No comments about All in the Day's Work.

No comments about Theater of the Mind: Thee-Quarters of a Century of Radio Across Texas.

5 comments about How to Be French.

1. Author Margaret Ambrose takes us on a tedious and self-indulgent journey as she describes in detail her double quest - to learn the French language and to "be French". Page after page we read of Margaret and her girlfriend as they attend language classes at the Alliance Francaise in Melbourne, Australia, sneering at their perceived less fortunate fellow students and attempting to ingratiate themselves with their teachers. Self-proclaimed French expert, Margaret, tells us of her visit to Champagne country and the delightful town of "Eperney" (sic.) and then a visit to "the shopping centre Galleries (sic.) Lafayette", one of the leading high-end department stores in Paris. My irritation increased as I persevered, reading the book from cover to cover. May I recommend instead the thoughtful, informative and enjoyable read, "True Pleasures - A Memoir of Women in Paris" by another Australian writer, Lucinda Holdforth. This is a gem. Charming, personal, honest, well-written and with no airs or pretence, it is an intelligent story of self-discovery, inspiration and connection with the great women and places of Paris.



2. How to be French is a pathetic and thinly disguised autobiographical exercise in narcissism. Margaret, the book's heroine (and funnily enough, its author), seems to have one word in her vocabulary: 'glamorous'. The book is a collection of petty snipes at others (unfortunate enough to have been in the same French class as Margaret) attempting to learn French, while the author firmly plants herself on a pedestal above all the rest. Reading this book was a waste of about 2 hours of my life that I'll never get back. Save your money and instead try Sarah Turnbull's well-written and highly readable 'Almost French'. Margaret Ambrose has succeeding only in proving herself more vile than even the most 'French' Francais. Dans un mot: c'etait merdique.



3. This book took me on a wonderful voyage to paris without leaving my home! All the sights and sounds of Paris are captured and written with some flair. This is not a totally beautiful portrait of france or the french and I can imagine some french having their national pride wounded, but it will ring true for anyone who has ever travelled and everyone who loves paris.



4. I agree with all the one-star reviews above: narcissistic, self-indulgent and plotless. For an alleged journalist her style is inelegant, and her grasp of grammar tenuous. And she thinks she's mastered French? Well, it's the subjunctive mood, dear, not the subjective tense.
   
   All-in-all, a very poor read which makes me, too, embarrassed to be Australian.



5. There are so many reasons I didn't enjoy this book, all of which have been mentioned by other reviewers. I almost stopped reading after a particularly nasty scene in which Margaret's friend explains that her potential French lover has downs syndrome: "He's retarded ... he even put a picture of himself with the photos of my friends! ... He wants to be my friend!" To which the ever eloquent Ms. Ambrose replies: "Oh. My. God ... But what about all those dates? Who was he going out with, retarded girls?"
   
   This 'novel' reads like a note passed between bitchy teenage girls during class.

No comments about Palestine: A Personal History.

No comments about Foreign Devil: Thirty Years of Reporting in the Far East.

1 comments about City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy.

1. I enjoyed Terry Teachout's book of autobiographical essays "City Limits". There is nothing terribly important in the book, but its tone and pace are leisurely & enjoyable and his stories reveal interesting details about an important cultural critic whose influence is rising each year through his books and articles in "Commentary", "The Wall Street Journal" and other influential conservative journals of opinion. Teachout's writing reminds me of my favorite writer, Joseph Epstein (it is probably no coincidence that you often find their pieces in the same issues of publications). Both writers are extremely culturally fluent with a lot of interesting things to say. Their writing is also very accessable to the average, educated person who is looking to learn more about literature, music, theater, art, and the good life in general.

5 comments about Blood of the Liberals.

1. I really enjoyed Packer's book. I'm roughly a contemporary of his, and experienced the same wrenching events that occurred in modern liberalism during the late 1960s and early 1970s.I'd just finished reading Roth's "American Pastoral", and it was great to follow it up by reading Packer's book.

   Like Packer, my father was an academic at an elite university, and as a traditional liberal who voted for Adlai, he was shocked by what he saw during the late 1960s. On a personal level, I liked reading a book by a writer who likes the same authors I like - Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift), Christopher Lasch, Irving Howe et al. There is a passage in which Packer perfectly summarizes the thesis of Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" - gated communities like the ones that dot my hometown in Southern California.

   The only area where I would fault Packer's book is that he does not criticize the dogmatic, politically correct tone that liberalism took on during the late 1980s and early 1990s and which still haunts liberalism. What alarmed Packer's father was exactly that, and I'm afraid Packer only devotes one paragraph to it. Left liberalism has, I'm afraid, taken on a neo-Stalinist quality on some college campuses, viz, stealing copies of conservative campus newspapers which take politically incorrect stands on such issues as affirmative action. Liberals should decry that just as much as the depredations of the Right. David Horowitz shouldn't be the only one who claims the moral high ground on that issue. I don't know if Packer's father would be a neoconservative today, but he might have been, if he'd lived.

   Aside from all that, I commend Packer's book. It is a decent, humane and intelligent work that says that there's still a place at the political table for liberalism, even for disheartened liberals like me!




2. Words can simply not do justice to the rapturous "Eureka! I have found it" feeling I experienced when I found, read and re-read this timely, vivid and insanely insightful book. (Perhaps I should mention that I have been searching in vain for nearly two years to find material on George Huddleston Sr. written in the literary style of eminent historians Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch which also serves as both a caustic critique and a dynamic defense of the very concept of American liberalism). Packer is a great writer! He surveys the modern history of the American reform movement from 1869 to 2000 in a penetrative yet highly readable style and the word pictures he creates both engage and enlighten the reader immediately and throughout. His highly personal depictions of his family lineage - including triumphs and more than a few tragedies - make the story so poignant and touching that your heart will simply melt even if you don't agree with all of his premises or conclusions. And his understanding of the broad sweep of history is astounding - anyone who reads this book will come away with a much more enlightened view of 20th century American reform efforts than they would ever get from a more traditional historical author. There are only a few flaws (which I will not detail here), but those should be arrived at only after thoroughly studying this absolutely amazing book. Blood of the Liberals is simply one of the very best books I have ever read and I recommend it highly!



3. How did such a basic, rational notion as liberalism turn into the favorite epithet of talk-show hosts? What happened to social justice? Where is the freewheeling spirit of the Sixties? These, and other questions, have haunted me for years. Not being well versed in American history, the seemingly abrupt annhiliation of everything "liberal" has caused me great puzzlement and distress.

   Packer, in a beautiful amalgam of memoir and history, has written a book that has almost singlehandedly restored my relationship with the past and pointed my way to the future. While as a historical account it is spotty, and as a memoir it is sometimes dry, the heartfelt combination of these two styles has a vitality and immediacy I've never seen anywhere else.

   His conclusions, while expansive, are also poignant, with a touch of desperation. In his consideration of the prospects of liberalism in this country, I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the parrot - "It's just resting!" - while at the same time I'm stirred by its undercurrent of optimism. His last few words ring in my ears: "We will have a more just society as soon as we want one."

   If you sense that, like myself, you are a lost liberal that is trying to find your way in the world, this book is for you.

   If you are a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who needs a clue as to what "liberal" really means, this book is for you as well.




4. Blood of the Liberals is a near-perfect blend of the personal and the political. Packer's grandfather was George Huddleston, a Congressman from Birmingham, Alabama who represents for Packer a lot of the contradictions in modern liberalism: desegregation versus states' rights, support for the common man against bigness (whether corporate, governmental, or otherwise), and at the same time a belief that government is sometimes necessary.
   
   Packer's father, by contrast, was a pointy-headed academic. He grew up as a shy Jewish boy and moved into the ivory-tower life after some time spent in World War II; Packer paints the war years as rather uneventful for the senior Packer -- indeed little more than a pause from his books. I felt a lot of empathy with the dad; I was the same way when I was a kid, and I'm sure that if I went off to fight a war I'd be mailing home to ask for books and magazines just as much as Packer Sr. was.
   
   I also drew a lot from Packer's portrait of his father, because in that portrait Packer seems to have discovered why liberals keep losing elections. Packer Sr. was an Adlai Stevenson man -- Stevenson, the charismatic, brilliant loser. In a better world, Stevenson would have been our president, but in this world he lost the race twice. The term egghead became popular because one of the Alsops tagged Stevenson with it.
   
   And ever since Stevenson, says Packer, liberalism has been dominated by rather bloodless intellectuals who can't argue persuasively against the bread-and-butter issues that let Republicans win. The common thread among these intellectuals, says Packer, is a love of abstract debate, and the belief that human problems can be solved by the judicious application of reason -- that we can all get along and solve our issues without yelling or fighting. That's fine and good, and as far as it goes it's no more modern than Jefferson. The Jeffersonian strain is one of the key strands that Packer identifies in liberal thought.
   
   Where it starts losing elections, he says, is when the intellectuals start to take it over. Discussions shift from individual people -- this man lost his land, this man's family is starving because of government policies -- to larger universal themes like freedom, equality, justice, and the rule of law.
   
   This adherence to principles loses us elections. It lost Stevenson the election against Eisenhower when he stood up for fairness and impartiality in the anti-Communist witchhunts; he himself was a strong anti-Communist, but he framed his beliefs in terms that Nixon could tear apart.
   
   This doesn't play with the public. The public is more concerned with outcomes than with processes. If the public doesn't feel safe, it will not vote for abstract principles that seem to help their enemies. We could argue for civil liberties all we want, but Republicans will always come back with the argument that they're helping protect us from terrorists. When it comes to a battle between safety and our Constitutional freedoms, safety will always win.
   
   This, at least, is the message that Packer seems to be sending so far. His diagnosis does seem spot on. And his delivery is just right: he cuts back and forth between an impersonal political tale -- how liberals have ended up in the mess we're in -- and a personal story about discovering his father's and grandfather's role in it all. It is at once autobiography and political cautionary tale. I'm amazed that he could pull it off.



5. I admire the liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt and company as much as the next person. I admire politicians who speak up for the common man. But am I the only one who notices how complacent and dishonest George Packer really is on the subject of race?
   
   While Packer seems sincere in his goodwill towards blacks, the southern history in this book is seriously distorted. In what appears to be a misguided effort to make liberalism more palatable to "ordinary" white Americans, George Packer tries to whitewash the racism of his own grandfather, a mediocre congressman from the depths of the Jim Crow era.
   
   Packer claims that his grandfather Huddleston spoke for the "common man." But he fails to examine the real ugliness of his grandfather's position. The vicious, lynching white men of Alabama sent him to Congress back in 1908. They allowed him to make his little chirping noises about "common men" and "Jeffersonian democracy." But all the old man was doing was providing long-winded camouflage for pure evil, for a reign of terror against black people. We don't need to revive the weak-willed cowardice of Packer's grandfather. We need to remember what his lying words really stood for, and who paid the real price for his success.
   
   While we're reviving dead American heroes, why can't we bring back all the black men who got lynched while Grandpa Huddleston was in Congress? Come to think about it, what about all the black American soldiers who were killed in combat in the Spanish American War? Georgie Packer doesn't care about their sacrifice. Like most modern liberals, he regards all military personnel with contempt. In fact, Packer tells us with evident pride that his sniveling Grandpa couldn't even make the grade in combat -- he played sick, and sat out the Cuban war, stateside. (At least Hitler won the Iron Cross.)
   
   George Packer, the modern liberal, doesn't bother to draw the comparison between his grandfather's shirking and the courage of black men. But there is a striking contrast between Grandpa Gutless Liar and the black heroes who served honorably under Pershing. That's General "Black Jack" Pershing, by the way. As in, he commanded black troops in Cuba. But you won't learn about that from lying little Georgie, who loves his Alabama grandpa but has no use for black men with guns.
   
   While Packer condemns the social policies of the conservatives, and blames them for black poverty and crime, it is nevertheless regrettable that the only blacks in this book are either helpless "victims" or rude, ill mannered nationalists. Packer claims to have hated the Sixties, and condemns black campus radicals who were "violent." Apparently any black who raises his voice to George Packer is a public menace. He doesn't mention the thousands of black men who served in Vietnam. And he never acknowledges the lynchings his Grandpa allowed to happen with his blessing.
   
   While he absolutely refuses to discuss the countless daily hate crimes his grandfather countenanced as a legislator, Packer makes a big thing out of Grandpa Huddleston "opposing" the war against Kaiser Bill. I can see why a lynching autocrat like Huddleston would identify with Prussian brutality and the rule of blood and iron! But I don't understand why George Packer has more respect for his yellow, gutless grandpa (who ended up voting for the war, by the way) then for the black heroes of the 369th Infantry, a.k.a. "Harlem Hellfighters." They weren't sullen, spoiled campus radicals, George. They were men. Soldiers. And I don't propose for our race to be cheated of its place of honor in this country because of fools like you -- or Grandpa Lynching Leghorn Huddleston.
   
   So many real American heroes are trivialized or ignored in this hateful, stupid book. What about me, George Packer? I graduated from Columbia in 1985, and I joined the Marines -- as an enlisted man -- in 1986. You're my age. But you say you would never have joined the military because it was "beneath" you. Don't you see that your hypocrisy and elitism is precisely what's poisoning the liberal movement?

3 comments about Douglas Southall Freeman.

1. David Johnson has done us all a great favor by finally writing a biography of the most amazing "Doc" Freeman. The son of a Confederate soldier, Douglas Southall Freeman's life is a study in self-discipline and perseverance. Freeman was a man who crammed 4 careers into one life - Pulitzer (One for the biography of General Lee and one post-humously for George Washington) winning author, newspaper editor, teacher and broadcaster. Ever since learning of Freeman many years ago, I'd wondered why no biography had ever been written of him. Freeman was a man that was faithful to his calling, to serving his fellow man and to serving his God. The book should be in every history lover's library. ~ Richard G. Williams, Jr., editor of "The Maxims of Robert E. Lee" to be released in November.



2. The author grabs the reader's attention at the very beginning of the book when describing Freeman's daily schedule (typically from 2:30 am - 8:30 pm), a schedule that would tire the typical person after only a few days.
   
   Johnson reveals Freeman's interesting background as the son of a Confederate soldier whose interest in writing about history was conceived at a gathering of Confederate veterans at the Battle of the Crater in Petersburg, Virginia years after the Civil War ended. The author includes the excellent relationships Freeman enjoyed with his family (with the exception of his son), newspaper associates, academic peers, and other areas of his interesting life. These revelations personify the definition of a true Southern gentleman! I might add too - Freeman was also a vocal and determined opponent of racism.
   
   I was particularly inspired by the author's description of Freeman's extremely disciplined (though not necessarily always rigid) life. While Freeman had a fulfilling and extremely busy life and was often away from his family, he did manage to spend time with them when possible.
   
   An excellent and highly enjoyable read of the eminent biographer of Robert E. Lee and George Washington. Highly recommended!



3. I highly recommend this book. It's easy to read, well researched and balanced. It belongs on the bookshelf of every Civil War Buff.

No comments about Missing: The Execution of Charles Horman.

No comments about Henry Watterson and the New South: The Politics of Empire, Free Trade, and Globalization (Topics in Kentucky History).