No comments about Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law.

3 comments about To the End of a Career (Grover Cleveland a Study in Courage, Vol. 2).

1. Though a dominant figure in Gilded Age politics, Grover Cleveland is remembered today primarily as a figure of historical trivia for being the only American president to serve two non-consecutive terms. Such a relegation diminishes his achievements and ignores his role in American history, one that was illuminated by Allan Nevins in his biography of the president.
   
   Born in 1837 to an impoverished Presbyterian minister and his wife, Grover Cleveland worked his way through school as a clerk and teacher before being admitted to the bar in Buffalo in 1859. While building a successful practice he served in a number of local offices, rising to become mayor in 1881. Corruption at the state level brought about a call for reform, and Cleveland was seen as the man to answer it. Elected governor in 1882, he ran an administration noted for both its honesty and efficiency. Over the opposition of Tammany Hall he was selected as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1884 and defeated James G. Blaine in the subsequent election.
   
   Cleveland's first administration was noted for his efforts to enlarge the civil service and thwarting attempts by veterans to raid the Treasury for greater pension benefits. Defeated by Benjamin Harrison in 1888 despite winning the popular vote, he won reelection four years later in a rematch between the two men. Cleveland's second term was marred by an economic depression and political battles over the currency, as well as a series of labor troubles. Cleveland's laissez-faire approach to the economic problems and his administration's support for the Pullman Company in their conflict with strikers (which Nevins blames on Cleveland's attorney general rather than the president) alienated many Americans, and he was repudiated by his party at the 1896 Democratic convention.
   
   Though Nevins exaggerates Cleveland's virtues and minimizes his limitations, this is the best biography of the president. Based on the Cleveland papers (which Nevins edited), it provides a stimulating, well-written portrait of the man and his times that rewards reading today.



2. When the dernier cri on Cleveland is 74 years old - and it is - we're all in trouble. Luckily, the crier is Allan Nevins, and you don't get much better than that. This Pulitzer Prize winning biography sets the bar and now, if some aspiring graduate student would just get off MySpace and into the library, we might all benefit from a fresh look at a first-rate president.



3. Cleveland was known for his honesty and admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock. At 49, he married 21-year-old Frances. He was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and the only one whose wedding took place in the White House. Cleveland and his young wife stayed together until his death. The Baby Ruth candy bar was named after their daughter, not Babe Ruth.

2 comments about Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier (Modern First Ladies).

1. As one of the most charismatic and intriguing women in modern American history, Jacqueline Kennedy has been the subject of numerous books, articles, and even made-for-television movies. Those attempts, however, focused almost exclusively on Mrs. Kennedy's aura of celebrity---until now. Enter Dr. Barbara Perry, the Carter Glass Professor of Government at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. In "Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier," Perry does an outstanding job of telling a familiar story from a scholar's perspective. She provides a highly readable, yet serious examination of Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House.
   
   In researching the glamorous and sometimes enigmatic First Lady, Dr. Perry states that her mission "was to write the first scholarly treatment of her [Kennedy's] work as first lady and filter out the extremes of previous books that range from hagiographic tributes to mean-spirited or sensationalized accounts." That mission was a particularly daunting one in that Jacqueline Kennedy's personal papers and oral history, located in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, remain closed. Not to be dissuaded, Dr. Perry apparently did exhaustive research into virtually every available primary source. The result is a fascinating, insightful look at a first lady who emerges as a surprisingly assertive, independent, and even bold actor on the White House stage. Jackie, of course, is best known as the driving force in the restoration of the White House, but she was equally influential in the creation of the White House Historical Society, the preservation of Lafayette Square, and support of the arts. Her personl correspondence on these projects is quite revealing, suggesting that she had a clear vision of how the White House, the presidency, and the first family should be presented to the public---and how she attempted to preserve and present her own identity. Professor Perry is especially effective in exploring this area, having previously authored a compelling analysis of the symbolism and imagery of the U.S. Supreme Court and how the court presents itself to the public (see "The Priestly Tribe: The Supreme Court's Image in the American Mind").
   
   Barbara Perry's work is a much-appreciated scholarly addition to the body of literature on Jacqueline Kennedy. Until the Kennedy papers are opened to the public (in about 40 years), it will stand unchallenged as the definitive account for viewing and understanding an American icon inside the White House.



2. Unlike more gosspiy biographies, political scientist Barbara Perry approaches the life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy as a scholar. She writes about the early influences in her life, her role as first lady and the passions and causes that she undertook in her official life. Perry touches on such issues as JFK's infidelity and deftlly handles the criticism leveled at Mrs. Kennedy for, among other things, her spending on her wardrobe and her "francophile" attachments. So while the book doesn't get bogged down in the tawdry details of their personal lives, neither does it ignore them. It's a well-written, well-documented account of a White House that was so different than any other in modern times -- much due, in part, to the youth and flair of Jacqueline Kennedy. For those who want an objective account, this is an excellent read.

4 comments about Cnut: King of England 1016-1035.

1. Lawson's coverage of the reign of Cnut and of the Danish conquest of England in the 11th century, is a thorough examination of a subject rarely covered in most histories of the island. About 50 years before the famous Norman Conquest of 1066, the Danish conquest was accomplished on the battle field by Cnut's father Svegn and cemented in Cnut's law codes. The England they conquered was one tired of wars and eager for a chance at peace. Lawson's study examines the ways in which Cnut engineered an aura of legitimacy to his reign, by using personal loyalty, legal codes, close relations with the church and, finally, by marrying the widowed queen of the Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelred the Unready. This is a very carefully researched work, shedding light on a compelling period in English history.

   This book is not for the historically uninitiated or for those who like their history on the light side. However, for those who enjoy an in-depth study of primary sources, this work fills an important gap in scholarship.




2. This book does a really good job of covering King Cnut's reign in detail. I didn't like the way it ended, though. We are told what a skillful king Cnut was, both politically and militarily, and then we are told that he has been all but forgotten. Kind of ruined the mood!



3. This book is good. Unfortunately, it is the exact same book written by M.K. Lawson under a different title. If I had known that, I wouldn't have spent another $20 on a book I already have. M.K. Lawson has the SAME book on Cnut out by two different titles.
   
   Anyway, it is a good, thorough, scholarly work.



4. I found this book frustrating to read since Lawson constantly refers to the source material assuming that every reader is a professional historian. The main things I learned from this book was what we do not know about Cnut and his times. The source material is scanty but overwelming the reader with ambiguities does not help. I was not very familiar with late Anglo-Saxon England but the book should have been more accessable for an important figure in English and Scandinavian history.

1 comments about Presidents at War: From Truman to Bush, The Gathering of Military Powers To Our Commanders in Chief.

1. This book should really be titled 'Presidents at UNDECLARED War.' During the years since the founding of the republic, the United States has only been in five declared wars. During those same years the United States military forces have engaged in more than two hundred armed conflicts. It is not a new thing, Wikipedia says: 'The first United States military action overseas, executed by the U.S. Marines and Navy, was the storming of Derna, Tripoli in 1805 in an effort to bolster diplomatic efforts in securing both the freedom of American prisoners and an end to piracy on the part of the Barbary state. The opening line of the Marine's Hymn, From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, refers to this action.'
   
   This is a very interesting book in how it looks at the conflicts fought since World War II. It covers not the conflict itself so much the interaction between the President and Congress. It further raises interesting questions about how Congress acts in these cases. For instance in the vote regarding Iraq, Congress voted 77 to 23 in favor of the Iraq war.
   
   With the current dissatisfaction regarding Iraq, it will be very interesting to see what happens, especially if the Democrats gain control of Congress.

No comments about Barbara Bush: Presidential Matriarch (Modern First Ladies).

5 comments about Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi.

1. Result of an obviously (too) meticulous study, the book reveals a very objective account of one of the leading female figures of the world... The emphasis is not limited to her political life and therefore you understand almost all underlying motives in her most absurd decisions. Throughout the book, you both love and hate Indira Nehru Gandhi but most of the time, you pity her for the life she, afterall, did not really wanted to have but couldn't refuse either... There is struggle, war, peace, politics, Byzantine games, democracy, dictatorship but happiness in this life....



2. This is one of the best biographies on Indira Gandhi. Most of the other books on indira authored by Indian journalists tend to focus primarily on her political activities with a brief summary of her childhood and adult years. This is by far the most comprehensive attempt at combining the various threads and presenting the story of a normal human being. Katherine's description of Indira's years at Anand Bhawan, Europe, marriage to Feroze read like a best seller fiction. Meticulous research, analysis and an objective attempt to understand the influences in Indira's life prior to her prime ministership is the hallmark.
   
   Missing is the analysis in understanding why a shy, reserved person longing for anonymity suddenly craves for power, and seeks power with scant regard for the institutions set-up by her father, leaders she grew up with. Going by Indira's example,I am disappointed that despite having the best role models (Gandhi, Nehru), best education ( shantiniketan, finishing schools, oxford), global exposure, immense wealth, Indira in her latter years behaved very much like an average middle class Mother, the book unfortunately fails to provide a rationale for this abnormal behavior.
   
   Still a great attempt from a non-indian to understand and piece together the life of the most charismatic and powerful Indian leader in the last 30 years.



3. This is a very good account of Indira Gandhi's life. I felt very sad after reading it. I knew already about her life and politics as being an Indian. But this book gave me a very comprehensive account of her life, except her last couple of years, which I think were
   hurried. I think that spicy tidbits of alleged affairs about her, Nehru and her husband should have been avoided as they distract from the larger point and have given her worshippers an excuse to discount the book. Description of India's early life before she became the Prime Minister is very engaging. You can see how the seeds of her later-day paranoia and siege mentality were sown during her unhappy childhood and her estrangement with her husband. You feel sad that in the end that privileged upbringing, lots of potential, education at the best schools and colleges and tutoring by her father in democratic traditions did not amount to much. She achieved little and destroyed much.
   
   It is amazing that in a vibrant democracy, she was able to undermine every political institution, which is essential for a democracy. How she instigated conflicts in Assam, Kashmir and Punjab. How she shamelessly went around dismissing democratically elected state govts and playing one group against another. How she let loose her son, Sanjay as an extra-constitutional authority to subvert judiciary and beaurocracy. She surrounded herself with sycophants and boot-lickers. In her own words, she herself admits, "men who may not be very bright but on whom I can rely"? Only bright spot in her career was the liberation Bangladesh. She used every weapon available to stay in the power. In the end, the forces she helped unleashed consumed her. Even her son Rajiv who became Prime Minister after her violent death was killed Srilankan Tamil Tigers whom she nourished. It might seem like a poetic justice in the end but India was/is the big loser having lost so much and still fighting those forces.
   
   History will not be kind to her and I hope that Indian people would not let another Indira immerge on the political scene.



4. It may very well be that Sonia cared for Maneka's child during the day, and Indira slept with him by night, but before painting this uncaring picture of Maneka, did Katherine attempt to get the other side of the story?
   
   Even if she had been refused an interview, perhaps she should have attempted to give her readers a third-party (her own?) view of what was probably transpiring in the Nehru-Gandhi household (as she does in numerous other places), rather than passing along what is probably Sonia Gandhi's view of the situation.
   
   Or perhaps Katherine didn't really care whether she maligned Maneka, the not-so-powerful politician?



5. Indira Ghandi was the prime minister of India from the 1960s and 1980s. She is the daughter of India's first PM, Nehru, and was raised in part by Mahatma Gandhi. Confusingly, however, she married a completely unrelated Feroze Gandhi who granted her that famous last name. This is a monster of a book at over 500 pages, copiously annotated and extremely detailed.
   
   The most striking thing I found reading the book was how weak and non-existent Indira seems in her youth and early adulthood. She is unendingly ill with pulmonary diseases, painfully thin, does poorly at school, and floats around Europe and India with her family (she attended the world's first international school, l'Ecole Internationale, in Switzerland for League of Nations brats). She has no normal childhood or youth as the whole Nehru family is deeply involved in the Indian independence movement. They all periodically have to face jail time (a veritable rite-of-passage) for their activities, which the British government calls seditious.
   
   She marries an ambitious, hot-headed and energetic Feroze Gandhi in 1942 despite the misgivings of her father Nehru. Though they were sincerely in love and they produced two sons, the marriage proved a miserable one. Indira was more committed to her father's political work (who becomes PM of independent India) than her husband (who quickly begins having a number of a more-or-less open affairs). I was struck by how Indira lives for others, she has no independent personality, not until in 1959, at age *fourty-two*, she deems that she has repaid her debt to her family and must live her own life. Tragically good timing, because both her husband Feroze and her father Nehru would die within the next few years.
   
   Then Indira comes into her own, she drifts into the prime ministership in 1966 as the previous once dies. She quickly personalises politics massively: she avoids the party organization her father had created and appeals directly to the people with populist programs such as bank nationalizations and removal of aristocratic privileges. She is massively re-elected in 1967 despite a vast coalition against her running on the motto "Remove Indira". She skillfully responded with the motto "Remove Poverty". As the situation in Bangladesh (then a part of Pakistan, though 1,200 km away) degenerated into genocide as the the West Pakistani military elite reasserted its rule in the country in 1971, Indira acted decisively to attract international attention. She eventually fought a brief 2 week war, short and successful, to liberate the country. She became massively popular earning the title "Empress of India".
   
   Though she governed over other successes, the investments of the "Green Revolution" to make India's food supply self-sufficient were finally paying off and India exploded its first atom bomb ("Smiling Buddha"), she did not fulfill her promises on poverty. By the mid-70s inflation was rising, strikes were paralyzing the economy and an anti-Indira coalition was making strong headway calling for her extra-constitutional overthrow. Indira had already eroded much of India's democracy, weakening the constitution, politicizing the judiciary and bureaucracy, and circumventing political parties. In response she declared "the Emergency", effectively making herself dictator, censuring the press, imprisoning thousands of opponents and postponing elections... but trains ran on time and inflation fell. Indira grew increasingly isolated, relying on her corrupt and ambitious son Sanjay whose political influence grew. She eventually relented, holding elections in 1977 and losing badly.
   
   Indira, her son Sanjay and their cronies then had to face 3 years of vengeful and badly organized trials on their misdeeds during the Emergency. They emerged basically unscathed, the very unpopular Sanjay died in 1980 just before the elections in an airplane crash which, though it devastated Indira, placed her in a perfect position to win those elections (the sympathy vote counts). Indira seems pretty aimless during her final term, unable to handle the communal violence affecting Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Harijans (also called Dalits or Untouchables, the lowest of Hindu castes), especially in Kashmir and the Sikh-populated Punjab.
   
   In 1984 as a Sikh terrorist group had been rampaging across Punjab from their base in the Golden Temple (the holiest of Sikh holy places), she launched a military operation to retake the temple and kill the terrorists. She succeeded, with massive civilian casualties and the temple heavily desecrated. Sikhs around the country were enraged and, a month later, two of her own Sikh bodyguards shot some 30 bullets into her body at point blank range. Her other son, Ranjiv, became the new prime minister. Over the 3 days after Indira's death, some 3,000 Sikhs were killed, tens of thousands more expelled from their neighborhoods, in anti-Sikh pogroms throughout India.
   
   Overall Indira comes across as a fairly unimpressive leader. She seems to have been very lucky to have been Nehru's daughter, not had terribly coherent ideas politically and been very dangerous to India's democratic politics. However, she had the ability to really connect with the common Indian and like de Gaulle, another leader with extra-constitutional and authoritarian tendencies, ultimately favored a return to democracy and could not govern without the approval of "the nation".
   
   In the book, Indira and her family appear very flawed but touchingly human, especially as a youth: they have petty disputes and feuds, she reads voraciously, complains of at the size of her nose and the darkness of her skin, she has few friends and her life is distinctly unordered. One word of warning she spoke to a son I thought particularly poignant: "There are millions of people in the world but most of them just drift along, afraid of death, and even more afraid of life."

No comments about Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison.

No comments about The Faith of America's Presidents.

No comments about The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 (Life of Herbert Hoover, Vol. 1).