American History

Review: Brave Companions

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Cover image of "Brave Companions" by David McCullough

Brave Companions

Brave Companions, David McCullough. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9781668003541) 2022 (first published in 1991).

Summary: Short profiles of exceptional American men and women from biologist Louis Agassiz to writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Recently, I reviewed a posthumously published collection of essays by David McCullough. I’ve loved his work ever since devouring his mammoth biography of Harry Truman. But in browsing the list of his books, I discovered there was one I had missed–this one! Obviously I’ve now remedied it.

In this work, McCullough offers brief sketches of a number of extraordinary historical figures, mostly Americans. Collecting these essays for this book, McCullough observed:

“Reading these essays again, selecting and arranging them as a book, I am struck by how much they have in common. In my way, I see now, I have been writing about the same kinds of people all along. And I see, too, the extent to which they have revealed the world and times past for me, and things about myself, that I would not have known otherwise” (p. xi).

It was indeed the case that this collection revealed more than the people, but also glimpses of our world and history in five sections.

First, he addresses “Phenomena.” He begins with the extraordinary journey of Alexander von Humboldt in South America from 1799-1804, accompanied by Aime Bonpland. Essentially, the pair rediscovered rediscovered South America. He follows with a portrait of biologist Louis Agassiz, whose first instruction to students after giving them a preserved fish was “Oh, look at your fish!” He and Asa Gray were friends and phenomena at Harvard who came to loggerheads over Darwin’s theories, which Agassiz couldn’t accept. He concludes the section sketching the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. McCullough portrays the extraordinary renown for a woman she achieved as well as her renunciation of her father’s Calvinism.

Part Two on “The Real West” portrays life in the cattle town of Medora, in North Dakota’s Badlands. He does so though the lens of two figures, both who lost a fortune there–Teddy Roosevelt and the Marquis de Mores. Roosevelt went there an asthmatic stripling. Work alongside cowboys exhilarated him and turned him into the adventurous, robust figure we know. The other vignette is of artist Frederic Remington, through whom many Americans saw the West portrayed.

In Part Three, McCullough turns to “Pioneers.” He begins with the pioneer railroad engineers who built the first Panama Railway in the early 1850’s, overcoming both topography and disease. The next two essays concern the Brooklyn Bridge, on which McCullough wrote a full-length book. The first focuses on the Roeblings, father and son. Washington Roebling’s extraordinary engineering accomplishment, despite the effects of Caisson’s Disease, is underscored in the second, in which McCullough chronicles his discovery of the meticulous engineering plans for the bridge. Many bore Roebling’s initials and are works of art. McCullough describes his efforts to preserve this treasure. Finally he portrays a trio of early aviators who also wrote: Charles Lindbergh, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Beryl Markham.

Then in Part Four, McCullough turns to contemporaries in “Figures in a Landscape.” The first essay is a peril for anyone who already has too many books on the TBR pile. He profiles Conrad Richter, a novelist portraying life on America’s extending frontier. I learned he even wrote a trilogy on the early settlement of Ohio. Then he sketches the work of lawyer Henry Caudill and his fight against strip mining interests denuding the landscape of eastern Kentucky (which continues to this day). We meet zoologist Miriam Rothschild who has studied marine biology, entomology, and farming. Finally, he accompanies photographer David Plowden in his efforts to capture small town America.

The concluding Part Five, “On We Go” is different in not focusing on biography. First, McCullough remembers Washington, DC as he knew it–a very different place from today. The next is a from a magazine assignment, summarizing fifty years of history between 1936 and 1986. I lived through thirty-two of those years and the essay makes me think what I’d write about the next forty. Then McCullough advises Middlebury College graduates in a commencement speech to learn history by traveling. Finally, “Simon Willard’s Clock” is a reflection on the U.S. House of Representatives that I wish all present members of the House would read.

A few of these essays reprise material from McCullough’s longer books. Sometimes a snack rather than a full meal is just right and that is what these essays were. I was particularly fascinated to learn about Alexander von Humboldt, Conrad Richter, and Henry Caudill, a co-belligerent with Wendell Berry. But the particular strength of this book was the chance in brief to glimpse a number of seminal figures, and perhaps find one or two to probe more deeply. We all need our pantheon of brave companions.

Review: The Life of the Mind in America

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Cover image of "The Life of the Mind in America" by Perry Miller

The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War, Books One Through Three, Perry Miller. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (ISBN: 9780156519908) 1965.

Summary: The first three books of an intellectual history of the influences that shaped the American mind.

American intellectual historian Perry Miller is most famous for his work on New England intellectual history, particularly that of the Puritans. In the year of his death (1963), Miller proposed to his publisher an ambitious project under the title of this book. It was a proposal consisting of ten books including a Prologue:

  • Prologue: The Sublime in America
  • Book I: The Evangelical Basis
  • Book II The Legal Mentality
  • Book III: Tension: Technology and Science
  • Book IV: The Battlefield of Democracy: education
  • Book V: Freedom and Association: Political Economy and Association
  • Book VI: Philosophy
  • Book VII: Theology
  • Book VIII: Nature
  • Book IX: The Self

Tragically, Miller was an alcoholic, struggling to recover until the assassination of John F. Kennedy, after which he basically drank himself to death, passing on December 10 of that year. He had completed only the first two books, and an outlined plan for the third. The Prologue was never written, which would have been interesting. His wife Elizabeth published his work posthumously, in 1965. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1966. We are left thinking, “If only…”

Book I explore the influence of revivalism in America. Most significant in this section is Miller’s account of how revivalism undermined the sectarian character of early American Protestantism, contributing both to a common evangelical mind and to the separation of church and state. A corollary to the latter is the rise of the voluntary spirit in American Christianity. Finally he traces the movement of revivals from rural settings like Cane Ridge to the urban setting of New York City in 1858 on the eve of the Civil War.

Book II then traces the parallel development of law. In this case, Miller offers an account that moves from a common sense approach and a reliance upon English common law to an increasing codification of civil and criminal law. In addition, he traces that transformation of the profession from reading Blackstone under an attorney’s tutelage to the rise of legal education. The growth of the nation exposed the inadequacies and contradictions in the English traditions of common law, equity, and civil law. Ultimately, this led to codification efforts.

Finally, Miller only completed chapter one of Book III. Above all, in this section, Miller traces out the transition of science from a contemplative study of the handiwork of God to the technological advances of the time. But what happens to God? Advances in geology anticipate the Darwinian controversies to follow. However we also glimpse a shift of finding the sublime in heavenly glories to the experience of technological wonders.

Although the work is dense, one senses the breadth of Miller’s own intellectual reach. It would have been fascinating to see Miller parse out his understanding of the American quest for the sublime in the other projected books. However, I wonder if this might have underscored the contradictions inherent in the tensions with which our nation has struggled. In addition, Miller’s decision to lead with the significance of revivals is striking. He stands apart from the intellectual squeamishness to deal with the importance of religion in the American experience, from which many are only now awakening. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me to find the book still in print sixty years after publication.

Finally, thanks for visiting Bob on Books.  I appreciate that you spent time here. Feel to “look around” – see the tabs at the top of the website, and the right hand column. And use the buttons below to share this post. Blessings! [Adapted from Enough Light, a blog I follow.]

Review: The Story of America

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Cover image of "The Story of America" by Jill Lepore

The Story of America, Jill Lepore. Princeton University Press (ISBN: 9780691153995) 2012.

Summary: Essays on American origins from Jamestown and the Constitution to the IOU and Webster’s dictionary.

Nations as well, as individuals strive for self-understanding. Much of this comes through the stories we tell of ourselves, particularly the stories of our origins. That is, we try to understand how we got here as a way of understanding who we are. This is what Jill Lepore strives to do in this collection of essays on the story of America. Rather than a comprehensive, beginning to the present account, she offers a variety or origin stories, arranged roughly in chronological order.

Most of these essays first appeared in The New Yorker. Lepore says, “I wrote them because I wanted to learn how to tell stories better. But mostly, I wrote them because I wanted to explain how history works, and how it’s different than politics.” She adds to this her definition of doing history: “History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.”

She begins with the primal origin story, the settlement of Jamestown through the lens of Captain John Smith, who gave us our first account of the settlement, concluding that while he was an “Elizabethan gallant,” he was not a fraud. The colony was a mixture of success and catastrophe, American dream and American nightmare.

Subsequent essays consider the Puritans and the succession of historians who have tried to tell their story, Franklin’s The Way to Wealth, and the career of Thomas Paine, hailed for Common Sense and excoriated for The Age of Reason. She writes on the 4,400 words of the Constitution, often not read and even less understood, and the meanings that have accrued, including originalism as one form of interpretation.

From key events and ideas, Lepore moves to origins less noticed but also significant, for example, the origins of the I.O.U. and the development of bankruptcy law. Particularly fascinating is Lepores avvount of Noah Webster and his dictionary, begun in 1800 and ended in 1828. She reflects on his singular effort in defining 70,000 words compared to Johnson’s 43,000. He defined American words using American examples in his definitions and dug into the etymology of words. And Webster, a religious man whose faith was implicit in the work, reaped the benefit of the religious revivals coinciding with the dictionary’s publication.

She turns to the art of presidential biographies, particularly those on Washington to Jackson. And then there is that inferior item, the campaign biography! She weighs in on Jefferson and the Hemings family. She chronicles Charles Dickens’ journeys in America and his decided dislike for the country. Paired with Dickens in the following essay is Edgar Allan Poe. No love lost between the two men. She charts Poe’s struggle with poverty, his drinking and the question of whether Poe was a genius or mad. Then there are our heroes and the accounts that make them bigger than life, from the dime novels on Kit Carson to Longfellow’s Paul Revere. Added to these is Earl Derr Biggars’ Charlie Chan based on Hawaiian Chang Apana. Chan was hailed as great crime fiction in the day and for invidious racial stereotyping today.

Along the way are essays on the development of voting ballots and Clarence Darrow on a major labor case. One essay discusses the Great Migration. the subject of Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, another on homicide and the death penalty. She concludes with the daunting task of writing inaugural addresses. Certainly, James Garfield was daunted, reading his predecessors. Only Lincoln really excelled. Most were mediocre to awful. Most address some version of history as they look to the future. But even the best speakers are rarely at their best here.

One of Lepore’s observations is the role of literacy in these stories. The story of our democracy is a story of reading and writing. She believes “Americans wrote and read their way into a political culture….” This, for me begs the question of the future of our democracy in our post-literate culture that wallows in an epistemic crisis. Instead of “stories accountable to evidence” we resort to fake news memes created with increasing visual sophistication. And it seems we are recreating our origin stories, engaging in both erasure and fable, attacking the history that is accountable to evidence. If nothing else, what Lepore does is remind us, in engaging story, of our real origins. And she reminds us of what we may easily lose.

Review: Unlikely General

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Cover image of "Unlikely General" by Mary Stockwell

Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America, Mary Stockwell. Yale University Press (ISBN: 9780300251876) 2018.

Summary: A biography of “Mad” Anthony Wayne centered on his successful campaign to defeat Native tribes in the Northwest Territory.

For three years I lived one block from the Anthony Wayne Trail (part of US 24) in Toledo, Ohio. I knew little more than that it was the fastest way to downtown Toledo from our apartment, and that Anthony Wayne had fought against Native tribes in that part of northwest Ohio, and that Fort Wayne, southwest on US 24, was named after him.

Mary Stockwell’s biography of Wayne renders a far more complicated portrait of this man and explains why he succeeded where others before him failed on what was then the northwest frontier of the young country. Wayne had been one of Washington’s “warhorses” during the War for Independence. He led successful campaigns at Ticonderoga, Germantown, Stony Point (a signature victory against a British strong point), and after Yorktown, in Georgia, leading to the disbanding of British forces in the South.

Yet Washington was ambivalent about him. He reminds me of Grant. He was an aggressive fighter in contrast to the more cautious Washington, sometimes exposing himself to risks. Stockwell describes this ambivalence. Wayne did all asked of him by Washington and would do more. Yet others advanced past him. Stockwell interleaves Wayne’s Revolutionary War career with the account of Wayne’s campaign in the Ohio country of the Northwest Territory. By doing so, we meet a general at once an aggressive fighter and disciplinarian, yet one who struggled with self doubts.

Like Grant, Wayne struggled with what to do when he was not fighting. He endangered his estate in Pennsylvania with bad land acquisitions in the South. He briefly served in Congress. He at least flirted with an affair. He drank, suffered from old war injuries, and gout.

Yet American affairs were going badly. The British refused to settle a string of forts in Ohio and what is now Michigan. They enlisted a confederacy of tribes to fight for them in an effort to prevent settlement north of the Ohio River despite an agreement in 1785 by some tribes to allow settlers to settle in the southern half of what is now Ohio. In 1791, General Arthur St. Clair who was also governor of the Northwest Territory, was routed in a battle against Little Turtle near Fort Recovery in western Ohio near the present Indiana border. General Harmar, who had preceded him also was defeated in 1790.

Stockwell recounts how now-President Washington, after rejecting other candidates called Wayne out of retirement in the spring of 1792. She narrates the formation of a new, larger force, the Legion of the United States and Wayne’s move to Pittsburgh, at the head of the Ohio River, to recruit the army.

Both in his initial training camp in Legionville, near Pittsburgh, and later in Greenville, in western Ohio, Wayne built a fighting force for a different kind of warfare, marked by vigilance, discipline, and drills. Other troops had fled under fire. He wanted his to hold or advance and to know what to do. He became known by native scouts as “the General that does not sleep.”

Stockwell recounts the adversity he endured, from delayed supplies to desertions of Kentucky volunteers. Worse was the covert betrayal of General James Wilkinson, his second in command, who was secretly feeding negative reports to congressmen about Wayne and undercutting supply efforts. It later came out that he was collaborating with a foreign power, Spain.

By the summer of 1794, Wayne was ready to advance north. Natives fled ahead of him as he marched north to the Maumee River, building Fort Defiance at the junction of the Auglaize and Maumee Rivers. He then marched downstream toward the British Fort Miami. The Native tribes of the Confederacy sought refuge but the British, not wanting open war with the United States, shut them out, betraying their alliance. This led to the decisive Battle of Fallen Timbers, where Wayne defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield. He subsequently seized a center of the Confederacy, Kekionga, which he transformed into Fort Wayne.

Stockwell shows how Wayne transitioned from winning on the battlefield to wooing tribal leaders who had been abandoned by the British. He offered a settlement with minor adjustments of the 1785 agreement, allowing tribes to remain in northern Ohio while Americans could settle in the south. The Treaty of Greenville was agreed to in 1795. The location of my home in central Ohio is on land ceded by this treaty. Following the treaty, Wayne supplied food and farming supplies to the Native people.

Sadly, Wayne’s wife, from whom he was estranged, died during this campaign. His daughter and son were as well, although he re-established a relationship with the latter. A year later, Wayne was dead, from his old war wounds. Stockwell portrays a man good at one thing, winning battles and securing territory for his country.

While Stockwell offers an illuminating portrayal of Wayne, and one that portrays him magnanimous in peace with tribal leaders, she treads lightly on the larger issues at stake in America’s advance on tribal lands. She mostly focuses on the British exploitation of the tribes. There is little about their displacement from eastern lands. Nor does she discuss how quickly settlers moved north of the treaty line, displacing the tribes further west after the defeat of Tecumseh. By 1803, Ohio as it is presently configured, achieved statehood.

She observes Wayne’s apprehension of the threat the British and their tribal allies posed on the American frontier. Part of it was that the British had not honored their agreements from the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and were using the tribes for both trade benefits and to hold onto what was no longer theirs. But there seems to be no questioning of the fact that all of the conflict was over who would control these tribal lands, assuming the eventual displacement of Native tribes, first in southern Ohio, then all of the state, after Wayne’s death.

What Stockwell does do is establish Wayne as one of our outstanding early military leaders, despite Washington’s uncertainties. We also see a man whose love of country left little room for family. Like Grant, he was really good at one thing–fighting.

Review: The Buster Clan

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The Buster Clan: An American Saga, K.P. Kollenborn. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2023.

Summary: What began as genealogical research into the Buster family turns into an account of the American story from the Revolutionary War to the present.

It began as a genealogy project by the author to trace her family roots in the Buster Clan. From the first generation of William Buster, she traced 3,380 who carried the name and estimated over 100,000 descendants. As she traced the migration of subsequent generations from their Virginia roots to Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, and to California and learned their stories, she recognized that this family story was the American story in microcosm.

William arrived from Northern Ireland as an indentured servant on a tobacco plantation, completed his indenture and married and migrated to the Shenandoah Valley. Intermarrying with the Wood’s clan, one son fled to the Carolinas and four served in Revolutionary War militias. After the war, they established comfortable livings as farmers. In the third generation, Joshua would migrate to Kentucky, become a general in the War of 1812, fighting along with Anthony Wayne, and a senator.

Living in the South, the history of the Busters was the history of slaveholding, as well as slaves who were given the family name, including Garret, a racially mixed servant of Joshua, eventually being permitted to purchase his freedom. It is fascinating how many Busters are named Claudius, including one who joined Stephen Austin’s migration to Texas, fighting in the Mexican-American War. Other Busters were part of the gold rush, mostly unsuccessful. Another Buster descendent was the product of intermarriage with the Chickasaw fought to represent Native American interests. George Washington Buster, meanwhile, was at work creating the Greenbriar Spa, with sulfur waters reputed to have healing powers.

Of course, a number of Busters fought for the South in the Civil War, and some, in border states remained loyal. In Missouri, they were divided. They sought to reconstruct themselves after the war. Some became cattle drovers. They contended with or went along with the rise of Jim Crow and the Klan. Others migrated to the mining towns of Colorado. There were Busters among the Texas rangers. Another, a descendant of slaves started an automobile company. Busters fought in World War I and returned with shell shock. During the depression, Floyd, who was deaf, would play professional baseball while his brother Budd became an actor in the burgeoning film industry. The story of post-World War II is the advance of Buster women as teachers, doctors, and even a governor! In the latter half of the twentieth century, a Buster led research on in vitro fertilization, another, Bobette, in research on the film industry, and Kendall in the area of sculpture.

Busters fought in every American war, represented different sides in our most fraught internal struggles, helped push the nation westward and contributed to education, film, scientific research, government and politics, and the arts. Kollenborn’s tracing of the lineage and their representative stories makes her case that these three hundred years of a family’s story is in fact the story of America.

The one thing that would have been helpful, given how many Busters there are and all the different branches of the family would be to have some genealogical chart or system for keeping it all straight–who was related to whom. You know how it is when you hear a large extended family talking about their relations–aunts, uncles, nephews, great grandparents, first and second cousins. You may get it if you are part of the family. Otherwise you just nod your head.

Kollenborn’s basic idea is fascinating–to see how a family can tell something of a nation’s story in miniature, including all the fraught details. She skillfully links family, local, and cultural, and national history together in a fascinating narrative. And she makes you wonder if you could do this with your family.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from BookSirens.

Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

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Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen. New York: Touchstone, 1995 (Link is to 2018 edition with a different publisher).

Summary: Based on an examination of twelve American history high school textbooks, looks at how these oversimplify, omit, distort, and sometimes perpetuate false myths of American history, and make the teaching of history boring in the process.

The late James Loewen wrote this book after surveying twelve history textbooks used to teach high school students in the early 1990’s. He found that most of these often passed along lies or distortions of the material they covered. Often this was the result of omitting important discussions. Loewen opens this study considering what most history books don’t tell us about Woodrow Wilson. They don’t tell us that he launched a war with Communist Russia at the end of the First World War. Wilson also launched invasions of several Latin America, and after an era of progress, instituted racist policies in government that may have contributed to the resurgence of the Klan in the 1920’s. Likewise with Helen Keller. We hear about how she overcomes blindness and deafness but most say little about the other six decades of her life, probably because of her socialist activism.

Loewen goes on to discuss a number of examples throughout American history and what the twelve textbooks do with them: Christopher Columbus and what his “discovery” meant to indigenous peoples who were “discovered,” the realities of the first Thanksgiving, how we narrate the history of Native Americans, how we whitewash racism from textbooks, even in accounts of the Civil War and in our treatments of both John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. He goes on to discuss federal power and how our government sought to bring down regime after regime, rarely discussed in our history books and how many texts are nearly silent about Vietnam, with the results that students think it was a war between North and South Korea!

Why does this happen? Loewen, who had worked with editorial committees of textbook publishers, discusses the aversion these publishers have to controversy. Controversy can mean losses of millions of dollars. Patriotism sells. America’s failures to live up to its stated ideals do not. They realize how consequential state and local boards are to the adoption of textbooks. He believes a large part of the fault lies here. He is more forgiving of teachers, recognizing both that they may not always have the knowledge or the time to gain the knowledge to challenge the textbooks–and they have huge demands on their lives.

The tragedy of all this in Loewen’s mind is that in making history uncontroversial we have made it dull. Accurate history, in all its complicatedness, is far more interesting. When students explore a president like Wilson at both his best and worst, they stop worshipping heroes and see historical figures as real and fallible human beings. History that is honest about both our failings and how people stood up to resist corruption and power because of their belief in America’s ideals doesn’t teach students to hate the country, it teaches them to care.

Loewen was writing this in 1995 and what reading him helped me realize is that what is going on in many of our state legislatures and parents groups around what is taught as our history is not a new discussion, simply a reinvigorated one. For a long time, we have been a nation that wants to feel good about ourselves without doing the hard work of facing what has been and is not good about us and learning from those who have brought progress toward our American ideals. For a long time, powerful interests have sought to hide what they are doing to the rest of the country behind facades of American greatness. How can it be that the wealth disparities between the top 1 percent and the rest of the country are just because the rest of us are benighted losers?

What is saddest is that we don’t turn students into patriots, we turn them into cynics, because they are good at detecting falsehoods. The tragedy is that we also teach them that truth cannot be found in our history, or really in anything else. And when there is no basis for liberty and justice in truth, then all that we have left is power.

I was one educated in the way Loewen describes. Thankfully, several college professors opened my eyes to what it really means to do history without the lies, to look at our complicated human condition, and to keep asking questions, and to care about the answers. They taught me to love history. They also helped teach me that for love of country to really mean something, it has to be able to look at ourselves at our best and worst and to keep showing up as citizens, pursuing the common good.

Loewen holds out to us the hope that we can do so much better, not by sanitized versions of our history but through texts and teachers that teach both the good and the bad, that will not only capture our children’s interest, but help them become passionate about making our country at least a little better in their generation. It seems to me that this is something all true patriots ought support.

Review: American Moonshot

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American Moonshot, Douglas Brinkley. New York: Harper, 2020.

Summary: A history of the American space program centering around John F. Kennedy’s embrace of the space race and goal that an American would walk on the moon by the end of the 1960’s.

Born in the 1950’s, I grew up loving rockets. I built models of rockets, launched rockets, and read about rockets. In first and second grade, I remembered televisions wheeled into our classrooms when Alan Shepard became the first American launched into space and John Glenn the first to orbit the earth three times. As fellow Ohioans, we were especially proud of Glenn, as we were that moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon–we stayed up to watch the landing and hear those words “That’s one small step for a man…”

In Douglas Brinkley’s book, I was able to relive all of that, as well as understand the history and personalities behind America’s race to the moon. Brinkley introduces us early to two central figures, John F. Kennedy and Werner von Braun, the former a war hero, the latter a German scientist who hitched his scientific aspirations in rocketry to Nazism, then escaped prosecution as a “paperclip” scientist brought to the U.S. for his expertise. Brinkley describes how the two would team up to drive America’s space program to new heights, even while making his own opinion clear that von Braun was a Nazi war criminal unworthy of enduring fame, despite his signal contributions to American rocketry culminating in the Saturn V and eventually the space shuttle boosters.

Brinkley casts this against the backdrop of the Cold War with the USSR and the space race kicked off with the launch of Sputnik, followed by the Soviet manned (and womaned) spaceflights with few answering U.S. accomplishments, although we rapidly surpassed the Soviets in satellite technology. These flights also underscored a feared threat of nuclear weapons in space and that the USSR would dominate space. This provided Kennedy an issue in the form of “the missile gap,” later shown to be spurious, that helped him win the 1960 presidential election. The Eisenhower administration had taken only slow, measured steps to develop space exploration.

Kennedy changed all that, facing the opposition of the former president, especially when he gave the speech at Rice University pledging the United States to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade, galvanizing von Braun and those he worked with at Huntsville. The book narrates the efforts to create NASA, mobilize the funding, and under space administrator James Webb, build out the capacity to accomplish the complex task of figuring out how to actually do what Kennedy pledged. As Kennedy’s re-election approached, Brinkley describes the increasing resistance and efforts to cut NASA funding. Paradoxically, it was Kennedy’s death that saved the program as Lyndon Johnson carried it through. The book portrays the breadth of Kennedy’s vision–at once to meet the Soviet threat, to give the country a lofty goal, and to create a kind of technology infrastructure that would bolster the economy of a number of states and result in spinoff inventions that enhanced Americans lives from medical devices to microchips.

Another facet of the book were the first American astronauts, the Mercury Seven, who were our space pioneers and paved the way for the subsequent Gemini and Apollo programs. It was fascinating to learn how deeply acquainted Kennedy became with the astronauts, hosting them collectively and individually at the White House. Some, like John Glenn, became family friends. It was Glenn who represented the astronauts at John Kennedy’s funeral, and who comforted the children of Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated. Those relationships, in turn, led to Glenn’s decision to pursue public service in a political career, serving as an Ohio Senator for three decades, attempting a run for president, and then returning to space in his seventies.

Because the book center’s around Kennedy’s role in the space program, the Gemini and Apollo launches are much more briefly covered, coming after Kennedy’s death, with the book ending with the Apollo 11 mission and the announcement that “the Eagle has landed” beating Kennedy’s goal by five months.

Douglas Brinkley pulls all these threads together around a study of presidential leadership in setting America a lofty goal wedding disciplined and courageous performance with technological innovation. While Brinkley doesn’t overlook it, one wonders if Lyndon Johnson deserves greater credit for bringing this program to fruition, if not being its inspiration. While telling a compelling story, Brinkley still left me wondering, was it worth it, particularly when what considers was not done with the tremendous outlay of money, further complicated by the Vietnam war? How important are national goals that capture the imagination and harness the resources of our best and brightest? How do we address the militarism and military industrial complex that grew around this program?

Nevertheless, there is a sense in which this was a “bright-shining moment,” a national effort that captured and held the country’s imagination. It was an exercise in presidential leadership, for which Brinkley has given us an in-depth case study. And for some of us, Brinkley’s book enables us to relive a decade of space exploration that is just as, if not more extraordinary, fifty to sixty years later as it was at the time.

Review: The Forgotten Man

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The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes. New York: MJF Books, 2008.

Summary: An account of the Depression years, focusing on why the Depression lasted so long, and the impact it had on so many different kinds of “forgotten men” and women.

Many accounts of the Depression have focused on the magnetic leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, creating work programs, declaring bank holidays, and seeking to give hope to the “forgotten man.” Amity Shlaes also considers various forgotten people, but asks the searching question of why the Depression lasted so long.

We are introduced to an impressive array of characters, many who recur as central figures throughout the account. There is the brain trust around Roosevelt, the “best and brightest” of his generation, who conceived of a variety of social and reform programs, mostly ineffectual: Harold Ickes, Raymond Moley, and Rex Tugwell. We meet the entrepreneurs and business people who find themselves on the wrong side of a government crusade against business, from Andrew Mellon to electrification pioneers Samuel Insull and Wendell Willkie, to the Schechter Brothers, kosher poultry wholesalers prosecuted for violating regulations of the National Recovery Act, and ultimately vindicated in court.

There are a variety of colorful figures, from Father Divine, a cult leader teaching Black self-sufficiency, John Llewellyn Lewis, a strong labor leader, David Lilienthal who headed up the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federalized effort to bring electric power to the South and “Bill” Wilson, the Wall Street alcoholic who founds Alcoholics Anonymous and in the 1930’s writes AA’s Big Book.

The book is basically an argument that the reason the Depression lasted so long was that the financial tinkering, taxation, and New Deal programs and over-reaching attacks on business “forgot” the people who made the country prosper. It recognizes the value of public works efforts like the WPA, the foundations of which were laid in the Hoover administration resulting in important infrastructure development that both put money into and facilitated the economy.

The book raises important questions about the role of government in economic downturns, arguing a classic conservative line that an activist, interventionist approach may prolong an economic downturn. Yet it also reflects the pressure a government faces from those suffering the most to “do something,” to appear to have not forgotten the little guy.

I personally found the work a tough read because it tried to follow so many threads, so many figures in a chronological account that at time the narrative felt like a lot of disparate stories and events strung together rather than the cohesive and compelling accounts the best historians render.

In the end, a global war lifted the country out of the Depression. Shlaes leaves us wondering if it needed take that long.

Review: Morgenthau

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Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty, Andrew Meier. New York: Random House, 2022.

Summary: An account of the 153 year history of four generations of the Morgenthau family and its impact on real estate, politics, diplomacy, and law enforcement.

Lazarus Morgenthau probably never should have migrated from Bavaria, where he invented a cigar box that made his fortune, for a time, before the business failed. He moved his family to America where other members of the Jewish elite had made fortunes after similar migrations. For Lazarus, all his schemes failed, from a wine import business to elixirs to cure various ailments to his Golden Book of Life. He spent the latter part of his life in and out of insane asylums. It might be that his principle purpose was to land his progeny in America, who would have a profound influence in many fields over the next hundred years.

Andrew Meier’s lengthy account of this family dynasty begins here. What follows are three full-length biographies of the leading family figure in each of the next three generations: Henry, Sr., Henry, Jr., and Robert Morgenthau, concluding at the end of the latter’s life in 2019.

Henry, Sr. built the family fortune in New York real estate. Meier takes us through the growth of his empire from his first acquisitions up through the relationship with Adolph Ochs and his acquisition of the properties that made up Times Square, and the headquarters of The New York Times. In 1912, his genius in fund-raising for Woodrow Wilson resulted in his being offered the ambassadorship to Turkey, the “Jewish seat.” It was not his first choice, but he distinguished himself in history in his efforts to advocate for and document the Armenian genocide.

Perhaps his greatest challenge was to help launch his son Henry, Jr. in life. Henry, Jr. seemed to lack a clear ambition other than becoming a farmer, which his father helped him to do in acquiring land in Duchess County. This put Henry, Jr. in touch with Franklin Roosevelt, a friendship that endured from Roosevelt’s rise as governor of New York through his presidency. He was a kind of “fixer” for Roosevelt–on farm matters in upstate New York, and later, at the Treasury. This seemed the saddest part of the book because the “friendship” seemed one of providing Roosevelt pleasant company at weekly lunches, but not asserting his own ideas or personality. Perhaps, like his father, his most significant work may have been advocacy for Jews in Europe as Hitler’s genocidal plans took shape. The US State Department and Roosevelt had been intransigent in opposing vigorous measures to help refugees, but Morgenthau probably managed to rescue 200,000 and help awaken the country to the Holocaust. The latter part of his life was the saddest in many ways as he lost his wife, was dumped by Truman, and spent the latter part of his life living lavishly with his second wife, considered “this thing he married” by his children.

I found the third part of the book the most interesting in many respects. Robert Morgenthau was an authentic war hero, offering exemplary leadership when his ship was attacked. He tried politics but failed in two runs for governor. Working with the Kennedy campaign, he won the appointment as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He took on organized crime when the FBI refused to acknowledge its existence. He also set his sights on Roy Cohn (an associate and mentor of Donald Trump), who became the “White Whale” he could never convict. When Nixon took office, he won office as the District Attorney for New York, a position he held until 2009. He was most known for the prosecutions of organized crime (the Gambino family) and the BCCI banking firm, which he believed was channeling money to Iran for development of nuclear weapons. The latter featured high powered American figures including Clark Clifford. It was a case that may have been pursued at the Federal level. For Morgenthau, if it came through New York, it was his jurisdiction.

He built a modestly-staffed department into a powerhouse, increasing the hiring of women and minorities, funding its operations in part with the fines he won. He often opted for plea bargains for fines in lieu of prison sentences–he had no appetite for sending people to prison–except for five youth accused of assault, rape, and murder of the Central Park Jogger. They were part of a “wilding” incident that night and, when apprehended, eventually confessed to the crime and were convicted and sent to prison. Except that DNA evidence, a relatively new technology at the time, linked none of the boys to evidence collected and was set aside. Several years later, new evidence matched with a man already in prison. Morgenthau admitted the mistake and reversed the convictions, albeit too late for the boys, who later recovered an award in court. It was the major stain on his record, lessened by his integrity when new evidence came forward.

This is a massive work, really three major biographies woven into a single account of a powerful family. One gains a sense of the distinctive character of the leading figure of each generation–Henry, Sr., the shrewd, incisive, and courageous businessman turned ambassador; Henry, Jr., the modest steady friend of Roosevelt who found his voice representing Jews caught in the Holocaust; and Robert, the resolute, ambitious prosecutor with a deep sense of integrity and justice that extended to the white collar criminals who often escaped prosecution. This book will carry you through the winter months, introducing you to a family who played a key role, often behind the scenes, over one hundred years in a variety of American institutions, centered around New York City,

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

Review: Asian American Histories of the United States

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Asian American Histories of the United States, Catherine Ceniza Choy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2022.

Summary: The multiple, interleaved histories of the diverse Asian American peoples who migrated to, built communities in, contributed to, experienced discriminatory acts in the United States.

If you look closely at the title of this book, you will note that it is not a singular history but rather plural “histories.” Asian American peoples have been migrating to the United States from various countries in various waves over the past two hundred years. Catherine Ceniza Choy sets out in this work to sketch the outlines of these multiple stories. Two aspects of that methodology stood out to me in the reading. One was that she followed a reverse chronology, taking more recent key events and migrations first and working back in history to 1869. The other aspect of this work is that it is a people’s history, sketching not just the large contours and key events but the stories of individual persons and families–showing us the hopes, hardships, and particular experience of anti-Asian discrimination at different periods

She considers:

  • 2020. The outbreak of Anti-Asian hatred during the pandemic, blaming those of Asian appearance for the origin and spread of the disease. At the same time, Filipino nurses, a mainstay in many hospital systems, were dying in disproportionate numbers.
  • 1975. The journeys of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees to the United States at the fall of Saigon. We learn of Ted Ngoy, a Cambodian who became the “donut king.”
  • 1968. The student strike at San Francisco State College and the growth of the Asian American Movement on campuses across the country.
  • 1965. The passage of the Hart-Cellar Act equalizing the numbers of immigration visas for all countries, allowing for expanded immigration from Asian countries, both highly skilled entering the professions as well as less-educated working in businesses like nail salons and restaurants, including the Filipino nurses among which came the author’s parents.
  • 1965. The Delano Grape Strike was part of the birth of the United Farm Workers, led by Filipino American Larry Itliong, often overlooked in the histories that focus on Cesar Chavez.
  • 1953. Permission to adopt transracial children of mixed birth from Korea and Japan, left behind when American soldiers returned home. This history raises the specter of the anti-miscegenation laws preventing inter-racial marriages.
  • 1942. Executive Order 9066 resulting in the forced removal of Japanese Americans in western states, losing property and belongings without due process to be interned in camps. George Takei and many others have told the stories of these camps.
  • 1919. The story of both Korean Americans and Filipino Americans seeking independence from Japan and the United States, respectively. The U.S. would remain silent about Korea due to their own hegemony in the Philippines.
  • 1875. The Page Act, ostensibly passed to keep out prostitutes, was used to keep Chinese women out of the United States, representing various laws that would keep Asians out of the country. This episode also reflects the sexualized stereotypes of Asian women as dragon ladies, lotus blossoms and prostitutes.
  • 1869. The completion of the transcontinental railroad. Chinese workers build much of the Central Pacific Railroad, yet were excluded from the celebratory photographs at Promontory Point and treated hostilely.

As may already be evident, Choy addresses three themes throughout the work: violence, erasure, and resistance. I was aware of both the violence and resistance but Choy makes evident that strategies of erasure are not new, whether it is blocking the publication of photographs, the scrubbing of stories from our history books, or even overshadowing the celebration of the centenary of the gurdwara in Stockton, California with a brutal mass killing at another gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. She also makes us aware that perhaps the greatest tragedy is the “othering” of those who have contributed so much as Asian Americans. Choi gives us not only Asian American histories, but also histories of the United States that both confront us with our failures to live up to our highest ideals and the opportunities before us to do so.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.