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THE APPROACHING STORM

Name: THE APPROACHING STORM
Author: Neil Lanctot
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1059-2

ROOSEVELT, WILSON, ADDAMS, AND THEIR CLASH OVER AMERICA'S FUTURE

by Neil Lanctot ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 26, 2021

A rigorous, dense historical study that reveals how three individuals helped pave the way for the American century.

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A meticulously researched examination of the dynamic among three important American newsmakers of the early 20th century.

Jane Addams was the vociferous pacifist, and Theodore Roosevelt was hellbent on military buildup. President Woodrow Wilson straddled the fence as long as he could. In this chronological work, Lanctot, the author of two books on early professional baseball, delineates the incremental influence each person had on the other two as Europe became enmeshed in a bloody conflict and the U.S. tried to stay neutral. Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull House, “where dedicated men and women lived among the urban poor while providing much needed social services,” was an important voice in progressive causes such as protection for workers and women’s suffrage. She advocated for diplomacy among the world leaders and actually traveled to meet them. Roosevelt, former president and leader of the progressive Bull Moose Party, believed the U.S. should take an active military lead. While his sons participated in a “War Department–run military training camp” in upstate New York, he pushed for universal military service as a boost to his political comeback in 1916. Wilson, obsessed after his wife’s death with widow Edith Galt, with whom he shared state secrets, had originally campaigned on neutrality. He held off the hawks even after German submarines torpedoed the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, while Roosevelt believed he was instrumental in getting Wilson to accept his view that “unless America prepares to defend itself she can perform no duty to others.” Germany’s continued aggressive submarine missions gradually helped turn American opinion until the spark of the Zimmerman Telegram, which revealed a German plot to enlist Mexico in an invasion of the U.S. Lanctot’s book is too long and his prose too wordy, but he delivers an interesting take on how Addams, Roosevelt, and Wilson interacted in alternately cooperative and competitive ways.

A rigorous, dense historical study that reveals how three individuals helped pave the way for the American century.

Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-7352-1059-2

Page Count: 672

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021

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TYRANNY OF THE MINORITY

WHY AMERICAN DEMOCRACY REACHED THE BREAKING POINT

by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2023

A well-organized and convincing argument, although procedural minutiae occasionally dilute otherwise passionate writing.

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Chilling study of how recent political turmoil demonstrates that, “far from checking authoritarian power, our institutions have begun to augment it.”

“The assault on American democracy was worse than anything we anticipated in 2017, when we were writing our first book, How Democracies Die.” So write Levitsky and Ziblatt, both professors of government at Harvard. While the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol provides a clear flashpoint, the authors weave a complex discussion, illuminating fault lines in the delicate nature of democracy that the Trump presidency (and its enablers) blatantly exploited. “The republic did not collapse between 2016 and 2021,” they write, “but it became undeniably less democratic.” The authors bolster their wide-ranging narrative with geopolitical and historical examples and informed analyses of the intricate mechanisms of governance. “Most twenty-first-century autocracies are built via constitutional hardball,” they write. “Democratic backsliding occurs gradually.” Compromised politicians propel it by amplifying the dangerous ideas of extremists. Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize that democracies must become multiracial to survive, explaining America’s fitful progress since Reconstruction. “Without federal protection of voting rights,” they write, “any semblance of democracy in the South was soon extinguished…the South succumbed to nearly a century of authoritarianism.” In the 1960s, civil rights legislation “establish[ed] a legal foundation for multiracial democracy,” which Republicans largely supported. Now, the same party embraces racial grievances and electoral lies and endorses violence, demonstrated in the aftermath of Jan. 6: “Most Republican leaders acted as semi-loyal democrats. They professed to play by democratic rules but in reality enabled authoritarian behavior.” The authors conclude by advocating for potential reforms, including prosecution of antidemocratic forces and promotion of voting rights. They also urge optimism even as they gloomily warn that “the mapping of the partisan divide onto the urban-rural divide risks converting some of our most important institutions into pillars of minority rule.”

A well-organized and convincing argument, although procedural minutiae occasionally dilute otherwise passionate writing.

Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023

ISBN: 9780593443071

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: June 20, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023

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- BOOK REVIEW
HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE
by Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt

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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.