THE LETTERS OF ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.

Name: THE LETTERS OF ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
Author: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9309-7

by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. edited by Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2013

A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the...

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An insightful, unique view of the multiple Pulitzer-winning liberal icon Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (1917–2007).

Serving as their father’s editor, Schlesinger’s sons—former ABC News documentary writer Andrew (Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience, 2005, etc.) and former Time contributor and World Policy Journal publisher Stephen (Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations, 2003, etc.)—mined more than 60 years of his correspondence and worked through the thousands of letters held at the New York Public Library and other collections. They also drew from his wide-ranging and varied correspondents to produce a worthy follow-up and companion to their Journals: 1952–2000 (2007). The letters selected here provide a clear picture of the multifaceted talents of their father. Schlesinger’s credentials provided standing for the advice he addressed to Democratic presidential candidates Walter Mondale in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1992. He helped them run effective campaigns and noted that they should avoid the temptation to “out-Republican the Republicans.” The letters also include exchanges with close friends, like socialite and political supporter Marietta Tree and economist John Kenneth Galbraith, as well as complete strangers. Schlesinger and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. corresponded over many years, each welcoming the other’s latest publication efforts and disputing the historical significance of such figures as Joseph McCarthy. The editors also do a good job of representing Schlesinger's relations with the Kennedy family over the years, and there are sharply penned rebuttals of critics of the Kennedy brothers' Cuba policy—e.g., Christopher Hitchens and Joseph Califano—in which Schlesinger’s attention to detail predominates. Pen portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss add to the mix, and the book also includes the author’s fears about the consequences of Ronald Reagan's term and the war in Iraq under the George W. Bush administration.

A treasure trove that enriches understanding of some of the men and women who helped shape events from World War II to the present.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-8129-9309-7

Page Count: 656

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013

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JOHN ADAMS

by David McCullough ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and...

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A great, troubled, and, it seems, overlooked president receives his due from the Pulitzer-winning historian/biographer McCullough (Truman, 1992, etc.).

John Adams, to gauge by the letters and diaries from which McCullough liberally quotes, did not exactly go out of his way to assume a leadership role in the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, though he was always “ambitious to excel.” Neither, however, did he shy from what he perceived to be a divinely inspired historical necessity; he took considerable personal risks in spreading the American colonists’ rebellion across his native Massachusetts. Adams gained an admirable reputation for fearlessness and for devotion not only to his cause but also to his beloved wife Abigail. After the Revolution, though he was quick to yield to the rebellion's military leader, George Washington, part of the reason that the New England states enjoyed influence in a government dominated by Virginians was the force of Adams's character. His lifelong nemesis, who tested that character in many ways, was also one of his greatest friends: Thomas Jefferson, who differed from Adams in almost every important respect. McCullough depicts Jefferson as lazy, a spendthrift, always in debt and always in trouble, whereas Adams never rested and never spent a penny without good reason, a holdover from the comparative poverty of his youth. Despite their sometimes vicious political battles (in a bafflingly complex environment that McCullough carefully deconstructs), the two shared a love of books, learning, and revolutionary idealism, and it is one of those wonderful symmetries of history that both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While McCullough never misses an episode in Adams's long and often troubled life, he includes enough biographical material on Jefferson that this can be considered two biographies for the price of one—which explains some of its portliness.

Despite the whopping length, there's not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative, which brings new and overdue honor to a Founding Father.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-684-81363-7

Page Count: 736

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PIONEERS
by David McCullough

- BOOK REVIEW
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT
by David McCullough

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
by David McCullough

- IN THE NEWS
Author David McCullough Dies at 89

- PERSPECTIVES
Remembering David McCullough (1933-2022)

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LUCKY

by Alice Sebold ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1999

Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will...

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A stunningly crafted and unsparing account of the author’s rape as a college freshman and what it took to win her case in court.

In 1981, Sebold was brutally raped on her college campus, at Syracuse University. Sebold, a New York Times Magazinecontributor, now in her 30s, reconstructs the rape and the year following in which her assailant was brought to trial and found guilty. When, months after the rape, she confided in her fiction professor, Tobias Wolff, he advised: “Try, if you can, to remember everything.” Sebold heeded his words, and the result is a memoir that reads like detective fiction, replete with police jargon, economical characterization, and film-like scene construction. Part of Sebold’s ironic luck, besides the fact that she wasn’t killed, was that she was a virgin prior to the rape, she was wearing bulky clothing, and her rapist beat her, leaving unmistakable evidence of violence. Sebold casts a cool eye on these facts: “The cosmetics of rape are central to proving any case.” Sebold critiques the sexism and misconceptions surrounding rape with neither rhetoric nor apology; she lets her experience speak for itself. Her family, her friends, her campus community are all shaken by the brutality she survived, yet Sebold finds herself feeling more affinity with police officers she meets, as it was “in [their] world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.” Just when Sebold believes she might surface from this world, a close friend is raped and the haunting continues. The last section, “Aftermath,” has an unavoidable tacked-on-at-the-end feel, as Sebold crams over a decade’s worth of coping and healing into a short chapter.

Told with mettle and intelligence, Sebold’s story of fierce determination to wrest back her life from her rapist will inspire and challenge.