5 comments about Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover that Transformed America.

1. For about half the book, I was thinking Hersh did a tremendous job of researching the Mob-Kennedy-Hoover nexus, adding a great deal to what several other books on the subject have alleged.
   
   Then I got to the Kennedy assassination and it became clear that Hersh was simply repeating conspiracy lore and mythology without any ability or perhaps inclination to evaluate the material.
   
   Suspicion is not evidence, and to allege that a lot a strange and suspicious things happened, does not prove that the Mob/CIA/FBI/Cubans were in league to kill Kennedy. A plausible motive is not the same as proof of participation in a conspiracy.
   
   Only one case in point: on page 422 Hersh alleges that the FBI reversed six crucial images on the Zapruder film -- frames 313-319 -- to cover up the fact that there was another gunman (or was it several)?
   
   Does Hersh think that a half-dozen splices can be made in film and not be detectable? Nobody would notice that Kennedy's head, instead of exploding for six frames, would be reassembled? The limo, instead of traveling left-to-right, would be traveling right-to-left for six frames?
   
   This is grade-school stuff.
   
   It is understandable that the FBI would attempt to protect its reputation, even to the extent of altering/suppressing evidence of its incompetence. But to suggest that the FBI had an interest in protecting the killers requires evidence. Conspiracy buffs quote each other as authorities, and eventually create a huge network of myth, aided and abetted by Oliver Stone's bizarre movie (ummm, those were composites characters, was his defense).
   
   In the end, Hersh proves to be so gullible that nothing he wrote in the book can be taken at face value, however sensational -- maybe, particularly if sensational.



2. This primly salacious biography suffers from two conflicting flaws. Writer Burton Hersh seems to know too much about his subjects and is unable to dissever the wheat from the chaff. He seems hell-bent on telling the reader everything about everything, to the point of confusion. Detailing knicknames of mobsters who make cameo appearances in a paragraph or two, for example, blurs understanding rather than clarifying. Burton's quick switching between names hampers understanding as well, with John F. Kennedy switching to Jack and Bobby to Robert to Bob within a few sentences, making it difficult to be sure what character is acting in the play. The overabundance of detail makes for a very tedious read.
   
   Compounding the difficulty is a serious failure in editorial oversight. Misspellings abound, both typographic and the "spellcheck" variety with correctly spelled but incorrect words. Sentence structure is convoluted to the point that necessitates re-reading, parsing and deconstructing the author's intent. A competent editor would have cut a third of the text and imposed clearer chronological threads. History buffs will pick up a few new details and learn more about the sex lives and obsessions of the rich and famous than is particularly useful.



3. It's a well-written, well-sourced book detailing disturbing relationships, among them:
   * The mob and the Mormons in Las Vegas
   * The rum-running "founding father" Joseph Kennedy and his intertwined business interests with the criminal element
   * The at-times destructive relationship of the brothers Kennedy to one another.
   Mr. Hersh's account is high on credibility and readability. However, this is not a book for those who want to swallow the "martyr" myths about JFK and RFK.



4. A new slant on the differences between a new generation in politics and how not to use power.A nasty powerful man who was corrupt and used his position to stay in power at others expense.The Kennedys and J Edgar Hoover is a good book and lots of information brought to light .A.T.Kiln



5. I found this book very interesting to read. It is of special interest to me living in Massachusetts during this period. I found consideral insight into the politics of the time. It was well written and held my attention until the last page in the book.

5 comments about Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him.

1. Brilliantly researched and written this is a vital and substantial contribution to the sorry and depressing history of life in the former Soviet Union under the rule of the psychotic, evil Stalin and his miserable bunch of hyena type acolytes. After out scheming and removing the old Bolsheviks, Stalin was able to put himself up as the top hyena at the top of the pack and corrupt his close associates and eventually the Cheka to inflict his paranoiac ideas and schemes on the Communist Party and Soviet Union.
   
   The book commences with the long road to power for Stalin and deals with his early life, the experience of his religious education in the Tbilisi seminary and the ideas he probably gained from it and his Bolshevik revolutionary life. Chapters are then devoted to the history of each of the leaders of the Cheka with details of their pre-Cheka life and how they performed in the top job.
   
   Dzierzynski with the agreement of Lenin and his men formed the Cheka within 6 weeks of the October revolution and was immediately up to his armpits in blood; the period 1918-1921 saw the Cheka involved in widespread arrests, brutal interrogations and mass shootings of some real and many thousands of imagined enemies. Dzierzynski was similar to Stalin with a religious background that was savagely shattered at age 19 in a conversion to atheism and revolution and these two got on well together. In 1922 Dzierzynski swung a half million paramilitaries from Trotsky to support Stalin and was a crucial influence in Stalin's rise to power. He died in 1926 but directed his efforts to combat counter revolution, espionage etc outside of the party not inside, l got the impression he would have opposed many of Stalin's later crazy schemes as party unity was vital to him and he personally disliked fabricating evidence (of all things!) and was not willing to suppress party members.
   
   Dzierzynski was followed by the very able Menzhinsky who during the period 1928 to 1934 ably assisted Stalin to neutralize his opponents inside and outside the party and of course controlled the Cheka as it moved against the rural inhabitants and actioned the grain requisition of 1928 and the brutal forced farm collectivization which lead to the subsequent famine. Menzhinsky also worked with Stalin on the first show trials.
   
   This sorry trend of brutal suppression and misery continues and gets worst as the book continues. Besides the main hangmen this books also presents the history of the other Cheka operatives i.e. the strategists, crackdown and arresting officers, interrogators, executioners, guards etc.
   Many sadists, psychotics and cruel operatives performed the dirty work of Stalin and his hangmen.



2. Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) was Ivan the Terrible with a copy of Karl Marx in his hand. In fact, Stalin (Russian for "steel") was much worse than Ivan. Under Stalin's dictatorship the Soviet Union underwent years of murders; shootings; forced removal of millions of ethnic and other groups; persecution of a wide array of groups:
   (Jews; physicians, professors, religious leaders, non-ethnic Russian citizens, artists; writers; actors; lawyers-you name it!)
   Stalin seized power by ruthlessly murdering his opponents. As he emerged with total power in 1927 "Koba" (to use a nickname) ruled the Soviet Union with cruelty, stupidity and crimes so immense it takes Rayfield 500 small printed pages to describe them in searing detail!!
   Lenin had established Soviet rule but it was Stalin with such loathsome cronies as Iagoda; Estov and the repulsive Lavria Beria who launched a reign of terror on the very people they governed! Millions were slaughtered by bullet, ax or starvation. In the Great Purge of 1937-1938 millions were relocated to distant lands; sent into slavery in the GULAG in the far east or murdered after a short kangaroo court proceeding.
   Justice was absent from the Soviet lexicon under the evil Stalin.
   Stalin trusted no person. He executed those who had worked hard to establish him in power. Most of the powerful men who were vassals of Stalin's whims died betrayed by him.
   On the eve of World War II Stalin purged the Red Army of gifted generals. When Nazi Germany launched its attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 the Soviets were woefully unprepared. Generals were murdered: Pows returning from German captivity were executed as spies. In all over 20 million Soviet citizens would die in the war. Many of these victims died at the hands of the evil sorcerer of the Kremlin.
   Donald Rayfield teaches Russian and Georgian at the University of London. His book on playwright Anton Chekhov was well received. In this book he shows us the Soviet hell on earth world of sudden death; betrayal; cruelty beyond belief; hatred; racial and ethnic hatred that boggles the mind of anyone with a claim to be a member of the human race!
   Stalin and his hangmen were thugs; bullies and merciless killers of all that is decent and good in the human soul. Rayfield suggests at the end of his book that he fears democracy in the new Russia under Putin is very fragile.The ghosts of Stalin may again materialize in the Russia of the 21st century.
   Anyone who lives in a Western democracy should thank God that they did not first see daylight in the Soviet Union in the black days of Stalin and his cruel cronies.
   Rayfield's book is well written. Though he is a scholar the book can be
   read by one who has little familiarity with the history of this sad chapter of human history (the chapter on the Katyn Forest of Polish officers is just one case among countless tales told in the book which will break your heart). Stalin killed women, children, the old and the poor, the wealthy and the smart. He was an indiscriminate murderer of all he feared in his paranoic isolatiion inside tall Kremlin walls. He also was adept at turning people against one another. Several cases are related where a husband would volunteer to murder his own wife if this was the ukase ultimatum from Stalin which would prove the man's loyalty!
   As one who has read several books on Stalin I would give this book five stars. Every page has something to shock the reader. We should know what Stalin did as we honor his millions of helpless victims.



3. This simply a very well written book.
   
   The author doesn't write in a dry and detached way. He allows his righteous hate for these killers to shine through.
   
   Too often, Hitler's equal has been given relative scant attention for the tens of millions of lives ruined and for the millions actually murdered.
   
   The left, AKA academia has had a difficult time coming to grips with what the Soviets were. It truly was an evil empire and Stalin ruled it at its zeneth.
   
   Also well covered all many of the people who helped Stalin achieve what he did. If there is anything to be enjoyed, it's the justice that most ended up being victims themselves, often tortured and killed by the very underlings they trained and it done so in locations they established.
   
   Again, this book is written with the outrage and hate towards these people that is long overdue. If Hitler and his camp deserve their own hell, and they do, the author of this book makes the case for Stalin and his Hangmen.



4. Of all the historical villains of the 20th century I consider Josef Stalin as the greatest villain of all -- yes, even greater than Adolf Hitler. He is also one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century. Stalin was a master bureaucrat who quietly and methodically finagled himself into a supposedly mundane unglamorous position within the Communist Party and turned it into his ticket to the top by defeating supposedly greater party leaders than himself -- first relegating them to lesser roles, then ushering them out of the party, and eventually eliminating them permanently.
   
   "Stalin and His Hangmen" is a brilliant compilation of his "achievements" and how he accomplished what he accomplished. It tells of how he manipulated the party and how his secret police brought grief to the country. What is perhaps most fascinating to me about his reign of terror is how he got away with it. The individuals he surrounded himself with knew what was happening, how it was happening, and that they too were apt to be victims of his terror. Yet they appeared powerless to save themselves until Stalin's own end in 1953. Small wonder that his immediate entourage were slow to call for medical assistance when they found him incapacitated by a stroke in March 1953.



5. Celine once said that the biggest defeat in life was to die without realizing how rotten people can be. In this sense, if none other, few of the victims of Stalin's reign of terror could have died in vain. Donald Rayfield's *Stalin and His Hangmen* offers exhaustive and well-documented proof--what a pack of rats we humans are!
   
   Rayfield doesn't analyze so much as record the appalling criminal and pathological behavior of Stalin and an entire ruling elite. By doing so, he hopes to explain how Stalin not only rose to power, kept power, but infected everyone around him with his murderous paranoia and ruthless quest for dominance. How did Stalin get these men to kill for him--to commit not just one Holocaust, but repeated holocausts over the decades of his absolute tyranny? And how did he convince, order, and inspire this gang of pseudo-psychopathic "party leaders" to kill so many as well as each other without turning on the one man from whom they all had the most to fear--Stalin himself?
   
   Rayfield suggests that it was part of Stalin's dark genius to be able to manipulate his minions in such a way that they were all in a constant state of mutual suspicion, each trying to get a leg up on the other, all trying to outdo each other in ruthless efficiency to please the boss and to avoid incurring his wrath. The whole warped dynamic doesn't sound a great deal different than the politicking that goes on in any ordinary workplace--without, naturally, the pogroms. No doubt Stalin's divide and conquer strategy goes a way towards explaining the crimes committed by these otherwise unremarkable men, but one suspects the matter is quite a bit more complicated and rooted in the paradoxes of human nature itself.
   
   What Rayfield illustrates most chillingly is the thin line that separates the normal man from the callous bureaucratic killer for whom millions of lives are, as Stalin once said, just a statistic. For it isn't the ever-present and ever-willing supply of sociopaths and contract killers available in any society who did the hands-on killing in the Gulags and prisons of Stalin's Russia that are so disturbing, but the "company men," the "family men," who went home to their wives and kids after a long day at the office casually ordering the ethnic cleansing of the Caucuses or the prophylactic execution of twenty thousand Poles.
   
   Yet while focusing more attention on Stalin's right (and left) hand men (like Beria, Yezhov, and Yagoda) than is usually the case in studies of Stalin and his crimes, Rayfield somehow fails to make these admittedly inhuman characters seem like real-life human beings. There's a lack of biographical depth and detail, of incident and anecdote that might flesh out these otherwise thinly-drawn figures and perhaps offer further clues and insights into their natures and into what turns not just politicians into killers, but poets, soldiers, wives, doctors, basically anyone, into an accomplice and snitch ready to betray their fellow man to save their own neck.
   
   In providing, admirably, the objective facts it seems to me that something was nevertheless missing that would bring this gang of cruds to life. Quite probably, there's just too much ground to cover here--the cast of characters is enormous, the crimes monstrous and abundant, and the time period over half a century. At five hundred densely-written pages, it's hard to see how Rayfield could have gone into much more depth in one volume. Still, in the end, *Stalin and His Hangmen* is a compelling and astounding read that has the power to shock even those who think they already know just how unspeakably cruel a people and a society can become when it's ruled by human beings at their worst.

1 comments about J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography.

1. Rick Geary does it again with his graphic biography of an American icon, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI. He uses his trademark illustrative style to chart the course of Hoover's life from birth to death, and all points in between. Hoover is now a controversial figure thanks to some scandalous, yet unproven rumors (mostly about his personal life), but Geary treats his subject matter fairly, and portrays Hoover in an unbiased fashion. This is a new venture from Geary's excellent "Treasury of Victorian Crime" series, and it does not disappoint. Anyone looking for a concise, yet thoroughly enjoyable biography of Hoover need look no further.

5 comments about The Confession.

1. i have never actually responded to what the reviewer's are saying about a book, but i am now. how the hell did this piece of crap get a high rating. are people that off base that a clear right and wrong is that hard to see.
   this guy is a dirtbag. he lied to just about everyone, used his office to get a job for his lover, and only fessed up when he was caught. it's assinine to excuse this behavior because he was conflicted about being gay. regardless of your race, sexual orientation, religion, or environment, unless you have a gun pointed to your head, you have free will. this guy did have a choice to be honest, and he DIDN'T.
   also, he not only put his life in danger but the life of his unborn child. condoms are NOT a 100% gaurantee against STDs and HIV. I know there are some that buy into that myth, but it's the truth. Many STDs are are now showing up that are resistant to antibiotics. STDs can cause blindness and mental retardation in babies. HIV is still mutating and advancing through our population. The drugs out their prolong the life, but that's a far cry from a cure.
   anyone who endorses this kind of behavior is just stupid. this guy is scum. being gay does not excuse that. safety, honesty, and some kind of moral compass trump that. right is STILL right. i could care less who you are. all human beings should be held to the same standard. ALL. NO EXCEPTIONS.



2. It took me a long time to buy both of the books, I'm glad I did...
   Bravo Jim McGreevy & Forbidden Love with a Married Man: E-mail Diaries by Dennis Schleicher, you both are brave men by telling us all your stories. Memoir's like this and other's like "Forbidden Love with a Married Man; E-mail Diaries" by Dennis J. Schleicher, "The Other Man," show men remaining closeted that heterosexually marrying will continue until society hears from these individuals. As you both experience an emotional time all who read your stories will understand the circumstances you both face as Gay American's. I would love to see more press on you this and will buy any sequel's you both do. Thank you Dennis for you support in my own Coming-Out and helping me to read "The Confession."
   
   Best of luck,
   
   Craig Davis
   Boston, MA.



3. A "confession" is an admission of wrongdoing, or, a statement of beliefs. Was his secret ("a gay American") known to insiders? Only the public was kept ignorant by the corporate media (else it would have surfaced in election time). JEM was adept in living his secret life, so this book has his self-serving statements. Politicians, like actors, live to fool the public to get their votes and money (p.5). JEM's early life was training to be "a perfect child" (p.23). Did he read too much (p.24)? Was he a fastidious dresser (p.25). Why didn't he fit in (p.28)? Was he precocious (p.36)? Were people secretly spying on him (p.38)? JEM knew his future (p.42). JEM backed Nixon (p.52)! JEM's admission of homosexuality could not have been a shocking surprise to those who knew him. Aren't party bosses and patronage a continuation of the feudal system (p.84)? Isn't that how corporations operate? The purpose of any government is to control the economy. Political power leads to wealth (p.85). Is a "strong governorship" a symptom of corruption that leads to high taxes (p.92)? JEM doesn't tell how the Kean campaign smeared Shapiro because he married a divorced woman (p.111). Did Merck buy him a seat in the NJ Assembly (p.112)? Chapters 8 and 9 give JEM's views about local politics. Florio's tax increase was "a bitter pill" because it extended and raised the sales tax.
   
   As mayor of Woodbridge JEM borrowed $42 million from politically connected underwriters (p.134). The Florio gun ban violated the "ex post facto" clause in the Constitution (p.142). JEM seems confused about politics, business, and self-interest (p.143)! Did Woodbridge really have "six, seven feet of snow" "month after month" (p.145)? The solution for high electricity prices is municipal-owned utilities (p.151). Big insurance companies drove up costs (p.158). Did Whitman loot NJ and cause high property taxes (p.161)? JEM's "punishing" schedule implies a lack of delegation (p.172). Does his meeting with Golan Cipel sound funny (p.209)? That detailed knowledge sounds like a set-up by an intelligence service to acquire an asset. Politics is business (pp.205-206). The job of governor is "very rewarding" (p.207). Who double-crossed JEM (p.208)? "The biggest hypocrite in the world"? Pages 209-211 provides news that is censored by the Media. Are voters that naive (p.213)? Was Golan an adventurer (p.214)? JEM named his biggest contributor to the Port Authority (p.224), but that was not a payback.
   
   "Cooking the books" to create a budget shortfall for the new governor isn't new (p.242). The result of a "strong governor"? Reduced corporate taxes? Personalities affect politics (p.244). "It was a big error in judgment" (p.248). Can any governor have a "secret life" (p.250)? JEM blames his faults on his security detail (p.252)! Was JEM "a bad judge of character" (p.270) or a "machine politician off the assembly line" (p.269)? Did people love JEM like he loved himself (p.270)? Chapter 14 is most revealing about the intrigues of the ruling class. JEM tries to explain away his use of the code word "Machiavelli" (p.280). Did a fixer procure women for JEM? NJ politicians hug each other to check for a hidden recording device (p.292)! What did JEM do about "auto insurance" (p.295)? New developments lead to rising taxes (p.296). Charles Kushner paid NY spooks for that sex blackmail (p.300). Were Federal laws broken? JEM's final crisis was a suit for sexual harassment (p.304). Why did he have to resign (p.322)? Why does JEM need punishment (p.324)? Do other politicians resign over a sex scandal when no laws were broken (p.327)? JEM's sins are also pride and vanity (p.336). JEM's "reform" made the political bosses more powerful (p.337)! Awarding contracts to political supporters is how government works by nature. JEM's skills could make him a talk show host. It worked for Jerry Springer and other lawyers.



4. l have to make a confession, l loved this book! Jim McGreevey is proof that with hard work and dedication, any boy can grow up to be Queen of New Jersey. This gets my vote.



5. What's the Big Deal?
   
   
   McGreevy, James. "The Confession". Regan Books, 2006
   
   Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
   
   I don't know how any of you feel about James McGreevy, the former governor of New Jersey who will be remembered for time immortal by making that famous statement, "My truth is that I am a gay American." I, personally, do not think much of him but I wanted to read his book to see what he had to say.
   In August, 2004 McGreevy made history when he made that public statement and then immediately resigned from public office. The story was big news and the statement he made was heard around the world. Yet his statement merely opened the door a tad to a very complex and international human and public political drama. In "My Confession" McGreevy attempts to set the record "straight" about his life of "ambition, money, compromise and redemption. Truthfully I was not impressed. Sure, I read the book just as all of us do. But a book is just printed words upon a page. No matter how erudite McGreevy is I found the book not to be an answer for a life gone astray.
   As a child, McGreevy never knew the word "want". Although he was the son of working class parents, he was a striver and a doer. He considered the priesthood but decided upon politics as a life goal. By the time he was 36 years old he had won 3 elections and then became the governor of New Jersey at a young age. Yet there was something here that was not quite honest. During his adult life he had been forced to suppress an aspect of his life that prevented him from being complete. Worst than that was the fact that he lied to himself. The fact that he knew he was gay caused him to live a life in the closet since living as a straight man was the only option a politician could have. (Really, McGreevy, you can't be so naïve as to believe that). What happened was that he split himself in two--living as a straight man on one hand and as a tormented gay man on the other. Politicians supposedly demand ethical behavior (right George W?) and that ethical behavior involved cut -throat political tactics and shady backroom deals. He says, "Political compromises came easy to me because I'd learned to keep myself innocent of them". (At least until he got caught). The political triumphs of his term as governor did not last and he was haunted by the sins of his staff. It took a disgruntled lover to threaten to expose him to bring him to his senses. It was only then that he could accept himself for who he was.
   Some call the book a memoir of coming out. I am not sure I agree that this is a coming out story. In fact, I am not quite sure what this book is. It is extremely readable but it is not as exciting as we were wont to expect. As McGreevy tries to forge the rift between his public persona and his private life in the shadows, he comes out and does so with a great deal of support.
   The book is written with style and grace---would we expect less from a "gay American"? It supposedly honest and it does give insight on being a political figure. What he does tell in this book that we did not know before was that he did not tell the federal government of a $50 million extortion plot against him because he was afraid that it would expose his secret life. It seems as if this plot was hatched by a former male lover. The book also goes into great details of his inner battles with his gayness, his double life as a twice married man with children and his political rise. He gives his side to the story of how we had sex with the man whom he alleges blackmailed him and this sexual liaison took place while his second wife was in the hospital delivering their new daughter.
   His account of how he and his blackmailer had sex on the day after Christmas 2001 is hot and heavy. "We undressed and he kissed me. It was the first time in my life that a kiss meant what it was supposed to mean---it sent me through the roof...I pulled him to the bed and we made love like I'd always dreamed: a boastful, passionate, masculine kind of love." And then this guy whom he made love with, this Golan Cipel was appointed to be in charge of New Jersey's counter terrorism efforts even though he had no experience and has claimed over and over that he is not gay. The lover and his non gay friend continued their affair and McGreevy's wife even confronted him about his sexuality and he decided to say nothing about it. Two years later Cipel told McGreevy that he had told his parents that they had had an affair and demanded to see him. McGreevy said no and Cipel told him, "If I don't see you I am going to begin to take action." McGreevy decided at that point that he had to go public and when telling his wife, her response was, "Where are you going to live?" His father simply said, "You make a choice Jim--Coke or Pepsi...why don't you make your choice?" McGreevy answered, "Dad, I've known my whole life. This is who I am."
   Today, after all of this dirty laundry has been done so publicly, McGreevy has accepted himself and is working as an educational consultant and lives in New Jersey with his millionaire partner, Mark O'Donnell.
   Now it is my turn to do a little laundry. I do not begrudge McGreevy a good life but what I want to know is why he needs all the hoopla and attention from the national media. I am sure that there are many other stories like his that need to be told and would better serve the needs of the gay community. He, after all, has a very good job and has a millionaire for a lover. Some in the gay community are lauding McGreevy for his honesty and courage and there are those that are calling him a role model. Likewise there are many of us who are just reveling in his gossip and having a really good sneer about the whole affair. McGreevy was forced to accept himself and come out because of blackmail and scandal. When he did come out, he did not do so nobly and he should not be regarded as a hero. It made me ill to see Oprah, a strong champion of gay rights, hug him and her audience show him love. Did his coming out made it any better for anyone than he himself? Did he pay a price for coming out? Sure, he lost his job but was he punished in any way for betraying the oath of office which he had committed himself to? Did he not risk the safety of the people of New Jersey buy giving an important security post to an unqualified "trick" in exchange for sexual favors? Today he is living with a multi millionaire financier in a million dollar mansion of 17 rooms in New Jersey and is becoming a celebrity. Let him have a good life--we all deserve that, but let us not forget how he got there.
   Is he good for the gay community? What we see now when we look at his life story is incompetence, corruption, blackmail, adultery, arrogance, exploitation and promiscuity. Are these the qualities our role models should have? Others see his pain and suffering, his sad life in the closet and the courage to come out and deal with the past. These are the things that make books sell. The Oprah show and the hype about the book will increase sales and we, the gay community are dragged yet again though another dirty, sleazy, shabby, shady, disgusting soap opera.. I think that we, as a community, have a responsibility and an obligation to not just question McGreevy's book, "The Confession" but to do so aggressively. Is it indeed a coming out story? I think it is just a self serving apology from another corrupt politician who is banking on the fact that he is "a gay American."
   In closing, I must state that the book is good--well written, easy to read and extremely interesting. However, the subject matter leaves a great deal to be desired and I am just amazed at those of us who can't call an elephant an elephant. My inner self tells me that as corrupt as he appears in the book, he has not really cleaned up his act. The fact that he wrote this book tells me that. What makes it so hard to review is that it is a good book but then the Brothers Grimm also wrote a good book--one of fairy tales.

5 comments about The Blair Years: The Alastair Campbell Diaries.

1. You don't have to go far into this "diary" to discover it's a highly interesting and possibly questionable account of the times but an account that has been not only excised of any substance but of any objectivity too. Therefore it fails as a diary and becomes a very monochrome and monotone account of.......well what? Campbell was well know in Fleet Street as a partial leaker of government business. That is the way the system works. If you were in favour by printing favourable things about "Nu" Labour then you got his highly coloured stories. Woe betide you if you printed the truth, locked out of the circle of knowledge you were left with crumbs from the table. And so "Nu" Labour set out with Campbell to control the press, sometime sucessful, sometimes with spectacular failure (Honours for money). Whatever Campbells truth is, it is his own and he should be left to it and his own fantacies!



2. mr campbell wrote every thing about sir tony blair in the period from 1994-2003 you will feel you are working & living in 10 downing street or in the labour party -before they became in power in 1997- really good job . iam waiting for mr blair diaraes which i heard that it will be released in 2008 to have the complete view about the most powerful british prime minester since margret tatcher



3. Until Tony Blair himself publishes his account of his time in office, this has to be the next best thing. Although most of the daily entries are short, it conveys the mood. Sunday morning confabs to determine the appropriate response to a breaking story, speechwriting on airplanes, careful feeding of information to journalists, it is all here. I found myself thinking " *that's* how they did it".
   
   There are also many amusing/bizarre anecdotes such as Campbell walking in on Mo Mowlan in the bath.
   
   The Diana parts felt set up to me. We hear about how she wanted to meet Campbell, then they met, she asks for him later, and then of course her crash and death. His affection for her seems somewhat overblown, and it says something of his reputation that I found myself believing his portrayal in "The Queen", coldly feeding the "People's Princess" line to Blair, more than his own diaries. The cartoonish version of Campbell as the arch spin doctor is now a cultural fixture of its own, turning up not only in "The Queen" but in books like "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen". I wonder what Campbell must think about that.
   
   Ambition and rivaly are never far from the surface. When describing Blair's lengths football header session with Kevin Keegan, Campbell is careful to note that it was easier than it seemed, since "of course a professional like Keegan can head the ball towards a target in the same way most of us can throw it, so it wasn't that difficult."
   
   I found it amusing that Campbell goes out of his way not to to use the word "spin". I expect that he became thoroughly sick of hearing that word.
   
   Note that this is "Extracts from" Alastair Campbell's diaries. The really secret stuff is, well, secret.



4. This book was returned due to its poor quality. There was simply no way I could present this book as a gift due to the cut of the pages. Please improve your product standards.



5. Whereas the recently released diaries of President Reagan were an approachable exercise in easy readability that never excluded facts and anecdotes about the personages of the age, this diary is truly for hard-core political aficionados only. I can read almost anything, and even I had trouble getting through The Blair Years. What's wrong here? Well, the typeface was poorly chosen, the writing style was distancing at best, and even the entries themselves were printed too closely together and should have been better designed. In the end everything about this work serves to put a reader off.
   
   For every interesting piece about, say, dinner with Princess Diana (who served Mr. Campbell tea), the Queen's bored reaction to the Millennium celebrations, or juicy details on Bill Clinton's personal opinion of then-President elect Bush, there are scores of entries that cover minutia so densely recorded that I truly think this is a book that will be of greatest value to a graduate student studying foreign affairs, or a future historian who wishes to research the Blair years. The average reader hoping to get a backstage pass to politics as undertaken at 10 Downing Street will probably do better looking elsewhere.
   
   While Campbell is comprehensive, he is not (at least as evidenced here) gifted with those talents that make for an engrossing reading experience.

3 comments about You Can Lead a Politician to Water, But You Can't Make Him Think: Ten Commandments for Texas Politics.

1. I live in Texas and I am very proud to say that I was one of the 12 % of us here in the Lone Star State who voted for Kinky for governor. Kinky is a true Texan, as this book shows. He loves the state of Texas. His comment that politicians are "by nature shallow and superficial" is very true. In contrast, true Texans have an independent spirit, and that is what makes Texas great. A sense of humor is also what makes Texas great, and Kinky has that, of course, too. How is it that Texas is one of the richest states, and yet, has one of the worst education systems of any state ? (6 % below the other states in pay) ? How is it that we have a dysfunctional death penalty system that makes this state a mockery around not just the U.S., but the world ? We have more people in prison in Texas than there are people in Alaska, as the "Kinkster" points out. How did it come to this ? We allow politicians to jerrymander districts to allow the perpetual re-election of their party ? Is this democracy ? We make casino gambling illegal, even though the typical Texan likes to gamble (they do it in Louisiana). We are a state run by a governor who has almost no power, and a legislature run by lobbies and big money. Kinky's book is full of funny anecdotes about him with Willie Nelson. I remember Kinky at the St. Patrick's Day parade here in Dallas. He was handed a Guiness in the back of a car, and took a couple of sips. One would think the world had ended. Kinky points out how two groups are ruining Texas: the politically correct Left, and the Religious Right. One main theme of the book is, musicians and other Texans are real people, with warmth, humor, and independence. Politicians in Texas are the opposite: superficial and fake. Who can argue with that ?



2. It is the American myth that any boy, now girl, can grow up to become President of the United States. It would stand to reason that the same rule applies to Texas. So why couldn't a politically incorrect Jewish country music singer and fiction author toss what he calls his "ten gallon yarmulke" into the ring and become governor of Texas?
   
   "Why the hell not?" became the slogan of Kinky Friedman as he waged his way, way uphill, independent run for the Texas governorship in 2006. YOU CAN LEAD A POLITICIAN TO WATER, BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE HIM THINK is Kinky's chronicle of that campaign. And in the true Kinky way, it is laugh-out-loud funny.
   
   Politics makes strange bedfellows and all that, but 2006 was a strange year even by American standards. Nationwide, the Democratic Party swept into control of Congress on a pledge to end the war. We see how well that worked out. And Kinky sensed the winds of change blowing in the Texas Hill country. Perhaps he could unseat Rick Perry, George W. Bush's successor, in the governor's mansion.
   
   His model was Minnesota, which several years back elected as governor a former wrestler, and California, which elected a former body builder turned actor governor in 2003. Both well-built men waged insurgent campaigns against entrenched professional politicians. Although, as Kinky points out, Jesse Ventura "didn't realize that wrestling is real and politics is fixed."
   
   An independent candidate had not even gotten on the ballot in Texas in 154 years. But this did not deter the Kinkster.
   
   After all, Friedman writes, Texas "has a tradition of singing governors. I thought back to Pappy O'Daniel's successful race for that esteemed office in the 1940's. He had a band called the Light Crust Doughboys. I had a band called the Texas Jewboys. His slogan was `Pass the biscuits, Pappy.' One of my most popular songs is `Get Your Biscuits in the Oven (And Your Buns in the Bed).' The parallels are uncanny."
   
   Indeed. But, still, the odds against Kinky were steep. Then something interesting happened. Friedman went around the state declaring that he was a "dealer of hope" and fighter for the "Alamo of the Mind."
   
   He launched a populist campaign and railed against the corruption of the two-party system. And people started paying attention. The 62-year-old king of the one-liners --- "too young for Medicare and too old for women to care" --- was delivering a dead serious message about America in 2006.
   
   "Because now, as politics as usual rolls across America like a noxious vapor," Kinky writes, "I'm no longer sure it matters whether the Democrats or Republicans run the country. It's just a different swarm of locust moving into Washington. In the words of the Reverend Goat Carson, `The Republicans and the Democrats have become the same guy admiring himself in the mirror.'"
   
   He decried a system where Texas was 46th in the nation in kids going to college, second in people going to bed hungry, first in executions and now imported energy. Yet the section of the state legislature reserved for lobbyists is called by some "the owner's box."
   
   His message resonated with the larger truth. As Bill Moyers pointed out a few years ago, there are now 34,785 registered lobbyists in Washington, D.C. spending $200 million a month to influence legislation. In the U.S. Congress there are 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. Talk about the owner's box!
   
   Kinky was able to put together a campaign where everybody on his staff "seemed to be either a hairdresser or bass player." They were able to raise $5 million, enough to get him on the ballot --- a feat that took the notarized signatures of 170,258 people --- but not enough to buy crucial TV ads for the general campaign.
   
   And although he received half a million votes, that was not enough to win the election. Indeed, only 28% of the populace voted, down 1% from the previous statewide election. For insurgents to have any chance of winning, turnout has to be huge. Ventura's race had a turnout of 62%.
   
   YOU CAN LEAD A POLITICIAN TO WATER, BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE HIM THINK reminded me of the work of the late, great gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. Like Thompson, Kinky uses sometimes outrageous humor to convey the scary, deeper truth. For example, the politically incorrect Kinkster was bound to have trouble with the media for many things, such as his habit of consuming 8-10 Cuban cigars a day. So he took to not lighting them.
   
   Kinky recalls, "This of course caused people to constantly come up to me and ask, `Do you ever smoke that thing?' or `Is that thing lit?' To the latter question I would often respond, `Which thing are you referring to?' which was, of course, a veiled reference to my penis. This response, I suspect, may have cost me some votes in the suburbs."
   
   His deeper message comes through a few pages later when he writes, "The media are essentially lazy and it is much easier to resort to `Got ya!' journalism than it is to speak up for the truth."
   
   Amen!
   
   Another author with a wonderful wit also waged a failed independent campaign for governor in 2006. Malachy McCourt ran for governor of New York on the Green Party ticket. Their accents might be different, but the message was basically the same: something has gone terribly wrong with the American Dream when politics is so far removed from the people that the people can vote for one thing and the politicians give them something else.
   
   Kinky Friedman is sending America a warning in this book. Message delivered, he can now fire up that cigar.
   
   --- Reviewed by Tom Callahan



3. The book is good--very funny--bit it's all stuff that was already published in Texas Monthly. If I had read "Friedman's just another word for nothing left to lose" for the first time, I'd be laughing for months. If you're a real fan of his, don't bother. Otherwise, I'd recommend it.

No comments about Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I.

5 comments about What Color is a Conservative?.

1. I think that this book is a great book but always keep an open mind



2. Watts, football player turned politician, indicates his obsession with racism and politics by trying to defend political conservatives as non-racist even when it's obvious that these were the same lunatics in both parties that allowed the racism wackiness to spiral out of control in the south back in the 1960s and still does today nationwide albeit more subtely. The only reason rural voters in his area ever kept the guy in office was because he was a corporate conservative who enjoyed the art of bait and switching voters on culture hot button issues such as guns and abortion all the while keeping the economic mess as silent as possible. Sorry Mr. Watts, but good conservatives would never have sucked up to your cultural bait and switch tricks if it weren't for political in-correctness. You know you're just a neoconservative radical and not a honest conservative and you're not fooling most African Americans anyway.



3. This is overall, a good read. The book gave me a different perspective of J.C. Watts and resulted in more respect for the former Congressman. My only complaint is the numerous football analogies: too many. It became overkill after a while and I was annoyed by his constant references to the game. Other than that, I enjoyed reading the book.



4. For those you are political junkies and for those who aren't this is a great read. There are some really good stories in this book as well as some really good and thoughtful insights. I bought this as a gift for someone struggling with the issues of color and liberalism. It makes a great converstional book as well. I own this book as well. Strongly recommended.



5. Very well writen, and informative. There are statesmen still left in this country, not just politicians.

3 comments about . . . And His Lovely Wife: A Campaign Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man.

1. Connie Schultz takes us inside her husband's 2006 senatorial campaign and shows us, in a warm,
   conversational style, just what it takes for the candidate--and the family--to win a statewide office. She is real,
   down-to-earth, funny and tells it like it is. Her passion for helping people matches her husband's, and she
   puts her heart and soul into the election. A book for all political junkies of any party!



2. Connie Schultz has written a love story and a fun quick read! This couple had their priorities straight as they struggled--and triumphed--through the inevitable challenges of the American political campaign. I appreciated Ms. Schultz calling herself a feminist (without apologizing for keeping her name) and Sherrod Brown accepting the label of liberal--it was refreshing to peek into the lives of people true to their roots and their beliefs. And it makes me think about what Michelle Obama must be experiencing right about now...



3. After a long presidential primary season, with the general election still to come, I'd decided I wanted no more of politics. The role of money, negative campaigning, and media coverage of (as far as I was concerned) non-issues, and an e-mail in-box filled with reports of the latest outrage committed by whichever candidate the sender opposed had turned me off the whole process.
   
   Then I read Connie Schultz's ...And His Lovely Wife: A Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, an account of the year spent with her husband, Sherrod Brown, in his 2006 campaign for the United States Senate, and my cynicism disappeared.
   
   Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, had been married to Brown, a U. S. Representative from Ohio, for just over two years when Brown told her he wanted to run for the Senate against a popular incumbent. They agreed that he would run as an "unapologetic progressive"; that he would run a statewide campaign and would fight back against any attack ads; and that their marriage would remain a priority.
   
   But the day after taking leave from her job, less than two months into the campaign, Schultz wrote in her journal, "WHAT'S TO BECOME OF ME?" She knew that her career, her marriage, and her very identity as a writer and as a feminist would be threatened--that as the spouse of a candidate, she would go from "being a woman paid to give her opinion to a wife spouting her husband's views everywhere she went." That she shared most of Brown's views was little consolation when she was repeatedly introduced on the campaign circuit as "his lovely wife."
   
   Schultz discovered, however, that she could "write [her] own playbook."
   
   "I didn't have to follow someone else's rules on how to be a political wife. In fact, I could just keep on being Sherrod's wife and do what I have always done: talk to people, take notes, and share their stories--and my own...The road up ahead offered a lighted path I couldn't see when I was way back there, wallowing in all that fear."
   
   The author takes the reader behind the scenes of a campaign in an uphill race for national office: the intense (and necessary) fundraising efforts, the hectic schedules, the friendships begun and those threatened, and the challenges of dealing with the press (the Plain Dealer endorsed Brown's opponent). Especially interesting is her discussion of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in affording financial backing to their respective candidates. In a chapter entitled "Karl Rove's Blunder," she details a turning point, the DSCC's funding of a response to an attack ad--one which used a "doctored version" of the burning Twin Towers--run on television by Brown's opponent at the urging of Karl Rove. "Long before a single vote had been counted," she writes, "we'd already won."
   
   Far from being just "his lovely wife," Schultz was an integral part of her husband's campaign. She not only served as his fashion coordinator (which included telling the director of his TV commercials that Brown didn't have a "power suit"), monitored his health, and appeared with him at campaign events. But she always spoke for him in her own voice. For me, the most moving part of the book comes when she is once more introduced as "'Sherrod Brown's wife...one of those women who won't change her name...'" (Confession: I, too, retained my name upon marrying; nevertheless, when I came across Sherrod Brown's name the first time, I flipped back to the cover to note with surprise that Connie Schultz hadn't changed her name!) In the speech following that introduction, Schultz explained that she has kept the name given to her by her father, a blue-collar worker, and that "one of the reasons I fell in love with Sherrod Brown was because he has spent his entire career fighting for the people I come from."
   
   Following Brown's election to the Senate, Schultz returned to her position as columnist at the Plain Dealer, where she continues to express her own opinion, to the dismay of some readers. In response to an e-mail insisting that, as the wife of an elected official, she has no business writing a newspaper column, she replied that marriage "does not suck the brain out of a woman or render her incapable of an independent thought." This statement alone might indicate why Schultz was an asset to the campaign.
   
   ...And His Lovely Wife is instructive, touching, funny, and inspiring. Calling herself "everywife," Schultz says that "[u]timately, this is a story about a marriage" that is tested and changed by eleven months of public scrutiny. It is also a story of a political campaign run by positive people in a positive way--an excellent book to read during a long campaign season.
   
   by Kathy Waller
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   reviewing books by, for, and about women

5 comments about Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag.

1. Give a copy of this book to all your friends wearing Che t-shirts. After so many descriptions of beatings and hunger strikes, you become numb to the next ones. I recall the AI campaigns in the 70s-80s to send letters and postcards to the Cuban and Soviet embassies just to remind them that the world was watching. Sadly today AI has degenerated into just another wacko outfit. The UN comes in for a beating of its own in this book, as it just sat back and closed its eyes, passing resolutions against Israel and other nonsense instead of putting pressure on Cuba. This continues today with Zimbabwe, NK, and others.
   
   Take a look at "The Aquariums of Pyongyang" for a look at the same song, different verse.



2. Another Amazon reviewer got it right when he wrote that this book should be given to all one's deluded friends sporting hip "Che" T-shirts. This eye-opening, stomach-churning account of the author's 22 years in Cuban prisons, the conditions of which make Shawshank seem like a Club Med, demolishes the romanticized memory of "freedom fighters" like Che and exposes the lie that Castro's Revolution created a socialist paradise. And it highlights Communism's inability to understand or erase one of the most important traits of human nature: our hunger for individual freedom and personal dignity.
   
   Valladares wastes no time plunging us into a hell Dante himself could barely have imagined - on page one he is abducted in the middle of the night by the political police on trumped-up charges (having been denounced, he feels, by a jealous coworker for his disapproval of Castro's embrace of Communism), and before his prison odyssey is over, he endures and observes the worst extremes of totalitarian repression. The tension and the drama never let up, and often reach the breaking point. The litany of sadistic human rights abuses goes on page after page, every page; the degree of physical and psychological cruelty is so incomprehensible as to nearly defy belief. And yet Valladares and others maintain an almost superhuman strength of character and will to live that are inspirational and humbling. Amazingly, there are even flashes of humor and an ultimate triumph in this maddening and disturbing memoir.
   
   Against All Hope is one of the most gripping books you will ever read. It has a compelling social conscience and an inspirational message of hope, faith, courage, determination, and even love, and it will leave you with a changed perspective on yourself and the world.



3. A beautiful and terrifying memoir of Castro's Cuba. This man suffered unspeakable injustices at the hands of Castro's servants. The honesty and heartfelt memories of this man persecuted by the Communists is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Wonderful testimony to the bravery and courage of the human spirit in the face of horrible odds.



4. I read this book in Spanish, in condensed form, when I was fourteen years old. (1987, to be exact) Twenty-one years later, I still think about it. It made an anti-Communist out of me, and made me absolutely abhor what Fidel and Raul have done to such a beautiful island as Cuba, and to its people, for almost fifty years.
   
   Sure, you might say they have "free health care". Trust me: they have paid a terrible price for "free."
   
   It should be a must-read, together with Vaclav Havel's essays, for those who need to know what Communism really is: the rottenness of the soul, and an ideology borne out of the bowels of hell itself. Nothing else can describe it.
   
   Viva Cuba Libre! (And this from a boricua.)



5. Mandatory reading for humans, along with Jorge Masetti's In the Pirate's Den, which allows to see the other side: the middle-class, comfortable punk turned communist, the appropriate accolyte for Castro's genocide.
   
   This book is a victory of faith and resistance against totalitarianism. Castro deceived the poor, the peasants of Cuba, he perverted the revolution those humble people were expecting. Castro had declared a thousand times that he was not a communist and that the revolution was "greener than palm trees", but when he got the power he proclaimed unashamedly the true nature of his beast.
   
   This books stands as an invaluable monument to the Cubans whom Castro broke but never bent. Those who refused to say: "Yes, Commissar, I have done wrong. I accept Political Rehabilitation because I see now that communism is the only just system, and it alone can bring happiness to humanity" (p.358).
   
   Notes on communism: "The authorities thought, moreover, that weeding out the cabecillas (leaders) would leave the less educated, less 'dangerous' prisoners, lacking leadership, easier to manipulate ... but if there is any ideology based completely on a misunderstanding of human behavior and the workings of men's psyche, their motivations, that ideology is without doubt marxism ... time would show that every man's conscience, system of values, and personal pride were what led him to resist. No man needed another to show him the way" (p.219).
   
   "A communist always seems to prefer an angry, blurted, uncontrolled manner (of speech from their opponents). The truth, spoken calmly to his face always exasperates him. As what I said was unarguable, the two men turned angrily and walked away." (p.477).
   
   I have to encourage the reader to get hold of this astounding book if only for the story of Alfredo Izaguirre (pp.239-242): "The only prisoner I know of who never performed any forced labor for his jailers -not even a minute's. It is fitting that his name go down in the history of the rebellion of the Cuban political prisons."
   
   On Castro's true revolutionary companions: (Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo) "led the bloody fighting against Batista's Army (in the mountains of Escambray), he had the sympathy of every peasant there -but Eloy had fought to establish a truly democratic system in Cuba, not another dictatorship. Therefore when he saw that Castro was becoming a tyrant, he fled the country; a while later he came back with a small group of armed men who tried to reach the mountains to continue the struggle. But he was trapped, captured and sentenced to 30 years in prison".
   
   "Rafael del Pino had been one of Castro's closest allies when Castro was in Mexico preparing the Granma landing. One night Castro confided his plans for Cuba to Rafael, and Rafael was so shocked at their totalitarian aspect that he abandoned Fidel. Castro never forgave Rafael that 'betrayal' ... Rafael was jailed". In 1977 he died in jail. "No one ever saw the body. The Ministry of the Interior flatly refused to turn it over to his family."
   
   "Ex-commander Mario Chaves, who had assaulted the Moncada barracks with Castro, been in prison with him, and accompanied him on the Granma landing, was brutally beaten (in jail) and literally dragged to the punishment cells" (p.458)
   
   Pierre Golendorf, a French marxist intellectual who had come to Cuba and worked for the Cuban government ... realized that the island was one big farm that Castro ran like a slave plantation ... he wrote letters about the lie the revolution had turned into ... the political police accused him, like everyone who stood up to the revolution, of being an agent of the CIA. He got 3 years and 2 months in prison. "The tribunals do nothing but read sentences (imposed by politicians)". Spain is not very different today. See how judge Gómez de Liaño was disposed of his toga for sentencing a big pro-government media shot (the El País media group).
   
   Children of the Devil: "One would naturally assume him to be a doctor, but he wasn't. He had been a traveling salesman for medical supply companies. This man, "Dr" Herrera Sotolongo, a Spanish communist, had fled to Cuba because of the civil war in Spain, and thanks to the solidarity of the Cuban revolution with Spanish communism, he had become chief of all medical services of all jails and prisons in Cuba. And you always had to call him doctor, or he wouldn't answer you. He knew nothing at all about medicine, of course, but he was a man the leader could trust." (p.233-234)
   
   The Western world's ignominious role: Conversation between Martha, Valladares' wife, and Pierr Schori, social-democrat big shot in Sweden: "-So if you know there's an implacable dictatorship in Cuba, if you know all liberties have been suspended, why don't you speak out? -Because that would be giving the Americans a publicity weapon." (!!) "Schori warned her not to speak to the press about this interview. Perhaps he didn't want to provoke Fidel."
   
   This undescribable book by Valladares, who should be the president of Cuba and give Castro a tour of his own jails and lacks, ends by remembering one of the anonymous victims in this genocide, a Christian martyr at his moment of death: "a heart overflowing with love, raising his arms to the invisible heaven and pleading for mercy for his executioners. 'Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.' And a burst of machine-gun fire ripping open his breast."
   
   Valladares writes beautifully, and even through all the horrors od more than 20 years of torture described here he keeps a tone of hope, of mysterious sanity and confidence all along, and which assures him that what he's doing is write, according to his conscience and to the power the Almighty God sustains him with. Why is this book unpublished in Spanish-speaking countries or so hard to find? That's another ignominy.