A bitter, perplexing, and eccentric work.
A vituperative rant, thinly veiled in scholarly clothes, against the direction the study of American history has lately taken.
Diggins (The Rise and Fall of the American Left, not reviewed) is not happy about the way American history is being taught. In a typically unmeasured comment, he says of the National History Standards (commissioned by the federal government to guide high-school curricula) that “[n]ot since the Nazi propaganda has a document . . . so minimized the importance of the western Enlightenment and replaced political knowledge about human nature with cultural mystiques about races and racial heritages.” This is a provocative statement, but unfortunately, it goes mostly unsupported by any kind of coherent argument. In fact, large parts of Diggins’s text verge on the unintelligible. What is clear is that the author is a Lockean liberal who believes that American history can be synthesized as a story about consensual liberalism. As such, he takes great umbrage at the attempts of Marxist, multiculturalist, post-structuralist, and feminist historians to tell other kinds of stories. He so misunderstands these efforts, however, that he completely fails to engage them constructively—which is too bad, because his analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s liberalism, with its emphasis on rights and property, could provide a compelling challenge to many ideas currently holding sway in the academy. But mostly we get unsupported assertions, selective paraphrases of offending historians, and the comments of Locke, Tocqueville, Lincoln, and Weber on a variety of subjects. Toward the end, the author takes up issues of class, race, and gender. Suffice it to say that few women or African-Americans are likely to be happy with his account.
A bitter, perplexing, and eccentric work.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-300-08237-1
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The...
Former Secretary of State Clinton tells—well, if not all, at least what she and her “book team” think we ought to know.
If this memoir of diplomatic service lacks the preening self-regard of Henry Kissinger’s and the technocratic certainty of Dean Acheson’s, it has all the requisite evenhandedness: Readers have the sense that there’s not a sentence in it that hasn’t been vetted, measured and adjusted for maximal blandness. The news that has thus far made the rounds has concerned the author’s revelation that the Clintons were cash-strapped on leaving the White House, probably since there’s not enough hanging rope about Benghazi for anyone to get worked up about. (On that current hot-button topic, the index says, mildly, “See Libya.”) The requisite encomia are there, of course: “Losing these fearless public servants in the line of duty was a crushing blow.” So are the crises and Clinton’s careful qualifying: Her memories of the Benghazi affair, she writes, are a blend of her own experience and information gathered in the course of the investigations that followed, “especially the work of the independent review board charged with determining the facts and pulling no punches.” When controversy appears, it is similarly cushioned: Tinhorn dictators are valuable allies, and everyone along the way is described with the usual honorifics and flattering descriptions: “Benazir [Bhutto] wore a shalwar kameez, the national dress of Pakistan, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive, and she covered her hair with lovely scarves.” In short, this is a standard-issue political memoir, with its nods to “adorable students,” “important partners,” the “rich history and culture” of every nation on the planet, and the difficulty of eating and exercising sensibly while logging thousands of hours in flight and in conference rooms.
Unsurprising but perfectly competent and seamlessly of a piece with her Living History (2003). And will Hillary run? The guiding metaphor of the book is the relay race, and there’s a sense that if the torch is handed to her, well….Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5144-3
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history...
A murder that transfixed the world and the invention that made possible the chase for its perpetrator combine in this fitfully thrilling real-life mystery.
Using the same formula that propelled Devil in the White City (2003), Larson pairs the story of a groundbreaking advance with a pulpy murder drama to limn the sociological particulars of its pre-WWI setting. While White City featured the Chicago World’s Fair and America’s first serial killer, this combines the fascinating case of Dr. Hawley Crippen with the much less gripping tale of Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of radio. (Larson draws out the twin narratives for a long while before showing how they intersect.) Undeniably brilliant, Marconi came to fame at a young age, during a time when scientific discoveries held mass appeal and were demonstrated before awed crowds with circus-like theatricality. Marconi’s radio sets, with their accompanying explosions of light and noise, were tailor-made for such showcases. By the early-20th century, however, the Italian was fighting with rival wireless companies to maintain his competitive edge. The event that would bring his invention back into the limelight was the first great crime story of the century. A mild-mannered doctor from Michigan who had married a tempestuously demanding actress and moved to London, Crippen became the eye of a media storm in 1910 when, after his wife’s “disappearance” (he had buried her body in the basement), he set off with a younger woman on an ocean-liner bound for America. The ship’s captain, who soon discerned the couple’s identity, updated Scotland Yard (and the world) on the ship’s progress—by wireless. The chase that ends this story makes up for some tedious early stretches regarding Marconi’s business struggles.
At times slow-going, but the riveting period detail and dramatic flair eventually render this tale an animated history lesson.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-8066-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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