5 comments about Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History.

1. Dr. Diggins seems to be an erudite, intelligent man who put some serious time into researching his book. The other reviewers have rightly praised his efforts to look at Reagan through the lense of history and not idealogy, and for his ranking of Reagan with Roosevelt and Lincoln among our greatest presidents.
   
   At the same time, I must confess that having recently read the Reagan Diaries as well as other books dealing with the Reagan legacy like Victory, Bill Bennett's recent second history volume, Reagan "In His Own Hand" etc., I must find that some of the conclusions drawn in this book diverge from the facts and tread familiar academic paths of thought about our great President.
   
   The final negotiations that ended the Cold War occured PRECISELY because Reagan worked on every front to thwart the Soviets. This included Bill Casey flying all over the world covertly, actions to stop Soviet technology acquisition, efforts to make them spend money they didn't have on defense, and a lot more. Reagan mentions anti-communist efforts on a daily basis in the diaries. Also, the preposterous comment that Reagan did nothing to support Solidarity is false on its face - not making speeches about something (even though he did) does not mean inaction. Again, his diaries reveal many efforts on behalf of Solidarity, and Walesa himself gives Reagan great credit for his support. The fact remains that Reagan didn't alter or change his demands on the Soviets when Gorbachev came to power - the final agreement reached was the US STARTING POSITION on disarmement years earlier. His strong stance in negotiations and the arms build up (laughably described as starting under the Carter administration in the book - are you kidding?) drove the Soviets to the table because they literally could not afford to fight anymore. Fighting them on every front was intended from the beginning to realize this result. It is as Reagan described before he became President - his view of the cold war was "we win and they lose".
   
   On a philosophical point, Diggins rightly remarks that Reagan often acted against the conservatives of his time's wishes. This does not make him somehow "less" conservative - just proven right in the argument. All idealogies are constantly in these debates, and Reagan comments on his reviews on the right constantly in his diaries as well, since he was such an avid reader of their writings. Just because the greatest conservative of the last fifty years didn't agree with every midget wonk at National Review or in congress is a comment on the midgets, not him. The line between "classical" and contemporary liberalism also seems to blur in his discussions. Yes, many current conservative thoughts on freedom and liberty are classicly liberal views (as many liberal statist views are classicly conservative), the modern distinctions are all that really matter in current discussion.
   
   I started to read this book with great enthusiasm, as its take on Reagan seemed fresh and interesting, but as I saw conclusion after conclusion follow other tired academic views on Reagan and contradict what I had read him say in his own hand were his views and thoughts, I found it ultimately unhelpful.



2. The dust jacket of this biography claims that John Patrick Diggins is one of America's "most interesting intellectual historians". This description gets two things right - Mr. Diggins is interesting, and Mr. Diggins is undoubtedly a historian. Whether he is much of an intellectual is another matter.
   
   Mr. Diggins' thesis is a peculiar and engaging one - that Reagan is one of the greatest Presidents of our nation, and also one of the most Emersonian, classically liberal Presidents of our time. Diggins, however, does not quite manage to provide definitive proof for either claim, though he does a better job of proving Reagan's intellectual roots than of proving his greatness. The reason for this failure, unfortunately, is not a problem with Diggins' scholarship, but rather an unfortunate case of self-sabotage which begins to show in the latter half of the book. During this section, one wonders if Diggins himself doubts his own thesis. In fact, one wonders if Diggins actually wanted to write a book with said thesis, or if the original argument he wanted to make was as follows: "Ronald Reagan is not a conservative, but even if he was, conservatives can't beat communism in the long run, anyway. Ha ha ha. Neener neener neener."
   
   To this end, many passages within the book are unabashedly, obnoxiously didactic. In fact, one often feels as though one is reading a philosophical essay meant to impugn the purity of American conservatism, rather than a biography of a conservative figure. One of the more absurd of these moments comes near the very end, when Diggins tries to impugn Reagan's conservatism by contrasting his vision with that of Edmund Burke. There are two problems with this analysis - firstly, Diggins misinterprets Burke's quote about the necessity of restraint for rights as implying that a paternalistic government is required to stop people from being greedy. What Burke was actually talking about, of course, was the tendency of people to believe they have a right to everything they want - a dangerous tendency, which often leads to things like the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which contradicts itself numerous times). The second problem with this analysis, however, is that Mr. Diggins is assuming that conservatism's nature has not changed at all since Edmund Burke. It is not as though Burke sat down and wrote out a "Constitution of Conservatism". Many conservative thinkers, in fact, believe that deriving a contemporary position from Edmund Burke's writings is impossible. It doesn't help, of course, that Burke was from England, and the conservative tradition in England is almost completely non-applicable to America.
   
   Furthermore, Diggins seems determined to convince his audience that Reagan was not really all that religious, as though there is something shameful in one of our greatest presidents being religious. Diggins also seems fixated on Reagan's fiscal policy, which he often links with the words "greed" and "selfishness." Finally, though Diggins initially credits Reagan with ending the cold war, he later throws in backhanded implications that it had more to do with Gorbachev than Reagan. It is as though Diggins wrote his thesis that Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents and then choked on it and had to go back and assure his readers that while Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents, he was still the selfish, shortsighted clod that Academics envision him to be.
   
   The existence of these flaws is unfortunate, because the book is historically excellent and so readable that it almost rivals a Harry Potter novel. Ultimately, I must recommend the book, with reservation. I give Mr. Diggins three stars for interesting history, and no stars for his intellectual pretensions. It is a pity. If Mr. Diggins had the courage to stick to his original thesis rather than frantically reassure his audience that he was not one of those awful Reagan-loving freaks, we might be reading the best Reagan biography yet.



3. There is already a vast amount of literature on the life of Ronald Reagan, and it shows no sign of abating. The 40th President of the United States is a continuing subject of fascination as the man who reasserted his country's superpower dominance, engineering the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War.
   
   His domestic policies, dominated by his passionate belief in small government and the ability of individuals to shape their own destinies, earned him the enmity of liberals, yet even on his own side of politics he is not the unquestioned hero as for example his contemporary, Margaret Thatcher, is among British conservatives.
   
   I recall a conversation with a retired American diplomat who preferred the unsuccessful 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as the true founder of the modern conservative movement in the US, dismissing Reagan as an opportunist, a former Democrat who could see the way the wind was blowing, jumping on the bandwagon in the right place at the right time.
   
   John Patrick Diggins seeks to dismiss this argument. For him Reagan deserves to be rated alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents of all time. He believes history will vindicate Reagan in the same way it did Lincoln, whose reputation was besmirched for many decades after his death, but more about that relationship later.
   
   The problem that Diggins and any other biographer of Reagan face is proximity. As the author states with some exasperation in the bibliographical notes, more than 80 per cent of the material in the presidential library remains classified and can be obtained only through the laborious and often unsuccessful method of applying under the Freedom of Information Act.
   
   Undeterred, he turns to other sources, notably the evidence emerging from Soviet archives of the relationship with the Soviet Union's last President, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as the burgeoning amount of literature discussing the origins behind the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union two years after Reagan left office.
   
   The result is a scholarly, meticulously-researched book that seeks to understand not just the president of the 1980s, but the film actor of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the California Governor of the 60s and 70s and the man who passionately believed in a new beginning for his country - a rebirth that came to be called "Morning in America".
   
   For Diggins, the man who took office in January 1981 had three dragons to slay: the nuclear arms race that threatened the world with extinction; the expanding welfare state that increased dependency and lowered self-esteem and the third, most controversially "a joyless religious inheritance that told people their kingdom was not of this world and they needed to be careful about pursuing happiness in case they enjoyed it".
   
   This was hardly the language that the increasingly influential religious right would have wanted to hear but Reagan could see no conflict in embracing the rewards of this world - after all, it was what trade unions had been advocating for their members for half a century. He may have been ushering in the decade of Wall Street and `Greed is Good', but it is the author's insistence that the president wanted Americans to enjoy the pursuit of wealth and not be ashamed of the bounty they accumulated. It was, Diggins asserts, a necessary step in order to restore Americans' confidence in themselves after the debacle of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran hostages humiliation and a decade of economic malaise.
   
   Diggins does not hold back on the obvious black marks of the Reagan presidency, most notably the Iran Contra scandal, occurring deep into Reagan's second term and at least partially resorting from the arrogance that comes from years of unbroken power.
   
   As with the Nixon presidency 15 years previously, there had been the subtle growth of a macho `can do' culture with little regard for moral or ethical objections. The difference being that Reagan quickly shouldered the blame in a televised mea culpa address in which the Great Communicator was at his best: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not...what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated in its implementation into trading arms for hostages."
   
   I take issue with the final chapter in which the author seeks to link Reagan even closer to Lincoln by likening Reagan's battle against communism to Lincoln's struggle to free the slaves. It is for readers to follow Diggin's closely argued reasoning and come to their conclusions, but the fact is Lincoln went to war not to free slaves but to save the Union and that the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a ploy to turn foreign opinion against the Confederacy and disrupt it internally at a time when the conflict was going badly for the North.
   
   However, it is certainly worth noting that the Cold War was won bloodlessly while the Civil War resulted in the deaths of more Americans than have been killed in all conflicts combined in the century-and-a-half since.
   
   There are times when this book stumbles into academic denseness, and I am unconvinced that Diggins has made his case for Reagan to be elevated to the heights of the presidential pantheon, but for those seeking an insight into the mind of the man who radically altered the face of American politics, it is to be recommended.



4. For the most part, the biographies that have been written about Ronald Reagan in the years since he left office have suffered from one of two defects. Either they have been overly critical and dismissive and failed to grasp the truly revolutionary aspects of the Reagan Presidency, or they have been overly worshipful, something more akin to adulation than real scholarship. In both cases, the differing interpretations of Reagan have likely been based on ideological differences and political resentments of the 1980s and beyond.In Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, John Patrick Diggins takes a worthy first step toward moving beyond either the worshipful or the hate-filled evaluations of the Reagan Presidency and gives America's 40th President the respectful, if not always positive, evaluation that he deserves.
   
   Reagan's singular achievement, Diggins argues, was the role he played in bringing a peaceful end to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though he came into the White House with a promise to rebuild the American military and confronted what his advisers contended were Soviet-sponsored regimes in nations ranging from Nicaragua to Angola, it's clear that, very early in his Administration, if not before then, Reagan became committed to the idea of drastically reducing, if not eliminating, nuclear weapons.
   
   Much to the consternation of his neo-conservative foreign policy team, Reagan made overtures to the Soviets as early as April 1981, when he wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev while recovering from an assassination attempt. The Brezhnev dialog never went anywhere, largely because Brezhnev was apparently too stubborn and too ill to actually pursue serious negotiations. Similarly, the short-lived reigns of his two immediate successors made pursuing peace impossible. As Reagan himself once quipped, "They keep dying on me."
   
   It was only with the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, who required reduced tensions with the U.S. to pursue his ultimately doomed strategy of reforming Communism, that Reagan was able to pursue his desire to bring both countries out of the horrifying doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
   
   One interesting thing that Diggins' book brings out is the extent to which many of Reagan's conservative supporters became convinced in the late 1980s that their leader had sold America down the river. Many of the same people who, on the occasion of his funeral in 2004, lionized him as the man who had "won" the Cold War. Among the critics were William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, and Henry Kissinger, all of whom seemed convinced at the time that the Cold War and the tensions with the USSR were a permanent and irreversible fact (Jeane Kirkpatrick had in fact said as much in her writings prior to being named U.N. Ambassador).
   
   Reagan, Diggins, argued, never accepted the neo-conservative view of history and rejected the idea that the Cold War was a permanent fact of life that could only end with an exchange of nuclear missiles that would destroy both nations, if not most of the civilized world. In fact, rather than being a true conservative, Diggins persuasively argues that Reagan was really more of a traditional old-style liberal, what we would today call a libertarian, and that his ideas were influenced more by the libertarianism of Thomas Paine and the romanticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson than conservative hero Edmund Burke. While Reagan courted social conservatives and neo-cons, he did not share their views on the inherent sinfulness and fallibility of man.
   
   Diggins goes criticize some aspects of Reagan's record, most notably, in the domestic sphere, and he rightly criticizes him for the mis-handling of the Iran Contra affair. But, like I said, this is a biography not a hagiography. On the whole, though, Diggins does an excellent job of rescuing our 40th President from his detractors and his worshipers. Hopefully, other historians will follow suit.



5. "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History" is a philosophical study of Ronald Reagan and his place in history. It is not a true biography but employs biographical details to support its points.
   
   Through much of this book I was unsure whether its purpose was to praise Reagan or to debunk his myth. Author John Patrick Diggins cites facts about Reagan to dispute many of the conventional wisdoms about him. He claims that Reagan was not as conservative or as hawkish as is widely believed. He delves into Reagan's days with General Electric, his confrontations with campus radicals in Sacramento, negotiations with Gorbachev, his flirtations with Nicaraguan Contras and Jonas Savimbi of Angola. He presents Reagan as an Emersonian idealist whose distrust of big government guided his political career. At times it is not clear whether Diggins is concluding that Reagan is a hero or a failure. Ultimately he finds Lincolnesque qualities in his subject.
   
   This is not a first book for one searching for the Reagan lore. For biographies, look elsewhere. After you have absorbed those, look here for a deeper dip into the philosophical underpinnings of the Reagan Revolution.

3 comments about Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family.

1. Four generations of the John Adams family of Quincy are brilliantly covered in this detailed, yet concise, 400 page study. The lives and work of 2 presidents, 3 major diplomats, cabinet officials, and great scholars are outlined within the context of their remarkable history as an American family. This book touches upon the topics of Colonial America through the Revolution and Civil War on into the 20th Century. One can't help but be interested with such personalities as Adamses John, Abigail, John Quincy, Charles Frances, Henry, and Brooks. Their triumph as a family, depite problems financial and personal (alchoholism, depression, etc.), makes for inspirational reading.



2. (...) An insightful and interesting study of four generations of complex and often contradictory personalities. I especially appreciated the author's manner of hinting at future developments and bating the reader to read on and on...in my case, well into the night. His analysis of the Adams' strengths and weaknesses is what sets this book apart so I am perplexed that anyone would describe it as dull and a mere listing of events. But don't take my word for it -- if you have only a few moments to browse through it, check the index for the passage dealing with the death of the tragic first generation daughter, Nabby. The writing is poignant and wrenching. Anything but routine.



3. I read this book in about one week. I found it very well written with logical conclusions and theories based on an extensive primary and secondary source material study, complex yet readable and extremely well researched. This is a book that anyone interested in American history and the complexities of the first 4 generations of the Adams family will appreciate. A masterful undertaking by the author...never boring and highly informative.

1 comments about Argentine Caudillo: Juan Manuel de Rosas (Latin American Silhouettes).

1. John Lynch is a master in whatever he presents and this book is no exception. Rosas was the strongman of Argentina and unified the country during his reign. Lynch not only assesses the idea of a Caudillo and the cult of personality that leads to their power. If you are starting out in Latin American history this is an excellent place to start. This book will take you through the unification of Argentina and lay the framework for one of the most important parts of Latin America. The book is very well written and like all of his stays on target.

5 comments about Mornings On Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt.

1. This book is an excellent history material. For those who are studying or are just interested in American history, this a great secondary source that brings Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. to life. The style Mr. David McCullough uses is very easy to understand, and it is also very descriptive in nature which makes readers feel they were present at the scene. The only weakness is that the book limits T.R.'s life to a 19 year period, which happens before his greatest achievements. Basically, the author leaves you wanting more...
   Great choice of biography, great author, and accessable price!
   F.C, GA



2. David McCullough's writing is superb. I have to admit I liked Thedore Roosevelt better as a person in Theodore Rex. His personal correspondence in this book reveals too much about his apparent enjoyment in killing animals for my taste. IMO his image as a conservationist is tarnished by the joy he took in killing. I was especially offended by his shooting the neighbor's dog when riding his horse. If I had lived back then and he shot my dog, I can safely say it would have been the last dog he ever shot and his departure from life would have been made slow and painful...
   
   But that dislike of his joy of killing aside, he and his family were extraordinary. One cannot change history, so I go with the flow to learn more about it and the people in it...



3. I was really expecting more TR info in this book... a little more than I needed to know about his family and acquaintances and not enough about the man himself.



4. David McCullough makes Teddy Roosevelt a very dull character and this book is very slow. I stopped reading half was through.
   
   I am a big fan of David's but this book is a stinker.



5. I would read the back of a cereal box if David McCullough wrote it so I'm biased to him as an author.
   This book should not be the source material for all things T.R. but does fill in the blanks on an interesting family, and goes a long way to explaining some of the details of the man's future life.
   The writing here is very good and the material is interesting enough to keep going, even though you are ostensibly reading about the obscure family background of a famous American. Only a commanding figure could even warrant a book about his deep family tree and the details of the homes they lived in and their neighbors.
   Good second tier material once you've read the major bios on TR.

1 comments about Thomas Jefferson's Architectural Drawings.

1. Jefferson's architectural drawings, edited and compiled by a noted architectural historian who taught at the university which Jefferson founded, give the general reader a perfect opportunity to observe Jefferson's talents not just as an architect but as a draftsman and artist. The drawings of the 1st and 2nd Monticello convincingly reveal to a general audience how the design and shape of his beloved home evolved from that of a two-story villa derived from the designs of the famous Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio to the red-bricked, octagonal, and domed three-story Neoclassical building that we see today. The drawings of Jefferson's other architectural masterpieces like the University of Virginia, Virginia State Capitol, and Poplar Forest also show this extraordinary Virginian's knowledge and mastery of the concepts of Classical architecture. This book is a must for all who admire Thomas Jefferson the architect and for all who want to know how he designed and built such beautiful buildings without any professional training as an architect.

5 comments about Juan Carlos: Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy.

1. Fans of the usual kinds of biographies about kings and princes should be careful about this one. It's a very good book, but it's likely to be very far from the sort of thing you're expecting. But then, King Juan Carlos of Spain's life has been very different from that of most modern royals. In a sense, this book is hardly even "about" him at all. Rather, it's an in-depth look at a transitional era in Spanish history, as well as at the man who, in many ways, was the pivot on which that transition turned. People looking for that kind of book will be rewarded here.
   
   Let me expand a little on what this book isn't, because I think that's important. There's not really very much in these pages about Juan Carlos' life outside the political realm. For example, the author mentions in passing toward the end of the book the king's "obsession with speed and with expensive sports in which he risked his life and which frequently caused him serious accidents and injuries" (p. 511). In most royal biographies, those kinds of things would be central to the story. Here, they're barely an aside. Likewise, Queen Sophia hardly appears here except tangentially in a political context. The Infantas and Prince Felipe show up even less. Is this book a well-rounded look at Juan Carlos as a man? No.
   
   But then, it doesn't seem like it's intended to be. What this book is, as I said, is a look at the king's role in helping Spain move from the Francoist dictatorship to the current popular democracy. That role was a central one -- not only at key moments like dismantling the 1981 coup attempt, but also in slowly, quietly, and yet unrelentingly keeping in check the forces that wanted to maintain Francoism even after the Caudillo's death in 1975.
   
   In telling this story, Paul Preston has produced a well-researched and well-sourced book that at times is almost overwhelming with its depth and detail. This is a book thick with names, dates, meetings, quotations ... I frankly found it slow going at times. Around page 300, I found myself asking (as I'm sure the people of Spain asked at the time), "Isn't Franco dead YET?!" Preston's discussion of the controversy about legalizing the Communist Party of Spain similarly seemed to go on for a really long time. And how many times did he need to repeat that the adolescent Juan Carlos' wishes were not consulted in the high-level negotiations between his father and Franco over how he was to be educated?
   
   A bit of familiarity with Spanish history and government would be useful to the reader too. Perhaps Preston assumes his reader has already read his biography of Franco, since he's pretty thin on what exactly the Spanish Civil War was all about, why Alfonso XIII had to leave Spain, and what precisely the oft-mentioned principles of the *Movimiento* really were. Similarly, Preston is quick to throw out names, events, and acronyms without always taking the time to explain who or what they are, or why (or if) they matter.
   
   Yet ultimately, all the depth, all the detail, all the exhaustive documentation has produced a volume that may be, at least in English, the definitive look at King Juan Carlos and his role in the restoration of Spain's monarchy and democracy. Preston emphasizes the weight of the king's personal sacrifice throughout his life in order to put Spain back on a solid democratic footing, and the truly central role he did (and does) play in that process. As he notes on page 474, for example, if the king had chosen to support the 1981 coup, there's no question it would have succeeded. That he chose not to support it doomed it to failure.
   
   The world of royal biography -- especially biography of still-living or recently-deceased figures -- is filled with shallow puffery and fawning adulation. When something different comes along, fans of royalty as well as serious historians should snap it up. This volume definitely falls into that category -- not only for its value as a work of history, but also as proof of how monarchy can and ought to be a force for good, even in an era which has tended to turn its back on that form of government. As a noted political commentator wrote following the collapse of the 1981 coup attempt (quoted on page 488), "Whilst we Spaniards thought that we deserved something better than a king, it turns out that we have a king that we don't deserve."



2. Royalty demands sycophancy from its subjects, and this is especially the case for royal biography. Notwithstanding that it doesn't take too much for people to realize that most monarchs are deeply unattractive people. Whether it is the selfish, irresponsible house of Savoy so acutely delineated in Denis Mack Smith's Italy and its Monarchy, or the houses of Hohenzollern and Romanov leading their countries to disaster, or the fundamentally mediocre British monarchy as seen in the essays of David Cannadine, or for that matter Juan Carlos' irresponsible, shallow brother-in-law, Constantine II, the last king of Greece, monarchs are people who believe the rest of the world owes them a living.
   
   In 1931 it seemed that the Spanish branch of the Bourbons had met its own well-deserved fate, as King Alfonso went into exile and his countrymen formed a democratic republic. As Preston puts it, the royal family does not take exile well. Hemophiliac uncles, morganatic marriages, adulterous affairs, a deaf and dumb uncle whose son will be used by Preston to make Juan Carlos' life even more miserable, it all looked most unpromising. One detail that comes to mind is a picture of a four year old Juan Carlos in military uniform. It was only after he had been standing in it for hours that people realized that his books were too small and his feet had been rubbed raw. But on the whole this is a picture of Juan Carlos that is fairly sympathetic to him. After he appears on the scene, there is little gossip of the Eurotrash aspect of things. (Although we do learn that Juan Carlos accidentally shot his brother to death.)
   
   Juan Carlos, born in 1938, and his father Don Juan had to find a way to restore the monarchy after the Spanish Civil war. The problem was simple. Franco at the time made monarchist sentiments and many monarchists were among his followers. The problem was that he had no desire of sharing power with anyone, and himself had little respect for the previous monarchy which had tolerated a limited parliamentarianism. He suspected Don Juan might try to reconcille his divided country, and remove it from Franco's regime of divine vindictiveness. The problem for Don Juan, who spent most of Franco's reign living in Portugal, was that he had little to offer and little power to use it. Although much of the Francoist elite would have prefered to see a monarchy, they were not going to risk their power trying to force the issue. And so for until 1968 Don Juan waited, endured Franco's condescension and lies, occasionally got angry, was separated from his son for long periods of time at considerable psychological stress for both of them, and ended up doing what Franco wanted. Franco got the idea that Juan Carlos might be more ameneable to Francoist propaganda and so in 1948 he was sent to Spain and educated under Falangist tuetalage. Finally after two decades of toying with them, Franco made Juan Carlos, not his father, his heir apparent.
   
   Juan Carlos' prospects were not promising. Being made heir was better than having to look over his shoulders at Carlist and other pretenders. But now he, although of generally liberal opinions, was stuck in a regime that was firmly reactionary. Franco had no desire to step down, and would remain in power almost until the very end. Consistently he and his entourage took the most reactionary path. Had his prime minister Carrero Blanco not been assassinated in 1973 by Basque separatists, the transition to democracy would have been much more difficult. And even when Franco grew less malevolent as old age, senility and death came upon him (the last a process that took months to complete) Juan Carlos still had to worry about the reactionary entourage of Franco's wife.
   
   And then Preston discusses how Juan Carlos managed to ease out the more reactionary Francoists from the cabinet, got the more moderate Suarez to make a transition to power, and, most dramatic of all, stopped the coup of February 1981 by making his clear his unconditional oppostion to it. For this transition to democracy Juan Carlos is beloved by his subjects and the Spanish monarchy appears as stable as Britain, Scandinavia and the Benelux countries. There are some points I would like to mention here. For a start, although there is new detail, much of the storyline can be seen in Preston's earlier books "Franco" and "The Triumph of Spanish Democracy." Second, one should point out that Juan Carlos was assisted by the Spanish Socialist and Communist parties, who agreed to let Juan Carlos remain, instead of pointing out that he had no popular mandate to do so. Third, it does seem unfair that the Spanish monarchy should get the credit for Juan Carlos' bravery, since the same crisis is not likely to be repeated again, and the absence of republicanism in contemporary Spain appears less as an act of gratitude than the whole post-socialist failure of imagination.



3. The complete title of Paul Preston's book on the present Spanish monarch-- "Juan Carlos, Steering Spain from Dictatorship to Democracy"--says it all. If you want to read about the king and his love of fast cars and beautiful women, consult the tabloids. Several biographies of his wife, Queen Sofía, a woman admired and beloved by most Spaniards for her strength, humanity, and dignity, have been written in Spanish. There are also many magazine articles about her in both Spanish and English. The author does assume that the reader has some knowledge of Spanish history. For those who don't, he has written a number of other books on the subject ("The Coming of the Spanish Civil War", "The Points of Revenge", and "A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War").
   
   When I lived in Spain in the sixties, the prevailing opinion of most of my friends was that, when Franco died, the society would plunge in another civil war as Juan Carlos would never be able to stand up to the generals and lead the country toward becoming a democracy. Undoubtedly this is one of the reasons I found fascinating the abundance of details of how the king was able to do exactly that. Preston's book is a complete study of the process that does not cater to sensationalism. For that I also consider it a "masterpiece".



4. If I were rating this book on content alone, Preston would get 5 stars. However, his writing style hampers him somewhat. This unique biography traces what is supposedly the life of King Juan Carlos of Spain, a man for whom I have immense respect, from the fall of Alfonso XIII to the present, but it winds up being a historical analysis of the transition of Spain out of the Franco regime, similar to Preston's Triumph of Democracy in Spain, which I read for school, only longer and with more focus on Juan Carlos. I was initially disappointed because I wanted personal information about the king, [...]Or somehow get a copy of The King by Jose Luis de Vilallonga (good luck, I had to order it used from Australia). However, this book contains more information and analysis about Francoist and post-Francoist Spain than you will ever need in your entire life. Preston tells the tale largely with a mind for the role of Juan Carlos in it (the manipulation by his father, the restoration, the initial democratic difficulties, etc.) but this winds up being so complex that he constantly goes elsewhere. I liked the book but you need to read it in small chunks, because his writing is exhausting. It's very complex and dry and full of untranslated Spanish and acronyms, so don't read this while you're tired or you won't remember a thing. Preston obviously has a lot of enthusiasm for the subject, though, which comes across in his writing and the sheer volume of the work. Buy this book if you want a long, scholarly read!



5. I made the mistake of thinking this was just a biography on Juan Carlos but instead its a complex read on Spain during the dictatorship and how it became a democrarcy again. It was a good book and well written but a little difficult to understand.

1 comments about Margaret Thatcher: A Tribute in Words and Pictures.

1. Not every British Prime Minister is a Thatcher or Churchill. Not every American President is a Lincoln, Kennedy, or Clinton. And even rarer a jewel is a woman who can lead a country not as a token female but a first among equals, whether they are man or woman. Such is the legacy of Margaret Hilda Roberts Thatcher, who in her 8 decades of life has epitomized the sheer force of will, intellect, fortitude, and backbone that brought Britain back from the brink of bankruptcy. One need not agree with Thatcher's reign but one thing is for certain: she was a woman of fierce drive with the intellectual and political savvy to boot. Most of all .... isn't it grand to know that in the machinations of international politics ... there are those world leaders who understand the courage and strength of conviction.

5 comments about Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.

1. If I was an American voter and I wished to for information about the Republican candidate prior to the 2000 election I would have bought the first edition of Ms Ivins' book. A read would have been enough to ensure that I would not have voted for Mr Bush even though Ms Ivins paints quite an attractive picture of him. She emphasises his campaigning abilities and the undoubted fact that unlike the present crop of Republican candidates he was able in his gubernatorial elections to unite the two quite separate parts of the American right, the fundamental Christians and the old time Republicans. However she also hands out low marks for ability and honesty. Bush does emerge as a Daddy's boy with Bush Senior's friends only too willing to hand out loans to shaky business enterprises and later to election expenses. I amazed that this book did not attract that much attention when the first edition was published.



2. No matter your political beliefs, it is interesting to read about the background of our elected leaders; even though it is freightening and sad at times.



3. Oh, that the subtitle of this wonderful little book had proved true. The world would be a much happier place. Texas writers Ivins and Dubose sat at ringside for Dubya's pre-presidential career, and herein offer a fascinating and humorous report card. George W. Bush had done very little to qualify himself as a presidential candidate beyond being born, which, one could argue, was not exactly his choice. (Karmic destiny, et. al, aside.) And he has done very little governing, because Texas has a "weak governor" system, in which the governor is actually the fifth most powerful elected official, with limited appointment responsibility. It is largely a bully pulpit position. Their report appears to be accurate and carefully documented - often by court documents. The record suggests that a Bush presidency would be very good for business and a disaster for the rest of us, most particularly a disaster for the environment. Bush had a clear environmental agenda: eliminate regulation, reporting, testing, oversight, fines, lawsuits or anything else which might prevent an industry from doing as it damn well pleases. His preceeding business career was almost entirely underwritten by Dad's friends and supporters, who might possibly have seen some advantage in being Junior's benefactor. His one big financial win, a capital gain when he sold his share of the Texas Rangers baseball team, came as the result of the use of eminent domain action to force below market sale of property to the team for a new stadium. Publicly, of course, Bush lobbies hard against government "taking," but he apparently didn't mind making $15 million on it himself. (This is somewhat reminiscent of that other Texan, Ross Perot, who railed against big government after making his millions via Medicare contracts.) As for his new mantra of "compassionate conservatism," George magazine reported that Dubya was the co-creator (with Lee Atwater) of the infamous Willie Horton TV ad which virtually labelled Michael Dukakis as a murderer. Atwater apologized to Dukakis from his death bed, but there is nothing in SHRUB to suggest that Dubya has ever expressed similar remorse. In the most repulsive quote in this book, Bush mocked Karla Faye Tucker's appeal for clemency in a September 1999 interview with a Talk magazine reporter. "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'" The reporter noted that he must have looked shocked, as the Governor immedicately dropped his customary smirk. A good read. Scarier than Stephen King because it is real. Full of fun asides, coincidences and local color. Oh, if only the Washington press corps had read this in 2000, and paid attention, instead of offering voters their opinion that Bush would be a fun beer-drinking companion.



4. There is no other writer that has such a witty presentation on such a difficult subject. She saw George W. Bush and his impact on Texas and with her wonderful sense of humor told the American citizens what to expect with regard to education, guns, laws and leadership. As I read I was amazed at the warnings we had, but we "elected" him anyway. Molly said what so many think, but are afraid to say outloud. This book is not heavy or difficult, but explains what GWB did and would do while injecting lots of humor to keep us from crying.



5. This provides a good insight into George W. Bush's character as governor of Texas, a character that keeps "shining". Even though this book also has a political agenda, it also spells out why voters need to do their own research prior to voting.

2 comments about The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency.

1. I'm using the "Sixth Year Itch" with an AP high school government class because it serves as a marker for the sea-change away from the conservative coalition tha G.W. Bush held together for five years. The book contains an interesting variety of writers, and as usual Sabato prefers insight over ideology.



2. Overall, this is a well-written and informative book that is interesting
   to read. However, I noticed at least three mistakes in the book. On page
   121, the map of the United States has two mistakes on it. Colorado and
   Kansas should be colored on this map as they each had a Democratic gain of
   one House seat in the 2006 election. On page 131 there is this sentence:
   "Following the 2006 House elections, Democrats now hold edges in 27 states' delegations, Republicans hold edges in 21, and two states' delegations are tied." The first and last part of this sentence is incorrect. The correct statement would be: "Following the 2006 House elections, Democrats now hold edges in 26 states' delegations, Republicans
   hold edges in 21 and three states' delegations are tied." The three state
   delegations that are tied are Arizona, Kansas, and Mississippi. On page 357, it says that Governor Wilson of California handily defeated Democratic incumbent Kathleen Brown in the 1994 election. The last part
   of this sentence is incorrect. Kathleen Brown was NOT the incumbent governor in that election, Governor Wilson was. Kathleen Brown was the
   incumbent state treasurer. This book, like so many other political books
   that I have purchased, appears to have not had an accurate proofreading
   before it was published to check the facts to make sure that everything
   is accurate.

No comments about Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory.