No comments about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (America's Past).

1 comments about The Life & Times of William Howard Taft, Vol. 2.

1. I have read nearly every book in print about WHT. Pringle's effort is quintessential. Pringle begins his treatment by admitting that his interest in Taft is superficial: He decided to write these books only after completing works on Teddy Roosevelt. Taft is usually treated as a moon to Roosevelt's planet. Pringle typifies this treatment. One gets the impression that Pringle is a lifeguard forced to rescue a man whom he loathes. In the end, the entire effort devolves into an apologia. The lifeguard, after struggling against the currents of his own indifference, pulls his lifeless charge to shore, explaining to a hostile crowd: "Every man, even this loathsome creature, deserves a chance." He then walks away while Taft turns blue. I give this book three stars because it is better than nothing, but just barely.

1 comments about The Measure of Our Days: Writings of William F. Winter.

1. Though you might not agree with his political stance, THE MEASURE OF OUR DAYS gives people of all walks of life something to strive for: personal excellence. Whether it is through his speeches are private writings, he lays out a plan that anyone who wants to see a better world can ascribe to---and you don't have to wade through pages of partisan dribble to do so. This is one book you will find handy as you are faced with obstacles that seem overwelming. There is something written about life as a whole and we are better off because of it.

5 comments about Across Boundaries.

1. Across Boundaries by Mamphela Ramphele is a fascinating autobiography about the extraordinary journey of a South African woman leader. From historical events to her personal experiences, Ramphele describes these events and struggles with dignity. Throughout her endeavors as a young child and continued to her adulthood, she is committed and determined to succeed and to make a difference. An honest testimony that shows her fears and courage. This is an excellent book and it will keep you reading for this one woman's strength is amazing. Through moderate to difficult times and tribulations Mamphela Ramphele keeps a remarkable and uplifting attitude that helps bring new light to unfortunate situations.



2. Across Boundaries was an excellent book about a women's struggle to be amother and have a career. As said in the book "Recognising thatyou are a member of the global village is essential to lifting you above the narrow nationalistic interests and concerns of your own country (222)." Mamphela's life was a pursuit for women to rise above the boundaries and the story was very detailed, and well written! END



3. I found Mamphela Ramphele's autobiography very interesting and amazing. The struggles she went through during her life absolutely amazed me! She is one of the strongest women I have ever heard of. I enjoyed reading about her fight for rights, her relationship with Steve Biko, and how she balanced all of her activities. I found it very interesting that she did not put motherhood as a priority in her life as many other women do. I enjoyed reading "Across Boundaries" and I thought Mamphela did a good job of telling the true story of her life.



4. Across Boundaries is an excellent book focussing on a mother's struggle to want a job and to be a mother at the same time. Even thogh this book was written by a woman from Africa it still pertains to many American mothers who struggle over the same problem. This book did not only focus on the mother aspect, but also on the fact that a woman wanted to help the condition of other woman also.



5. This book is about Mamphelafs political life. Personal aspects of her life are rarely told unless they pertain to her activism or illustrate inequality. Individuals are rarely mentioned; those that are, are rarely mentioned more than once.

   Donft read this book if you want an old-fashioned story with interesting characters who interact to create entertaining plots.

   Read this book to learn about the battle of a black woman against patriarchal apartheid. Read about her gsuperwomanh strengths and the sacrifices she made for the movement.

No comments about Bandido: The Death and Resurrection of Oscar "Zeta" Acosta.

5 comments about The Kennedys: An American Drama.

1. One of the first things you will see are family-trees at the beginning of every part, where you can see all the members of the family, their children and their birth- and deathdates. Unfortunately for the Kennedy family many died prematurely, as is well recognized.
   
   Most Kennedy books will be focused on John F and his brother Robert F who were both shot. But in this book they still play main parts, but not the only ones. The book starts when the Kennedy's, and Fitzgeralds, came to America and how they quickly rose in first Boston and later American society, even though they had one big disadvantage; they were Irish.
   
   JFK's grandfather Honey Fitz became mayor of Boston by using the Irish vote. Joe Kennedy Sr. started out selling newspapers but was soon a movie producer, even having an alleged affair with movie star Gloria Swanson, something his sons would later copy with Marylin Monroe of course.
   
   Then came the biggest move in Joe Kennedy's life; he became Ambassador in England under Roosevelt, with whom he had a somewhat strained relationship. He would ever since be referred to as the Ambassador, even in his own family.
   
   Collier and Horowitz make it clear that the Ambassador is the most important member of the Kennedy family and that every child's actions are in some way related to him. The story is sometimes a little TV-movie sentimental, but whould would you do if you lose 4 children when you are still alive. The oldest son Joe dies in a WWII plane crash, his oldest daughter marries but loses her noble husband soon and dies herself in a plane crash a few months later.
   
   And of course there are the deaths of JFK and RFK.
   
   It's certainly not a hagiography telling how great the Kennedy's were. Old Joe Kennedy is sometimes shown as a towering figure who completely dominated his family's life until his stroke. JFK got his last rites twice and was often very sick with pain in his back and Addisson's desease. His medication is mentioned in the book and also are his numorous flings with women in the White House, his own house, even Airforce One. RFK seems to have been the most moral person and I believe the authors feel that way too. They explain his religion, his fight against organized crime and Jimmy Hoffa and also his meetings with minorities all over the world. He seemed to have had the Kennedy promise even more than his brother Jack or later Ted.
   
   The last part of the book is devoted to the next generation who cannot seem to deal with their heritage and often get into trouble, it seems as if everyone in the family is doing drugs, the last Kennedy death in the old edition, even loses his life because of it.
   
   It's a gripping story that sometimes reads like a novel. I think it gave a balanced story of the family with the good but also the bad, which made them even more human. It's a lot clearer now why the family was so loved and hated at the same time.
   
   A must-read for Kennedy-admirer and Kennedy-hater alike.



2. Well written and engaging, the book surveys three generations of Kennedys over four sections, beginning with how Joseph Patrick Kennedy shaped his family and gave his sons a calling (Architect of Their Lives) then moves on to how his sons Jack and Bobby developed their public careers following Joe, Jr.'s death in WWII (The Stand In) then moving to the peak Kennedy years of Jack's Presidency and Bobby's campaign (Brothers Within). The drama ends as both a sad farce describing Teddy's troubles and as a tragedy invading the lives of the lost generation of Kennedy children (The Lost Boys).
   
   The book centers, as did the family, around the elder Joseph Kennedy and his wife, the queenly Rose Fitzgerald. JPK's generosity and his sincerity surprise the reader given his raw ambition, his selfishness, his manipulation of people, his womanizing, and his incompetence as a diplomat. All this was equaled only by his talent as a business man and in the end surpassed by his devotion as a father. On the other hand, Rose comes off rather dry and unappealing, which is a little difficult to believe given that she had nine children.
   
   A disturbing revelation of the book was how high on drugs (usually prescribed) Jack was during his presidency. His awful health mandated pain killers and other drug therapies to allow him to function, but at the same time must have affected his judgment and his ability to work. Given the confrontational character of the Kennedys, one shudders to think of how badly the Cuban crisis could have turned out.
   
   I have two strong criticism of the book. First, not enough space is given to JPK's most important contribution to the United States: he created and established the Securities and Exchange Commission, which gave the USA for decades a virtual monopoly on fair and transparent financial markets. (President Roosevelt apparently responded to critics of this appointment that "it takes a crook to catch a crook".)
   
   Second, in the interest of protecting privacy, the material on the last Kennedy generation should have been left out. The book was published in 1984 when the lost Kennedys were still in their teens and twenties. The authors needlessly (though with sympathy) sensationalized sad stories, at too early a time in those lives to pass any sort of critical judgment.
   
   The most interesting discovery for me was Lem Billings. He basically followed all three generations: best friend to Jack Kennedy, reassuring JPK that his son had someone supporting him outside the family, and surrogate father to some of the young Kennedys after Bobby's assassination until his death in the early 80s. A short book on Billings would be welcome.



3. I read this book in 1984 and found it quite relevant and enlightening at the time. I am glad that the third generation has gotten itself together and are doing good things.
   
   I have also notice that any books written after Jackie's death have a wealth of information! President Kennedy is a real person (not some far off statesman). Jackie's plus and minuses are explored and she becomes human too! The way she raised Caroline and John was amazing and they seemed to have avoided any of the pitfalls of their other cousins. Except the most devastating one of course and that was will always be a great tragedy of a young life unfinished.
   
   Another excellent book written at the same time is Doris Goodwin's: The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga. John B. Davis, Jackie's first cousin has written serveral books on Jackie, Kennedy's and the Mafia. You will not be disappointed.



4. Heard the taped version of THE KENNEDYS: AN AMERICAN
   DREAM by Peter Collier and David Horowitz.
   
   This was a controversial NEW YORK TIMES bestseller when
   it was published in 1984, and I can see why . . . it tells the
   story of a dysfunctional family over three generations, centering
   around the elder Joseph Kenney and his wife Rose Fitzgerald . . . it then
   moves on to tell how his sons Jack and Bobby moved into the
   limelight via their careers in elected politics . . . and the book
   concludes with an account of Teddy's troubles, as well as those
   of the younger Kennedy children.
   
   Along the way there was adultery, drug usage (particularly by
   Jack during his presidency), alcoholism, and a variety of characters
   who mostly come across as not very lovable . . . perhaps only Lem
   Billings, JFK's best friend and subsequent family advisor, comes
   across in any sort of favorable light.
   
   My main criticism of THE KENNEDYS had to do with the last
   part . . . many of the younger Kennedys were portrayed in a negative
   fashion and though they may have had their difficulties while in
   school, several settled down and went on to careers in public
   service . . . consequently, I could have done without some
   of the dirt that seems to have been found.
   
   Yet that is probably what gives this book its appeal, so I'd
   recommend it if you want both the good and the bad about the
   Kennedy family . . . in addition, the narration by Joseph
   Campanella was outstanding and added to my enjoyment
   of listening to this tale about a dynasty that had to face
   so much tragedy over the years.



5. I was pretty disappointed. I have read a lot on individual Kennedys, and was looking for something to tie them all together. This book is very surface level, and practically ignores the women in the family. I know it is more interesting to cover the successful politicians (all male at the time of first publishing in 1984) and the drug abusers (apparently also all male, but still not sure), but a word or two about some of the other Kennedys would have been nice. For example, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who founded the special olympics, gets only passing mention. All in all an interesting read, but mostly because the family (faults and successes) is so compelling, not because of the writing.

5 comments about James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse (2nd Edition) (Library of American Biography).

1. While many people try to depict the lives of our past Presidents in four or five hundred pages, this abbreviated view of the life and associations of James K. Polk is a refreshing change. As a history major, this book provides all of the pertinent information required to gain an insightful depiction of this man. It is a must read for anyone interested in Jacksonian America and an entertaining read for thinkers from all walks of life.



2. James K. Polk and the Expansionist Impulse is an exciting and educational book. It helps to understand American history especially the policies pursued between 1845 and 1849 as well as the polities of that time but more importantly it enlightens the reader on the life of American's 11th president who added 522 million acres to land of the country. The book also confirmed the accusation that Americans think they are superior and have the ability to do anything at all better than the rest of the world. This is evident in the way Mexico was treated. Convinced that they were the only people with the requisite qualities for self-government, they looked down on the Mexicans and took away their lands. One can now perfectly understands why Mexicans harbor so much bitterness towards Americans even up to today. This book will be of a great benefit to any student studying American history and anyone at all who is interested in learning about President Polk and the lands he coveted for his country.



3. A short book written more as text book that about the life of Polk. I was disappointed with the book. We need more about James K. Polk.



4. James K. Polk has one of the most interesting historical reputations among American presidents. Serving for a solitary term, he consistently ranks among the most highly regarded occupants of the White House. Yet in spite of this he has been the subject of surprisingly little attention from historians. This is what makes Sam Haynes' short study so welcome. Seeing Polk as representative of the nation's desire for territorial expansion, he provides a concise account of the life of this understudied figure.
   
   Haynes' book is hardly the final word on Polk; he compresses the first thirty years of Polk's life into a single chapter, raising many questions that are then left unanswered. It is only when Polk emerges as one of Andrew Jackson's lieutenants in the House of Representatives that the narrative slows enough to allow for insights. Haynes sees Polk as the "consummate Jacksonian," serving as a loyal lieutenant and emerging as one of the foremost heirs to his legacy. Yet two successive defeats in races for the governorship of Tennessee dimmed his political star, and his name was not among those of the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844.
   
   Nonetheless, Polk emerged from a deadlocked convention as the first "dark horse" nominee in American history. Hynes argues that the significance of the 1844 presidential convention lies in the embrace of territorial expansion as an issue that united a broad range of groups in a diverse country, which helped Polk defeat Henry Clay in the subsequent election. As president, Polk was a hands-on manager who carefully monitored every department of the executive branch. While viable with the small bureaucracy in the Washington of his day, this proved impractical when managing the far-flung war against Mexico.
   
   The Mexican-American War takes up over a third of the book, both as the pivotal event of Polk's presidency and as the culminating moment of the expansionist movement. Haynes depicts it as a natural consequence of the belligerency of American expansion, which risked war with Great Britain as well over the Pacific Northwest. Polk's battles were not confined to foreign relations, though, as going to war with poorly defined aims exacerbated tensions between the proslavery South and antislavery North. Polk also clashed with the predominantly Whig military commanders, who chafed at the president's effort to micromanage the conflict. This created conflict as well with Polk's handpicked negotiator, Nicholas Trist, who succeeded in hammering out a treaty ending the war before the expected recall order arrived. His success allowed the president to step down with the war as the crowning achievement of his administration, though Polk was so exhausted that he died soon afterwards.
   
   Haynes's book provides an excellent introduction to both American expansionism during the 1840s and Polk's conduct of the war. In many respects, it serves as a useful supplement to Charles Sellers's unfinished two-volume study of Polk, James K. Polk, Jackonian 1795-1843 & Continentalist 1843-1846 (Two Volume Set), which covers his life to the start of the war with Mexico. Yet while Sellers's biography is the definitive work on the president's early years, this book is still the best modern study available of Polk's complete political career.



5. 11 James K. Polk - 1845-49
   Polk is our most underrated president. He championed the idea of manifest destiny. He believed the United States was destined to own all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Texas was annexed, and the Mexican War was fought. The treaty added California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The U.S. stretched from sea to shining sea. Polk was from Tennessee. He accomplished what he wanted and decided not to seek a second term. I rank him #6.

2 comments about Living for Change: An Autobiography.

1. For anyone who has ever wanted to work for social change, this life story by a wise and vital woman is a guidebook. As the book's cover tells us, "Grace Lee Boggs is a first-generation Chinese American who has been a speaker, writer, and movement activist in the African- American community for fifty-five years." After earning her Ph.D. in philosophy at Bryn Mawr in June of 1940, Grace wanted to become an activist. She moved to Chicago in the fall of 1940 and began working with the South Side Tenants Organization--a group that had been set up by the Workers Party.
   

   When distinguished "labor leader A. Phillip Randolph issued a call for blacks all over the country to march on Washington to demand jobs in the defense plants," more and more people began attending the Workers Party discussions in Chicago's Washington Park. Grace had been invited to participate in those discussions. She said, "The more I went out in the community and met people, the more inadequate I was beginning to feel." When Randolph's leadership of the March on Washington movement was successful and President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, Grace realized "the power that the black community has within itself to change this country when it begins to move. As a result, I decided that what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was to become a movement activist in the black community." To Grace, "Joining the Workers Party seemed a good way to start," and that's what she did, in order to get the political education she felt she needed.
   

   In the 1950s, Grace moved to Detroit where she worked on the Socialist Workers Party newsletter and met Jimmy Boggs, "A rank-and-file black Chrysler-Jefferson worker and community activist." Grace liked living in Detroit because it "felt like a 'Movement' city where radical history had been made and could be made again." She also liked working with Jimmy. Having worked closely with C. L. R. James, the intellectually powerful Socialist philosopher, Grace felt that her life had been "exciting but also extremely intellectual." She reasoned that she "needed to return to the concrete." Grace and Jimmy married in 1953 and began a life together that was rooted in the concrete reality of a major 20th-century industrialized city that had been abandoned by the large corporations that built it and by much of its white population.
   

   As Ossie Davis says in his foreword to Grace's book, "Through these pages walk causes, gatherings, confrontations, movements, and the men and women who made them: workers and students and committees of the People...." Studs Terkel has called Grace's book "More than a deeply moving memoir...." He said, "...this is a book of revelation."
   

   It is just that, for with passion and reason, Grace invites us to join her and Jimmy. She shows how they made "Detroit Summer" and "Gardening Angels" part of a new urban economic system, and she shows us how to interact multiculturally and multi-generationally. She doesn't merely talk about it--she does it and reports on its results. Grace Boggs educates us in her book and helps us see the possibilities of what we can do in our own cities.
   




2. I was impressed to find this book at my public library. It is an important remembrance of some of the movements that were occurring during the 1940's through the 1990's. Lots of acronyms! Some of the history of the splits in the Party got tedious.

   It was interesting to read about some of the options people had besides the Panthers, to hear the view of taking responsibilty, not only blaming the man for the situation. And to reaffirm the idea that a great shift in society needs to occur before we can have true equality.

   NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!

1 comments about Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (California Legacy Book).

1. This book holds the premier position in my book collection. It is a book that looks at how a man's environment and passion for life forces him to separate the right from the wrong, sometimes at personal peril. From the quintessential muckraker to one of the original socialists, Steffens was an independent thinker who shares his mistakes, his disappointments, and his fundamental beliefs in rich and passionate prose. Thought by many to be the greatest autobiography ever written this book, as well as his famous "Shame of the Cities", are considered two of the New York Times' greatest 100 books of the 20th century. And rightfully so. Don't expect dry historical narrative. Rather, be ready to be given insight into turn of the twentieth century life and to be inspired by a man's struggles while exposing and understanding truth and power in every form.

5 comments about Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.

1. If there is any justice in the world, Spotts' book will go a long way toward eradicating from popular consciousness the facile descriptions of Hitler as not much more than a cross between a risible, Chaplin-esque, comic book character and an insane, incarnate demon.
   
   Part of the first notion of Hitler includes the idea that he ought to be dismissed as a failed, lousy artist. As Spott points out, the truth is that Nazism, like all self-styled utopianisms, was something like a gigantic project in aesthetics using people rather than pigments or plastics, and control and murder rather than downstrokes and glazing - and Hitler was the artist behind that (very popular for some years in Germany) project; he therefore must be taken seriously as an artist in this sense (obviously a grotesque, genocidal one).
   
   As Spotts notes, even his hatred of Jews emerges from this context: the Jews are "ruining all art" by embracing atonalism, cubism, jazz, dadaism, etc., as well as ruining all life by embracing "Bolshevism". But in his mind, there doesn't seem to be much difference there: Picasso, Marx, Alban Berg - all the same. Since, in Hitler's view, art can't be separated from culture, and culture can't be separated from the state, and the state can't be separated from life itself, the eradication of the Jews becomes, in Hitler's mind, nothing less than a matter of national survival, or, strangely, to say the same thing, the artistically appropriate choice.
   
   Spotts does a good job of underscoring another aspect of all this by calling attention to the seeming homoeroticism in Hitler's taste, particularly as it expresses itself toward the human being: at bottom (pun intended), Hitler preferred, aesthetically, buff blond males with blue eyes, i.e., "Nordic" types. The Jews, in addition to being greedy, "Bolsheviks", destroyers of art/culture/life, etc., just...looked "wrong". And so in this sense, in Hitler's mind, ridding the proper-looking race of these improper-looking portions of it was as obviously a necessary decision as would be getting rid of a "wrong" piece of furniture cluttering up an otherwise beautiful living room. (Spotts even includes a contemporary German cartoon caricaturing the physical features of a "typical" Jew).
   
   But what I started out to say was this. Spotts surveys how Hitler very consciously used colour, shape, rhetoric, size, proportion, angle, material, sound, light, symbol, rhythm, story, pageantry, texture, surprise, music, fire, sculpture, formation, etc., to, quite literally, achieve a truly terrifying degree of control over the minds of his subjects, even as a conversion tool over those who had resisted him. (Spotts describes how awed even American visitors were by the Nuremberg rallies.)
   
   And page by page, one begins increasingly to get a sense of what it would have been like, to be a human being, subject to all the mental and emotional strengths and weaknesses we are, living in a country (our world, for all purposes) which only a year or two before had been totally chaotic and depressed...and then to be stirred, roused, when that world around us begins to change, prompted to feel different, pleasurable things, think different, exciting thoughts, and in the end, perform different - and ultimately - indescribably horrific actions. In every way, we are preyed upon by the mesmeric, sick genius of a man who was rejected by the art school in Vienna, and who sought his revenge for this affront by dominating human psychology through all those elements I mentioned above more totally than perhaps any other "artist" of the 20th century.
   
   I saw a BBC documentary a couple of weeks ago, in which several elderly Germans candidly recalled with fondness Hitler's early years. What they said they missed most were the euphoric feelings they had, going to the pageants and rallies, seeing the flags, hearing the speeches and the music, those feelings of belonging, meaning, "specialness". And for the first time, reading Spotts' book, in a really disturbing way, I could imagine what that might have been like, imagine that I might have been just as susceptible to the manipulator as millions of Germans had been. For the first time, how the whole thing could have happened seemed imaginable. Scary.
   
   Bravo to Spotts for his brilliant and disturbing book. I would love to see him now do a documentary on this, using real footage.
   
   Highly recommended.



2. There is an incomplete list of sources for photographs and sketches based on page numbers in the Acknowledgements section of this book. The photographs and sketches are not individually numbered. I also think the references are unsatisfactory. For example, the author makes a number of assertions about a boyhood friend of Hitler in the Introduction but there is no background material to support these 'facts'. The book is interesting for its shift in focus (aesthetics) but there is an impression of sloppiness that affects credibility in my opinion.



3. One of the hardest things as historians is to try and get into someone's head. The Book Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics do this but in away that other people have not tried. The book looks at Hitler from artist view point and sees Hitler from a different view which people has not looked at before. The person who decides to read this book will also learn how Aesthesis and be a powerful tool used by man. The book is now being sold at a very good price and I give it my personal seal of approval!



4. This is perhaps the best and most relevant book about aesthetics, and their potential to influence people and history.



5. In "Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics," Frederic Spotts takes the pop-culture theme of "Hitler-as-frustrated-artist" and turns it into a learned and compelling narrative that goes a long way towards illuminating the intellectual background of many recurring themes in Hitler's thinking and in the growth of Nazism as a movement in general. Given that most works on Hitler understandably focus on political and military history, the importance of Hitler's background as an artist is often forgotten. For instance, as Spotts points out, Hitler dedicated an entire chapter of "Mein Kampf" to excoriating modernist trends in the visual arts and music, tying them in with what he perceived as an international conspiracy of cosmopolitan Jewish leftists. Spotts expertly traces out the ramifications of these preoccupations for Hitler's years in power, not just narrating such well-known incidents as the exhibitions of "degenerate art" staged by Joseph Goebels, in which modernist pictures were held up to public ridicule, but also detailing the politico-aesthetic ideals that Hitler proposed in opposition to modernism - in particular, an ultra-nationalist, "Aryan" art, whose main themes were the glorification of Germany, Germanic culture, and the so-called Thousand Year Reich. Showing the importance of these ideas to phenomena as diverse as Albert Speer's architecture, Leni Riefenstahl's films, and the carefully choreographed Nuremburg rallies, as well as the work of specific Nazi artists, photographers, and sculptors, Spotts makes a forceful and intelligent case for seeing the rise of Nazi ideology through the lens of aesthetics. This is a useful, well-written, and compelling book that could be read with interest by scholars and laypeople alike.