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Showing posts with the label FDR

PROHIBITION in the UNITED STATES: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

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  Published in 2019 by Hourly History. Hourly History  publishes histories and biographies that you can read in about an hour. That can be a tough job for larger topics in history like "The Industrial Revolution" or "The Roman Empire" but it works out about right for this topic. This history goes all of the way back to the arrival of the  Mayflower in 1620. Turns out the Puritans brought hundreds of gallons of alcoholic beverages with them to the New World and immediately set up the means to produce even more. The book then goes on to show the ups and down of America's relationship with alcohol. When the reader gets to the temperance movement, there is a solid context to understand why the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1919 and why it was eventually abolished by the 21st Amendment a mere 14 years later. For a short read, this book provides a lot of good, basic information.  I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.c

THE AMERICAN STORY: CONVERSATIONS with MASTER HISTORIANS (audiobook) by David M. Rubinstein

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  Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Voice work by various historians hosted by David M. Rubinstein. Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged . David M. Rubinstein is an avid amateur historian and financial supporter of history-related projects. He organized a series of 16 interviews of historians by the Library of Congress with the intended audience to be actual members of Congress with invited guests.  He picked historians who have written popular and professionally respected histories and biographies of famous Americans mostly presidents such as Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton), David McCullough (Adams and Truman), Cokie Roberts (Abigail Adams) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln) and just let them discuss the person they studied. Doris Kearns Goodwin The audiobook consists of the actual audio of these interviews with a little introduction The interviews were all solid, but could have been better if Rubinstein had not insisted on inserting himself in the middle of them so

ON FASCISM: 12 LESSONS from AMERICAN HISTORY (audiobook) by Matthew CC MacWilliams

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  Published in September of 2020 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Kevin Stillwell. Duration: 4 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. MacWilliams is a sociologist who studies authoritarianism. He has done a number of surveys over American attitudes towards the Constitution and the freedoms of their fellow citizens and there are areas of concern. For example, "31% of Americans agree that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections is a good way of governing the United States" and "30% of Americans agree with the statement 'I often find myself fearful of other people of other races.'" Other stats of concern are: "44% of Americans agree that increasing racial, religious and ethnic diversity represents a threat to the security of the United States" When you break down the numbers about "18 percent of Americans are highly disposed to authoritarianism. Another 23 percent or so are attitudinally just one step below them on the a

1942: THE YEAR THAT TRIED MEN'S SOULS by Winston Groom

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Originally published in 2004. Winston Groom is best known as the author of  Forrest Gump . He is also the author of 14 different non-fiction books and shows a real talent for writing narrative history. This book focuses on the year that Groom considers to be the crisis year for the Allies and America in particular in World War II - 1942.  He starts his story just before World War II with the attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and ends it in February of 1943 with the ending of the fighting on Guadalcanal. This was a bad time, especially early in 1942 when Japan conquered one territory after another and American forces were seemingly caught off guard or under-prepared everywhere. Groom focuses primarily on the Pacific Theater in this book (75 % or more), although he does offer a decent look at the North African campaign. His look at the fall of the Philippines and the Bataan Death March was very compelling. Groom has no problem pointing out incompetent leadership when he sees i

AMERICAN HERITAGE: GREAT MINDS of HISTORY interviews by Roger Mudd

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Published in 1999 by Wiley and Sons. Roger Mudd, formerly of CBS and NBC news, interviewed five historians about their special topics of expertise. They are all solid interviews that allow the historians to tell why their topics are important. Mudd does a great job of letting the interviews flow along a natural conversational path, but he does interrupt with questions that ask for clarification or challenge a point. The historians are: Gordon Wood discussing the American Revolution; James McPherson discussing the Civil War; Richard White discussing Westward Expansion; David McCullough discussing the Industrial Era; and Stephen Ambrose discussing World War II/Eisenhower/Nixon. This was a lot like sitting down with a talented professor in a coffee shop and letting him/her go on about their favorite topic. They weren't lectures, but more like a conversation. I know the work of four of these five historians and have read quite a bit of McCullough, Ambrose and McPherson. McPherson is

ALISTAIR COOKE'S AMERICA by Alistair Cooke

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Published in 1973. In 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces). Photo by Lewis Hine Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book. This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313 t

LEADERSHIP: IN TURBULENT TIMES (audiobook) by Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Beau Bridges. David Morse, Richard Thomas, Jay O. Sanders and the author. Duration: 18 hours, 5 minutes. The author, Doris Kearns Goodwin Unabridged. Doris Kearns Goodwin often is labeled with the title "presidential historian" and, really, that is a pretty accurate term for her. As a young historian, she worked personally with Lyndon Johnson on his presidential memoirs. She has written about both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her book Team of Rivals is a modern classic and has redefined the popular image of the Lincoln administration. In this book, she looks at various qualities of leadership that each of these very different men exhibited. She begins with interesting pre-presidential biographies of each of these men. She focuses on Lincoln's expressed desire to become a person that was worthy of the esteem of his community. Theodore Roosevelt's ceaseless energy and desire to experien

YOU LEARN BY LIVING: ELEVEN KEYS for a MORE FULFILLING LIFE (audiobook) by Eleanor Roosevelt

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Originally published in 1960. Published in December of 2018 by HarperAudio. Read by Vivienne Leheny. Duration: 5 hours, 29 minutes. Unabridged.  Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) Eleanor Roosevelt, cousin of one president and wife of another became a celebrity and a political force to be reckoned with in her own right after the death of her husband in 1945. She worked with the United Nations and wrote a regular newspaper column. Over her lifetime, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote more than 25 books, met thousands of people, visited dozens of countries and raised half a dozen children. All of that in addition to being First Lady for more than 12 years. Eleanor's column was normally based on letters that were sent to her. A lot of those letters asked for her advice. This book is a distillation of the advice she had given over the years. It is written in a very approachable, simple manner and, as she notes at the end of her book, doesn't really teach anything new. Instead, there is a

THE SOUL of AMERICA: THE BATTLE for OUR BETTER ANGELS (audiobook) by Jon Meacham

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Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Fred Sanders and the author, Jon Meacham. Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. LBJ and MLK discussing Civil Rights strategy -  Jon Meacham takes a look at Presidential leadership from the Civil War onward, particularly the power of the President to lead the country to "do the right thing" in a time of crisis. He has a particular focus with how the President deals with people who want to abuse the rights of others. Well, to be completely honest, Meacham does not have a complete clear thesis in this book and I am not 100% sure what his overall goal was. What it turned out to be was an interesting, rambling work that looked at several crisis points in American history and how the politicians, mostly presidents, responded. He looked at Lincoln (the source of the title), Grant during Reconstruction and the rise of the KKK, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ

LAST HOPE ISLAND: BRITAIN, OCCUPIED EUROPE, and the BROTHERHOOD THAT HELPED TURN the TIDE of WAR (audiobook) by Lynne Olson

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An Exceedingly Well-Written History Published in April of 2017 by Random House Audio Read by Arthur Morey Duration: 18 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged Winston Churchill (1874-1965)  and Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) As Europe collapsed before the Nazi onslaught several governments-in-exile retreated to the United Kingdom in an effort to support their struggling underground resistance movements and to remind the world of their plight. Some brought a lot of soldiers (Poland), some brought money, some brought civilian ships and some brought not much more than a loud voice and the will to use it. This was not an easy alliance. The UK was xenophobic and stunned at the rapid fall of France and many of the governments in exile were being ripped apart from their own internal politics. Misunderstandings, patronizing attitudes and differing agendas make everything more difficult. When America and the Soviets joined the war the UK shifted its attention away from the governments-in-exile

THE GENERALS: PATTON, MACARTHUR, MARSHALL and the WINNING of WORLD WAR II (audiobook) by Winston Groom

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George Patton (1885-1945) Published in November of 2015 by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 16 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged George Marshall (1880-1959) Winston Groom, forever associated with his iconic character Forrest Gump, has written an interesting and solid history of three equally iconic World War II generals: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall.  Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) Groom's triple biography format works quite well as all three of these men's life stories were on parallel tracks once they entered World War I and they all knew one another and had worked with one another in one capacity or another through the years (the story of Patton and MacArthur meeting up and working together on the front lines of World War I is a great one). The histories of these men during peacetime only served to reinforce my impression that both of these men were eccentric, sometimes to the point of being bizarre - especiall

1944: FDR and the YEAR THAT CHANGED HISTORY (audiobook) by Jay Winik

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A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Arthur Morey Duration: 21 Hours, 10 minutes Unabridged Josef Stalin (1878-1953), FDR (1882-1945) and Winston Churchill (1874-1965) at the Tehran Conference in 1943. The premise of 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is that 1944 is the most important year of World War II - the year that the Allies grew certain that they were going to win the war, the year that post-War plans were laid out, the year of the D-Day invasion and more. This effort by Jay Winik is very readable and was an informative and entertaining listen. There are times when he creates fabulous images in the listener's mind that are worthy of any novelist. His description of the extent of anti-Jewish operations throughout Europe and particularly in Auschwitz and other death camps are so vivid and so striking that I can readily recommend this book as a good place to start for anyone who wants a serious look. The book

THE AVIATORS: EDDIE RICKENBACKER, JIMMY DOOLITTLE, CHARLES LINDBERGH and the EPIC AGE of FLIGHT (audiobook) by Winston Groom

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Published by Blackstone Audio in 2013 Read by Robertson Dean Duration: 17 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump , has delivered an impressive triple biography of three of America's aviation pioneers with The Aviators . The book focuses on Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973), auto racer turned World War I flying ace, Jimmy Doolittle (1896-1993), test pilot and the first person to perform a landing using only instruments (this sounds sort of mundane but it meant that planes could take fly in all sorts of weather - not just on clear days), and the world famous Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) - the first man to fly solo over the Atlantic in an airplane and a truly international celebrity. Charles Lindbergh (right) with a P-38 on  an island in the South Pacific  during World War II in 1944 Each of these men had very different personalities but each shared a passion for being in the air. Charles Lindbergh is by far the most famous of the three

THE JEFFERSON RULE: WHY WE THINK the FOUNDING FATHERS HAVE ALL the ANSWERS (audiobook) by David Sehat

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Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2015 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes If you are a person that likes to debate on the internet than you have undoubtedly experienced Godwin's Law . Godwin's Law states that if you debate long enough on the internet, someone will inevitably make a comparison to Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust ("You don't like Donald Trump's hair? What are you the hairdo Nazi?!?").  A similar rule exists when discussing American politics - eventually someone will refer back to the Founding Fathers. It is especially easy to quote Thomas Jefferson - he was so prolific and well-written that it is easy to break out a quote to support your point of view. In the case of Jefferson, it is often too easy because he was extremely inconsistent in his political views. To start easy, he did write " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena

The Plot Against America: A Novel by Philip Roth

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Published in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin In The Plot Against America , Philip Roth creates an alternate history centered around the presidential election of 1940. FDR doesn't run against Wendell Willkie. Instead, Charles Lindbergh enters the contest at the convention as an anti-war candidate and defeats Roosevelt. In the real world, Lindbergh was  friendly towards the Nazi regime in Germany and made several public anti-Semitic comments so Roth's little twist to history is not out of line. Also, Lindbergh spoke at several "America First" anti-war rallies in 1940 and 1941. The first part of this book is the strongest. The alternate history moves briskly, the introduction to the Roth family and its main character, Philip (I can only assume that this is intended to be an alternate history autobiography) proceeds well. Lindbergh speaking at an America First rally  However, after the part of the book about the family trip to Washington, D.C. The Plot Against Amer

The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity (audiobook) by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

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Very Interesting History of the Modern Presidency Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2012 Read by Bob Walter Duration: 22 hours, 1 minute Unabridged Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, both editors at Time , have delivered a very listenable, fascinating look at each American president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama. No matter their political persuasion, their life experiences or their qualities as a human being, all 12 of these men share one thing: they were once President. This is an exclusive club and it seems that just about every president has looked to a former president for a shoulder to lean on, advice or even as a personal envoy sent to convey a sense of urgency to the message. The story is told in a rough chronological order starting with Truman. When Truman was President there was only one other member of the Presidents Club: Herbert Hoover. Yes, the same Hoover that Truman and FDR disparaged for 12 years. However, to his credit, Truman sent out feelers and disc

The 1940s: A Brief History [Kindle Edition] by Vook

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Published in 2011 by Vook. Voo k is a publisher of e-books enhanced with video clips ( V ideo + B ook  =  Vook ). This history is short (Amazon estimates it would be about 32 pages on paper) so it is unlikely to satisfy a history purist. It is very lightweight due to its short length but very readable. The result is about the same as if you read the chapter on World War II and the 1940s in a standard high school world history book. The broadest of outlines are there but if this is all you knew about World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War you would be one un-educated person indeed. At best, this is an introduction to the topic. Considering how long of a shadow World War II and the Cold War have cast, this is too short and too shallow to be of much value. Adolf Hitler in strategy session The Chapter titles are: -"The Greatest Generation" -The Cold War -Boom Times -Making Military Technology Civil -Hurray for Hollywood -Breaking the Race Barrier

10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America (audiobook) by Steven M. Gillon

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Published in June of 2006 by Random House Audio Read by Stephen Hoye. Unabridged Duration: 8 hours, 51 minutes. The book and audiobook for  10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America  are companion works for a History Channel series of the same name. They cover the same ten days but are independently researched and written. These dates are not the super-obvious ones like July 4, 1776 and December 7, 1941. One could quibble with the choices (it is part of the fun of a project like this one) but his choices are good ones. Here are the ten days and a few comments: 1) May 26, 1637 The date of a Puritan massacre of Indians at Mystic. He argues that King Philip's War is the model of American/Indian relations for the next 250+ years. 2) January 25, 1787 Shay's Rebellion and its influence on the Constitution. Emphasized the need for a more centralized government. 3) January 24, 1848 California Gold Rush. Focused on environmental degradation and not so much on the

No Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt

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Reviewed by a history teacher seeking reading material for his classes I picked up No Promises in the Wind without much in the way of expectations since I am not that big of fan of Irene Hunt's most famous novel for the younger set, Across Five Aprils . However, I am pleased to say that this is a much better book. No Promises In The Wind is about two brothers who leave home during the Great Depression simply because there is not enough money at home to buy enough food to feed everyone. They head off from Chicago with no plan except to try to survive as best as they can. A soup line during the Great Depression As a teacher, what I like best about this book is its portrayal of the complete and utter economic collapse that the Great Depression entailed. Most students have no conception as to the breadth and depth of the Great Depression. By looking at this small family, readers gain an inkling as to what went on. Modern readers might question why this fami