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THE SPOILS OF WAR

Name: THE SPOILS OF WAR
Author: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
ISBN: 978-1-61039-662-2

GREED, POWER, AND THE CONFLICTS THAT MADE OUR GREATEST PRESIDENTS

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 2016

A fruitful if arguable thesis yields a book worth reading in this election year.

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A stimulating look at the presidency from the vantage point of the wars America has fought—and, in some instances, the none-too-noble reasons for them.

New York University politics professors de Mesquita and Smith, co-authors of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (2011), seem guaranteed to ruffle nationalist feathers with a few of their reinterpretations of American history. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, promoted the federalist policies that led to the Civil War not just out of a wish to preserve the Union, but also out of “burning personal ambition,” his chief aim being to occupy the White House. While George Washington “is perhaps unique among American presidents in not having manifested any great desire for political power,” he also benefited greatly from the revolution in which so many shed their blood. By the authors’ account, the bloodier the hands of the president, oftentimes, the greater the esteem in which he (and perhaps she) will be held. Lincoln, for instance, won the presidency by the tiniest of electoral margins, with a split opposing ticket, so much so that only some 40 percent went to Lincoln; that was enough to carry the race, but we account him great for having led the nation through war. The authors propose an idealistic but not soppy counterfactual: if presidents were prized for keeping the peace, as well as not squandering the public treasure on war, then Warren Harding would top our list of greatest presidents, followed by Gerald Ford and then John F. Kennedy; Lincoln would rank near the bottom of the list, tying with George W. Bush. Even without exhaustive explanation of the methodology, these rankings are provocative, and certainly the authors do not shy from controversy—criticizing Barack Obama, for instance, for “a willingness to back down” in situations that could have done with more bellicosity.

A fruitful if arguable thesis yields a book worth reading in this election year.

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61039-662-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: July 3, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DICTATOR'S HANDBOOK
by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

- BOOK REVIEW
THE PREDICTIONEER’S GAME
by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)