An accessible exploration of how war enabled the federal government to acquire real financial power.
How Lincoln’s administration effected a significant expansion of the federal government to pay for the Civil War.
Lowenstein is not a Lincoln scholar, but no matter. His experience writing about financial matters, on display in such books as America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle To Create the Federal Reserve and The End of Wall Street, informs this fresh look at the president’s essential Republican roots as a self-made man, rather than slaveholder, and belief that anyone could be successful in America. Even before the war, just as Lincoln was assuming office, a recession loomed, and he tapped one of his rivals, Salmon P. Chase, to lead the Treasury. (For more on Chase, turn to Walter Stahr’s recent bio.) The economic differences between the North and South were vast, with the South essentially a monoculture of cotton exports, dependent on the North’s manufacturing base. This led to widespread inequality and inefficiency, hampering the South’s ability to wage war. Lowenstein ably chronicles the myriad economic problems facing each side. For example, in the South, Jefferson Davis fervently believed that the war was less about slavery than objection to “the Hamiltonian ideal of centralism. Federal involvement in the economy was off limits.” The North, on the other hand, guided by Lincoln, believed the government should work for the betterment of the people. Lincoln’s Congress, writes Lowenstein, “enacted a protective tariff worthy of Henry Clay and enabl[ed] legislation for a transcontinental railroad. It involved the federal government in agriculture, education, and land policy. It legislated an income and refocused the war’s purposes to include a frontal attack on slavery. It could almost be said that it created the government itself.” Eventually, Chase came around to implementing a legal tender, the greenback, to stabilize and regulate the economy and create national banking, a system that exists to this day.
An accessible exploration of how war enabled the federal government to acquire real financial power.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2355-4
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.
A history of the right to vote in America.
Since the nation’s founding, many Americans have been uneasy about democracy. Law and policy expert Waldman (The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014, etc.), president of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, offers a compelling—and disheartening—history of voting in America, from provisions of the Constitution to current debates about voting rights and campaign financing. In the Colonies, only white male property holders could vote and did so in public, by voice. With bribery and intimidation rampant, few made the effort. After the Revolution, many states eliminated property requirements so that men over 21 who had served in the militia could vote. But leaving voting rules to the states disturbed some lawmakers, inciting a clash between those who wanted to restrict voting and those “who sought greater democracy.” That clash fueled future debates about allowing freed slaves, immigrants, and, eventually, women to vote. In 1878, one leading intellectual railed against universal suffrage, fearing rule by “an ignorant proletariat and a half-taught plutocracy.” Voting corruption persisted in the 19th century, when adoption of the secret ballot “made it easier to stuff the ballot box” by adding “as many new votes as proved necessary.” Southern states enacted disenfranchising measures, undermining the 15th Amendment. Waldman traces the campaign for women’s suffrage; the Supreme Court’s dismal record on voting issues (including Citizens United); and the contentious fight to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which “became a touchstone of consensus between Democrats and Republicans” and was reauthorized four times before the Supreme Court “eviscerated it in 2013.” Despite increased access to voting, over the years, turnout has fallen precipitously, and “entrenched groups, fearing change, have…tried to reduce the opportunity for political participation and power.” Waldman urges citizens to find a way to celebrate democracy and reinvigorate political engagement for all.
A timely contribution to the discussion of a crucial issue.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1648-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.
That thing in the air that is deadlier than even your “strenuous flus”? Trump knew—and did nothing about it.
The big news from veteran reporter Woodward’s follow-up to Fear has been widely reported: Trump was fully aware at the beginning of 2020 that a pandemic loomed and chose to downplay it, causing an untold number of deaths and crippling the economy. His excuse that he didn’t want to cause a panic doesn’t fly given that he trades in fear and division. The underlying news, however, is that Trump participated in this book, unlike in the first, convinced by Lindsey Graham that Woodward would give him a fair shake. Seventeen interviews with the sitting president inform this book, as well as extensive digging that yields not so much news as confirmation: Trump has survived his ineptitude because the majority of Congressional Republicans go along with the madness because they “had made a political survival decision” to do so—and surrendered their party to him. The narrative often requires reading between the lines. Graham, though a byword for toadyism, often reins Trump in; Jared Kushner emerges as the real power in the West Wing, “highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments”; Trump admires tyrants, longs for their unbridled power, resents the law and those who enforce it, and is quick to betray even his closest advisers; and, of course, Trump is beholden to Putin. Trump occasionally emerges as modestly self-aware, but throughout the narrative, he is in a rage. Though he participated, he said that he suspected this to be “a lousy book.” It’s not—though readers may wish Woodward had aired some of this information earlier, when more could have been done to stem the pandemic. When promoting Fear, the author was asked for his assessment of Trump. His reply: “Let’s hope to God we don’t have a crisis.” Multiple crises later, Woodward concludes, as many observers have, “Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
An essential account of a chaotic administration that, Woodward makes painfully clear, is incapable of governing.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982131-73-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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