Title

Taking on the world : Joseph and Stewart Alsop--guardians of the American century

Description

In 1948 the column-writing Alsop brothers produced an article for the Saturday Evening Post, then the country's preeminent weekly magazine. Its title: "Must America Save the World?" Their answer was a resounding yes. Indeed, Joseph and Stewart Alsop were there in those heady postwar years when the country's foreign-policy elite created what became known as the American Century. As men of words, they served as confidants of and cheerleaders for the men of deeds, who came largely from the country's patrician class. The Alsop brothers were themselves sons of this class. Theodore Roosevelt was the brothers' great-uncle. Eleanor Roosevelt was their mother's first cousin. They grew up with members of this Anglo-Saxon elite, went to school with them, socialized with them. And they threw the considerable weight of their column behind the efforts of these statesmen to refashion the world. Writing four times a week, they appeared in nearly two hundred newspapers; their work also graced the pages of the major magazines of the time. Thus, they wielded immense influence throughout the nation from the victory in World War II to the defeat in Vietnam. Stewart was a political analyst of rare acumen, while Joe, his older brother, was a curmudgeon with an aristocratic bearing and a biting wit. He once likened a dinner at Lyndon Johnson's to "going to an opera in which one man sings all the parts." He was a friend and confidant of John Kennedy, a teacher of Washington ways to Jackie Kennedy. When he called people in the highest echelons of officialdom, they responded. In Taking On the World, Robert W. Merry, a Washington insider himself, has fashioned an intricate and fascinating combination of biography and narrative history. As Mr. Merry puts it, "Within the lifetime of the Alsop brothers the country was remade. And its remaking illuminates their careers, just as their careers illuminate the American Century." Robert Merry casts brilliant light on these two remarkable men, and on one of the most tumultuous periods of the country's history.

Identifier

658519

670838683

Creator

Merry, Robert W

Source

Brian Lamb Booknotes Collection

Gift of Brian Lamb, 2011.

Catalog record

Language

eng

Date

1996

Program air date: March 24, 1996

Publisher

Viking

George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections & Archives

Subject

"Alsop, Joseph, 1910-1989."

"Alsop, Stewart."

"Journalists--United States--Biography."

"Press and politics--United States--History--20th century"

Relation

Original Booknotes interview

Rights

This work may be protected by copyright laws and is provided for educational and research purposes only. Any infringing use may be subject to disciplinary action and/or civil or criminal liability as provided by law. If you believe that you are the rights-holder and object to Mason’s use of this image, please contact speccoll@gmu.edu.

Text

Notes on front endpaper: Joe's party for King Hussein, the joint column-reporting. A lot of drinking! Lippmann/Joe A./Limbaugh. Joe on Vietnam--He had no TV. Missile gap. Kennedy GT house 341 v. Billy Patten's wife's Waco family 490. Anglo Saxon-Anglophilia. Isaiah Berlin. The Acheson relationship 183, 184. Underlinings/Notes: Underlinings: Lamb underlines notable names, places important to the family, descriptions of people, details about schools, Anglophilia, events during WWII, writing, relationships with Kennedys and the Georgetown Set, CIA, politics, careers. Notes: "Father," "Joe's wartime diaries," "mother," "1961 Joe 50; Stewart 46," "Joe-Harvard," "Stewart-Yale," "Tish 18 yrs old, he was 30," "Susan Mary," "King Hussein," "LBJ v. Bobby," "Joe's weight," "Summer '41" "Corinne meets FDR," "no army failed exam," "Tom Braden" "York," "Meeting Tish," "Stewart not enough money for Tish," "the jump," "Tish pregnant to Avon 1/4/45," "to join forces with his brother," "a book about OSS," "column," "a butler, a maid," "Sunday night supper," "cooking class," "dancing class," "57 papers," "1946 1st year earnings," "letter to Lucius Clay," "Perle Mesta," "Tom Dewey," "Truman," "Johnson for Forrestal," "Joe to Johnson," "the Soviet threat," "Tish's drinking," "Liar columns," "Louis Johnson 1950," "Joe fearless reporter," "MacArthur," "Stewart interview," "Joe letter to Nixon," "LBJ," "feud over books," "the book," "missile gap," "for LBJ 1960," "Phil Graham for LBJ for VP," "Susan Mary," "CIA connections," "Saturday Evening Post," "Bay of Pigs," "a new Stewart column," "Phil Graham suicide Aug '63," "Joe 'a born bully,'" "Nhu 'mad'," "Joe guilt," "JFK shot sobbing," "June 64 dinner LBJ," "anger," "no more W.H. invites," "1970 Billy Patten marries Kate Bacon," "1972 Kay Graham criticized the column," "$49 to Nixon," "Chou," "3 hours," "Joe seduced," "Feb 1972 platelets," "life's lesson," "1974," "Joe on John Dear," "Joe's personal life," "Anne step-daughter," "175 newspapers," "a dying man," "April 8, last column 60 years old," "1989 died 78," "elite in decline," "Vietnam," "passing of the Anglo Saxon," "The American century.”