Here, Williams (Divine Rebel, 1981) gives voice to those silenced lawyers, academics, and civil servants—the nearly invisible federal employees who filled the government's vital middle ranks—whose lives and careers were destroyed by the federal loyalty program whose purpose was to expose Nazis and Communists in government. Between 1934 and 1974, thousands of federal employees were investigated and either dismissed or bullied into resigning by various committees that suspended protocol and deprived good citizens of their basic rights of privacy, speech, and association in the misguided pursuit of spies—although none were actually identified. Williams focuses on about a dozen victims whose terrible ordeals survive in FBI dossiers, diaries, and—although the subjects are now in their 70s or 80s—in the still painful and embattled conversations of the accused. Jessica Davidson, for instance, a young lawyer working for the NLRB, was forced to resign because she belonged to the Washington Bookshop (a cultural oasis in Washington that for no special reason was placed on the perilous ``Attorney General's List'') even while her colleague stayed on as a demoralized, paranoid, ``mentally paralyzed'' functionary. Another victim, a brilliant self-described ``iconoclast,'' was dismissed, the epithet ``Disloyal'' scrawled across his dossier although he had devoted his life to government service. Meanwhile, Williams says, real Communists evolved into superpatriots and became informers, still justifying themselves 40 years later. Some others, such as Conrad Snow of the State Department, defied Joseph McCarthy and survived—but with diminished stature and reputation. Two ironies emerge from Williams's study: that even as America fought Hitler, its government was not only banning but burning books; and that fear of being branded as disloyal drove out some of the most loyal and talented of public servants just when they were most needed. A balance of chilling documentary evidence with poignant personal reminiscence.
Pub Date: June 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-201-55069-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1993
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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