5 comments about Bush Hat, Black Tie: Adventures of a Foreign Service Officer.

1. I bought this book with the hope that it would give me some insight on how to answer the hypothetical questions of the State Department's Foreign Service Oral exam that I have coming up. On the down side, he spent little time discussing his early career, and since I'm going for the Managerial track (his was, I guess, sort of like public diplomacy)it was the gold mine I had hoped for.

   However, he gave great insight into what real life is like at a hardship post, and his mid- and late- career experiences were invaluable. His experiences show just how important interpersonal relationships are in the foreign service, which contrasted my view that it is all book knowledge and sterile, rely-purely-on-yourself stuff.




2. This seems to be basically a collection of mildly intriguing antidotes from Mr. Simpson's diary. It gives some idea of what it was like to be an information officer, and some of the stories are interesting. But the book lacks emotion, wallows in neutrality and is quite dated (ending in 1979). Mr. Simpson also strikes one as being more concerned with his lifestyle than the actual job, which is admirable, but not informative.

   If one is looking to learn what it's really like to be an FSO, particulary in one of the other career tracks within the Foreign Service, there may be better sources out there.
   I am now in search of a book that provides more in-depth analysis of the job being done by the State Dept and FSOs overseas.




3. Entertaining if episodic accout of life as a diplomat. At times parochial and old-fashioned, the book reads like a nostalgic take on life in the good old days of the Western Empire.



4. "Although the passing of time often tends to blur specific memories and dates, the events in this book are factual and, I trust, untainted by political correctness". The person who wrote this in the preface to "Bush Hat, Black Tie: Adventures of a Foreign Service Officer" is the author of the book himself, Howard R. Simpson (1925-1999).
   
   The author is a person I would have like to know, because he led a very interesting life, seemed to possess a good sense of humour, and managed not to take himself too seriously while being extremely professional about his job, being a diplomat. Simpson didn't plan to be a diplomat, "it just happened". Before that, he participated in the Second World War, studied art in Paris, and became a journalist. He could have been many things, but he ended up being a diplomat, although a rather peculiar one.
   
   The beginning of Simpson's career can be traced to 1951, when he joined the Foreign Service as an information specialist. Simpson would be posted to French Indochina, Nigeria, France, South Vietnam, Australia and Algeria. He would also work in the United States, specifically in Washington and as a professor in the U.S. Naval War College. This book includes interesting photographs that show the author in some of those places, and that emphasize the fact that in his career he wore a bush hat at least as frequently as a black tie. My favorite photograph is probably one that shows the author in Hanoi, in 1954, when he was posing as a Polish journalist in order to escape unharmed from the communist occupied city.
   
   In this book, Simpon shares with the reader some of the experiences he had in the somewhat strange life that some diplomats live. He does that in an engaging way, peppering serious observation regarding policy matters with funny anecdotes. A good example of that can be found in the chapter "Fire ant fandango", where he talks about the last stages of decolonization in Nigeria, but also tells us what happens when African fire ants are surprise visitors to a reception.
   
   It is easy to see in every page of this book that Simpson loved his career, even though he wasn't much of a fan of paperwork. In his words, "I believe most Foreign Service veterans would agree that few other professions offer such a variety of interesting, adventurous, and -at times- dangerous assignments. My only advice to those now entering the ranks would be: beware of creeping bureacracy, don't take yourself too seriously, and enjoy your new career".
   
   On the whole, I highly recommend "Bush Hat, Black Tie: Adventures of a Foreign Service Officer". It doesn't matter if you are just a reader looking to be entertained, or a person who is seriously considering joining the Foreign Service. I'm pretty sure that both kinds of reader will find what they are looking for in this book.
   
   Belen Alcat



5. I am in the process of reading this book (just finished the part about California wine in Marseille), and find it very entertaining. However, does anyone else find the frequency in which local prostitutes are mentioned disturbing? I've lived and travelled overseas quite a bit, and although it's the oldest profession in the world, one would think that the cities the author lived in and visited would have a lot more to describe than the talents of local working girls.

5 comments about Son of the Morning Star.

1. Being a longstanding, confirmed student of the frontier Indian War era, Custer and his likes, etc., by now I must have read and collected several hundred books on these topics. In my opinion, Connell's is one of the very best and most entertaining, compelling, witty, and informative "reads" in this genre. Perhaps its not "perfect" (I have long been aware of some of the criticisms that have been directed toward it, some of which may be substantive and others just silly), but -- and this is unusual for me -- I found myself reading it all the way through more than once when I first got it a few years ago. I highly recommend this book.



2. I have been to the battlefield and have read and seen numerous documentaries of the Big Horn" battle (even watched the made for television series by the same title as this book), and I can say that the series was not as good as the book and neither has anything else I have seen or read about that fatal day in Montana over one hundred and thirty years ago.



3. On a whim, I purchased this book at a London bookshop in the late 1980's, and was immediately captivated by it. Since then, I have reread Son of the Morning Star at least half-a-dozen times, each time with greater pleasure. Notwithstanding the passage of more than two decades since its original publication, "Son of the Morning Star" remains magisterial. One Amazon review I read denigrated this book because it was, according to the writer, inadequate for the serious historian. Perhaps. There exists no shortage of books devoted to Custer, intended for the "serious historian," among them Evan's 1999 exhaustive "Custer's Last Fight." "Son of the Morning Star" does not purport to cater to the "serious historian." It is, as Dee Brown remarked, "unique and for that reason should endure." Buy it. Read it.



4. Those who study the Little Big Horn battle seem to fall into two camps where this work is concerned, some love it for it literary style, others loath it as it doesn't adhere to a strict timeline in recounting the events preceding and encompassing the battle. Instead, this book is a literary collage but its coverage is so well written that it is absolutely captivating. It encapsulates the spirit and mystery of the Little Big Horn like no other book. It's all here-the "hotspur" Custer as Connell calls him, the defiant Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Reno described by the Crow scouts as "frothing at the mouth," the surly Benteen, Keogh and Comanche, spurious survivor stories galore and the evocative landscape of the battlefield itself. All captured in words and conveyed in a highly entertaining manner. It's almost as if Connell says we can never solve all the mysteries of this battle, so let's dispense with chronological history and just have fun! Besides, there are tons of excellent histories that do follow the conventional route that one can turn to for a more ordered look.
   
   My first visit to the Little Big Horn took place in 1994 and I took a special paid tour that included the Crow's Nest. I remember our guide talking about Connell and how, when he was shown factual errors in the first edition of this book, he readily agreed to change them and acknowledlged his mistakes. Our guide said that not all authors are that way where their books are concerned. Speaks well of him and his book. Only drawback--the index is very scanty so don't rely on it if you look for references for, say, the names of all of Custer's officers.



5. This slightly dated work by an accomplished novelist is well worth slugging through its lack of organization and meanderings to extract the huge compendium of facts contained therein. Please note; while other readers have thought this was an historical novel, it isn't fiction. It would deserve five stars if better organized and possessed a better index, but alas, one can't have everything. The reader will read and note a fact or story, but find himself unable to locate it later without reading through the entire book again.
   
   The "slightly dated" aspect is deserved as it, a 1984 work, does not contain the archeological data unearthed by Fox et al since that time. Nonetheless, for sheer facts, statements, and opinions, this is the reader's single best source on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
   
   I recommend this book for purchase and reading.

5 comments about Tom Paine: A Political Life (Grove Great Lives).

1. I will admit that I was not immediately enamored with this book. The luciferous introduction on Keane's predecessors in Paineite biography was engaging enough, but I found his systematic, nit-picky demolition of each work to be just plain egotistical. In Keane's eyes, each previous biography "failed" or "floundered" for various reasons, thereby opening a window for his own, earth-shattering tome on the subject. Granted, it has become common practice for authors to "justify" their reasons for writing "yet another biography on _______" in the preface of their books, but this sort of self-serving, hypercritical overview left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I seriously worried that the 540 pages that followed would be tinctured with the same sort of pomposity - thankfully that was not the case.
   

   
   The book is a solid biography, and I can very well see Paine enthusiasts flocking to this as one of the best biographies ever written about him. As this is the only biography of him I've read, I'll reserve my judgment on that question, but I will admit that it is an exceptional study of a peculiar man. What the general public knows of Paine is often just his authorship of Common Sense, but of course there was so much more. He penned not one but three of the best-selling books of the 18th century, and, arguably, he initiated modern political thought on the subject of democratic republicanism. Paine was born an Englishman but for most of his life considered himself a "citizen of the world," which prompted a major change in how we view national citizenship - no so much as a gift from the state, as was the 18th century perception, but rather a promise from it to preserve certain rights indigenous to its people. Yet despite his cosmopolitan leanings, Paine managed to ostracize himself from all three countries in which he declared citizenship - England, France and America - thanks to his revolutionary ideals and his fervent insistence on airing his views publicly regardless of their popularity. He would eventually face public execution in both England and France - the story of his brush with death in La Luxembourg prison during the French Reign of Terror is decidedly spine-tingling - but would survive both to end up back in America, ostracized by the generation that remembered him, and nearly forgotten by the generation that followed.
   

   
   Keane doesn't devolve into hero-worship, despite several initially-worrisome hyperbolic descriptions of him as "the greatest American revolutionary." Instead, the author deals with each of Paine's failings in a forthright manner. Paine was certainly a man driven by ego, though certainly an ego unaffected by cares for money, power, or public approbation. To put it simply, he just knew he was right, and he would never back down from any of his arguments, regardless of their popularity. Even his most unpopular anti-Christian sentiments displayed in the Age of Reason could not be moved, despite the efforts of many to make him recant on his deathbed. As for Paine's legendary alcoholism, Keane suggests it was just that - a legend. According to Keane, Paine never drank to excess when in social situations. He only drank himself into stupors later on in life when the pain of gout and bedsores became unbearable. This may or may not have been the case - I lean towards may not - but in the end it is of comparatively little importance when calculating the worth of a man whose ideas have arguably shaped many of our own modern ideas on government and civil rights.
   

   
   All told, the biography earns four stars from me on a scale of five. The rating falls short of the final star more because of style than substance. Keane's prose is certainly readable, and in most cases enjoyable, but it was a bit dry and academic for my tastes in several places. On top of that there was some strange editorial snafus, including several instances of sloppy repetition and an imprecise policy of when and when not to translate from the original French. In one chapter Keane includes an entire paragraph of French extracted from a letter (p. 405), with no accompanying translation, and yet in the next he feels it necessary to include a parenthetical translation of the decidedly uncomplicated Dissertations sur les Premiers Principes de Gouvernement as, surprisingly, or not, "Dissertations on the First Principles of Government" (p. 423).
   

   
   Regardless of my editorial trifles, the book is strong and well recommended to anyone interested in picking up a book on the life and works of Tom Paine. You'll find his life, in many respects, reads like an adventure novel, and his ideas on government and society are surprisingly, shockingly, modern.




2. Crackerjack biography of Old Tom (Paine) in the four stages of his life, from his early years in England til Ben Franklin advises him to reach America, the period of _Common Sense_ and the American Revolt, then the _Rights of Man_ and the French Revolution, and finally his return to America, where the reputation of the _Age of Reason_ caught up with him, and his great early popularity was replaced with the jibes of those in a suddenly religious republic, whose liberties were won by more secular sorts (cf. Gordon Wood's book on the Revolution, such as Paine. It is a sad ending to a magnificent tale for a true champion of freedom, one who brought the democratic idea to a republican experiment in constitutions. The phenomenal nature of the sales of his books, whose profits he renounced in the name of his cause, is an episode almost world-historical in its seminal influence. Paine's trek is also a classic snapshot of the 'classic' liberal in his revolutionary phase, and the subtleties of great tomes politcal philosophy seem prefigured in the sheer horse-sense of this man who saw the gist of it all, and somehow at a glance. Witness his instinctive in the spectral course of the French Revolution from the Girondins to the Terror to the dungeons, which he survived. It may finally be that his reputation has recovered at last its nineteenth century shadows where the truest of patriots was consigned.



3. As I read this book, I couldn't help but think, where is the Tom Paine of our time? The insights that Tom Paine had are needed today more than ever.



4. An interesting biography, heavily- if not well- researched. Partisan, but Keane does manage a bit of perspective. The main problems come with the background. There is both too much - I for one could do without the often inaccurate disquisitions on eighteenth-century England - and too much WRONG. Keane seems to think that Britain and America were at war in 1787, and that Adam Smith visited Paris at that time (p.284-5). Hobbes is both more and less than a 'philosopher of counterrrevolution.'
   Furthermore, it seems a man only had to bump into Paine for Keane to count him a 'close friend'. What was the extent of Paine's friendship with Goldsmith (this is interesting) and with Burke (very important)?
   I get the impression that Keane did all his research for the book and had no grounding in the subject before. But it's an engrossing read for all that.



5. This is the kind of biography that makes reading history worthwhile. The writing style is intelligent and clear, marshalling innumerable facts and interesting anecdotes. It gives us the full scope of Paine's remarkable life - a man who was one of the intellectual midwives at the birth of the era of democratic revolution.
   
   He fought for free political expression as a citizen of three countries in the throes of revolutionary change: born in England where he fought against monarchy, moved to America where he became a writer of inspirational tracts for independence, and finally, made citizen of France during the violence of the Revolution where he argued, at great risk to himself, to spare the life of King Louis XVI. If his positions seem contradictory they actually reflect a philosophy of consistant political moderation.
   
   Secondly, this biography is a story about the struggle to realize ideas against great odds. Everywhere he went he was fortunate to escape death at the hands of his murderous foes. In spite of these threats, Paine fought tirelessly for his ideals.
   
   Thirdly, the author gives contempory meaning to Paine's goals. Paine was against religious literalism because he saw the adherence to strict doctrine as an obstacle to extablishing a civic society in which people could live together harmoniously.
   This position was a cause of much suffering for Paine at the end of his life as his anti-traditional ideas incited deep personal hatred. Without needing to conclude whether he was misguided or not, suffice to say, the difficulty he tried to tackle remains with us today...in the headlines. And I don't think we've come all that far in solving the problem he recognized. That he saw its importance at the inception of modern civic society makes him a visionary of the highest importance worthy of our respect whether we agree with the totality of his ideas or not.

No comments about Andrew Foote: Civil War Admiral on Western Waters (Library of Naval Biography).

No comments about Paine.

2 comments about A Benjamin Franklin Reader.

1. This is a great collection of the writings of Benjamin Franklin. For me, the real value here lies not so much in the fact that he was a self-made man, but in the advice he gave about connecting with people and interacting with others both from a business and from a personal point of view. His ability in that area led directly to his success (along with some luck). I wish more people read the Autobiography and other papers just for that reason alone. In the long run, that may be the greatest contribution made by Ben Franklin.



2. This is a fine selection from Franklin's writings, including the entire 'Autobiography'. All texts have been judiciously chosen by the editor, arranged in chronological order and prefaced by intelligent, concise and well written introductory notes. Franklin's importance and permanence clearly emerge from the reading.
   
   I only wish there were more excerpts from Franklin's delightful 'Poor Richard's Almanac'. The selections presented in this edition come from the Almanacs for the years 1733, 1734, 1736, 1737, 1738 and 1739, and they barely fill 15 pages. Nonetheless they might well satisfy the reader and in any event there is plenty of rarely published letters and articles from the Pennsylvania Gazette to make up for the possible lack of material from the almanacs signed by 'Richard Saunders'.
   
   This is the perfect book to discover Franklin and also a very good one for those who already know him, thanks to the editors insightful notes and to the opportunity to review Franklin's writings in chronological order, from a historical and biographical perspective.

5 comments about Gentleman Revolutionary : Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution.

1. I was really looking forward to reading this book. I am a nut for anything to do with the American Revolution. I'd read Brookhiser's short, concise bio on George Washington and enjoyed it very much.
   I was so disappointed with this book. Just looking at the cover and reading the blurbs made me expect too much I guess.
   Morris was known for 3 things: losing his leg, writing the Constitution, and scoring with the ladies. How could his life be turned into a snoozefest?
   Maybe it's the writing...I just finished reading Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton bigoraphy, which is 3 times longer than this Morris bio. It was absolutely riveting. I was sorry when I finished it; I just did not want it to end. I could not finish the Morris book fast enough; I ended up skipping pages here and there to get to Morris; he seems to be missing in his own biography. Brookhiser gave me no sense as to the kind of man Gouverneur Morris really was.
   Very disappointing!



2. 
   This is the most misleading of books. The title would have you believe Gouverneur Morris wrote the Constitution. A few more founding Fathers naturally participated. However, Morris was Chairman of the Committee on Style which means Morris was primarily responsible for making printed sense out of the legal mumbo jumbo. He did this and did it well to include the Preamble, no mean feat. But he certainly did not write the Constitution as Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Nor did Morris himself ever claim to. If Morris did write the Constitution, as Richard Brookheiser claims in the title, why did Brookheiser spend less that 10% of the book reporting on what this work is purportedly all about, the Constitution and Morris' participation therein?
   
   Aside from being misleading, this book just also happens to be very poorly written. It is cluttered and confusing. It is a shame the author does not give the reader a better opportunity to know Morris. Morris lived and participated in some of the Nation's most formative times. If the author had given his subject more attention, if he had said more about who Morris was and how he interacted with the events of his time, then this could have been a slam bang winner, a blockbuster of a fine work. Instead, the best thing that can be said is that it is a very cursory survey of the times in which Morris lived.
   
   Mercifully, it is short.



3. After reading "Gentleman revolutionary", I found I wanted more on the life of Gouverneur Morris. Brookeiser's book just seemed to go by so darn quickly. But, I did, indeed, enjoy it.
   
   I find that we Americans have spent so much time venerating our top five Founders (Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin and Madison/Adams tied for fifth) that we forget that it took hundreds of "founders" in that same era to midwife the country.
   
   What about Pinckney, John Jay, Winthrop, Richard Heny Lee, and, yes, Gouverneur Morris? There are so many more that it would be impossible to mention them all in this short review.
   
   At least, Brookhiser gave us a taste of a seldom-discussed Founder with this short bio. Even though Brookhieser obviously loves his subject, which in some reviewers leads to problematic reporting, it is chock full of interesting if not salacious tidbits. ( He married a woman accused of murder, was quite the ladies man, and even some sources claim Morris to be a deist though he was officially an Episcopalian)
   
   Anyway, I hope to see Brookhiser do more on the Founders who are not household names.



4. "Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included?" "The admission of slaves into the representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the coast of Africa and, in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a government instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice." This voice during the American Constitutional Convention belonged to Gouverneur (his mother's maiden name) Morris. "Morris spoke 173 times at the Convention, more often than any other member, despite the fact that he missed all of June (while Madison, who attended every session spoke 161 times).
   
   So it wasn't very surprising when, on 8 September 1786, the convention selected a five man committee which in turn gave Morris, of of its members, the task of putting together a draft based on all the previous proceedings that summer. Four days later Morris produced a clear, simple document avoiding legislative repetitions as far as possible; in one instance drafting down 23 articles from the Committee of Detail into a much more concise 7. And he also wrote this which ought sound familiar: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Thank Morris for the coinage of "We the People." Convention drafts previously referred to "We the People of the states." A most important distinction. Brookhiser: "When Gouverneur Morris changed 'We the people of the states' into 'We the people,' he created a phrase that would ring throughout American history, defining every American as part of a single whole. Those three words may be his greatest legacy."
   
   "As Jefferson immortalized the Continental Congress's view of first principles, so Morris had applied his finish to the Constitutional Convention's view of fundamental law. And he defended it later. Consider when Republicans "proposed a bill to disband the new federal courts" in 1801, notwithstanding that the Constitution provided for federal judges and expressly stated that such judges were not to be removed during good behavior. Argued an incredulous and sarcastic Morris at the time: "[Y]ou shall not take the man from the office, but you may take the office from the man; you shall not throw him overboard, but you may sink his boat under him; you shall not put him to death, but you may take away his life."
   
   The man who witnessed the French Revolution up close and personal (being a minister to France between 1792 & 1794, and resident in Europe until December 1798---see Melanie Randolph Miller's Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution) knew a thing or two about the importance of power remaining balanced, or at least subject to some checks. Though Morris did have some sympathy for the predicament the Jeffersonians, in Morris's view, faced: "Time...seems about to disclose the awful secret that commerce and domestic slavery are mortal foes; and, bound together, one must destroy the other. I cannot blame Southern gentlemen for striving to put down commerce, because commerce, if it survives, will, I think, put them down...."
   
   "Morris did not leave his country on paper," however. Besides his work on the American Constitution and his historically important published diary impressions from those tumultuous years he spent in France, "Morris performed two special services as a public man." In addition to the above Morris also "worked to plan a canal that should make it bloom. A handful of other men might have buffed the Constitution almost as smoothly, but he was the one who did it; a handful of New Yorkers pushed for the Erie Canal---he was one of the most eloquent and energetic. For the rest, he gave many hours of intelligent and industrious labor as a New Yorker, a financier, and a diplomat;" as well as having been a member of the Continental Congress, and one who was instrumental in reviving the Continental Army's supplies after visiting GW at Valley Forge and recognizing the urgent need for such. (The details of many such efforts, I ought point out, are not especially delved into by Mr. Brookhiser in this somewhat short book---inclining this reader to regret not having at least considered some of the more substantive examinations of Gouverneur Morris' life before choosing this one).
   
   With an injured arm and one leg, Morris evinced those who believed (as he did, in these words) "that the happiest mortals are those who have been taught, through some sad experience, the value of this world's goods." Like Hamilton, who came from nothing Morris was one who refused, in Mr. Brookhiser's words, "to be satisfied with airy ideals or soothing phrases" thanks, in part, "on the hard things each had seen in his life." (Interestingly, Morris delivered the eulogy at Hamilton's actual funeral in NY; and before that, gave the eulogy, also in NY, upon Washington's death.)
   
   Postscript: Should you find yourself in Morrisania, or on Morris Avenue, or anywhere in the Morris Park section of the Bronx Borough of New York, perhaps even stopping at the Morris Park Bakery, pause a moment to reflect on the more important legacies of this founding father. In addition, a few blocks north and east of 138th Street and Brook Avenue (roughly the middle of where in the Bronx that Morris's estate Morrisania once could be found) stands St. Ann's Church where this founding father now rests. (07Jun) Cheers



5. I wasn't overly interested in reading about Mr. Morris until a used book store clerk recommended it. I had just finished reading a book on Thomas Paine and wasn't feeling overly charitable toward Mr. Morris. But there are truly 2 sides to every story as I discovered. I enjoyed the book, finishing it in 3 or 4 evenings after work. For as thin as it is, it gave a good account of his life without overly obsessing about any particular events. Although not an in depth study, it was truly enjoyable nonetheless.

1 comments about John Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant (Signpost Biographies).

1. John Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant is a fast paced, well researched account of one of America's premiere retailers. The author, Herbert Ershkowitz ascribes Wanamaker's success to beliefs critical to new millenium themes. The importance of business to the community. Advertising as the key to marketing success. Religion as the foundation of society. Must reading for the biography buff; the marketing major; the proactive capitalist and the budding fashionista.

No comments about Brothers' War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Ones from the Blue and Gray.

No comments about J.F. Kennedy: A Beginner's Guide.