a person is worthy of respect and is not to be placed above or below any other person. You and I are equally persons before we have our own personality. We have an inherent right to respect, a natural law, that precedes manmade law. The other school of thought began with Plato's Republic and was more recently characterized in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The ideal community is sought. Individuals are active agents in constant motion, vying for place and power and in need of restraint to promote their own good. Without the structure of government to keep order, all will be in conflict in lives that are famously characterized by Hobbes as "nasty, brutish and short." In contrast to the natural law school, this communitarian school looks at what men do rather than what they are. It is Craig Thomas' goal to show how both schools of thought developed since the 1600's (Locke and Hobbes) to be represented in the 20th century by liberal democracy on one hand and communism and fascism on the other. The reader is treated to a wonderful examination of how the concepts of the individual and the state were developed in the thinking of Hegel, Marx, Durkheim and Weber. For the communitarians, the individual finds identity only in the state, rather than being a person in his own right. Hobbes proposed a single ruler with absolute authority over all members of the community and we have seen in Nazism and Stalinism how individuals were freely destroyed in the millions at the behest of a leader seeking to perfect a state. To this reader living in 21st century America, grounded in the ideas of the founding fathers who drew heavily on the work of John Locke, Locke's thinking seems quite understandable and persuasive. In contrast the communitarian ideas so dreadfully imposed by communism and fascism are repulsive. Hegel's concept of a world-spirit, an ideal out there coming to ever improving realizations over the ages in different societies, is outlandish and fantastic, but it was influential. This is not light reading, but Thomas writes clearly and successfully follows the two threads of thought as he works his way though three centuries of political thinking. This book is a great aid to understanding political philosophy by connecting philosophers together. It provides illumination that would be difficult if one read the work of each one at a time. Curiously, Craig Thomas did not write any other work concerning philosophy though he was a prolific author. ...more |
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Paperback
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| 0141441720
| 9780141441726
| 0141441720
| 4.38
| 7,116
| Jun 01, 1948
| Jan 01, 2005
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it was amazing
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War is a fascinating subject, but in literature it is too easily bogged down in detail. Pages of maps with troop deployments and movements shown in de
War is a fascinating subject, but in literature it is too easily bogged down in detail. Pages of maps with troop deployments and movements shown in detail are not only boring but deceptive, the commanders at the time not having the detail available to a reader after the fact in addition to the fluidity of the situation in real time. If a war is to be described, who better to tell of it than commanders who directed the action? What better action to describe than the ultimate war after which no similar world conflict can come to pass? World War Two was a clear case of aggression countered by justifiable defense. It involved unprecedented masses of equipment and men on land, on the sea and in the air with new technology continually coming into use (radar, sonar, etc.). Every resource on all sides was tapped. Churchill notes the irony of the tank, invented by the British in WW1, to be then highly developed by Hitler into a weapon for blitzkrieg against which the inventors' outdated armor was helpless. If a weapon was available it was used including the atomic bombs that closed the war and insured that any future major power conflict would be world ending and could not be fought. The epic of WW2, filled with innumerable cases of heroism and sacrifice amid the movements of great armies and fleets can never be repeated as a single nuclear detonation can instantly eliminate such military groupings today. Curiously, we still maintain armies and navies as if we expect the next war to be conventional. Winston Churchill, respected not only for his leadership of Great Britain during the war, but for his mastery of the English language and his historical writing I thought would be the perfect story teller for WW2, though the 3600 pages of his six volume work looked daunting on the library shelf. I have not been disappointed. As a man who insisted on written communication for all orders that he gave throughout the conflict and as a gentleman not given to the personal petty insults that are so common in American politics today, the reader gets fascinating detail of gentlemen working in an atmosphere of mutual respect simply to survive. Having served the British Admiralty during WW1, Churchill was well equipped to move into that position at the beginning of WW2 before becoming both Prime Minister and Defense Minister with full authority over all war policy. In this first volume the story begins with the Treaty of Versailles that ended WW1 then follows Hitler's relentless and audacious moves to rearm and expand Germany in outright violation of the Treaty provisions. Throughout, Churchill warns that time is passing, the strength of Germany is growing and opportunities are being lost to control German expansion. We all know of the charge of appeasement that history has placed on Neville Chamberlin. Churchill does not dispute that, yet he doesn't condemn Chamberlain, explaining that the Prime Minister was acting in concert with the feelings of the British people who, along with the French, had no interest in beginning another slaughter after the experience of WW1. Chamberlin was also under the impression that he could personally influence Hitler (and Stalin) to reach reasonable agreements. Hitler worked this to his advantage first in reoccupying the Rhineland, then taking over in Austria and topping it all off with the occupation of Czechoslovakia, in each case talking up a storm of propaganda to portray Germany as the victim while betting the British and French would not respond. In each case the difficulty of opposing Hitler became greater. Since the Czechs were willing to fight, had a respectable army and substantial fortifications with a USSR that was ready to support fellow Slavs, it was in Churchill's view the last opportunity to act that would head off total war. From an American perspective, Churchill's account surprised me in that the power of the League of Nations is repeatedly mentioned. Hitler's moves were precisely what the League was formed to counter. Since the US Congress had refused to allow the US to enter the League, as President Wilson had wanted, my impression has always been that it was a completely impotent body, but apparently this was not felt to be so in Europe where the idea of concerted action remained strong, Britain, France and the USSR all being League members . Another interesting issue for me was Mussolini's initial reluctance to join up with Hitler, in particular because of Italy's reluctance to see Austria annexed by Germany . But because England and France would not approve of the Duce's pet aggressive project, the invasion of Abyssinia, while Hitler had no problem with it, Mussolini swallowed the Anschluss and the Axis was formed. Before reading this book I had no idea that Britain and France had attempted to counter the Nazi invasion of Norway, abandoning the effort when Germany opened the Western offensive and every counterforce was needed in the low countries. I strongly advise internet access as you read. I found the net a great resource when trying to determine the difference between, say, a pocket battleship and a battle cruiser. It should be noted that the success of the British cracking of Nazi cryptography, Enigma, is never mentioned by Churchill in this history as it was still classified at the time of writing. That history has told us what happened in WW2 has no damping effect on the excitement felt in this story where the future was unknown to the participants. The clarity of Churchill's prose has me hooked. I've plunged into volume 2, Their Finest Hour. ...more |
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| 0321043715
| 9780321043719
| 0321043715
| 3.39
| 120
| 1984
| Jul 11, 2006
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really liked it
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This is another in the very enjoyable Library of American Biography that provides a concise and compact account of the lives of notables in American h
This is another in the very enjoyable Library of American Biography that provides a concise and compact account of the lives of notables in American history. Though we know the outcome of the conflict between the native and the white man in North America, it's difficult to imagine that for those whites who lived at the time there was any doubt about victory in the long run with more advanced weapons, more manpower, better supply and a culture with aspects that would silently invade and undermine that of the native. The history of the conflict told only of repeated defeat and loss of land. For the native it would require more than a little hope and a great deal of bravery to believe the land could be held. The tribes being proudly distinct, it could always be thought that defeat had been the result for them, but will not be for us. What makes the story of Tecumseh different is both his call for tribal unity, which he could see was the only hope, and the degree of his countercultural success. Whiskey, clothing, cookery, weapons and jewelry of American manufacture all appealed to the natives to the extent that they willingly hunted game for the pelts that could be traded to get them. This by itself made the native dependent on the white and all but insured the decline of the ancient ways. There was only one way to resist, by total withdrawal. In the early years of the 19th century, the brother of the Shawnee Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, became known as The Prophet for his teaching of withdrawal from interaction with whites. He had been an alcoholic. At one point he lost consciousness during which he had a vision. After coming to he would never take another drink of alcohol and would have a clear idea of how to resist the white man. This seemingly miraculous transformation greatly impressed not only his fellow Shawnees, but also members of other nearby tribes. The Prophet preached not only renunciation of white culture and its products, but an acceptance by all tribes of unity in the face of the white threat. His brother having been a ne'er-do-well, the transformation impressed Tecumseh who, won to the philosophy of his brother, began the remarkable and prolonged effort to unite tribes across not only native lands in Ohio, but in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and as far south as Mississippi and Alabama. To even attempt such a unification that went against all tribal precedent was an act of boldness rightfully admired since, but respect must also be given for the dedication Tecumseh showed, his persuasive power and dogged refusal to give up the effort even when he met rejection in council or desertion after a battle. Add the physical endurance required to travel repeatedly across a wide region with no guarantee of success. Author Edmunds points out that for the native, the troops at his side almost always included family members, unlike the American army of strangers to each other under the command of one person, also a stranger. For the Americans, either regular army or militia, families were safely far from the battle. In addition, the natives did not recognize formal ranks that mandated obedience regardless of circumstances. Bravery was admired on both sides, but understandably the natives were less likely to willingly expose their ranks of brothers, fathers, uncles and cousins to massed firepower. If a battle was not going well, retreat was always an option, whoever it might be that was calling for making a stand. That no man could tell another what to do was a foundation of native culture, the antithesis of military hierarchy. Turmoil was all about in the early 1800's in the Old Northwest. Settlers were as always moving in, the British were on hand in Canada, the War of 1812 would break out and it seemed just possible that the natives could make use of the situation to hold the remains of their land, what was left to them after the Treaty of Greenville took away their homeland along the Ohio River. In this confusing state, tribes could ally with the Americans or the British. Tecumseh's tribe, the Shawnee, were divided with some settling into farming allied with the Americans. Anyone who has read about warfare knows that more often than not things do not happen according to plan. This book is filled with examples. For anyone who lives, as I do, in the region within which the action took place, the mention of familiar place names will heighten the interest. I have been to the site of Prophetstown on the Tippicanoe River in Indiana where once The Profit established a settlement. There is a very enjoyable museum at a place undisturbed by modern development where one can sit amid the giant oaks and think of what once happened there not so very long ago. ...more |
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| 1501183087
| 4.23
| 999
| 2019
| Oct 15, 2019
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it was amazing
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In this comprehensive history of wealth vs the people there is a great insight that seems obvious to me now that I think about it, but never occurred
In this comprehensive history of wealth vs the people there is a great insight that seems obvious to me now that I think about it, but never occurred to me before. It is that Americans were considered producers up to WW2 and then became identified as consumers in the rush to consumption of the 1950's. Think of a walk through a town or city in 1900. You would see storefronts for a multitude of businesses, each owned by a proprietor on the premises with whom you could speak about the merchandise being sold. If you went to a different city, you'd find similar merchandise for sale but the business would be run by another individual or individuals unrelated to those in other cities. What would become known as chain-stores were not seen. You couldn't count on finding the exact same merchandise or brands as we do today. Along with the mass of small farmers, these entrepreneurs were producers who sold mostly hand made goods. For this world of small producers, the coming of giant companies dominating sales of a particular necessity such as oil, coal, transportation (railroads) were a threat. The railroad could dictate prices to people who lived in the territory covered solely by that railroad. Monopoly was the goal of all the robber barons whose names became synonymous with the product whose production they dominated, Carnegie with steel, Rockefeller with oil. The rich got richer at the expense of the small producers with no end in sight, quite naturally bringing outrage and a call for the government to do something about it. This starts the 100 year period over which Matt Stoller covers the rise and fall of populism, the collapse and recovery of business and the return of monopoly, seeming to serve the consumer rather than oppressing the small producers of old. The satisfaction with Amazon by consumers, however, only hides the way that Amazon can, just like in the old days, dictate prices to small companies if not taking them over. We hear frequently of the 1% leaving the 99% further and further behind and there are calls for the breakup of monopolies, but the country is pro-business as never before. Rather than moves on the part of government, due to public demand, to rein in large business as was the case with the Teddy Roosevelt and then with the FDR's New Deal, the public has stood by and watched in the Great Recession/Mortgage Bust as the government has rushed to bail out those guilty of defrauding the public while leaving the citizen unable to pay his/her mortgage to default. President Obama, elected on the promise of hope and change, quickly rushed to help bankers and investors while agreeing to the pharma and insurance monopolies requirements for "Obamacare." In this 100 year period, profit before people has returned to the almost complete freedom it had in the beginning. This book might be be titled "Patman Tried" because it recounts as a central theme the career of one Texas Representative in Congress, Wright Patman, who in his long service there never gave up his drive to protect the little guy from big business. Readers learn that too-big-to-fail goes far back to the 1973 collapse of the PennCentral Railroad. A rush was on for a government bailout, all the pieces were in place until one man, Patman, said no. The company went bankrupt and the country survived. Ironically, it was the new generation of Boomers in Congress that pushed Patman out, seeing him as just another elderly committee head that had to go, clearing the path for business to be set free of the out of fashion regulations of the New Deal. In short, almost all that was constructed to protect Americans from concentrated wealth and the power that comes with it was deliberately dismantled, done in plain sight, driven by an ideological "free market" agenda carefully recounted by Matt Stoller. Plutocrats, once reviled, are now admired as they personally amass an ever greater share of the national wealth. The citizenry is left with decaying infrastructure, is denied national health insurance and reviles the government which is supposed to represent the people but instead is captured by lobbies. History is too often ignored, but it will teach all who are willing to listen that things as they are have come about for a reason. This book does that teaching, in the process highlighting the good work of Wright Patman, a politician who truly represented the people over decades and is all but forgotten. ...more |
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| 0679764410
| 3.93
| 28,448
| Jan 31, 1997
| Apr 07, 1998
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really liked it
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Thomas Jefferson was a gifted writer, the man who gave us the Declaration of Independence, but he was a shy person who disliked public speaking and pe
Thomas Jefferson was a gifted writer, the man who gave us the Declaration of Independence, but he was a shy person who disliked public speaking and personal confrontation, preferring to be master of his domain at Monticello. He was a man of contradictions as Joseph Ellis reveals to us in this psychological study. The idea that an individual should be as free as possible from authority was a foundation of Jefferson's thought though he owned over 150 slaves. Professing his dislike of slavery he did not work to end it instead proclaiming that future generations would take care of the problem either through gradual emancipation, his hope, or by violent confrontation between the races, his fear. He felt that speaking out against slavery would only isolate him, preventing the achievements he thought possible through his efforts. Though not a tyrant with his slaves, he conveniently left then under the charge of overseers in the fields. Jefferson promoted life on the land, that of the virtuous and responsible farmer, but he spent little time in the field and much time at home studying and tinkering with pet projects. His property at Monticello had poor soil with his crops bringing little income to relieve the heavy debt he owed to foreign bankers. A Virginian, he was a republican defending agrarian America and states rights against the Federalists led by Adams and Hamilton who saw the future in a strong central government supported by industry and finance, the backbone of the northeastern states. Despite his distain for the industrial world, Jefferson's sole profitmaking venture was a small nail factory he started on his property employing slaves to make the nails. His dislike of slavery could not compete with the financial benefit it brought him, nor could his dislike of the industrial keep him from manufacturing nails to earn income. Debt oppressed him throughout his life, but did not inhibit his free spending while in Paris as part of the delegation to France, buying things and shipping them back to Virginia. At the end of his life he owed what in today's dollars would amount to over $1 million, resulting in an auction of his estate after his death. Though FDR pushed through the construction of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, Jefferson would have been strongly opposed to the centralization of authority represented by the New Deal. He also would object to the Constitution being seen as holy writ, a tyranny of the dead cited to prevent needed change regardless of present circumstances as we see with the Second Amendment today. Though we all exhibit contradictions, those of national heroes are usually forgotten. This book is an antidote to thinking only of Jefferson on Mt. Rushmore. ...more |
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| 0765804646
| 4.23
| 106
| Jan 01, 1980
| Apr 30, 1999
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it was amazing
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This book is the perfect combination of biography and American history. Walter Lippman was a journalist who for decades wrote an opinion column syndic
This book is the perfect combination of biography and American history. Walter Lippman was a journalist who for decades wrote an opinion column syndicated in newspapers throughout the United States, dealing primarily with international affairs. Because Lippman came up via a privileged path with money no problem and finished his schooling at Harvard, he was from the start an insider who made the usual network of friends who were either influential at the time or would become so. Incredibly, before the age of 30 he had the ear of a President (Wilson). Toward the end of his career he had the ear and then the enmity of LBJ. Throughout he mingled with just about every known political personality not only in the United States but in Europe as well. Trips to Europe were frequent and always put to good use with visits to such as the Pope and heads of state. Not simply formal visits, friendships were maintained through intelligent conversation about the pressing issues of the day, Lippman's second wife, Helen, not only taking copious notes but often acting as translator. The reader could not ask for more vivid portraits of the powerful, the people that the public know only as images. For example, in a visit by the Lippmans to the USSR, Khrushchev invited them to play badminton and, surprisingly for a short and portly man, won. This is a book filled with personal encounters. LBJ, known for his domination of others in conversation, remarked of Lippman, "as soon as I pull my chair toward him, he pulls his away" This was a perfect sign of Lippman's high standard for journalism. The journalist should remain aloof from the danger in relationships with power. The reporter could not let personal relationships interfere with reason when deciding on the value of this or that political policy. By adhering to this, he established himself as a person both in the know and worth listening to. His readership was vast and influential because he wasn't a toady to anyone and would quickly speak out against bad policy with good reasons to shun it. Politicians attempted to cultivate him and he enjoyed the attention, connections and socializing this made possible but kept his columns dedicated to suggesting the best policies based only on the facts of the matter. He was a public intellectual unlike any journalist today. Not only did he write his column, Today and Tomorrow, several times a week, he also wrote books that were well received and remain highly regarded. He had no respect for the mythology of democracy: that each citizen is omnicompetent and that the collective will of the citizenry is capable of making the right policy choices through the vote. He felt that only an impartial group of technical experts on specific subjects, groups that could only offer advice without a say in policy making, could make a democracy workable. We the people would be limited to voting in qualified people and voting out those who proved to be poor choices. With a good income and the companionship of a second wife that fully supported him and helped him engage fully with emotion, Lippman flourished, rewarded with the respect of the powerful, living an expansive life of travel and intellectual challenge that will awe any reader. Lippman lived exactly the life he wanted. Though he did not always suggest the right direction for policy, he arrived at his views honestly with a sincere desire to offer the best path for his country. As for the American century, Lippman's intellectual lifetime covered the period from before World War I to the Vietnam War. Starting with Teddy Roosevelt, Lippman had something to say through the terms of Wilson, Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ. Ronald Steel gives an excellent background on all the issues throughout. Any lover of history will find this book a delight. ...more |
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| 0062300547
| 3.86
| 416,915
| Jun 28, 2016
| Jun 28, 2016
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it was amazing
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This book has been a bestseller and I am late to the read. The story has elements familiar to me such as the deranged screaming mother and the good bud This book has been a bestseller and I am late to the read. The story has elements familiar to me such as the deranged screaming mother and the good buddy older sister. How many times did I hear my mother say, "she's not your mother, I am!" exactly as described in this book. In my case the member of the family providing salvation was not grandmother as with Vance, but Dad, who stoically endured all, never responded to attack and gave me a stable model to emulate quite different from that of the average American male. Thank you, Dad! I did not have to face poverty, nor did I see routine destructive behavior in the neighbors or witness the decline of my town. Vance was in the position of too many Americans who, surrounded by hopelessness and despair, are at the same time at home nowhere else. With both my parents being from the South, I did get a taste of resentment for the way other Americans were thought to look down on those from the South. The Beverly Hillbillies was not appreciated even though I thought the show made fun of the pretentious upper class as much as it did the Clampetts. Reading this book, I could not help thinking of the similar situation of poor whites in Appalachia and poor blacks in the ghettoes of urban America. It is so easy to look self righteously from the outside at both groups and wonder why people in dire straits don't simply get out, no matter what it takes. But this simplistic view doesn't take into account the powerful connection of identity with the place where one grows up, absorbing the negative as easily as those more fortunate absorb the positive in middle class homes. We like to think of ourselves having completely free will and tend to ignore that we are constructed from our environment. I hoped to gain insight from this book into the mindset of the many white Americans who are angry and often armed, vowing to fight change and government in America; to throw a wrench into the works if nothing else. In this Hillbilly Elegy delivers. Other books, such as Strangers in Their Own Land, Confederates in the Attic and Ain't No Makin' It also deliver, though nothing can tell the story as intimately as an autobiography. I'm worried about J.D. Vance, though. The fame and fortune of this book are propelling him into divisive politics, potentially pushing him from the rational reflection and refreshing truth-telling he has shown into the extremism that easily comes from playing to a crowd. He is rightfully proud of what he accomplished in his escape from what looked like his destiny in Appalachia, but having the exhilarating power to escape adversity can easily turn into loving power for itself. He is currently running for an Ohio seat in the Senate and is putting out some crazy talk typical of the extreme right that keeps me from applauding. Read the book and keep your eye on the man. ...more |
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| 9780801481116
| 0801481112
| 4.18
| 50
| Jun 1991
| Jan 05, 1993
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it was amazing
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John Dewey, American public intellectual, was born in 1859. He died in 1952. This outstanding book is a trip through the period that repeatedly made t
John Dewey, American public intellectual, was born in 1859. He died in 1952. This outstanding book is a trip through the period that repeatedly made this reader pause and consider topics that might be, that should be, on the mind of any American today. Dewey's life began in a time of romanticism and idealism in both Europe and America just as the American Civil War was about to began. It ended when both "isms" were history with nothing to replace them and nuclear war threatening, as it is today. Romanticism placed emotion above reason. Science, though revealing facts, was a cold companion in a blind universe that it could not transcend. One could not be fully human without relating to the world with feeling. Nature could speak to us, wordlessly, through our emotional response to it. Idealists believed that there was a spiritual background to reality; that mankind was progressing, improving as it moved toward a destiny indicated by ideals of beauty and the good. If this was not directed by a god, then surely there was a force that acted through human behavior even if not known directly by individuals. There could be no other basis for morality. Dewey as a young man subscribed to these thoughts. As he aged he became uncomfortable with them, increasingly persuaded that science alone could inform us of reality. The challenge that faced each person, as an individual and in community was to decide what to do about problems as they arose. The good was what would benefit the community through cooperation while at the same time aiding each member in realizing his/her full potential. The was known as Pragmatism. Democracy was for Dewey the only political arrangement that could be Pragmatic. The trouble he saw was capitalism that, by design, elevated the few to power over the many and degraded the great majority to the status of tools to be used by those few. Socialism would be more in accord with Pragmatism, but Dewey knew well enough from what happened in the USSR that state socialism was not the answer. He also recognized that in the Unites States, just the mention of the word socialism meant defeat in national politics. He recognized that there could never be the personal growth necessary for true human fulfilment for all if there wasn't equal opportunity. It was foolish to believe in a democracy of one man - one vote when some were born to deprivation and others to entitlement and wealth. He saw no difference between intellectuals claiming sole responsibility for their thinking ability and the wealthy claiming to have earned every cent of their wealth. He was an advocate of income redistribution, but never believed that in itself would make a difference. He thought that only the individual fully involved with the community could bring the kind of society needed. Everyone would want to see the success of the whole and in achieving that success, each individual would be advanced in realizing all he/she could be. He was a severe critic of public education for the way it unapologetically trained youth to accept the status quo and to fit into the economic scene in willing service to established wealth Dewey headed a program in pedagogy at the University of Chicago, putting into practice his plan for the best education possible, one that would not (as critics wrongfully claimed) allow children to do as they pleased, but would have teachers guide the inclinations of children to be all that they could be within the limits of the possible. This could not be more in contrast to the typical public education that expected children to take in what was given and then reproduce it on demand. Yet, as with income redistribution, Dewey did not think education in itself would bring improvement, primarily because it was subject to so much input from so many people across the country. Robert Westbrook excels in making the intellectual ideas that prevailed during Dewey's lifetime understandable to the reader. He gives both Dewey and his critics full play, in particular the debate between Dewey and Walter Lippman over democracy, an absorbing topic for this reader. Democracy as seen by the two men had three possibilities. 1) All citizens would have the vote and all would be encouraged to vote. Those who did not vote would be failing the system of rule of, by and for the people. This was Dewey's preference with the proviso that "the public" would be individuals fulling engaged in community and supported by that community. His analogy was that only the man who wears the shoes can say where they pinch. Power had to come from the bottom up where problems were encountered in everyday life. 2) Though all had the vote, the great majority were not qualified to vote based on the fact that most were ignorant of the matters involved. Only an elite, those who knew the issues should be in the driver's seat. There was no need to worry about non-voters. The only purpose for the people to vote was to throw out bad guys and retain good ones. This was Lippman's view. As I read this, I thought of Jefferson's idea of the voting yeoman farmer who was intimately familiar with the problems of the agricultural America of his day, property ownership being a qualification for voting. In other words, this scheme is nothing new and is in practice what we know today, with the experts on legislation being lobbyists who know every detail but have a vested interest far different from that of the public. 3) All would have the vote and there would be an advisory body of technical experts who would only offer alternatives to the legislature without having any power to pass legislation. Dewey feared that this restriction on power could too easily be sidestepped, in the end putting the elite in control. It seems obvious that choice #3 is the best plan, interesting to note that from 1974 to 1995 there was an Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) as part of the government, composed of experts and tasked with advising Congress. It was terminated in 1995 when Republicans took power (the "Contract With America and Newt Gingrich) under the claim that it cost too much and was not in line with Republican goals. Democracy was Dewey's obsession and reading this book is exhilarating if only for exposing the reader to his wide open, stimulating ideas regarding a system of government that could be so much more than it has evolved to be: a democracy of lobbies, projecting an image of the public behind which is the reality of the few operating the process for their own profit, exactly the case of experts putting themselves into power that Dewey feared. Dewey's thoughts remained only thoughts. He was clear in his descriptions of the goal, but he could never come up with a practical (pragmatic!) way to get from here to there. He treasured science as a source of information and dismissed any grand idea of divine direction for human affairs. he treasured human beings as wonderfully capable and productive if allowed to develop fully. He deplored the use of people as tools with work that had nothing of them in it but their robotic actions, to the detriment of their minds; a person as a replaceable part. On finishing the book, I considered Dewey to have come up with a perfect description of a mountain peak; the good society good for each member. At the same time he precisely defined the barriers to ascent. We need to solve the problem of how to make the climb, being pragmatic in doing so. ...more |
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| 0673393194
| 3.12
| 41
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| Dec 01, 2019
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really liked it
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In the debate about whether mankind progresses, I find one area where it is indisputable, the acceptance, still far from complete, of women as fully e
In the debate about whether mankind progresses, I find one area where it is indisputable, the acceptance, still far from complete, of women as fully equal to men. Though I had heard the name of Cady Stanton, it was only when I read an essay of hers from 1892 that I was stimulated to find out more about her. This short biography does an excellent job portraying the issues and the times in which this remarkable woman lived. She was a close associate of Susan B. Anthony, seven years her junior, who did the organizational and clerical work while Cady Stanton wrote articles, made speeches and impressed the public with her command of her subject. Her subject was the inferior status of women and she saw it broadly, as sexual and social, not just in the political lack of suffrage. This book concisely describes the social turmoil of the mid to late 19th century. The drive for abolition of slavery is probably the best known of the movements of that time, but there was a strong effort to ban alcohol as well. Feminism lagged behind, denounced even by a majority of women that Cady Stanton sought to win over, impressing all who heard her speak even if they did not agree with her. Freed by inherited wealth and aided by a supportive though feisty and usually absent husband due to his dedication to abolition, Cady Stanton, a mother of seven, had the means to provide child care during her frequent absences from home. She lived her entire life in New York state, a center of American political activity in the late 1800's, knowing and associating with such as Frederick Douglass and Henry Ward Beecher. She did not have to travel far to reach New York City and was a principle organizer of the Seneca Falls (NY) convention on women held in 1848 which is considered the opening event for the women's rights movement. The dispute that dominated Cady Stanton's early life was over priority. Should the rights of the slave or that of the woman be considered first? For most slavery was most important and Cady Stanton would often be attacked for not giving it her full attention. She spoke mostly to groups of women and found a majority of them opposed to her call for female equality. Far more popular among women was the call for temperance. Not surprisingly for someone on the lecture circuits of the time, Cady Stanton also knew and was friends with the much younger Francis Willard who played a leading role promoting prohibition. Cady Stanton's view on the equality of women, notable in the essay I read, was comprehensive. She believed that all avenues, social and sexual, should be open to women without restriction. She had an outlook that would be at home today, but was astounding 150 years ago, properly earning her place as a trailblazer for women's rights. This book was a double treat for me as I discovered the Library of American Biography of which it is a title, published in 1980 containing (per the back cover) 28 biographies ranging from Tecumseh to Andrew Carnegie. The Cady Stanton book is only 175 pages in length and not a sentence is wasted. I'm ready for more! Cady Stanton's biographer, Lois Banner, has an easy to read yet energetic style that held my attention throughout. ...more |
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| 9780804138215
| 0804138214
| 3.95
| 143
| May 24, 2016
| May 24, 2016
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it was amazing
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The collapse of the WTC towers on 9/11 was a horrible thing, but the reaction of the United States both immediately and for years afterward was a disa
The collapse of the WTC towers on 9/11 was a horrible thing, but the reaction of the United States both immediately and for years afterward was a disaster for the country with regard to its own laws, one that could only have pleased Osama bin Laden. Karen Greenberg gives us an account of the speed with which the G. W. Bush administration threw out the Constitution, preferring to go to "the dark side" as Vice-President Cheney termed it, going with preposterous legal rulings of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the executive department agency charged with giving the President legal advice. There, a zealot for increased presidential power, John Yoo, was happy to approve torture by smothering it in euphemisms. Because the CIA had not been informed of the FBI's knowledge of a guy taking flight training with no interest in learning how to land prior to 9/11, there was a frenzy to break down the wall between domestic crime investigations and international intelligence gathering. This wall was in place to prevent Americans from coming under surveillance with the excuse of national security. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created the FISA court to hold hearings on any request to monitor Americans for national security reasons and the Bush administration set about to defeat this firewall purpose. As a result the FISA court went from rarely holding hearings and denying requests for warrants, to allowing almost anything to result in a warrant (an approval for surveillance). All restraint was dropped. "Special renditions" to CIA black sites for torture opened as people were grabbed, labeled as unlawful combatants and locked away indefinitely. The CIA was more than eager to run the program even though the FBI wanted nothing to do with torture. The prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba allowed the farce of the US doing un-Constitutional things because it was not on US territory, the same reasoning that allowed the torture black sites in Europe and the middle east. Habeas corpus, the requirement that a person not be kept in prison without a hearing on the charges against him/her was fought over in the courts even as the suspects rotted in solitary confinement for years. As for being kept in the dark, so were the American people. The NSA began its wholesale mopping up of personal communications. Denials of this, lies, were made before Congress by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he was asked directly if the American people were being monitored. The deception continued until Edward Snowden exposed the truth. Throughout the book, the reader follows the courtroom activities that would generally wave through all the government wanted to do with a few courageous judges providing exceptions. Greenberg shows how powerful fear and government are when combined to push through things that contradict the Constitution. And in the end, all the perpetrators, the violators of the highest law of the land, escaped with the blessing of President Obama. The lesson he learned being that capturing people and bringing them to trial, though far more effective that torture, is messy, potentially embarrassing for the government and far more risky than the simple act of killing by drone that needs only the President's approval, even if is an American being assassinated. Thus, in addition to being commander in chief, the President is now an assassin and this has been accepted with little objection by a Congress happy to avoid its Constitutional responsibilities and defer to the President. I finished this book far better informed of what happened, all laid out clearly by Karen Greenberg. I couldn't help but note that the CIA had been taken to task by the Church Commission back in the 1970's and limitations were placed on what the agency could do. Then came 9/11 and the CIA committed more misdeeds followed by another Congressional investigation showing how the agency had again gone off the rails with nothing to show for it. I can only wonder what good the CIA has done in the 75 years of its existence. And Edward Snowden...has any one individual ever done so much for his country? Yet our government wants to get him behind bars for exposing that government's lies that deceived us all. How many thousands of Americans were content to let the Constitution be subverted without anyone saying a word about it! ...more |
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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This gem of a book is a comprehensive and very readable look at extremism on the right in the history of America. With a thorough grounding in data, of This gem of a book is a comprehensive and very readable look at extremism on the right in the history of America. With a thorough grounding in data, often presented in chart form for extremist groups of the 20th century, Lipset gets into the philosophical basis and the characteristics of the membership of groups starting in the early 19th century and continuing to the political support of George Wallace in the 1960's, Wallace surprisingly a strong political liberal who, after defeat by a racist, decided bigotry was the key to electoral success. With each iteration of backlash there is a common theme of anxiety provoked by social change that leaves a established cultural/economic group worrying its position is threatened. A conspiracy is claimed to exist. Early on it is immigration of Catholics alarming Protestants accompanied with the conspiracy of the Illuminati. Then Jews alarm Christians with the concocted Protocols of the Elders of Zion "proving" a conspiracy, southern European immigrants alarm Americans with a northern European background, blacks with newly won freedoms alarm whites (3 distinct period outbreaks of the KKK), then Communists alarm everyone with a core of extremists in the John Birch Society calling none other than Dwight Eisenhower a communist dupe. Throughout, social anxiety picks out a group object upon which to direct anger. As Lipset points out, it isn't necessarily bigotry that starts a movement, but bigotry that naturally follows upon identifying a group as a threat. Today we see pushback against Black Lives Matter and liberalism combined with anger at elites in Trumpism. This combination of rage against some group asserting its place within society along with resentment of the elites (hatred for Hillary) and a nefarious conspiracy (Q-Anon) is a predictable combination. Consider the following quote from Rev. Billy Hargis, a man very popular on radio in the early 1960's and think of Rush Limbaugh more recently... "A giant gangster conspiracy threatens to take away our freedoms and enslave us all...the greatest threat is not so much from the outside as the inside...a powerfully entrenched liberal establishment...that reaches into the fields of education, politics, religion, labor and management - dedicated men determined to abolish the free enterprise system and bring about a world government of socialist nations...with a hatred of the less educated masses". What could be closer to MAGA? Leaving no movement unexamined, Lipset explains the origin, rise and fall of each movement. Father Coughlin (another wildly popular radio rantor), Jack Welsh of the John Birch Society and Joe McCarthy find a key to popularity, ride it for all its worth and then fade. Most interesting is a discussion of how the two party system manages to incorporate aspects of extremism to win victories in elections, as Richard Nixon did with his "Southern strategy" of dog-whistle bigotry that worked very well for the Republican party. The Politics of Unreason is a masterpiece of American history that unfortunately is out of print. I'm very sorry it isn't available as an ebook for the ease of finding material within the text that allows. A follow-up that brings the subject up to the 2020's would be very welcome should anyone be able to fill the very big shoes of Seymour Martin Lipset who died in 2006. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 27, 2022
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Apr 27, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0471678783
| 9780471678786
| 0471678783
| 4.29
| 9,729
| Jul 17, 2003
| Jan 01, 2004
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it was amazing
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The United States in the 20th and 21st centuries has been home to American exceptionalism, the idea that the country is the possessor of the best econ
The United States in the 20th and 21st centuries has been home to American exceptionalism, the idea that the country is the possessor of the best economic and political system on the planet and that it has an obligation to spread this best system worldwide, more recently by the unilateral use of armed force than by diplomacy or clandestine operations. It is telling of the power of American exceptionalism that former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has said that in spite of all that is now known about the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, he would do it again. This push of what is seen by U.S. administrations as good against evil began in earnest after WW2, the "good war" in which the raw aggression of Germany and Japan was crushed in concert with the Soviet Union, the home of communism that soon became enemy number one for the U.S. in the Cold War. But the Cold War was far from cold in the places around the globe where proxy wars were fought and regimes were either supported or opposed by the United States based solely on the American perception of the danger there of a fall to communism. As this book makes clear, President Truman was the last occupant of the office to hold back on United States involvement in Iran. In the face of great pressure by Great Britain to oppose the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian oil company (today knows as BP), Truman would not side with a colonial power, though such was the case regarding France in Vietnam. Stephen Kinzer recounts a history of Iran, ancient Persia, that chronicles the downfall of a mighty empire to become a playground for other empires, in particular those of Britain and the USSR, thanks to compliant Iranian rulers who eagerly sold out their country for personal wealth. The USSR, not out for capitalist exploitation, was eager to secure its border with Iran while Britain was out to extract any and all wealth that it could in the form of coffee, tobacco and in particular oil. The British built and maintained the refinery complex at Abadan supplying the Royal Navy with fuel. Iranians were not allowed to be trained on any technical work there. Iranian oil was considered necessary to empire just as later on the U.S. was to take the same position regarding Saudi Arabia. On its own, Iran was able to establish a democracy, the peculiar character of Mohammed Mossadegh becoming prime minister on a pledge of nationalizing the nation's oil along with the British infrastructure that extracted and exported it. The highly educated, eloquent and emotional Mossadegh was wildly popular not just in Iran, becoming a symbol of national liberation as the age of European colonialism was ending. He toured the United States to great acclaim and appeared on the cover of Time magazine as its man of the year in 1951. However, the fear of communism in the U.S. was soon to have American democracy bring Iranian democracy to a close, replaced by yet another willing servant of imperialism in return for personal power and glory, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Immediately upon leaving office, the restraint of Harry Truman regarding Iran was gone, The reluctance of Eisenhower to get involved was soon overcome by the crusading Dulles brothers, John Foster as Secretary of State and Allen as director of the newly created CIA. Anti-communism was the order of the day. The CIA jumped into action eagerly, successfully starting a train of CIA actions after Iran that steadily lowered the very high global reputation of America held at the end of WW2. Undeterred to date, American exceptionalism has eclipsed any respect for international law or the opinions of other nations. All the Shah's Men is an excellent companion to The Shadow Commander which I have also reviewed. The former gives the history that accounts for the Iranian anti-American rage that came to a head with the story told in the latter. ...more |
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not set
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Apr 03, 2022
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Apr 03, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0300243111
| 9780300243116
| 0300243111
| 3.93
| 328
| Aug 03, 2021
| Aug 03, 2021
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it was amazing
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It's important to set the stage for understanding this book. As a white child growing up in the 1950's in the United States, the world appeared to be m It's important to set the stage for understanding this book. As a white child growing up in the 1950's in the United States, the world appeared to be made up of people just like me. There were no blacks or ethnic groups even though as I think back I realize many of the last names of friends in my neighborhood had a German origin. Homosexuality did not exist in my world. None of my friends or their parents had funny accents and nobody looked strange. While I knew that there were other people, Chinese, Arabs, Mexicans, etc., they were only to be seen in National Geographic magazine dressed strangely and usually looking poor and primitive; exotics that had nothing to do with the modern world. TV shows extended this impression and though annual travel to the American south to see my grandparents revealed an accent, it was still the same people living the same lives albeit at a slower pace. Genuine poverty and black faces could be seen when traveling through the Ozarks, but discrimination was unimaginable. Everyone I knew accepted everyone else automatically. It was impossible to feel fear of others. I knew I could go to any house if I needed help, that a mom would answer the door and she would not need to unlock it. There were few fences, so yards opened into one large green space for play. Everybody went to church. There were no places that were forbidden and our gang of kids ranged widely. At ten I was put on a long distance bus for my first trip alone and I felt no anxiety at all. The world was safe, secure and open to investigation with not a word about stranger danger. My parents never grilled me on where I had been as long as I showed up for dinner on time. I would have been shocked to hear of anyone having a gun in the house. Growing up this way made us all liberals quite naturally. Of course everyone had equal rights. Of course each of us should do our best because not making an effort was all that could hold one back. Inequality didn't exist. Friendships came easily and trust followed. Cops were seldom seen and, in my experience, never needed. I had no idea I was living in a protected, limited world, shielded from a larger reality that America was about to face starting with the collapse of trust in the government brought on by the Vietnam War in 60's and early 70's. This book explores the thoughts of those who have reacted with fear to the end of the American world I knew. As US administrations have tried hard to force that world on various cultures that find it alien it has collapsed at home. Fear is rampant in the United States and, though crime statistics and reality don't support it, the mixing of different people has brought it on. Matthew Rose presents the thinking of Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist, and Samuel Francis that have given rise to the alt-right. The common thread is fear of the decline of the West undermined by liberalism, the very thinking that my upbringing gave me and to which I adhere today. Some of the above put Christianity in the dock as well. How can liberalism be bad? Doesn't proclaiming the equality of all promise a peaceful world where every person is respected as a human being with ethnicity and race disregarded? Those on the far right, drawing from the thoughts expressed in this book, would tell me that the world I knew as a child is the ideal, that I should reflect on the disappearance of that world and realize it has happened because others have been allowed in, that the assumed superiority of my limited world is necessary for life and that instead of welcoming the other as an equal I should know that equality is impossible. Cultures make the person, we are not free to establish our own agency as individuals, but must always and forever be the products a particular culture we are incapable of escaping. The model human being works on developing what his/her culture implants while holding others at a distance. Christianity is at fault because it assumes the family of man. Every member of the family is equally capable of achieving life in the hereafter by treating every other person as a brother or sister in earthly life. Jesus did not accept any person or people as superior to any other, though he recognized that power could be had by some, the Romans, at the expense of others. His council was to accept that power would not be shared equally, but that it was not important. Those who are first in this life shall be last and those who are last shall be first (for eternity). One might be oppressed but the answer was not revolution. Instead one should accept one's situation in life, oppressed though it might be and vow not to oppress others. A World after Liberalism invites the reader to understand how fear can create philosophies, how emotion can generate myopia leading to a fight against a future that offers unprecedented promise to a species with a history of strife and bloodletting in the name of asserting superiority. As a man who can certify his whiteness in all of his ancestry, I put my lot in with liberalism and the courage it requires to let go of one's own background and let in others whose cultures can have things to add to the future of humanity. If the fearful insist on taking the side of cultural purity and assertions of authority, then put me with the blacks, the browns, the yellows without distinction. Most of them know a life the opposite of the one I knew as a child, a life where one is forced to look up from below and about which not one of the people whose philosophies are featured in this book has any awareness. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 27, 2022
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Mar 27, 2022
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.75
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it was amazing
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Aug 04, 2023
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Aug 04, 2023
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| 3.98
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it was amazing
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May 30, 2023
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May 30, 2023
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| 4.11
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it was amazing
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Apr 26, 2023
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Apr 26, 2023
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| 4.32
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it was amazing
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Apr 09, 2023
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Apr 09, 2023
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| 3.76
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it was ok
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Apr 03, 2023
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Apr 03, 2023
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| 4.04
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it was amazing
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Mar 31, 2023
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Mar 31, 2023
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| 4.15
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really liked it
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Jan 09, 2023
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Jan 09, 2023
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| 3.00
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really liked it
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Dec 10, 2022
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Dec 10, 2022
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| 4.38
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it was amazing
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Nov 10, 2022
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Nov 10, 2022
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| 3.39
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really liked it
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Sep 28, 2022
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Sep 28, 2022
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| 4.23
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it was amazing
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Sep 19, 2022
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Sep 19, 2022
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| 3.93
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really liked it
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Sep 06, 2022
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Sep 06, 2022
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| 4.23
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it was amazing
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Aug 28, 2022
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Aug 28, 2022
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| 3.86
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it was amazing
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Aug 11, 2022
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Aug 11, 2022
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| 4.18
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it was amazing
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Jul 16, 2022
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Jul 16, 2022
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| 3.12
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really liked it
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May 23, 2022
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May 23, 2022
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| 3.95
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it was amazing
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May 16, 2022
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May 16, 2022
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| 4.13
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it was amazing
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Apr 27, 2022
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Apr 27, 2022
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| 4.29
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it was amazing
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Apr 03, 2022
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Apr 03, 2022
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| 3.93
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it was amazing
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Mar 27, 2022
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Mar 27, 2022
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