Booknotes

Items

• America's jubilee

  On July 4, 1826, the United States celebrated its fiftieth birthday with parades and speeches across the country. But what ultimately sanctified the national jubilee in the minds of the celebrants was an extraordinary coincidence: the nearly simultaneous deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, the last pillars of the original republic, already venerated as legends in their own time. It was a watershed in the nation's history, a bright moment when the successors to the Revolutionary dream examined their own lives as they took inspiration from and found nostalgia in the accomplishments of the founders. "In this book, the distinguished historian Andrew Burstein explores what it was to be an American in 1826. Drawing on private diaries and letters, daily newspapers, and long-buried publications, he shows us the personal lives behind the pageantry and reveals an acutely self-conscious nation - anxiously optimistic about its future, eager to romanticize the Revolutionary past." "In this portrait of the United States in its jubilee year, Burstein shows how 1826 marked an unforgettable time in the republic's history, when a generation embraced the legacy of its predecessors and sought to enlarge its role in America's story."--BOOK JACKET.
• Reagan, in his own hand

  Consists largely of radio addresses written from 1975-1979.
• Niccolò's smile : a biography of Machiavelli

  In Niccolo's Smile, Maurizio Viroli brings to life the fascinating writer who was the founder of modern political thought. Niccolo Machiavelli's works on the theory and practice of statecraft are classics, but Viroli suggests that his greatest accomplishment is his robust philosophy of life - his deep beliefs about how one should conduct oneself as a modern citizen in a republic, as a responsible family member, as a good person. On these subjects Machiavelli wrote no books; the text of his philosophy is his life itself, a life that was filled with paradox, uncertainty, and tragic drama.--BOOK JACKET.
• Jefferson Davis, American

  West Point graduate, secretary of war under President Pierce, U.S. senator from Mississippi - how was it that this statesman and patriot came to be president of the Confederacy, leading the struggle to destroy the United States? This is the question at the center of William Cooper's biography of Jefferson Davis. Basing his account on the massive archival record left by Davis and his family and associates, Cooper delves not only into the events of Davis's public and personal life but also into the ideas that shaped and compelled him.--BOOK JACKET.
• America afire : Jefferson, Adams, and the revolutionary election of 1800

  Narrates the presidential election of 1800 and its impact on American history, drawing in elements such as the friendship between Adams and Jefferson, the beginnings of government under the Constitution, and partisan warfare.
• Orwell : wintry conscience of a generation

  Biography of George Orwell by Jeffrey Myers.
• The inextinguishable symphony : a true story of music and love in Nazi Germany

  Set amid the growing tyranny of German's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Gunther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who strugged to perform under unimaginable circumstances - and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.
• Ho Chi Minh

  Describes Ho Chi Minh's poverty-stricken youth, his expatriate years in the U.S., France, and the Soviet Union, and his commitment to the Vietnamese revolution and reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule.
• The informant : a true story

  Chronicles the FBI's attempts to infiltrate one of America's most powerful corporations, using information supplied to them by one of the company's employees.
• Beer and circus : how big-time college sports is crippling undergraduate education

  Murray Sperber takes us beyond the headlines and the public controversies to explore the profound and tragic impact of big-time intercollegiate athletics on undergraduate education. Sperber explodes cherished myths about college sports, particularly at Big-time U's," the large public research universities with high-profile men's football and basketball teams playing at the top level of the NCAA."."Using research culled from students, faculty, and administrators around the country, Sperber proves that many schools, because of their emphasis on research and graduate programs, no longer give the majority of their undergraduates a meaningful education. What they offer instead is a meager and dangerous substitute: the party scene surrounding college sports that Sperber calls "beer and circus" and which serves to keep the students happy while tuition dollars keep rolling in."."Sperber explains how this beer-and-circus scene has evolved over many generations. He details the pernicious roles of the media and corporations looking to tap into the lucrative student market, raising the particular concern of the current epidemic of student binge drinking, which in many ways results from these complex factors."--BOOK JACKET.
• Boundaries

  Work by Maya Lin which explores her personal strategy for achieving balance in her work and life.
• The virtue of prosperity : finding values in an age of techno-affluence

  Discusses the potential problems of technological advancement in America, such as class conflict and transformation of the human race due to life-span lengthening and parents' choosing children's genetic makeups, and proposes ways of using technology to promote overall prosperity while preserving values.
• Tip O'Neill and the Democratic century

  The towering figure of the postwar Democratic Party, Thomas Tip" O'Neill was one of the last of the great political warhorses, a man who cared as much about his family and friends as he did about the issues, someone who knew how to have a good time and do a good deed. Now, based on previously untapped records, interviews, and private correspondence, prizewinning journalist John A. Farrell gives us the first full-scale biography of this legendary American: a garrulous legislative titan who fought with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich and prevailed because he never forgot where he came from." "In Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century John Farrell has crafted an epic biography, not just of a person, but of politics. Full of larger-than-life personalities and historic moments, it is a grand waltz through the corridors and back rooms of American power. And like Tip himself, Farrell's dazzling book is majestic, powerful, important, and utterly winning."--BOOK JACKET.
• Hirohito and the making of modern Japan

  A biography of the Japanese emperor reveals a powerful man who successfully cultivated an image of a reluctant king while manipulating important events behind the scenes for five decades.
• Promise and power : the life and times of Robert McNamara

  Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara is the first major biography, and only complete history, of this enigmatic man who has been a towering figure of the twentieth century. Here is the dramatic story of a brilliant but flawed leader who struggled endlessly to reconcile his Berkeley-bred social conscience with his raw drive for power. From his position as the wunderkind president of the Ford Motor Company, to his reign as secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, through his efforts as the president of the World Bank, Deborah Shapley paints an electric portrait of Robert Strange McNamara. To a generation of Americans, the name McNamara spells a nightmare in jungle green: Vietnam. Promise and Power traces how McNamara shaped the American commitment in Vietnam - and his devastating inner realization of his error. McNamara has remained silent on the war since February 1968, when he stepped down as America's secretary of defense, but in this book, for the first time, he admits, "The greatest failure of all was Vietnam." Promise and Power shows, as no other book has, how the moral ambiguity all Americans feel about Vietnam's shocking result is shared by the man who led them there. But McNamara's life story spans a wider swath of our history. Shapley describes his roots in the generation of Americans who came of age in the 1930s, his upbringing in the plain town of Oakland, California, and formative years at the liberal Berkeley campus and Harvard Business School. After World War II, talent and raw ambition pushed him to the top of Ford; he became president in 1960 and reshaped the organization. Yet he fought the company's values, too, and drew up plans to change Ford to meet foreign competition - revealed here for the first time. McNamara's fame as a captain of industry who also read Teilhard de Chardin spurred President-elect John F. Kennedy to name him secretary of defense. With Camelot-inspired activism, McNamara used management controls to revolutionize the American military, revealing the driven man whom the press dubbed "I've-Got-All-the-Answers McNamara." Promise and Power is the first profile of how McNamara was changed by failure and by the discovery all Americans made in the 1970s of the strength and power of the Third World. As president of the World Bank, McNamara marched through slums and shantytowns, holding out the promise of effective aid. He either saved the Third World or lost it, depending, of course, on which government's or banker's view is believed. Promise and Power, featuring exclusive interviews with the subject himself and four hundred other participants, and meticulous research, explores the effects of war and remembrance on this complex figure. Robert McNamara, the private individual and the public technocrat, stands before us, in light and shadow, as a remarkable man whose own promise and power changed America, and the world.
• The conservative crack-up

  R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s commentary of the state of conservatism during the 1990s.
• The lone star : the life of John Connally

  A biography of Connally's life includes his twenty years of political power, his return to Texas and riches, and then bankruptcy.
• The ends of the earth : a journey at the dawn of the 21st century

  In The Ends of the Earth, Robert D. Kaplan travels from the devastated countries of West Africa and the fundamentalist enclaves of Egypt and Iran to the culturally explosive lands of Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia with hardly more than a notebook and a backpack. Kaplan's intention was to investigate firsthand the effect of population explosion and environmental degradation in these countries and to see how the various cultures he encountered responded to them. But as he traveled, talking to gun smugglers and government ministers, warlords and shantytown dwellers, he discovered that the real problem, in places as far afield as Sierra Leone and western China, was the reemergence of longstanding cultural rivalries and the dissolution of national boundaries as regions redefine themselves along ethnic and historic lines.Kaplan's ground-level experiences allow him to avoid grandiose generalizations about the clash of civilizations and to replace them with intimate portraits of the men and women he encounters: Rafighdoost, Khomeini's fiercely loyal chauffeur; Ali Abdel Razag, keeper of the Aswan High Dam; and Ayshe Tanrikulu, a squatter on Golden Mountain, a shantytown on the outskirts of Ankara, who hopes that her sons will one day be doctors or engineers. It is in the squalor of daily existence and in people's fears, frustrations, and dreams that Kaplan looks for the key to a country's future. The Ends of the Earth offers an intimate portrait of the devastated parts of the world, whose cultural disasters - like those in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda today - will dominate our attention and remake the world of tomorrow.
• Ernie Pyle's war : America's eyewitness to World War II

  When a machine-gun bullet ended the life of war correspondent Ernie Pyle in the final days of World War II, Americans mourned him in the same breath as they mourned Franklin Roosevelt. To millions, the loss of this American folk hero seemed nearly and great as the loss of the wartime president. If the hidden horrors and valor of combat persist at all in the public mind, it is because of those writers who watched it and recorded it in the faith that war is too important to be confined to the private memories of the warriors. Above all these writers, Ernie Pyle towered as a giant. Through his words ad his compassion, Americans everywhere gleaned their understanding of what they came to call "The Good War." Pyle walked a troubled path to fame. Though insecure and anxious, he created a carefree and kindly public image in his popular prewar column - all the while struggling with inner demons and a tortured marriage. War, in fact, offered. Pyle an escape hatch from his own personal hell. It also offered him a subject precisely suited to his talent - a shrewd understanding of human nature, an unmatched eye for detail, a profound capacity to identify with the suffering soldiers whom he adopted as his own, and a plain yet poetic style reminiscent of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. These he brought to bear on the Battle of Britain and all the great American campaigns of the war - North Africa, Sicily, Italy, D-Day, and Normandy, the liberation of Paris, and finally Okinawa, where he felt compelled to go because of his enormous public stature despite premonitions of death.
• Russia transformed : breakthrough to hope : Moscow, August 1991

  James Billington examines the changes that have occurred in the former Soviet Union over recent years.
• Fools' names, fools' faces

  Andrew Ferguson's collection of thirty-two essays reprinted from the New Republic, the Wall Street Journal and other publications.
• Nixon off the record

  With fully reconstructed conversations based on extensive notes made at the time, Nixon off the Record puts the reader in the room with the thirty-seventh president, listening to his views on leadership, his opinions of White House predecessors and successors, his activities and thoughts during the 1992 presidential campaign and election, and his assessment of Bill Clinton's first year in office and his potential challengers in 1996. Nixon's views give voters uncommon criteria by which to measure presidential candidates - including Bob Dole - and their ability to exercise effective leadership. Richard Nixon was one of the most controversial and indestructible presidents of the twentieth century. With her privileged perspective and unlimited access to Nixon, Crowley has written a perceptive and spirited memoir that shows not just what Nixon thought in the last years of his life but who he was. She offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of Nixon's activities and opinions, giving the reader a front-row view of recent American political history. Nixon's unparalleled experience placed him in a unique position to judge leaders who had come before and after. His assessments are candid, astonishing, and sometimes explosive. This book places those judgments in context and brings them alive for the last American presidential election of the twentieth century.
• For the children : lessons from a visionary principal

  Educator Madeline Cartwright explains how she transformed a public school and shares her secrets and hopes for all public schools.
• Fortunate son : the autobiography of Lewis B. Puller, Jr.

  A Vietnam veteran who lost both legs and a hand in the Vietnam War recounts his homecoming and his attempts to come to terms with his life.
• Conspiracy : how the paranoid style flourishes and where it comes from

  Was AIDS intentionally inflicted upon blacks by whites? Was JFK assassinated as part of an intricate conspiracy? Daniel Pipes traces conspiracy theories through history and convincingly shows how they have been used as common tools of mass manipulation in the West and have more recently cropped up in the Third World and among disempowered fringe groups.