The Wild Blue by Stephen E. AmbroseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Sunday, June 29, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Review: Nixon, Vol 2: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972
Nixon, Vol 2: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972 by Stephen E. AmbroseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
small-minded, dictatorial, retalitory
IT SOMETIMES SEEMED that Nixon was more concerned about and angrier with the American press than with the North Vietnamese. His fury escalated to new heights at the end of January, when new uniforms he had had Ehrlichman design for the White House police were worn in public for the first time. Inspired by the guards at Buckingham Palace and others he had seen on Nixon’s European tour a year earlier, Ehrlichman had put the White House police into white-tunicked, gold-braided, pillbox-hatted ceremonial uniforms.
The press ridiculed the result. The Chicago Daily News was reminded of movie characters from The Student Prince. The Buffalo Evening News thought “even ushers at old-time movie palaces were garbed with greater restraint and better taste.” “Ruritania, D.C.,” scoffed The New York Times.
Mort Allin, in the News Summary, informed Nixon that Newsweek had used a photo from a 1925 movie, The Merry Widow, and that Life used a photo of Emperor Francis Joseph for comparison.
Nixon was defiant. He wrote on the News Summary, “H—I want our staff to take RN’s position on this regardless of their own views—remind them of K’s line—a W.H. staffer does not have independent views on W.H. matter. H—Have Klein take the offensive on the slovenly W.H. police we found.” Happily for the police, his defiance didn’t last, and soon they were back in less colorful uniforms.
His rage against the press did last. When John Gardner criticized his budget, Nixon wrote: “H & E—He is to be completely cut off from now on. This is an order.”
When Walter Cronkite was quoted by Allin in a critical remark, Nixon circled his name and scribbled furiously, “A Nothing!” He didn’t much like Cronkite’s competitor, either; at his insistence, Jeb Magruder mounted a campaign to discredit David Brinkley, including such actions as having Don Kendall of Pepsi-Cola, an old Nixon friend and client, complain to the NBC corporate heads about Brinkley.
Hugh Sidey was another target. “H—I’m inclined to think Sidey is under orders,” Nixon wrote on one report. “No Contact with him for 30 days will shake him—order this to all hands.”12 When Sidey mentioned in a column Nixon’s lavish private homes and his wealthy friends, Nixon commented, “Freeze him completely for 60 days.”13 He also instructed Magruder to “initiate some letters to the editor comparing RN with LBJ, Ike, and JFK on this score.”
The obsession with the press and PR in the Nixon White House was never ending. On February 27, after his morning conference with the President, Haldeman sent a note to the staff. He began, “There is a need for some cold, tough decisions regarding the amount of time spent being king vs. that spent as leader of the government. Perhaps we should consider a drastic shift—reducing the ‘king’ time to a bare minimum. We also have to recognize that some of the time has to be spent just in being a nice person.”
(Ten years earlier Ann Whitman, Ike’s secretary, had observed in her diary, “The Vice-President [Nixon] sometimes seems like a man who is acting like a nice man rather than being one.”)
Haldeman went on to call for some “deep thinking” about the presentation of the President, “recognizing always that it actually gets down to what is the best television.”
Nixon loved television, especially when he could use it to speak directly to the people from the majesty of the Oval Office, with all three networks carrying his speech on prime time (after the networks caught on and began dividing up the chore, with two showing their regular programs, Nixon’s ratings sank, and he cut back drastically on his TV time).
2nd term plans
Nixon also brought Caspar Weinberger and John Ehrlichman in on his plans. On September 20, at Camp David, he subjected them to a two-hour monologue on how things were going to change after he got his mandate. He wanted Weinberger to prepare a radically austere budget for fiscal 1973. He wanted Ehrlichman to get cracking on the reorganization, not only of departments (Nixon wanted to reduce the Cabinet to eight departments; there would be four new ones, Economic Affairs, Human Resources, Natural Resources, and Community Development, plus four traditional ones, State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury) but by finding new people to replace the current officeholders.
NIXON’S ANTICIPATED MANDATE not only strengthened his tough-guy and mean-streak attitude toward McGovern and the Democrats, and toward his own Cabinet and the federal bureaucracy,...
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Monday, June 23, 2025
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Review: Life under the Pharaohs
Life under the Pharaohs by Leonard CottrellMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Social history is a branch of history that examines the experiences, lives, and social structures of ordinary people, rather than focusing solely on political or military events. It explores the everyday lives, social dynamics, and cultural practices of past societies.
Here's a more detailed look at what social history encompasses:
Key Aspects of Social History:
Focus on the "People":
Social history seeks to understand the lives and experiences of individuals, families, communities, and social groups, often those who were not part of political or military history.
Broad Scope:
It examines a wide range of topics, including family structures, social inequality, cultural practices, economic systems, and social movements.
Diverse Sources:
Social historians use a variety of sources, such as diaries, letters, oral histories, and material culture, to reconstruct the lives of people in the past.
Emphasis on "History from Below":
Social history is sometimes referred to as "history from below" because it emphasizes the perspectives and experiences of those who were not typically part of the historical narrative, according to Wikipedia.
Different from Traditional History:
Social history distinguishes itself from traditional political or military history by focusing on the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the past, rather than solely on political events or the lives of elites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_...
Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past
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Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Review: Climb to Conquer: The Untold Story of WWII's 10th Mountain Division
Climb to Conquer: The Untold Story of WWII's 10th Mountain Division by Peter SheltonMy rating: 0 of 5 stars
Italy v. Greece
an estimated ten thousand of them froze to death. Twenty-five thousand were killed in mountain fighting, and many thou-sands more were taken prisoner. The blow to Italian morale and prestige turned out to be irreparable.
In a memorandum on the Italian fiasco, Lt. Col. L. S. Gerow of the General Staff Corps wrote: "Important lesson learned: an army which may have to fight anywhere in the world must have... units especially organized, trained, and equipped for fighting in the mountains and in winter... such units cannot be improvised hurriedly from line divisions. They require long periods of hardening and experience, for which there is no substitute for time."
Minnie Dole couldn't have asked for a better testimonial, and on October 22, 1941, he received letters from Secretary of War Stim-son and General Marshall stating that on November 15, 1941, the 1st Battalion (Reinforced) 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment would be activated at Fort Lewis, Washington. The first element of what would become the 10th Mountain Division was officially launched.
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Saturday, June 14, 2025
Review: Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos
Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos by Ogi OgasMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...
Building on these insights, Grossberg recognized that there had to be two distinct but codependent mental processes underlying the serial position effect, each associated with a different rate of time. The first was a fast short-term memory process that changed in real time as new items were presented, and the second was a slow long-term memory process that acted on a much slower time scale and was influenced by the results of the fast activity. The notion that two mental processes, each specialized for a specific purpose, yet each needing to collaborate with the other to achieve an even larger purpose, eventually contributed to his articulation of the complementary thinking principle.
He also recognized that because the mind was a physical system, it should be treated not as an abstract, noncorporeal entity but as a specific configuration of physical elements interacting with a specific physical environment in real time. Thus, he also embraced the embodied thinking principle.
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Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Review: Lillian Hellman: Life
Lillian Hellman: Life by William WrightMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Commies
On several occasions Faulkner spoke to the press of his dislike of "literary circles" and told one reporter he "never associated with other writers." It was not the only instance of Faulkner's striking a pose. The fact is, he spent many long evenings with Hellman and Hammett-just the three of them sitting up all night talking and drinking. Faulkner was intrigued by Hammett, recognizing at once his unaffected honesty. He also identified with Hammett's roustabout background and especially envied his years as a Pinkerton agent. One area of potential discord was politics. Hammett was then beginning his long involvement with Marxism. Although his opinions were unformulated and unorthodox, they were sufficiently communistic to upset Faulkner, who abhorred any form of radicalism.
Dashiell Hammett influence by transference
former self, became a model of purposefulness and decisiveness. Although the purposes and decisions were markedly colored by Hammett's own, they were still hers. Hammett was genuinely fascinated by the person he saw behind the confusions and contradictions of Hellman. Energized by his love for her, he set to work to bring that person into being. Hammett is frequently given credit for Hellman's emergence as a playwright-which is certainly true, but not in the collaborative way that is often implied; his contribution was far broader. He was a collaborator in the creation not so much of the plays as of Lillian Hellman herself.
Letter to HUAC
I am prepared to waive the privilege against self-incrimination and to tell you anything you wish to know about my views or actions if your Committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the Committee is un-willing to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the Fifth Amendment at the hearing.
The committee's response was terse. It would not enter into negotiations with witnesses about what they would and would not testify to.
There is a subtlety to the Fifth Amendment that lay behind this exchange and determined Hellman's eventual course-as it did for many other witnesses. Once you have answered a question that could in any way be considered incriminating, you have waived your right to plead the Fifth Amendment on lesser matters relating to this admission. That is, if you admitted to having been a communist, which was a crime at that time, you couldn't then plead the Fifth when asked the names of other communists you might have known. The Fifth Amendment protects against self-incrimination, not against incriminating others. The Supreme Court had not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the Smith Act and was vague about what was "incriminating." So witnesses before HUAC had to walk gingerly around any questions that could be so construed, even about actions they didn't mind admitting to, if they wanted to keep the Fifth Amendment in their arsenal.
In 1962, Signoret translated Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes into French for a production in Paris that ran for six months
Hellman in print lied saying earlier than day before opening night, wanting changes.
In order to buy the rights, Hellman still had to obtain written consent from Hammett's daughters. She wrote them several letters, persuading them of the wisdom of her offer. Her main argument was that if they were to retain the rights, they would be liable for their father's considerable debts. This was not true, as the Government had acquiesced to the sale of the rights in order to close the Hammett account.
disagreeable
Dorothy Samuels, while admiring Hellman, found her an extremely difficult boss. "She was always making dramas out of nothing. She would take things people had said and twist them around until they became dramas of some sort. Orville Schell finally resigned as her co-chairman. He couldn't take the bickering that Lillian thrived on. She got very down on Ray Calamaro, an executive director who preceded me. She was so nasty to him, we all thought he must have turned her down. Whatever it was that set her against him, he finally quit and went to work at the Justice Department.
Nixon
...accusing the intellectuals of failing to speak out against McCarthy, she wrote: "None of them, as far as I know, has yet found it a part of conscience to admit their Cold War anti-Communism was perverted, possibly against their wishes, into the Vietnam War and then into the reign of Nixon, their unwanted but inevitable leader."
"anticommunist left"
... the man who saved Hellman at the time of her HUAC ordeal was Joe Rauh, a pillar of the anticommunist left, of which she and Garry Wills are so scornful. (Rauh himself says, "Not just me, everybody who helped her, Abe Fortas, Stanley Isaacs-we were all of the anticommunist left.") Howe had numerous other complaints, and he ended his piece with an answer to one of Hellman's main Scoundrel Time themes: while having been mistaken in "taking too long to see what was going on in the Soviet Union, I do not believe we did our country any harm" (and the McCarthyites did). Howe wrote:DEAR LILLIAN HELLMAN,
You could not be more mistaken. Those who supported Stalinism and its political enterprises, either here or abroad, helped befoul the cultural atmosphere, helped bring totalitarian methods into trade unions, helped perpetrate one of the great lies of the century, helped destroy whatever possibilities there might have been for a resurgence of serious radicalism in America. Isn't that harm enough?
"...Hellman was a systematic supporter of Stalinism, in spite of its mass horrors, for many, many years, and a savage critic of American liberals who opposed both McCarthy and American communists..."
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Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Review: Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868
Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 by Kate StoneMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
In her early 20s, Kate Stone journaled a diary through the Civil War from her plantation home Brokenburn Plantation in the Mississippi Delta to refugee flight across the state to Tyler, TX and areas.
Sometimes seeing humanity in the "darkies", she tries to maintain a life of novel-reading, huckleberry-gathering, and socializing while her brothers are pulled away into the war and eventually the "Yankees" arrive regardless.
It is not all war rumors and eroding quality of life. There is, for instance, a comet:
June 30
There is a comet visible tonight. We were surprised to see it, as we did not know it was expected. Have seen nothing of it in the papers. It is not very bright but has the appearance of a large star, Venus at her brightest, with a long train of light seen dimly as through a mist. Jimmy first discovered it. Two splendid meteors fell just above it, and the boys said it was a big star chased by little ones trying to regain its orbit.
Also, sewing up gloves, hats, and jackets as sell as making food like souse.
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Saturday, June 7, 2025
Monday, June 2, 2025
Review: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon KrakauerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had read this before but apparently did not pen a review
Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
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Review: Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature
Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature by Alison Lurie My rating: 4 of 5 star...
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Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America by M. Stanton Evans My ...
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1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza My rating: 3 of 5 stars The presidential electio...
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Trump in Exile by Meridith McGraw My rating: 4 of 5 stars [I read the Audible version narrated by [auth...
