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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
Dear Friends,
Alice's pal, the White Rabbit, has just the right message for this year's summer reading recommendations, so if you'll forgive the delays and follow us down the rabbit hole, we promise some wonderful reading recommendations - books we've read, and a few that we'll be reading.
Books We've Read
Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama, Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb, Brookings Press.
I can almost hear the unspoken thoughts as you read this recommendation - “I don't need another book about Vietnam;” “I'm tired of war;” “Give me something new to think about” And that's just exactly what you'll get in this just-published, highly insightful book from one of America's most distinguished television journalists - Marvin Kalb - and his conspicuously talented daughter, Deborah Kalb.
It's not a book about the Vietnam War; it isn't even a book about war, per se; but it is, perhaps, the first serious piece of scholarship to document the ways in which the experience of that pivotal moment in modern American history has influenced eight presidents:
“The story of Vietnam, the war and its aftermath, runs like a bleeding wound through recent American history, affecting every president from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama and raising profound questions about their prerogatives and powers.
“That war still casts an unforgiving shadow over Oval Office deliberations. Unwanted, uninvited, but inescapable, Vietnam refuses to be forgotten.”
Kalb and Kalb have constructed a meticulous, eminently readable, and thoughtful analysis of how each president has dealt with the specter of Vietnam - from Gerald Ford and the Mayaguez incident through to Barack Obama's decision to increase U. S. troop strength in Afghanistan, and in between a nasty patch of “Swiftboating” that marred and muddied the presidential campaign of 2004.
In the closing chapter, “Good Enough,” the authors make their final pitch:
“He [Obama] fancied himself post-Vietnam, but the war that was lost so many years before he assumed office still hovered over his presidency like Banquo's ghost - unwelcome, but unwilling to release its grip. With Obama or any of the other presidents from Ford on, Vietnam was rarely the only reason for a presidential decision about war or peace, but it was always there whenever the question arose about the possible use of American military power.”
In the service of full disclosure, readers should know three things about the reviewer: first, that that Marvin Kalb is a treasured friend; second, that I was privy to stories about the development of this book for several years before its publication, and read a couple sections in draft form; and third, that I am much taken by the 'back story' of this book, the partnership of a father and daughter in such an important and challenging intellectual adventure.
But if Haunting Legacy were anything short of an important, authoritative, and engaging book, it wouldn't be on this list.
Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Frederick Kempe, G. P. Putnam's Sons
Having just ended a review with a 'full disclosure,' this one will begin with a similar notice.
The author is a friend, also president of a Washington DC think tank - The Atlantic Council -- where I spend considerable time participating in their South Asia program. I first met him and learned of his thesis through a mutual friend, at a time when Kempe was in the midst of research-and-writing days. And in clear violation of TMR's commitment to review only those books that have been read cover-to-cover - this review comes to you as I begin Chapter 17 on page 419. One chapter and 83 pages left to cross the finish line.
Now, about this masterwork.
Berlin 1961 is a story told in three parts - Part I, “The Players,” 'the protagonists,' as Kempe describes them: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, President John F. Kennedy, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and East German leader Walter Ulbricht; Part II, “The Gathering Storm,” John Kennedy's first year in office, which featured two high visibility foreign policy 'failures' - the Bay of Pigs and the Vienna Summit, which JFK described to the New York Times' James, 'Scotty', Reston as “Worst thing in my life. He [Khrushchev] savaged me;” And Part III “The Showdown,” in which the author provides exacting, scrupulous, revealing, and sometimes controversial details about a moment when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, and when the footprint of the Cold War was fixed for nearly three decades of history that would follow.
One of JFK's national security strategists - William Kaufman -- who was engaged in both Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes it this way:
“Berlin was the worst moment of the Cold War. Although I was deeply involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, I personally thought that the Berlin confrontation, especially after the wall went up, where you had Soviet and U. S. tanks literally facing one another with guns pointed, was a more dangerous situation. We had very clear indications mid-week of the Cuban Missile Crisis that the Russians were not going to push us to the edge . . . You didn't get that sense in Berlin.”
It is in Kempe's Introduction where he sets both the stage and the tone for 500 pages that follow - a scholarly work that reads more like a tantalizing mystery novel; a fascinating character study of four protagonists and other key players, including former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, General Lucius D. Clay, and a preview of Henry Kissinger, the young Harvard professor who is briefly a consultant to the Kennedy Administration, but who returns to academia licking a wounded ego, having failed to prevail in minor power struggles for Kennedy's attention owing to blackballing by his former Dean, McGeorge Bundy; and, finally, an historical analysis that challenges much of the conventional wisdom and offers new perspectives on a much under-appreciated moment in history.
Without disclosing specifics of Kempe's thesis, Berlin 1961 is both a page-turner and a head-turner, offering fresh perspectives about the principals and the political calculus in NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. And it all begins with a series of seven questions that provide the framework for the 'gift that keeps on giving' for 500 pages. Here are two:
“Should history consider the Berlin Wall's construction the positive outcome of Kennedy's unflappable leadership . . . or was the Wall the unhappy result of his missing backbone?”
“Was Khrushchev a true reformer whose efforts to reach out to Kennedy following his election were a genuine effort (that the U. S. failed to recognize) to reduce tensions? Or was he an erratic leader with whom the U S. could never have done business?”
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices, Noah Feldman, Twelve (Hachette Book Group.)
Years ago, I read a stunning book entitled, “A World Lit Only by Fire,” written by the preeminent historian, William Manchester, which is a brief history of the medieval centuries and a look at the medieval mind. It grew out of an assignment to write an introduction to a friend's biography of Ferdinand Magellan, while under doctor's orders to relinquish work on his three-part Churchill biography. Owing to his fascination with this period of world history, Manchester's insatiable intellectual curiosity went into overdrive, and within a matter of weeks his “Introduction” had morphed into what would become a nearly 300-page, award-winning book.
When I first began to write a review of Scorpions, I experienced an instinct similar to Manchester's, taken as I was by the brilliance of Feldman's tour de force about Supreme Court justices Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, and William O. Douglas.
If you're a devotee of Supreme Court history, a Constitutional scholar at heart, a lay historian of the early-middle years of the 20th century, an FDR aficionado, or someone who simply loves a great story told by a gifted storyteller about the machinations of powerful figures in American history, then Scorpions is for you.
It is Feldman's fifth book - the other four written while still in his 30's - and despite the density of subject matter, it is a genuine 'page-turner,' and one that would challenge any reviewer to be sparing in superlatives.
After much backing-and-filling, I concluded that Feldman's opening paragraphs set the tone and the thesis better than anything I might offer:
“A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Ku Klux Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international trial ever. A self-invented, tall-tale Westerner who narrowly missed the presidency but expanded individual freedom beyond what anyone had dreamed.
“Four more different men could hardly be imagined. Yet they had certain things in common. Each was a self-made man who came from humble beginnings on the edge of poverty. Each had a driving ambition and a will to succeed. Each was, in his own way, a genius.
“They began as close allies and friends of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who appointed them to the Supreme Court in order to shape a new, liberal view of the Constitution that could live up to the challenges of economic depression and war. Within months, their alliance had fragmented. Friends became enemies. In competition and sometimes outright warfare, the men struggled with one another to define the Constitution and, through it, the idea of America.”
When Art Worked: The New Deal, Art, and Democracy, Roger G. Kennedy and David Larkin, Rizzoli Books.
You can put this on your “Do Not Take To The Beach” list, but if your summer plans call for spending time in a place where you can sit at trusty old table or desk on a rainy afternoon, this is your prize - a stunning visual exhibition and narrative history by two remarkable scholars who have crafted an encyclopedic, illustrated documentary of the art, architecture, culture, history, politics, and presidential leadership of these remarkable years in a volume that weighs in at something less than a healthy newborn but more than a spirited Brook trout.
When Art Worked is both a coffee table and art book - but you'll need a sturdy coffee table -- and is a reminder that good things still come in large packages.
Thanks to Larkin's unerring eye and exquisite taste, and Kennedy's encyclopedic familiarity with and feel for the temper and themes of the times, When Art Worked is a stunning portrait of a country barely recognizable to the majority of Americans today -- as distant from the Age of Google as the Civil War or the California gold rush were from the New Deal.
In ten chapters, 350+ large plate pages, and 460 black-and-white and color images, masterfully produced by Rizzoli Books of New York, you will rediscover 'the real America' through the art and architecture of hundreds of out-of-work artists who helped lift the spirits of a sagging nation and provided works that define the American character to the present day.
It was the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, whose most famous work adorns Mt. Rushmore, who wrote that “art helped coax the soul of America back to life.”
Might be just the right gift for your favorite member of Congress or for Barack Obama's 50th birthday, which looms during the same week as the alleged deadlines for America's financial default.
The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, David Remnick, Alfred A. Knopf.
David Remnick's masterful biography about the most remarkable politician of his generation is the story of sui generis written by rara avis.
Strictly speaking, Remnick has crafted more than a biography of a man, it is also a biography of the places, ideas, and people who have influenced America's 44th president.
o The politics of Kenya in the post-WW II years when Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya were leading the country toward independence from the British Crown, and who were important influences in Obama's father's troubled career.
o Chicago, the 'black metropolis,' home to black and white leaders like William Dawson, Saul Alinsky, Richard J. Daley, Harold Washington, and others from whom Obama would learn mostly what not to do.
o The rootlessness of moving back and forth between Hawaii and Indonesia, deserted by his father, living with his mother, then separated from her, living with his grandparents, and being a young black boy thrust into the privileged Punahou School environment where being 'black' was neither alien nor ordinary.
In this nearly 600-page account of Obama's highly textured and unconventional upbringing, Remnick skillfully weaves together the multiple influences that conspired to produce a most uncommon man whose countenance belies the complexity of those early life experiences.
“Obama, who had been attracted to community organizing by the example and the romance of the civil-rights movement, was, by the time his experience with it was over, thinking about how to combine elements of charismatic leadership, the principles of organizing, and a set of liberal political and policy principles.”
And the title -- The Bridge?
It's borrowed from an observation by the great civil rights leader and Georgia Congressman, John Lewis: “Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma.”
Neoconservative: The Biography of a Movement, Justin Vaisse, Belknap Press of Harvard University.
This book that took me by surprise on three counts: first, because I could not have imagined becoming engrossed in a nearly 300-page book devoted to a 'movement' about which I have always been skeptical, at best; second, because it provided an in-depth look at American politics from the 1950's through to the first decade of the 21st century, which provided fresh perspective on several of the primary -isms; and finally, because this is the work of a French scholar -- Justin Vaisse, now a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and formerly a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- who demonstrates a remarkable grasp of American domestic politics, recalling a similar skill of his fellow countryman, Alexis de Tocqueville.
Vaisse sorts neoconservatism into its three distinct philosophical and (even) geographic developmental 'ages,' beginning in New York in the 1950's - “Liberal Intellectuals in Dissent;” then another shift in the 1970's in both New York and Washington, DC, “Cold War Democrats in Dissent;” and finally, its form known to most during the late 1990's and into the administration of George W. Bush, which he calls, “National Greatness Conservatives.”
The great strength of Vaisse's scholarship is its objectivity, eschewing the either/or perspectives through which this '-ism' has been typically discussed. He is neither proponent nor critic:
“Neoconservatism also offers a way into the very rich intellectual debate about politics that took place in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. It can tell us a great deal about both liberalism (which neoconservatives angrily rejected in the end, but in a way that suggests the narcissism of small differences may have played a role) and conservatism (which neoconservatives embraced but never fully identified with.)
“Finally, neoconservatism sheds a fascinating light on the way in which American political society works . . . Behind political ideas we find not only people but also networks linking intellectuals to journalists and decisionmakers, careers that take individuals back and forth between the academic and political worlds, and a variety of organizations from think tanks to citizen groups to political parties.”
Vaisse quotes his countryman, de Tocqueville, with this coda:
“When Americans have a feeling or idea they wish to bring to the world's attention, they will immediately seek out others who share that feeling or idea and, if successful in finding them, join forces. From the point on, they cease to be isolated individuals and become a power to be reckoned with whose actions serve as an example; a power that speaks, and to which people listen.”
One wonders what de Tocqueville would observe on a visit today?
Books We're Going to be Reading
Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, Robin Wright, Simon and Schuster: Wright is among the most accomplished and respected foreign correspondents of her generation who has spent four decades studying the Middle East and its peoples, and who writes with the unerring instincts of a great reporter and the literary skills of an eminent novelist. Her earlier book - Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East - was one of 2008's “Best Books” rated by both the Washington Post and New York Times. I consider it one of the half dozen best books on the Middle East, and have every expectation that Rock the Casbah will be its equal. So, too, does New York magazine, which rates it as one of this summer's “Five Must-Reads.”
Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage, David Ignatius, W. W. Norton: If you're familiar with Ignatius as the foreign policy and national security columnist of the Washington Post (and former Editor-in-Chief of the International Herald Tribune), then you're aware of his matchless reputation as a reporter and foreign correspondent. If you're familiar with his previous novels - The Increment, Body of Lies (adapted to a movie directed by Ridley Scott, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe), Agents of Innocence - then you can anticipate another stunning piece of fiction grounded in his incomparable knowledge of the Middle East and South Asia and in the business of espionage. And if Ignatius is a new name for you, you have gifts awaiting.
Francie's Fortune, Kita Helmetag Murdock, Blue Mustang Press: This one is for your elementary school-age children or grandchildren, and it's a sure bet that they'll love this at least as much as you'll be engaged by the adult TMR reading list. It's an entrancing story about 10 year-old Francie, a child of Hollywood, who much against her will is spirited off to spend a summer with a grandmother whom she's never really known, and in mountains of Colorado, a place she doesn't want to be. All signs point to a long and disappointing summer, and particularly because Francie suspects that her grandmother might be a witch. But as the story unfolds, it reveals a special gift that they share, and a heartwarming account of the bonds that exist between humans and animals.
And if you can tolerate one more “full disclosure,” the author is “family,” if not in the purely legal sense, enough so that to claim anything less would be misleading.
If you've made it this far, there is a reward awaiting you somewhere in your future - and I trust that it will be between the covers of at least one or more of these recommended books.
R. Garrett Mitchell
The Mitchell Report
July 27, 2011
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