1 comments about Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and Fox News Founder Roger Ailes.

1. As a Libertarian I have always seen Roger Ailes as being very much a Machiavellian type person, and the author seems to agree, although he also see Forest Gump in the man as well.
   
   Mr. Ailes is no Gump to me. And I was surprised to learn he had been involved with the old Mike Douglas Show which I so loved in the 60's and 70's. Mr. Douglas was such a nice, decent man, and thus my surprised that he would have someone like Mr. Ailes around.
   
   Of no surprise to me was Mr. Ailes connection to conservative Republican types. And I am glad the author writes about how Fox News under Mr. Ailes rule has become the only real biased 'news' channel on television.
   
   As the author notes, Fox says 'we report you decide', so in essence they report what they want, in a biased way and then its up to the viewer to decide what's fact and what isn't.
   
   I will note that Fox News is still a young network and like any new idea, after 15-20 years viewers change and the pendulum swings the other way.
   
   And with those under the age of 40 and/or those who are high tech lovers being drawn to the Internet for their news, or to shows like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have, Fox News will become less of a force.

No comments about The Making of an American.

5 comments about Heroes.

1. This is one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. It is informative and interesting. It gives a wonderful first-hand telling of some of the most important events of the past four decades.



2. This book describes Pilger's interpretation of some of the most significant and tragic world events of the last forty years, but instead of focussing on presidents, generals and politicians, Pilger's account is told as it ought to be, through the lives of ordinary people, unfortunate enough to be caught up in extraordinary and sometimes horrific situations. It serves as a reminder that no human being in the world is any more or less important than any other human being - something which world leaders apparently need to be reminded of.



3. You can't deny that John Pilger has witnessed more than his fair share of social injustice, abuse of power and bloodshed on a variety of continents and he covers many in this excellent collection of essays. Unlike so many of today's journalists, he's actually put in the leg-work and been to these events and seen first hand what's going on (rather than re-hash second-hand reports), so he knows what he's talking about. His reporting is accurate and well researched and he regularly challenges the accepted norm: in this fine book, he really does make you stop and think about the folly of current World leaders who time and again fail to learn from past mistakes.

   You can only wonder why they don't take the time to understand the consequences of their decisions, (made behind closed doors in comfortable surroundings), on innocent people and in our names....whether we're talking about wars and armed conflicts or shady political and financial deals. A great read and one that should be on everyone's bookshelves, it'll leave you wondering who the real problem countries and people are, especially in the current World climate.




4. Left-wing bias from beginning to end. If you're serious about getting an even perspective on things, find some other source. I can handle a certain amount of distortion, but really, there are limits. Waste of time and money.



5. Further down, someone - presumably dissatisfied by the fact that John Pilger doesn't try to explain away the crimes of Western politicians as acts of historical necessity - referred to the author's "monumental left-wing bias". Indeed. Pilger is heavily biased, there is no doubt about that. Pilger is biased in favour of the innocent, the harmless, the poor, and the victims of atrocity. This unfortunate bias certainly distorts everything he writes, making it impossible for him to sneak in the self-serving excuses of the Western pigs who have benefitted from decades of brutality and oppression which they have either directly perpetrated or had perpetrated on their behalf by their paid minions and stooges.
   
   The section dealing with Cambodia is particularly harrowing, and I spent a great deal of time alternating between tears and vituperation as I read it. What I like most about Pilger's journalism is that he relies, for the most part, on quotes from officials and from official documents, allowing the anti-human pigs who run the world to indict themselves with their own utterances. It is shocking, almost mind-boggling, to conceive that such despicable, black-hearted, savage scum are sitting at the top of the world's food-chain, merrily cannibalising the human race to feather their own sordid little nests.
   
   Pilger is, in many ways, the successor to Orwell (I mean Orwell's non-fiction). He writes clearly, with purpose, and without hyperbole, simply stating the facts and allowing them to reveal the truth without the need for vitriol or dissimulation. The effect is much more distressing and gut-wrenching than any amount of rote left-wing activism could ever be.

3 comments about Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961.

1. This collection of letters serves as the closest thing to a Hemingway autobiography we have. It is certainly must reading for the student or researcher, and I would highly recommend it for even the casual Hemingway fan.

   Hemingway often wrote letters to either warm up for a day of writing or cool off afterward, and in these letters you see him at his unguarded, intellectual, humorous best. The style of his letter writing is often much freer than the tightly crafted prose style of his fiction...it's almost like watching a classical musician break into some improvisational jazz.

   A great book to just dip into wherever you want, and this new edition is long overdue.




2. I miss old fashioned letters, now that we live in the age of email. Frotunately, I still have 'real' letters saved that have now collected dust from my parent's generation, and from a time gone by.
   
   Occasionally I stumble over published letters of famous writers in antique bookstores: Last time, it was a 800 page volume of some of Ernest Hemingway's personal letters; the first edition of this Amazon edition. They were published posthumeously, and not intended by EH for publication.
   We get a peek behind the curtain, and learn among other things that Ernest Hemingway was addicted to letters, wrote lots and lots, starting in his teens; and that he was really depressed when he didn't receive replies; or when there were days when the postman brought no letters. Waiting for transatlantic mail added to his sense of loneliness. Letters were a lifelong passion of his, continuing up to the day when he took his own life. These private letters weren't meant to be published, and they are raw, but very honest.
   When you read them, you are in no doubt that the writer is a true artist, and an original!
   They stretch over the span of his productive life, and they are varied: addressed to family (his parents, his children), his ex, to friends, including famous contemporaries, such as Marlene Dietrich (just one of them), his agent(s), his publishers, and many more.
   
   I have a hunch EH must have been hard to keep up with, but his letters are fun to read; even though, in my view, his novels are mixed: Some great, and some I don't care for.
   
   Guess, EH's life was bizare too. The private letters are consistent with that. And yet, they exude a special warmth; both gentelness and passion.
   Reviewed by Palle Jorgensen. December 2004.



3. Two authors of the 20th century whose letters go beyond fascination are James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. This volume is an excellent example of just how committed Hemingway was not only to writing, but to getting as close to the action of his writing. Once the reader emerses themselves into his letters, one sees the true Hemingway, not the mythological one created by critics (mostly those who were not fans of the writer).
   
   It is almost unimaginable that someone in his time or any other could be so well connected and intimate with other artist: Joyce, Pound, McLeish, Fitzgerald, Picaso, and so on. If you're a writer this collection is wonderful. It shows the day to day dealings with drafting, editing, publishing, and the intimate relationships between writer and publisher, though this relationship is almost non-existent today.
   
   I found Hemingway through his letters to be someone who is passionate about life and equally compassionate about friends. He tells it the way it is, not the way politically correct messengers do. It is an education in itself to read this collection.

No comments about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

3 comments about The Miss Dennis School of Writing: And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life.

1. I purchased this book because I had enjoyed 'Without Reservations' so much. I often share books with my closest friend. By the time I had read the introduction and the first few pages, I knew it would not be enough to simply have her read it when I was done. I knew we had to read it together, taking turns reading it aloud (a new experience for us). Steinbach's musings on everyday life are insightful, laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, a true delight. I plan to buy several copies for Christmas gifts.



2. Alice Steinbach is a great writer! I have enjoyed each one of her books and this was no exception.



3. I had read and liked her "Without Reservations" and "Educating Alice." This collection of her columns did not disappoint and I kept going back to re-read what I thought of as hidden gems or things to think about in regard to my own life.

5 comments about Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir.

1. I am saddened to find so many unfavorable reviews of this memoir. Reading it, I was reminded of "Angela's Ashes," "A Beautiful Mind" and "Growing Up." I found Lyden's prose both poetic and evocative. I thought she portrayed her own family and herself with remarkable journalistic perspective, but also with compassion. I am amazed at the extent of Lyden's success in her attempt to describe her mother's mania, as well as the author's candor about her own life. There's no self-indulgence in these pages, only a long and difficult distance bravely traveled and recounted for us, so we can see the terrain through her eyes. To the critical reviewers, I say, "Let us read your life," and to Ms. Lyden an unequivocal, "Bravo."



2. I bought this book after watching Ms. Lyden's appearance on Larry King Live, in which she spoke engagingly and eloquently about her childhood, her mother's illness, and the effects it had on the family. Sadly, she speaks more effectively than she writes.

   Big words taste and feel good in our mouths, and it's fun to string a bunch together (this I know from personal experience), but after reading that style through a couple of chapters it got tiresome. Ms. Lyden seemed more interested in demonstrating her command of the English language than in telling her story.

   I was also disappointed by too-frequent and too-lengthy sidetracks into other aspects of the family's life (for instance, the whole trip to Mexico story could have been told in a couple of pages). I had the impression Ms. Lyden was trying to flesh out the book.

   For those interested in the subject matter, this is worth a try if you can find it second-hand or in the library, but not worth full price.

   I do recommend watching Ms. Lyden if you ever get a chance to see her being interviewed - she is an excellent communicator...just not on paper.




3. I trudged through 40 pages and basically determined that this whole family must be nuts and we read this for book group and everyone agreed this was not an easy book or an enjoyable one



4. I basically just skimmed the last half of the book as she lost me early on. Too bad. A fascinating subject, just extremely badly written.



5. This book was written by someone from my hometown, thus I know the characters. She changed the names and the places, yet I still knew what she was referring to. She left out any reference to her two younger brothers so were my age. This book was written in a very choppy fashion...hard to tell her current experiences from her past experiences in her writing.

3 comments about I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You: My Life And Pastimes.

1. A delightful autobiography -- one can only wish it were longer. The author's life has been full of adventures that most of us can experience only second-hand. Of particular interest may be the chapter on Vatican II and its aftermath, or the chapter delineating the problems of modernist philosophers and the Scholastic antidote. For many readers, especially those of the author's multitudinous mysteries, the chapter titled "Author" will be the best. It refers to several of McInerny's early novels, which though sadly out of print are well worth the trouble of tracking down in libraries.
   
   One would think that Notre Dame could employ a scholarship student to do the proofreading. Apparently only a spell-checker is used, as words occasionally appear under the guise of other words' spellings, but misspellings that coincide with no other word do not. This book deserved better. The upshot is that a few sentences have to be read several times over in order to be degarbled. But there are many more sentences worth rereading for their intrinsic interest -- I think you'll be glad to have read this book.



2. Ralph McInerny has only gained skill as a craftsman as he ages. This account is tightly written and carries the reader along through a remarkable life, but manages to be self-depracating in the process.
   
   As a wordsmith, McInerny is unparelleled and having a dictionary in this journey might be wise. However, his style and grace makes the occasional unfamiliar term non-threatening.
   
   I would recommend this to anyone who loves the academic life or the life of the spirit.
   
   Stephanie Swee



3. Ralph McInerny is best known for his Father Dowling series of mysteries. In his memoir, I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You he goes beyond a mere story about his life. He talks about his life, yet offers advice to aspiring authors on getting started, persevering in the face of rejection and handling success. He explains how to write a mystery story.
   His discussions on life and philosophy, a subject he teaches at Notre Dame, gives the readers reason to pause and think. And in some cases, a desire to look at some of the other books he mentions.
   Despite being a relatively short book, and a quick read, the information presented makes you go back and reread some sections looking for a different perspective.
   Well worth the time to read. I highly recommend it for writers, philosophers and people looking for a good story about an amazing life.

5 comments about Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby (New York Review Books Classics).

1. Curiously, given Harry's infatuation with Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray throughout much of his life, it was a dictum of Wilde's that Uber-Critic Harold Bloom says he would have engraved above the entrances to the English Departments of every institution of higher learning if he had his way, to wit: "All bad poetry is sincere." that kept coming to my mind throughout the reading of this book. But, note, this dictum does NOT imply its converse: "All sincere poetry is bad." - An important distinction, this. - For Crosby's poetry is nothing if not sincere and, taken out of the context of his life, is bound to seem tawdry, fantastical or sloppy. In other words, it does indeed seem quite bad. But taken in the context of this life, it assumes another hue entirely. As Wolff puts it, his poems were more "testaments" than poems qua poems. All his writings on suicide, the worship of the Sun, et al seem pallid and lifeless until one realizes through the reading of this book that he lived these words. He didn't merely write them. Upon this realization, (dare I say it) they suddenly BLAZE to life.
   
   The best aspect of the biography for me is that there is no attempt at some sort of psychobabble analysis in the study of a character that surely invites it: Not one "Id," "Ego," "Oedipus Complex," "Jungian Archetype," et blah, blah, blah. Wolff deftly narrates the life-story of this fantastic, wealthy, sybarite with his literary ambition as he lived it through his short, kaleidoscopically decadent and unbalanced life.

   But, given all this, there is a prodigal consistency to his life worthy of symbolic logic, right up to the end. Thus, to me, reading this book was brisk and refreshing (pace to the Puritans). Near the end of the book, Wolff quotes Mrs. Powell as saying that all Harry's extravagant talk was "just literary." To her, it surely must have been. But as Wolff points out, "For Harry, of course, the locution `just literary' would have been oxymoronic."

   In contrast to all the "Lost Generation" writers and artists and jabberers for whom the whole scene was "just literary," to Harry, every word (Indeed, every letter) was wriggling with the blaze of life and........death.

   HE MEANT IT.




2. Vignettes about Harry Crosby may be found in Malcom Cowley's, "Exiles Return"; "Absinthe: History in a Bottle", by Barnaby Conrad; "Published in Paris," by Hugh Ford; and a couple poems in "The Penguin Book of Surrealist Poetry". You may come across Harry Crosby in biographies of D.H. Lawerence, Hart Crane, or James Joyce, and definitely in his wife, Caresse Crosby's "The Passionate Years". All in all, Geoffrey Wolff's biography is a welcome find. I came across an old and forgotten copy of "Black Sun" for $1 amidst thousands of used books at a San Francisco library sale in the "pre-Amazon.com" days when I was blindly searching for more information about Crosby who fascinated me. It was pure luck; or destiny! I had recently read his diary, "Shadows of the Sun" (Black Sparrow Press, 1977) which is the work he is most known for, and is one of the most fascinating & captivating diaries I've ever read. Some reviewers have commented on the "mediocre quality" of Crosby's poems, but read within the context of "Shadows of the Sun" and/or "Black Sun" they melt into perfect harmony with his life. "Black Sun" is the ideal supplement to "Shadows of the Sun", adding unbiased biographical details about Harry, the 1920's, and the wonderful influence Harry and Caresse had upon those they befriended. Wolff did an excellent job researching old letters from various archives, as well as utilizing his orignal diaries as source material - Harry kept assiduous details of his life for posterity's sake.

   I'm glad to see that "Black Sun" has been reprinted in this new 2003 paperback, and it contains an afterword by Wolff discussing how and why he chose to write about Crosby. He states that he wouldn't have written about Crosby had he not committed suicide. This is interesting, but not shocking, as that is what pulls everyone into Crosby's story in the first place - he seemed to be on top of the world right up until his tragic end. Yet, none of it was surprising to anyone who knew him. He and his recent mistress, Josephine shot themselves in a suicide pact. The mystery is in the details of how it all exactly transpired, and my personal opinion is that they were drunk, he talked about suicide, she took him seriously, stomped on his wedding ring, took his gun and shot herself first, beating him to the punch, and so leaving him with no escape (he had originally intended to die with Caresse at a predetermined date in the 1940's). The standard theory is that "he shot her" first (she, probably willingly, but unknown), and then, a couple hours later, himself. Indeed, he had discussed death frequently, and it was his own gun that he brought into the New York hotel room that final night in December, 1929. Whatever the actuality of the two suicides, the most fascinating thing about Harry to me (and perhaps to Wolff) is that his death and life were intertwined into a sparkling surrealist poem idealized, and carried out. Harry Crosby was and is a very rare figure in American literature, and gladly, due in great part to Geoffrey Wolff, will continue to remain so. One may take what they will from his brief life, but more than simply some lost peripheral figure from the "bohemian 1920's", Harry was religously devoted to love, truth, poesy, and art. He committed himself to living out his aethetic ideals to the fullest extent possible, making his and Caresse's life together an inspiring firestorm of intense passion.

   Carpe Diem.




3. Anyone who thinks Crosby led a "minor" life doesn't get it. Harry Crosby, the founder of Black Sun press, led an astonishing existence and was a premiere member of the avant-guarde "suicide club" founded by Baudelaire and carried through Lautrec, Jarry and Charles Cros.
   
   I knew I was going to love this book when I read in the first chapter about the cable Harry and his wife Caresse sent to Harry's rich Boston family: "Please send $10,000 immediately -- have decided to live a wild and extravagant life." Very few people are able to create their own realities and inhabit them as fully as Crosby -- his determination recalls not only Jarry but even earlier figures like William Blake.
   
   Wolff's writing is superb: his sense of narrative and description are pitch-perfect without sacrificing detachment or sinking into the realm of hagiography. It is a fascinating portrait of a man who lived his life to the fullest through his love of Art.



4. Are there no more editors? This book is repetitive, much too long, and the organization is confusing. I am never convinced Harry Crosby is worth the time to read his story. As I read, I kept thinking, "Why bother?" Harry's life might be interesting as an example of supreme self-indulgence and self-absorption, but his writing (as quoted) is atrocious! Tighten it up, tell me more about Black Sun Press and some good writers, and less about Harry's decadence-unless you can make it more interesting than this!



5. No one thus far seems to recognize the obvious fact that Harry Crosby is a classic example of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He volunteered as an ambulance driver in World War I, and that harrowing experience smashed his mind, as similar experiences have mentally crushed so many other brave people who volunteered for war duty instead of staying complacently at home.
   
   Harry's life after the war is thus not a merely decadent and self-indulgent romp, but an ongoing struggle to regain some kind of mental equilibrium after seeing hundreds of men turned into slabs of bleeding meat in a gigantic and futile butchery. At one point a shell struck his ambulance and blew it apart. It's almost imporrible to survive that kind of experience without serious mental damage.
   
   The attitude of the author is judgemental in a naive, Midwestern way to the point of unintentional hilarity. The endless gasps of shock from the naive and outraged author are better than Saturday Night Live. Gasp! Harry actually dares to wear a black flower to his father's dinner party! Great heavens, what would Aunt Gertrude think? Shocked! I'm so terribly shocked! I do believe that I'm going to faint!
   
   On and on it goes, and I'm amazed that the naive author, or should say the faux-naive author, survives the hypocrisy of his endless denunciations of the roaring 1920's and those who roared while the roaring was good.
   
   So the author wouldn't have written about Harry Crosby unless he had the suicide at the end? Suppose that Harry had survived into a pleasant and prosperous old age? That no doubt would have been intolerable to our censorious author, who is determined to rewrite the Portrait of Dorian Gray, but unhappily without Oscar Wilde's genius.
   
   It's a real shame that this seems to be the only extensive biography of Harry Crosby. It's a guilty pleasure to read this endless pseudo-moralistic trashing of Harry's interesting life. If the smugly righteous author had suffered through the same kinds of wartime horrors that Harry endured, the silly bloke would have been institutionalized for the rest of his life, and we wouldn't be victimized by this hymn of hate toward a man whom the author so transparently envies. A tame lap dog is writing the biography of a lone wolf, and it just doesn't click.

3 comments about Walter Lippmann and the American Century.

1. This book is excellent. The 20th Century has often been described as the "American Century" and this book surveys the major part of that era from the vantage point of the life and work of one of America's leading intellectuals, journalists and pundits. Lippmann began his intellectual career as a young follower and aide to Theodore Roosevelt while a student at Harvard, moving quickly thereafter into the leading milieu around Woodrow Wilson for whom he authored the famous "14 Points" upon which the vison of the League of Nations and America's ostensible goal of promoting world democracy was based. Prior to that time he played a leading role in the formation of the still influential liberal magazine, "The New Republic" in 1915. After the First World War he became the editor of the New York World, a prominent New York City daily newspaper founded by Joseph Pulitzer, a demanding position, but one that did not prevent him from acting, as he did throughout much of his life from then on, as an unofficial ambassador and troubleshooter for the U.S. government and leading American business interests, first in Mexico in 1927 and later in Italy, Germany and elsewhere.

   In the wake of the bankruptcy of the New York World, Lippmann became one of America's most prominent newspaper columnists and opinion leaders and in fact wrote a seminal work "Public Opinion" dealing with the interaction of mass culture and politics. Lippmann continued and grew in this role as an ideologue and high priest for the New Deal, the Allied cause in World War 2 and more generally for America's leading role in world affairs until 1971 when his last column was published, three years before his death at the age of 85. By the time of the Kennedy/Johnson administration, Lippmann had solidified his reputation as, if not the Dean, certainly the grand old man of American journalism whose life had embodied and reflected all the great events and issues of American and world history through Vietnam which he came to view with skepticism and regret, a view presaged by some reservations he had held, notwithstanding his anti-communism, towards the "Truman Doctrine" and the Cold War.




2. This is an absolutely wonderful book. Walter Lippman was the first modern journalist of the US: in a time of parochialism, self-congratulatory muckraking, and yellow journalism, he had an internationalist perspective and strove to introduce the American people to new ideas. At the same time, he was deeply interested in the currents of virtually all major political movements in America, and he studied and then participated in them as an opinion maker. What is truly remarkable about the book is the way that Steel recounts the elements of these movements - encapsulates them in brilliant and stimulating descriptions - in paragrpah after paragraph on the development of Lippman's restless and omnivorous mind. He starts with the muckrakers and Lincoln Steffens as well as Wilson's ideas on the League of nations, moved through the implications of Freud for public policy, to the New Deal (and the ideas of Keynes), the Cold War, and his last great battle on the Vietnam War. But as Lippman looks at each of these problems, he also critiques them, probing for their limitations before moving on to the next great movement. The result is an absolutely first-rate intellectual history of about the first 70 years of the 20C, which in my opinion were far more interesting than the remaining 30. With each movement, at least for me, I wanted to learn more, to go back to the sources and other histories and biographies. Finally, there are also fascinating anecdotes of his intereactions with the great politicos of his time, from his dismissal of FDR as a mediocre thinker to a screaming argument at a party with Dean Acheson over the COld War - "it was two titans facing off" - to the bitter obsession that LBJ developed about him in the 1960s.

   Of course, Lippman had a charmed career and sprung from an elite background. This made him somewhat insensitive or disinterested in some developments that hurt people, from the Ku Klux Klan to the McCarthy era. Nonetheless, as Steel points out, in his conservatism he also reflected the most popular opinions of his time, which is the reason he was so relevant.

   Steel also gives us a portrait of the man, and it is charming and admiring. His father was a slum lord, of whom he was ashamed and Steel speculates that Lippman's life was a search for a better father figure in American politicians. He also had an empty first marriage, which he abandoned when he fell in love with his best friend's wife, renewing his life in middle age and breaking a number of 1950s taboos. THe portrait is quite moving.

   This is a truly great book, and I hope that it will be viewed as a classic someday. I learned an immense amount and felt hungry for more, which is my principal criterion for true excellence in writing.

   Highest recommendation.




3. Ronald Steele's Walter Lippmann and the American Century is everything an historical biography should be and much more because it is also a valuable study in political science that takes the reader deep into the character, thought and impact of perhaps the finest political journalist in American history.
   
   When he was 25, Walter Lippmann was described by Teddy Roosevelt as "the most brilliant young man of his age in all the United States." He built his global, popular reputation for 36 years in his column, "Today and Tomorrow" written from 1931 to 1962 for the New York Herald Tribune and from 1963 to 1967 for the Washington Post and their respective international syndicates. Lippmann was one of the founders of the New Republic, a columnist for Vanity Fair, editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, the voice of early 20th century America's liberal conscience, and a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. Millions of Americans didn't decide what to think about an issue until Walter Lippmann published his opinion on it. Steele says he was read not for solutions but for his dispassionate analysis, an intellect of the sort rarely attracted to journalism. English contemporary Van Wyck Brooks said Lippmann's career was the most brilliant ever devoted to political writing in America.
   
   Lippmann was born in 1889 in New York City, the only child of well-to-do Jewish parents of German heritage. They had inherited wealth from Lippmann's grandparents, especially from his maternal grandfather who had invested wisely in New York real estate. An exceptionally bright youngster, he was practically ignored by his mother, superficially acknowledged by his father and coddled by his maternal grandmother whom he loved dearly. Lippmann was educated in the demanding curriculum of a prestigious New York City secular Jewish school and spent his summers touring Europe and its museums with his parents. He pursued university studies in philosophy at Harvard where he learned to think under the personal tutelage of William James and George Santayana and to write from the irascible Charles Copeland. Steele says "Copey" shouted blunt criticism at Lippmann and his fellow students while they read their papers aloud in his office. Describing his experience learning to write under Copeland, Lippmann said "you began to feel that out of the darkness all around you long fingers were searching through the layers of fat and fluff to find your bones and muscles."
   
   His first job of note out of Harvard was as assistant to the muckraking journalist, Lincoln Steffens, "...looking not for the evils of Big Business, but for its anatomy." Lippmann helped Steffens with a thoroughly researched report showing the secret arrangements between New York banks and the major financial houses on Wall Street. The material Steffens and the young Lippmann dug up helped trigger the Pujo Committee's investigations that attempted to regulate America's big banks through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Lippmann's time with Steffens was formative; he acquired Steffens' belief that corruption was an inherent part of the system, his skepticism about the inherent goodness of the average man, his insistence on uncluttered writing, his admiration for strong leaders and his faith in science.
   
   Along with thousands of articles, columns and lectures, Lippmann wrote more than a dozen major books. He demonstrated his powerful intellect with his very first, A Preface to History, published in 1913 when he was only 23. Lippmann had worried throughout his studies at Harvard that something was wrong with the way people were taught to think about politics. When he was introduced by a friend to Sigmund Freud's theories of personality, he saw them immediately as a new analytical tool for political science. A Preface to History was acclaimed by critics for being the first link between psychology and politics. In the book, Lippmann explained what he called the obvious: politics as a system of social interaction had to be governed by the same forces that governed other social behavior. Freud himself was impressed with the young Lippmann; a few years after the book was published, he invited Lippmann to a Vienna meeting of the Psychoanalytic Society and introduced him to Adler and Jung.
   
   Lippmann's genius was developed on both sides of the journalism - government fault line. He assisted a Schenectady, New York socialist mayor, albeit for only four months before he lost his appetite for petty local politics. He drafted a position paper on labor and management for Teddy Roosevelt. He wrote speeches for President Wilson and led the four-man effort to help draft Wilson's Fourteen Points for peace in post-World War I Europe. The first five and the 14th were the President's; the other eight essentially were Lippmann's. He even served as a Captain in the U.S. Army for six months as the American representative to the Inter-Allied Propaganda Board in London. With Wilson's peace plan in mind, Lippmann approached this work as "getting away from propaganda in the sinister sense, and substituting for it a frank campaign of education addressed to the German and Austrian troops, explaining as simply and persuasively as possible the unselfish character of the war, the generosity of our aims and the great hope of mankind which we are trying to realize."
   
   In 1922, Alfred Harcourt published Lippmann's most enduring book, Public Opinion. Considered a classic today, it went far beyond the mechanics of political science to scrutinize the democratic process and the citizen whose mind is full of distorted, suppressed facts jumbled together by emotions, habits and prejudices. He said people see and define things according to stereotypes, prejudice and propaganda. What we know as facts are really judgments. While men are willing to admit there are two sides to a question, Lippmann says they do not believe there are two sides to what they regard as a fact. He said this poses a critical political drama for classic democracy "because the pictures inside people's heads do not automatically correspond with the world outside." The result, says Lippmann, is erosion of the foundation of popular government.
   
   Lippmann said the press cannot provide the answer because truth and the news are not the same. He says men "cannot govern society by episodes, incidents and eruptions." What would he say today about the American news media's slavish stream of engineered political photo ops, media events and sound bites? Might he have agreed it's not what we don't know that's dangerous, it's what we know that's wrong?
   
   Although he never became a sycophant, Lippmann was a high level political insider most of his life. He was always cautious about President Franklin Roosevelt, forming his opinion in 1931 when he wrote, "I am now satisfied that he just doesn't happen to have a very good mind, that he never really comes to grips with a problem which has any large dimensions and that above all the controlling element in almost every case is political advantage." Steele says Lippmann thought Truman was an insecure man given to hasty decisions and false bravado to cover his anxieties and called publicly for his resignation. Lippmann was an admirer of President Kennedy while finding fault with several of his administration's decisions, including those on Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. "I don't agree with the people who think that we have to go out and shed a little blood to prove we're virile men ... And then behind that all lies a very personal and human feeling - that I don't think old men ought to promote wars for young men to fight. I don't like warlike old men."
   
   One of Lippmann's journalistic rules stipulated one should not strike the king unless s(he) strikes to kill. He had been a Johnson administration insider, never wavering in his support of President Johnson's domestic programs. His foreign policy was another matter. Frustrated his advice was being ignored regarding the Vietnam War, Lippmann implicitly relinquished his role as an administration confidant in the spring of 1966, denouncing Johnson over Vietnam. Later that year, he wrote, "There is a growing belief that Johnson's America is no longer the historic America, that it is a bastard empire which relies on superior force to achieve its purposes, and is no longer an example of the wisdom and humanity of a free society ... It is a feeling that the American promise has been betrayed and abandoned." Fighting back, Johnson rarely missed an opportunity to attack Lippmann as traitorous, irrational or senile. Steele says Lippmann's break with Johnson and opposition to the Vietnam War was his finest hour.
   
   Lippmann's last literary effort was a book he wanted to write on how mankind would govern itself in the future. "The absolutely revolutionary invention of our time is the invention of invention itself. It's also the reason for the moral and psychological difficulties of our time. The supreme question before mankind is how men will be able to make themselves willing and able to save themselves." Steele reports he was too tired, too weak to do it. Lippmann published his last article in January, 1971, while his final comments flowed to America through interviews as the elder statesman of American political journalism. One comment was predictive but less than optimistic. "Anything that makes the world more humane and more rational is progress; that's the only measuring stick we can apply to it. But I don't wish to imply that I think this (the 20th century) is a great progressive age. I don't. I think it's going to be a minor Dark Age." Lippmann died at age 85 on Dec. 14, 1974.
   
   Thoughtful debate leading to enlightened political compromise seems today to have been replaced in America by simplistic poll-driven talking points emanating from mean-spirited, doctrinaire partisanship. Ronald Steele's outstanding historical biography, doing double duty as a valuable study in political science, shows how Walter Lippmann would suggest Americans might find their way back from that swamp. "When men are brought face to face with their opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend their ideas, they cease to be children and savages and begin to live like civilized men. Then only is freedom a reality, when men may voice their opinions because they must examine their opinions ... Where all think alike, no one thinks very much."