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.

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.

- Richard Brookhiser, author of Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, writes in the Wall Street Journal about what the Right might learn from William F. Buckley:

The most important lesson of his career is that there are limits to accommodation. Buckley came to fame in the early 1950s after two decades of liberal Democratic dominance, the Fair Deal of Harry Truman having followed the New Deal of FDR. When Republicans finally recaptured Congress and the White House in 1952, it was a case of new men and old measures. The new president, Dwight Eisenhower, despite his conservative instincts, was unwilling to pick ideological fights. On the sidelines of politics, the poet Peter Viereck called for a New Conservatism dedicated to managing change gracefully and recognizing liberal Democrats like Adlai Stevenson as its natural leaders. Germany, Japan and (it seemed) the Depression had been beaten by great collective efforts. The world had moved into a new era, and conservatives should recognize the fact.

Buckley would have none of it. He wanted a conservatism that stood for capitalism and freedom. The Cold War required another great mobilization, which Buckley supported wholeheartedly, but he would not lose sight of his individualistic goals. In 1955, when he founded National Review as the journal of opinion for his kind of conservatism, he declared its purpose to be “to stand athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” He yelled because he hoped to be heard. Liberalism had been ascendant for years, but that didn’t mean it always would be.

- Steven F. Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counter-Revolution, 1980-1989, offers thoughts on Reagan’s Unfinished Agenda and where the Tea Parties might lead:

Here’s where the Tea Parties come in. If the Tea Party movement wishes to stand for something concrete, and sensibly avoid being co-opted by the Republican party, it might consider embracing Reagan’s Economic Bill of Rights (perhaps with the addition of term limits and an anti-earmark provision just to make sure the politicians stay away). It is not necessary that agitation for constitutional amendments actually succeed in getting the amendments adopted in order to have a significant political effect. There is no chance that the current Congress would even bring any of these amendments to a vote, though the Tea Parties could agitate for resolutions from state legislatures. The progress of feminism showed the Equal Rights Amendment to have been unnecessary for its larger social goals. Advocating amendments to secure new limits to government would have the salutary effect of putting liberals on the defensive, just as the balanced-budget movement and tax revolt of the 1970s assisted the rise of Reagan and conservatives in general in the 1980s. It is the kind of populism that would gain Tocqueville’s approval and Madison’s acquiescence. Above all, picking this fight would reintroduce constitutional ideas to America’s political conversation. And not a moment too soon.

George F. Kennan’s is not an easy figure to place on our rather simplified political spectrum.  His positions on the hot button issues of the day placed him on one side or the other, but just as often seemed to contradict each other.

He was opposed to Joseph McCarthy, nuclear weapons, the militarization of the Cold War, and the Vietnam War; he was an agrarian localist that decried industrialization; he preferred engagement to demonization; and he served under, and advised, a number of iconic liberal presidents.

And yet, he was staunchly anti-communist (and anti-Stalinist) and set the course of the early Cold War; opposed the creation of the United Nations; largely preferred the free market system to the centralizing tendencies of socialism; was deeply suspicious of democracy and universalist views of politics; and decried the idealistic vision of liberal foreign policy.

Biographers and academics have tried to make sense of these, and many other, apparent contradictions (as did I in graduate school).  In George Kennan: A Writing Life Lee Congdon takes a different approach.

From the inside cover:

There were two George F. Kennans. The first was the well-known diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia-a tough political realist and man of the world who gained fame as the theorist of America’s Cold War “containment” strategy. This was a “persona” that Kennan adopted in order to carry out his professional responsibilities. The second, largely unknown, but real George Kennan was a writer and aesthete-a shy, lonely man who felt alienated from both his country and his times, and a man who made major contributions to American literature.

Thus argues Lee Congdon in George Kennan: A Writing Life, a groundbreaking study of Kennan’s life and thought. Congdon narrates Kennan’s legendary work in the foreign service, his later career as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and the schools of thought to which he made significant contributions: political realism, antidemocratic social and political criticism, Spenglerian gloom, and conservative cultural analysis. Congdon concludes that notwithstanding his great accomplishments as a diplomat and geopolitical strategist, Kennan merits consideration above all else as an original and penetrating American writer.

This argument breaks down into two components: 1) Kennan’s aesthetics and personality explain more than his surface political and professional reputation 2) Kennan was a writer who deserves to be in the upper echelons of American letters. Congdon is quite persuasive on the first point, but less so on the second.

Congdon argues that, despite his reputation, Kennan was not a politician or diplomat but a writer at heart; and that he brought this sensibility to his entire life and work. This is particularly important since Kennan’s extremely shy and self-conscious personality meant that his writing was the one place where he could not only thoughtfully explore the most important issues and questions but truly express himself.

Digging beneath just the publically available material, Congdon explores Kennan’s archival papers (notes, journals, letters, etc.) and finds this thread running throughout his life from a very early age.

In my opinion the argument that Kennan assumed a persona in order to succeed as a policy maker and diplomat fits very well with the historic evidence. And Congdon persuasively shows that viewing Kennan as a shy, but extremely gifted, writer and “aesthete” is more clarifying than attempting to see him as a political thinker or strategist. And this, when combined with his career path, contributes to much of the confusion about Kennan’s policy recommendations.

From a conservative perspective what is interesting is that Congdon seems to be claiming Kennan as a sort of pre-paleo-conservative, to use an awkwardly hyphenated term.  He is clearly pushing back against the conservative rejection of Kennan at the time as a liberal of no use in the critical battle against the Soviets.

Anti-communists at the time saw Kennan as naïve about the role of ideology as motivation for Soviet action and as dangerously idealistic about military strategy and the use of force; particularly his anti-nuclear weapons opinions.

Congdon argues, however, that Kennan was deeply pragmatic; saw the pitfalls of idealistic and universalistic doctrines; and at the same time fully aware of the long term weaknesses of the Soviet Union. In their anti-communist fervor too many on the right dismissed the wisdom Kennan offered.

For Kennan the best weapon against the Communists was a strong and vibrant West.  He argued that focusing on living up to our own ideals would, in the long term, do far more good than utopian schemes to make the world more like America.

Kennan reject the leftist view of the perfectibility of man:

That fact ruled out all utopian projects, all hope for a world of permanent peace and harmony, all efforts to remove considerations of power from the diplomatic equation.  A prudent foreign policy was on that accepted the realities of power and interest and strove to to keep the inevitable conflicts between nations within tolerable limits.

This sensibility, however, often put him at odds with the anti-communist conservatives and the internationalist liberals.

For Kennan, realism mandated moderation, a sense of proportion, and a recognition of limits.  He evinced no sympathy for moral crusades, imperial adventures, or interventions in foreign lands.

[...]

But realism meant something else as well: a rejection of any idea of American “exceptionalism” or messianism, any claim that superior virtue placed upon Americans a redemptive burden on a global scale.

In this sense, intellectually and politically Kennan was a man without a home.  In many ways he was a 18^th century European conservative trapped in the 20^th.  As noted above, he was an agrarian localist who despised the leveling aspects of mass commercial culture. He was distrustful of mass democracy as well and long held that such a political structure was incapable of a balanced and wise foreign policy.  He was an elitist politically and culturally in a time of rising egalitarianism on both the left and the right.

These views, Congdon notes, made him a reactionary, in a “strict and nonpejorative sense” rather than a conservative as he “preferred the past to the present and looked to it for wisdom and guidance.”

Clearly being labeled a reactionary in a nonpejorative sense is, and was at the time, nearly impossible.  And Kennan’s views are easily caricatured. But Congdon carefully puts them in to context and helps the reader understand Kennan in light of his upbringing, personality, and intellectual influences.

The portrait that emerges is of an intelligent, sensitive, and skilled writer who despite an active public career never quite felt at home in his own time and place.  Not surprisingly then, some of the most important work Kennan leaves behind is as a historian (having won the National Book Award as well as the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes).

Whether Kennan deserves to be seen as one of the greatest writers of his era, or as Congdon claims the “greatest American of the century now ended, is a question I am not prepared to answer.  But I can say without hesitation that he is a figure that deserves to be more widely known and for more than just the term containment.

Luckily, Congdon has provided the perfect introduction for anyone seeking to know more about this important, and yet poorly understood, man.  But really, anyone who is interested in the art of writing or the intellectual history of the 20^th century would enjoy this slim elegant portrait.

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.

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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.

With Buckley’s recent passing I was motivated to finish one of his last published works, Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription, a collection of his Notes and Asides column. It turned out to be an insightful glimpse into Buckley’s style, perspective, and sense of humor.

Here is the publishers blurb:

Four decades of William F. Buckley Jr.’s famous (and infamous) wit in a volume that will be the political gift book of the season.

Who knew that William F. Buckley Jr., the quintessential conservative, invented the blog decades before the World Wide Web came into existence? National Review, like nearly all magazines, has always published letters from readers. In 1967 the magazine decided that certain letters merited different treatment, and Buckley, the editor, began a column called “Notes & Asides,” in which he personally answered the most notable and outrageous letters.

The selections in this book, culled from four decades of these columns, include exchanges with such figures as Ronald Reagan, Eric Sevareid, Richard Nixon, A. M. Rosenthal, Auberon Waugh, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. There are also hilarious exchanges with ordinary readers, as well as letters from Buckley to various organizations and government agencies.

I am not sue what it says about blogs that the publisher is trying to use them as a selling point here. Nor am I sure that this is even close to an accurate claim. Since when do blogs follow the form of letters no matter their formality or lack thereof? I suppose you could argue that Buckley used this section in the magazine as a reporter might use a blog today: to post interesting things that might not otherwise get printed. Still, bit of stretch.

But what makes this book interesting is the way WFB’s personality and interests come through. Politics of course, but also language, humor, popular culture, and his many famous and interesting friends. You can learn a lot about a famous person, or at least about how he is perceived and perceives himself, by the letters he gets and how he chooses to respond.

Buckley was tireless in defending his, and his magazine’s, reputation. He never shrank from a fight that would further conservative ends even if that mean legal and financial risk. But he was a happy warrior and valued friendship above everything except his faith and his principles. He had a sharp wit and a instinct for the short but brutal reply.

Andrew Ferguson notes some of these reoccurring themes in his WSJ review:

“You ridiculous ass,” begins one early letter. Another opens: “You are the mouthpiece of that evil rabble that depends on fraud, perjury.” And another: “You are a hateful, un-Christian demagogue.” “You are the second worst-dressed s.o.b. on television.” Mr. Buckley’s responses are equally pithy, though slightly higher toned and always more allusive. To one disgruntled reader who identifies himself, in his righteous indignation, as the Second Coming of Jesus, Mr. Buckley warns: “And I am the second coming of Pontius Pilate.” He sometimes composes his insults in Latin–a bit of one-upmanship that even Eustace Tilley would envy.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. writes to complain about some perceived slight: “I might have hoped that you would have had the elementary fairness, or guts, to provide equal time; but, alas, wrong again.” “Dear Arthur,” Mr. Buckley replies. “I should have thought you would be used to being wrong.”

Not all the exchanges are purely contentious. The literary scholar Hugh Kenner writes in to critique a single sentence–a long, zig-zaggy construction that Mr. Buckley wrote to open an essay in Esquire magazine. Abashed, Mr. Buckley protests that the sentence was “springy and tight.”

” ‘Springy and tight’ my foot,” says Kenner. “Those aren’t springs, they’re bits of Scotch tape.” What follows is several pages of literary dissection, with Kenner attacking vigorously and Mr. Buckley defending his published sentence with slackening strength. If it sounds fussy, it isn’t. It’s a miniature tutorial in rhetoric and style from one of the century’s most rigorous critics directed at one of its most accomplished journalists. You can’t imagine finding it in any other letters column.

Not surprisingly, I came away from it feeling even more found of Buckley and a strong dose of nostalgia for the National Review that was directly under his hand.

Obviously this is a must have for Buckley fans, but anyone with an interest in the unique journalistic practice of Letters to the Editor will find things of interest here. And anyone who enjoys witty repartee or the art of correspondence will chuckle at Buckley and his unique style and sense of humor.

Notes and Asides may not have been the precursor to the blog, but it certainly was a unique contribution to a classic journalistic forum. And like a great deal, it seems to have ended with him. The world is the poorer for it, but it is nice to know that this book has captured a glimpse for posterity.

The authors of this calmly argued and well sourced book,[amazon-product region="us" text="Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State" type="text"]1890626732[/amazon-product] are not likely to appear on any of the cable gab fests any time soon despite the relevance of the subject matter. Their book lacks the hyperbole and controversy those shows thrive on. From my perspective this is a compliment – not that I don’t enjoy a good polemic now and again – but if it means that the book’s subject fails to spark a discussion then it is a shame. Because the history the authors lay out deserves wide distribution and debate.

The flap jacket copy succinctly explains what this book is about and why it is important:

No American living in 1800 would have predicted that Thomas Jefferson s idiosyncratic views on church and state would ever eclipse those of George Washington let alone become constitutional dogma. Yet today’s Supreme Court guards no doctrine more fiercely than Jefferson’s antagonistic wall of separation between church and state. Washington’s sharply contrasting views, explored in this path-breaking new book, suggest a more reasonable interpretation of the First Amendment, one that is consistent with religion s importance to the enterprise of democracy.

The most admired man of his age, Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention and was president when religious freedom was enshrined in the Bill of Rights. His claim to constitutional authority is considerably more impressive than the brilliant but eccentric Jefferson’s. Washington considered religion essential for the virtue required of self-governing citizens. Though careful not to favor particular sects, he believed that a democracy must not merely accommodate religion but encourage it.

This is one of those situations that can beggar the imagination. After a particularly bitter battle for the presidency Thomas Jefferson writes a political letter to the Danbury Baptists advocating his position that there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state. The letter is controversial at the time and by no means taken as definitive. Hundreds of years later the Supreme Court plucks Jefferson’s phrase out of history and soon it becomes accepted as if it were enshrined in the constitution itself. And George Washington’s far more pertinent and experienced views have faded from public consciousness.

Ross and Smith aim to start the hard work of overturning this state of affairs. They calmly and patiently outline in clear prose how Washington had a great deal of experience as a military commander, legislator, and as president with the questions surrounding church and state relations. They show how he developed a highly pragmatic view that sought to balance the critical and necessary role of religion in American life and government with the important principal of freedom conscience and the need for social comity.

Contrary to the near hysteria many have about any connection between church and state, or religion and state, Washington saw religion as a public good and thus something that government would be wise to promote. He had no problem with the religious symbolism and public religion that the courts have nearly outlawed in our time. He supported public funding of military chaplains, federally printed Bibles for soldiers, and even the financial support of missionaries to the Indians. These views both pre-date and post-date the ratifying of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

In the first section of the book, the authors outline Washington’s perspective and positions in his various roles from regimental leader to legislator to president. In the second section they reproduce Washington’s letters, speeches, and official documents that touch on church state relations. The combined sections form a restrained yet powerful argument for a re-evaluation of this contentious issue.

The author’s basic question is this: Why are the views of the much revered and respected Washington not part of the discussion on this critical topic?

This is a question well worth asking. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for a wider debate, because a willingness to ask the question risks the abandonment of some very closely held dogma regardless of its lack of historical or legal foundation.