Dead Presidents

Imagine: How Creativity Works
Jonah Lehrer
Hardcover.  279 pp.
March 19, 2012.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Like many writers, I spend an inordinate amount of time staring at a blinking text cursor on an empty white document hoping that I will miraculously shift from having no ideas whatsoever into relentlessly filling my computer screen with pure literary brilliance.  For as long as humans have created, we have also experienced the frustration of a creative funk.  No matter what works we have previously produced all artists or builders understand the hopeless feeling that comes along with a blank piece of paper, an untouched painter’s canvas, or a silent musical instrument.  We sit, we stare, and we dream that something will spark our imagination and inspire the ideas that we need.  We wonder if maybe we’re just not the artistic type; if maybe we’re not wired the same way as Steinbeck or Van Gogh, Chopin or Rodin.

And, then, an idea hits us and we go to work.  Many liken that insight to a light bulb going off, illuminating ideas that seem to be buried within us, brightening the path towards completion, and spotlighting whatever it is we want to express, whatever it is that we want people to feel.

Where do these ideas come from?  What is it exactly that sparks our creativity?  In Jonah Lehrer’s new book Imagine: How Creativity Works (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), the New York Times best-selling author draws on his background in neuroscience and his first-rate abilities as a writer and journalist to break down the science behind the creative process and illustrate how the imagination works by sharing the extraordinary stories of creative people from all walks of life. 

Often, we tend to think that creativity is a rare gift bestowed upon a lucky few.  In Imagine, Lehrer argues that creativity and imagination aren’t attributes exclusive only to a small collection of artistic types.  We are all capable of creating.  Some may be more talented than others, but creativity isn’t a serendipitous occurrence that strikes the fortunate like a bolt of artistic lightning.  Nor is it a transient state of awareness or fleeting opportunity that may never call again.  Instead, it is a physical action.  The ability to use our imagination and create something new is hardwired inside all of us.  We can be confident that all of our minds are capable of accessing that ability and even triggering it.  In fact, the science behind the creative process allows us to take the analogy of a new idea or fresh insight being like a light bulb going off in our head a little further.  The creative process in our brains is wired like an electrical system and if a new idea means that light bulb brightens we ourselves have the ability to flip the switch.

As he has done in previous books like How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, as well as in his frequently articles featured in The New Yorker, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, and Grantland.com, Jonah Lehrer introduces us to examples and experiments that back up the science he is trying to explain with writing that is lucid and vivid, as if he were reporting on the details of a basketball game rather than neuroscience or cognitive psychology.  While some of Lehrer’s examples spring forward from stories about familiar people like Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma, and William Shakespeare, Imagine also highlights the unlikely creation of well-known objects like masking tape, Post-It notes, Barbie dolls, and Nike’s “Just do it” slogan.  As with Lehrer’s other books, though, these subjects are not the focus of Imagine.  Instead, they are the vehicles that Lehrer utilizes to take us into our own heads so that we can understand the structure and mechanics of our brain, how ideas or insights are formulated, and where creativity comes from.  Because Lehrer is so good at what he does, any casual reader with little background in science is able to understand the language and lessons that he uses. 

Being able to translate complicated science into books like Imagine comes from more than the author possessing a vast amount of knowledge on the subject — a feat that would be impressive enough on its on.  It requires the immense talents of a great writer.  And that is exactly what Jonah Lehrer is.  There is not a long list of writers whose works I make a point not to miss, but Lehrer is on the list.  Whether it is in one of his books or one of his articles, I consistently find myself learning from Lehrer’s writing.  Usually, I learn something directly about neuroscience and, indirectly or subtly, I learn something about writing from his entertaining and fluid style.  In Imagine, the same thing holds true, but there is also a lot of science in this particular book which I feel might directly help in the writing aspect, too.  Imagine isn’t meant to be a self-help or how-to book, but by revealing some of the mysteries behind creativity, Lehrer provides helpful hints on how to access those parts of the brain which can trigger imagination or insight and help creative people produce more effectively, or more often.  After reading about the possible benefits of focused daydreaming, I’ve started doing something similar to what one of the scientists in Lehrer’s book does to help with creativity.  Instead of taking walks with Jay-Z or 2Pac on my iPod, I’ve left the music at home and felt that it helps sharpen my focus and my thoughts are more organized if I come home and start writing afterward.

By breaking Imagine into two sections, Lehrer gives attention to all types of creative thinking.  The first part of the book focuses on individuals and the second part looks at how people think or create when working together.  For people who work closely with others, the second half of Imagine could help with making the most out of teamwork and be essential to those trying to build a successful and innovative company.  For those who especially dislike meetings, don’t miss the part about why brainstorming doesn’t work.  In both parts, Lehrer relies on years of research from scientists around the world and supplements his stories with academic information and testimony from some of the top researchers studying the brain and creative thinking.

This is now the third book of Jonah Lehrer’s that I have read and I regularly check out the articles that he publishes and I’m just constantly jealous of his ability.  It’s almost unfair, really, that someone like Lehrer can be so smart and ALSO be a fantastic writer.  I don’t know what the science is behind those feelings of mine, but the annoying thing is that Lehrer probably does — and he could explain it to me.  That’s one of the most amazing thing about Lehrer’s writing.  He not only finds compelling stories to tell or captivating people to write about, but he is able to either pull the science out of those stories or find science to explain them, and then translate that science to people like me.  And that’s not an easy thing to do at all.  Imagine is not only informative, but for creative people or those looking to be more efficient, it is also potentially helpful.  For those of you wondering why that light bulb of imagination shines, or how to turn it on, Imagine is an excellent start.       

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer is available now from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  You can order the book now from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Jonah Lehrer writes the “Frontal Cortex” column and is a contributing editor at Wired, writes the “Head Case” column for the Wall Street Journal, is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and Grantland, his website is jonahlehrer.com, and he is on Twitter @jonahlehrer.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity
Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
Hardcover.  641 pp.
April 17, 2012.  Simon & Schuster.

It would not be a stretch if someone said that I have an affinity for the Presidents of the United States.  Anyone who has read any of my book reviews or even looked at the archive of my past articles here in AND Magazine probably came to that conclusion without much difficulty.  Since childhood, I have been fascinated with the Presidents and the Presidency itself.  I’ve studied it deeply, continue studying it daily, often write about it in the pages of AND, and have made it the focus of my Tumblr site, Dead Presidents, where I constantly produce content ranging from random facts incorporated in brief stories to feature-length essays, as well humorous parodies, coverage of current Presidential politics, and question-and-answer sessions with readers, fans, and dissenters.  As a little kid, the Presidents were a hobby to me; now, at 32 years old, my business card says “Presidential Historian” and I’m able to devote all of my time to my passion, which is now my profession.

The reason that I am explaining this is because I frequently come across books that rehash what I already know about the Presidents or the Presidency.  I have hundreds of books about the Presidents in my personal library that I have already read, so it is inevitable that I will pick up a new book from time-to-time and feel like there is nothing else that I can learn.  If I have read 25 books about Abraham Lincoln or Lyndon Johnson, what am I going to get from the 26th book?  I’ve had friends half-jokingly tell me that I’m crazy and wonder why I read multiple books about the same subjects as if history might change.

Those who don’t love history and imagine that every history book must be written like a textbook overlook an important fact:  at its core, history is a form of storytelling.  The appeal is that the stories being told involve actual people, familiar places, and true events.  There are heroes and villains, rewards and consequences, and the stories either affect us directly or become a part of the foundation which structures our world’s social architecture.  Even if I’ve read two dozen books about a single subject or a specific person, a good storyteller can convince me to meet that person or experience that subject once again.  Details emerge, new information is discovered, blank places are filled in, and the story is augmented and reinforced by the best of our historians.  Maybe the solid, unassailable facts of history don’t change, but our interpretation of history is constantly evolving, shaped by the context of our times, our understanding of the past, and our hopes for the future. 

History is not one thing; history is everything.

If we are lucky, a spotlight will shine on a familiar aspect of history and help tell a story from a different perspective.  With a subject as vast as the Presidents or Presidency — a group of men and an institution which has been under the microscope for nearly 225 years — many of the best contemporary books sharpen the focus and illuminate something more specific.  These books are immensely helpful to people like me because the office of President is complex and far-reaching.  By breaking down the subject in smaller, more detailed fragments, it becomes easier to fully understand the job, its importance, and the people who have held that office.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (Simon & Schuster, 2012) by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy does far more than break down the Presidency, focus on a specific component, or reinforce what is already known.  Instead, Gibbs and Duffy — both editors at TIME magazine who collaborated on The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham (BOOK•KINDLE) in the White House, a New York Times best-seller in 2007 — reveal the relatively quiet, yet immensely important relationship that incumbent Presidents have with their predecessors.

In 2004, author Bob Greene likened that relationship between American Presidents as a “fraternity”.  In his book, Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents, Greene wrote about his visits with four ex-Presidents (the fifth, Ronald Reagan, was ill with Alzheimer’s disease) and one of the most intriguing aspects were their comments about each other.  Greene’s book looks at the Presidents he interviewed (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush) on a personal level.  Gibbs and Duffy also examine the personal relationships of Presidents, but The Presidents Club goes even deeper to also define the unique role a former President can play, and the advantages and obstacles that an incumbent President faces because of their predecessors.

Because our Presidents are such monumental figures, there is often a rush to dehumanize them, as if the ambition required to seek the office disqualifies them from having feelings or deserving our respect.  Since tens of millions of people wanted a different President in the first place, the incumbent fights an uphill battle from the moment the votes are counted.  It seems that today’s sensational political atmosphere and need for instant gratification means that the American people, particularly the opposition, have even less patience for our President and no tolerance for weakness or indecision.

John Steinbeck described the struggle for a President in his 1966 book, American and Americans:

“The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else.  We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day.  A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment — social, political, or ethical — can raise a storm of protest.  We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear.  We abuse him often and rarely praise him.  We wear him out, use him up, eat him up.  And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours and we exercise the right to destroy him.”

Throughout Presidential campaigns the candidates claim that they are the most qualified and best equipped American to be elected to the office.  They run down their opponents and raise questions about who has the best experience and who is most ready to assume the Presidency.  In The Presidents Club, time-and-time again, all Presidents quickly recognize that there is no training that qualifies you to be President of the United States.  There is no experience that replicates the job.  No college courses, no corporate apprenticeship, no political position prepares a person for the heavy burdens, massive responsibilities, and lightning quick pace of the Presidency.  The only people who understand the gravity of the President’s duties and decisions are former Presidents. 

Gibbs and Duffy begin The Presidents Club with two men who crossed party lines to establish a relationship, solve some problems in the world, and begin to define how former Presidents can continue to serve their country and help their successors.  Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945, the new President, Harry Truman, invited FDR’s immediate predecessor, Herbert Hoover, to the White House.  FDR had defeated Hoover in the 1932 election and because Hoover and the Great Depression were practically synonymous, Roosevelt saw Hoover as radioactive.  Although Roosevelt served an unprecedented 12 years in office, Hoover was persona non grata, even as the country moved towards war and aides close to FDR suggested making Hoover — immensely popular in Europe due to his famine relief work during the First World War - useful.  Roosevelt steadfastly refused, saying at one point, “I’m not Jesus Christ.  I’m not raising him from the dead.”

FDR’s death propelled Truman into the White House in the midst of World War II, as Allied troops raced towards Berlin and battles raged in the Pacific.  As Vice President, Truman was kept out of the loop on just about everything and the sheer scope of the Presidency was overwhelming.  While FDR ignored Herbert Hoover’s existence, Harry Truman quickly recognized the value of the perspective that only Hoover could provide.  For the remainder of Truman’s Presidency, Hoover and Truman maintained a solid friendship and a fruitful professional partnership.  Despite their political differences, Truman chose Hoover to lead a commission which helped streamline the government and, in the process, strengthen the Executive Branch.  The relationship between the two Presidents — one a Democrat and the other a Republican — really set the stage for what the “Presidents Club” would become.

The Presidents Club continues with Gibbs and Duffy looking at other important partnerships between Presidents and their predecessors in the last half of the 20th Century up until today.  The partnerships aren’t always perfect and some of the relationships are complicated, but that’s to be expected between men of different political and social backgrounds who are ambitious enough to strive to hold the most powerful position in the world, sometimes at the cost of their immediate predecessor.  Truman and Eisenhower had a particularly difficult relationship, but in old age and in the wake of a tragedy they mended their troubles after sharing a ride from the funeral of the assassinated President Kennedy.

Through The Presidents Club runs a common thread, no matter what party the President belongs to or how disappointed they might be in a successor’s policy or personality: a deep interest in protecting the office of the Presidency and a sincere wish to see the incumbent President succeed.  Once a man has been President it seems as if his perception of politics changes.  Rarely do former Presidents openly criticize the incumbent President and the reason why is one that Gibbs and Duffy find many Presidents in agreement about.  Nobody, including former Presidents, sees the same information that the current President sees and that means that nobody understands what goes into making his decisions and what the ramifications might be except for the incumbent President who sits in every meeting, receives every briefing, and sees all of the available intelligence or information.  No matter what they might think of the current President, The Presidents Club makes it clear that former Presidents are ready to serve, answer questions, advise, and support, but not criticize or second-guess. 

To me, that’s the most remarkable part of The Presidents Club.  The former Presidents that Gibbs and Duffy spoke to were adamant about their sincerity when it comes to letting the incumbent President do his job.  Former Presidents talk about how any criticism from an ex-President to the current President is unfair and could be potentially damaging or confusing to our enemies overseas.  And, of course, the former Presidents consistently return to the idea that criticizing the current President’s decision-making is borderline ignorant since nobody sees the same information that the President sees and understands the full picture.  Anyone who has served as President seems to realize at some point — perhaps in retirement as they withdraw from the scene, extract themselves from the White House bubble, and view everything from a different perspective — that, as George W. Bush said, “the office transcends the individual.”

The Presidents Club is a tremendous read and would be if it only focused on the unique professional relationships of Presidents and their predecessors.  Fortunately for us, there are also scores of fascinating stories and anecdotes that illuminate the personal relationships that these very famous, very ambitious, very accomplished men share with each other.  Gibbs and Duffy look at every President since Harry Truman and the human component to these relationships is captivating because of the complex personalities and colossal egos sometimes involved. 

There is the partnership between Truman and Hoover that established the unique fraternity, and the bitter feud between Truman and Eisenhower.  John F. Kennedy’s youth and the tension in the world at the time require one of the youngest Presidents to rely on the advice of one of the oldest.  Lyndon Johnson takes office when JFK is assassinated and never hesitates to show Eisenhower and Truman how much he respects them, how badly he needs them, and how often he’ll call the aging ex-Presidents.  Nixon and LBJ have a complicated relationship fraught with distrust, but also with a mutual respect (and fear) for one another’s political abilities.  Nixon also has a great love for Eisenhower, but when Nixon’s Presidency begins falling apart, he has no one to turn to because Truman, Ike, and LBJ are dead. 

One month after Nixon’s resigns, Gerald Ford pardons him, and the book shares the long, close relationship between the two men.  Ronald Reagan pops up first as a potential challenger to Nixon in 1968, then as a dangerous challenger to Ford in 1976.  Gibbs and Duffy do their best to explain the tense and somewhat strange Ford/Reagan relationship, beginning with Reagan’s challenge of Ford in ‘76 and continuing up to the point where Reagan nearly chose former President Ford as his running mate in 1980.  Carter beats Ford in 1976 and loses to Reagan in 1980, beginning what will likely end up being the longest, most accomplished “retirements” of any President in American History.

President Reagan sets the stage for perhaps the most compelling story in The Presidents Club after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated in 1981 when Reagan asks Nixon, Ford, and Carter to represent him at the funeral.  The former Presidents agree and all travel together in an awkward flight on a plane usually in service as Air Force One despite strained relationships between all three of them, particularly Ford and Carter.  After the funeral, Nixon continues traveling in the Middle East while Ford and Carter use the 16-hour flight back to the United States to put their troubles behind them, find some common interests, and begin a friendship that was sealed with a promise: whoever lived longer would deliver the eulogy at the other’s funeral (Carter ended up eulogizing Ford in January 2007).

Finally, with the more recent Presidents, Gibbs and Duffy show how personal the human side of the Presidency can get.  Reagan’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease means that his successors must do without his advice as he vanishes from the scene to face his illness and his influential voice is silenced.  George H.W. Bush sees the end of the Cold War and successfully launches the Persian Gulf War but his high approval ratings drop along with the economy and he’s defeated by Bill Clinton.  When Clinton takes office, he has five former Presidents still alive to counsel him, and he surprisingly turns to Nixon for advice.  Clinton’s own scandals lead Ford and Carter to step in — not to defend Clinton’s actions, but to protect the institution of the Presidency.  After Clinton leaves office, he and the man he defeated in 1992, George H.W. Bush, build a remarkable friendship that is almost familial, one that Clinton sometimes looks at like the father he never had.  Together, they raise millions of dollars for disaster relief and heal any wounds from 1992 with a devotion to each other.  Of course, by that time, Bush’s actual son was President which doubles the protective feeling the elder Bush has toward the Presidency. 

Shortly before Barack Obama joined The Presidents Club in 2009 all of the living Presidents had breakfast at the White House with the President-elect, and George W. Bush made it clear that the unofficial fraternity really was a collective, telling Obama, “We want you to succeed.”  While Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney, has criticized Obama at every turn and many of Bush’s fellow Republicans have openly admitted their hope that Obama fails, Bush has comfortably and quietly settled into retirement, as well as adhering to the traditional standards of The Presidents Club.  “I love my country a lot more than I love politics,” Bush said after Obama’s inauguration, “I think it is essential that Obama be helped in the office.”

There are few books that are able to detail both the historic and institutional aspects of the Presidency as well as the deeply personal elements that define the Presidents themselves.  The Presidents Club is a book about history, politics, rivalry, friendship, and family.  Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy have intensely researched the last 80 years of the Presidency in order to deliver one of the most absorbing books that I have read in a long time.  We love riveting, touching stories about the interactions and relationships of people and Americans are always eager to learn more about the personal lives and human sides of our leaders.  The Presidents Club is a rare convergence of both.  As I said earlier, the best history is stories about people and The Presidents Club is a story about how the most powerful people in the world lived and worked with one another.

The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy is available now from Simon & Schuster.  You can order it from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Nancy Gibbs is the deputy managing editor of TIME magazine and Michael Duffy is TIME’s executive editor.  They previously collaborated on The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House.

This Is How: Help for the Self: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Grief, Molestation, Disease, Fatness, Lushery, Spinsterhood, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike
Augusten Burroughs
Hardcover.  230 pp.
May 8, 2012.  St. Martin’s Press.

If you have read any of Augusten Burroughs’ previous memoirs, beginning with the New York Times best-selling Running With Scissors, you are probably aware of his unorthodox childhood — a story so bizarre and complex and rich that it’s not fair for me to even attempt to summarize it.  Needless to say, Burroughs grew up quickly and his adolescence and early adulthood has been full of enough speed bumps and screwed-up experiences that he’s been able to churn out six memoirs best-selling memoirs about his life that are hilarious, deep, honest, and open without becoming redundant.

Now, some people might think that a former alcoholic who almost drank himself to death and sexual abuse victim who grew up in two broken homes and didn’t get much further than elementary school would be a terrible choice to write a book to help others live their lives.  Those people are assholes.  Augusten Burroughs is the perfect person to write a self-help book, and that’s why This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Grief, Molestation, Disease, Fatness, Lushery, Spinsterhood, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike (St. Martin’s Press, May 8, 2012) is unlike any other self-help type book that I’ve ever read.

Since, first and foremost, This Is How is about honesty, I’ll be honest.  There have been times in my past where I’ve felt the need to turn to a self-help book in order to try to figure out who I was or where I was.  And, every single time that I picked up a self-help book, I’ve made it three or four chapters deep before saying, “This is bullshit” and tossing it aside.  That’s why I hesitate to even call This Is How a self-help book — because it transcends the genre while also defining it.

This Is How is a book about being honest with yourself and others in order to find yourself and find your way.  Burroughs tackles topics with chapters such as “How To Find Love”, “How To Be Thin”, “How To Change the World By Yourself” — things that you might find in other self-help books.  But there are also chapters like “How To Feel Like Shit”, “How To Be Fat”, “How To Remain Unhealed”, “How To End Your Life”, and “How to Hold On To Your Dream or Maybe Not”.  With his characteristic candor and straightforward style, I agree that this is the book Augusten Burroughs was born to write.

Other self-help books never connected with me because they’ve never felt real.  The examples that the authors shared never felt real; their stories or metaphors were milquetoast and placid.  Burroughs, however, shares experiences that are raw and visceral.  With sparse sentences that are somehow packed full of knowledge, Burroughs makes the point, over-and-over again, that living your life is being in the moment and being yourself, always honest and always on.

Because Burroughs is a funny dude and has written such fascinating books, I feel like many people will look at This Is How as if he is being cynical or sarcastic.  Unless he totally got one over on me, he’s not.  This Is How is truly meant to help people, and because Burroughs brings many of the lessons he learned back to the necessity of honesty, I think the book can really help people focus on what’s important.  And, sometimes, what is important is the fact that you can’t get over all of your problems and issues.  Instead, you can recognize that, and move past them and move forward, into the now, so you can progress into tomorrow.

It’s ironic that in This Is How, Burroughs tries to break down complex experiences from life’s lessons into simple solutions — and does so with modest language that is still somehow literary in the same way that Hemingway’s austerity was its own type of art — and it works.  I mean, I usually check out of self-help books immediately, but I’ll say it:  This Is How helped me.  I started reading it because it was written by Augusten Burroughs, but I finished reading it because I was thoroughly captivated and
finding answers to issues that I recognized within myself. 

This Is How doesn’t unlock the secrets of life because there are no secrets to life.  Above everything else, honesty is the key, and Burroughs is always, candidly, shockingly, frighteningly honest.  And to quote Burroughs from This Is How, “If that sounds too reductive, remember we crawled from the swamp.  Simple isn’t such a terrible thing to be in this respect.”

In amazing books like Running With Scissors, Dry, and Magical Thinking, Augusten Burroughs told you about his life; in This Is How, he helps you recognize the truth about yours.

This Is How: Help for the Self: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Grief, Molestation, Disease, Fatness, Lushery, Spinsterhood, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike by Augusten Burroughs will be released on May 8th by St. Martin’s Press.  Order the book now from Amazon, or for your Kindle.  Augusten Burroughs is on Twitter @Augusten and his website is www.augusten.com.

Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq
Jess Goodell (with John Hearn)
Hardcover.  192 pp.
2011.  Casemate Publishers.

When Jessica Goodell and her Marine Corps unit was deployed to Iraq in 2004, she was already attempting to overcome the obstacles placed in front of her by her male counterparts who frequently showed less respect for female Marines.  The men often labeled the women as “Marine-ettes” and disrespected them as if they were inferior; as if they weren’t sacrificing as much as the men; as if they weren’t actually Marines.

While that alone would have likely compounded the stress of a soldier being deployed into an active war zone such as Iraq, Goodell volunteered for one of the most important yet heart-wrenching jobs in the American military — being a member of the Mortuary Affairs team.  In Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq (2011, Casemate), Jess Goodell pulls back the curtain and attempts to share her experiences in the Mortuary Affairs unit at Camp Taqaddum, a forward operating base in one of the most dangerous areas at that point of the war — 50 miles west of Baghdad, between Fallujah and Ramadi.

The responsibility of Goodell and her fellow Marines in the Mortuary Affairs unit was the grisly task of recovering the bodies of American soldiers killed in action and attempting to identify the deceased soldier, prepare the body for repatriation to the United States, and to do so with the dignity and reverence that Americans would hope dead soldiers would receive.  Shade It Black attempts to give some insight on the solemn and important work done by the Mortuary Affairs unit.

Unfortunately, the narrative of Shade It Black is so disjointed that it is tremendously difficult to follow.  I was very interested in the work that Goodell and her team members did — work that must be emotionally-draining and that I’m convinced Goodell and her fellow Marines did with the utmost respect and honor.  I can tell that the Mortuary Affairs unit felt strongly about carefully collecting the remains of deceased soldiers — often when there is very little to collect — finding out who the soldier is, gathering their belongings, and attempting to return as much as possible to the family of the fallen warriors so that they could receive a dignified burial and the honors due to them.

There are parts of Shade It Black that shine and it’s not the story that I had trouble with; it was the storytelling.  Goodell attempts to weave the duties of the Mortuary Affairs unit in with the challenges that female Marines faced in the testosterone-driven world of the American military and then laces in another story towards the end about her personal problems once she returned from Iraq.  All three of these threads of stories could be interesting if told thoroughly, but Shade It Black is structured as chaotic as the dangerous battlefield retrievals of fallen soldiers must have felt.  Each chapter felt as if I was jumping into a new story that was missing the first five paragraphs.

I don’t mean to discount any of the divergent stories that Lance Corporal Goodell is trying to tell in Shade It Black.  I just wish she would have finished telling them.  What Goodell and the Mortuary Affairs unit did is tremendously important work that gives shattered families closure when they’ve lost a loved one.  I have a ton of respect for what she and her fellow Marines did, and there is some fascinating information in the book, but something is missing.

The title, Shade It Black, refers to how members of the Mortuary Affairs unit fill out a diagram of a fallen soldier.  If there is a body part or section of the deceased soldier missing, they shade that area black on the diagram.  Jessica Goodell also refers to parts of her life after leaving the Marines that left her troubled and made her feel as if she was shading some part of herself black.  Unfortunately, after reading this book there are some important links and aspects of what could have been a very interesting story that I would have to shade black because they’re simply missing.

Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq by Jess Goodell (with John Hearn) is available now from Casemate Publishers.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.

SEALAB: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor
Ben Hellwarth
Hardcover.  388 pp.
2012.  Simon & Schuster.

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy upped the ante in the ongoing space race between the United States and the Soviet Union with a challenge that inspired the nation to reach the next level in its quest for space exploration.  In front of a joint session of Congress and the world, President Kennedy said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”  It was a stunning goal and after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Americans worked even harder to achieve their slain President’s dream.  In July 1969, Kennedy’s goal was realized when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and planted an American flag in lunar soil.

Space, however, was not the only “new frontier” that Americans explored in the late-1950’s and 1960’s.  In JFK’s Inaugural Address several months before his pledge to send a man to the moon, he also urged the world’s nations to work together in order “to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.”  “Together,” Kennedy suggested, “let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.”

While the United States and the Russians sent satellites and capsules and monkeys and men into orbit, a group of researchers and U.S. Navy divers sought to explore Earth’s largest, most mysterious, least understood, and final frontier — the oceans.  Despite the fact that 71% of our world is covered by oceans and explorers have spent centuries sailing the surface of the seas, almost nothing was known of the depths until the mid-20th century when a dedicated cadre of divers, researchers, scientists, and medical professionals focused on whether humans could live and work underwater and, if so, for how long.

In SEALAB: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor (2012, Simon & Schuster), journalist Ben Hellwarth has meticulously researched the undersea experiments that helped to answer many of those questions — experiments every bit as daring, frequently more dangerous, and far less recognized than the achievements in space exploration.  SEALAB looks at the brave men who fought claustrophobic conditions and served as human guinea pigs as researchers and medical personnel studied the effects of tremendous pressure in deep water and extended stays in underwater habitats. 

The “aquanauts” in SEALAB are not famous like the Mercury Seven astronauts featured in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (although the second American in space, Scott Carpenter, was also one of the most important early aquanauts) or the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon.  However, the work of the aquanauts is no less important.  The lessons learned in the SEALAB experiments helped develop a better understanding of the human body’s ability to survive in an underwater habitat — something that has become useful over the past few decades for deep-sea salvage, the importance of submarines to naval warfare, and commercial interests ranging from underwater cables to deep-sea oil drilling.

Hellwarth does a masterful job in SEALAB of setting the scene for what it was like for aquanauts to descend hundreds of feet underwater and spend weeks living and working in a specially-designed underwater habitat.  The drama of dives that go wrong, the suffocating thought of being stuck in a tiny chamber for several days in order to avoid decompression sickness, or “the bends”, and the otherworldly scenery of an underwater habitat is masterfully told by Hellwarth.

SEALAB also features colorful characters, like Navy diver/doctor/researcher/jack-of-all-trades George Bond, or “Papa Topside”, as his colleagues called him and the famed French explorer Jacques Yves-Cousteau help add to the sense of adventurism that went along with the experiments of SEALAB.  The brave aquanauts also add the human aspect that make a story about science into a story about human achievement.

I knew nothing about this fascinating chapter in scientific discovery, and I’m so glad that I had the chance to experience Ben Hellwarth bringing this amazing history of underwater exploration to the surface in SEALAB.

SEALAB: America’s Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor by Ben Hellwarth is available now from Simon & Schuster.  You can order the book from Amazon, or get it instantly for your Kindle.  Ben Hellwarth’s website is at benhellwarth.com.

Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan
Del Quentin Wilber
Trade Paperback.  305 pp.
March 27, 2012.  Picador.

One of the most challenging aspects to writing about history is trying to find a way to retell a story about a well-known person or event that sheds new light or brings forth a different perspective on a very familiar subject.  The very best history books are those that sharpen the knowledge that we already possess, augment it with new information or previously untold details, and package everything with first-rate reporting and compelling storytelling in order to create a work that is not merely noteworthy but definitive.  And definitive was the word that never left my mind as I sped through Del Quentin Wilber’s Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan.

On the surface, the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan just 70 days into his Presidency is a memorable event.  On March 30, 1981, a deranged young man named John Hinckley, Jr., opened fire as President Reagan left the Washington Hilton Hotel after giving a speech.  Hinckley was mentally ill and, after watching Taxi Driver, obsessed with actress Jodie Foster.  After stalking Foster and finding that his love for her was not reciprocated, Hinckley had delusions that a dramatic act on his part might yet win the young actress’s attention.  If killing the President didn’t lead Jodie Foster in his arms, Hinckley was certain that the other possibility of his action — being killed in a shootout with Secret Service agents — would satisfy his other obsession, suicide.

As Reagan left the Hilton for a short walk to his waiting limousine, Hinckley fired six shots.  Two shots missed.  One struck White House Press Secretary Jim Brady in the head.  Another wounded Washington, D.C. Police Officer Thomas Delahanty.  Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy literally took one of the bullets for the President; as soon as he heard gunshots, McCarthy spread his body into a wide stance directly in front of Reagan and was shot in the chest.  The other bullet had ricocheted off the Presidential limousine and tore into the left side of President Reagan. 

Secret Service agent Jerry Parr quickly shoved Reagan into the limousine and the motorcade hurriedly sped away from the chaotic scene of the shooting.  As the Secret Service raced the President back to the safety of the White House, Reagan found himself in a lot of pain and short of breath.  The President and his top Secret Service agent, Parr, saw no signs that Reagan had been shot but they both worried that Reagan’s ribs had been broken when Parr shoved the President into the limousine.  Instead of going to the White House, Parr ordered the limo to take the President to George Washington University Medical Center for treatment.

In Rawhide Down, Del Quentin Wilber uses his top-notch reporting skills to give a moment-by-moment account of the major players in the assassination attempt and its aftermath, from the time they woke up on March 30, 1981 and through the chaos of the shooting and Reagan’s arrival at the hospital.  Like Wilber’s legendary colleague at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward, this is journalistic history at its best — the always-riveting tick-tock format, but done in a way that seamlessly blends activities happening at the scene of the shooting, at the White House, at the hospital, and throughout the shaken country. 

Yet, it’s not just the assassination attempt itself that gives Rawhide Down its color.  The personalities at work throughout that day really tell the story thanks to Wilber’s meticulous research (research that makes Wilber’s footnotes a must-read, as well).  There is the disturbingly calm would-be assassin, Hinckley; the brave and devoted members of Reagan’s Secret Service detail; Reagan’s “troika” of James Baker, Michael Deaver, and Edwin Meese; the Cabinet — trying to “mind the store” at the White House — and making a mess of things; the frightened but strong-willed First Lady, Nancy Reagan; the level-headed leadership of Vice President George H.W. Bush; the frantic media; the spectacular medical staff at George Washington University Medical Center; and, above everyone else, the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

While everything up to the shooting is detailed and riveting, Rawhide Down becomes impossible to put down as President Reagan’s motorcade races to the hospital.  Still unsure of what’s causing Reagan’s injury, the limousine pulls up to the emergency room entrance, but Reagan insists on walking into the hospital under his own power.  Obviously weakened and shaky, hospital staff at first are worried that the 70-year-old President — the oldest man to ever hold the office — was in the midst of a serious heart attack.  As soon as Reagan walked inside the hospital, he collapsed and was rushed to a trauma room.  The frantic scene at the hospital is brought to life three decades later by Wilber’s vivid account.  Hospital staff rushes to treat Reagan, yet many of the nurses and doctors don’t realize who their patient is until after they start treating him.  Shockingly, it isn’t until several minutes after they begin examining Reagan that they realize that the President indeed had been shot.

The scene that Wilber depicts in Rawhide Down is far more serious than what most people realize.  Because Ronald Reagan seemed to recover so quickly, enjoyed a full two terms as President, and lived until he was 93 years old, many have overlooked how serious his wounds were on March 30, 1981.  When Reagan was first brought into the trauma room, many hospital staff worried that he was almost certainly going to die.  Not only was Reagan’s gunshot wound serious, but it appeared that he was going into shock — a potentially lethal development for a 70-year-old man.  As doctors searched for the bullet and the cause of massive bleeding inside Reagan’s chest, they were forced to pump the President full of pints of donated blood while ensuring that he was getting enough oxygen into his system to keep his organs functioning.  By the time doctors finally stopped the bleeding in Reagan’s chest, the President had lost more than 50% of the blood in his body.  Blessed with a rapid response, better technology, and top-notch medical treatment, the 70-year-old President survived a gunshot wound far more dangerous than the bullet wounds that killed 49-year-old President James Garfield in 1881 and 58-year-old President William McKinley in 1901.

Through it all, though, it is Ronald Reagan who stands amongst a cast of fascinating figures of history.  Many Americans forget just what it was exactly that turned an elderly former movie actor into an icon for a political movement and one of the legendary Presidents of modern times.  Reading Rawhide Down, we’re reminded of the aspects of Ronald Reagan’s character and personality that rose above politics and inspired confidence.  There’s the unfailing good humor of a severely wounded man who happened to be the most powerful person in the world, yet tried his best to put his doctors and nurses at ease by joking, “I hope you’re all Republicans” or calming the worried nerves of his beloved wife by  telling her, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”  Most touching to me was how Reagan stayed up until 4:00 AM after his surgery and once his breathing tube was removed so that he could chat with the two nurses on special duty watching over him.  Reagan basically felt bad that they were forced to stay by his side on his account, so he joked with them, asked them about their families, talked about his job, and regaled them with old stories from his days in Hollywood.  Rawhide Down does what all great history books are somehow able to do — tell the story of a significant event through the eyes and words and actions of the people who lived it.

There have always been two books on Presidential assassinations that have stood heads-and-shoulders above the rest — William Manchester’s The Death of a President and Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Those two books, both about the JFK assassination, are so richly detailed and vivid that they have had no peers.  I do not hesitate in placing Del Quentin Wilber’s Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan in the rarefied air of Manchester and Bugliosi.  This book is a masterpiece.

Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber will be released in trade paperback by Picador USA on March 27, 2012.  It’s currently available in hardcover or on your Kindle.  Mr. Wilber also has a website about the book at rawhidedown.com.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress
Joseph Wheelan
Paperback.  309 pp.
2008.  PublicAffairs.

On March 4, 1829, John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, skipped the inauguration of his successor and prepared for what he imagined would be a quiet and private retirement.  For nearly 50 years, Adams had served his country, beginning as a secretary to his father and other American diplomats overseas as a teenager during the American Revolution before becoming perhaps the best diplomat in the history of the United States.  Adams — the son of the 2nd President — occupied diplomatic posts in the Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia, and Sweden by the time he was 30 years old.  He served in the U.S. Senate from 1803-1808, returned to Europe as the U.S. Minister to Russia under President Madison, declined a seat on the Supreme Court when he was just 44 years old, negotiated the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812, served as the U.S. Minister to Great Britain immediately after the war, and spent 8 years as President Monroe’s Secretary of State — a role in which Adams excelled and where he helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, a cornerstone of American foreign policy for nearly two centuries.

In 1824, Adams sought the Presidency and lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson in a four-way race that also included Henry Clay and William H. Crawford.  Despite Jackson’s popular vote victory, no candidate obtained a majority of Electoral Votes, so the election was thrown into the House of Representatives for a decision on who would become the 6th President.  When Henry Clay swung his support behind Adams, the brilliant but dour man from Massachusetts clinched enough votes to win the Presidency.  When Adams then named Clay as his Secretary of State, Adams’s opponents claimed that there was a “Corrupt Bargain” between the new President and Clay.  Andrew Jackson was the politician most angered by the results of the 1824 election and he practically began campaigning aganst Adams before JQA even took the oath of office.  Adams and Jackson became vicious rivals while Jackson and his supporters made life in the White House miserable for John Quincy Adams.  By the time the 1828 election rolled around, there was little doubt that Jackson would gain his revenge and oust Adams from the White House.  While Adams was cordial to Jackson in the transition prior to Jackson’s inauguration, JQA refused to attend Jackson’s inauguration, just as his father had refused to attend the inauguration of his successor in 1801, Thomas Jefferson.

“After the third of March I shall consider my public career closed,” President Adams wrote prior to leaving the White House.  All five Presidents who had preceded Adams had quietly retired at the end of their respective Administrations.  The 61-year-old Adams was the youngest former President up to that point in American History and in good health.  For a man who had been in nearly constant public service since he was a teenager, retirement was an unfamiliar place for John Quincy Adams.  Adams had been miserable as President — partly due to the opposition that Jackson and his supporters maintained throughout his entire four-year team, and partly due to the fact that his political temperament and intense personality was not conducive to the Executive Branch. 

Leaving the White House was not an unpleasant experience for Adams.  “No one knows, and few conceive, the agony of mind that I have suffered from the time that I was made by circumstances, and not by my volition, a candidate for the Presidency till I was dismissed from that station by the failure of my re-election,” Adams wrote.  Yet, a man as prideful and sensitive as John Quincy Adams couldn’t help but feel a lack of validation due to his defeat in 1828.  With retirement on the horizon, Adams had a foreboding sense that history would not remember him fondly — or worse, would not remember him at all.

That quickly changed, however.  As Joseph Wheelan chronicles in Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress (2008, PublicAffairs), the people of the Massachusetts still understood the value of former President John Quincy Adams and some of his biggest accomplishments took place after he left the White House.  In 1830, Adams was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives — the first of just two Presidents to serve in Congress following their Presidencies (Andrew Johnson was elected to the Senate after leaving the White House).

In the House, Adams became a leading opposition voice to the Jackson, Van Buren, Tyler, and Polk Administrations, and a champion of abolitionism.  Upon taking his seat in Congress, Adams found a renewed vigor for the political battles that had frustrated him so much as President.  In the House of Representatives, Adams mastered the parliamentary system and used his extraordinary intelligence to become a brilliant debater, mesmerizing orator, and tireless anti-slavery advocate.

Wheelan’s book examines how the former President spent eight terms in Congress using his rhetorical skills and passion for the issues to rise above partisan politics and sectional squabbles in order to fight for the causes he believed in.  Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade is actually this nation’s first crusade — the ideal that our country was founded upon, the belief that all men are created equal.  As the United States grew and the evils of slavery continued to poison the roots of liberty, Adams constantly fought to defend the rights brought forth in the Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the Constitution.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade portrays John Quincy Adams as perhaps the last living link to the Founders.  Adams had a unique connection to the Founding Fathers, and not simply because he was the son of John Adams.  JQA was appointed to his first diplomatic posts by George Washington and served each of the first five Presidents in some manner.  Adams is one of the few Americans who knew George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln served one term in Congress with JQA shortly before Adams’s death).  While JQA was not of the same generation as Washington, his father, Jefferson, and Madison, his role in the early years of the American republic cannot be ignored.  If the older generation were the Founding Fathers, perhaps JQA was a Founding Son; as a teenager and young adult Adams was already representing the United States in European courts such as Amsterdam and St. Petersburg.

When Southern members of Congress attempted to silence debate on slavery by imposing a Gag Rule on the petitions of citizens to the House, Adams launched his longest and most tireless battle of his post-Presidential career.  To avoid any stirring of sectional troubles, many House leaders attempted to ban petitions from citizens, and for several years, Adams continued bringing petitions to the House floor.  “The right of petition…is essential to the very existence of government; it is the right of the people over the Government; it is their right, and they may not be deprived of it,” Adams thundered.  One of the major components to Adams’s Congressional career is his continuous battle to protect the right-to-petition (whether Adams agreed with the petitions submitted to the Congress or not), and Wheelan expertly explains Adams’s deep-seated belief in that right, his indefatigable effort in fighting for it, and the satisfaction that Adams experienced when he was finally victorious.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade includes much more, as well.  There is, of course, Adams’s defense of the slaves who mutinied on the Amistad while en route to bondage in Cuba.  Adams took on the case of the Amistad mutineers and fought for their freedom before the Supreme Court as President Van Buren attempted to placate Southern interests by secretly handing the Amistad and its occupants back to Spain.  Most fascinating is the transformation of Adams from the somewhat dour, cold personality that he had been as President into the passionate, energetic “Old Man Eloquent”, as he was nicknamed during his post-Presidential Congressional career.

Finally, Wheelan gives us insight into the former President’s focus on his work in Congress, despite physical ailments and the encroachment of old age.  Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade gives us an account of John Quincy Adams’s last days as, fittingly, the 80-year-old Congressman and one of the last links to the Revolution collapses at his desk in the House of Representatives and dies two days later in the Speaker’s Room of the United States Capitol.  After a lifetime of service, John Quincy Adams died at his post, and there was an outpouring of grief nationwide for a once unpopular President who had redeemed his career, validated his own self-worth, and built an entirely different legacy with a remarkable post-Presidential life.

Mr. Adams’s Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams’s Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan is available now from PublicAffairs.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Mr. Wheelan’s website is www.joewheelan.com.

1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies
By David Pietrusza
Hardcover. 523 pp.
2008. Union Square Press

After the last of four historic Presidential debates in 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon shook hands with his opponent, Senator John F. Kennedy, and said, “It sure goes by fast, doesn’t it?”. 

As I was reading David Pietrusza’s 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies (2008, Union Square Press) I found myself thinking the same thing: It sure goes by fast.

David Pietrusza writes history the way that novelists strive to write fiction.  Pietrusza takes a seminal event, introduces us to a broad, fascinating cast of characters, and ties together numerous stories filled with drama and even humor to create an exciting, addictive tale.  The most rewarding thing about it is that Pietrusza is writing about something that actually happened and that makes the story even more interesting.  He writes about something that is real and, in the case of 1960, Pietrusza is writing about an election featuring three of the most dominant politicians and leaders of the 20th Century — an election which shaped the last half of the American Century and changed Presidential politics forever.

I flew through this book — partly because I couldn’t put it down and partly because it is supremely readable.  Pietrusza’s research brings us amazing quotes, and the book features complex characters who are full of enough stories that it’s easy to get lost in a book about each of them individually.  In 1960, these individuals are playing a part in the same drama and there is never a moment where you wish the author would switch back to something more interesting.  Every story he tells is interesting.

Among the bold-faced names which give 1960 an all-star cast are Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon Johnson, current President Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon’s running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, Hubert Humphrey, Nelson Rockefeller, Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., mobster Sam Giancana, Barry Goldwater, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Martin Luther King Jr., Tip O’Neill, Harry Truman, Stuart Symington, Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Jackie Robinson, and more.  These are big names with big stories, and during the 1960 Presidential campaign they all played major roles.

One of the most interesting aspects of 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is the ambition of the Kennedy family as a whole, which is matched by the ambition of Richard Nixon as an individual.  Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy is focused on getting his son, Jack, elected President in 1960 and he’s willing to pay any price to do so.  Nixon is similarly focused on the Presidency, but he doesn’t have wealth to back him up, charm to open doors, or the support of his mentor President Eisenhower to give him strength.  Nixon attempts to do it all on his own, and what is so shocking, even in retrospect, is how very close Nixon came to beating JFK in 1960.

Beginning with the battle between JFK and Hubert Humphrey in several state primary contests, the Democratic Presidential nomination comes down to a last-second challenge to JFK from Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas.  When JFK triumphs in Los Angeles and wins the nomination he astonishes everyone by offering the Vice Presidency to LBJ.  From there the campaign — and the book — takes off.

1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is strongest when Pietrusza shares little-known backroom facts and inside secrets, as well as when he disputes myths that have surrounded the 1960 campaign, JFK, LBJ and Nixon.  We learn more details about JFK’s unsavory connections with Frank Sinatra and, through Sinatra, Sam Giancana and the Chicago Mafia.  LBJ’s insecurities as a leader and as a candidate are exposed.  The tenacity and abrasiveness of Bobby Kennedy are spotlighted.  Richard Nixon’s strengths and weaknesses — a foreshadowing of what would eventually finally get him elected President and then eventually topple his career in disgrace — are obvious as he isolates himself and obsesses over campaign details while overlooking big-picture items.

All great historians are able to translate stories about events and facts into stories about people.  All history is personal, and David Pietrusza’s 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon is a wonderful book about a transcendent event populated by extraordinary human beings who faced achievements and adversity, triumphs and tragedies.  We know what happened to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon once they moved into the White House, but this is how they got to that point.  It’s a story about America and Americans, and about how 1960 was a turning point for politics and politicians in this country — the beginning of a New Frontier, a Great Society, and a Silent Majority, and the end of American innocence.

As I first learned with his previous book (1920: The Year of the Six Presidents) I love the way David Pietrusza writes history and this is a book about three of the Presidents who fascinate me most.  I highly recommend 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon - The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies.  Get it at your local bookstore, Amazon, or through the Sterling Publishing website.

Native Son: Richard Nixon’s Southern California — A Biographical Map
By Paul Carter

Because of my love of Presidential History, I have bought, received, or been sent quite a bit of unique and sometimes unusual pieces of Presidential miscellany.  I almost always get a kick out of the stuff, even if it is kind of weird or something that no person who is trying to impress another human being would ever display publicly.

When Paul Carter offered to send me his biographical map of Richard Nixon’s life in Southern California, I was intrigued but not expecting anything too earth-shattering.  I was wrong.  Paul Carter exhaustively researched Nixon’s life in Southern California, from his birth in Yorba Linda to college in Whittier to his secluded Western White House in San Clemente, La Casa Pacifica, where Nixon spent several years in exile following his 1974 resignation.

But those are the easy facts.  Carter’s Native Son: Richard Nixon’s Southern California also features minutiae such as the locations of Nixon’s law office and the locations of Nixon family homes and churches throughout the region.  Carter shows important places in the early political career of Nixon, the Bel-Air Country Club where Nixon hit a hole-in-one in 1961, and a host of other interesting locales in the life of Richard Nixon.

The fact that these meticulously researched facts are represented in a visually captivating manner through a colorful, illustrated map of Southern California makes this one of the most creative projects on Presidential History that I have ever had the privilege of collecting.  Paul Carter spent over two years researching Nixon’s life in Southern California, combining his knowledge of Nixon’s life and career with knowledge about Southern California to accurately depict locations of importance.  The reverse side of the map contains a timeline that helps add to your understanding of the map.

Native Son: Richard Nixon’s Southern California is a fantastic project and I strongly recommend that anybody interested in Nixon or the Presidents check out Paul Carter’s biographical map.  The next time I visit Southern California, I’ll be bringing Carter’s map with me and using it to take a tour of some of these important places in the life and legacy of Richard Nixon.

Paul Carter’s biographical map Native Son: Richard Nixon’s Southern California is available now through Carter’s website.  If you’re in Southern California, the map is also available at the gift shop of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda.  Carter is currently working on a book about Nixon’s life in Southern California, which he says will “breathe life” into the biographical map and which I am anxiously anticipating.

1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America
David Pietrusza
Hardcover.  520 pp.
2011.  Union Square Press.

This is becoming routine.  David Pietrusza writes an entertaining, informative book about a Presidential campaign and I write a review praising it.  It’s becoming unfair to other authors who hope to someday write definitive histories of famous Presidential campaigns.  This time, Pietrusza has told the story of Harry Truman’s stunning come-from-behind victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America (2011, Union Square Press).

In Pietrusza’s 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, we learned about an election which featured at one point or another, six men who had previously been or would someday be President of the United States: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies, Pietrusza covered perhaps the most exciting Presidential campaign of the 20th Century, which also happened to feature three of the more colorful personalities in American History.

1948 tells the story of incumbent President Harry Truman, who assumed the Presidency in April 1945 upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as he attempted to win election in his own right to a term in the White House.  As the 1948 campaign got underway, Truman was wildly unpopular with Americans and was suffering from polling numbers that remain, nearly 65 years later, some of the lowest in American History.  President Truman’s chances at winning the general election seemed impossible, and he was even at danger of not even winning the Democratic Party’s nomination.  As the Democrats limped towards their convention in Philadelphia in July 1948, some leading Democratic Party figures were searching for a way to dump President Truman from the ticket.  Democratic heavyweights such as Florida Senate Claude Pepper and FDR’s eldest son, James Roosevelt, openly attempted to draft General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the Democratic nominee and, when Eisenhower expressed that he had no interest, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.  Truman, however, was nothing if not tough and won the nomination on the first ballot, nominated Alben Barkley as his Vice President, and launched into a blistering acceptance speech which turned his campaign around and motivated many of those in his party who doubted him.

A few weeks earlier, the Republicans had held their convention in the same Philadelphia venue that hosted the Democratic National Convention.  The favorite for the Republican nomination was New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the Republican nominee in 1944 in a losing effort against President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Since FDR defeated him, Dewey had remained the front-runner, but he wasn’t necessarily exciting the Republican faithful.  Rumors that General Douglas MacArthur would enter the race were extinguished when the General was soundly defeated when he allowed his name to be entered into the Wisconsin primary.  It wasn’t Dewey who beat MacArthur, however; it was Minnesota’s young Governor Harold Stassen.  Stassen made a respectable run at the nomination and Senators Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan also held a significant amount of delegates going into the Republican National Convention.  Governor Dewey’s delegate strength, however, gave him the Republican nomination on the third ballot and California Governor Earl Warren was selected as his running mate.

As Pietrusza shows in 1948, when the general election geared up, it wasn’t merely a battle between Truman and Dewey.  The Democratic Party had splintered after the young Mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert H. Humphrey, made a passionate speech at the convention about civil rights and the Southern delegates walked out of the convention hall.  The Southerners — all of whom were Conservative Democrats far to the right of President Truman anyway — marched out of Philadelphia and gathered in their own convention to form the States’ Rights, or “Dixiecrat”, Party.  The Dixiecrats nominated South Carolina’s 45-year-old Governor, Strom Thurmond.  To the left of Truman was former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, an eccentric man who had preceded Truman in the Vice Presidency and dumped from the ticket in 1944 in favor of Truman because FDR was gravely ill and party leaders felt more comfortable with Truman as an insurance policy than Wallace.  Wallace and his supporters broke with Truman over the Truman’s Administration’s hawkish stance towards the Soviet Union, formed the Progressive Party (which was endorsed by and heavily made up of members of the Communist Party), and nominated Wallace as their Presidential candidate.

The 1948 campaign became a four-way race and 1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America gives us a front-row seat for a thrilling election which literally came down to the wire and resulted in one of the biggest upsets in the history of United States elections.  Pietrusza, as always, has stacked the book full of compelling and influential characters — many of whom played parts in his previous campaign histories.  As Election Day nears, 1948 shows the subtle shifts and major movements which led to the famous photo of a beaming President Truman, the morning after his stunning victory, holding a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the erroneous and infamous title: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”.

The journey that Pietrusza takes to get us to Election Day is one that he has definitively become the best at leading.  In the past, I’ve compared David Pietrusza’s fascinating campaign histories to the legendary work done by Theodore White in his classic The Making of the President series.  After three straight home runs, I think Pietrusza is the undisputed champion of chronicling American Presidential campaigns.  These are not just biographies of people running for a certain office in a specific campaign, but biographies of some of our most important campaigns as a whole that happen to be told through the eyes and words and deeds of the principals involved.  With 1948, Pietrusza has now told the story of three of our most riveting Presidential campaigns.  Would I be getting greedy if I hope that he’ll give the same treatment to the other 54 Presidential campaigns throughout our nation’s storied history?

David Pietrusza’s 1948: Harry Truman’s Improbable Victory and the Year That Transformed America is published by Union Square Press and is available now from Amazon and other outlets.  David Pietrusza’s website is www.davidpietrusza.com.

Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership Between a President and His General
By John C. Waugh
Paperback.  252 pages.
October 11, 2011.  Palgrave Macmillan.

Over the past few years, John C. Waugh has become one of my favorite historians of the Civil War and its unique personalities.  Books like The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox — Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan, and Their Brothers; One Man Great Enough: Abraham Lincoln’s Road To The Civil War; Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency; and his latest offering, Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership Between a President and His General (Paperback edition released in October 2011 by Palgrave Macmillan) have recast the people, places, and events which changed our nation before, during, and after the first shots of the Civil War were fired 150 years this years.

What is great about Waugh’s books is that in capturing these subjects in a series of books we aren’t reading stories that are squeezed in between two covers.  Instead, Waugh gives us vignettes of sorts, and I think that’s really the only way to study the Civil War — in many different parts.  The Civil War was never about just one issue, and Waugh broadens the study of the major events and players by telling the stories separately.  For serious and casual readers of Civil War history, Waugh’s books are perfect as we remember the sesquicentennial of that terrible conflict. 

The last book of Waugh’s that I read was Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency, which focused on Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to win another term in the White House in 1864 despite very few Union victories up to that point of the Civil War, widespread unpopularity, and a serious challenge from the former commander of Union armies, General George B. McClellan.  In Lincoln and McClellan, we see the beginnings of that relationship between Commander-in-Chief and General-in-Chief and we understand how Lincoln transitioned from appointing McClellan to lead the war effort to relieving McClellan from his duties to facing McClellan in the 1864 election.

The strength of Jack Waugh’s books is his in-depth descriptions of the personalities and characteristics of the important leaders who were at the helm during the Civil War.  Lincoln and McClellan is no different, and we are given a chance to learn more about General McClellan and his background.  One of the most surprising things that I learned in Lincoln and McClellan is the fact that the President and the General knew each other even before Lincoln sought the Presidency in 1860.  Their paths had crossed while Lincoln was a respected lawyer for Illinois railroad companies and McClellan was superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad.  There’s even a McClellan link to the famed debates between Lincoln and Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas as McClellan, a loyal Democrat, provided Douglas with his own private railroad car and gave Douglas preference as he the Senator traveled between towns to debate Lincoln.

Above all else, Lincoln and McClellan tells the stories of two very different men from very different backgrounds with very different ideas about how the Civil War should be fought.  McClellan, unsurprisingly, does not come across well in the book.  Though Waugh gives McClellan the opportunity to tell his side of the story through the scores of personal letters that the General wrote home to his wife, Nelly, we still see a vain, ambitious, perhaps even delusional commander who could organize an Army better than anyone else in the country, yet never figured out how to use it.  We also see President Lincoln do everything he can to support McClellan and push him to fight before finally giving up on the General.  What’s most astonishing isn’t that President Lincoln fired General McClellan; it’s that he waited so long to do so.

Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership Between a President and His General by John C. Waugh is available now from Amazon, or for your e-reader..  John C. Waugh’s other books and information about the author can also be found through his personal website.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
By Candice Millard
Hardcover. 339 pages.
September 20, 2011. Doubleday.

James Abram Garfield was President of the United States for 199 days, and 79 of those days were spent fighting for his life after he was shot by delusional office-seeker Charles Guiteau at Washington, D.C.’s Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on July 2, 1881. Because of his brief Presidency, his seemingly meteoric rise to the White House, the fact that he was only 49 years old when he died, and his unfortunate inclusion in the era of largely forgettable Presidents between Lincoln and FDR, we tend to overlook Garfield’s importance and his fascinating life.

In Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (2011, Doubleday) — the new book by Candice Millard, the New York Times Bestselling Author of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey (2005) — we learn more about Garfield’s improbable ascension from desperate, Lincolnesque poverty to a life as one of the more remarkable intellectuals of his period and a politician who was propelled into the Presidency by his popularity rather than his ambition.

Destiny of the Republic weaves together several captivating storylines which feature a variety of complex characters. The book begins with the 1880 Republican National Convention which Civil War veteran and Ohio Congressman James Garfield emerged from as the surprise GOP nominee for the Presidency. Involved in the machinations of the convention are leaders and bosses from both sides of the Republican Party — Garfield’s Half-Breeds and the Stalwarts, led by New York Senator Roscoe Conkling and represented by Garfield’s Vice Presidential running mate, Conkling’s protege, Chester Arthur.

As Garfield wins the Presidency in November 1880, we’re introduced to Charles Guiteau, a wanderer and lost soul who is intelligent, but clearly insane. Guiteau can’t decide what to do with his life, but as the 1880 campaign rages on, Guiteau believes that a rambling speech that he gave in vague support of Garfield contributes to Garfield’s victory and should be rewarded with a diplomatic appointment overseas.

After Garfield is inaugurated in March 1881, he finds himself beleaguered — as all of his predecessors have been — by office-seekers who feel that their service to Garfield or the Republican Party is deserving of an appointment under the spoils system which the American government has been built on since political parties were first formed in the United States. Charles Guiteau is one of those office-seekers who pesters President Garfield, Garfield’s private secretary, and Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Guiteau isn’t the President’s only worry. As Garfield leans towards reforming the spoils system and appointing people to government position based on merit and experience, he is met with protest by powerful opponents such as Senator Conkling and his own Vice President, Chester Arthur.

Candice Millard does her best to take us into the diseased mind of Charles Guiteau as he is frustrated by being turned down for the diplomatic posts that he genuinely feels he deserved. Through Guiteau’s own words and testimony from those who knew him, Millard clearly illustrates in Destiny of the Republic how truly delusional Guiteau was. After being turned down once again with a blunt dismissal by Secretary of State Blaine, Guiteau realizes that a diplomatic post isn’t in his future, but feels that God has called on him to remove Garfield from the Presidency and put Arthur in his place.

It was July 2, 1881 when Guiteau shot President Garfield twice as Garfield walked with Secretary of State Blaine through the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. One bullet grazed Garfield’s arm, and the other miraculously missed all of his vital organs and lodged near his pancreas. Guiteau was immediately arrested, but felt that he had merely done God’s work and that Chester Arthur — who would succeed Garfield if the President died — would appreciate what he had done and free him.

James Garfield wasn’t dead, though. Although he was seriously wounded, Garfield was a relatively young man, very healthy, and physically robust. At just 49 years old, the President was about 6’1” and weighed a solid, muscular 210 lbs. The wounds that he received were far less serious than the gunshot wounds that former President Theodore Roosevelt (1912) and President Ronald Reagan (1981) would later survive.

It’s been widely-known — pretty much since Garfield’s autopsy — that James Garfield wasn’t killed by the gunshot wounds he received, but by blood poisoning that resulted from infections introduced by the unsterilized instruments and fingers that Garfield’s doctors probed the President with. What Candice Millard does in Destiny of the Republic is meticulously detail the mistakes and miscalculations made by Garfield’s doctors and describe the agonizing, often disgusting results.

As President Garfield tries to recover, Millard helps us follow Guiteau’s experiences in prison as he slowly realized that he wouldn’t be received as the hero he expected to be welcomed as. We also see the transformation of Chester Arthur from a puppet of Roscoe Conkling’s political machine to a man genuinely devastated about Garfield’s shooting and worried about potentially becoming President. We also follow the somewhat tyrannical bedside manner of Garfield’s lead doctor, D. Willard Bliss, whose decisions may have prevented the President’s recovery. Millard also examines the work of famous inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who races to perfect a machine that can help locate the bullet inside of Garfield before the President’s time runs out. In the process, Bell faces his own tragedy, Guiteau faces trial, Arthur finds a helpful friend, and the First Lady Lucretia Rudolph Garfield attempts to be strong for her husband.

What really stood out in Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, however, is James Abram Garfield. Now, I have read quite a bit about the 20th President and his times, but I guess I wasn’t examining him closely enough — or, perhaps, I wasn’t given a good enough insight until Candice Millard added some illumination. I’ve always been impressed by Garfield’s intelligence, his rise from abject poverty, his service in the Civil War, and his remarkably long (for a man who died before the age of 50) and eventful Congressional career. I’ve also been aware of Garfield’s progressive beliefs — his loud voice in support of civil rights, his early adherence to the abolition of slavery, and his courageous stand for equality.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve tended to overlook Garfield’s Presidency because it was so brief. I guess I simply thought that Garfield’s Administration basically ended on the day he was shot, without thinking about what he went through as he fought for his life. The portrait that Millard paints in Destiny of the Republic is that of almost a saintly figure. A brave man who suffered through torturous pain and illness without complaining, without treating the people around him badly, without showing so much as a hint of the anguish that he was obviously enduring. Garfield lingered on for 79 days in the summer months of humid, malarial Washington, D.C. His body, as Millard writes in Destiny of the Republic was “literally rotting”. Infection introduced by his stubborn, misguided doctors had whitened his dark hair, removed the color from his face, and left him emaciated after his weight dropped from 210 lbs. to 130 lbs. in a matter of weeks. Yet, Garfield continued to fight and never had anything but a smile for the doctors who were doing him so much harm (and eventually killed him).

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President (2011, Doubleday) is a riveting story that made me look at a historical figure that I thought I knew pretty well in a completely different way. When people ask me if, as a Presidential Historian, there is any specific era of Presidents that I find boring, I’ve often replied “The Gilded Age Presidents” or the Presidents between Lincoln and FDR (with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt). I can’t say that anymore. This made me reconsider James Garfield as more than just a brief footnote due to his unfortunate assassination. There’s much more to Garfield than his assassination, and there is much more to the assassination than the two shots fired by Guiteau in a Washington railroad station.

In River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Candice Millard took us along with Theodore Roosevelt as he faced death and barely escaped it on an expedition to Brazil. In Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, Millard takes us along with James Garfield as he meets death and, in the process, inspires his nation and transforms his successor, Chester Arthur, into a President that Garfield would have been proud of. I can’t recommend Destiny of the Republic enough. It’s available now, so go get it.