biography

Review: George F. Kennan

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George F. Kennan: An American Life, John Lewis Gaddis. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.

Summary: The authorized biography of this diplomat and strategic thinker who articulated the Western strategy of “containment” that curbed and ultimately resulted in the end of the former Soviet Union.

He grew up in modest surroundings in a quiet Milwaukee neighborhood, bereft of his mother, who died in early childhood. After a college career at Princeton, he entered the foreign service and became one of the first Russian specialists when the Soviet Union was closed to the United States. He was one of the first Russia experts to go to Russia when the U.S. opened an embassy in 1933. As the Nazi threat rose, he took assignments in Prague, and then Berlin, leading to his internment during the first months of the war. Later, he returned to Moscow under Ambassador Harriman.

It was while Harriman was away that a request came in 1946 to Kennan as deputy to explain certain aspects of Soviet behavior. Kennan long had bemoaned the lack of “grand strategy” on the part of the U.S., particularly in the post-war situation where the once-ally was now an ideological adversary once more. He sent an 8,000 word telegram, known as the “Long Telegram” that articulated both Kennan’s assessment of the Soviet outlook, and what he thought the appropriate American response, one of containment, checking Soviet threats while projecting a peaceful intent and strengthening western Europe until the Soviets could no longer control their satellites. Kennan perceived the unsustainability of the Soviet state.

Later, this was expanded into a Foreign Affairs article by “X.” What he had done was nothing less than articulate the strategy the United States would follow, with variations, for the next forty-five years. He soon was called upon to help establish the War College, as deputy director, an advanced training school for rising officers in the services. He also was called on to form the Policy Planning Staff, which over the next years, during the Truman administration, published policy papers for nearly every part of th world, including one on Yugoslavia, recognizing that communism often was a nationalist movement not necessarily aligned with Moscow.

Over his life, Kennan went on to a post at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he wrote Russia Leaves the War, winning multiple awards including the Pulitzer Prize in History and a second Pulitzer years later for the first volume of his memoirs. He was an early opponent of the nuclear arms race, an early advocate for the environment, he proposed the reunification of Germany, he opposed the Vietnam war, testifying in 1966 to its folly before Congress.

Yet Kennan never held positions any higher than an ambassadorship in Moscow that last merely five months before undiplomatic remarks led to him being declared persona non grata. Under Kennedy, he served as ambassador in Yugoslavia for two years. A recurring complaint was that no one was listening, and in a profession where diplomacy was the name of the game, he could be quite undiplomatic. Acheson as Secretary of State was an admirer and friend but thought him utterly impractical.

He was a person of incredible rectitude, always elegantly dressed, articulate and well-spoken, and elegant in writing. He lived under the shadow of another George Kennan, also an ambassador to Russia, his grandfather’s cousin, with whom he shared a birthday. Recognition was important to this man who grew up without a mother and a distant father. When things became stressful, he suffered from a variety of illnesses including ulcers. He was married to Annelise until his death at 101, yet also had several affairs, and then suffered under a Calvinist-formed conscience.

In sum, he was a complicated individual–understanding the Soviet Union better than almost anyone, yet despairing for the character of his own country, particularly the “counter-culture” of which he spoke critically. He was prescient, and at times incisive, and at others, a bit of a wool-gatherer and one to whom others turned a deaf ear. John Lewis Gaddis, selected by Kennan to write his authorized biography, explores not only the extraordinary career of Kennan but the complexities of his character. This biography is a model of erudition, one that captures as fully as any biography I’ve read, the character as well as the accomplishments of its subject. Closing the circle, Gaddis followed his subject in winning the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the National Book Critics Circle award for this work. This is a profound work not only in understanding Kennan, but also American foreign policy since World War II.

Review: Cronkite

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Cronkite, Douglas Brinkley. New York: Harper, 2012.

Summary: The biography of Walter Cronkite, from his early reporting days, his United Press work during World War 2, and his years at CBS, including his nineteen years on the CBS Evening News, and his “retirement years,” where he came out as a liberal.

I grew up with “Uncle Walter.” I was a fourth grader when John F. Kennedy was assassinated and watched as Walter Cronkite walked us through the days that followed, from his initial announcement of the death of Kennedy, removing his glasses and sitting in silence, connecting with the stunned response of all of us. I watched the unfolding of the Vietnam war, which Cronkite declared, after visiting the front lines in 1967, a “stalemate.” He covered the horrors of 1968 from the deaths of Kennedy and King through the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention. With the world, I watched the orbiting of the moon on Christmas eve in 1968, and the landing on the moon in the summer of 1969, accompanied by his characteristic “Oh, boy!” Watergate, the fall of Saigon, the Iran hostages, and that final sign off in March of 1981. “That’s the way it is.”

Douglas Brinkley chronicles all of this in this outstanding biography, and so much more. He covers the shaping and the rise that made him “the most trusted man in America.” We follow him from his sports reporting forays, his unfinished college career at UT Austin, his radio news experience at KCMO, and the pivotal opportunity of becoming night editor at the United Press office in Kansas City, that honed his instincts as a news hound both careful with the facts and eager to be the first to break the story that would go with him for the rest of his life. Then the war came, and through persistence he won the opportunity to cover the war in Europe for the United Press on the front lines, flying in a bombing run, and with troops in northern Africa, on D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge, first meeting Andy Rooney as part of the “Writing 69th.” His bombing dispatch caught the attention of Edward R. Murrow, who thought he’d succeeded in recruiting Cronkite to CBS only to have him renege, still believing print was the thing.

Murrow tried again and Cronkite joined CBS in the fifties to cover the Korean War. Returning stateside, he failed as the host of CBS’s version of the Today show, hosted “You Are There,” a weekly show in which Cronkite would interview historical figures or cover events like the Boston Tea Party. It was in 1956 that he found his true calling as anchor of CBS television’s political convention coverage, first earning the nickname, “Old Ironpants” for his stamina.

We learn about the complicated relationship with Edward R. Murrow, the dean of broadcasters, both mentor and rival. Cronkite continued to accumulate achievements, polishing his TV credentials with the coverage of the Mercury 7 astronauts and his relationship with John Glenn. Murrow left CBS at Kennedy’s request to lead the US Information Agency. When it became apparent that Douglas Edwards was coming to the end of his tenure, the rivalry became fierce. In the end Cronkite won over Eric Sevareid, who did offer commentary at the end of newscasts for a time, Charles Collingwood, Charles Kuralt, and Howard K. Smith. Cronkite was Paley’s choice, and for nineteen years anchored the CBS Evening News.

Brinkley covers the team of people who worked with Cronkite, perhaps most important of all, Richard Salant as news director, and a young, ambitious reporter by the name of Dan Rather. He describes the slow, upward climb to supplant NBC’s top position in the news ratings. He recounts the decisive role Cronkite played in changing the narrative about Vietnam, after passing along the administration version in 1965 and 1966, how he served to “platform” the story Woodward and Bernstein were putting together about Watergate, and his role in bringing Sadat and Begin together.

Brinkley offers an unvarnished account of how difficult Cronkite’s retirement was and his bitterness toward Dan Rather, his successor, who cut him out of opportunities to continue to contribute, despite Rather’s flagging ratings. They would never reconcile. Freed of the reporter’s commitment to neutrality, his own liberal views came to the fore, brought on, in part, by the movie, Network. In later years, he would rail on the war on drugs, and argue for the legalization of marijuana.

Betsy Cronkite, Walter’s wife of 65 years comes through as a force in her own right, often traveling with Cronkite, and helping him keep perspective. I was also surprised to learn that two of his close friends were Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead, who encouraged Cronkite’s drumming, and Jimmy Buffett. I never knew Cronkite was either a “Deadhead” or a “Parrothead.” Buffett was actually at Cronkite’s death bed, playing songs, which he also did at his funeral.

Brinkley gives us a portrait with warts and all. Cronkite was absolutely tenacious about both getting the facts straight and getting the story out, and he succeeded so well at this because of his relentless pursuit of the reporter’s disciplines. He had a kind of “common touch” that came from middle-American roots but his credibility was earned and not just because of an “on air” personality. Yet he was contemptuous of some of his rivals, both Murrow and Rather. He liked to carouse, and while he gave opportunities to women like Connie Chung and Katie Couric, he was a bit of a chauvinist, still enjoying the company of his “old boys.”

Reading this account makes one wonder whether such news coverage is possible today, and perhaps wistful for a different time. Cronkite did not have to deal with a 24/7 news cycle on cable TV and the internet and the increasingly partisan character of many news outlets. I suspect he would have done what he did, pursue the facts and work at getting the story out both quickly and right. What this biography reminds me of is why we did not have the epistemic crisis in the Cronkite years that we face when it comes to the news today. Back then, you trusted Cronkite, and he warranted that trust. We didn’t ask, “who can you trust?” Today that sounds incredibly naïve. Sadly, today it is.

Review: This Isn’t Going to End Well

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This Isn’t Going to End Well, Daniel Wallace. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2023.

Summary: The story of William Nealy, as told by his brother-in-law, a cartoonist, guru of adventure sports, and emulated by the author, all the while harboring a secret within that finally killed him.

The First Time I saw him he was standing on the roof of our house, wearing frayed and faded cutoffs and nothing else, eyeing the swimming pool about twenty-five feet below. William. Last name unknown, unnecessary. Already–in my mind, at least–he had achieved the single name status of a rock star, and I had yet to even meet him. I’d only heard about him from Holly, my sister, who was older than me by six years. My sister’s boyfriend was on the roof.

This Isn’t Going to End Well, p. 3

William was William Nealy, the author’s brother-in-law. For years, Daniel Wallace would admire him. He could fix anything. He was fearless, whether diving off a roof, white waterrafting, kayaking, or mountain biking. He was also an underground cartoonist. Several of his books on whitewater rafting, kayaking, and mountain biking are legendary. His maps of rivers, cartoon-like, are incredibly detailed and accurate, and as we learn, how he began to make money on his art. He’d lived near death since age 9 when he saw it up close when twins he was on a scouting trip with were buried under an overhang. Some thought it changed him.

Wallace wanted to be him–cartoonist, writer. He was a kind of big brother. They’d go to movies, William sneaking in beer. He fixed Wallace’s waterbed. There were drugs as well. And Wallace did follow him as a writer, even though they grew apart after Wallace married.

And there was Holly. They saw others but William and Holly just kept coming back to each other. Then at twenty-one, Holly was diagnosed with a debilitating and progressive form of rheumatoid arthritis. William cared for her for the next twenty five years, making life possible for her while he did most of the work on their small farm, a retreat, really, in the woods. Then one day he went up to their houseboat, then into the woods behind the marina office, and shot himself. Several years later, Holly finally succumbed to the disease that had afflicted her all her adult life.

William’s death seemed inexplicable. He seemed the most alive person Wallace had ever known. He had everything going for him. Only after Holly’s death did Wallace discover the secret burden William carried for decades as he cleaned out there house and went through William’s journals, coming to terms with the mix of emotions around William’s life, manner of death, and their friendship.

Nealy was something of a cult figure. This work is an intimate glimpse into the man behind the cult figure. It also gives us a glimpse into the complicated feelings that follow suicide, and the reality that what we see on the outside may not reflect what the person we think we know struggles with within.

For anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide or who is concerned for someone or needs emotional support, the 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is open 24/7. The call is free and confidential.

Or, text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the United States, anytime. Crisis Text Line is here for any crisis. A live, trained Crisis Counselor receives the text and responds, all from a secure online platform.

____________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.

Review: The Most Famous Man in America

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The Most Famous Man in America, Debby Applegate. New York: Three Leaves Press, 2007.

Summary: The Pulitzer prize-winning biography of the most famous preacher in nineteenth century America, and the scandals around his sexual life.

The story of the writing of this biography strikes me as nearly as interesting as the book itself. It began when Debby Applegate was an undergraduate student at Amherst researching famous Amherst alumni. She selected Henry Ward Beecher and then went on to write her senior thesis about him. She then went on to Yale, making him the subject of her doctoral thesis. And like any good writer of theses in history, she sought a book contract to turn it into a book. This was in the Clinton era and the sex scandals surrounding his administration. However, due to the time needed for research, it finally published in 2006 (in paper in 2007). The culmination of this twenty year project was that the book was a National Book Critics Award Finalist and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Her biography traces the life of Henry Ward Beecher, who, if not the most famous man in America, was certainly the most famous preacher of America. He was asked by President Lincoln to speak at Fort Sumter at the end of the Civil War, an event overshadowed by Lincoln’s assassination. He filled the pulpit of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, a nineteenth century megachurch. At one point he drew a $100,000 salary–in the nineteenth century. He pioneered a more informal style of preaching using humor and pathos and emphasizing the love of God as well as social reform.

He was a mover in the abolitionist movement, although Applegate emphasizes his ambivalent record. One one hand, he raised money to emancipate slaves and sent rifles to Nebraska and Kansas to aid abolitionists–“Beecher Bibles.” On the other hand, he counselled caution and moderation, offending more radical proponents like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. He also campaigned for women’s suffrage and for temperance.

The book portrays his distinguished family. His father Lyman was a New England Calvinist, later transplanted to Cincinnati as president of Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was his sister. One of the striking facts is that all of his children departed from this stern Calvinism, although a number were ministers. Nine were writers. Applegate traces Henry’s career from his early struggles with his charge in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where he first begins to shift from the more Calvinist form of preaching to the more informal and engaging style he observed among the Methodists. His success was great enough to attract the notice of church leaders in Indianapolis, who offered him a salary that finally allowed him and Eunice to live more comfortably. Increasingly his preaching focused on the love of God rather than human sinfulness. This, in turn, caught the attention of Henry Bowen, who lured the Beechers to Brooklyn, and the shared ambitions of building up Plymouth Church.

Applegate chronicles the influence of money and power that became increasingly alluring to Beecher. Bowen helped Beecher with his debts and Beecher contributed to his publishing enterprises. Beecher’s fame led to political influence within the newly born Republican party. As he became ever busier on social campaigns, he and Bowen relied more on Theodore Tilton for his writing enterprises.

This powerful alliance unraveled when Beecher became emotionally, and, it seems likely, sexually involved with several women, culminating in an affair with Tilton’s wife Elizabeth. Applegate records a tawdry set of confrontations, confessions, retractions and denial, and ultimately a civil trial that ended with a hung jury and a church trial that exonerated Beecher and shamed his accusers.

Reading the biography brought to mind the Apostle Paul’s counsel to a young pastor, Timothy: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16, NIV). As Beecher pursued pastoral success, he jettisoned unpopular doctrines for public acclaim. Having struggled with desperate circumstances, he gave way to the allures of money, power, and sex. At one point he defends and propounds free love and the rightness of intimacy with a woman not his wife. And sadly, because of his success, the leaders of his church cast a blind eye to these abuses, and the relational wreckage that resulted with Bowen, the Tiltons, and others.

If the biography came after the scandals of the Clinton administration, it came before the sex scandals, #MeToo, and #ChurchToo of the last decade. It seems to me that Applegate’s biography ought be recommended reading for aspiring ministers as well as the church boards who oversee their efforts, especially where such efforts result in significant growth and acclaim for minister and church. The biography explores not only the personal temptations but the systemic dynamics that contribute to pastoral unfaithfulness and the covering up of moral failures. The biography also traces the rise of the personality cults around pastors, which may arguably have begun with Beecher. A study of the circle around Beecher reveals a web of dysfunctionality. Even if none of this interests you, read this simply for Applegate’s fascinating chronicle of one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century.

Review: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

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The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2022.

Summary: A biography of this Boston revolutionary who, working mostly behind the scenes, fanned into flame the colonists decision to seek independence.

For many, the name of Samuel Adams calls to mind a beer. And indeed, Adams was a maltster for part of his life. But one of the things that emerges is that Adams was a failure at everything he did except for kindling the fires that led to a revolution. He inherited debt from a failed land scheme of his father. He failed as a tax collector, perhaps unsurprisingly. He really got by with the help of his friends.

What Stacy Schiff makes clear is that there was one thing that Samuel Adams was good at: igniting a revolution. It might well be said that Samuel Adams played as large a part in stirring up the movement that led to a revolution as his more famous peers, is cousin John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

Yet we know much less of him. What we learn from reading Schiff is that much of this was necessary because his activities could easily lead to arrest if known. As it is, he often had to flee writs of arrest, as he did in consequence of Paul Revere’s ride to warn him that the British authorities were marching to Lexington, in part, to arrest him, as well to seize ammunition stores. He often destroyed papers, or published pieces anonymously, planned in back rooms, maintaining an elusive presence that gave him what we might call “plausible deniability.” All of this makes the historian’s job harder.

Schiff focuses on the 15 years beginning with 1764 and the Stamp Act that inflamed feeling. Adams was able to put his finger on the fundamental issue of taxation without representation. He was not present at the destruction of the home of the man who represented the British opposition, Thomas Hutchinson, but he certainly inflamed the feeling of fellow-Bostonians that led to the act. He awakened his fellow colonists that they were being treated as inferiors with little or no say about how they were governed when, in fact they had shown them capable of self-government in their town councils and in colonial legislative bodies.

The introduction of British troops further escalated his efforts, and led to campaigns of misinformation, including allegations that the British troops assaulted young girls. Later a blockade on trade led him to set up committees of correspondence between the colonies, the first steps down the road to Philadelphia and the Declaration of Independence. He was one of the first to moot the idea of independence and to recognize this would mean armed resistance.

He was the skilled propagandist who turned a military action in which five Bostonians died into the Boston Massacre, memorialized each year with public speeches. When imports of East India tea were forced on Bostonians, he disingenuously arranged for the protection of the cargo while covertly planning its destruction by “redskins.” Schiff gives the most extensive account of this episode I’ve read, emphasizing that those who dumped the tea into Boston harbor even cleaned up the ship afterwards!

For anything else than making revolution, he wasn’t terribly practical. His second wife had to work while he was at the Continental Congress. People were relieved in his later years when he finally resigned as Massachusetts governor. But his ability to articulate the case for American independence emboldened others, including his younger cousin John Adams. His network of relationships, represented eventually in the committees of correspondence reflected his ability to forge a movement of disparate persons. While he was not above underhanded means, he held to high ideals for the country, including an early opposition to slavery. Offered a slave, he required her to be freed first.

Schiff’s work transforms Adams from a figure in the background to one whose dynamic role in fostering the revolution necessarily required work in the background. Schiff helps us understand how this singularly skilled man played a far bigger role in mobilizing colonies into the revolt that became what we call the War of Independence that created a nation. When most simply wanted to resolve grievances, Adams saw that, risky as it was, breaking with British rule was where things were headed, seeing further and sooner than most.

Review: John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America

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John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America (Princeton Theological Monograph Series), Jeffrey S. McDonald. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017.

Summary: A biography of church historian, apologist, and theologian John Gerstner exploring his impact on theological education, the Presbyterian denominations of which he was part, and the wider evangelical and Reformed movement.

I heard John Gerstner speak over 50 years ago at the youth Bible Studies of the New Wilmington Missionary Conference. This gruff scholar spoke with passion about the parables. I cannot say I remember what he said, but it was clear that here was someone who was passionate about the Bible. Years later, I listened to him on tapes from the Ligonier Valley Study Center, arguing for the inerrancy of the Bible at a time this was an issue under much discussion. He was also a strong influence on two of the ministers of the church in which I grew up. I have to say I’ve not thought much about him since until reading this biography, which both impressed me with the reach and impact of his scholarship and underscored the journey away from an evangelical faith of the PCUSA, from which, late in life he resigned his membership.

The biography begins with some of the formative influences in his life: the UPCNA (United Presbyterian Church North America) church in which he grew up, one adhering to evangelical doctrine, his conversion and early formation at Philadelphia School of the Bible, his studies under John Orr at Westminster College, which persuaded him of the importance of rational, evidentialist apologetics. After a brief stint as a student at Pitt-Xenia Seminary, then associated with the UPCNA, he went to Westminster Seminary, still reflecting the influence of J. Gresham Machen, the modernist versus fundamentalist “Presbyterian Controversy,” where he was shaped by the Old Princeton theologians who had shaped Machen’s resistance to liberalism.

The subsequent chapters of the book trace Gerstner’s career by decades. The 1950’s witnessed his rise as an evangelical scholar, both at Pitt-Xenia and more broadly. He led a movement, along with Addison Leitch to renew the evangelical stance of the seminary. This was interrupted by the merger of the UPCNA with the United Presbyterian Church to form the UPCUSA. Gerstner opposed this merger on theological grounds, as well as the subsequent merger of Pitt-Xenia and Western Seminary, both in Pittsburgh, to form Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (PTS).

In short order, the moderates and liberals from Western asserted their influence at PTS. McDonald traces the disillusionment Gerstner felt when Leitch abandoned ship. Throughout the 1960’s, he continued to defend an evangelical faith, supporting a group of evangelical students, while continuing to work as “loyal opposition” within the denomination. Two cases in the 1970’s gave him pause, even as he advocated unsuccessfully in both instances. One was the Kenyon case, denying ordination to a pastor who did not believe in the ordination of women to church leadership positions and the other, the Kaseman case resulted in the ordination of a pastor who denied the full deity of Christ. For a time, Gerstner considered the denomination apostate.

As Gerstner failed his efforts to preserve orthodoxy within his denomination, his ministry broadened in other ways. He taught courses at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, exposing a broader audience to Reformed thought. He spoke increasingly about his Jonathan Edwards scholarship contending for a direct line between Edwards and the Old Princeton Theology. And his teaching, particularly about biblical inerrancy spread widely through the influence of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and the Ligonier Valley Study Center, led by one of his former students and mentees, R.C. Sproul. Sproul championed Gerstner’s work and brought him to the attention of a much wider audience. One failure that marred his scholarship was his inability to transcribe the texts of Jonathan Edwards sermons as editor of for that volume of the Yale edition of Edwards’s works, resulting in his removal from the project in 1977. At least part of the issue was his inability to do the critical work necessary, given his high estimate of Edwards.

In the 1980’s, Gerstner retired from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary but spoke and lectured widely. Despite being removed from the Yale project, he brought attention to Edwards in a variety of settings and helped shape the growth of Presbyterian and Reformed evangelicalism in the newly formed Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America, joining the latter denomination in 1990. He kept up an intense schedule of teaching and also edited a three volume work on Jonathan Edwards. McDonald describes this as poorly edited and flawed in many ways but also offering many original insights into Edwards work.

I always pictured Gerstner as a theological pit bull. This biography offers a much more nuanced view. He was beloved as a teacher by many of his students and deeply shaped many including Sproul. It is clear that he was shaped by the aftermath of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the 1930’s and determined all his life to preserve the theological integrity of the church, a losing battle in his own denomination. What is striking from this biography is that he remained a faithful churchman and theologian in that denomination so long despite the losses, remaining the gentleman, even though he could be fierce in debate.

It strikes me that he was both teacher and apologist for an evangelical faith and one wonders what might have happened had he devoted, or been capable of devoting greater energy to his Edwards scholarship. Yet even so, he prepared the way for the resurgence of Edwards studies that we are seeing to the present day. Likewise, he offered theological sustenance to the newly formed Evangelical Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America, two bodies that offset the decline in mainline Presbyterianism. McDonald’s biography offers a great service in remembering this distinctive voice who left his mark in so many Presbyterian and Reformed circles and in the wider evangelical community.