Monday, August 31, 2009
Krugman On Ideology & Influence: I Wish He Wasn't Correct, But I Think He Is
Paul Krugman's piece in NYT today, "Missing Richard Nixon" raises two points that I'm coming more and more to accept. One--well, actually this is quite old--the Republican Party has been taken over by right wing crazies. Even Senator Charlies Grassley, whom I believed to be genuinely conservative in the small-government, tight-fisted, Midwestern small town kind of way, has given over to the crazies. A far cry from the Republican Party that I knew growing up (although the take-over began in earnest in 1964). Second, corporate, moneyed influence has gotten worse? I think yes, but it's a good question for a historian of American politics. I agree with Krugman that it has gotten worse. It's gotten so bad that we now start to make Richard Nixon look good! How do we break the powerful, powerful hold of the moneyed interests on Washington?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Quick Updates
Lots of good reading going on now that I no longer have an six-day jury trial looking at me. Thus, a quick update with ideas:
1. Jon Elster, Alexis De Toqueville: The First Social Scientist (2009). If De Toqueville is the first, Elster is one of the best. De Toqueville, unlike Marx or Durkheim, looks primarily to mechanisms to explain social behavior. Elster, at his analytical best, shows Toqueville's insights and failures. Things like envy and hatred, equality and privilege, are seen through a jeweler's eye--or I should say eyes, as Elster adds his perspective to Toqueville's. I have also dipped into Political Psychology by Elster (1993), an earlier Elster consideration of Toqueville, along with French historian Paul Veyne and Russian Alexander Zinoviev. Again, mechanisms, individual decisions with great social consequences, are the topic of consideration and Elster's primary methodological concern.
2. Jean Edward Smith's FDR (2008). Listening to this in the car, I started with FDR's inaguration. It's all so familiar. President Obama should read it (perhaps any good FDR biography would do). The attacks from right and left; the ability to steer the middle ground. Certainly no president, however great in hindsight, goes without every Dick, Jane, and Sally second-guessing and criticizing him (or her, when the time comes). A familiar story, but still fascinating.
3. Steig Larson's The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo (2008). I'd heard or seen a lot about this mystery, so I popped for it last weekend. 270 pages into it, I'm just getting going. Larson doesn't rush things, and he sets up things very carefully. Without knowing the ending, I know that it's engrossing and well thought out.
Happy reading for now.
1. Jon Elster, Alexis De Toqueville: The First Social Scientist (2009). If De Toqueville is the first, Elster is one of the best. De Toqueville, unlike Marx or Durkheim, looks primarily to mechanisms to explain social behavior. Elster, at his analytical best, shows Toqueville's insights and failures. Things like envy and hatred, equality and privilege, are seen through a jeweler's eye--or I should say eyes, as Elster adds his perspective to Toqueville's. I have also dipped into Political Psychology by Elster (1993), an earlier Elster consideration of Toqueville, along with French historian Paul Veyne and Russian Alexander Zinoviev. Again, mechanisms, individual decisions with great social consequences, are the topic of consideration and Elster's primary methodological concern.
2. Jean Edward Smith's FDR (2008). Listening to this in the car, I started with FDR's inaguration. It's all so familiar. President Obama should read it (perhaps any good FDR biography would do). The attacks from right and left; the ability to steer the middle ground. Certainly no president, however great in hindsight, goes without every Dick, Jane, and Sally second-guessing and criticizing him (or her, when the time comes). A familiar story, but still fascinating.
3. Steig Larson's The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo (2008). I'd heard or seen a lot about this mystery, so I popped for it last weekend. 270 pages into it, I'm just getting going. Larson doesn't rush things, and he sets up things very carefully. Without knowing the ending, I know that it's engrossing and well thought out.
Happy reading for now.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Books on the Founding & Early Repulic
I've pulled this from a some writing that I did a while ago to allay my conscience for not having posted anything recently. So as not to let my fan--someday maybe we'll get to a plural--down, I thought I'd pull something out of the (figurative) drawer.
Some Good Reading on the Founding & the Early Republic
After some delay, I’ve finally gotten to recounting some of the good reading I’ve discovered about the founding and the early republic. Of course, this is a work in progress, as I’m currently listening to a very fine work on the various playing in the Revolution and Early Republic: Gordon Wood’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Paine, and Burr. You’d think that all of these men are so well known that you wouldn’t learn anything new, but I have found the essays very informative and insightful.
But let’s start near the beginning—in this case, with Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1976). Wills, after receiving a degree in the classics from Yale and then gaining fame for his 1969 book on Richard Nixon, Nixon Agonistes, published Inventing. He used his writing skills as a magazine writer in combination with his skills as a scholar to bring a new understanding the Jefferson and the Declaration. He showed that Jefferson was more directly influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment than by John Locke. He followed this book with Explaining America: The Federalist (1981), in which he followed the path of Douglas Adair and showed the influence of David Hume on Madison and his cohorts.
Moving a away from Wills for a bit (but only to return), I’ve greatly enjoyed listening to Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers, like Woods’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on the Founders. Very telling and informative. Likewise, I enjoyed listening to Ellis’s His Excellency George Washington, a brief biography of GW. GW was an immensely ambitious man, and Ellis gives a very compelling portrait. Also on GW, see Garry Wills’s Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984). This is not so much a biography as a study in iconography. Wills does discuss some incidents in GW’s life, but it’s mainly about the images that animated GW.
On Jefferson, in whom I’ve developed some reserve, I have no one good single biography that I’ve read, but he comes up in works such as those of Ellis (who’s written a highly acclaimed biography of TJ: American Sphinx) and Wood. I have read Forrest McDonald’s book on Jefferson’s presidency, and it was indeed informative. Alas, I’ve not read some of McDonald’s highly regarded work on the Founding. However, for John Adams, I’ve read a couple: David McCullough’s popular biography John Adams. Charming and a good overall consideration. However, I most enjoyed John Patrick Diggins’s John Adams in the American Presidents series. Short, but Diggins is always full of insight, and he’s one of my favorite American historians, whether dealing with the Revolution and Early Republic or a contemporary figure like Ronald Reagan. I also recommend his The Lost Soul of American Politics, although only the first few chapters deal with this era.
I listened to an abridged version of Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Alexander Hamilton, a true genius of the era, but a frightening prospect to many of his contemporaries. I’d like to read more about Hamilton, perhaps the most genius of a group of geniuses.
As for the Early Republic, Wills’s Negro President: Jefferson & the Slave Power (2003) argues that Jefferson won the election of 1800 against Adams (and Burr) by virtue of the constitutional provision that slaves counted for 3/5 of a person in the census, thereby giving an electoral advantage to the slave states. Back on Wills, portions of his books Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990), A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (1999), and Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (1994) (includes an essay on Washington), all include chapters on Founding & Early Republic issues.
Wills’s James Madison, for the American Presidents series, is a good overview of Madison & his presidency: how so effective a theorist and legislator was a less effective president. And last year, Wills added Henry Adams and Making of America (2006), part retrospective on Adams and part extended commentary on Adams’s History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson & Madison. Will seeks to rehabilitate Adams’s great work, so often misunderstood and too little considered. Wills argues that the late Adams of The Education (voted the outstanding non-fiction book of the 20th century by Modern Library), who was cynical and determinist, is not the Adams who wrote the History. I’m now reading part of the history in conjunction with a re-reading of the Wills book. The interesting things about Adams work—a counterpoint to Gibbons’s—is that he sees America rising into nationhood after an uncertain start. Truly first-rate reading and history.
I have a bunch of books that I can list or share about this era that haven’t read (and that I’m now more motivated to do so), but these are ones that I have gotten to. All in all, a fascinating group of (mostly) men, not angels, who managed quite an amazing feat. Happy reading!
Some Good Reading on the Founding & the Early Republic
After some delay, I’ve finally gotten to recounting some of the good reading I’ve discovered about the founding and the early republic. Of course, this is a work in progress, as I’m currently listening to a very fine work on the various playing in the Revolution and Early Republic: Gordon Wood’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, Paine, and Burr. You’d think that all of these men are so well known that you wouldn’t learn anything new, but I have found the essays very informative and insightful.
But let’s start near the beginning—in this case, with Garry Wills’s Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (1976). Wills, after receiving a degree in the classics from Yale and then gaining fame for his 1969 book on Richard Nixon, Nixon Agonistes, published Inventing. He used his writing skills as a magazine writer in combination with his skills as a scholar to bring a new understanding the Jefferson and the Declaration. He showed that Jefferson was more directly influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment than by John Locke. He followed this book with Explaining America: The Federalist (1981), in which he followed the path of Douglas Adair and showed the influence of David Hume on Madison and his cohorts.
Moving a away from Wills for a bit (but only to return), I’ve greatly enjoyed listening to Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers, like Woods’s Revolutionary Characters, essays on the Founders. Very telling and informative. Likewise, I enjoyed listening to Ellis’s His Excellency George Washington, a brief biography of GW. GW was an immensely ambitious man, and Ellis gives a very compelling portrait. Also on GW, see Garry Wills’s Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (1984). This is not so much a biography as a study in iconography. Wills does discuss some incidents in GW’s life, but it’s mainly about the images that animated GW.
On Jefferson, in whom I’ve developed some reserve, I have no one good single biography that I’ve read, but he comes up in works such as those of Ellis (who’s written a highly acclaimed biography of TJ: American Sphinx) and Wood. I have read Forrest McDonald’s book on Jefferson’s presidency, and it was indeed informative. Alas, I’ve not read some of McDonald’s highly regarded work on the Founding. However, for John Adams, I’ve read a couple: David McCullough’s popular biography John Adams. Charming and a good overall consideration. However, I most enjoyed John Patrick Diggins’s John Adams in the American Presidents series. Short, but Diggins is always full of insight, and he’s one of my favorite American historians, whether dealing with the Revolution and Early Republic or a contemporary figure like Ronald Reagan. I also recommend his The Lost Soul of American Politics, although only the first few chapters deal with this era.
I listened to an abridged version of Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Alexander Hamilton, a true genius of the era, but a frightening prospect to many of his contemporaries. I’d like to read more about Hamilton, perhaps the most genius of a group of geniuses.
As for the Early Republic, Wills’s Negro President: Jefferson & the Slave Power (2003) argues that Jefferson won the election of 1800 against Adams (and Burr) by virtue of the constitutional provision that slaves counted for 3/5 of a person in the census, thereby giving an electoral advantage to the slave states. Back on Wills, portions of his books Under God: Religion and American Politics (1990), A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government (1999), and Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (1994) (includes an essay on Washington), all include chapters on Founding & Early Republic issues.
Wills’s James Madison, for the American Presidents series, is a good overview of Madison & his presidency: how so effective a theorist and legislator was a less effective president. And last year, Wills added Henry Adams and Making of America (2006), part retrospective on Adams and part extended commentary on Adams’s History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson & Madison. Will seeks to rehabilitate Adams’s great work, so often misunderstood and too little considered. Wills argues that the late Adams of The Education (voted the outstanding non-fiction book of the 20th century by Modern Library), who was cynical and determinist, is not the Adams who wrote the History. I’m now reading part of the history in conjunction with a re-reading of the Wills book. The interesting things about Adams work—a counterpoint to Gibbons’s—is that he sees America rising into nationhood after an uncertain start. Truly first-rate reading and history.
I have a bunch of books that I can list or share about this era that haven’t read (and that I’m now more motivated to do so), but these are ones that I have gotten to. All in all, a fascinating group of (mostly) men, not angels, who managed quite an amazing feat. Happy reading!
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