A perceptive, well-informed take on a vital though rarely celebrated tradition in American politics.
A historical study profiles United States senators who took unpopular stands against wars.
Amchan explores the actions of a handful of senators who tried to block a rush toward war or end an ongoing conflict, often at serious cost to their political careers. He devotes the bulk of the book to opponents of the Vietnam War. These include Democrats Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, the only two senators to vote against the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the Johnson administration a blank check to prosecute the war. At a time when Cold War anti-communism was virtually unchallengeable, they called the conflict illegal and unconstitutional, with Gruening denouncing the “plain murder” of American servicemen sent to fight. Both lost their seats in the 1968 election. Democratic Sens. George McGovern of South Dakota and Frank Church of Idaho were more circumspect but more effective, in the author’s telling. Both hesitantly voted for the Tonkin Resolution but took increasingly dovish positions as the war dragged on. McGovern became the anti-war Democratic nominee in the 1972 presidential election while Church co-authored measures that banned funding for the war in Indochina in 1973 and then chaired groundbreaking hearings into abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. Both kept their seats until the 1980 Ronald Reagan landslide. Amchan also spotlights Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, a more recent dove, who opposed former Presidents H.W. Bush's and George W. Bush's wars against Iraq and died in a plane crash amid a 2002 re-election campaign. The volume finishes with a look at Republican Sen. Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin, a leading opponent of America’s entry into World War I. His epic anti-war speeches, which harped on the supposed machinations of profiteers, provoked cries of treason and a move to expel him from the Senate.
Amchan’s biographical sketches note the importance of ideological commitments and conscience in anti-war activism. Gruening, for example, was a member of the Anti-Imperialist League and a critic of U.S. support for Latin American dictators while McGovern, a pilot in World War II, was haunted by the belief that he may have killed innocents by accidentally bombing a farmhouse. But the author also examines the fog of political calculation and uncertainty that shaped the senators’ moves—La Follette had a sizable German American constituency, for example, while McGovern and Church were taken in by misleading government claims about the Tonkin Gulf incident—and how changing facts on the ground altered public opinion and opened or closed possibilities for dissent. Amchan’s prose is lucid, if somewhat dry, and his narrative features dramatic confrontations—“This chamber literally reeks of blood,” thundered McGovern in a speech to pro-war colleagues—set against knowledgeable and insightful (but sometimes repetitive) backgrounds on the conflicts. While the author is sympathetic to his subjects’ stances, he is also cleareyed and judicious about the blind spots in anti-war politics. (“The hawks were deluding themselves into believing they could bomb the Vietnamese Communists into submission,” he writes, while “the doves were deluding themselves into believing that the Vietnamese Communists would accept any arrangement that did not ultimately result in a united Vietnam under Communist rule.”) The result is a sophisticated and illuminating discussion of some iconically courageous and divisive political stands.
A perceptive, well-informed take on a vital though rarely celebrated tradition in American politics.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9617132-8-7
Page Count: 195
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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