No comments about Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War (Publications of the Southern Texts Society).

5 comments about The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax - Clarence King in the Old West.

1. For me, this book was an introduction to the daring and storied adventurer scientists of the mid-nineteenth century. I bought it with great anticipation and, after reading the dust jacket, I began with a novice's eagerness on a journey of which I knew little. The first chapter was set in Washington D.C., after all of King's great adventures had been accomplished, in the parlor of Henry and Clover Adams accompanied by their usual guests and friends, Clarence King and John and Clara Hay. These five were such fast friends that they were referred to in the inner circles of Washington as the Five of Hearts. And the glue that held them together was King himself, with his great raconteur tales and his abundant charm. Adams called him the most remarkable man in their circle--tremendous praise considering Adam's circle of friends.
   
   What a unique way to establish your protagonist and to whet the reader's appetite for the adventure to come.
   
   Unfortunately the first chapter is as good as this book gets. It is not that the story is not worth reading. For the most part it is. One learns a great deal about geology, surveying, the geography and topology of the West, and the sense of adventure that any white explorer felt in going into these new, wild and dangerous territories. It is that the telling of the story turns flat--never matching, or coming close, to the rip-roaring story telling, charismatic, fast living, adventure filled life of Clarence King. The book is a polite scholastic treatment, if you will. It reminds the reader not of a book, but rather, of a dissertation.
   
   If this were not enough, the author devotes only three pages of the last chapter to the surreptitious last half of King's life and his marriage to a black woman who bore him five children. This relationship he kept secret to the world, with only his most devoted friends having an awareness. This would have been fertile ground to develop even more the complex character and turmoiled person that was King. The author, however chooses to pass by this last 29 years of King's life; instead retreating into the scholastic realm with which the author is most comfortable--the retelling and analysis of a speech that King made at Yale, his alma mater. With this, the book abruptly ends.
   
   It is like a Doctoral student who doesn't quite know how to end his thesis and submits it to the jury of peers hoping that it will be enough. I don't think that it would have earned the degree.



2. As a geographer with an interest in the opening of the west I looked forward the this book. Unfortunately it is poorly written and repetitious, and half-way through King's life the author appears to lose interest in the subject. There is nothing about the rivalry between King's Survey and the other great surveys led by Powell, Hayden and Wheeler that lead to the establishment of the U. S. Geological Survey. Nor is there any mention of the political fighting between King and Ferdinand Hayden that led to King's selection as the first director of that agency. A major disappointment.



3. This book does not discuss in much detail the USGS and the second half of Clarence's life but it places you in the times of King and during some of the most interesting parts of his adventures in the West. I really enjoyed the book and found that the author created an interesting angle by carefully reviewing King's upbringing, religious beliefs and how he squared his religious convictions with an education and career in science during the mid 1800s.
   This is not a historical tome but a fairly light read where the author keeps the material interesting. It is like a rock skipping over the surface of his life. A good read that leaves me hoping others will write additional books to tell other parts of his story.



4. An absorbing biography of famed geologist Clarence King.
   I must admit that while not totally ignorant in the sciences, I had never heard of the man.
   
   In his early twenties he accomplished many outstanding feats while climbing, mapping and geologizing in California's high Sierra Nevada mountains. Then, at the age of twenty-five he was placed in charge of the fortieth parallel scientific expedition across the western U. S. The culmination of his career was uncovering the great diamond hoax in northwestern Colorado.
   
   All this field work and close observation of the natural and physical world lead King to his own geological theories of time, space and evolution. For the first half of his life the man was highly regarded and respected for both his demeanor and scientific contributions. Sadly, the second half of his life he basically "fell off the planet ".



5. This book seemed to end at least 50 pages too soon in the sense that there are only tantalizing glimpses of the last 25 years of geologist, author, would-be mining baron Clarence King's life (1842-1901). "Where's the rest?", I thought. Then I looked again at the front of the book and parsed the full title, "The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax--Clarence King in the Old West". Oh, it wasn't supposed to be a full biography of the pioneering geologist who became nationally known through his colorful writing about travels, adventures and mountaineering exploits that mostly occurred before he tuned thirty. Rather it focuses just on King's adventures (exploring previously undocumented mountain ranges, making first ascents of high peaks, violent encounters with Indians and outlaws), science (education with leading geologists at Yale, field work with the California Geologic Survey, leading, at age 25, his own multi-year pioneering exploration/survey of the Great Basin and publishing several books that were scientific standards of the era) and the Great Diamond Hoax (exposing a huge financial fraud that made worldwide news in the early 1870s).
   
   But if it's not supposed to be a biography why did the author devote almost a third of the book to King's childhood and college years as well as sketches of King's upper strata social life that had little or nothing to do with the themes promised in the subtitle? It's especially perplexing because some of the "exploration" begs for more detail since large swaths of the country that King explored are barely mentioned.
   
   Today King is best known for his once-bestseller Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, and anyone who has read that book - excerpted and described at some length in Explorer King - will find nothing new here. Likewise there are entire books devoted to the Great Diamond Hoax, and although King played the pivotal in exposing the hoax (and reaped scads of publicity for himself in the process), this episode consumes an inordinate amount of space to set up the story before King (alerted by members of his survey staff) rushes in to save the day. As for the science and King's 40th Parallel Survey's position relative to the other large scale geologic surveys that overlapped his work, I highly recommend Great Surveys of the American West by Bartlett. Apparently the best biographies of King, which author Wilson refers to several times are an unpublished 1953 PhD dissertation, So Deep a Trail, by Crosby and a 1988 work by Wilkins, Clarence King a Biography. These books and others are listed in a three-page bibliography.
   
   I reluctantly concur with another reviewer that this book is something like a college term paper that draws together material from its bibliography but contributes nothing original to the subject. There are 18 pages of term paper style, chapter-by-chapter footnotes at the end of the book but, oddly, the text itself doesn't contain any superscript footnote numbers so it's hard to connect the text to the notes (I didn't even realize they existed until I got to the end of the book). The author pieces together material from his sources in an almost novelistic style and the story skips around chronologically in places, a practice I found confusing.
   
   Recommended to anyone wants to read just a single account of the career and adventure highlights of a leading 19th Century American scientist/explorer/adventurer to learn a bit about the era and its interests and accomplishments. Readers who want to study the era and it's leading figures comprehensively would do well to look elsewhere. Numerous period b&w photos, mostly widely reproduced elsewhere, are scattered through the book but many are too small to see clearly. Two large scale sketch maps cover the regions most prominent in the book but they don't have enough detail to locate all the major events mentioned.

3 comments about Steal This Dream: Abbie Hoffman & the Countercultural REvolustion in America.

1. Larry 'Ratso' Sloman has created a masterpiece with his oral biography of Abbie Hoffman. Not just the story of a fascinating, complex, American clown and activist, Steal This Dream is perhaps the first major book to put the sixties and seventies in perspective. Sloman knew Abbie and many of the other players intimately, and they open up to him with a forthrightness and honesty only possible now that the events are decades in the past. Hardly a homage to Hoffman, this excellent and highly readable book will make Hoffman worshippers cringe and Hoffman haters respectful. Larry Sloman deserves a Pulitzer.



2. I came to this book with only a cursory knowledge of Abbie Hoffman and his generation of the Yippies. I found this book very interesting and entertaining exposing Abbie for all his faults and successes as a peace/environmental activitist. The only problem I have is that the oral history format leaves holes in the story and makes some of the comments hard to put in context. More context from the author between the passages would have made it more enjoyable reading. Overall, this was a very interesting book.



3. This book is a pretty good overview Abbie Hoffman. It uses differing quotes to outline who and what he was about. For the real deal, however, readers should turns to Hoffman's own autobiography "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture".

5 comments about Heretic's Heart: A Journey through Spirit and Revolution.

1. I'm a few years younger than Margot Adler, and only got to the shores of the seas she swam in and observed so trenchantly, but what she writes agrees with my memories of what I saw. It was a time when black and white just wouldn't do any more,and when learning to see the greys of life could be an initiatory journey in itself. Margot's earlier book, Drawing Down the Moon, brought me to the feet of the Goddess. The new book will help me teach my students and coven members what it's like to live in two worlds at once. I'm profoundly grateful. And on a lighter note, the portraits of the Zells jibe quite well with friends of mine who knew them well (in all senses of the word). Thanks, Margot!!



2. It was a curious, somewhat humorous thing at first... that police car with the flattened out roof being used for a speakers platform in the middle of campus. It was the beginning of a painful awakening and an angry rebellion for me that Ms Adler does not quite capture, perhaps because it was no shock to her that "liberty and justice for all" was a lie they'd made us pledge. Nevertheless, it is a brave and revealing story of youthfull struggle against injustice in the world and insecurity in oneself. I'm giving it to my daughter, who hopes to enter UC this fall. Venceremos!



3. I loved this book. I am a few years younger than Margo Adler--and I was always about four years years too young to experience the high points of the Sixties directly. Too young to hitch to Woodstock or go to San Francisco for the Beatles last performance, let alone the Summer of Love! Yet, reading Adler's book, I felt I was there. She is articulate and well-spoken, and can breathe life into those years for those of us who were a little too young to participate, and were always left out. Her correspondence with Mark Anderson made my hair stand up on end, not only because of its evocation of the era (and its "The Way We Were" pairing of two very different people), but because it played out like a precursor of a modern Internet romance. Despite the distance between Margot and Mark, despite the fact that they could not meet in person for years, they "connected," and formed formed a strong, passionate bond that enriched both their lives. I highly recommend this book for more reasons that I have space to describe here. Older boomers, read it to recall a time you lived through; younger boomers, read it to experience a time you may have missed; the rest of you guys, just read it! It's not "just" about the Sixties, it's about love and friendship having the power to transcend even a war that was tearing the country apart.



4. Ms. Adler's book gave me an insight into a time that (I am embarrased to say) I never cared about before. The era that my parents grew up in seemed totally unknown to me before I read this book. All I knew were antiseptic text book notations and footage from Vietnam that seemed less realistic that "Apocalypse Now." I can't thank Ms. Adler enough for letting us into her life, thereby making the 1960's a human experience for me.



5. Margot Adler is what's known in some circles as a "VIP" (Very Important Pagan), and that's why I read this book. What I found is that what little it had to say about the author's conversion to neo-paganism was disjointed and unrelated to the rest of the book. This is mainly a life history spanning the author's early life as the child of fringe American communists, through her college years at Berkley in the midst of the Free Speach and Viet Nam war protests. To me it included interesting history but I didn't see all the conections Ms Adler was making

5 comments about James Madison: The Founding Father.

1. not like Jefferson & Hamilton or celebrated like Washington & Franklin. My fellow reviewers seemed disappointed in this as a biography. But it was not Mr. Rutland's purpose to write a personal story of Mr. Madison's life although his later years were covered quite well. I am glad, however, I took the easy way out by listening to the audio version (unedited). It was as if I was in Mr. Rutland's class as he was giving a lecture. The years after The Revolutionary War, The Federalist Papers, The Constitution & The Bill of Rights, are the real meat of this book. Madison's behind the scenes leadership in Congress was consummate. If we do not appreciate how important he was 200 years later, it seems that he contemporaries did. To his sorrow he was, with Jefferson, responsible for creating the two party system we now operate under. That he wanted to heed Washington's advice against the party system is evident. But he found this advice quickly outdated. As a result Washington, & to a lesser extent Adams were the only unaffiliated presidents in our history. Happily, none of this two-party stuff is cluttering up our Consititution. As Secretary of State under Jefferson & President on his own he was unremarkable. Any one could have mucked things up as well as he did. Indeed his best years were his early years. What seemed to me remarkable was the love, respect & friendship that existed between Madison & Jefferson all of their adult lives. It was an alliance of two great men that never wavered & recreated the "republican" type government of ancient Greece. Mr Rutland was obviously impressed by this relationship & alludes to it several times. I appreciate biographies that teach me something about history I didn't know. How great is this book? Hard to say. But it fit the bill.



2. Read the title: "James Madison: The Founding Father" focuses on Madison's role in the founding of our country. Here we learn little of Madison's youth and upbringing. Although Dolly plays a role in this book, it is a relatively minor part.
   
   This book explains Madison's role in the development and ratification of the Constitution, including his authorship of some of the Federalist Papers. The narration of Madison's leadership in the early Democratic-Republican Party can change the reader's view of history. Whereas we usually think of Thomas Jefferson as founder of the Democratic-Republican Party, Rutland makes a strong case that it was really Madison who united and organized the party from his seat in the House of Representatives. Much as Alexander Hamilton founded the party which elected John Adams, so it can be said that James Madison founded the party which chose Thomas Jefferson as its first standard bearer.
   
   Rutland progresses through Madison's term as Secretary of State and even puts a favorable spin on his two terms as president. This is no easy task, considering that the British burned the White House and Capitol on his watch.
   
   Rutland follows the wind down of Madison's career with his post-White House collaboration in the establishment of the University of Virginia.
   
   I appreciate books which enable me to see things differently. This book meets that test. I had always thought of Madison as, so to speak, Jefferson's underling and less talented successor. Through Robert Rutland's eyes we see him as one of the most influential and talented men of the early Republic. Madison comes across, as a practical political operative, the equal of Hamilton and, in result at least, perhaps his better. In the title, Rutland tells us that James Madison is The Founding Father. In the book he proves it.



3. I did not really care for this book. Rutland makes the premise that Madison was THE founding father implying that he was the most important. He finishes the book with a quote from JFK that Madison was the most under-rated president yet the book dedicates less than 40 pages to the presidency of James Madison. In those 40 pages, I did not gleam anything that Madison did exceptionally well - it all sounded pretty bad to me. I believe the point that Rutland was trying to make is that Madison was not Jefferson's crony and that it was Madison who actually shaped the early Republican party (early version of today's Democratic Party). This was a point well taken and I might accept that Madison was Jefferson's superior. At that same time, I remain unconvinced that he was THE founding father with such peers as George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Important yes but...
   
   The failed argument of Madison's superiority aside, I found the book to brief to be interesting. James Madison was a central figure in the formation of our country, the formation of party politics, and the early days of the republic and to try and tell the story of his entire life in a 250 page book is simply impossible. Many important stories that I have previously enjoyed in book volume detail were reduced to a sentence or two in Rutland's book.
   
   I think this book perfect for a high school student who needs a quick read for a research project but has no real interest in the life and career of James Madison. For a history nut like me, it is a bit too much like reading an encyclopedia.



4. The War of 1812 was fought with Great Britain. The British captured Washington, D.C., and burned the White House. Madison fled. He is known as the father of the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments. The first Amendment guarantees free speech.



5. This is one case where I should have heeded the advice of this site's reviewers.
   
   I wanted to read a Madison biography, but I wasn't looking for a 500-page book, and since my father had this one at his house, I thought, "How bad could it be?" Well, it's pretty shaky.
   
   First of all, Rutland does not make this easy on the readers because he's all over the place. It's not neat and focused like a good biography generally is, perhaps because he tried to cram so much information into less than 300 pages. He just jumped around too much.
   
   For example, the first chapter is a disaster. Rutland barely mentions Madison's upbringing, and even when he does, it's buried amongst other information. You will not get hooked by the first chapter. The last chapter was supposed to be about Madison's post-presidency life, but Rutland continues to mention parts of the presidency. I also really wanted a more focused description of the events leading up to the War of 1812, and what I got were bits of hard-to-follow details here and there. This is just not smooth story telling.
   
   There was some valuable information, such as the detailed outline of the Republican platform during the early stages of the party. And the book was not painfully sympathetic to its subject, but rather a fair account of the great man's life. Perhaps another 100 pages and a more defined overall direction, with chapters addressing a few specific issues rather than bouncing all around, would have made this a decent book.
   
   For those looking to learn about Madison, I don't know what book you should read, but I would not recommend this one.

5 comments about Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2 , The Defining Years, 1933-1938.

1. Although not being an American, I'm aware that there are many in the States who are not too fond of ER and who are very critical of her. This second volume of Blanche Wiesen Cook's series on America's former First Lady is as remarkable and absorbing as was the first. There is no doubt FDR was a man of character,courage and great personal charm and warmth, there is equally no doubt that his wife suffered great personal trauma (and embarrassment) at his refusal (doubtless for political reasons)to speak out against the racial problems (in particular lyching in the South) and the Hitlerites treament of Jews in prewar Germany and Austria whilst the US continued to trade with the Germans. The same could be said of his stance during the Spanish Civil War. Eleanor was a nag (as was mentioned here in other summaries of this book) but never without good reason.
   And all of her dire predictions came true. ER's passion for life, her beliefs, her love and respect of her husband, come through over and over again. Her ability to manipulate people, a less attractive aspect of her character - is also here for all to see (as her relationship with Lorena Hickock so aptly demonstrates).
   Was there too much of Hick in this book ? I didn't think so. The relationship was a long term, on going one. The letters were not destroyed by ER, who I believe must have realised they'd become public after her death. Finally, ER's energy levels must have been extraordinary - her ability to criss cross the country seemingly non stop was remarkable considering that travel and the mode of travel was nothing like it is today. What an absolute bonus such a partner was to FDR's re electibility !
   I look forward to the next "installment" with great anticipation.



2. This is a very well-researched and meticulously written book. However, I never felt I got to know Eleanor Roosevelt. I found the reference to Mrs. Roosevelt throughout the book as "ER" off-putting. It put an emotional distance between the reader and the subject. While we are treated to many details of Mrs. Roosevelt's life, we are never really let in to her emotional life. BWC (the author) goes into such detail about everyone else around Mrs. Roosevelt and she tells us what happened, but she doesn't let us see things through Mrs. Roosevelt's eyes. I still have no idea what the relationship between FDR and his wife was. Nor do I really understand why she remained with Lorena Hick so long. This book really amounts to a laundry list of who, what, where. A really effective biography will let us into the personal lives of the subject and let us feel as they feel as the story of their life unfolds. I never found that emotional resonance in this account. Eleanor Roosevelt left behind copious amounts of source material. I think that the author could have done a much better job of letting us experience Mrs. Roosevelt more fully as a person and not just as a public figure with a lot on her agenda.



3. I was shocked to discover that volume 2 only covered 5 years, albeit 5 important years. However, that should serve as a caveat for a potential reader.
   
   This volume is a much harder read than volume 1 as this version grinds to a screeching halt in places. While I agree it was important to document ERs long, tortured relationship with Lorena Hickock, too much emphasis (and repetition) was placed on what looks to be a normal parting-of-the-ways as ER ascended.
   
   There are some very intriguing and thoughtful moments in this book (which makes its a worthwhile read), but they are broken up by too many abrupt harbringers of moral/political doom or redemption with sparse or no follow-up.



4. I have to admit that I gave up on this book. I'm hoping to find a more readable biography of Mrs. Roosevelt. Cook's style and grammar are just too jumbled for me.
   
   Look in the "look inside this book" section here and go to page 14. This is a prime example of Cook's overuse of quotes. I appreciate that she did her research, but if she was going to quote so much, she should have just included one whole article. As it is, the whole page is a mish-mash of sentances and words taken from various sources creating a confusing unreadable mess.



5. In the first volume of her series on Eleanor Roosevelt, Blanche Wiesen Cook, a historian and women's studies professor, introduced us to a compelling historical figure who, after years of living in passive submission to her husband and mother-in-law, had finally broken free to create her own "independent life" - a life filled with careers (teacher, writer, public speaker) and fulfilling private friendships. In volume two, Eleanor Roosevelt faces the challenge of keeping her independent life as she assumes the traditionally social (and passive) role of First Lady. "Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933 - 1938" contemplates Eleanor Roosevelt's life during the first five years of her husband's presidency.
   
   In her first volume on Eleanor Roosevelt, Cook took a feminist approach in asking questions about power, relationships, and identity. Unfortunately, volume two falls short of the first volume, in leaving many of these questions not only unanswered, but sometimes even unasked. Whereas the central theme of volume one was Eleanor's struggle to assert herself as an "independent power," in volume two, we are not just reading the story of Eleanor Roosevelt, but also the parallel story of her husband and his presidency, which places Eleanor Roosevelt in a dependent role as she must work her way into her husband's political circle to gain influence. In fact, too often, volume two devolves into a story of FDR's presidency and Eleanor's reaction to it, rather than the story of Eleanor Roosevelt as an individual, independent agent. Eleanor is often portrayed as dependent on FDR for power, her moods uplifted when his speeches reflect her views and depressed and cold when they don't, particularly when she is shut out from the inner circle and has to learn about what is going on from her own son. While she occasionally dissents from the administration's talking points, her writing and speaking career is now primarily aimed at advancing FDR's policies. The most disappointing example of Eleanor's capitulation to her husband is on the subject of the Holocaust, where she remains silent from 1933 to 1938. When a German refugee appeals to Eleanor Roosevelt's sense of justice, asking, "Can you really stand by and watch this? Can you stand and see us more or less all gassed? I should like to have your word, you will do something," Eleanor Roosevelt replies, "Unfortunately, in my present position I am obliged to leave all contacts with foreign governments in the hands of my husband and his advisers." Obviously, Eleanor Roosevelt does gain power within FDR's political circle, but it is never clear what the extent and significance of this power really is.
   
   Another central theme in volume one was how Eleanor Roosevelt's relationship with a new circle of feminist and lesbian friends helped her create her own life apart from FDR. After Eleanor discovered FDR's infidelity with Lucy Mercer, and they began living separately, Eleanor established her own new life at Val-Kill, a residence she shared with Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman. In addition, Eleanor made her first true friend in Lorena Hickok, an established reporter with the Associated Press. In volume two, these relationships all dissolve, as Eleanor acrimoniously splits with Cook and Dickerman and drifts apart from Hickok. Hickok, in fact, is the key figure in volume two, as her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt is chronicled in painful detail. While their relationship is clearly the most important in Eleanor's life during her time as First Lady, it unfortunately takes a bit of a tragic turn as Hickok gives up her job with the AP, and along with it, her self-respect, becoming dependent on Eleanor Roosevelt for work, in addition to financial and emotional support. As Hickok grows increasingly depressed and resentful of Eleanor's other friends and busy schedule, they continue to drift apart, to the point where, when they do share a vacation alone together, Eleanor is miserable, missing her work and eager to return to her life as First Lady. As Eleanor Roosevelt drifts away from the friends who were so important to her in first creating her own independent life, it is clear that her interests and priorities have changed. Her political life is now the most important thing in her life.
   
   What does this say about Eleanor Roosevelt's identity? This is the final question then left to be answered. Unfortunately, the question is never even posed to readers. Does it matter that Eleanor Roosevelt depends on her husband for power and she no longer has an independent role of her own? What does it say that she pulls Lorena Hickok into a dependent relationship where she retains all the power? Why is her public life more important to her than her private relationships? What, in fact, is her new identity? While in volume one, we are left with the image of Eleanor Roosevelt as an independent woman, pursuing her own career interests and developing her own loyal set of friends apart from FDR, in volume two, we are mostly left with an image of Eleanor Roosevelt not as an independent force, but as the First Lady, a woman who keeps a busy schedule and cares for a lot of causes and people, but none in particular.
   
   In focusing on the day-to-day details of Eleanor Roosevelt's life and FDR's administration, "Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume Two, 1933 - 1938" reads more like a timeline from a boring history text - a list of dates and facts - than a compelling biography of Eleanor Roosevelt the person, her priorities and main accomplishments. In trying to tell two stories - first, of the political movement behind the New Deal and, second, of the role Eleanor Roosevelt carves out for herself within her husband's administration - ultimately Cook fails to tell either story.

1 comments about The Life and Adventures of Nat Love (Blacks in the American West).

1. The Life and Adventures of Nat Love is the narrative of a former slave who went west first to become a cowboy in Texas and across the plains during the American Reconstruction period and then to retire as a Pullman Porter in Oklahoma (I believe). It is a culturally significant work because there are obviously very few such stories and it highlights the fact so many cowboys in the latter part of the 19th century were, in fact, black. It would probably be inaccurate, however, to read Nat's narrative as the gospel truth. Rather, it reads more like a dime novel romp with a heavy dose of Horatio Alger and Booker T. Washington's 'Up from Slavery' philosophy. Which seems strangely fitting for a former slave during Reconstruction who believed himself undeniably American. Nat became a cowboy because he was a free spirit, despite slavery, and the order of the day for Americans was to 'go west.' Thus, like other Americans at the time, he has (at first, at least) no sympathy for marauding Indians (the best one being a dead one) and no cultural identification with non-Americans (i.e., Mexicans). Like other American cowboys (and dime novel heroes) he was a crack shot and superior horse-man, eventually earning the name of Deadwood Dick for these talents (notably on July 4). The narrative is definitely an intriguing read and anyone with an interest in slave or cowboy narratives, or dime store novels, should be interested in looking deeper into this one.

2 comments about The Trials of Anthony Burns: Freedom and Slavery in Emersons Boston.

1. Looking for an exciting book that you can't put down? Anthony Burns would be a great one. A slave who has be accused for stealing and he is on trial, fighting for his life and freedom. It's a sad book because he's in jail with water once a week, food twice a day (which is raw meat, cornbread, and really just scraps of food. The end is shocking and it's a great book that I recommend reading.You will never put it down.



2. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. This is a monumental piece of writing and extremely important for anyone interested in American history particularly relating to slavery and aboltion. it really does not get any better. Anyone in the civil rights movement , activst or attorney, should get a copy of this book. Get 10 copies and pass them around. It reads like a Dumas novel and informs like an encylopedia. A masterpiece. Thank you professor Von Frank.
   
   Randy Credico
   Director
   William Moses Kunstler Fund For Racial Justice

5 comments about Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In: Appreciations, Castigations, and Reminiscences by Ram Dass, Andrew Weil, Allen Ginsberg, Winona Ryder, William Burroughs, ... Huston Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, and Others.

1. Robert Forte is one of the most important living documentarians of psychedelic history and phenomonology. In this book, he's gathered a myriad voices of people who were really "there" when Leary was influencing people and who therefore have valuable commentary worth hearing -- both positive and negative. The folksy, chatty style of this book make it a pleasure to read. Along with his other book "Entheogens and the Future of Religion," Forte is performing an important informational and documentary service toward a fair assessment of the role that drugs have in society and also of the real-life figures who have affected this. This book is a must read for anyone interested in what Tim Leary (and for that matter, ...) were really like.



2. Timothy Leary is a mythological figure. Almost everyone has an opinion of him, even if they have never read a word he wrote.
   Often opinions are second-hand filtered through this or that media source.

   The editor for this book, Robert Forte, one
   of Mircea Eliade's last students at the University of Chicago,
   does not provide us with second-hand information that he has digested, but instead, gathers an anthology of viewpoints from those who knew Timothy Leary. Not all are positive, and I was surprized to read the negative remarks of Owlsley Stanley in regards to Leary. Thanks to this compendium, we are allowed past the veil of the myth and get a glimpse of the human Timothy Leary.

   Robert Forte knew Timothy Leary personally and has edited another book, Entheogens and the Future of religion, that I highly recommend.

   Thomas Seay




3. This book is a source of comfort to anyone disgruntled by Robert Greenfield's less than appreciative bio of Timothy Leary. Editor Robert Forte calls his project a "festschrift," which, if my rusty German holds up, loosely means "celebration of writing." It is by no means balanced; its cover promises castigations but delivers only one, ironically from former outlaw chemist Owsley Stanley. There are polite rebukes of Leary's methods from Huston Smith and Myron Stolaroff, but the rest of the book is mainly a chorus of paeans, a love fest that gets sloppy in places.
   
   Part of Forte's thesis is that Leary will come to be vindicated and revered as another Socrates or Galileo. Inevitably the uptight world will recognize the transformational power of psychedelics and, grasping the keys to the missing link in evolution, start popping them like vitamin supplements. Why millions of grateful acid veterans haven't united to demand a change in the drug laws goes unexplained. Like a lot of other issues the book grazes. Why was Eldridge Cleaver not more supportive of Leary in Algeria? Why was Art Linkletter hostile to Leary? What happened to Leary's children? What was "The Brotherhood" that Forte cryptically refers to a couple of times? What about the charges that Leary betrayed friends, including the lawyers who helped him avoid lengthier prison time? Although Forte concedes that Leary failed "to confront his shadow," the negative aspects of his life, he left the shadowy particulars for Robert Greenfield to detail.
   
   There are other shortcomings. The correspondence between Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard is vacuous, discussing where and when they plan to meet next. Albert Hofman's contribution is brief. Hunter Thompson's more caustic criticisms of Leary are absent, replaced by a short, all-is-forgiven comment. Some of the respondents use a pretentious argot prevalent in the `60s, reflecting the mindless blather of the drug-addled. And there are outrageous claims that transcendentalist philosophers Emerson and Thoreau took drugs, that psychedelics brought forth the computer revolution and the Internet. At least Forte didn't suggest that psychedelics are "the only visible hope for a race tottering on the brink of extinction." That claim was in a recent letter of complaint from the Leary estate to The New Yorker over the favorable review its critic gave to the Greenfield book.
   
   I don't blame Forte for being a cheerleader. He was only 11 years old during the '67 Summer of Love, so he didn't see the zombies walking down Haight Street and other hippie enclaves ingesting not only psychedelics but other wares sold by hierarchical criminal outfits (such as the Brotherhood?) engaged in the "democratization" of drug distribution. Gosh and golly, why would law enforcement ever consider LSD a gateway to heroin, methamphetamine and crack? Set and setting indeed.
   
   I thought I'd had enough of Leary after reading the Greenfield book, but I picked this one up after browsing its table of contents. It has limited appeal, so I give it three stars: one for the interview with Huston Smith, one for the interviews with Metzner & Stolaroff, and one for likening Leary to Huck Finn. Greenfield mistakenly linked him to Tom Sawyer.



4. This is a rich and revealing book that I always recommend to anyone trying to grasp the contradictory figure that was Timothy Leary - not least because many of its subjects are still struggling to grasp exactly what hit them when Leary entered their lives. Highlights for me include the essays by Ram Dass, Robert Anton Wilson and Ralph Metzner, as well as William Burroughs' ability to use a few brief words so well. Winona Ryder's eulogy is also terrific -- it has since been included in Copeland's book on the greatest eulogies of our time, and I liked it so much I used it as the foreword to my own biography on Leary, 'I Have America Surrounded'.
   
   As Forte writes in his introduction, this is "not a biography of Leary, nor an in-depth study of his ideas", and as such the critical review on this page by R. Goldstein seems to have missed the point of the book. Forte is not attempting to be a 'cheerleader' or promote his 'thesis', as is claimed, but instead provides a forum where those who knew Leary could record their memories and reminiscences. True, the majority are positive and loving, but this is no reason to criticize the book. The fact is Leary was deeply loved by many - which is something that those who condemn his character find it convenient to overlook. For this reason the book is an important record, but perhaps more importantly it is those who knew him best who often have the most revealing insights - and this is why the book is so valuable.



5. Regardless of one's personal opinions about Timothy Leary, one cannot really deny the fact that he was a great man; great in the sense that his thoughts and ideas influenced an entire generation (and continues to do so), and that A LOT of people had - and still have - A LOT of strong feelings about everything he stood for. Perhaps it's too early to figure out how extensive his influence actually was. Everything he talked about didn't revolve around LSD, even though many tend to think just that. What many don't know, for instance, is that he contributed greatly to the field of psychology and developed different tests that are still in use today.
   
   Robert Forte has edited a book, not about Leary's life, but more about people who met him, were familiar with him, were close to him, were affected and influenced by him, and all in all had some sort of relation to him. Some of these people are Winona Ryder (to whom Leary was godfather), Hunter S. Thompson, Albert Hofmann (the chemist who synthesized LSD in 1938), Ken Kesey (another "psychedelic pioneer"), Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and many more.
   
   Some of the contributions consist of Forte simply interviewing the individual in question, while in other cases the contributor has written the piece him/herself. But it's not all about Leary all the time. Timothy Leary is more a book about the psychedelic revolution itself than about one of its leading advocates. Richard Nixon referred to him as "the most dangerous man in the world", and sure, a great deal of the content is about him, what he accomplished, different incidents in his life, and so on. However, another great deal is about the use and abuse of psychedelic drugs, how they shaped and changed society and individual consciousness, how dangers (or harmless) they actually are, what happens to people who choose to try them, and how these now criminalized drugs could be used beneficially in different sorts of therapies.
   
   It's not the best book on the market if you want to learn more about Timothy Leary's opinions and messages, but on the other hand, it's a great book if you want to know some of the influence and the affect he had on his surroundings. Furthermore, through its use of sensible discussions by and with well-informed and rational people, the book offers great knowledge about the absurd American "War on Drugs" and all the hypocrisy this futile and senseless war is built upon.

5 comments about After the Ball: Gilded Age Secrets, Boardroom Betrayals, and the Party That Ignited the Great Wall Street Scandal of 1905.

1. "After the Fall," Patricia Beard's clear-eyed look into the excesses at the tag end of the Gilded Age, focuses around a costume party thrown in 1905 by then 23-year-old James Hazen Hyde, who was expected to accede to the presidecy of the Equitable Life Insurance Company when he turned thirty.
   
   It never happened. Instead his enemies, in the company and outside it, used the ball as an excuse to start a power play that would bring him down. As sometimes happens, however, they brought themselves down as well.
   
   The book is almost like a musical comedy in structure. The title is somewhat misleading as the ball itself comes in the middle of the book (imagine the ball as the big production number that brings the curtain down on act one). It begins with James's father, Henry, skips quickly through James's adolescence and early manhood (there'll be a production number having to do with James's hobby, racing horsedrawn carriages), the premature death of his father, and his rise to the first vice presidency of the insurance company, where, or so his father had hoped, he would be tutored by the interim president, James W. Alexander, who was nearing retirement age.
   
   When the curtain rises on act 2, you will encounter an array of schemers, some driven almost batty as they struggle for power, and a parade of the gilded age financiers, J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, and James Fortune Ryan, as well as President Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President Grover Cleveland, and Charles Evans Hughes, who would some day be, thanks largely to his investigation of the scandal, Chief Justice of the United States.
   
   You'll maybe hear patter songs in your head as the robber barons form committees, make deals, break deals, and leak their doings to the press, as they scheme to acquire the faltering company for themselves.
   
   And when the curtain comes down on the tale as the chastened but hardly impoverished Hyde leaves for France--saying his goodbyes aboard the ship that's about to sail perhaps--it comes down, as well, on the Gilded Age itself.
   
   Notes and asides: The afterword, about Hyde's later life and that of his son, who was in the OSS during WWII should not be skipped.



2. 
   This is a well presented and gripping account of the clash of the titans of industry of a century ago. It shows them in their true, unsavory, colors, albeit a tad muted....
   
   We find the anything-but-poor, yet unsuspecting Mr. Hyde (heir in his 20s to the Equitable Insurance fortune) shaken from his elite complacency and thrust into the eye of a storm that is kept stirred by the machinations of Equitable board member Henry Clay Frick, one of the more amazing and alarming capitalists from Pittsburgh's steel days.
   
   In a bid to oust Hyde from control of the mega-insurance concern that his father founded with wit, skill and sleight of hand, Frick engineers a negative publicity juggernaut that calls Hyde's personal financial ethics into question and ends up in the courts. The Equitable goes into receivership-with some luminaries like George Westinghouse in temporary control-until, beset by the scandal, Hyde sells out, shakes the dust off of his well-heeled shoes, and departs for Pre-World War I Paris. He remains a Francophile expatriate for the remainder of his days.
   
   There is more to the story and some of it is here, and well worth the reader's time and attention, especially since Ms Beard had access to some privately held family papers and files that cast the story in a Schubert pink spotlight, with few shadows. The author, a personal friend of Hyde's granddaughters and a member of the same giltetry social set, goes easy on some of the tale. What is left on the cutting room floor is even more fascinating than what made it into this book.
   
   For, shadows there are, and there is oh so much more of the story to be told, ranging from the Johnstown Flood (this family is connected to the infamous South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club) to the crafty ire of Mr. Frick's European counterpart, the equally effective and furiously ambitious harridan, the Archduchess Isabella of Austria-Hungary (again, an extended family connection).
   
   What a yarn and all of it, true!
   
   Perhaps Miss Beard will muster the courage to follow up this book with a prequel about Mr. Frick's very similar, skillful machinations regarding Mr. Hyde's future father-in-law, and a sequel that more fully addresses the irony of World History that found Mr. Hyde's son among two generations of this extended family who served diligently, on both sides of W W I and W W II, some as top level spies. Then again, perhaps not.
   
   But if not, one hopes that other historians might take note, there is so much more to be told! This is a real life E Phillips Oppenheim novel. It would find as its centerpiece, Hyde's father-in-law, a rags to riches success - an orphan who rose to the top of the tree, on both sides of the Atlantic and who had his hands in many a pie, industrial and diplomatic....
   
   Now...The only question is: Who will be the first to tell it?
   
   Perhaps Martha Sanger, or Teresa Carpenter or Les Standiford or - of course - the incomparable David McCullough!
   
   If you find this review helpful you might want to read some of my other reviews, including those on subjects ranging from biography to architecture, as well as religion and fiction.



3. Well-written, interesting and sheds new light on a long-forgotten subject. The author has the gift of understanding and writing well about both Gilded Age high society and finance, and uses her gift to good advantage. Occasionally the inner manueverings in the Equitable drag a bit, but this is a hardly noticeable defect. Five stars +; buy and and read it with enjoyment.



4. "After the Ball" is a biography of James Hazen Hyde (1876-1959), Gilded Age aesthete, sportsman, patron of the arts and heir to the majority shares in The Equitable Life Assurance Society, which his father Henry Baldwin Hyde had founded in 1859. The emphasis is on the decisive event of James' life: His battle to retain control of his father's company that played out over the course of 1905 against Equitable's president James Waddell Alexander and its ruthlessly ambitious 2nd vice president Gage Tarbell. That battle commanded 115 front page articles in "The New York Times" alone and resulted in the passage of New York's Armstrong Laws in an attempt to regulate the insurance industry. Author Patricia Beard knew James Hyde's only son Henry Hyde -Henry was godfather to her son- which explains the late chapter dedicated to Henry Hyde's life.
   
   James Hyde became the majority shareholder in The Equitable at the age of 23 upon his father's death in 1899. Henry B. Hyde had planned that his son serve as 1st vice president under the tutelage of James Alexander before assuming the role of company president at age 30. But Henry had ill prepared his son for the murky realities and unbridled ambitions of the business world. And James was ill-suited to the job, being by nature a man of arts and letters and high society. James idolized his father and took his legacy seriously but didn't understand his responsibilities until it was too late. In 1905, frustrated by James' ability as majority shareholder to stifle his plans for the Society, unscrupulous, dogged Gage Tarbell recruited malleable and unstable James Alexander as his ally and launched a campaign to force The Equitable to mutualize (give shareholders voting rights) with the intent of ousting James. They expected James to resign, sell his stock, and move to France. Instead, he put up a fight.
   
   "After the Ball" provides a blow-by-blow account of The Equitable crisis and the attempts to resolve it, from James Hyde's lavish 18th century France-themed ball in January 1905 until his self-imposed exile in France a year later. Although it occasionally bogs down in minutiae, the battle for The Equitable is a page-turner. Histories of Henry B. Hyde, The Equitable, James' later life in Paris and New York, and his son's service in the OSS during World War II bookend the drama. Prominent industrialists and financiers from Wall Street's boom years of the 1890s-1920s are the cast, and The Gilded Age itself is a character. James' flamboyance, active social life, and ostentatious wealth exemplified the ideals of the era. He was praised for successfully juggling his business, social, and artistic pursuits. But he couldn't. "After the Ball" is the story of a doting father who gave his son an empire but neglected to teach him how to rule for fear that his image would be tarnished in the boy's eyes. It's the story of a son who inherited great wealth and power but little motivation to comprehend or exploit them and so fell victim to those more willing.



5. Historians of the Progressive Era will appreciate this biographical sketch of Henry Hyde and the founding of the Equitable Assurance Co. during the latter nineteenth-century. In a period of liberal corporate empire building by Hyde, Morgan, Biltmore, et al., Patricia Beard profiles the Hyde's desire to establish a "sacred trust" life insurance company for investors and policyholders. As the author notes in her sub-title, that trust was riddled with financial scandal and power brokering. Henry Hyde's heir apparent, James, is cited as a flamboyant, underachieving vice-president of the company and ridiculed for a wasteful spending ball in 1905. In truth James Hyde's rivals Alexander and Harriman are the true culprits of the Equitable's indebtedness when they establish trusts with railroad magnates and wealthy stockbrokers.
   Some highlights of the book that readers might find interesting are Charles Evans Hughes establishment of anti-trust legislation as governor of New York which set the foundation for the Armstrong Commission and contemporary rules of conduct, for corporations. Biographical profiles of the Hyde family covers James' early proficiency at coach racing to his son Henry's "exact" purpose in life while he served in the OSS during World War II. Future reviewers may speculate about why James did not heed a lesson from the famous Bradley-Martin Ball (1897) which caused those families embarrassment and exiile. Perhaps the implicit meaning of the word "Gilded" is appropriate here in that the thin layer of ornamentation that covered the rich and haughty was only a cover-up for their flawed character.
   Overall, Patricia Beard does a fine job proving the primary sources she uncovered in newspapers and family correspondence. She writes with the narrative style of Barbara Tuchman and her personal encounters with Henry Jr. and surviving members of the Hyde lineage adds panache. A good read for history book discussion clubs and perhaps a welcome addition to business history curriculums.