5 comments about Martin Van Buren and the Romantic Age of American Politics.

1. This is a very readable and interesting book that deals with the long and highly political life of Martin Van Buren. He comes off very well as a hard-working, fair and moral politician who practically establishes the democratic party as a well-oiled machine for both New York state and the United States. I have now read multiple books about the first eight presidents and he can hold his own with almost all of them so far. Highly recommended.



2. It is hard to tell how a man will do as President based on his experience. Some figures with virtually no political experience became good Presidents, such as Washington and Lincoln; others were failures such as Grant or Hoover. On the other hand, political experience is no guarantee of success: John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan had decent resumes going into office and had miserable presidencies. Martin Van Buren, one of the most politically talented of all Presidents, was not an utter failure, but he didn't shine in office either.

   In Niven's biography, we follow Van Buren from his impoverished roots through his rise in New York state government. Although not perfect, Van Buren had enough political astuteness and the right sort of temperment to help create and lead a party machine and elevate New York's prominence on a national level. Becoming a trusted advisor to Andrew Jackson and a member of his cabinet eventually led to his Vice Presidency and then the Presidency. With a major financial crash occurring right as he got into office, Van Buren was struggling right off the bat, and wound up serving only a single term; nonetheless, in an era of one-term presidents (from 1837 to 1861, no president was re-elected), Van Buren was hardly thrown into ignonimy after his defeat; instead, he remained a powerful member of the Democratic party for the next two decades.

   Niven's biography is generally favorable although he doesn't hide Van Buren's flaws. We learn of a man who was not a great ideologue but was one of the most masterful politicians of his era, holding his own with the often more prominent figures such as Jackson, Calhoun, Clay and Webster. He also wound up being a prominent figure in the anti-slavery movement, even running on the Free-Soil ticket at one point.

   At times, however, this biography is a bit ponderous and often focuses so much on the political part of Van Buren's life that the personal part is pushed aside. Thus, although this may be the best Van Buren biography available (it may also be the only one), I cannot give it a full five stars. Nonetheless, this is overall a very good book and worth reading if you are interested in this period of history.




3. Like others, I've set out to read at least one biography on each American President. This particular biography is extremely well researched. A myriad of detail about Martin Van Buren and his times is presented. It's not the book if you are looking for a brief summary of the highlights of Van Buren's career, but if you are looking for detail it's great. Occasionally I got a little lost, probably due to my relative ignorance of the political figures and movements of those times. You form a definite picture of the little magician with both flaws and strengths brought forward. The one significant historical event that I didn't read about was the interaction of Van Buren with the early Mormons, of which I have read some very interesting things elsewhere.



4. I came away from this book with a new appreciation for Martin Van Buren--who was certainly much more than the Jackson coattail rider I thought previously. This is THE definitive biography of Martin Van Buren, but I agree with the other reviewers that some of the many and DETAILED accounts of the political machinations in New York at the time were a bit much. That's really the only complaint I had about the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and recommend it highly if you really want to know Van Buren.



5. I am currently reading a biography of every President in order. I realize with Martin Van Buren I am entering a long period of obscure Presidents, but very much looking forward to learning more about the chief executives between Jackson and Lincoln. Based on Amazon reviews, I decided that John Niven's biography was the best and most comprehensive choice.
   
   Thankfully, I have not been disappointed. John Niven has written a readable and extremely well researched biography of our eigth President. I was most impressed with the depth of detail Niven has included and the voluminous research it undoubtedly required. Niven has clearly succeeded in covering the public life of Martin Van Buren comprehensibly and succinctly from his early days in New York politics to his final years as an active participant in the political turmoil leading to the Civil War.
   
   The thoroughness this volume achieves regarding the political side of Van Buren's life comes at a price, however. At times this book is a dull read and seems to provide more detail, especially in the first third of the book dealing with New York machine politics, than most readers are likely to want or need. The book also does not delve very deeply into the personal side of Van Buren's life, although given that Van Buren's entire life revolved around politics (certainly far more than any previous President) this leaves fewer gaps than one might expect.
   
   In summation, this is an excellent biography of Van Buren, though Niven obviously intended it to be a scholarly treatment meant primarily for academic level study. This biography is easy to read and well organized, though not the type of book you that you will likely want to read twice.

No comments about Happy Valley: Murder, Mafia, Mormons and More!.

No comments about Corpsman Up!.

No comments about Filipinos in the U.S. Navy & Coast Guard During the Vietnam War.

1 comments about Mary Edwards Walker: Above and Beyond (American Heroes).

1. In this short biography of Mary Walker, Dale Walker gives glimpses into the history of medicine, the world of women's fashions, prisons of the Civil War, and the beginning of the campaign for women's vote. Mary Walker was born in 1832 in upstate New York to freethinking parents who insisted that the four girls work on the farm and wear clothing that allowed amble circulation of blood. Not only did she follow her father's suggestions for attire, she also followed him into the medical profession and became one of the first female doctors in the Unites States. Her father was self-taught; Mary graduated from Syracuse Medical College in 1849 and began the difficult task of finding patients who would pay to see a woman doctor. What the Civil War began, she volunteered as a physician and fought hard to be paid as a physician, not a nurse. She worked to stop battlefield amputations and to incorporate sanitary practices. Known as much for her brash, unrelenting behavior as her trousers, she became fodder for Civil War tabloids. Captured as a spy, Mary spent four months in Confederate prison where she schemed for prison reforms including better food and medical care. She was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1865, had it rescinded 1917 when Congress decided that too many medals had been awarded without merit, and reinstated in 1977. Her life spanned the Civil War and beyond. She saw women's roles changed from domestic work to physician. Just before she died in 1919, women were granted the right to vote.
   
   Mary Walker is a terrific role model for today's girls- feisty, responsible, hard-working and not at all concerned about the fashion police. Well worth reading.
   
   Reviewed by Beth Edelsten for Flamingnet Book Reviews
   www.flamingnet.com
   Preteen, teen, and young adult book reviews and recommendations

2 comments about Tojo.

1. Browne has written an excellent summary of Japanese governmental history during the first half of the twentieth century rather than a biography of Tojo. Pages go by with no mention of the biography's purported subject. When Tojo does receive attention, it is usually a bare summary of his actions. There is little attempt to get inside his mind or to provide personal context. Similarly, the photos section has relatively few photos of Tojo. The book is very good but its title ought to be "Japan: Government 1900-1945."



2. A poem called: the last Samurai:
   
   Tojo he was warlord,
   He say: If Japan-Kwo wants war, Japan-Kwo will have war!
   In the end the the Fat Man and the Thin Man fell on Japan-Kwo...
   and Tojo swung in autumn breeze,
   wearing a hemp necktie
   While cherry trees blossomed......
   Confucius he say: Tojo was velly honollabre ah so.............
   
   Bit long for a haiku, but it pretty much sums up Tojo's life and achievements. A horrible and destructive nihilist, at least Hitler had some (albeit sick and twisted and detestable) ideals....Tojo,like militant Islamists today, had nothing to offer but death... Apart from that there was nothing, only a void filled with pure hatred.
   He succeeded in turning many, many other Japanese into fanatical automatons, bent on killing and being killed.
   
   Be very afraid, peoples of the Western World: Tojo's ghost and "ideas" live on and manifested itself most spectacularly on the 11th of september 2001. Since then, whether we choose to ignore it or not (and most prefer to do so) we are at war with a bigger threat than the nazis...
   To think that Iran and Pakistan (where the mullahs soon will rule) control significant nuclear capabilities is a shocking realisation...
   May God defend the right, which is us, so in your fr*gging faces, bearded, suicide-bombing, wife-beating creeps!! And Tojo, if I ever get to Japan, I'll go to your grave or shrine or whatever the hell it is and p*ss all over it, hell, I might even take a cr*p on it while I'm at it!
   
   Two world wars and one world cup, mate, remember that!

No comments about Wings Over Georgia.

5 comments about My Father's Secret War: A Memoir.

1. I found it hard to stick with the book while waiting for the author to tie the whole thing together. She decided early-on that her father was a spy although the physical evidence she found was weak, at best. She then directed all of her energies towards supporting her theory at any cost through the use of leading and relentless questioning. Furthermore, given her father's testimony fifty years after the fact compounded by possible onset of dementia, the author's conclusions were tenuous at best.



2. While many readers have criticized the author for pursuing her inquiry to the point that, as they see it, it inflicted on her father unnecessary pain, I see two positive outcomes. One is that she unveils for us all one of the most unusual military careers of all times and prepares for the father the recognition and the dignified military farewell accorded to him at the end of his life. The other is that by relentless personal and professional persistence she proves to him that she is not only his worthy offspring but also that she is maturing by leaving behing her youthful ideological adventures and moving closer to him by appreciating his outstanding skills and sacrifices for the country. They both get rewarded by her actions.
   As to the psychological and clinical interpretations of the story, I believe that talking of posttraumatic stress is an unproductive if fashionable analysis, that trivializes the uniqueness of this case. Instead, the man's withdrawal seems to be a case of disruption of the relationships the hero had formed with his larger than life assignments, the exceptional feats of skill and daring, the national and world significance of his services. Importantly, these successes had been part of his personal growth away from the stifling family environment and had helped him conquer the limitations of his introverted disposition. When he returned to the unpleasantness of his job and the confines of a home and a distasteful marriage, he simply withdrew. Where he could keep his accomplishments reasonably alive, i.e., in the company of Pat Rosenfield, he opened up, talked rather freely about them and found just about all the joy of which he was capable. Likewise, the alienation from the author/daughter during her youth paralleled her acting the role of a "commy," i.e. a proxy for the things he had fought against. Fortunately it resolved when she slowly grasped and accepted his "secret war."
   Better than with the current PTSD theories, we could perhaps understand Tom Franks' story in the light psychoanalytic concepts of "adaptation" to certain object relationships that anchor our adjustment and self image and whose withdrawal engenders conflict and neurosis.
   The only exception would be the episode of the concentration camp, a trauma unredeemed by the excitement of a task accomplished and by the satisfaction of a duty absolved. In fact, when the memory of it was stirred in the restaurant encounter, he reacted violently, more in keeping with the majority of the PTSD cases and clearly out of character with regards to his typical aloofness. This could be the exception that confirms the rule.



3. This book was absolutely amazing. I was drawn to it especially because my father, and the father written about in the book, were both at the Ordruf Concentration camp and liberated it at the same time.
   I loved how the author wrote so sensitively about her father's health and the issues that certainly changed him after his time in the war.
   Eileen Hale



4. This seems to be a book with the best of intentions.
   I liked Thomas Franks, and clearly Lucinda Franks is an accomplished journalist.
   But the story itself is all over the place. Too many quick episodes and incidents about too many irrelevant characters. All I really wanted to know was what happened to the author's father during the war.
   I didn't appreciate Lucinda Franks's decision to take us on her arduous journey of finding the truth about her father, either. "Did you do this, Dad?" "Did you do that?" "Were you serving here, Dad?" "Were you serving there?" All answered with a "Well, perhaps," or "Let's not talk about that now." A sentence or two along the lines of, "It took me years to get the most basic information out of my father, but finally I did: here is his story," would have made for much more compelling reading.



5. At first I did not like Ms Franks or her book. I was not sure why she was writing if she disliked her father so much. But as I read on you could see she was trying, not very well at first, to understand her father and what made him tick. It took a lot and several times I wanted to slap her for some of the things she said but in the end she found the father she had wanted all along and really had right there with her but she had to get tear down the wall he had built so he could servive with what he had seen during the war and her mother after the war.

1 comments about Sounds from Another Room.

1. One of the best books I have read in many years-- that's real--a life that is so absorbing that I am following up people and events, that are mentioned in his life that prove to be as dramatic; real; and harrowing as his own.

   HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT -- EXCELLENT READING

1 comments about With Rommel's Army in Libya.

1. My name is Il-Kyu Han and I am an AP English Literature teacher at a top preparatory school in Korea. As a major work for the study of postcolonial literature, I have had the kids read both the book and film versions of "The English Patient." This book is very helpful for teaching students the power of poetic license where true history is modified into a work of fiction. It was also a great opportunity for me to work on the ability of students to compare and contrast the characterization of the fictional Almasy to the real one. I strongly recommend this book as a cross-reference to Ondaatje's masterpiece.