It is no surprise that Percival Everett’sJames is leading multiple Best Seller Lists. A ride on a raft on the muddy Mississippi with Jim and Huck misses absolutely nothing of the strife and life of slaves and their society of oppressors in the American South. The dialogue is real:
Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gotta hab a rule to tell ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good splaIned to ya, den ya cain’t be good. Good ain’t got nuttin to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”
Funny, humorous and always insightful Percival James has delivered a brilliant portrait as the sounds, words, and message echo in the reader’s mind long after the cover is closed. Why of course.
He created ” New Journalism”. He changed the work of a columnist from punditry to storytelling.Jimmy Breslin was unique, one of a kind, and the biography by Richard EspositoJIMMY BRESLIN The Man Who Told The Truth is excellent. Son of Sam, Kennedy Assassination, The Central Park Five,the big stories and those of the lessor known that make up the fabric of New York City.
Breslin was not an easy man to either live or work with and Esposito defines him perfectly. ” Nearly everyone who met him has a Breslin story: Pugnacious, Passionate, Bombastic, Bully Buffoon, Heavy drinking, Grandstanding miserable bastard. With all of this baggage Breslin was the very best at The Trib, The Herald, The Herald Tribune, The Daily News, New York Newsday. He wrote in great company, Pete Hamill, Tom Wolfe, and in the shadow of Damon Runyon.
His columns rose from the neighborhoods of New York, especially his home turf in Queens. Tips and clues came from neighborhood bars eschewing news releases. He was a street reporter disappearing into where the stories and truths morphed into his columns. Breslin was rarely in the newsroom and then only at deadline. With whom did Son of Sam communicate? J.B. of course. Who had the insight to enlighten us of the “Gravedigger” and of the Priest who gave the Last Rights upon the death and burial of John Kennedy. Breslin with his great “storytelling” so often missed by others in a sea of ink, photos and noise.
In many ways JIMMY BRESLIN is a story of New York, by a New Yorker, for New Yorkers. It is a kaleidoscope of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and Esposito doesn’t miss an important player of scene. One great storyteller recognizes another.
If you feel the need, perhaps you do not, there are two important current biographies of these two men who are at the forefront of the news. Confidence Man ( Donald Trump) by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, and Walter Isaacson’sElon Musk. Great first hand personal research and objective reporting. The best!
Here you go!
You can read my take on these two books here at gordonsgoodreads.
In the 1850s, just prior to the Civil War at the height of the Cotton Kingdom and the southern slave society, a young Frederick Law Olmsted, just employed as a reporter for the fledgling New York Times was sent on a mission to report on the nature, culture and society of the American South. He had previously been wandering through Europe seeking a sense of personal direction.
But this was a real job with a paycheck, expectations and deadlines. Olmsted took his brother on what turned out to be two separate trips, the first into the eastern southern states and the second a year later a more adventurous journey through Kentucky then on to Tennessee and East and West Texas. Travel was by riverboat , trail horseback and foot.
Olmsted delivered hundreds of insightful detailed dispatches to theTimes over these two years. Southern society, the cruelty of slavery, the grandiose lifestyles of plantation owners and of course of lasting impact on his future career, the American natural landscape. His political philosophy was sharpened by the early German settlers of the West Texas Hill Country and the southern gentry slave holders and their progeny. He and his brother enthusiastically tasted heritage cuisines in Cajun and Creole Country, and African in the deep south and came to an understanding of their cultural origins
Tony Horwitz in Spying on the South takes it upon himself to recreate step by step Olmsted’s two journeys. With some of the original manuscripts in hand he attempts to re-imagine what Olmsted observed 150 years earlier, admittedly an almost impossible task. In some respect everything had changed, pavement, highways, strip malls. I other cases, nothing changed. Attitudes, economic disparity, political divisions and yes the wonderful cuisines of the south remained. Did Howritz capture Olmsted’s trip? That was a tall order. However, Horwitz’s trek on pack mules in West Texas likely came closest to the Olmsted experience!
Frederick Law Olmsted went on to develop a world renown reputation as a landscape architect and an advocate for public lands and shared spaces. Central Park is considered among his masterpieces from both a social and a landscape perspective. Without question the Olmsted design and social imprimatur was deeply nurtured by his two adventures in the pre Civil War American South.
For more on Frederick Law Olmsted see gordonsgoodreads.com Olmsted & Yosemite.
Lindsay M. Chervinski’s book MAKING THE PRESIDENCY/ John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic is a must read for its relevance to the historical perspective of the Electoral College and the precedent of the election of John Adams as its relates to the controversies of 2020 and 2024.
Chervinski has produced a great academic yet entertaining work in understanding the historic perspective of our electoral process through the lens of John Adams and the hotly contested election of first Adams himself succeeding George Washington and then his loss to Thomas Jefferson in his bid for a second term.
The author elevates the contributions of John Adams to our democracy and in his defining of the early powers of the presidency. It is a case study of the implications of the Alien and Sedition Acts, the establishment of highly partisan political parties in the election process and the fascinating intrigue and plotting of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Both unlikely bedfellows in the bitter Jefferson-Adams electoral contest.
” History repeats itself ” can become a cliche. After reading MAKING THE PRESIDENCY you will quickly see how history can fast forward.
For those in Massachusetts or nearby, Revolutionary Spaces is hosting a discussion with Lindsay Chervinsky on Thursday, November 21 at 1PM at Old South Meeting House in Boston. For reservations go to revolutionary spaces.org There is no charge for admission.
If you are like anxiously waiting for the next installment of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson,WORKING by the author himself will help with your understanding of why patience is necessary. In this book Caro describedsin depth his approach to research and writing. His fundamental research ethos is Turn Every Page, a discipline dating back to his early days as a newspaper reporter.
If you are a follower of Caro’s work this book is an essential read that is most enlightening of Caro and also the enormous contributions made by his wife Ina.
With regard to the release date of the final Lyndon Johnson book the code word is patience knowing that the master is WORKING!
A new Jack Ryan Novel in the Red October genre, this edition written by Brian Andrews and JeffreyWilson. Everything would expect from a Clancy adventure, this time featuring the president and his daughter.
Hard to believe it was forty years ago when Clancy’s Hunt for Red October was first published. Like all series the adventures can often be challenging to maintain but Andrews and Wilson give this quick read their best effort.
You can see overviews of nearly all of Clancy here at Gordons Good Reads. I have read and enjoyed them all.
John Swanson Jacobs, son of Harriet Jacobs both of whom escaped slavery, is now available in a rediscovered narrative titled A TRUE STORY OF SLAVERY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNED BY SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS.
The book goes far beyond Jacob’s bondage and escape there from to crystallize his views on the very government and the US Constitution that allowed the institution to continue and thrive through the end of the Civil War. Jacob’s SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DESPOTS are clearly defined by his narrative as the white American oligarchy that that allowed and supported slavery’s existence. In his own words, Jacobs holds all American citizens, North and South accountable for writing -absolute rule over an unfree people- into the democratic charter. Jacob’s narrative is one of the very few first hand accounts of slavery that survive, including his mother’s Harriet Jacob’s INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL and also the NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AN AMErICAN SLAVE. Before leaving America for Australia and then a life at sea he briefly joined the lecture circuit with Frederick Douglas. The book also includes a biography of Jacobs by Jonathan Schroeder titled NO LONGER YOURS.
Another important Juneteenth volume is Matthew Stewart’sAN EMANCIPATION OF THE MIND RADICAL PHILOSOPHY, THE WAR OVER SLAVERY, AND THE REFOUNDING OF AMERICA.
This volume is a highly charged analysis of how government, the white oligarchy, American’s prominent religious denominations and the economics of the plantation/cotton economy forced and kept four million human beings in bondage. In the effort to dominate the national political system the slaveholders were able to count on the antidemocratic aspects of the US Constitution: The overrepresentation of the small states in the Senate and the Electoral College; the growing power of the unelected judiciary: and the absence on meaningful checks on the corruption of state governments.
Of great interest to this reader was the influence of German revolutionaries, progressives and intellectuals upon the American abolitionist movement. They called themselves the 48ERS, having been among the some 10,000 Germans emigrating to America during that period. They included Friedrich Knapp, Ludwig Feuerbach, journalist Ottilie Assign, August Willich, Carl Schurz and many others. There were some 10,000 German immigrants living in the Ohio Valley by the start of the Civil War whose abolitionist views were made well known to President Lincoln.
Two volumes written over 250 years apart, one by an escaped slave the other by a modern day historian zero in on the same underlying issues that allowed slavery to exist and in some cases remain a threat to American democracy to this very day. I can think of two more timely reads.
Gordons Goodreads along with countless books, movies and streaming documentaries have delved deeply into the European and Pacific Theaters of The Second World War. Caroline Alexander’s new work of non-fiction SKIES OF THUNDER takes the reader to a relatively lesser known WWII Theater, the BURMA HUMP.
During WWII one of the most deadly missions of the war flew hundreds of tons of supplies from India to China over the treacherous airoute above the Himalayas and the northern deep jungles of of Burma. (Now Myanmar). FDR was determined to supply the Nationalist Chinese Army to prevent a Japanese takeover of China. China’s Nationalist leader was none other than Chiang-Kai-shek. With the old Burma Road not accessible, the only supply access was by air. The flying conditions brought about by weather including the annual Monsoons, high altitude icing and the dangerous Himalayan peaks made for nearly impossible flying conditions. But fly they must and hundreds lost their lives.
Alexander’s writing and research has no mercy for the military commanders in charge. Vinegar Joe Stilwell’s and Claire Lee Chennault’s ( Flying Tigers fame) reputations are left in tatters. Chiang-Kai-shek’s strongest supporter was perhaps FDR himself. The project became rife with a black market of American supplies. Through it all hundreds of brave pilots gave their lives, many bodies never recovered from snow covered mountain slopes and deep unexplored jungle.
Exactly what did the Hump accomplish? It demonstrated conclusively that a vast quantity of cargo could be delivered by air even under the most unfavorable circumstances if leadership was willing to pay the price in men and money. A Japanese takeover of China was prevented and millions of Japanese troops were diverted from the Pacific Theater to China. However, following the war, Chiang Ki-shek’s Nationalist Government ultimately fell to the Communists leaving the United States with Formosa which is now Taiwan.
Anderson Cooper gave the perfect description of Doris Kearns Goodwin when he called her a national treasure. His quote appears on the dust cover of Kearns Goodwin’s new book AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY, A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE 1960S.
Richard Goodwin while in his twenties and early thirties was a speechwriter and inner circle advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and then later to Robert F. Kennedy. For years, all of Goodwin’s personal papers of the era sat collected in some thirty boxes stored in the Kearns Goodwin home at Concord, Massachusetts. In their later years after over 40 years of marriage Richard in his 80s and Kearns in her seventies decided it was time to open the boxes and write his personal history. By this time Kearns had established herself as among the most prestigious of presidential Pulitzer Prize winning historians. ( Search Gordons GoodReads).
What is remarkable about this book is the insiders look behind the scenes of the personalities and the inner workings of the campaigns and administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Added to the narrative is the disruptive force of Robert Kennedy and how Richard Goodwin navigated his mixed loyalties. Those loyalties of course spilled over into the Kearns/Goodwin love story, she being an ardent loyalist of Johnson and Richard having left the Johnson inner circle for Bobby Kennedy’s ill fated primary campaign against LBJ.
The reader learns of the beginnings of the Peace Corps ( an off the cuff-JFK speech in Michigan), the LBJ Great Society the inside strategy of the Voting Rights Act, The Civil Rights Act and LBJ’s famous joint session of Congress speech in which Goodwin co-opted Martin Luther King’s We shall overcome. Insight into the transition from the Kennedy to the Johnson administration after JFK’s death evoke a combination of anger and empathy. The Robert Kennedy personality for all of its strength and weaknesses is on abundant display.
A remarkable aspect of AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY is the lesson learned of how great writers and politicians learn how complicated and controversial legislation can be properly packaged and themed to insure success. Kennedy, Goodwin and LBJ were a brilliant combination in fulfilling this task.
As readers of Gordons Good Reads surely know I too elevate Doris Kearns Goodwin as a National Treasure. AN UNFINISHED LOVE STORY IS a must read for those interested in American political history of the 1960S.
Gordon's Good Reads 