Destiny of the Republic

Highly recommended by a patron, who happens to be married to a first cousin of Max Yasgur (yes, that Yasgur; a couple of days ago they told me that when the family gets together they sing the song about going to Yasgur's farm). She also highly recommended Candice Millard's first book, River of doubt : Theodore Roosevelt's darkest journey .

And this is high praise, indeed.
Kirkus Reviews
The shocking shooting and the painful, lingering death of the 20th president.


"Killed by a disappointed office seeker." Thus most history texts backhand the self-made James Garfield (1831–1881), notwithstanding his distinguished career as a college professor, lawyer, Civil War general, exceptional orator, congressman and all too briefly president. Millard follows up her impressive debut (The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, 2005) by colorfully unpacking this summary dismissal, demonstrating the power of expert storytelling to wonderfully animate even the simplest facts. As she builds to the president's fatal encounter with his assassin, she details the intra-party struggle among Republicans that led to Garfield's surprise 1880 nomination. The Stalwarts, worshippers of Grant, defenders of the notorious spoils system, battled the Half-Breeds, reformers who took direction from Senators John Sherman and James G. Blaine. The scheming, delusional Charles J. Guiteau, failed author, lawyer and evangelist, listened to no one, except perhaps the voices in his head assuring him he was an important political player, instrumental in Garfield's election and deserving of the consulship to Paris. After repeated rebuffs, he determined that only "removing the president" would allow a grateful Vice President Chester A. Arthur to reward him. During the nearly three excruciating months Garfield lay dying, Alexander Graham Bell desperately scrambled to perfect his induction balance (a metal detector) in time to locate the lead bullet lodged in the stricken president's back. Meanwhile, Garfield's medical team persistently failed to observe British surgeon Joseph Lister's methods of antisepsis—the American medical establishment rejected the idea of invisible germs as ridiculous—a neglect that almost surely killed the president. Moving set pieces—the 1876 U.S. Centennial Exhibition which Garfield attended and where both Lister and Bell presented, the deadlocked Republican Convention, the steamship explosion that almost killed Guiteau, the White House death watch—and sharply etched sketches of Blaine, the overwhelmed Arthur and larger portraits of the truly impressive Garfield and the thoroughly insane Guiteau make for compulsive reading.


Superb American history.

Collision course

McCartin, Joseph A.Collision course: Ronald Reagan, the air traffic controllers, and the strike that changed America. New York : Oxford University Press.

A patron asked for this book today. This is a chapter of modern American history that I have forgotten about, and reading a review of the book reminds me of its importance.


On the 30th anniversary of the showdown between Ronald Reagan and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), McCartin revisits the most consequential labor dispute since the New Deal. As a two-time governor of California, Ronald Reagan regularly bargained with public-service employees and, as president (the only one in American history ever to have helmed a union), he offered PATCO, one of the few labor organizations to endorse his candidacy, an unprecedented contract in 1981. When PATCO rejected the proposal and called an illegal strike, Reagan issued a 48 hour return-to-work ultimatum. He ended up firing the vast majority of the more than 10,000 highly specialized controllers, destroyed PATCO and set a precedent that continues to reverberate. An expert on the labor movement, McCartin reviews the origins and evolution of public-sector unions—once universally decried, even by iconic liberal presidents—outlines and translates for the general reader the applicable laws and delivers a detailed history of PATCO from its 1968 founding to its demise. Demonstrating a thorough understanding of PATCO's culture, the author powerfully describes the high-pressure world of air-traffic control, examines the historically contentious relations between the controllers and the hidebound FAA and charts PATCO's increasing militancy, even as a powerful anti-union backlash gathered in the country. Although his union sympathies are clear, McCartin, for the most part, plays it straight, relying on extensive interviews with government and union officials, rank-and-file members, pilots, airline executives and politicians to get the full story behind this dramatic confrontation. Breaking the strike proved more expensive to the federal government than meeting the controllers' demands. But the chilling effect of Reagan's swift dismissal of seemingly indispensable workers has proven more costly to organized labor. With the collective-bargaining power of public employees under fierce assault, McCartin's story couldn't be timelier or more important.

As so much else about and in today's GOP, the impetus and inspiration of today's Republican party comes from Ronald Reagan. But, I contend, not from the Gipper himself, but from how today's Republicans (choose to) see him.

Perhaps Reagan himself would prove to be too moderate for today's right wingers. Notice that President Reagan first proposed an unprecedented contract, and only then moved to crush the union. O, there is no mistaking that Reagan was ruthless, hard-assed, and started the right-wing counter-revolution; I am under no such illusions. But he would compromise, he would negotiate, and he would even joke and socialize with his archnemesis, Tip O'Neill.

I simply can not imagine Obama and Boehner doing this, enjoying each other this much.

Whiskey

Liss, David. (2008). The whiskey rebels. New York: Random House.

" ... a ripping yarn of intrigue, money, politics, real-life heroes and villains, and even a love story ..."

Kirkus: Uneven, sometimes risibly overstuffed narrative that's nevertheless compulsively readable.

Hogeland, William.(2006). The Whiskey Rebellion : George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the frontier rebels who challenged America's newfound sovereignty. New York: Scribner.


Kirkus: Contrarian account of a contrarian struggle, in some senses America's first civil war. A vigorous, revealing look at a forgotten—and confusing—chapter in American history, one that invites critical reconsideration of a founding father or two.

Founding foodies

DeWitt, Dave. (2010). The founding foodies: how Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin revolutionized American cuisine. Naperville: Sourcebooks.

Eisenhower : soldier and president

Book of the day on Book-a-Day calendar.

Condensed version of a two volume work originally published as: Eisenhower. c1983-c1984.