Category Archives: Non-Fiction

09.17.14
by

THE GUNS OF AUGUST- AN ANNIVERSARY READ BY A BRILLIANT HISTORIAN

August, 2014 marked the 100th Anniversary of the First World War , the perfect stimulus to read or reread Barbara Tuchman’s  The Guns of August.

images

While the French high command argued over whether to eliminate the crimson of their soldiers trousers, the Germans had already converted to olive-green and were building a mighty force and a thirty-six day offensive plan to bring France to a quick and tidy surrender and to regain German losses to both Russia and France from the war of 1870.  Barbara Tuchman in her Pulitzer Prize winning The Guns of August uncovers in great detail the misguided decisions and confusion among the French, German and British military and civilian leadership that led to the disastrous four years of carnage following the August 1914 outbreak of the First World War.

Tuchman’s meticulous research focuses upon the incredible errors made by all parties to the war by their failing to comprehend that warfare in the 20th Century had changed forever. Looking back on the  war’s 100th anniversary, the reader will be astonished to learn of the self-serving decisions and the indecisiveness  of politicians, generals, czars, prime ministers and presidents costing millions of lives on the battlefields of Belgium, France, Germany and Prussia . ” You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees, the Kaiser told departing troops in early August 1914.”

Tuchman leaves no stone unturned in the chronological detail leading up to the outbreak of the war. and its raging first month of battle. The Guns of August carries the reader through the German invasion of Belgium to the standoff on the outskirts of Paris and the Marne as the German Army, by only inches,  missed its opportunity to complete their 36 day plan for certain victory over France.

The French Army by mid-August had been in retreat since defeat at the Battle of the Frontiers on the Belgium border.  The Germans  army brutally pushed through Belgium, slaughtering civilians in their wake and then moved almost at will  into Northern France capturing not only territory but the rich natural resources that would help fuel its stamina through what would become four years of trench warfare. Meanwhile the British remained reluctant and confused in their commitment to both Belgium and France.  So much for French ” Élan” as their armies retreated in a desperate attempt to regroup before Paris fell.

Then occurred what German General Kluck termed a ” French miracle. ” Just four days before the Germans completed their 36 day schedule for decisive victory, the Battle of the Marne ended  with Germany in a startling reversal at the hands of a re-grouped French Army.  Said  Kluck, ” That men who have retreated for ten days , sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds is a thing upon which we never counted. It was a possibility not studied in our war academy.”

The Guns of August sets the stage for  what became The Western Front,  four years ( 1914-1918) of the most horrendous fighting in the history of the modern world.  Casualties at one point reached 50,000 per day.

Tuchman’s narrative style allows for assimilation of a trove of information and detail of an event the enormity of which forever changed the world.  Tuchman retains a rightful honored place among the great historians of her time. The Guns of August was published in 1962. She won a second Pulitzer in 1971  for ‘Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45.  Also by Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower, a look at the quarter century leading up to World War I, the clash between Olympian luxury of the wealthy and the uprising of the underclass. Additionally, The Zimmermann Telegram, the story of the German promises made to Mexico  to entice them to enter the First World War.  Her last book  The First Salute,  published in 1988, sets the American Revolution in international perspective and was on the New York Times best-seller list for 17 weeks.

Barbara Tuchman died in 1989 at age 77 after suffering a stroke at her home in Cos Cob, Connecticut. The cabin in which she wrote her prized works remains on a rocky rise overlooking the meadows of the family property.

09.08.14
by

David McCullough- Thirty Seven Years Later- A NYT Best Seller !

Yes, hundreds of other kindred spirits did the same as me!  On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Panama Canal we were reminded of  David McCullough’s  The Path Between The Seas  and rushed out to purchase this acclaimed historical work.  As a testament to its relevance,  the book again appeared on the New York Times Best Seller List on Sunday, September 7th, 2014,  37 years after its original publication in 1977!

images

The epic story of the building of the Panama Canal, started by the French, completed by the Americans, could not have been better told than through a David McCullough narrative.  The Path Between The Seas details every nuance of this unprecedented enterprise in world history.

Despite the enormity of the subject, McCullough’s story telling never gets bogged down in detail but rather enlightens  and educates the reader into understanding the complexities of the entire undertaking.  Meet the fascinating Frenchman Ferdinand deLesseps, the promoter of the Suez Canal, whose failure at Panama, ensured the ultimate completion by America of an enterprise the scale of which had never before been attempted by mankind. It literally required a revolution to reorganize the geography and power structure of the world.

McCullough masterfully tells the story of the canal. The politics, money, ego’s, intrigue and with great insight to the racial issues surrounding 45,000 West Indian black men and women whose manual labor made the building of the canal possible. The development of  the engineering skills and construction knowledge previously unknown and untested became miracles in their application.  ” We are facing a proposition greater than was ever undertaken in engineering history. ”

Combined with the enormity of the engineering and logistical challenge was the understanding the once the American’s bought out the failed French effort, the first priority would be ridding the Canal Zone of Yellow Fever and Malaria which had heretofore devastated the work force. The resulting benefit to medical research, while at the same time overcoming skeptical pedestrian medical views , would benefit populations worldwide for decades.  No single construction effort in American History had exacted a comparable  price in human lives and dollars and yet the scientific, social and economic rewards would ultimately dwarf the investment costs.

Just as in Truman, John Adams and Mornings on Horseback,  McCullough combines his skills as historian with those of a storyteller resulting in a thrilling journey during an American  era when anything seemed possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

07.23.14
by

THE KILLING OF CRAZY HORSE- AUTHOR’S IMMERSION DELIVERS “THE FEEL OF IT”

Thomas Power’s The Killing of Crazy Horse is most deserving of the praise offered  by fellow authors Larry McMurtry and Evan Thomas. Power’s work of non-fiction ventures miles beyond the compelling story of Crazy Horse to encompass a rich journey into the final years of the Sioux and the demise of their culture upon the great northern plains.

images

Power’s  detail into the relationships of members of the Sioux families together with their interface with the white trappers, adventurers , soldiers, translators and scouts tells the story of what actually occurred to bring about the destruction of this once proud Indian Nation. Power’s research is so outstanding that he seems to have personally absorbed the Sioux culture, language, relationships, spirituality, pride and passions and then realistically tells the tale in a captivating style. The context is so strong it seems that Powers was present in the teepee, on the battlefield, smoking the pipe, on the Powder River, at the Sun Dance and at The Killing of Crazy Horse.

Unique in its approach, Powers relates the story through the voices of the Indians, the families of Sitting Bull , Crazy Horse , Red Cloud, and the half breeds who served both the Indians and the military often in duplicitous and self dealing fashion. General Crook’s role as the major facilitator in the demise of Crazy Horse  delves into the personality and motives of the man who so influenced the fate of Crazy Horse and  the northern tribes.

The story of the Oglala Sioux and Crazy Horse can not be told without Custer and the Little Big Horn. I have read much of this historic event but never before have I seen this epic through the eyes of Crazy Horse and the Sioux themselves, present on the Little Big Horn Battlefield that day.

Every word counts in the very best of non-fiction writing and The Killing of Crazy Horse meets this standard on each page. Crazy Horse: ” I am no white man! They are the only people who make rules for other people who say, if you stay on one side of this line it’s peace, but if you go on the other side I will kill you. I don’t hold with deadlines. There is plenty of room, camp where you please.”

In his Afterword, Powers perfectly captures this reader’s reaction to his work: ” My effort here has been to tell the story in a way that helps readers to experience its weight and quality-the feel of it.”  Powers words ” the feel of it ”  become abundantly apparent.

The Killing of Crazy Horse eclipses all expectations of  ” the feel of it,” learning from the people, places, triumphs and tragedies  of the Oglala Sioux.

Thomas Powers is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. He has also written Intelligence Wars : American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda; Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb; and The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA.

06.26.14
by

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT- AN EPIC STORY OF SEABISCUIT CALIBRE

Daniel James Brown’s  THE BOYS IN THE BOAT ranks  among my top non-fiction reads of 2014.  It is a captivating human story made even more compelling by Brown’s remarkable story telling.  This book is much more than its brilliant depiction of the sport of crew with nine men acting as one in an eight pared shell.  Brown wraps their journey to victory in the 1936 Berlin Olympics  in the history of the times.  The culture of young men growing up in the lumber and mining towns of the Pacific Northwest with few prospects beyond a life of hardship and physical labor.  The author brilliantly captures the darkness of the depression  of the 1930s and its impact on families and family life. He incorporates the drumbeat of the Nazi’s, preceding the outbreak of  WW II, and the elaborate deception of Hitler surrounding the 1936 Olympic Games.

images-1

Out of this era of despair appear nine young working class men, eight oarsmen and a coxswain , who literally by chance  come together under a brilliant coach and an iconic boat builder at the University of Washington.  Among these young men is teenager Joe Rantz, a boy with few prospects in life after being abandoned at age ten by his father an step-mother.  His true story of grit and determination swells the heart of the reader right through the exciting climax of this great American drama.  The Washington eight-oared shell captured the imagination of the country much as did the underdog racehorse Seabiscuit, as so beautifully chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand’s book of the same name.

Could there ever again be nine young men more deserving of ultimate triumph ?  Could a nation in a great depression be uplifted by a sport so obscure as crew, which was  formerly dominated only by the eastern elite.  Shades of Seabiscuit versus Man O’ War!  Could Hitler’s propaganda machine receive a huge setback by nine determined young American’s in eight-oared-shell ?   It all happens because of  THE BOYS IN THE BOAT!

The legendary boat-builder and philosopher of human nature George Pocock, provides a narrative for each chapter of  THE BOYS IN THE  BOAT :  ” He came to understand how those almost mystical bonds of trust and affection, if nurtured correctly, might lift a crew above the ordinary sphere, transport it to a place where nine boys somehow become one thing-a thing that could not quite be defined, a thing that was so in tune with the water and the earth and the sky above that, as they rowed, effort was replaced by ecstasy. ”

images-2

Daniel James Brown: ” It occurred to me that when Hitler watched Joe and the boys fight their way back from the rear of the field to sweep ahead of Italy and Germany seventy-five years ago, he saw, but did not recognize, heralds of his own doom. He could not have known that one day hundreds of thousands of boys just like them, boys who shared their essential natures-decent and unassuming, not privileged or favored by anything in particular, just loyal, committed and perseverant- would return to Germany dressed in olive drab, hunting him down.”

I commend  THE BOYS IN THE BOAT to the very top of your summer reading list. Buy it in hardcover because it belongs in your library for future generations.  Also by Daniel James Brown, The Indifferent Stars Above and Under a Flaming Sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06.16.14
by

PIKETTY- CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY- THE NEWS IS NOT GOOD!

It is somewhat astonishing that Thomas Piketty’s  CAPITAL in the 21st Century remains at the very top of the New York Times Best Seller List! Not intending to be condescending, this is not an easy read even for the most ardent observers of the national and world economy.  The first 250 pages, filled with exhaustive research over a 250 year period, complete with charts and graphs, is a test of anyone’s concentration.  You may need to read many pages more than once! The good news is that once through this sophisticated and advanced course in economics, the reader will come to an understanding of the inexorable march of an economic matrix that appears to be leading to a dysfunctional environment for the capitalistic system as  we have known in America for over 300 years.  Ironically, there is  currently a billboard on the south bound FDR Drive  in New York City that reads,” The French Aristocracy Didn’t See It Coming Either! ”  images Piketty does not set out to be an alarmist but rather to lay out what he believes is the most definitive research ever completed on the subject of inequality and the distribution of wealth in America and Europe, dating back to the seventeenth century.  Admittedly, Piketty qualifies some of the early collection of data as anecdotal but at the same time has sought out all-available recorded records to track the distribution of wealth over three centuries. What is most troubling in the Piketty thesis is his substantiation of a mathematical paradigm that left unchecked , places  the concentration of wealth worldwide and particularly in the United States on an unstoppable course of disastrous inequality.  Not an exciting prospect. Piketty: ” If the growing concentration of income from labor that has been observed in the United States over the last few decades were to continue, the bottom 50% could earn just half as much in total compensation as the top 10% by 2030.”  In the United States, the most recent survey by the Federal Reserve, indicates that the top decile own 72 percent of America’s wealth,  of which the bottom half claim just 2% .  These figures clearly delineate the plight of the dwindling  middle class.  If the top ten percent  and the bottom 2 percent control 74 percent of all wealth in America, that leaves only 26% for everyone else! Fundamental to Piketty’s  thesis is that a predicted economic annual growth rate in America of 1.5 percent or less will force a greater concentration of wealth among the top decile because based upon a rate of return there will be no incentive to invest risk capital back into the economy.  The top ten percent can comfortably continue to invest capital at 4-5% ( with some hedge funds at 10-30%) and in essence keep these capital resources off the table in the hands of the super wealthy, further shrinking the middle class and decimating the lower class.  He also predicts that as future generations  of the wealthy mature, inherited wealth will be exclusively bequeathed, removing it from the general capitalistic economy, in the same manner as did the old European aristocracies.  Thus, a new American Aristocracy fueled by inherited wealth? Piketty: ” In my view, there is absolutely no doubt that the increase of inequality in the United States  prior to 2007 contributed to the nation’s financial instability. The reason is simple:  One consequence of increasing inequality was virtual stagnation of the purchasing power of the lower and middle classes in the United States , which inevitably  made it more likely that modest households would take on debt, especially since unscrupulous banks  and financial intermediaries, freed from regulation and eager to earn good yields on the enormous savings injected into the system by the well-to-do, offered  credit on increasingly generous terms.” ” If we consider the total growth of the U.S. economy in the thirty years prior to the crisis, we find that the richest appropriated three-quarters of the growth.The richest 1-percent absorbed 60 percent of the total increase of U.S. national income in this period.  It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups.” Capital In The Twenty First Century has raised considerably debate and the outright questioning of Piketty’s research and formulas ( r>g ). However, if you take him for his word, the forecast is not comforting and for sure,  don’t look for many rave reviews from the financial establishment! Unfortunately, if you have sensed something wrong with the economy, Piketty offers great insight but little comfort! Capital in The 21st Century  is well worth a major investment of time.

06.05.14
by

A NEW CHAPTER FOR PIKETTY’S CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY

I have not completed Tom Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. I will hasten to add that  after completing the first 250 pages  I may apply for an advanced Economics Degree.   The reward for wading through research and formulas going back 200 years does however come after the academics but in the early reading the news is not good regarding income inequality  globally and in America in particular.  More on that in a future posting with another 500 pages still to complete.

images

There is breaking news today that may require an additional chapter in Piketty’s book!

Please indulge my own interpretative headline.

U.S. APPEALS COURT DEEMS TRUTH IRRELEVANT!

I was not shocked at the U.S. Federal Appeals Court decision overturning Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s rejection of the settlement deal with Citigroup, claiming that the bank had got off with a mere slap on the wrist.  The three-judge panel yesterday said Rakoff got it wrong by applying an “ incorrect legal standard.” Citigroup now pays a fine and its business as usual.

The decision becomes even more frightening, at least to the layperson, when you peel back the details of the ruling! It seems to me that the three judges were searching for a rationale to support a foregone conclusion, much like Elmer Gantry could always find a passage in the Bible to support a point of view!

Judges Rosemary S. Pooler, Raymond J. Lohier Jr. and Susan L. Carney — concluded that it “is not within the district court’s purview to demand ‘cold, hard, solid facts. ”

The appellate court instead outlined a checklist for judges to follow when weighing enforcement cases, saying they must “determine whether the proposed consent decree is fair and reasonable, with the additional requirement that the public interest would not be dis-served.” 

What a stretch!  That the public interest would not be dis-served!  How is that for a parsing of words to avoid saying that the greater public interest should be served!  Your honors, please!

The final affront comes in this quote from the appellate decision.“ Trials are primarily about truth. Consent decrees are primarily about pragmatism.”

The bottom line is that three federal judges ruling deemed Judge Rakoff the “ skunk” at the Citigroup, S.E.C. party.

A final irony in this sordid affair is that the appellate court, in closing, questioned its own judgment!

“On remand, if the district court ( Rakoff)  finds it necessary, it may ask the S.E.C. and Citigroup to provide additional information ( the truth) sufficient to allay any concerns the district court may have regarding improper collusion” between Citigroup and the S.E.C.”  I think that Judge Rakoff made it quite clear that he had MANY CONCERNS!

This disingenuous decision may require an additional 50 pages in Tom Piketty’s already voluminous   Capital in the Twenty-First Century!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

06.03.14
by

REFLECTIONS ON D-DAY, JUNE 6, 1944

imgres-1

The 70th Anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, has obviously peaked interested in this monumental, historic event. There are two  books I would like to recommend to those who wish to pursue the historic details of this epic event and a third which offers important insight into the citizen soldiers so critical to the ultimate Allied Victory.  Two of these books are by the same author, historian Stephen E. Ambrose.
One of the most definitive and detailed histories of D-Day:  OVERLORD D-DAY AND THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY by  British Historian Max Hastings, first published in Great Britain  in 1984. Wrote the Englishman, ” Not the least remarkable aspect of the Second World War was the manner in which the United States, which might have been expected to regard the campaign in Europe as a diversion from the struggle against her principal aggressor, Japan, was persuaded to commit her chief strength in the west.  Not only that, but from December 1941 until June, 1944 it was the Americans who were passionately impatient to confront the German Army on the continent while the British, right up until the eve of D-Day, were haunted by the misgivings about doing do.”  “Why are we trying to do this? cried Winston Churchill.”

 

imgres

The author of Eisenhower, Stephen Ambrose,  wrote the quintessential  D-Day history:  D-DAY, JUNE 6, 1944, THE CLIMATIC BATTLE OF WORLD WAR II. First published in 1994 on the 50th anniversary of D-Day.  Dwight Eisenhower, ” The Fury of an aroused democracy.” Eisenhower on Omaha Beach in 1964 on the D-Day 20th Anniversary.  ” But it’s a wonderful thing to remember what those fellows twenty years ago were fighting for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve  our way of life. Not to conquer any territory, not for any ambitions of our own. But to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

imagesHow ordinary enlisted men’s ability to assume leadership turned the tide for the Allies:  Stephen E. Ambrose, CITIZEN SOLDIERS.  First published in 1997.  From the memoir of  Bruce Eggert who rose from private to staff sergeant: ” Not a man among us would want to go through it again, but were all proud of having been so severely tested and found adequate. The only regret is for those of our friends who never returned.”

Any of these volumes would make a wonderful Fathers Day gift for lovers of history. All are still available in hard cover and paperback editions.

 

05.19.14
by

FINANCIAL CRISIS BOOKS-TWO GREAT OVERVIEWS

The Sunday May 18th  New York Times carried two wonderful overviews of two current books on the financial crisis. If you are following this odyssey both articles are most worthwhile. Gretchen Morgenson’s Fair Game column, Geithner Staying on Script  dissected Geithner’s Stress Test  self-defense book with precision!  In my view no reporter is better than Morgenson in getting to the bottom of  complex financial issues and her article is enlightening and the conclusions on point.  Writes Morgenson,

images

“Mr. Geithner does do some introspection. “I did not view Wall Street as a cabal of idiots or crooks,” he writes. “My jobs mostly exposed me to talented senior bankers, and selection bias probably gave me an impression that the U.S. financial sector was more capable and ethical than it really was.” That’s as close as he gets to saying that he was wrong to trust — not question — bankers he encountered.

A final flaw: In his book, Mr. Geithner boasts that the bailouts he helped design have been profitable to taxpayers. But his calculations do not take into account the cost of capital that the taxpayers extended to the banks.

Concludes Morgenson

“As for the oversight mistakes that he and his regulatory colleagues made, Mr. Geithner essentially says “We were human.” But this fails to address head-on the possibility that he was a captured regulator, a man locked into the mind-set of the very bankers he was supposed to oversee.”

 

http://nyti.ms/1oADWtM

 

images-1

The second article, written by Binyamin  Appelbaum, The Case Against The Bernanke-Obama Financial Rescue, reviews a new book by Atif  Mian and Amir Sufi titled House of Debt.  The authors flatly accuse Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke of focusing only on preserving the financial system ( the banks).  From Appelbaum’s  article ”

“If you actually look at the argument that people like Mr. Geithner make, they almost always point to financial metrics like risk spreads and interest rates,” he said. “But if you look at the real economy, it just tends to come out in our favor.” Millions of Americans remain unemployed almost five years after the formal end of the recession.”

 

http://nyti.ms/1lwE9YE

I have not as yet read either Stress Test or House of Debt.  These two overviews are great previews and set the table for two more good reads on this complex subject, a story which has no ending.

 

 

 

 

 

03.31.14
by

The Barbarous Years – The Original American Immigrants

Pulitzer Prize winning author Bernard Bailyn writing The Barbarous Years opens a sweeping and authoritative discourse into the  peopling of North American between 1600 and 1675.  From Jamestown, Virginia to Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who were these individuals who braved three plus months voyages on small, crowded and disease infested ships to arrive at the edge of the American wilderness? You will learn not only who they were but why some succeeded while others were destined to fail.

images

No one needs tout Bailey’s credentials as historian and researcher. He is brilliant. However, what is most remarkable is his ability to keep the subject flowing, fascinating and understandable for the lay reader. Bailyn delivers in brilliant digital display the complexity and challenges of the people responsible for the early settlement of North America.

Think of this:

Why did the Jamestown fail numerous times?

Why did the Catholics establish a foothold in Maryland and the Finns and Swedes in Delaware?

Why did The Massachusetts Bay Colony begin to work from day one.? Was it religious fervor or the composition of the settlers themselves?

What role did the varied Native American tribes play in the success or failure of early settlement.

How did the Pilgrims differ from the Puritans and the aforementioned from the  Quakers and the Dutch?

Were indentured servants a precursor to slavery?

Winthrop, Bradford ,Stuyvesant, Keift, Underhill, King Philips War.

The Barbarous Years that marked the original settling of America is a most accurate title for the book. Adventurers, scoundrels, orphans, preachers, doctors, lawyers, Native Americans, politicians, merchants and perhaps most important, the hundreds of unnamed families with children who came to America during the Great Migration of the 1630s , bringing with them the skills and the ethic to permanently settle on the land.

The ” New World” was British North America during its early settlement but Bailyn clearly identifies the complexity of cultures, trade and geography that would eventually become America. The Barbarous Years is a fabulous foundation for understanding colonial America’s formative years. Also by Bernard Bailyn: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, and Voyages to the West, which won a Pulitzer.

A wonderful different perspective of the  settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony comes from reading Anya Seton’s historical novel Winthrop Women. Search Gordonsgoodreads.com

 

03.13.14
by

BEN CARSON’S VIEW OF AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

Two pieces of information converged upon me this week.  A family member sent me a book,America The Beautiful, written by acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson.  Simultaneously I learned that in the straw poll at the CPAC conference in Washington that Carson finished third in the presidential poll behind Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.  Surprisingly he ranked ahead of Chris Christie!  I quickly turned to the book.

imagesBen Carson is an African-American who has distinguished himself in the medical profession after rising up from a childhood of poverty in Boston and Detroit to live the American Dream. He is also a much sought after speaker.  Without question Carson is a conservative with his credentials and beliefs clearly outlined in America The Beautiful.   He is also a devout Christian and strongly connects his social and political views to his belief in God. The book details much of Carson’s philosophy and substantiates many of his views with the historical founding fathers references to a higher power.

If Carson becomes a greater factor in Republican politics you may wish to read his narrative, and learn why he is at the opposite end of the spectrum from President Obama.  In some parts of the book Carson becomes a political moderate while elsewhere he rings the clarion that America is moving toward socialism and expresses great fears that President Obama’s desire to redistribute wealth will guarantee that outcome.

Carson willingly credits America’s social support system as playing a vital role in his own rise from poverty while at the same time he decries a welfare system that he believes spawns laziness. However, in an odd twist, he calls for nationalizing the health care system with the government limiting insurance company profits and establishing rates for hospital and medical services! Sounds a bit like Obama Care.

Dr. Carson poses an interesting option when looking at the Republican field of 2016 presidential candidates. Clearly he is very conservative but in comparison to Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and even Ted Cruz and Ron Paul he is a moderate!

American The Beautiful was among the New York Times Best Sellers for many weeks.  If you are interested in following the GOP political mix this book is a good choice. My guess is that the country will be hearing more from Ben Carson.