I have read a lot of books on the individual battles fought in the Pacific Theater during World War II, but I have not read much on the strategy used by American political and military leaders – other than Plan Orange. So, in order to learn more about the strategy, I decided to read The Pacific War: The Strategy, Politics, and Players That Won the War by William B. Hopkins.

At a little less than 400 pages, this book is an excellent overview of the strategy and major personalities that shaped the American war effort in the Pacific. Hopkins succinctly explains the various strategies in competition with each other on how to defeat the Japanese – some of these strategies were advocated by one armed service over another one. For example, General Douglas MacArthur advocated that the main thrust of the American counterattack should start from Australia and move north with the U.S. Army taking the lead and the U.S. Navy taking a support role. However, Admiral Ernest King (Chief of Naval Operations), with the full support of Admiral Chester Nimitz (Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet), advocated an island hopping strategy across the Central Pacific with the U.S. Navy taking the lead (Hopkins is very partial to this plan).

Hopkins also brings much-needed attention to the unsung heroes of the Pacific Theater – the cryptologists and the submariners. The cracking of the Japanese military code and the information obtained – codenamed Japanese ULTRA – was a major intelligence coup that gave the United States a decided advantage over the Japanese. The Americans used ULTRA to its advantage in many battles. For example, Hopkins adroitly points out that the Americans knew where to send their precious carriers for maximum effect in the Battle of Midway.

Hopkins rightly acknowledges the contribution of American submarines – dubbed the Silent Service – in the defeat of Japan. Hopkins writes that most Americans during and immediately after the war did realize how significant of an impact the submarines were in crippling the Japanese merchant fleet. More than half of the tonnage of sunken Japanese ships is credited to the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet. Hopkins contends that the submarines shortened the war in the Pacific because they destroyed Japan’s shipping links to its conquered territories that provided the raw materials (particularly oil) for Japan’s war machine.

The book is not completely objective in certain areas of the subject. Hopkins clearly believes that this theater of operations was the Navy’s show and that its strategy was the strongest to defeat the Japanese in the fastest time with the fewest casualties. He supports this conclusion with solid numbers on comparing casualties between the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific battle zones – there were some rough spots though, particularly Pelilieu. Even though I am partial to the Army, I must agree that the Navy was the best service for tackling the Japanese.

If you are a big fan of MacArthur, I would toughen your skin before you read this book. Hopkins is not very kind in his treatment of MacArthur – I have to admit that I agree with most of his comments. Hopkins believes that MacArthur put his personal reputation and desires before the goals of the nation. For example, since he left the Phillipines, he put all of his efforts in returning there even though it made more sense to pursue a different strategy. He was a glory hound who rarely gave credit to his subordinates.

In addition to the excellent content, the book is well written. Hopkins’s style is easy to follow and understand. The abundance of maps allows you to easily understand the strategy of the war and specific locations of the battles.

I would highly recommend this book for any person who wants a better understanding of the Pacific Theater in World War II.

But these days the possibilities of what to watch are almost endless so deciding what to watch might be a challenge. Well, have I got a book for you! [imagine that being read in the voice of your favorite TV infomercial star]

Jokes aside, I thought it would be worth mentioning Movie Lists: 397 Ways to Pick a DVD as both a useful guide and a potential gift for movie buffs.

It is probably not a shock to tell you that I am more of a book person than a movie person. But even I can appreciate the need for a resource like this.  So what is it exactly?  Here is the short answer:

These lists, arranged by genre, director, or actor, answer that most difficult of questions: what DVD should you rent for the night?

Fabulously quirky and enjoyable, this book is both a celebration of movies and a handy, entertaining guide to films guaranteed to deliver. Oddly enough, most movie guides are not full of recommendations. But Movie Lists is-and you don’t have to watch them all before you die!

A post by Samiat Pedro at ArtsHub also gives a helpful explanation:

Listing films, all available on DVD, Movie Lists range from the obvious: Comedy, Action and Thriller; to the plain absurd: Weddings, Nervous Breakdowns and… Dogs. So, what is it that led Paul to create such a book?

“Life is just too short to watch bad movies. (The book) is purely about good films, 397 lists of them, that I’m convinced you’ll enjoy,” he explains.

Movie Lists features an opening verdict on a director, actor or genre and then gives recommendations of, on average, 8-10 films that fit the bill perfectly. Constantly throwing in the odd bits of trivia, Movie Lists is actually a good, funny read, full of fun movie info.

So if you want to broaden your movie knowledge and/or branch out beyond the latest release check out Movie Lists.

Well, luckily I dodged that particular bullet with The End of Secularism by Hunter Baker. I have never met the good Dr. Baker (not to confuse you with his wife who is an actual doctor) but have become friends with him over the years through our participation at Red State and other conservative venues.

So I was quite happy to find that Hunter’s book was enjoyable and very well done (I expect nothing less from Crossway). It is in fact a book I am likely to recommend to friends and family.

Baker’s slim volume is an intelligent brief against the popular “modern” conception of secularism that seeks to keep the religious out of public life. Readable, and useful, for non-academics but interesting for those with a greater depth on the subject as well.

He uses straightforward arguments and language to lay out both the history and the debates surrounding the issue before making his own – in my opinion persuasive – case against what might be called hard line secularism.

Here is a section of the publisher’s blurb that sums it up nicely:

The result of Baker’s analysis is The End of Secularism. He reveals that secularism fails as an instrument designed to create superior social harmony and political rationality to that which is available with theistic alternatives. Baker also demonstrates that secularism is far from the best or only way to enjoy modernity’s fruits of religious liberty, free speech, and democracy. The End of Secularism declares the demise of secularism as a useful social construct and upholds the value of a public square that welcomes all comers, religious and otherwise, into the discussion. The message of The End of Secularism is that the marketplace of ideas depends on open and honest discussion rather than on religious content or the lack thereof.

Two things that are laudatory about this book:

1. It is written in an easy and enjoyable style. More academics should learn to write this clearly and succinctly. It is neither “dumbed down” nor unnecessarily verbose. Understandable for the average reader but deep enough for the academic.
2. It is a great length. Too many books seem padded or are overly dense. Baker introduces the subject well, provides the background, makes his argument and wraps it up. Again, more authors should strive for this sort of presentation. Not everyone has the time or energy to dive into long complex tomes, but we don’t need fluff either. This length is perfect for me anyways.

If you are interested in the subject of secularism or the interaction of faith in the public square you will want to read this book. It can serve as a useful introduction or an interesting argument/debate kickoff for those with more of a background in the subject.

LeMay’s life is not only one of a great general who intuitively understood the capabilities of strategic air power it was also one that rivaled any Horatio Alger story. The eldest son of a ne’er-do-well, LeMay was a breadwinner for the family at an early age. At an age when most boys were delivering newspapers, LeMay was a newspaper distributor. He worked his way through college in a steel mill, working 9 hour shifts at night, six days a week, and then going to class. This ingrained in young LeMay life long habits of self-reliance, frugality, and loyalty. He continued to be the primary means of support for his family and a surrogate parent to his siblings all through his life.

As an ROTC cadet at Ohio State he decided very early that he wished to be a pilot in the Army Air Corps and demonstrated his ability to master a bureaucratic process. He discovered that the easiest path to flight school was by way of the National Guard and showing a sophistication much beyond his years managed to get himself enrolled as a flight candidate that way. LeMay’s intelligence, work ethic, and luck ensured he passed flight school and his class rank was high enough to see him posted as a fighter pilot.

In the interwar period, LeMay became enamored of heavy bombers and left the higher prestige world of fighters to become an expert in in-flight navigation and bombing tactics. When war broke out in 1941, LeMay found himself promoted at a staggering rate of speed. In 1940 he was a lieutenant, 24 months later he was a lieutenant colonel and commander of a bomb group.

When LeMay finally arrived in England in November 1942 he was appalled to find a bombing campaign that was accomplishing little. Morale was at rock bottom and the US Army Air Forces were on the verge of following the British example of restricting bomb raids to the hours of darkness. The prevailing wisdom was that a B-17 flying more than 10 seconds on the same course and altitude was sure to be hit by flak. It was impossible, of course, to hit anything but random bits of European countryside under those conditions. LeMay set out to see if mathematics provided the same solution as the conventional wisdom:

He had pulled the covers over himself because of the cold damp weather, “but I was too excited to freeze,” he remembered. LeMay calculated the lift required to place the shells that high, the target size (seventy-four feet, nine inches from a B-17s forward gun to its tail), the number of shells the German gun batteries could cover, the dispersion of those rounds and, finally, their accuracy. All of this was based on the number of guns he thought the Germans were using, according to intelligence reports. Finally, he had it: 372.

Actually post war analysis found the number was closer to 1800. The first time it was tried was on November 23, 1942 when the 305th Bomb Group hit the rail yards and submarine pens at St. Nazaire. A near riot broke out in the briefing when it was revealed that the raid would culminate in a straight and level run of 420 seconds. The riot ended when LeMay declared that he was flying lead. Two of his planes were lost, both to fighters, and resistance to his tactics not only evaporated but quickly became the standard for B-17s.

This became a recurring theme in LeMay’s career. He was given the toughest problems, bringing the troubled B-29 into action, setting up the Strategic Air Command, etc. He approached the problem quietly and analytically. And when he arrived at a conclusion he used vigorous personal leadership to carry out the necessary actions to ensure success.

Where Kozak’s book does a good job on LeMay in World War II, it is deficient in other areas. His role in integrating the Air Force is asserted but not explored. In light of his future role as the running mate of Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1968 this is a critical omission.

At several places Kozak assures us he was not a Jack D. Ripper character and respectful of the idea of civilian supremacy over the military, troubling instances that suggest he possessed a much more ambivalent view. Duke University Political Science professor Peter Feaver states in Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations that when LeMay was told that his policy of “launch-on-warn,” that is, launching a retaliatory nuclear strike based on a warning that Soviet missiles were being launched, was not national policy he replied, “I don’t care. It’s my policy. It’s what I’m going to do.”

A greater deficiency in the book is the relatively short shrift given LeMay’s decision to join George Wallace’s presidential bid in 1968. Any legacy that LeMay retained which hadn’t been damaged by lampooning from the peace movement in the 50s and 60s was mortally wounded by his joining Wallace’s campaign. Kozak also, in my view, reduces Wallace to a caricature of the sort Kozak protests against in his book. But a more careful and detailed study of the the 1968 campaign would have solved that problem as well as clarifying LeMay’s role.

On the whole, the book leaves a lot more questions asked than answered. The prewar jockeying for position between the Army and Navy is glossed over, and in the case of the Joint Air Exercise 4 of August 1937 perhaps wrongly described.

Much is made of LeMay’s lack of social polish yet his biography is one of a man who became the youngest general in the history of the United States, a man who amassed a formidable array of patrons, and who was able to run rings around successive administrations in funding and carving out autonomy for the Strategic Air Command and the Air Force. How was this possible?

Despite LeMay’s devotion to strategic bombing there is an ample amount of information that suggests that strategic bombing was not the decisive weapon LeMay thought in World War II, or in any war thereafter. To fully evaluate the man this is a question that should have been explored.

And as we’ve mentioned, the whole 1968 campaign is given short shrift.

Having said that, Warren Kozak’s new book, LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay, provides an accessible starting point to anyone interested in the career of one of the most important figures of World War II. Hopefully, Kozak’s book is a welcome first step in dispelling the aura of a bomb-happy reactionary that has been attached to LeMay and will serve as the basis for serious academic scholarship on his life in the future.

I had the pleasure of speaking recently with Paul Rahe, who is the author of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocquville and the Modern Prospect (Yale University Press: 2009).

Professor Rahe’s book is the first of three that I will be recommending for summer reading in preparation for the RedState get-together in Atlanta on August 1st. Judging from the covers, this trio might not seem the lightest of reading but fortunately all three authors prove in their own styles that substantive reading doesn’t have to be a long, hard slog. And all three of them have important lessons for us in this lazy, off-election-cycle summer.

Over the months since the 2008 election, conservatives of all stripes have searched their souls and wrung their hands and gnashed their teeth over the apparent demise of our movement. Various proposals to reinvent, repackage and/or rebrand conservatism have been widely offered. My thought is that we might productively, with the assistance of these three excellent books, strive for another “r” word—renaissance.The word renaissance carries a number of meanings. Literally, it means “rebirth.” It is generally associated with the intense interest in classical antiquity that emerged in Italy at the beginning of the fourteenth century. But as Erwin Panofsky pointed out in his Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, what we think of as the Italian Renaissance is just one in a long series of encounters with the classical past that continue to this day.

In our current quest, we might find Professor Panofsky’s work instructive. I think we are right to recognize that the contemporary version of conservatism has, at least judging from the results of the last two election cycles, become exhausted and sterile. But it does not necessarily follow that conservatism is dead. It seems to me that what we might do is revisit the past to forge our own vision of the future, one that is suited to the twenty-first century. To return to Panofsky’s example, just because he didn’t paint like Raphael doesn’t mean Cezanne didn’t understand antiquity in his own right. He just responded to it differently.

And so we come to Professor Rahe’s new book. His premise is that in the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Swiss and French philosophers Montesquieu, Rousseau and Tocqueville we find the origins of classical modern political theory designed to ensure the liberty and rights of the individual—a movement which is, as Rahe notes, itself yet another reinterpretation of the lessons of classical antiquity.

For those of us not blessed with the kind of rigorous education offered by Rahe and his colleagues at Hillsdale College, the opening section of Soft Despotism provides a thorough grounding in their political philosophy. Through this section I was struck by the aspects of their thought that seems to have particular resonance for our situation today—resonance that for me was most profound in the sections on Tocqueville.

It may seem curious that a Frenchman who was born 204 years ago would have much to tell us about twenty-first century America, but I find Alexis de Tocqueville eerily prophetic in his identification of the cult of equality that characterizes the American approach to democracy. I find him more appealing than Montesquieu and Rousseau—although that may stem from too little exposure to Montesquieu and too much to Rousseau in another context. In any event, Tocqueville has something to say to us, notably:

Without fear, he trusts in his own strength, which to him appears sufficient for all. An individual conceives the thought of some enterprise; this enterprise has in itself a relation with the well-being of society; the idea that he should address himself to the public authority for the purpose of obtaining its help does not even occur to him. He makes his plan known; he offers to execute it; he summons the strength of other individuals to the aid of his own strength; and he engages in hand-to-hand combat against all the obstacles. Often, without a doubt, he succeeds less well than if the State was to take his place. But in the long run, the general result of all these individual enterprises greatly exceeds that which the government would be able to accomplish. (I.i.5, p. 78)

It’s a passage to make you think a bit—it might seem to go against the grain to admit that the State could do some things better, given its enormous resources. But the point is that the greater good is actually better served by the sum of individual rather than collective activity. It requires, however, self-generated effort by the individual.

Soft Despotism is more than historical analysis of long-departed white European males. In the conclusion of the book, Rahe bravely makes a leap that few historians are willing to take these days, and applies the lessons of the past to the present day. For him, these are not dead texts isolated in their own time; they are living documents that we can revisit in order to confront our own dilemmas.

The thing about “soft” despotism as opposed to other kinds of despotism is that it is not necessarily inevitable. It is not created by natural or man-made disaster. It is rather self-inflicted by societies that have come to a point of exhausted surrender to the naturally-expansionist tendencies of the state. In Professor Rahe’s analysis, the United States has arrived at the brink of this abyss. We had thought that the fall of the Soviet Union had created a world in which the trend towards liberty and democracy would naturally evolve, but we were perhaps wrong. Rather than march on towards freedom, the victorious west has drifted in the opposite direction. Complacency has replaced urgency.

Rahe here makes what may be his most powerful contribution. We have on our library shelves tomes that foretold this unfortunate trend, and that contain the seeds of ideas that can help us combat it if we have the will. True, it is a tall order, but not an impossible one. We have an opportunity now that is uniquely our own to revisit the origins of what we understand as conservatism and take our own lessons—not the lessons that resonated in 1952 or 1980 but those that speak to 2009—to heart. We can look at the menace of encroaching government control that manifests itself in ways big and small and seriously consider how this is stifling the spirit Tocqueville so admired.

It is greatly to Professor Rahe’s credit that he has taken this material off the dusty shelves and put it freshly into our hands—and that he has done so with such vigor and passion as well as scholarly rigor.

In the course of our conversation, Rahe emphasized the need for “vigorous local government”—in other words the form of government best suited to respond to the needs of the individual rather than the collective, and so foster prosperity. He pointed out that the social democratic state is an entity that “eats its own seed corn”—it has nothing to plant that will grow in the future. He proposed that two events that have occurred since President Obama’s inauguration illustrate both his thesis of a drift towards soft despotism, and his proposed means to combat it. They are the infamous DHS report identifying potentially dangerous domestic terrorists, and the April 15th “tea party” protests against excessive taxation and government race.

In the first case, Rahe pointed out that the rights and privacy of individuals were being targeted in the name of the collective good. After all, everyone hates terrorists, right? But the people in this report aren’t actually terrorists. They are people who are likely to feel strongly against the policies that result in the social democratic state and so they are “softly” blacklisted not by overt attack, but by the suggestion that such people are dangerous and need to be controlled for all of our good.

Professor Rahe did, however, find “hope” in the tea party protests, which speak to the Revolutionary sprit that forged this country. They were relatively small, local affairs that expressed the needs and opinions of the few rather than the many—needs and opinions that would most effectively be handled by a knowledgeable and responsive local authority rather than a distant, once size fits all central government. They suggested that parts of the populace are still willing to take action and stand up for themselves, rather than surrender to the state. As he concludes, “Let our motto be, as once it was, ‘Don’t tread on me!’ And let our virtue be individual responsibility.” (p. 280)

So, people, Memorial Day has passed. The summer reading season is here. Get cracking, and let’s discuss in August.

Well, to be fair Brookhiser had his first NR cover story at the age of 14; became a senior editor, then managing editor at National Review; was close friends with and, for a time, heir apparent to Buckley; and has written highly successful biographies of the founding fathers.  But take away the talent, ambition, and career success and it’s like we’re the same person!

Joking aside, it would be impossible to calculate how many young writers and politicos idealized and were inspired by Buckley and National Review.  Particularly in the period leading up to Ronald Regan’s election, WFB and NR were at the center of American conservatism.  And Brookhiser’s latest book – Right Time, Right Place – tells the story of what it was like to be at the very inner circle of this fully operational conservative battle station.

As the subtitle – Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement –indicates, RTRP is a blend of history, memoir, and political commentary.  I find this type of “creative non-fiction” can lack focus, often jumping between subjects and styles, but Brookhiser’s unique perspective, style and flair for language make this a remarkably focused and powerful read.

It is a very personal and honest look at the man and magazine at the heart of the conservative movement’s rise to power, and eventual return to earth, while at the same time a meditation on the dangers of hero worship and the nature of mature relationships.

The “hook” of much of the publicity behind the book is the revelation that Buckley promised Brookhiser the helm of NR when he retired and nine years later reneged.  Still in his twenties Brookhiser is taken out to lunch and promised control of the magazine in stages (contributing, senior, managing, editor in chief and sole stock holder) but the promise is to be a secret.  With this in mind, Brookhiser moves up the chain of command at NR.

Then one day he returns to his desk to find an envelope marked confidential.  It contains a letter from the out of town Buckley explaining that he no longer feels Brookhiser is suited to succeed him.  The letter refuses to document details but states that Brookhiser lacks “executive flair” and would be better off utilizing his clear writings talents in a different way.

Remarkably, Brookhiser builds a career as a freelance writer and successful author, but keeps his connection to National Review where he still contributes to this day.

It is clear why the publicists focus on this aspect of the story as it is clearly a compelling one; particularly to anyone interested in the conservative movement and its journalism. It almost seems a cliche at times: prodigy rises to dizzying heights only to have his hero turn on him; prodigy then must rebuild his career and come to peace with his former mentor/idol. But just because it is a classic story arc doesn’t make it any less interesting.

As any conservative writer interested in politics would, Brookhiser clearly idolized Buckley and NR, but his unique and early relationship with WFB made this a particularly strong connection.  For awhile it had to seem as if his dreams were coming true and then, suddenly, all bets were off and he had to rebuild not only his career but a relationship at the center of his life.

Brookhiser himself provides a great summary of this theme:

This is, finally, the story of a relationship. Bill was a generous and devoted man; he was also willful, capricious, impulsive. The former qualities generally prevailed over eruptions of the latter, but the latter could give you a wild ride. I went on a number. One fine day he announced that I would succeed him; another, he announced that I would not (there were other little surprises in store besides those). I was the more susceptible because I was thirty years younger than he was, because I was looking for someone to look up to, because it took me thirty years to realize that friendship is one of the few solid things you can have in this world, and rare enough.

What keeps it from devolving into emotionalism or melodrama is Brookhiser’s style and larger purpose. Brookhiser isn’t interested in writing a sort of conservative kiss-and-tell story where he drops dirt on various conservative luminaries.

Instead he brings his crisp and honest writing style to the history – including his own – of this critical time period.  As he learns his craft, he describes the approach he developed as impressionistic:

If I listened and looked hard enough, the story would tell itself, and if I wrote well enough, I could make you see and hear it too.

Brookhiser writes well enough, of that there is no doubt.  He tells the story of Buckley and NR at the height of their success with candor and insight because he was there; he saw it happen.  And he makes you see it and feel it.  Along the way he gives the reader a much fuller picture of Buckley the man then any hagiography could.

This really is a “coming of age” story.  Brookhiser literally grows up at NR and under the shadow of Buckley.  But he must find his own place.  And although the fracture is painful, and changed the relationship permanently, Brookhiser went on to build his own career and “become his own man.”

The reader is also treated to a sharp and perceptive narrated history of the politics of the period and the figures involved.  Brookhiser offers wonderful sketches of the writers and personalities that were part of NR; the challenges, scandals, and triumphs they experienced; and the politicians and leaders they covered.

In fact, the one thing that struck me while reading it was the wonderful collection of aphorisms it contains; sharp, insightful, biting, and humorous.  A sampling:

On Jimmy Carter:

Jimmy Carter is the worst ex-president in history, but he was also, after an erratic start, a very bad president: small-minded, moralizing, and incompetent.

Describing the way James Baker seemed to pop up everywhere not matter his previous success:

Like carbonation, he rose with every shake-up.

On the role of intellectuals in politics:

Intellectuals are the Kleenex of administrations – used, then discarded.

On Buckley’s particular weakness:

Bill, like time, worshipped language and forgave everyone by whom it lived

On writers selling out for Bill Clinton:

The wizard in The Firebird keeps his sold in an egg. Writers keep their souls, or great parts of them, in their words.  If they throw words away, they destroy themselves.  And what, after that sacrifice, would he [Sid Blumenthal] and other Clintonites be willing to do for their leader?

On the Adamses as a political dynasty:

The Adamses were hands-on fathers, which was equally bad: John had three sons, two alcoholics and a president; John Quincy had three sons, two alcoholics and a candidate for president. In that family, if you weren’t presidential material, you could tell it to the bartender.

Just as Brookhiser’s biographies get to the heart of their subject without the often dry writing of academic history, his retelling of the conservative movement gives you a lively and interesting broad overview but this time it comes with an insider’s glimpse into the figures involved.  For anyone interested in the movement, its history and personalities, this is great stuff.

Here he describes the birth of a new form of television via John McLaughlin (one time Washington correspondent for NR):

The most important thing that McLaughlin accomplished had nothing to do with National Review; he transformed the medium of political talk, incidentally sounding the death knell for Firing Line.  The McLaughlin Group invented the political sitcom.  Each character was a personality; what they said counted for nothing.

Or here he attempts to explain the break between the first President Bush and conservatives:

Why were conservatives sick of George H. W. Bush as his re-election approached? We pointed to specific mistakes, from raising taxes to his tied tongue, but we also judged hum by the unforgiving standard of nostalgia, comparing him with the man he had replaced.  Because Reagan was family, we forgave him many sideslips.  Bush had come in as the executor of the estate, and no one forgives an executor even if he only bungles a few bequests.

And here he gets to the difference between father and son:

Both he and his father mangled the language, but George H.W. Bush did so out of awkwardness and deference, as if speaking well would be an unacceptable act of self-assertion.  George W. Bush spoke badly out of confidence and indifference, believing that whatever he said was said well enough, and there was no point making the effort to say it better.

The book is full of these wonderful impressions and observations.

For anyone wanting to understand the conservative movement, and its flagship magazine, Right Time, Right Place is a must read.  And anyone interested in becoming a journalist/writer would do well to read it. But at its heart is a more humane vision: that being true to your ideals and friends is what’s important.

And that is worth remembering no matter what your politics.

The Global War on Terror, if we’re allowed to call it as much anymore, has produced wide array of books with a cacophony of voices. At one end of the spectrum are those which profess to predict the future through the lens of our Vietnam experience (Tom Ricks’s Fiasco and George Packer’s Assassin’s Gate fit in here) the other, and currently dominant end of the spectrum are the soldier’s narratives in the tradition of Joe Galloway’s We Were Soldiers Once… And Young and Mark Bowden’s Blackhawk Down. These would include Thunder Run by Mark Bowden’s colleague Dave Zucchino and Not a Good Day to Die by Sean Naylor. Doug Stanton’s Horse Soldiers fits squarely within the latter category.

Stanton eschews political posturing and Monday morning quarterbacking in favor of telling a small but important story from the viewpoint of a handful of Special Forces officers and non-commissioned officers who supported the Northern Alliance in October-December 2001.

For those who followed the events following the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of the primary feelings was frustration. In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon most Americans wanted a decisive response, quickly, which would demonstrate American resolve to harry those responsible to the ends of the earth. As the days mounted, frustration grew.

There were the inevitable air strikes in Afghanistan but the Taliban, and their al-Qaeda guests and sponsors, remained fully in control and many of us feared the war would devolve into a series of impotent air and missile strikes against a very primitive enemy. While the press was consumed by stories of conflict between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and US Central Command commander, General Tommy Franks, several Special Forces A Teams were quietly inserted into Afghanistan in support of the most effective warlords.

Then in a whirlwind campaign, the Special Forces soldiers blended 21st century technology into a campaign being conducted primarily by horse cavalry. The result was the rapid and stunning collapse of the Taliban. And contrary to the infatuation much of our media have had with the high-tech aspects of modern warfare, much of the fight by the men of ODA 595 was very low-tech, indeed, it could very well have come from a Louis L’Amour novel:

As he rode, J.J. started passing Taliban fighters who had been hiding in the grass. They jumped up shooting, and J.J. spun in his saddle, firing his AK. Spann came upon a Taliban who was running away, back to his line, when suddenly the soldier turned and took aim. Spann shot the man in the head.

Nelson rode past dead and dying men, the air misting with the iron scent of blood, the burnt sting of gunpowder. Smoke hovered above the field. The charging horsemen raised their RPG tubes and fired at the Taliban. The explosions rocked them in their saddles.

Up ahead, Nelson could see the Taliban line breaking in places. Here and there, like a sand wall crumbling. Nelson was amazed when he saw that some of the Taliban were running toward Dostum’s men, their hands held high in surrender.

He was equally surprised when they started falling face-forward, dead, in the dirt. He would later learn that they had been shot in the back by their commanders still on the line.

Dostum reined his horse and cut across the field to its right flank, then pulled up and stopped. the general did not like what he was seeing. the Taliban had dialed the range on their remaining ZSU-23. The rapid banging of the antiaircraft gun hurled through the Afghan line. Men blew apart in their saddles and were lifted off the ground as they walked, cut in two.

Of the 600 men who had started the charge, Nelson guessed that maybe there ewer 300 still in the fight. The remainder had been wounded, killed, or had scattered. And Dostum’s men were close, within striking distance for victory. One last hill separated them from the Taliban, about 100 yards. But Nelson sensed they were losing momentum.

Stanton highlights the political pressure for action that was placed on the Special Forces. According to Stanton, the Secretary of Defense called Colonel (now Lieutenant General) John Mulholland at TF Dagger headquarters at Karshi-Kanabad (known as K2) Airbase, Uzbekistan demanding to know why the Special Forces were not producing results. This resulted, naturally, in Mulholland telling the team leader Captain Mitch Nelson to get off his butt and do something. That, in turn, provoked a unique report that was eventually read by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on at the Fletcher Conference on November 15, 2001:

“I am advising a man on how to best employ light infantry and horse cavalry in the attack against Taliban T-55s (tanks) … mortars, artillery, personnel carriers and machine guns — a tactic which I think became outdated with the introduction of the Gatling gun. (The Mujahadeen) have done this every day we have been on the ground. They have attacked with 10 rounds AK’s per man, with PK gunners (snipers) having less than 100 rounds … little water and less food. I have observed a PK gunner who walked 10-plus miles to get to the fight, who was proud to show me his artificial right leg from the knee down.

…”We have witnessed the horse cavalry bounding overwatch from spur to spur to attack Taliban strong points — the last several kilometers under mortar, artillery … and PK fire. There is little medical care if injured, only a donkey ride to the aid station, which is a dirt hut. I think (the Mujahadeen) are doing very well with what they have. They have killed over 125 Taliban … while losing only eight.

“We couldn’t do what we are (doing) without the close air support. … Everywhere I go the civilians and Mujahadeen soldiers are always telling me they are glad the USA has come. … They all speak of their hopes for a better Afghanistan once the Taliban are gone. Better go. (The local commander) is finishing his phone call with (someone back in the States).”

On the whole, Stanton does a good job telling the story of those early days in Afghanistan and the small number of men who were sent there to carry fire and sword to our enemies. An unfair, but necessary, criticism of Stanton is that unless you have served in a combat arms outfit you really can’t describe the attitudes and interpersonal relationships that exist there. You can’t begin to understand the ambiguity of a professional soldier’s relationship with his wife, his family, indeed any one but his comrades. Mark Bowden, of all modern authors covering the American fighting men at war, does the best job of capturing a true insider’s perspective. Stanton tries to capture that ambiance but because he hasn’t experienced it, some of the opinions expressed by the soldiers come across as both trite and overly gung-ho.

Having said that, the characterization of the men in ODA 595 and their sister teams and company headquarters is fair and humane. They aren’t supermen. They aren’t Rambo. They are ordinary men who have undergone the rigors of Special Forces training and by dint of hard work and motivation have become superlative soldiers. Stanton is obviously in awe of his subject is at his best in describing the trial and privations they endured during the campaign.

The story is at its weakest when Stanton wanders outside the world of Special Forces. The segments involving John Walker Lindh and the 9-11 hijackers are extremely weak and could be eliminated without loss. The juxtaposition of Lindh’s travels from Marin County, CA to Mazar-i-Sharif with the travel of the Special Forces teams deployment from Fort Campbell, KY to Mazar-i-Sharif is strained at best.

If you are a serious student of the Global War on Terror (there I go again) the absence of footnotes will leave you in tears.  Stanton could also have done with the services of a good fact checker. Major George Rogers did form the force that is the lineal ancestor of the American Rangers and Special Forces, however, Rogers did not fight the British. During the American Revolution he was a Tory. There is no such thing as a T-52 tank. And the vignette I gave you concerning Dr. Wolfowitz is attributed to Rumsfeld by Stanton. These errors, detected while reading the book for a book review, could disguise a sloppiness in other facts I didn’t take the time to check.

Stanton inadvertently raises some interesting points. The CIA paramilitary team at Mazar-i-Sharif doesn’t come across as very tightly wrapped. It isn’t that Stanton has anything but good things to say about them, but you are left with a lot of questions. Why John Micheal Spann and his partner undertook the interrogation of some 600 captured Taliban without a security force. Why didn’t they have communications with either the CIA team or the Special Forces team? Why were they so lightly armed?

As an aside, this whole feeling of the CIA as being a somewhat less than professional or effective organization dovetails neatly with books written by CIA operatives such as Gary Schroen’s “First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan.” For instance, whenever one of the Special Forces team leaders requests biographical information on the Tajik warlord Atta Mohammed Noor, they get the biography of 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta.

And there is this tidbit:

[Commander of the US Army Special Forces Commnand, Major General Geoffrey] Lambert knew that Fifth Group’s bell had been rung.

It had taken him about ten seconds to figure out who had masterminded the attacks, and who and carried them out. For the past several years, he had observed a top-secrety intelligence program called data mining that had identified one man, an Egyptian by the name of Mohammed Atta, as a serious terrorist with links to a Saudi named bin Laden, who was a financier of terrorist training camps for men like the Egyptian.

This obviously refers to Able Danger. Is this derived from an interview with Lambert or is it simply inserted, Bob Woodward style, into the narrative. We don’t know but if it is not the product of Stanton’s imagination this paragraph is the most significant thing written on 9-11 including the Commission report.

If you are interested in the geopolitical implications of the war in Afghanistan or if you want to see Donald Rumsfeld used as a pinata then don’t waste your money. This is not the book for you. The book focuses of the men who rode with Abdul Rashid Dostun and Atta Mohammed Noor, what they did during two months in 2001, and to a lesser extent on their families. However, if the stories of American fighting men appeal to you, then by all means buy this book.

As General Dostun said, “I asked for a few Americans. They brought with them the courage of a whole army.” This book tells their story.

Cover via Amazon

*Cross Posted from Collected Miscellany*

Laura Miller had a problem.  When she was young she was absolutely captivated and enthralled with the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.  Given a copy of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by a school teacher she dove in an entered a new world.  Things would never be the same.

But eventually she grew older and began to find out things about Lewis and Narnia that changed her relationship with the series: the Christian underpinnings of the story, Lewis’s world view and political opinions, etc.  But as she pursued a career as a literary critic she decided to return to these books and she found there was still much about them that she loved.

The road that had once seemed to lead to free and open country had in reality doubled back to church.  Now I was trying to explain why my damning adolescent assessment of Chronicles wasn’t entirely sufficient, either.  As an adult, I’d discovered that I could follow Lewis pretty far without feeling obliged to return to Christianity, and that the old sensations of freedom, of wilderness in Narnia, remained.

She sets out to make sense of this journey.  The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia is her answer in book form.

I guess you would have to put Magician’s Book into the category of creative non-fiction.  Good thing too, because otherwise it would be hard to categorize.  Part memoir, literary criticism, biography, and current events reporting it frequently slides between childhood memories, academic criticism, Freudian analysis, personal opinion, and interviews with other authors.

Sometimes this manages to flow and hold together in a coherent way and at others the transitions are a little rough.  I found the sections dealing with Lewis’s faith and politics were the least convincing – but perhaps that is my bias – but the book as a whole remains an insightful and engaging look at Lewis and Narnia.

The sections dealing with the politically incorrect nature of Lewis’s views, and their inclusion in his fiction, struck me as the weakest part of the book.  Miller left the Catholicism of her childhood and never looked back.  And as a result, she evidences little sympathy for Lewis’s faith or political worldview. This is the weakness of such a personal take, since Miller is left cold by the religious nature of the books she can’t see why others might feel differently.

If you share Miller’s secular liberalism then you will probably find her discussion of Lewis’s chauvinism and her relating how she found the religious elements of the Chronicles unpersuasive, or her mockery of the way certain Christians seem to worship Lewis, dead on.  Those who don’t share her perspective, however, will likely not learn much from these chapters.

There are two aspects that make the book in spite of these distractions: Miller’s attempt to understand, and describe, why she loved the books as a child (and what continues to make them so appealing to children); and her insights into what Lewis was attempting to accomplish in his literary efforts.

The first aspect benefits from the book’s eclectic style (the lack of a rigid format, etc.).  Miller’s exploration of her childhood love of Narnia, and larger topic of one’s first literary loves, reads like a conversation with an intelligent and knowledgeable friend.  Miller shares her own experiences, adds in biographical details about Lewis, shares quotes and experiences from other authors, discusses children’s literature, and even describes her interaction with her friends’ young children.  Put it all together and it is an interesting exploration of books, they way young people interact with them, and how this both impacts us and changes as we grow older.

With this as background, in the final chapters Miller provides a very useful conceptualization of Lewis’s work.  She uses her understand of Lewis’s academic work on Medieval Literature, and its underpinning world view, to help the readers understand the style and structure of The Chronicles.

She points out that their style and structure frequently turns people off:

The made-up-ness of Narnia has seemed particularly glaring to certain well-read adults who never encountered them as children.  Lewis’s mythic syncretism – fauns and dragons and dwarves and Arabian Nights exoticism all jumbled together – undermine the Chronicle’s religious integrity for readers like John Goldthwaite, and the Christian subtext spoils the imaginative freedom for readers like my own teenage self.  For Tolkien, these undigested borrowings and the lack of coherent, unified world-building make Narnia a flimsy, derivative concoction that spits in the eye of true sub-creation.  The idea that the Chronicles are allegories – a supposedly crude, reductive, pedantic for of literature – as well as a collection of insufficiently original tidbits, offends against the premium contemporary critics place on naturalism and novelty.

But Miller argues, rightfully to my mind, that these critics are frequently missing the point.  What readers, young and old, enjoy about the Chronicles is the joy Lewis put into them:

The Chronicles are unified, not by anything resembling the exhaustive cultural stuff that Tolkien invented for Middle-earth, not by a single aesthetic or style, and not even, really, by a cogent religious vision, but by readerly desire.  Lewis poured into his imaginary world everything that he had adored in the books he read as a child and in the handful of children’s books he had enjoyed as an adult.  And there is more, too: treasures collected from Dante, from Spenser, from Malory, from Austen, from old romances and ballads and fairy tales and pagan epics.  Everything that Lewis had ever read and loved went into Narnia, and because he was a great reader, these things were as deeply felt by him as actual experiences.  In his own way, Lewis, too, believed that everything in the Chronicles was true, and this conviction is what he communicates to his young readers.

And this is how she comes to understand her relationship with Lewis and the Chronicles.  That Lewis shared her love of books and reading and that by pouring his love into Narnia he has opened up those worlds to untold numbers of people.  What is wonderful about Narnia is what is wonderful about books and literature.

As Miller works this out the reader is brought a long on a wonderful journey exploring not just Lewis, his life and work, but books and literature.  And like Lewis, Miller’s love of both comes through.

I came away knowing more about Lewis and Narnia but also about literature and how it “works.” But I was also reminded of the magic of reading and failing in love with this experience as a child.

So no matter what your politics, faith, or even opinion of The Chronicles of Narnia, if you love reading I think you will enjoy this book.

I was prepared to be angry about Christopher Buckley’s latest book Losing Mum and Pup.  I have been a fan – idealized is probably more accurate – of his father’s since a very young age and worried about any attempt at sullying that reputation.  I was so sure a tell-all book about losing both of his parents within a year would be offensive.  Throw in Christo’s (the name his parents used for him) less than astute political judgment of late and I had all but pronounced him beyond the pale.

But I decided to read the book first.  And, despite the difficult nature of the subject, I am glad I did.

Not surprisingly, Losing Mum and Pup reveals that being the only son of two famous, larger-than-life personalities was not always easy.  As is frequently the case, Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley’s vices and virtues were both larger than life.  Difficult health issues added another layer of burden on their son in their later years.

I can’t say I always enjoyed reading about the ugly reality of the last days of Christopher’s parents (it is never easy to read about the frailties and foibles of those you idolize); people who, for me, lived a sort of Olympian existence glimpsed only through the pages of books and magazines.  But Christopher’s talent, and clear love for his parents, makes the book a poignant, humorous, and engaging read.

Evaluating a book like this centered, for me, on three questions: why, what, how?  Why write it?  What to include and what to leave out? How did it turn out (was it worth it)?

Many have been asking that first question.  Why write about it now? Why air the dirty laundry in public and disappoint so many?  Christopher answers all of these related questions with a simple answer: “because I am a writer; that’s what I do.”

Writers write.  Put aside the professional aspect (making a living, furthering a career, etc.) this is also how they process and come to terms with life.  Having written it, Christopher comes to understand that this is really what it was all about:

Writing it (I suspect) was intended to enable catharsis; now, as I reach the end, it seems to me that I may have written it out of a more basic need: as an excuse to spend more time with them before letting them go – if, indeed, one ever really lets them go.  So instead of a working-it-out exercise, perhaps this is just a black-and-white album of memories, in which the unfond memories can be leeched of bitterness and settle quietly and stingless like scattered autumn leaves on the soft forest floor.

That paragraph both gets to the heart of what the book is really about and showcases, in the last sentence, the younger Buckley’s very clear talent.

And that brings us to the “what.”  The challenge for Christopher was what to include and what to leave out.  Leave out anything controversial or negative and what is the interest?  Put in too much and it seems like a kiss-and-tell book attempting to profit off his parents fame while at the same time denigrating their reputation and memories.

There are some who probably still feel the later description is accurate.  But I don’t think that is fair.  The book is a glimpse into the lives of the Buckley family as seen through the prism of Christopher having lost both parents in the course of a year.

The excerpt in the New York Times Book Review made it seem like the book was simply a catalog of the horror of growing up with famous parents and the ugly reality of their last years.  But as Neil Freeman noted in his NR review, the book provides much greater context.

Christopher is trying to come to grips with his relationship with his parents; to find some catharsis.  As an honest, and talented, writer he simply had to deal with the struggles and challenges.  Otherwise it would have come off as fake to those that knew the Buckley’s and as just another hagiography to those who didn’t.

But as Christopher so eloquently explained in the Postlude quoted above, the result was not necessarily simply catharsis – getting it off his chest – but a softening of the edges – a “leeching of bitterness” – from the emotion packed memories.  And the reader feels the bitterness seeping away and the love and devotion coming through.  In the end, the later emotions are what matter.

So yes, the book describes some difficult moments in the later months of his parent’s lives.  His dad’s growing dependence on sleeping pills and other medication; or his habit of urinating out of a moving car; or his unwillingness to spend the required money on wine for his wife’s memorial service.

And it relates the difficult side of growing up the only son of these two towering figures.  WFB’s cruel dismissal of one of Christopher’s books: “This one didn’t work for me. Sorry.” His mom’s scathing, and totally inappropriate, verbal attack on her granddaughter’s best friend simply because she was related to a Kennedy.  The day his dad walked out on his college graduation leaving him to wander the campus alone for the day or his mom’s penchant for tall tales.

And more substantive difficult issues are touched on – if not resolved.  Christopher deals with his moving away from his faith and the kind of truce that he had to broker with his father; largely by not talking about it.  And in almost a one liner he notes that his mom seemingly had no connection whatsoever to religious faith despite his father’s famous piety.

But all of this is put in context – not that it excuses the behavior – by the nature of the couple.  In all fairness to most people’s parents, the Buckley’s were simply not your average family. And Christopher recognizes this, even if at time it is cold comfort, but more than that he embraces the great things about his parents even while recognizing their faults.

As a writer Christopher is in awe of his father’s writing abilities (both the quality and the production) and, despite the difficulties, this shared calling or craft formed a bond between the two. He is similarly in awe of his mother’s force of personality; her wit, style, and determination.  Christopher readily acknowledges that whatever his gifts of satire and humor they come from his mother.

This may sound trite, but Christopher clearly loved his parents dearly and they him.  This comes through in the writing and as a result the anger, or offense, one might have felt falls away (the political opinions offered elsewhere are another matter). Or at least it did for me.

And so we come to the last question: how did it turn out or was it worth it? In discussing the first two questions I have gone some way in answering the third, but let me just say that I think Christopher did pull it off.

This is not to say there are not problems.  The humor can sometimes seem forced or over-the-top (a sense of cracking jokes to avoid getting too caught up in the emotions). The “advice for aging boomers who will soon lose their parents” sections seem out of place and discordant (are people really reading to learn about pre-negotiating funeral costs?).  And those looking for more serious examination of Christopher’s relationship with his father, his faith, and his politics will be disappointed.

But for me, the book offered the same thing it offered its author: “an excuse to spend more time with them.”  It offered me a glimpse into the lives of people I have long admired.  Maybe it is the height of tabloid naiveté to say so, but while reading it I felt a little closer to my hero WFB and felt a little less animosity to his son.

And outside of this psychological connection there is the plan fact that Christopher is a talented writer who handles a difficult subject with humor, grace, and skill.  As many others have noted, his parents might not have approved of the revelations contained in this unique book but they are undoubtedly proud of the man their son has become.

Enter win a free copy of Losing Mum and Pup.

To read the review see below.

Simon Schama is a great scholar, a great writer, and a great historian. Among his many works, The Embarrassment of Riches is the finest history of the Dutch Golden Age in English; and Citizens is among the best surveys of the French Revolution in any language. He is that most rare and privileged creature, the celebrity-scholar, who has proven his mastery in multiple subjects — he teaches in two departments at Columbia University, and boasts an academic pedigree from both Cambridge and Oxford — and is therefore allowed free rein in any. For the most part, he sticks with what he knows: a History of Britain, the Power of Art. This is for the best, because when he does not, it shows. Nowhere does it show more clearly than in his latest book, The American Future, already available in the United Kingdom, and slated for a May 2009 release in the United States.

The American Future is a sort of ersatz companion book to a four-part documentary series by the same name that Schama is starring in for the BBC. As of this writing, it has only recently aired (and it will assuredly make its way to PBS in due time). The description offered by the BBC would be nice if applicable to the book: “Simon Schama travels through America to dig deep into the conflicts of its history as a way to understand the country’s contemporary political situation.” Perhaps the television series both digs deep and arrives at some understanding. In print, The American Future does neither. It is, in fact, the worst Schama book this reviewer has ever read.

This does not necessarily mean it is not worth reading. Simon Schama’s worst is better than most people’s best. Yet because he is such a sterling historian elsewhere, it is all the more disappointing to see him phone it in here. The structure of the book purports to examine the American past as a means of discerning its future, and he does this in ways that vary wildly from interesting to absurd.

Much of the book is taken up with a narrative history of the august and rightly respected Meigs family, who managed to participate in the whole sweep of American history, mostly with rifle in hand, from the colonial era to the present. (The most recent Meigs of note commanded NATO forces in Bosnia in 1998-1999.) Yet Schama’s implicit argument, that the Meigs family history is a reasonable metaphor for the American experience, falls flat. He attempts to transform Montgomery C. Meigs, the Union quartermaster-general in the Civil War, into an emblematic American figure of that era. It works in the most awkward way, inasmuch as it works best if you don’t know much about that war. If you do, you know that though that Meigs was a deeply interesting man, he was eclipsed by far more interesting men in a period suffused with them. Shelby Foote on several occasions stated that the two towering figures of that war were Nathan Bedford Forrest and William Tecumseh Sherman; and he makes a better case in a few sentences than Schama manages in an entire book.

Even as he strains — or doesn’t — to make a case for his chosen narrative set-pieces wrested from American history, the reader of The American Future is left with the troubling sense that Schama has perhaps not done his due diligence in sourcing and research. There are the odd, Edmund Morris-style digressions into first-person recollection that cannot possibly be anything but fiction: “Sonofabitch,” Schama has yet another Meigs think just before dying at the Battle of the Bulge, “if it was this cold then you think the mud would’ve frozen … Clean it out, get into Deutschland, finish them off, good guys win, bad guys, very bad guys, lose.” Did any soldier actually think this? It is perilously close to tinny Hollywood rhetoric — what a British expat professor thinks an American infantryman speaks like — and if Schama made it up, shame on him. And if he has documentary evidence that the fallen Meigs of World War Two expressed these thoughts, shame on him for presenting it as his own weird reconstruction.

The reader’s confidence in these episodes, strewn throughout the book, is further marred by the occasional factual error. “[T]he second president of the Texan Republic was a Tejano,” Schama writes, though depending on how you count it, Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar were not Tejanos of any sort. There never was a Tejano president of the Republic of Texas: Schama is probably referring to Lorenzo de Zavala, who was interim vice-president of the Republic during the Texas War of Independence. Or rather, one of Schama’s graduate students is probably referring to de Zavala. This is emblematic of the minimal attention the author appears to have given this work, which stands in such regrettable contrast to his earlier, justly famed efforts.

It should be acknowledged that there are some interesting ideas in The American Future. Schama highlights the contrast between the present-day American disavowal of nation building, and the explicitly nation-building purpose of the pre-Civil War American military. He does it in a ham-handed way, and obscures his point with a fondness for illustrative anecdote that illustrates very little, but it is there. Similarly, his treatment of the Cherokee removal of the 1830s (via another Meigs, of course) is moving and vivid. In these brief passages, The American Future shows us what it could have been: a moral argument about American history, or an exploration of contradictions in that history. Schama neglects both routes in favor of anecdote upon anecdote.

We are presumably to plow through these anecdotes as a means of arriving at what the BBC promises, “a way to understand the country’s contemporary political situation.” Nothing like this emerges. We go from a touching account of a colonial Meigs romance, to a dusty Texas chow hall, to Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, to a somewhat dubious recounting of the time the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan educated a young Simon Schama into the pageantry of American democracy. None of it is linear, and little of it is thematically coherent. Out of this great, wonderful mess of history, Schama tries to say, the American character emerges, and its contradictions are with us still. Well, yes: but Walt Whitman said it better, and briefer, and much earlier.

Lurking throughout The American Future is the specter of Barack Obama, not yet President-elect when the book was written. It is no surprise that Schama sees Obama as the culminating figure of all that history: the embodiment of what is good, true, and worthwhile about our country. No doubt he is, from the perspective of an expatriate Briton, celebrity academic, and longtime Manhattan resident. So be it: but the acknowledgment makes The American Future less an explanation of America, and more an explanation of what Simon Schama wishes America was.