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The other biographies I've read by Harlow Giles Unger were all clearly biased favorably towards his subjects, but this biography of John Marshall is t
The other biographies I've read by Harlow Giles Unger were all clearly biased favorably towards his subjects, but this biography of John Marshall is the most blatant apple-polishing of a historical figure I've read yet. Not only does Unger practically attach a halo to John Marshall's head, he casts a clear villain in the story: Thomas Jefferson. Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton was not particularly flattering to Jefferson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical cast Jefferson as Hamilton's antagonist, but Harlow Giles Unger frequently strips away objectivity in declaring Jefferson cowardly, disingenuous, treasonous, meddling, and generally representing just about everything he did as self-serving and disingenuous, especially when it was in opposition to John Marshall. And I am broadly sympathetic to Unger's POV here. John Marshall was a Federalist who established the independence and equal stature of the Supreme Court, at a time when Jefferson wanted the United States to be no more than a confederation, and the judiciary to be completely subordinate to executive power. From reading previous Founding Father histories, I was already predisposed to dislike Jefferson. Nonetheless, it was notable in this book that everything John Marshall did was wise and principled and patriotic (oh yeah and he owned slaves *cough* *cough*) and everyone who disagreed with him was either Thomas Jefferson or a puppet of Jefferson. Unger really pulls out all the stops in vilifying Jefferson. When our old muckraking friend James T. Callender shows up (he was the guy who exposed Alexander Hamilton's infidelity and Thomas Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemmings), Unger all but accuses Jefferson of having him killed. (Callender, a known drunkard, was found drowned in the James River, and while the timing of his death was convenient and he had no shortage of enemies, there does not seem to have been any actual evidence that he was murdered.) John Marshall's father surveyed the colonial frontier with a young George Washington. John Marshall became a surveyor himself, which was a profitable career at that time, before he became a lawyer. When the Revolutionary War rolled around, Marshall served in the Continental Army, rising to the rank of Colonel. The story of John Marshall meeting his wife, Polly Ambler, who would be the love of his life for the next fifty years, is a sweet and charming love story with an asterisk. He was a young officer who had been invited with several others to attend a ball being thrown by the wealthy Jaquelin Ambler, who had several eligible daughters to show off. They were all very excited to meet the dashing officer, until Marshall stumbled in, haggard, badly dressed, unwashed, unshaven, his uniform much the worse for wear... in other words, he looked like a soldier just coming in from the field. The Ambler sisters were unimpressed... except for fourteen-year-old Polly, who wasn't supposed to be there because she was too young. But she snuck into the ball, met John Marshall, and they fell in love... Yup, 26-year-old John Marshall wooed a fourteen-year-old. This was, of course, not so eyebrow-raising back then, but it certainly got a raised eyebrow from me as Unger waxed on about the saintly Marshall. Polly would prove to be an anxious, fragile woman. Like many women of her time, she spent much of her life pregnant, and suffered multiple miscarriages. This took a severe toll on her physical and mental health, and though John was a devoted husband (even Polly's sisters eventually came to like him), she seemed to live much of her life either recovering from illness or difficult pregnancies, or being terrified for her husband's safety. John Marshall's political career began in the Virginia state legislature, where he defended the ratification of the Constitution, even standing up to the venerable Patrick Henry and calling him a hypocrite at one point. Under President Adams, Marshall was asked to go to France to try to negotiate peace during the "Quasi-War" with Revolutionary France. He was one of the American envoys who was solicited for a bribe by agents of French Minister Tallyrand in what became known as the XYZ Affair. Marshall was one of the few people who came out looking good to the American public. Not so much to his wife, though. While in France, Marshall and his fellow American envoys were put up in the luxurious estate of a wealthy French lady who they thought was just the nicest mademoiselle ever, until they found out she was more of a madam � literally a courtesan in Tallyrand's employ. John Marshall, so far as is known, never succumbed to the little fille's advances, but he made the mistake of writing home about how gay Paris was and the lovely house and the nice lady he was staying with, while Polly was suffering from another failed pregnancy and separation anxiety. It did not go over well. Polly became convinced her husband was being seduced by a fancy French trollop, which did nothing for her mental health. When he returned home, he reunited with his wife, convinced her he had not been out on the town with French courtesans, and ran for Congress. In 1800, John Adams made Marshall Secretary of State, and Marshall was widely considered a future contender for President. Then came the split in the Federalist Party, precipitated by Alexander Hamilton's dislike of both Adams and Jefferson. Realizing that he had probably lost reelection, in the waning days of his administration, John Adams appointed John Marshall to the Supreme Court. (Marshall was not, in fact, Adams' first choice, but John Jay, his first pick, turned it down.) For the man who would later become a stalwart defender of the Constitution, Unger does point out that under Adams, John Marshall was given a vast amount of power that the Constitution does not delegate to the Secretary of State. Adams literally made Marshall his proxy. Along with Marshall, Adams also filled the federal courts with Federalists, who would become known as "midnight judges," and be a source of contention and some of the Supreme Court's biggest legal battles under the Jefferson administration. John Marshall basically created the Supreme Court as we know it today. The Supreme Court is defined in Article III of the Constitution, but it was left to Congress to organize it, and initially, it wasn't a significant part of the government. In the 11 years before John Marshall took the bench, the Supreme Court had decided 11 cases, none of them particularly significant to the country overall. Then came Thomas Jefferson, who as Unger describes it, basically went about trying to strip all power from anyone who opposed him. He started by trying to undo everything the Federalists had done, including John Adams' "midnight judges." He didn't have the Constitutional power to undo judicial nominations that had been confirmed by the Senate, so instead, he simply refused to deliver their commissions. One of the judges who had effectively been prevented from taking the bench he'd been appointed to, William Marbury, filed suit against Secretary of State James Madison (who was technically the one withholding commissions). The court ruled against Madison, and moreover, ruled that a federal law that was tangential to the case was unconstitutional and thus invalid. Many legal scholars consider Marbury vs. Madison the most important case the U.S. Supreme Court ever decided, because it basically established the Court's power to strike down laws passed by the legislature, or executive orders, as unconstitutional. While arguably this power was implicit in the Constitution (obviously, because it's the argument John Marshall made), it came as a surprise to many of the signers of the Constitution, including President Jefferson. It made the Supreme Court an independent and coequal branch of the government. Thomas Jefferson would spend the rest of his presidency trying to get rid of John Marshall. Here, again, Unger takes an extremely partisan view, one that I am partial to, but it would have been a better book if the author had acknowledged that Marbury vs. Madison is controversial to this day, and that Jefferson's concerns were not solely pique at being foiled. All the complaints we hear today about "activist judges" stem from Marbury vs. Madison, and indeed, most of the Founding Fathers didn't envision the Supreme Court as a body that could effectively write new law. For better or for worse, this was an unanticipated evolution of the court as defined in the Constitution, and the Marshall court unquestionably changed the course of history. For starters, Thomas Jefferson tried to have Associate Justice Samuel Chase impeached on trumped up charges of judicial bias. Chase was apparently prone to making scornful and rude comments from the bench, a practice that Marshall convinced him was unbecoming of a judge, but the real reason Jefferson wanted to get rid of him was that he was a Federalist and a friend of John Marshall. Jefferson made many attempts to bring the Supreme Court to heel and dismiss judges he didn't like. He "packed" the court by increasing it to seven judges, and experienced another phenomenon that would plague many later presidents: the discovery that putting someone you think is ideologically aligned on the bench does not guarantee they're going to rule the way you'd like. Jefferson repeatedly appointed anti-Federalists to the Supreme Court, only for them to become friends with John Marshall, and also to decide that they liked being independent and able to rule according to what they actually believed the Constitution said. Good old Aaron Burr, the other arch-villain of Hamilton, and most Founding Father biographies. I've noted that most biographers cast Burr in an extremely negative light, not just for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but for a career of political shenanigans aimed at advancing his own political interests... like every other politician then and now. I wondered if his frequent depiction as an unprincipled gigolo was doing the man justice. Unger is very sympathetic to Aaron Burr, but mostly because Burr was one of Jefferson's enemies. He represents Burr as being a politician, yes, but emphasizes how principled and fair he was in his role as Vice President and President of the Senate... again, because he was voting against Jefferson. When Aaron Burr went off to (allegedly) try to create an empire in Spanish territory, Jefferson had him charged with treason. His case came before the Supreme Court, and John Marshall dismissed the treason charge as having no foundation, but held him over for trial on the misdemeanor charge of trying to start shit with Spain, a charge of which he was eventually acquitted. Other biographers have heavily implied that Burr really was trying to start his own empire, while Unger takes Burr's claims � that he was just trying to acquire real estate and become a farmer � at face value. (According to Unger, Burr also literally became a gigolo when he went off to Europe following his legal troubles.) Jefferson was furious, and stirred up so much hatred of John Marshall that people were burning him in effigy in Baltimore, something that nearly caused Marshall's wife Polly to have another breakdown. Most of the rest of the book covers the Marshall's courts significant rulings, of which there were many. Most every power of the Supreme Court today was created in the Marshall court. McCulloch v. Maryland was probably the most far-reaching case, next to Marbury vs. Madison, as it gave Congress the authority to charter a national bank, and established that states could not tax the federal government. It all but settled the question of the federal government vs. states' rights in favor of the federal government... and essentially made the Civil War inevitable. Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia was probably the most infamous and tragic case of John Marshall's career. The state of Georgia had essentially stripped the Cherokee of all rights and ordered them removed from their lands. Marshall was sympathetic, but unable to help them because, under U.S. law, the Cherokee literally had no legal standing. But when a group of white missionaries brought suit, the Marshall court was able to rule against Georgia. Georgia's response was to flat-out ignore the Supreme Court's judgment, and President Andrew Jackson, refusing to do anything about it, uttered his famous rebuke to the court: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." The Supreme Court has always had to perform a delicate balancing act, well aware that it has the responsibility of defending the Constitution against politicians who would love to just do whatever they want, but also aware that they have no enforcement powers, and that Congress and the President have a lot of power to strip the court of the powers it does have. The idea that Supreme Court justices act in a vacuum and never take political considerations into account is false; they have to take political considerations into account, not just for their own ideological reasons, but to preserve their own legitimacy. I didn't learn that from this book, but from other books on the history of the court, but this book described a lot of the early foundations of the court and how it came to be, and just how pivotal a figure John Marshall was. Like all of Harlow Unger's biographies, I found this well-written and informative, but it was definitely more biased than his previous works. Here, his subject is almost saintly, his enemies dastardly enemies of the Constitution. John Marshall was a great and brilliant man, but he certainly had personal and political flaws. I wish we'd seen them through a slightly less adoring lens. ...more |
Notes are private!
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| 1441762787
| 9781441762788
| 1441762787
| 4.04
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| Oct 07, 2010
| Oct 26, 2010
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really liked it
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Having read Harlow Giles Younger's biography of John Quincy Adams, a few more of his biographies came as a free bonus in my Audible account, so I deci
Having read Harlow Giles Younger's biography of John Quincy Adams, a few more of his biographies came as a free bonus in my Audible account, so I decided to listen to some non-presidential biographies. Patrick Henry is known as the firebrand who said "Give me liberty or give me death." He never became President, but he did serve as Governor of Virginia (three times before independence, and again afterwards), and was a powerful figure before and after the American Revolution. Also, the dude has eighteen children (of whom all but two survived) and 77 grandchildren! He's estimated to have over 100,000 descendants. Like so many of the Founding Fathers, Patrick Henry got his start as a lawyer, where his gift of oratory was evident early in his career, as was his willingness to rebel against the King. In a case in which his father was the presiding judge, Patrick Henry represented a group of tobacco farmers whose debts to the Anglican Church had been reduced by a bill passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses, but which the Church, not happy about having its payments reduced, petitioned London to overturn. Britain did so, and Henry proceeded to rail in court against the king and the church, calling them tyrants and enemies of the people, in so many words. Despite opposing counsel accusing him of treason, Henry's oratory worked: the jury came back and awarded the plaintiff damages of 1 farthing. This would not be the first time that Patrick Henry would convince a jury to effectively ignore the law and the facts of the case in favor of an emotional response. It was the Stamp Act that really got Henry rolling. To cries of "Treason!" when he seemed to be calling for King George's head, he said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" And it was on. If Patrick Henry were alive today, he would probably be a Trump-like figure, shitposting on Twitter and calling his opponents enemies of the people. A lot of the most prominent Founding Fathers were Virginians, including four of the first five presidents. Patrick Henry was a peer of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, mostly a friend of Washington, an opponent of Madison, and a sometimes ally, sometimes adversary of Jefferson and Monroe. Like many of those men, Henry managed to simultaneously oppose slavery and own slaves. He frequently wrote about how his moral and religious beliefs convinced him that slavery was a moral wrong, and the cognitive dissonance tore at him. He never purchased slaves directly, but slaves often came attached to farms he purchased. He regarded abolition as even crueler than slavery, since the only alternative he could conceive of was throwing freed slaves out onto the streets to fend for themselves. In his early lawyerly days, he defended Baptists (then an underclass denomination that appealed to the poor) against the Anglican Church, and defended a separation between Church and State. This would not prevent him later in his career from trying to make Christianity the state religion, only to be opposed by Jefferson and Madison. During the revolution, when Virginia was vulnerable to British invasion, Virginians were quite unimpressed by Jefferson's leadership. When Patrick Henry took charge, he basically became a dictator, asking the Virginia legislature to give him powers he had always condemned if wielded by any other tyrant. Unger spends a lot of time defending Henry here against the obvious charge of hypocrisy, pointing out that almost every politician reversed course sometimes when the facts on the ground changed. And he's not wrong, but it was rather amusing, in a biography about one of the most firebreathing pro-freedom Founding Fathers, to read about how democracy doesn't work in an emergency and Patrick Henry was totally justified in effectively declaring martial law. His first wife, Sarah, had six, before she went mad. Sarah Henry apparently suffered from severe mental illness and depression which only got worse as she got older, until Patrick Henry's friends were recommending she be sent to an insane asylum. Since insane asylums at that time were horrific hellholes, Henry, to his credit, hid her in his attic instead. Well, okay, not quite. But Sarah Henry did spend the last few years of her life quietly tucked away in their mansion and probably be cared for by slaves. Henry would marry a second wife, Dolly, who gave him twelve more children. As Unger puts it, Dolly and the kids had to run and hide from the British early in the war, but once General Cornwallis was driven out of Virginia, they returned -
Patrick Henry and his wife really, really loved children, and they appeared to have a happy marriage. He was known to be a passionate fiddler and played for and with his children often. He was regarded as a man of strict morals and there were no stories that he ever practiced infidelity. After the war, Thomas Jefferson was still pissed at Patrick Henry for opening an inquiry into his disgraceful retreat from the capital while he was governor (Jefferson was really a pretty shit wartime governor) even though Henry insisted it wasn't personal. Henry was also rabble-rousing, so Jefferson and Madison and the rest of the Virginia legislature decided to make him Governor again, where he'd be powerless. This seems to be a thing that happened quite a lot in American history: take a willful, rhetorically gifted politician you want to defang and give him a political office where you think he can't do any damage. Watch him start doing damage. Henry was enormously popular, and started issuing executive orders right and left that flat out ignored the Constitutional restrictions on his power. Not all of his schemes worked (he tried to subsidize mixed marriages with Indians in an effort to integrate them with white society), but he did block land surveys and do his best to prevent more encroachments on Indian land. He also suspended capital punishment in Richmond. He would later oppose ratification of the Constitution during the Constitutional Convention, as he was an original proponent of strong states right against a powerful federal government. (Ironically, since later his foes would be the "anti-Federalists" including Jefferson and Madison.) While he lost that fight, many of his objections were eventually incorporated into the Bill of Rights. He convinced James Monroe to run for Congress against his friend (and Henry's foe) James Madison. Monroe agreed, resulting in a tepid campaign in which Madison won anyway. He almost challenged the governor who succeeded him, Edmund Randolph, to a duel over another political argument. After retiring from public office, Henry resumed his career as a lawyer, where he continued to use emotionally manipulative rhetoric. At one point, he convinced a jury to acquit a murderer by getting them to cry over how much it would grieve the defendants' parents to see him put to death. The judge made the jury revise their verdict after pointing out to them that they didn't have to put the defendant to death. Despite developing a somewhat disreputable reputation as a lawyer who'd get anyone off for a fee, Henry became wealthy and one of the greatest landholders in Virginia. I found this book, and Patrick Henry's life, quite interesting. He was, like many of the Founding Fathers, gifted and full of passion and convictions, and also flawed and capable of ignoring his principles when they were inconvenient. I'd rank him as a better man by far than Jefferson, and probably more sincere than anyone save perhaps Madison, who was less passionate but far more brilliant. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Audio Cassette
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| 4.02
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| Sep 04, 2012
| Sep 04, 2012
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really liked it
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This biography, by Harlow Giles Unger, was on the short side, and it's unabashedly laudatory. John Quincy comes off as a man who's hard not to admire
This biography, by Harlow Giles Unger, was on the short side, and it's unabashedly laudatory. John Quincy comes off as a man who's hard not to admire unambiguously; you will have to scrutinize Unger's biography carefully to find any flaws in the man. (His most glaring flaw seems to have been that he was too principled for the presidency.) It took a while for me to warm up to Unger's writing, which for the first half of the book is thorough but neither deep nor particularly opinionated, and read like an extended Wikipedia-level information dump. However, as Unger becomes increasingly admiring, I got caught up in his praise for John Quincy, especially in the final act, where the ex-president returned to Congress (the only former president ever to do so) and gleefully became a gadfly and anti-slavery crusader against the growing power of the South. John Quincy Adams was the eldest son of second president John Adams, who lived to see John Quincy occupy the White House himself. At the age of 9, he rode as a courier from his home in Braintree, Massachusetts to carry messages to the American revolutionary army. At the age of 10, he was studying Greek and Latin. At the age of 11, he sailed with his father to Europe. While the elder Adams never saw battle, John Quincy saw his father arming himself and preparing to fight to the death as their vessel was nearly intercepted by British warships, who would have hung John senior and impressed John Quincy. While in London and France, John Quincy spent a lot of time at the home of Thomas Jefferson, and the two of them remained friends even while Jefferson and the senior Adams spent years estranged. Having spent years in Europe with his father, John Quincy returned to Boston at the age of 17, where he tested for admittance to Harvard. Even in 1785, Harvard had a tradition of legacy admissions. It turns it out it also already had a tradition of self-important academics who sometimes reveled in the petty power they exercised. John Quincy's suave, European manners and his expectation that admission to Harvard for the son of a VIP alumnus was merely a formality rubbed the president of the college the wrong way, and he summarily declared that the young man was not qualified. Adams was forced to spend a year hitting the books and being tutored some more. When he was examined again, this time before a committee, the president grudgingly admitted him. If you're looking for flaws in the younger Adams, you can see one of them manifesting here. He just assumed that being educated, highly qualified, and knowing what he was talking about would be recognized and appreciated and earn him his just due. It did not occur to him that some people don't like hoity-toity know-it-alls. This would not be the first time he would make this mistake. After graduating Harvard, Adams initially avoided politics and opened a law practice. But President Washington asked him to go to the Netherlands as U.S. ambassador. John and Abigail Adams, who were always pushing their son to live up to their considerable expectations for him, talked him into accepting. They were less pleased when while spending a winter in London, John Quincy spent time with a wealthy American merchant named Joshua Johnson, who had seven daughters he was anxious to marry off. They expected JQ to hook up with the eldest, but instead he proposed to the second daughter, Louisa. Abigail Adams, upon hearing that her son was engaged, said: "I would hope, for the love I bear my country, that the siren is at least half blood." Louisa was born in London and had grown up in England and France, which made her British as far as the Adamses were concerned. (Louisa would become the first, and until Melania Trump, the only First Lady not to have been born in the United States.) Abigail's comment probably sounds harsher than was intended, since Abigail, like her husband, had a wry wit that I think often did not come across very well. But reading between the lines (and from what I have gleaned in other biographies), the Adams family might have been warm and personable once you got to know them, but they struck outsiders as humorless Puritan scolds with a stick up their asses, and Louisa definitely started out as an outsider. She had a better relationship with her mother-in-law later in life, but she definitely did not feel as if the family embraced her at first. It didn't help that immediately after their wedding, John Quincy and Louisa returned home to find angry creditors waiting for them. It turned out that Louisa's father, deeply in debt, had fled the country, leaving his creditors demanding payment from his new son-in-law. Since Adams didn't get his promised dowry, he could have legally annulled the marriage. He didn't, but Louisa felt the humiliation of this incident for the rest of her life. Then President Washington sent word that John Quincy was to become the new U.S. ambassador to Portugal. No sooner had they packed and shipped off most of their household goods to Lisbon than the newly-elected President Adams sent him to Prussia instead. This was a much more prestigious post, and John Adams almost didn't send his son, because he was strongly against nepotism. However, John Quincy really had been an extremely capable overseas ambassador, both in his negotiations with foreign powers and at his more important job: collecting intelligence which he sent back to America. So George Washington persuaded the senior Adams not to let appearances prevent him from giving his son a job he was very good at. The result of this was that John Quincy lost a small fortune (getting all your stuff that's been sent to Portugal when you're in Prussia was a little bit trickier in the 18th century) and John Adams senior got smeared in the press for nepotism. After John Adams lost reelection to Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy returned home. Initially he restarted a law practice, but then he was elected to the Massachesetts senate. Here, he began crusading against corruption and being a general pain in the ass. His fellow Massholes decided the best way to get rid of him was to send him to the U.S. Senate instead. This seemed like a good idea because the Senate at the time was mostly useless. They would end up regretting this. John Quincy Adams, throughout his life, would be honest to a fault and refuse to put loyalty to party or even pragmatism over his principles. In other words, he was a humorless Puritan scold with a stick up his ass. (He did find a "principled" way to read a Constitutional justification for Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase: by changing one line to make it "with the consent and agreement of France," it became a treaty which the President had the authority to sign, rather than a land purchase which he did not.) Despite being a Northern Federalist, he voted in favor of a British embargo which Southerners supported and Northerners opposed. This was the last straw for his fellow Federalists, who elected his successor before his term was even up. Having been knifed in the back by his own party, Adams resigned from the Senate and returned to Boston where, despite being shunned professionally and socially by Federalists, he became quite successful, and even argued some landmark cases before the Supreme Court. This would happen again. In 1809, President James Madison asked Adams to go back to Europe, this time as Minister to Russia. He accepted without consulting with his wife first. Louisa was not happy. In fact, Louisa's life and marriage seems to have been kind of unhappy in general. She spent most of her married life pregnant, and had multiple miscarriages. In St. Petersburg, she gave birth to a little girl, who died at the age of two. John and Louisa had five sons who survived to adulthood, three of whom they would see succumb to alcoholism. John Quincy and Louisa didn't exactly have a bad marriage, but from letters they both left behind, it's apparent that she frequently felt frustrated, neglected, and taken for granted. She suffered from depression, and her in-laws were, well, humorless Puritan scolds with sticks up their asses. They did, however, genuinely love each other, and there were some amusing episodes when John Quincy, separated from his wife, sent her erotic poetry. She threatened to publish it. This echoes the flirtatious, teasing love letters John and Abigail Adams used to send each other. But she helped him become president Adams was next sent to England, to help negotiate an end to the War of 1812. For months, there was little progress, as both sides would amend their demands depending on how the war was going. Eventually, however, John Quincy helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. James Madison also nominated John Quincy Adams to the Supreme Court. He pushed the nomination through, and Adams turned it down. (His parents were not pleased.) When he returned to the U.S., President Monroe appointed him Secretary of State. John Quincy once again excelled in his role. After Andrew Jackson ran amok in Florida and almost triggered wars with both England and Spain, Adams defended him and negotiated a treaty that essentially expanded the United States almost to its present borders. The Monroe Doctrine was largely penned by Adams. By now, it was well established that Secretary of State was the usual stepping stone to becoming President. Here, John Quincy frustrated everyone from his party to his wife and his father. He wanted to be president. He thought he deserved to be president. He was sure he'd be a good president. But he refused to run for president. Adams, taking one of his principled stands that seems charmingly oblivious now and was naive even then, believed that it was unbecoming to seek office. The people were supposed to want you to take office and, essentially, do any necessary campaigning for you. This had also been Washington's stand, more or less, but no one else but John Quincy Adams ever tried that, at least not and became president. Louisa, realizing that her husband was refusing to do the necessary, took it upon herself to learn the political ropes. A few years earlier, First Lady Dolly Madison had explained a bit about how Washington politics worked to Louisa, when she was having a hard time adjusting. Now, Louisa started throwing parties, inviting other Washington wives over, and doing the behind-the-scenes schmoozing that her husband wouldn't. This didn't get John Quincy into the White House by itself, but it finally mobilized enough political support that in the election of 1824� well, Adams actually lost both the popular and the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson, to whom Adams had offered the vice presidency, won a plurality, but not enough votes to win outright in a five-way race between Adams, Jackson, William H. Crawford, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. Before the run-off election, Adams met with Clay to talk over their issues and come to an agreement. Whatever the actual terms of their agreement, it had the appearance of a shady deal when Clay threw his support behind Adams, Adams ended up winning the run-off, and then appointed Clay as Secretary of State. (John Calhoun would become his vice president.) Andrew Jackson called this a "Corrupt Bargain," and pretty much from the moment Adams took office was working to undermine him. It is ironic that one of the shortest sections of Unger's book is about John Quincy's presidency. To hear Unger tell it, the second President Adams basically accomplished almost nothing, being sabotaged and sandbagged by hostile Southerners under the command of Andrew Jackson, and spent much of his time moping. He does, however, point out that much of the damage was self-inflicted. Appointing Henry Clay as Secretary of State (and thus as presumptive heir to the presidency) angered both Andrew Jackson and Vice President Calhoun. Adams' inaugural address, which was full of lofty rhetoric about ambitious public works, was tone deaf and alienating. He would repeatedly throughout his presidency come off as a high-falutin' fancy-speaking aristocrat when talking to ordinary people, which made his grand schemes for the improvement of the country seem more like imperial ambitions than national interest. John Quincy Adams was far from the worst president in U.S. history, but his administration had little to show for itself when he was soundly beaten by Andrew Jackson in 1828. He limped out of Washington without attending the inauguration. Most ex-presidents retire, hit the speaking circuit, write memoirs, play gold, sit on boards. John Quincy ran for Congress in 1830, and would hold the office for 8 terms, until his death. As U.S. Representative from Massachusetts, he continued to reject the idea of party loyalty. Instead he turned his sights on slavery. Unger's descriptions of Adams in Congress over the next 16 years are both entertaining and inspiring. The Southerners had created a "gag rule" which basically forbade the issue of slavery to even be put on the table. Adams defied the gag rule repeatedly, so the Southerners kept amending it until they were pretty much adding provisions to the gag rule specifically to shut Adams up. He would get in yelling matches with the Speaker of the House while all the Southern delegates were hissing and booing at him. At one point, after Congress had forbidden the word "slavery" to even be spoken in chamber, Adams stood up to read " A prayer from a women's religious society among my constituents�." (Yeah, okay, whatever, think the Southerners) "... for the abolishment of slavery--" (outrage and pandemonium ensues) I loved this part. John Quincy Adams all but put on a mask and a cape, becoming a villain as far the South was concerned (at one point, they almost gathered enough support to expel him from Congress), but a hero to abolitionists throughout the country, who realizing that Adams would stand for them no matter what state they were in, deluged Congress with tens of thousands of petitions. Adams would eventually succeed in getting the gag rule abolished, as the increasing restrictions that were put on him made more congressmen realize that, gosh, those restrictions could be applied to them too. Besides his relentless opposition to slavery, in which Adams would fight against the Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler, and Polk administrations, he is also pretty much responsible for the Smithsonian as it exists today. A wealthy British scientist left a fortune to the U.S. government for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Naturally Andrew Jackson and his cronies saw this as a windfall for them to plunder. But Adams, who despite being hated on the slavery issue, had also earned respect as a principled and nonpartisan politician on other issues, managed to wrangle the money out of various spoils schemes and created the non-partisan trust that established the Smithsonian Institution. In 1839, a Spanish ship, La Amistad, was carrying a "cargo" of captured Africans off the coast of Cuba when the Africans escaped, killed the captain, and demanded that the surviving crew take them home. The navigators obeyed during the day, but at night, pointed the ship north. It eventually wound up in U.S. waters, and when the Africans were taken prisoner, the Spanish demanded their return, claiming they were "escaped property." In the U.S., they were charged with mutiny and murder. Abolitionists took up their case and claimed that the Africans had been illegally kidnapped, and thus they were exercising their legal right of self defense. A New York district court ruled in the Africans' favor, but President Van Buren, who was having political troubles with Southerners, demanded the case be appealed. Running out of money, the abolitionists asked John Quincy Adams for help. He argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. In Unger's book, this moment is like the climax of a novel, and his description of Adams' march into the Supreme Court, where he faced a majority of Southern Justices who were hostile to him, to deliver a closing argument that left tears in their eyes, was, well, worthy of a Spielberg movie. (I have not seen the movie, by the way.) As hated as he was by Southerners, John Quincy Adams was a noble enemy they couldn't help respecting. When he returned to Congress after a stroke, everyone applauded him. In 1848, he fell on the floor of the House, while in the middle of protesting yet another bill. He never left the Capitol Building, and died two days later. Besides gaining an appreciation for the unfortunate man who, like his father, failed in office and became a one-term president, I learned a lot more about how many states threatened secession and civil war before we had a real secession and civil war, how quickly national fortunes can change (America went from the dog everyone kicked to the mighty ruler of the Western hemisphere everyone wanted to placate and trade with in the space of a few decades), and how corrupt and venal party politics have always been. All these things were already taking shape starting with Washington's administration, but having read presidential biographies in order, you can really trace the evolution until we get to John Quincy Adams, where battle lines between North and South were now becoming entrenched, and like the growing threat on the horizon in an epic fantasy series, you can hear the rumblings of war from decades in the future. It couldn't have been plotted or foreshadowed better by a novelist: one of John Quincy's admirers in his later years, as he becomes an anti-slavery firebrand, is a young freshman congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, I came away quite liking John Quincy Adams. More than I liked his father, in fact. But how was this as a biography? Well, I think Unger's writing was okay. At times -- when he brings us into the House and describes Representative Adams railing against slavery -- it was compelling and brought his subject to life. At other times, it was just a narrative description of events in his life. A few touches of insight into Louisa's feelings, John Quincy's relations with his famous parents, the political machinations of other actors, were welcome but sparse. There are a number of much larger biographies of John Quincy Adams available, so perhaps this was as complete as it could have been for its length. Unger seems to be a prolific biographer of politicians from this era, so I may read a few more. ...more |
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it was amazing
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Having read biographies of six of the Founding Fathers in the last year, including Ron Chernow's splendid Alexander Hamilton, there are a lot of recur
Having read biographies of six of the Founding Fathers in the last year, including Ron Chernow's splendid Alexander Hamilton, there are a lot of recurring characters weaving through all their lives, as they all wove through each other's lives. It was a pretty small society; everyone knew each other. One character who figures significantly throughout the early Republic is Aaron Burr. [image] The third Vice President, who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and was later accused of trying to take Mexico from Spain and create his own empire, tried for treason for allegedly planning to take part of the United States with him, a rascal and a rake who was the toast of Southerners who hated Hamilton, the toast of ladies throughout Europe, later remarried and then was divorced by a rich widow who was represented by one of Hamilton's sons, he has seemed in all the biographies I've read to be an interesting man. But he's always described as more or less a villain. Whatever his charming qualities (he's often mentioned being genuinely beneficent towards poor ladies), very little else good is said about Aaron Burr. Ron Chernow calls him a murderer, and in describing his duel with Hamilton, goes over all the claims made by partisans on both sides but is clearly more sympathetic to Hamilton's version. Biographers of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all describe a man who was a political weathercock, devoid of any genuine principals except self-interest. He switched between the Republicans and the Federalists whenever it was convenient, all with the ultimate goal of becoming president himself, and when that didn't work out, he tried to raise an army to take over Mexico. I could not help wondering whether Aaron Burr was being portrayed fairly. After all, to have held so much influence for as long as he did (there was an electoral path that could easily have made him president instead of Jefferson, had things worked out just a little bit differently), he must have had friends. Surely Burr felt justified in his reasons for dueling Hamilton; they had once been friends. Did he just decide he wanted to murder a political rival out of spite? There are biographies written of Burr, including some that appear to be sympathetic. He definitely has his defenders. Yet to get another view of the man, I ended up reading a work of historical fiction, by the late author Gore Vidal, whom I have never read before. Burr is the first in a series of books Vidal wrote about the American empire. In the author's preface, he comes off as a little pretentious, and seems to think he invented the idea of historical fiction. But this novel was truly a fantastic experience, and Vidal absolutely researched the hell out of his subject. Every scene, from major historical events to minor anecdotes from the lives of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, I recognized from the biographies of those men. The Aaron Burr that Vidal brings us in this book is a fictional character, yet it's a compelling and believable version of him. This Aaron Burr is wry, witty, and oh yes, he was always right and all the others, from Washington to Hamilton, were the real scoundrels, who constantly took advantage of Aaron Burr's good and principled nature. This may not be the truth, and it may not even be how the real Burr would have told his own story. But let's say it's a version of the truth. The device Vidal uses to tell Burr's story is the one fictional character he introduces: a young journalist named Charles Schuyler (not one of those Schuylers, as he has to tell people), who's hired to do a hit piece on the elderly former senator and vice president. The election of 1836 is looming, Martin Van Buren is the heir apparent, and the anti-Van Buren faction wants to torpedo his election by digging up evidence that long-whispered rumors of Van Buren being Aaron Burr's illegitimate son are true. (This, like all the other details in Vidal's novel, was based on historical fact: it really was a rumor that followed them around.) So young Charles Schuyler ingratiates himself with Aaron Burr, and ends up having his entire life history dictated to him, including the "real" story about everything from the Revolutionary War and Washington's generalship (terrible, according to Burr, and again, historians actually agree that Washington was pretty bad as a military strategist) to that fatal duel with Hamilton (in one of the few clearly fictional embellishments � or is it? � Vidal has Schuyler learn of Hamilton's real reason for challenging Hamilton to a duel, a reason that is plausible but, as far as I can tell, not actually mentioned in any historical records). Along the way, Burr absolutely trashes every other Founding Father. His description of George Washington ("He had the hips, buttocks and bosom of a woman") is of a dullard whose stoic, presidential demeanor was a veneer over his greed and ego. According to Burr, they'd have captured Canada if Washington had listened to him. Thomas Jefferson was a sleazy little sneak who considered the Constitution to be just words that meant whatever was convenient for him (more or less true, in my readings of biographies of Jefferson and others). Vidal's Burr gives a very believable version of Jefferson's double-dealing and selling out his own vice president, and later trying to have him convicted of treason over a plan that Jefferson himself supported. Again, it's a narrative that might not actually be true, but it fits the historical facts. James Madison was a brilliant but sad little incel until Burr hooked him up with Dolly. (Again, a harsh version of the story, but not far from the truth.) James Monroe actually hated Washington, all the way back to serving under him during the war. (True? Monroe's biographers don't say this, but on the other hand, the men did have a break, Monroe was pissed at Washington over a lot of things, and we don't know for certain that Monroe ever actually liked him, so Burr's description of Monroe as constantly sneering at an oblivious Washington is, if not true, not unbelievable.) In Burr, Aaron Burr is marvelously bitchy and cynical. As he takes down America's founding fathers while narrating his story to Charles Schuyler, Schuyler's own ambitions and unfortunate love life forms the only definitely made-up part of the novel (though even here, Vidal uses real people, like having Schuyler fall in love with a prostitute named .) I really enjoyed Burr. Gore Vidal wrote an Aaron Burr who is definitely the hero of his own story, and while it may or may not be true to the real Burr, it at least presents a believable version of the man who wasn't just Jefferson's foil and Hamilton's killer. ...more |
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Apr 21, 2021
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really liked it
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[image] James Madison is most often known as the "Father of the Constitution," as he wrote much of it, and more importantly, was intrumental in getting [image] James Madison is most often known as the "Father of the Constitution," as he wrote much of it, and more importantly, was intrumental in getting it passed at the Constitutional Convention, over considerable opposition (including from his friend, frequent political rival, and future successor, James Monroe). The Three Lives of James Madison presents Madison's political career in three acts, of which his role as POTUS #4 was only the last. Noah Feldman's biography is long, detailed (especially on the minutae of the debate over the Constitution), and rather consistent with Madison's other epithet, the "Least Fun Founding Father." Madison was a wonk. He was the sort of politician who'd have become a college professor if he hadn't come from money. He was smart (though not incandescently brilliant like his friend-turned-foe Hamilton), even-tempered, calm, patient, and, well, a little dull. Even his contemporaries hobnobbing with him in Philadelphia and Washington described him as uninteresting and basically not much fun at parties. After his failures at romance earlier in life, scoring the most eligible widowed hottie in town, Dolley Paine Todd, was a stroke of luck for him personally and politically, as Dolley had all the social skills he was lacking, and became the first First Lady to really fill out the role, turning the White House into the Place To Be. (One of the more amusing anecdotes in this book is of Dolley trying to coach the hapless Madison and Thomas Jefferson both as they are entering a White House dinner and about to inadvertently snub the wife of the British ambassador. "No, you idiots, escort her, not me!" she whispers. Okay, minus the "you idiots" part, but she was probably thinking it.) [image] This being the fourth book in my sequential track through Presidential biographies, I enjoyed seeing once again the familiar figures appear in their familiar roles, but seen through a different lens. As before, I've found that biographers tend to be more sympathetic to their own subjects than their rivals, even when not being completely uncritical. Noah Feldman doesn't paint a flawless picture of Madison, pointing out his fumbles at romance and diplomacy, among other things, and addressing his mealy-mouthed stance on slavery in a final chapter. But he does write of Madison admiringly, and in fact, there is a lot to admire, even if there's a lot to criticize as well. Madison's childhood is barely mentioned here: he was the son of a wealthy Virginian plantation owner, so he never really had to worry about working (though he did in fact prove to be pretty inept at running a plantation later in life, and died leaving Dolley in debt). Likewise, The Three Lives of James Madison don't include much about the Revolutionary War, as Madison was already serving in the Virginia legislature. He wouldn't actually see battle until the War of 1812. Madison's "first" political life, according to Feldman, is as the architect of the Constitution. At this time, he was an ally of future foe Alexander Hamilton, and the two of them co-wrote the Federalist Papers, urging their fellow delegates to ratify the Constitution. Americans hold the Constitution as almost sacred today, and seeing how the sausage was ground back in 1787 puts into perspective just how much of a compromise the Constitution was. From the 3/5 Compromise to the multiple proposals debated and discarded for splitting the powers of the government, with every state concerned that the federal government should have only powers that wouldn't affect them, it was never uncontroversial. Looming large in Madison's life at this time was that old revolutionary firebrand Patrick Henry, who was now Governor of Virginia and giving some real barn-burner speeches about the tyranny of the proposed Constitution, and worse, a "Bill of Rights" which would give the government even more laws it could use to oppress the states. The Bill of Rights, in fact, was Madison's attempt to prevent a second Constitutional Congress, which he anticipated would be a disaster from his Republican perspective. It's during his time spent as a congressman and a political strategist that Feldman describes Madison's second "political life." Madison's mentor and friend was Thomas Jefferson. Like Jefferson, Madison eschewed partisan politics. Unlike Jefferson, he meant it. Like Jefferson, he was unable to avoid the reality of partisanship, and so the two of them formed the Democratic-Republican Party (which later became simply the Republicans), in opposition to Hamilton's Federalist party. One of the points Feldman makes repeatedly is that Madison sincerely believed in separating political disagreements from personal feelings, and tried to remain friends even with his adversaries. This is why he managed to stay friends with James Monroe, who despite being a Virginia Republican like him, repeatedly ran against him and even fought against ratification of the Constitution. But as Alexander Hamilton grew in power and influence, Madison came to see Hamilton as not just a political adversary, but someone who was bent on subverting and destroying the Republic: not just an opponent, but an enemy. He also split with George Washington over the John Jay treaty; Washington's pride was pricked by Madison criticizing his judgment, and despite them having been close since the Philadelphia Convention, Washington never spoke of Madison again. Madison's "third life" was of course as the fourth president, following Jefferson's two terms. Madison's presidency was, by most measures, successful. He left office after two terms with the country bigger, more powerful, and wealthier than when he took office. However, he certainly made some blunders along the way, arguably the greatest of which was the War of 1812. In hindsight, the war was probably more to America's benefit than not � it established the country as a world power, set it up to assert its sovereignty over the Western Hemisphere, and basically bought us some "street cred" with Europe. However, at best the war can be considered a draw, Madison's repeated failures to invade Canada showed how inept the American military was at the time (Madison wanted to rely entirely on militias and long opposed maintaining a standing army or navy), and he totally got outfoxed by Napoleon and Britain in his attempts to negotiate peace with both powers and play them off against each other. Instead, France succeeded in playing America off against Britain. Lastly, there is that elephant in every Virginian Founding Father's room: slavery. Madison was, perhaps, not quite as big a hypocrite as Jefferson, but he still shared in the same hypocrisy as his mentor, condemning slavery, speaking unequivocally of its moral injustice and even the understandable desire of slaves to be free, even rejecting the assumption that Africans were inferior to whites... and yet, he owned slaves, and never made any real efforts to free either his own or anyone else's. Like Jefferson (and Washington, and Monroe), he hedged, talking about how blacks and whites could not coexist peacefully as blacks would harbor resentment against their former masters (hmm, you think?). To his credit, he did spend quite a lot of time after he left the White House coming up with a grandiose scheme whereby the federal government would sell land to raise the cash to outright purchase all slaves, and then send them to a new country in Africa that would be established for them. This was laudable in principle, perhaps, if not in execution, and of course, it was never going to happen. But unlike Jefferson, at least Madison tried. My takeaway from this book was that Madison was a much more principled man than Jefferson, and while perhaps he didn't have Jefferson's intellectual curiosity or congenial personality, in the modern day he'd have been one of those ex-presidents who'd make a very good political science professor. He wasn't a very interesting man personally, but his political careers were eventful and showcased his intellect, and if the Constitution he architected was flawed and compromised, it was probably also the best that could have been produced under the circumstances. This biography was not exactly enthralling, but that's partly the fault of its not exactly enthralling subject. I did find Feldman's writing to be thorough, fair, and unafraid to delve into the nitty gritty of early American politics, putting together a complex picture of all the issues Madison faced, locally, federally, and internationally. Partisanship was as complicated and aggravating then as it is now; the personalities and ambitions of individuals equally capable of derailing any plans built on a foundation of logic and reason. In the words of his future wife, he was "the great little Madison," small in stature and not exactly a hit at parties, but definitely one of our most important Founders. A good history book, but unless you're taking a deep dive into POTUSes like I am, or you have a particular interest in James Madison, I can't say it should necessarily make it to the top of your reading list. ...more |
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it was amazing
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[image] Book three in my journey through American history via Presidential biographies. (Yes, Adams was POTUS #2; I started with Lyndon Johnson.) I don't know if any of them will live up to Robert Caro's LBJ epic, but David McCullough's biography of John Adams is certainly equal to Ron Chernow's biography of George Washington. So, speaking of Ron Chernow, it was his biography of Alexander Hamilton that was the basis of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton. Now, I quite like Hamilton, but after reading this book, I really want to read Chernow's bio, because it's pretty clear that Miranda took some liberties. Of course, Miranda wrote a musical, not a biography, but seeing as how it appears that Hamilton is going to be this generation's Schoolhouse Rock, it's a shame if they come away with the impression that Adams was a unhinged, inept one-term nobody, 'cause he wasn't. John Adams was a mellowed-out Massachusetts Puritan whose father wanted him to be a minister, but he went to Harvard and became a lawyer instead. He was defense counsel for the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre, and only came to the revolutionary cause relatively late. He was America's first Ambassador to France and England, then America's first Vice President, and then its second President, and its first one-term President and the only President ever to have to run against his own Vice President. He and his wife were charming lovebirds and intellectual equals; Adams himself outlived his wife and three of his children. One of his sons would also become President; two others would die penniless alcoholics. His early political career was in the shadow of Washington; the second half of his career was a constant war with his old frenemies, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Contrary to Hamilton's frankly scurrilous attacks on him, Adams could occasionally be grumpy and sharp-tongued, but he always held his temper in public, and his persona in public and private was that of a genial gentleman who was always prepared to believe the best of everyone. This was perhaps a flaw that afflicted him throughout his life, from his diplomatic missions to Europe to his term as President, when he made the mistake of keeping Washington's cabinet.... all of whom were Hamilton's men and working against him. "Remember the ladies" [image] Abigail Adams deserves a biography of her own � unlike dear old Martha Washington, she actually had opinions, and her husband listened to them. It was charming reading about John and Abigail's relationship throughout their lives, told in letters during their long separations. Ironically, Abigail hadn't been John's first choice; he almost proposed to another girl but was interrupted, and some other guy swept her away first. He admitted to being a little girl-crazy in his younger years, though for this conservative Puritan, that probably didn't mean much more than lots of very devoted mooning and awkward courting attempts. But then he fell for his third cousin, Abigail Smith, and the two of them were very much in love until Abigail's passing 54 years later. Abigail Adams is often considered a proto-feminist for a famous letter she wrote to him in 1776:
According to McCullough, who puts this in context of their other correspondence, and their general tone towards one another, this was a sort of half-serious, joking-but-not-entirely suggestion. Abigail probably really did mean what she wrote, but she was also teasing her husband, and certainly wasn't serious about the ladies "fomenting a rebellion." She might have liked the idea of women being given the vote, but she didn't really expect it... at least, not in 1776. There is another famous pair of letters in which John sends Abigail a . He's clearly teasing � one of her "faults" is that she sucks at playing cards. But Abigail responded quite cheekily in kind. During the years John spent in Europe, Abigail begged him to show some more affection in his letters, and poor sappy John explained that he was afraid of them being intercepted and the British making fun of him. (In fairness, his letters being intercepted, and anything minor or major worthy of mockery being printed in the British press, was a real possibility. Imagine the country you're at war with intercepting your love letters to your wife and printing them in the papers with the 18th center equivalent of lolmemes.) Abigail was pretty progressive for her time (like John), and while she was always supportive of him, she also had some choice words for other gentlemen, including a certain Thomas Jefferson, whose relationship with John Adams would have epic ups and downs until they day they both died, hours apart. Ambassador to France and England In 1777, John sailed to France, along with his 10-year-old son, John Quincy. He met Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. He clashed frequently with Benjamin Franklin, who had become rather lazy and complacent. Adams was less enamored of the French than Franklin, believing (correctly) that the French were not supporting the Americans out of any sympathy for their ideals, but in hopes of snapping up their territories from Britain. Adams had a lot of difficulty in Paris, especially because the French foreign minister didn't like him. He ended up returning to the U.S. feeling frustrated and slighted, but in 1779, he was sent back to France. He disliked Franklin, and spent the whole time intermediating between Franklin and Arthur Lee. The French minister wanted the American Congress to subordinate itself to the French court in its negotiations with England; Adams finally got Franklin to agree to negotiate without "approval" from France. He traveled to the Netherlands to negotiate Dutch loans, and tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a Dutch-American alliance. After the Treaty of Paris, Adams was sent to London as America's first ambassador to Great Britain. He had polite meetings with King George III, who a few years earlier had sent over a list of colonial leaders who would be pardoned if they ceased rebelling; Adams wasn't one of them. He was going to get the noose. He was treated contemptuously by the British press, considered inelegant and undiplomatic by his fellow ambassadors, and generally had a miserable time even when Abigail joined him in London. While in London, they also spent time socializing with their old friend, Thomas Jefferson, and met his 14-year-old Negro maid (diplomatically not called a "slave" while in London) Sally Hemings, who struck the Adamses as a bit hapless and too immature for the nanny duties she was supposedly there for. But their son John Quincy spent a lot of time with the Jeffersons, who lived large and well beyond their means. "His Rotundity" Upon returning to America, Adams was chosen by George Washington to be his running mate in what was an essentially uncontested election. Under the U.S. Constitution, the Vice President's only duties are to break ties in the Senate, and otherwise hang around as a spare. Thus John Adams began the tradition of VPs mostly fading to invisibility and rarely having much to do with the running of the government. But in his eight years as Washington's Vice President, as he generally sided with Washington and the Federalist party, he came under increasing attack from Jefferson's Republicans. Republican papers began attacking Adams viciously in ways they wouldn't quite dare to attack Washington. They called him "His Rotundity" for his girth and his supposed monarchical sentiments (an accusation that was also made against Washington, equally unjustly). Like Washington, Adams avoided parties and politicking, only to learn that even if he wasn't interested in political parties, political parties were interested in him. It was during this time that Adams estrangement with Jefferson began. They were on opposite sides in the developing party politics of the early Republic, and while Adams tried to preserve their friendship, Jefferson was a very political animal. Additionally, Alexander Hamilton was a puppet master behind the scenes, an enemy of Jefferson but also no friend of Adams. Despite all this, as he jokingly said to Abigail, "I am the heir apparent, you know." He ran against Jefferson in the first contested election, in 1796. After he won, he became the first President who had to serve with his opponent as Vice President. He wanted Jefferson to stand with him and signal they would work together, and in a tragic "what if?" moment in history, Jefferson wrote a flattering, congratulatory letter to Adams that probably would have altered the entire tone of the next 12 years � but he ran it by his fellow Republican James Madison first, and Madison told him it was too complimentary, and they needed to be politicians. So Adams never received the letter, and his estrangement from Jefferson grew. When the French Revolution broke out, Adams was appalled by the bloodshed; Jefferson thought it was just what any growing country needed. Meanwhile, neither America nor Great Britain were strictly upholding the terms of the treaty that had ended the war, but America was in less of a position to do anything about it. When John Jay came back from London with a tepid treaty that got very few of the concessions Americans wanted, most of the country was enraged. Adams, whose sentiments were not precisely pro-Britain, but who had a realistic view of what could be accomplished from having been there, backed Jay, knowing he'd done his best. Jefferson, who hated Britain and wanted closer ties with France, only became more enraged, even as France went to war with Britain, and then began seizing American ships. Adams ended up sidelining Jefferson completely.
So, back to Hamilton. Lin-Manuel Miranda didn't even bother to cast John Adams as a character in his play, but the poor guy got treated as a whipping boy in the war between Hamilton and Jefferson, and rather ahistorically so. John Adams never fired Hamilton. Hamilton resigned as Secretary of the Treasury at the end of Washington's administration. Adams kept the cabinet Washington left him... all of whom were Hamilton's men. They were practically laughing behind his back (in a very genteel 19th century way) during most of his administration, until he finally did get around to firing a couple of them, much too late. Hamilton was mostly pissed at Adams because he wanted to raise a standing army and go take Florida and Louisiana. Adams put the kibosh on that because he quite sensibly thought that the last thing America needed was wars with France and Spain. (They were already in practically an undeclared war with France.) Hamilton was pulling strings to sabotage both Adams and Jefferson and try to get his handpicked successor into the White House. He really did write an incendiary polemic about Adams: . For about 50 pages, he went on about how unfit Adams was and all the mistakes he'd made as President, only to end by.... praising his virtues and saying he wasn't telling anyone not to vote for him. Uh??? The effect of this polemic was to damage John Adams, but make Hamilton look like he was the unhinged loser. It pretty much ended his political influence. And as far as I can tell, John Adams never called Hamilton a "creole bastard." The closest he came was in to his friend Benjamin Rush, in which he said:
In 1800, Jefferson ran against the sitting President he served under. Adams was trying to negotiate peace with France from a very tenuous position. One of his sons had become a dissolute alcoholic, and died. The papers were calling him an outright monarchist and worse. Adams was also (with justification) being heavily criticized for the , which essentially made it illegal to "defame" or speak "maliciously" about the government. They weren't Adams' idea, but it was the Federalist Congress that passed them, and he signed them into law. While Adams himself never used them to prosecute anyone, people were prosecuted under them for sedition. Losing to Jefferson and becoming America's first one-term President might have stung initially, but in his subsequent life, it was pretty clear that he enjoyed being an ex-president much more than he'd ever enjoyed being President. (continued in comments) ...more |
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it was amazing
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Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton was the basis for Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, Hamilton. I have not read Alexander Hamilton yet, but af
Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton was the basis for Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, Hamilton. I have not read Alexander Hamilton yet, but after reading Robert Caro's magnificent multivolume biography of LBJ, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, I decided to embark upon a personal "bucket list," which is to read (preferably in sequence) biographies of every one of America's Presidents, and see what it's like to examine the history of the country through a presidential lens. Chernow's biography of George Washington seemed like a good starting point. As Chernow points out, biographies of our first president began popping up practically as soon as he died. These early hagiographies, of course, told highly embellished stories, such as Parson Weems' The Life of Washington, which is responsible for myths like his chopping down a cherry tree, throwing a silver dollar across the Delaware River, and praying at Valley Forge. Washington was beloved by his country in death as in life, and it's not surprising that the man who many feared might become a monarch (and who arguably could have, if he'd wanted to) became an American saint after he died. He would probably have been both flattered and chagrined at The Apotheosis of George Washington that now hangs in the Capitol Building. [image] Ron Chernow's much more recent biography of Washington attempts to collect everything we know of the man from his extensive letters, and those of the men and women who knew him throughout his life, and paint a more accurate and human picture of him. Chernow is thorough and has a mostly non-editorial style, only occasionally inserting an authorial POV into the narrative. One of the first things that surprised me was how many details about Washington's early life are unknown. We sometimes forget what a rough and largely undocumented society colonial America was, forcing us to fill in the gaps with a lot of speculation that's acquired a patina of unfounded certainty over time. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, on his family's plantation in Virginia. We know his mother, Mary Ball Washington, was his father's second wife. We know his father died when he was 11, and his mother raised him on her own thereafter. We know it was George's great-grandfather, John Washington, who first came to Virginia from England. The were an old and respectable family in England, though not members of the nobility. But a lot of George's childhood � how much education he received, what he did in his teen years, even his romantic relationships as he entered adulthood � are mostly conjecture. There are quite a few places in Chernow's biography where he points out that there is evidence that Washington had feelings for one woman or another, and that it's possible that these feelings might have been reciprocated and even that they led to something, but we really don't know. [image] Partly this is because Washington didn't receive a lot of formal education (which Chernow claims was a source of insecurity his entire life) and didn't write much about his youth. While he did leave a lot of letters behind, very few of them revealed his sentiments. His reputation for being an undemonstrative, granite-faced stoic was slightly exaggerated, but not completely undeserved. By the time Washington was born, his family was prosperous, if not rich. This was another interesting aspect to Washington, as financial troubles would plague him his entire life. He is usually described as a wealthy Virginian patrician, like Thomas Jefferson, and he was, at least in terms of his lifestyle. He socialized with rich people, as an adult he lived in a mansion and had hundreds of slaves and a lot of land. But he was frequently in debt, and literally had to borrow money to attend his own inauguration in suitable style. One of his lifelong problems was being overly generous, and living beyond his means. His Mount Vernon plantation was never very profitable, and while he wasn't an entirely self-made man (his parents had a plantation, after all), he definitely did not grow up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He worked hard, as did his mother. Mary Ball Washington [image] George's mother was quite an interesting character in her own right. She was a widow in an era where widows who didn't remarry had few options except relying on the kindness of their families, but Mary Ball Washington was a tough, hard-working lady whose domineering influence on George's life is seen until she died in 1789. She interfered in his career prospects and prevented him from joining the navy, even though technically she had no legal veto power over his decisions. She ran their plantation with George and their slaves She was apparently not particularly affectionate, and George didn't feel a great deal of affection for her, yet he was always a dutiful son. This caused him a lot of headaches later. Mary never showed pride in her son's accomplishments � not when he became commander of the Continental Army, not when he led a successful rebellion against Britain (there were rumors, for which Chernow says there isn't really much evidence, that she was a Tory), and not even when he became President. Instead, she continually pestered him for money, and even pleaded poverty to their friends and the Virginia legislature, causing George a great deal of embarrassment. Always sensitive about his reputation, he never failed to send his mother money when she asked, and was quite upset that she was painting him as a neglectful son. (In fact, on her death it turned out Mary Ball Washington was far from poor.) He coulda been a Tory Washington was a principled man who often did the right thing at the expense of his own self-interest, so it's easy to see him as completely altruistic, but in fact, he was quite ambitious as a young man, and even after he was President, he was very concerned about his legacy, quite aware that he was a major historical figure, and he really wanted to be seen in a good light. During his early career as a military scout for the British, he fought in the French-Indian War, and got repeatedly dissed by the British, who had no respect for colonials. This was one of the first obvious inflection points in Washington's history � he really wanted a commission in the British army. He served under General Braddock, who didn't listen to Washington's advice and died in a skirmish that presaged the British inability to deal with colonial guerrilla tactics. [image] Washington was an aspiring gentleman who really wanted to join high society. (He also wanted to visit England, but in fact he never would.) Had he been given the commission he desired, he would likely have become a high-ranking British officer, and helped suppress the revolutionaries a few years later. But his experiences in the French-Indian War left him bitter, and he'd have a grudge against the British for the rest of his life. This would be ironic during his presidency, when he'd be accused of monarchical and pro-British sentiment. Washington was a great leader, but not such a great general
Biographies of Washington talk a lot about his stoicism, his great leadership, his tribulations at Valley Forge, his crossing the Delaware. They don't talk much about his mixed record as a military general. In fact, Washington lost more battles than he won. The British won most of their battles, but lost the war. Chernow describes how many of Washington's losses were the result of poor judgment. In some cases, he just made bad guesses, but in others, he was simply not the best general in the field. His leadership was inspiring and no one could fault his courage, but he wasn't a grand strategist. He also had to deal with mutinies, manpower shortages, and lack of funds. Part of our American mythology today is how all the brave revolutionaries fought against impossible odds, through the bitter cold of Valley Forge, etc., etc., because they were dedicated to the cause of freedom, but in fact, the troops wanted to get paid, and state legislatures frequently had no money. There wasn't yet much of a federal government, and Washington was constantly having to beg the militias to stay on for another term when their service was up. Starving militiamen sometimes ended up pillaging the countryside and looting civilian homes. When Washington returned to Philadelphia, he felt the familiar soldier's bitterness as he saw how comfortable and well-fed all the civilians were, and how many speculators were getting rich, while his troops out in the field were foraging for food. President Washington After the war, Washington returned to Mount Vernon. He wanted to be a gentleman farmer and retire from politics. The plantation was in terrible shape, as were his finances. However, the new nation wasn't in much better shape. There was no strong government, there were rebellions over taxes, and the European powers were circling, assuming that America would soon be up for grabs. We didn't have a Constitution yet, just some Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was extremely controversial. Even its legality was questioned. Washington was reluctant to go at first, but eventually was persuaded to represent Virginia. Even though Washington's election as the first president was quickly becoming an inevitability, the cracks were also becoming evident. Washington was still enormously popular, but the early Republic was not. Washington was stuck with John Adams as his VP, who would go on to become the second president, with rival Thomas Jefferson as his VP because that was how things worked until the 12th Amendment. Ya know that big musical about Washington's first Secretary of the Treasury? Alexander Hamilton and Washington had a somewhat fraught relationship. Hamilton was initially an admirer of the general, and Washington recognized his brilliance, but he and Washington had some tiffs during the war, though not enough for Washington not to bring him into his new cabinet. Hamilton was a Federalist who wanted a central bank. Washington's Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, was a Republican who mistrusted central governments, Britain, and Hamilton. Washington's cabinet was a mess. He had rival factions backstabbing and smearing each other and him, while he tried to stay above it all and reconcile his fundamentally irreconcilable partisans. By his second term, the press honeymoon was over and Washington was being attacked by newspapers for his foreign policy, his alleged monarchical tendencies, and Hamilton's federalism. Jefferson almost resigned, then did resign. Washington was repeatedly hurt at the things said about him in the press and at what he perceived to be disloyalty from his friends.
It's safe to say that by 1796, Washington really wanted to get away from Washington, even though he had a whole city named after him and everything. There were friends and partisans urging him to run again, but he established the tradition (not enforced in the Constitution until 1947, but unbroken until FDR) of presidents not serving more than two terms. (continued in comments) ...more |
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May 17, 2020
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Jun 09, 2020
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May 17, 2020
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Audible Audio
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| B0DLTBTNVR
| 4.19
| 42,615
| Sep 03, 2009
| 2009
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it was amazing
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[image] I don't know how Edward Rutherfurd does the research to write these immense historical novels about different times and places. My first Ruther [image] I don't know how Edward Rutherfurd does the research to write these immense historical novels about different times and places. My first Rutherfurd novel was Sarum, which covered the entire history of England from the earliest Celts to the modern day. New York doesn't go back quite so far - only to the 1600s, and the beginnings of New York, but as with Sarum, it spans centuries of history by following the ups and downs of several families, who grow up in and with the city, sometimes leave and return, sometimes are very much aware of their ancient lineage and sometimes have no idea when they are speaking to someone whose ancestors did business with their ancestors right in this same city. You, the reader, become attached to the Van Dycks, the Masters, the Kellers and the O'Donnells, all weaving their way through history and being joined by newer families along the way. All of the "main characters" in the book are fictional, but they meet with real historical figures, and experience historical events. It's a grand, sweeping epic, driven by the melodramas of individual characters. We know that the Revolutionary War is coming, and how it will end, just as we know about the Civil War, and World Wars I and II, and in the final chapters of the novel, 9/11. But our fictional families go through it all as it happens. The central figures in New York, the ones who are present through every generation, are the Van Dycks and the Masters. Originally Dutch and Puritan arrivals in New York, respectively, they intermarry and become one of the wealthy "old money" families of the city. At one point they reckon themselves at the top of the social order, but as the 19th century ends, even though they are still wealthy, they are being eclipsed by the Morgans, the Duponts, the Rockefellers, and in the early 20th century, wars and depressions reduce them to "genteel" circumstances. Still rich (as another character puts it, "What a strange world in which becoming poor meant moving to an apartment on Park Avenue!"), but now just rich compared to the average New Yorker. As the family's fortunes continue to wax and wane, they continue to be affluent, but still looking up at the titanic fortunes of investment bankers and dot.com billionaires. There are also Irish and Jewish and Italian immigrant families who join the story. And here and there reappears the descendant of an Indian mistress who began the novel. Perhaps most tragic is the story of the descendants of Quash, the African slave, whose line also persists down through many generations until it is tragically cut short. Some families make it to the 21st century, some don't... There were no uninteresting chapters. Whether it was the Dutch/English rivalries in early Manhattan, the conflict between Patriots and Loyalists as New York weathers the American Revolution, the draft riots of the Civil War era, the Flapper and Speakeasy era, the collapse of the economy in the Great Depression, the changing times of the 50s and 60s, or the turn of the 21st century, every era of history was illustrated not by an infodump about the historical events, but by returning to our friends the Masters, the Adlers, the Kellers, the Carusos, and seeing how they are faring. I really love these books, and intend to eventually read all of Rutherfurd's novels. He's written several about England and Ireland, one about Russia, another about Paris. This is his style, to create relatable characters and then write them and their generations of descendent into a dramatic history that will probably dump a few things you didn't actually know on you along the way. Highly recommended for any fans of historical dramas. ...more |
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Jul 05, 2017
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Jul 15, 2017
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Jul 09, 2017
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| B0DM1F559F
| 3.64
| 289
| unknown
| Jan 27, 2016
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really liked it
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This was an abridged full-cast performance, in epistolary form, of the play, which is based on the 1782 novel about French aristocrats engaging in rec
This was an abridged full-cast performance, in epistolary form, of the play, which is based on the 1782 novel about French aristocrats engaging in recreational adultery and competitive seduction. It's marvelously acted with all the venom and petty viciousness befitting scheming, amoral aristocrats whose only ambition is sex and the ruination of lives. The Marquise de Merteuil (played in the 1988 movie by Glenn Close) is a rich widow who has clawed her way to the top the only way a woman can in her society. Sexually rapacious and (deep down) embittered by the double standards that allow men to boast of their conquests while women have to carefully guard their reputations, she enjoys manipulating people and ruining lives, and enlists a friend of hers, the equally amoral playboy Vicomte de Valmont, to deflower the virginal fiancee (played in the movie by a young Uma Thurman) of a lover who just broke up with her. He has his own conquests in mind, however, and the two of them spar with at first friendly affection as they execute their separate schemes, but the two of them wind up ruining lives, breaking hearts, and eventually, causing more than one death as their rivalry escalates. One might be forgiven for concluding that the moral of the story is that the entire French aristocracy were worthless parasites who deserved the tumbrils soon to come. It's a great story, which I downloaded as an Audible freebie. As much as I enjoyed the 1988 movie, the cast here is perfect. ...more |
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Feb 2016
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Feb 2016
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Feb 01, 2016
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| B0DM1LCKT5
| unknown
| 4.00
| 38,090
| 1776
| Nov 14, 2011
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really liked it
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Like most Americans, I've read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, but maybe not all of it recently, and not mu
Like most Americans, I've read the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, but maybe not all of it recently, and not much of the actual writings of the founding fathers. So this Audible daily deal seemed like a good thing to add to my commute. Thomas Paine's famous polemic is a quick and easy listen, because that's how he intended it to be - indeed, it was read throughout the colonies, in inns and taverns and meeting houses, to a population that was well-educated for the time but still not that literate by modern standards. It was a bestselling pamphlet, and it's credited with getting the majority of the American colonists "off the fence" on the subject of separating from Britain. Until Paine's pamphlet, most Americans were ambivalent about declaring independence, and even those with grievances against Britain thought that reconciliation was better than separation. Paine's argument is basically a long sermon against monarchy and absolute rule, and a recounting of all the grievances the American colonists had against England, and why it was ridiculous for a continent to continue to be governed by an island, and how Americans would benefit by making their own way in the world. It is very much a sermon, and reading some historical background on Common Sense makes it more understandable. Paine deliberately used the language and cadence of a sermon, complete with ample Biblical references, making the (somewhat dubious, in my opinion) argument that the Bible itself does not endorse monarchies. (Paine claims that even King David was only honored as a man, and not a king, but I think he's being a bit selective in his choice of Bible verses there.) It's important to understand that at the time, educated men writing treatises like this usually used formal rhetorical style, with lots of Latin and Greek phrases, so they'd sound smart and go right over the heads of commoners. Paine deliberately aimed at the common man (and as his language makes clear, he was only talking to men here), wanting his arguments to be accessible to everyone, not just the elites who stood to benefit most from revolution. At the time, this was truly revolutionary and inflammatory, and even some of the founding fathers didn't approve. Yet Common Sense is credited with swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence. Paine launches a tirade against Britain and King George, delivering quite a one-sided but effective case for divorce. The pamphlet ends with an epilogue which is a rebuttal to Quaker arguments in favor of peace (i.e., non-revolution), in which Paine basically says, "Stick to your religion and keep your noses out of politics." Having this read to me made it more enjoyable, as I could imagine Thomas Paine delivering his oratory in person, or some rabble rouser reading it aloud in an alehouse in Philadelphia. An appropriate July 4th listen. ...more |
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Jul 06, 2015
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Jul 07, 2015
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Jul 07, 2015
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| B0DM1RQKQ3
| 3.16
| 4,225
| 1800
| Feb 18, 2006
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it was ok
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Cited as an early satirical work and one of the first English historical novels, Castle Rackrent is the story of the Rackrents, formerly the O'Shaughl
Cited as an early satirical work and one of the first English historical novels, Castle Rackrent is the story of the Rackrents, formerly the O'Shaughlins, a family of land-holding Anglo-Irish aristocrats who sink into dissolution and ruin over the course of four generations. The narrator, "Old Thady" or "Honest Thady," is the Rackrents' steward. Offering occasionally obsequious, occasionally wry commentary, never directly insulting the family he's served for his entire life but making it pretty clear that some of them are wastes of space, Thady is also supposedly an early example of an unreliable narrator. As a work of satire, Castle Rackrent isn't that funny, though the Rackrents are certainly comical figures. Thady describes one Rackrent heir after the next: the generous but spendthrift Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, the litigious Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the cruel Sir Kit Rackrent, who abuses his Jewish wife and locks her in her bedroom for seven years, and the last of the Rackrents, Sir Condy, who ends up selling the estate to the narrator's son, Jason. It emerges as a single long stream of narration, interspersed with Thady's highly vernacular commentary, telling the history of Castle Rackrent until at last it falls into the hands of their long-time Irish steward's son. Politically, this book was apparently something of a hot potato, being published just prior to the 1800 Act of Union that supposedly united Ireland with Britain. Edgeworth was ostensibly describing the Irish people for her English readers. From the Author's Preface:
As she puts it, the Irish were more alien to the English than the people of continental Europe. Her description of the Irish is sympathetic yet slightly condescending; betwixt the lines one sees the sharp criticism of English overlordship, and how mismanagement by profligate and irresponsible, mostly absentee, landlords has driven the Irish to poverty and pathos. That said, it's a very early work. The novel form was still being refined. Edgeworth writes with a certain amount of humor and depth, but I saw little of the wit or understanding of story found in Jane Austen's much better novels, which came a few years later. This would be of interest to people with a historical interest in Anglo-Irish relations, and Edgeworth casts neither the English nor the Irish as heroes or villains; they're just two groups of people thrown together into a historical stew; the bloody outcome persisting for generations was probably not foreseeable by the author, even if she shows an awareness of what sort of calamity is already being perpetrated. 2 stars for entertainment value, 3 stars for its historical value and place in literary history. ...more |
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Nov 13, 2014
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Nov 14, 2014
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Nov 12, 2014
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ebook
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| 1433254735
| 9781433254734
| 1433254735
| 4.08
| 45,644
| May 07, 1987
| Aug 15, 2011
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it was amazing
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This is another book that gets 5 stars for being a great big hunk of enjoyable cheese. But it's historical cheese! Sarum tells the entire history of En This is another book that gets 5 stars for being a great big hunk of enjoyable cheese. But it's historical cheese! Sarum tells the entire history of England, from its ice-age prehistory when the first men arrived on the island to the 1980s, by focusing the passing of ages on the city of Salisbury, once known as "Sarum." Located on the edge of Salisbury Plain, at the juncture of five rivers, archeological evidence tells us it's been a trading settlement since prehistoric times (and of course, it is located only a few miles from Stonehenge). Rutherfurd uses a mixture of archeology and recorded history to tell us the complete history of Sarum from the arrival of Hwll the Hunter, seeking high ground as the ice melts, to the last in the line of the Shockleys and Masons, who have entertained us with their family dramas for centuries, trying to restore Salisbury Cathedral in 1985. How historically accurate is this book? It would take a historian to criticize that aspect of Rutherfurd's storytelling, though obviously everything involving the neolithic settlers, followed by the bronze age settlers, ancestors of the Celts, and pretty much everything up to Roman times, has to be more speculation than known fact. To this day, we don't know for sure exactly when Stonehenge was built or for what purpose, and I remember an Irish history professor in college telling me "Don't believe anything anyone writes about druids - crazy people write about druids." So Rutherfurd's take on the bloodthirsty rites of these Bronze Age tribesmen is probably as likely as any other. This is not primarily a history book, though, but a multi-generational (many, many, many generations) soap opera, through which history is told. Of the many families living around Sarum, Rutherfurd invents several � the Wilsons (descended from "Will's son" though actually present as fisher-folk living on Sarum's rivers since the Ice Age), the Masons (descended from a medieval mason, who was himself descended from an old Celtic craftsman who learned architecture from the Romans, who was himself descended from the architect of Stonehenge), the Porters (descended from a Roman officer named Porteus), the Godfreys (descended from a Norman knight), the Shockleys, the Forests (a branch of the Wilsons that renamed themselves something more noble once they got money) � who frequently change names and reverse fortunes and have interwoven lives, feuds, and marriages with the passing of centuries. The family that ruled Sarum in Roman times becomes in the 19th century the tenant farmers living on land owned by another family that were Anglo-Saxon peasants in the 11th, and so on. Naturally they don't know their ancient noble (or common) origins the way the reader does, other than as family tales passed down which they believe to be largely fictitious, like Doctor Barnagel, who laughs at his family's legend of being descended from a Danish invader known for crying "Bairn nae gel!" ("Don't kill the children!"), not knowing that it's actually true. This is a historical epic told through the eyes of everyday people. Rutherfurd has each of his families passing down physical and personality traits through the generations that are more fanciful than genetic, but there is something pleasing and familiar in seeing what the scheming, "spider-like" Wilsons are up to in each century, or what form the next generation's incarnation of a buxom, Amazonish Shockley girl will take. It sprawls across all of history. How are these families affected by the Roman invasion? The Anglo-Saxon invasion? The Danish invasion? The Norman invasion? The Black Death? The Reformation? The English Civil War? The New World? The Napoleonic Wars? All the way into the 20th century, where things became a bit rushed, covering the passing of time from World War I to 1985 in as many pages as earlier were spent on a single generation in the medieval era. Stylistically, Edward Rutherfurd is a plain and unembellished writer and he often relies on cliches and tropes, particularly all the women with their "firm young bodies" from paleolithic times onward, and the aforementioned repetition of family traits, from the Wilsons' "long-toed feet," dating back to the Ice Age, to the precise fussiness of the Porters, dating back to their Roman ancestor. Chapters begin with a lot of historical exposition explaining what's going on in this era, then zooming into what our families are up to and which side they're taking. But none of this was a detriment to me; it was a long, long listen and very satisfying. The time spent to research and write an epic spanning over 10,000 years and yet get us personally invested in the lives of individual people made it well worth it. So, maybe Sarum really only "deserves" 4 stars but I'm giving it 5 because I liked it enough that I am pushing Rutherfurd's New York epic higher on my TBR list. ...more |
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Nov 2013
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Nov 28, 2013
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Nov 01, 2013
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Audiobook
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| 1605977276
| 9781605977270
| 1605977276
| 4.02
| 48,063
| 1729
| Jul 04, 2008
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it was amazing
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I was familiar with Jonathan Swift's famous work of satire but had never actually read the whole thing. But it is on the Books 1001 list, so I decided
I was familiar with Jonathan Swift's famous work of satire but had never actually read the whole thing. But it is on the Books 1001 list, so I decided to read it, since it's online everywhere and it's only five pages. The first page of Swift's 1729 essay describes the problem: the ever-increasing number of destitute Irish, the economic hardships imposed on the nation, and the numerous inadequate and ineffective schemes that had been attempted to address it. There is no alteration in Swift's very serious and thoughtful tone when he delivers his zinger:
The rest of the essay continues in an absolutely straight-faced manner, laying out economic and dietary calculations, never once hinting that a proposal to raise Irish children for their meat might be anything less than serious. It is the sober, analytical tone that makes this such a brilliant and famous work of satire. For the exceptionally dense and humor-impaired (of whom there were apparently quite a few people back when Swift published it), the only clue may be his bitterly ironic conclusion:
It amused me to find essays posted even today by people who didn't seem to be quite sure whether Swift was seriously advocating cannibalism. Reading a bit about the publication's social context does make A Modest Proposal more interesting � Swift wasn't just condemning the heartlessness of English landlords and expressing sympathy for the bitter plight of the poor, but mocking specific remedies and alternate proposals that were popular at the time. But just reading the essay all the way through is an educational experience, because the imitators and "modest proposals" that have been proposed ever since generally fail to be nearly as witty or intelligent. The whole point of Swift's satire was that he constructed a very careful argument that invites earnest debate if you just... consider it a serious proposal. I highly encourage anyone who appreciates satire to read the essay that practically defines the modern form. ...more |
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Oct 03, 2013
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Oct 03, 2013
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Oct 03, 2013
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Paperback
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| 1433284030
| 9781433284038
| 1433284030
| 4.07
| 139,271
| 1905
| Jul 01, 2007
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really liked it
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I almost gave this 5 stars -- I really wanted to because it was hugely entertaining for such a quick, light read, but I found Orczy's prose just a lit
I almost gave this 5 stars -- I really wanted to because it was hugely entertaining for such a quick, light read, but I found Orczy's prose just a little too purple and repetitious at times. She gives great descriptions, and Sir Blakeny's clever disguises and escapes from the French Republicans are great fun to read (if very obvious to the reader), but while this is a worthy classic in the spy/adventure novel genre, it falls short of being a literary masterpiece; Baroness Orczy just is not a Dickens or even a Bronte. That said, many people - especially if looking for something light to read - may well enjoy Orczy more than one of Dickens's dense multi-layered tomes, or a depressing Bronte novel about dysfunctional Byronic anti-heroes. The Scarlet Pimpernel is all close calls and daring rescues by the dashing Sir Percy Blakeny, who adopts the persona of a dull-witted playboy but is secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel, leader of a band of English gentlemen who spirit French aristocrats condemned to die by the guillotine out of France. He's kind of like an 18th century superhero, Bruce Wayne in a cravat. His French-born wife, Marguerite, has no idea that her seemingly stupid and inane husband is the heroic figure admired throughout England and despised throughout France. Much of the tension in the novel is marital tension between these two -- Marguerite has done some bad things in the past that she regrets, but she can't explain them to Percy, so he of course doesn't trust her. Never fear, the story has a romantic happy ending. Again, great fun to read, but Orczy was a bit of a hack as a writer and the story sort of careens from one unlikely escape to another, so don't expect much depth. It's still better than most modern spy thrillers. ...more |
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Jul 04, 2011
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Jul 05, 2011
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Jul 04, 2011
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Audiobook
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| 0143058150
| 9780143058151
| 0143058150
| 3.87
| 989,162
| Nov 26, 1859
| Jun 16, 2005
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it was amazing
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This is another one of those Charles Dickens classics I was supposed to read as a kid and never did. Since I've never seen any of the movies either, i
This is another one of those Charles Dickens classics I was supposed to read as a kid and never did. Since I've never seen any of the movies either, it was actually pretty unspoiled for me, though I did know how it ends (anyone growing up in the English-speaking world can hardly have avoided knowing Sydney Carton's famous last lines: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.". Once again, I am in awe of Dickens's ability to craft larger-than-life characters whose defining personality traits and conversational tics carry them strongly through the story, and his depiction of France before and during the Revolution is as vivid and bloody as the Terror, despite his exercising all the expected Victorian restraint when it comes to actually describing bloodshed. He also contrasts Paris with London, and not always in London's favor; Dickens was a marvelous social critic of his time, and with understated clarity he shows the reader how, while the British aristocracy was no longer trampling peasants beneath their horses' feet with impunity, the English court system was hardly more just or less rapacious and corrupt than the French. The reader can be forgiven for thinking it's just a historical novel about the French Revolution and the thrilling escape of some of its would-be victims. Dickens tells us what the novel is really about in the last chapter: And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. The story itself is typically Dickensian in that it is full of memorable characters who are all brought onstage separately and then brought together by a tightening web of plot threads that ends up tying everyone together one way or another. Once Dickens introduces a character, he means to use that character until the very end, and will use any improbable plot device to make sure everyone is where he wants them to be. So of course the spy who is known to the Defarges is the very same man whom Sydney Carton saw tried years earlier in London; of course the nephew of the Marquis who imprisoned Doctor Manette (who once employed Monsieur Defarge) is the very same man who flees France and marries his daughter; of course Sydney Carton and Jerry Cruncher just happen to be in Paris on business (with the "man of business" Mr. Lorry) when Charles Darnay goes there, etc. And there is the most improbable plot device of all, telegraphed at the beginning of the book when Carton faces Darnay during that London trial. But it all works to create a tense and very enjoyable novel. One of my chief complaints about Dickens (besides his overuse of coincidence) is his very Victorian view of women: always angels of one kind or another, whether fallen or still high on their pedestals. But he almost redeems himself of that in this book with his Angel of Death, Madame Defarge (and her sidekick, The Vengeance), one of the scariest ladies in British literature. And the final confrontation between Madame Defarge and Miss Pross was all the more epic for that Dickens so rarely resolves a situation with a scene of violence, and this time he did it with two bad-ass women, both of them practically waving their national flags as they went at each other. Definitely a favorite, and one I should have read earlier. ...more |
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Jun 09, 2011
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Jun 19, 2011
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Jun 09, 2011
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Audio CD
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| B0DLT2LZ9D
| unknown
| 3.59
| 291,056
| 1726
| Feb 20, 1997
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really liked it
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A classic that deserves to be read by children and adults alike. I liked this book when I was a child, but of course a lot of Swift's humor went over
A classic that deserves to be read by children and adults alike. I liked this book when I was a child, but of course a lot of Swift's humor went over my head at the time. If you've only ever seen the TV and movie versions with Gulliver stomping around in the land of the Lilliputians, you should read the full volume, in which Gulliver also travels to Brobdingnab, the flying island of Laputa, the academy of Lagado, and the land of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms. In part one, Gulliver visits Lilliput, a land of six-inch tall people ruled by a byzantine court governed by silly and elaborate rituals. On his next voyage (unlike the movie version, he goes home each time), he visits Brobdingnab, where he is the Lilliputian and the Brobdingnabians treat him like a performing pet. Here, he finds a court vastly superior to that of Europe. Then he visits Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, and Glubbdubrib, lands with fantastic science (including a Flying Island) and magic (necromancers who can summon ghosts, tragic immortals who age but never die) which they use to absurd purposes. Finally, he visits Houyhnhnmland, ruled by intelligent horses, where humans (Yahoos) are vicious, degenerate animals. The metaphor becomes heavy-handed here, as Gulliver grows to despise himself, wishes to become a Houyhnhnm, and when he's forced to return to England, he can only see his fellow human beings as disgusting, smelly Yahoos. Each place is funny and fantastic and would make fine bed-time reading for a child, but Swift is always wielding his knife. Sometimes the humor is as subtle as an axe, such as his frequent jibes about princes, ministers, and lawyers, and in the end, Gulliver becomes a bitter misanthrope, but there are also more clever jokes about religion, education, and human vice in general, and even sex. When the Emperor of Lilliput sentences Gulliver to have his eyes put out (fully expecting him to literally lie down and submit to this), adults will see what Swift is saying about the ingratitude of princes and ministers (while Swift's original readers probably saw real-life leaders being caricaturized), while kids will just be laughing at the fact that Gulliver put out a palace fire by pissing on it. Lastly, since Swift was a satirist with a social consciousness, Gulliver's narrative ends with a commentary (still delivered with sharp, earnest satire) on England's penchant for colonization. This was, after all, the same author who wrote . Gulliver's Travels is fun. Just as science fiction, it compares favorably with the pulp adventures that followed two centuries later. I found it to be quite an enjoyable read on a surface level, and would recommend it for any young reader's library, but it's also one of those novels that merits a periodic rereading; I suspect I'd have read it quite differently as a teenager (it probably really appeals to those teenagers who think they have it all figured out when it comes to how screwed up and hypocritical the world is), and I definitely read it differently today, able to appreciate the humor, the fantasy, and the satire. Definitely do not rely on any condensed versions or film adaptations to plug this hole in your cultural education -- read the original! ...more |
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Apr 15, 2011
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May 11, 2011
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Apr 08, 2011
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ebook
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| B0B339MV4T
| 3.76
| 291,038
| Jan 1759
| Nov 27, 2006
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liked it
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Candide, or Optimism was Voltaire's satiric refutation of Leibniz's Theodicy.
Candide, or Optimism was Voltaire's satiric refutation of Leibniz's Theodicy. What I got from reading it before I read up on its history was that Voltaire was basically addressing the Problem of Evil in a particularly farcical matter, by presenting a couple of naive and foolishly optimistic characters who believe (having lived lives of ease and privilege) that they live in the best of all possible worlds, ruled by a benevolent deity. Voltaire then proceeds to pile on one tragedy after another, until by the end of this short book, everyone has been beaten, whipped, tortured, raped, robbed, enslaved, starved, humiliated, hounded, and generally suffered beyond human endurance, and in some cases even killed (except no one ever really dies, they just turn out to have miraculously survived so the suffering can continue), multiple times. Voltaire's point seems to be: "Bad things happen, the world is a shitty place, therefore there is no God." Even being an atheist myself, I can see that this is a bit of a straw man and while no Christian apologetic has addressed the Problem of Evil to my satisfaction, I recognize that Theodicy goes a little deeper than that. Of course, Voltaire wrote this at a time when questioning the existence of God, let alone challenging the philosophical foundations of a benevolent deity, could get you killed, so there hadn't been much written attacking this notion as he did. As the foreword to the edition I read pointed out, a modern satirist would be a lot subtler, but Voltaire was being edgy and shocking. Thus, as a work of philosophy, Candide is historically important but not terribly relevant today. As a story, it goes from one absurdity to the next in a fashion akin to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, but with much less imagination or wit. (It did not surprise me to learn that Voltaire wrote Candide in three days.) This is not to say it's totally unentertaining, or that it's not worth reading.
Candide and Cunegonde decide to conduct their own experiment in natural philosophy, but are caught by Cunegonde's father, who kicks Candide out of his castle Thunder-ten-Tronckh. Candide then spends the rest of the book trying to be reunited with Cunegonde, while trying to adhere to Pangloss's philosophy of optimism even in the face of Inquisitions, wars, plagues, natural disasters, and every other catastrophe Voltaire can throw at them. Is it funny? Well, there are some moments that are worth a chuckle, and Voltaire was a great polemicist.
As a work of satire, however, I would say that Candide is still read today mostly for its historical relevance; I doubt anyone would read and reread it for sheer pleasure. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 09, 2014
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Sep 10, 2014
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Nov 30, 2010
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Kindle Edition
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| 1449837581
| 9781449837587
| 1449837581
| 4.03
| 66,369
| May 13, 2010
| Jun 2010
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it was amazing
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This was a great historical novel focusing on just a few characters and a short span of years. It tells the tale of Dutch clerk Jacob de Zoet, the pio
This was a great historical novel focusing on just a few characters and a short span of years. It tells the tale of Dutch clerk Jacob de Zoet, the pious son of a deacon, and his unexpectedly long stay at the Dutch trading post of Dejima, at the time (late 18th/early 19th century) the West's only contact with Japan. De Zoet is the main character, but the novel switches POVs throughout, with the middle third focusing mostly on Japanese characters. It's a long, complex story full of love, betrayal, and cultural misunderstandings, ending with a naval attack based on an actual historical incident. There are vivid, sometimes literally poetic descriptions of everything from trees and Nagasaki Harbor to the fellows hauling chamber pots, and some quite brilliant internal monologues, which earned this book its Booker Award nomination. If you like historical fiction and character dramas, I highly recommend this one.
...more
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Notes are private!
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Sep 12, 2010
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Sep 28, 2010
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Sep 12, 2010
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Audiobook
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| B0DSZSYSVM
| 3.85
| 521,338
| Jan 28, 1882
| 1968
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really liked it
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I remember I really liked this book as a child. Someday I should reread it.
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 1978
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Apr 04, 2010
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Paperback
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