Dead Presidents

Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives
Robert Draper
Hardcover.  327 pp.
April 24, 2012.  Free Press.

John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan who represents the western suburbs of Detroit, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Monroe in the United States House of Representatives is the Dean of the House.  In a couple of months, Congressman Dingell will celebrate his 86th birthday.  If he wins his campaign in November, as he has done the last 28 times he’s been on the ballot, and serves past June 8, 2013, he will have spent more time in Congress than any American in history.  Right now, only two Americans in 223 years of American History have served longer in Congress.  Nobody has spent more time in the House of Representatives.  Dingell joined the House on December 13, 1955, succeeding his father, John Dingell, Sr., who had died a few months earlier.  Between the current Congressman Dingell and his father, somebody named John Dingell has represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives for almost 80 consecutive years.

If anybody is an expert on the lower chamber of Congress — the people’s chamber — it is John Dingell.  If anybody can give an educated opinion on the state of America’s legislative branch, it is this aging World War II veteran who has held office in Washington, D.C. through the Administrations of 11 Presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama).  John Dingell’s ties to the House of Representatives even include five years as page where he watched his father work alongside legislative titans and stood transfixed on the floor of the House during the joint session of Congress where President Franklin D. Roosevelt mourned the “day which will live in infamy” and declared war on Japan.

After nearly 57 years as a member of the House of Representatives and 75 years as a keen observer of Congress’s lower chamber, John Dingell has seemingly experienced it all, but the 112th Congress — the current session, which began on January 3, 2011 and saw Republicans take control of the House after the disastrous 2010 midterm elections for House Democrats — is difficult to deal with.  In Robert Draper’s new book, Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives (Free Press, 2012), Dingell admits that “I’m more frustrated than I’ve ever been in my career.”  The Dean of the House tries to flip through the pages of political history that he has personally experienced, yet he can’t find another example of an organization or individual who had approval ratings as low as the 9% approval rating that Americans have for the 112th Congress.  In fact, Dingell finally says, “I think pedophiles would do better.”

Robert Draper is a top-notch journalist for publications such as the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and National Geographic, and his previous book, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (BOOK•KINDLE), was a fascinating insider account of the Executive branch as President Bush’s two terms were coming to a close.  Do Not Ask What Good We Do is just as intriguing, perhaps more so because instead of a White House with one leader and nearly everyone else working toward the same goals, the House of Representatives is full of 435 very different Americans from very different parts of the country.  And while the House is controlled by a Republican Party that currently holds on to a 52-vote majority over the Democrats, the two parties themselves have major ideological differences within them.

Do Not Ask What Good We Do focuses on a handful of House members.  Some of Draper’s subjects are very well-known and very influential like current Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Dingell (D-MI), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), disgraced former New York Democrat Anthony Weiner, and the courageous Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords who was nearly killed in an assassination attempt in her Congressional district at the beginning of the 112th Congress.  But Draper also looks at some of the 87 freshmen who helped the Republicans take back the House in November 2010 thanks to their Tea Party credentials and relentless opposition to anything and everything that President Barack Obama has attempted to do, particularly Florida’s Allen West, Missouri’s Billy Long, Blake Farenthold of Texas, Renee Elmers of North Carolina, Raul Labrador of Idaho, and South Carolina’s “Four Horsemen” freshmen: Jeff Duncan, Tim Scott, Trey Gowdy, and Mick Mulvaney.

By introducing us to some of the personalities who are responsible for crafting and passing legislation, Draper helps us understand why John Dingell is so frustrated, why nothing is getting done, and why the approval rating of Congress is in single digits.  We see Tea Party Republican freshmen whose intransigence not only provide headaches for the Democratic President, the Democratic Senate, or the Democratic House minority, but also for moderate Republicans or Congressional veterans who are never conservative enough for the newcomers who hold up bills and refuse to compromise.  While there are admirable, hard-working, pragmatic legislators on both sides of the aisle, there are also Members of Congress — people that were somehow elected by a majority of Americans to represent their district in the House of Representatives — like Idaho’s Republican freshman Raul Labrador who is quoted in a Republican conference telling Speaker Boehner, “I didn’t come to Washington to be part of a team.”  Or, Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, whose obsession with tacking on amendments, need to make a floor speech about something every morning, and stubborn attitude is one of the most blatant examples I’ve ever seen of government waste.

Do Not Ask What Good We Do is a fascinating book, but tremendously frustrating.  The frustration doesn’t come from Robert Draper’s first-class reporting or his ability to put personalities to the faces and names we see on C-SPAN; it comes from the frightening fact that if, as many Americans believe, our system is broken and needs to be fixed, the repairs should start with the House of Representatives.  The Senate is the more deliberative body of Congress — designed to represent the states equally.  The House is supposed to be the people’s chamber — designed to represent us, the average American voter or taxpayer, as directly as possible.  I’m scared for my country if these are the best 435 people we have to represent us.  Not all of the members of the House are equally horrible, but enough of them are bad that I worry for my country.  I am saddened for my country if we can’t do better than many of these men and women that we send to Congress to represent the districts that we live in.  We have to be able to do better.  We must do better.

Draper’s title — Do Not Ask What Good We Do — comes from one of this country’s original members of Congress, Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, who wrote of Congress in 1796, “If we should finish and leave the world right side up, it will be happy.  Do not ask what good we do: that is not a fair question, in these days of faction.”  Thanks to Draper’s revealing account of the current House of Representatives, we can look at the 112th Congress and know not to ask what good they do, for there hasn’t been anything of note in the past two years that has made our lives better.  We know that we don’t need to ask how bad they’ve been; the 9% approval rating answers that question clearly.  Instead, we should ask ourselves: “Can we do better?” and “Is it January 3, 2013 yet?”.      

Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper is available now from Free Press.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Robert Draper is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and GQ.  His previous book was the New York Times best-seller, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (BOOK•KINDLE).  Robert Draper is also on Twitter @draperrobert.

The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus
Mark Anderson
Hardcover.  280 pp.
May 8, 2012.  Da Capo Press.

On June 5, 2012, a rare astronomical phenomenon will take place for the final time in the lifetimes of anybody reading this as Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun.  Observers in certain parts of the world will be able to see the tiny black dot of Venus traveling across the surface of the blazing sun — an event that takes place no more than twice per century and won’t happen again until December 10, 2117.  While the last transit of Venus was only eight years ago, on June 8, 2004, the previous transits of Venus were in December 1874 and December 1882.  Venus’s transit is one of the rarest astronomical occurrences that scientists are able to predict, and they have provided valuable opportunities for understanding the physical dimensions of our solar system.

The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus (Da Capo Press, May 8, 2012), Mark Anderson reveals the story behind the scientists and explorers who traveled to distant parts of a still largely unmapped world in order to track the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769 in hopes of unlocking some of the secrets of our solar system and modernizing measurements and navigation methods here on Earth.

After an unsuccessful attempt in 1761 by the leading powers of a world at war to get accurate readings on Venus’s transit, peace had settled throughout Europe and the world’s top astronomers, explorers, mathematicians, and naval officers set out to distant points on the globe to try to observe the transit of Venus, record their measurements, and hopefully make the correct calculations and computations to solve some of the mysteries of astronomy.  By no means was this an easy task.  Not only were these observers traveling to far-off, foreign lands, but they were carrying expensive, delicate equipment — clocks, telescopes, quadrants, sextants, chronometers, pendulums — that could easily be damaged at sea, on bumpy overland routes, or by inclement weather.  Even if the observers made it to their targeted destination, built their observatories, set up their equipment, and had everything ready for the big day, months and years of work could be thrown away if the skies were cloudy on June 3, 1769 and they couldn’t actually see the tiny black dot traversing the sun.

While scores of astronomers — official and amateur — attempted to make observations around the world on June 3, 1769, Mark Anderson focuses on three major expeditions that traveled thousands of miles from home and set up shop thousands of miles away from each other to capture the last transit of Venus for over a century.  The Day the World Discovered the Sun follows French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, whose 1761 observations from Siberia didn’t provide the answers he hoped for, and his Spanish partners as they crossed the Atlantic, made an overland journey across Mexico and built their makeshift observatory at San José del Cabo in present-day Baja California.  In the Arctic, Denmark’s teenage King Christian VII invited the expedition of two Hungarian priests, Maximilian Hell and Joannes Sajnovics, who brave harrowing mountain roads, frigid Arctic waters, and the bitter cold and endless nights of a Nordic winter to observe the transit from the northern Norwegian village of Vardø.  The English expedition is led by a soon-to-be-famous Captain James Cook and while they’re heading to the much more welcoming climate of Tahiti, the voyage through the South Atlantic and around Cape Horn is no less dangerous then the expeditions of Chappe and Father Hell.

All three expeditions are compelling, with riveting accounts of the voyages to the far-flung points of observation, and a fast-paced narrative that has you on the edge of your seat, rooting for each of the teams of astronomers to be able to have the opportunity to actually see the transit of Venus on June 3, 1769 without the threat of clouds, broken equipment, dangerous weather, angry natives, or debilitating illness.  Anderson weaves the three stories together seamlessly and The Day the World Discovered the Sun is a book about scientific advancement and adventure that is somehow able to avoid being bogged down with the complexities of science.  For those, like me, who are casual fans of astronomy, Anderson helpfully includes a technical appendix in the back of the back which further explains the calculations these astronomers and explorers needed to use.

Mark Anderson’s extensive research (and his master’s degree is astrophysics) is enhanced by the storytelling ability of a Shakespearean scholar (which he is).  The Day the World Discovered the Sun is a captivating collection of stories about a rare phenomenon that also happens to be a valuable scientific opportunity — not just back in 1769 when the observations of the transit of Venus from around the world helped measure the dimensions of our solar system, but also today, as we prepare for the June 5, 2012 Venus transit.

The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus by Mark Anderson is available now from Da Capo Press.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Mark Anderson is the author of “Shakespeare” By Any Other Name and has written about science, history, and technology for many publications, including Discover, Wired, and National Public Radio, among others.  Anderson is on Twitter @mkanders and has a Tumblr (http://discoveredsun.tumblr.com).

The transit of Venus is an incredibly rare astronomical occurrence that won’t take place again until 2117, so you may not want to miss out on June 5, 2012.  With that said, looking at the sun without protection is very dangerous and, much like with an eclipse, precautions should be taken.  Visit the NASA website on the Transit of Venus for more information and for possible viewing parties in your area.  There is also helpful information about the transit and viewing opportunities from the European Space Agency and the National Solar Observatory.

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.

The Laws of the Ring
Urijah Faber (with Tim Keown)
Hardcover.  223 pp.
May 22, 2012.  William Morrow.

Okay, alright…first things first.  Full disclosure:  I have a hard time being impartial about MMA star Urijah “the California Kid” Faber.  I think Urijah Faber is one of the most exciting fighters in the history of mixed martial arts.  I think Urijah Faber is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth dudes in any professional sport or field of entertainment.  But, most importantly, Urijah Faber and I are not only both from California, but we’re both from Sacramento.  I’ve trained a few times at Urijah’s gym in downtown Sacramento, Ultimate Fitness, which is also the homebase of his Team Alpha Male.  I am as loyal of a fan of Urijah Faber’s MMA career as I am of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings (yes, that is still a real team, but Urijah’s much more successful).

Now, I don’t live in California anymore, but I am still loyal to my fellow Sacramentans, and I love to see another Sacramento guy do good.  I think Urijah is good for the city (and for the sport of mixed martial arts), and I root for him every time he fights.  Even if he wasn’t from Sacramento, I’d probably be a huge Urijah Faber fan.  Because he is from the “916” and represents my hometown so well, I will always appreciate Urijah — and be forever proud that Sacramento has Urijah as the capital city’s most visible star athlete. 

However, my admiration for Urijah Faber goes deeper than simply sharing the same hometown.  Faber is an inspirational athlete and, even though his job is to beat the crap out of other people, I think he’s a solid role model.  Faber is charismatic, handles himself well, and brings the respectful, honorable aspects of traditional martial arts to MMA.  Not all MMA fighters do that when they enter the cage.  After all, I wouldn’t be nearly as loyal to my hometown fighter if, instead of Sacramento, I lived 45 minutes (depending on traffic) down Interstate 5 in Stockton and had to support the annoying and disrespectful Diaz brothers, Nate and Nick.

It seems like Urijah Faber would be an unlikely person to write a book, but Faber is also an unlikely candidate for one of the toughest fighters in the world.  At 5’6” and 135 lbs, Faber is about the same size as Lil’ Wayne or Hillary Clinton, but his credentials cannot be questioned.  After a highly-successful amateur wrestling career in high school and at UC Davis where he holds more victories than any other wrestler in the university’s history, Faber had his first professional MMA fight in 2003 at Colusa Casino in Northern California.  Faber quickly made an impression in the emerging world of mixed martial arts.  In 2005, Faber won the King of the Cage Bantamweight Championship and competed in the world famous Abu Dhabi World Championships.  Since 2006, Faber has become a major star, making World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) into perhaps the most exciting MMA promotion in the world, winning several championships, and joining the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) after it absorbed the WEC promotion.  Today, Faber is one of the UFC’s brightest stars and currently starring as a coach on the UFC’s reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, on the FX network.

In Faber’s new book, The Laws of the Ring (William Morrow, May 22, 2012), the fighter teams up with best-selling author Tim Keown — co-author of Dennis Rodman’s memorable autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be — to share his fascinating story.  The difference is that Faber’s book isn’t the normal sports autobiography full of tired cliches and generic memories.  In The Laws of the Ring, Faber shares his unique experiences and his lessons from working with and coaching others in order to help people find the same passion in their lives that he has for fighting.

The Laws of the Ring is similar in some ways to Robert Greene’s series of books, The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, and The 33 Stragies of War.  While Greene uses experiences from history, philosophy, and classic literature to illustrate the lessons and strategies in his books, Faber shares his personal experiences and his own lessons that he has learned from a life of hard work, sacrifice, passion, fighting, and surviving.

Faber’s ability to focus on his opponents, search out the strengths and weaknesses of any rivals who stand across the cage from him, and convey his own passions and beliefs allow him to tell this story and motivate others to achieve their goals without coming across as pretentious.  With a degree in human development and a solid background in teaching and coaching other wrestlers and martial artists, Faber’s The Laws of the Ring would be a credible textbook in a course on overcoming obstacles, reaching your targets, and kicking any asses that might get in the way.

Early in The Laws of the Ring, while sharing stories about the family that he is obviously incredibly close with, Urijah Faber mentions his mother’s “aggressive positivity”.  That’s a trait that has undoubtedly been inherited.  Whether Faber is heading to the cage to 2Pac’s “California Love”, bouncing around in preparation for the bell to ring to begin his fight, raising his hand in victory afterward, or instructing his students and teammates, the California Kid is overflowing with energetic enthusiasm, relentless passion, and “aggressive positivity”.  I will always enjoy watching Urijah fight, and I think The Laws of the Ring is a book that could inspire a legion of fans and motivate future fighters to come.

The Laws of the Ring by Urijah Faber, with Tim Keown, will be released by William Morrow on May 22, 2012.  You can order the book from Amazon, or for your Kindle.  Urijah “the California Kid” Faber is on Twitter @urijahfaber, his website is urijahfaber.com, and he trains with Team Alpha Male at Ultimate Fitness in Sacramento. 

Faber can currently be seen as a coach on UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter on FX and he will challenge Dominick Cruz for the World Bantamweight Championship at the UFC’s biggest show of the year, at UFC 148 on July 7, 2012, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence
Hugh Howard
Hardcover.  365 pp.
2012.  Bloomsbury Press.

To many Americans, the War of 1812 is a mere footnote in our history, a struggle between the U.S. and the British that is notable to history students only because it’s easy to learn when it took place.  Casual observers don’t know why the war happened, couldn’t name the important battles, and probably won’t have a good idea on who was victorious at the end.  The Revolutionary War had George Washington and the Founding Fathers, the Civil War had Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee and scores of famed American soldiers, and the modern wars have left an indelible imprint on the country.  The War of 1812, however, was waged by a bookish commander-in-chief who stood 5’4” and weighed about 90 lbs, so the importance of the war, much like the importance of that President, James Madison, is often overlooked.

Hugh Howard — a historian who has written several books on the Founding Fathers and Revolutionary-era America — examines this frequently neglected event in our history in his new book, Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence (2012, Bloomsbury Press).  Despite the fact that the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, British ships had been steadily harassing American merchantmen on the high seas.  Britain was locked in a war with France and used that as an excuse to ignore American neutrality, stop American ships, and impress American sailors into the service of the Royal Navy.  The United States protested the actions of the British, but the attacks continued to increase as Thomas Jefferson finished his Presidency (1801-1809) and James Madison moved into the White House for his two terms (1809-1817).

The Jefferson and Madison Administrations sought various solutions that would guarantee British recognition of American sovereignty and neutrality, but Britain continued actively intercepting American ships and impressing American sailors into service.  To add insult to injury, the British were also inciting  Native Americans in the northwestern frontier to rise up against the United States.  When the United States could no longer resist taking action without being humiliated on the world stage, President Madison declared war.

As the title suggests, Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War looks at the War of 1812 from the perspective of President Madison and his wife, Dolley, who was a dynamic hostess, unofficial adviser to her husband, and true patriot.  There are other books on the War of 1812 that go into deeper details about every major battle from Canada and down along the Atlantic coast, but Howard’s book is unique in that it follows the powerful First Couple and clues the reader in to what the Madison’s were like under siege.  We see leadership qualities in President Madison, but we also see the courage and determination of Dolley Madison as she attempts to keep Washington moving as usual even while under imminent threat of a British invasion.  Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War also shows the valuable role that Madison’s Secretary of State, James Monroe, who would succeed Madison as President, played as Madison’s confidant and as a leader who acted without hesitation.

The most fascinating part of Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War is not surprising.  Hugh Howard details the frantic preparations towards the end of August 1814 as the British inched closer and closer to the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  At times, American military leaders couldn’t figure out if the British invasion would head towards Baltimore, or if they would attack the national capital named after our first President.  While families gathered up their belongings and officials gathered important documents or relics of the young United States, the movements of the British made it clear that they were targeting Washington, D.C.  As the British skirmished with American defenders in Maryland, President Madison — who had no military experience — rode out to join American troops and became the only President to ever command troops on the field of battle.

Howard’s meticulous research and wonderful storytelling ability truly paints a detailed portrait of the unthinkable result of the British invasion.  While President Madison rode to safety in order to elude capture at the hands of the British, Dolley Madison and the Madison family’s slaves packed up as many important objects as she could save from the White House.  Most famous of all, Mrs. Madison had a historic portrait of George Washington pulled down from the East Room and taken to safety in Virginia.  Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War then recounts how the British invaded Washington, D.C. and set fire to all of the public buildings.  Nearly 200 years later, it’s still astonishing to imagine foreign troops occupying the nation’s capital and burning down the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Library of Congress, and other symbols of America’s independence.  Howard evokes a stirring image of President Madison returning to the national capital in ruins, seeing the charred remains of the White House, and immediately finding a place so he could continue the business of the government.

Despite the humiliating burning of Washington, the U.S. showed its resiliency and proved that the United States of America wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan experiment but an established nation that could hold its own with what was, at the time, the most powerful empire in the world.  When the War of 1812 ended (in 1815, oddly enough), there was no clear victor, but it was obvious that the United States was here to stay.  When the Treaty of Ghent was signed ending the war, there were not territorial changes and the treaty didn’t include anything about the impressment of American sailors because the end of Britain’s war against France no longer required the Royal Navy to continue the practice.  In a strange way, the War of 1812 seemed to put to rest any major issues between the U.S. and Britain and the two countries grew close in the years afterward, much like a bully might respect the person he picked on if they only stood up to them.

Although it’s difficult to explain exactly what the War of 1812 was all about, then-former President Madison did so in an 1818 letter to Jared Ingersoll.  “If our first struggle was a war of our infancy,” said Madison, “this last was that of our youth; and the issue of both, wisely improved, may long postpone, if not forever prevent, a necessity for exerting the strength of our manhood.”  To Madison, it seems that the Revolutionary War established American independence and the War of 1812 guaranteed its continuation.  Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War is a wonderful book about an overlooked chapter in history that featured one of this country’s darkest moments in the burning of Washington, but also gave Francis Scott Key the inspiration for our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

Mr. and Mrs. Madison’s War: America’s First Couple and the Second War of Independence by Hugh Howard is available now from Bloomsbury Press.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Hugh Howard’s website is www.hughhoward.com.

The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska
Colleen Mondor
Hardcover.  242 pp.
2012.  Lyons Press.

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward concluded a deal with representatives of Tsar Alexander II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, to acquire the vast Russian territory of Alaska.  Alaska was purchased by the United States for $7.2 million — a price that worked out to about 2 cents per acre.  The U.S. bought the entire territory of Alaska for less money than publishing company HarperCollins would pay future Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to write a book about her life about 140 years later.  With the hindsight of history, Seward’s Alaska Purchase is one of the great bargains in world history.

While some derided the Alaska Purchase as “Seward’s Folly” because of its harsh terrain and climate, vast empty spaces, low population, and distance from the contiguous United States, most Americans supported the transaction.  All doubts about Alaska’s worth were extinguished when prospectors realized that Alaska was rich in natural resources, including gold and oil.  Alaska was organized as a Territory of the United States following the purchase, and became the 49th state on January 3, 1959.

Whether it was Russian or American, territory or state, Alaska has never been a place for everybody.  If there is any sort of frontier still remaining in the United States, it’s likely located in Alaska.  The state is, by far, the largest in the union — twice the size of the second-largest state, Texas.  Yet, despite that size, the population remains small.  With as many people as a mid-sized American city, only three states have a smaller population and Alaska has the lowest population density.  Almost 150 years after Seward’s purchase, Alaska remains relatively empty; its unforgiving terrain is almost always so frigid that it makes the famous “frozen tundra” of the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field seem like a Hawaiian lava field.

But people do live and work in Alaska.  Small towns and villages dot the landscape throughout the vast, frozen state from the Aleutian Islands the reach across the Bering Strait towards Russia to the eastern border with Canada’s Yukon Territory and all the way up to the northernmost city in the United States at Point Barrow.  While Alaskans in the southern part of the state have an effective road system between the town, villages, and larger cities such as Fairbanks and Anchorage, the geography that gives Alaska its beauty and uniqueness amongst American states prevents safe, year-round travel in territory above the Arctic Circle.

The conditions which sustain that remoteness have necessitated Alaska’s unique and widespread aviation industry.  With town and villages hundreds of miles apart, the best — and often only — transportation is by plane.  Aviation in Alaska has been a steady form of travel, an effective way to deliver supplies or evacuate patients to hospitals, and an important commercial industry for nearly a century.  For many Alaskans, there is a reliance upon aviation for needs that Americans in the Lower 48 would never imagine boarding an aircraft for.

Colleen Mondor spent four years as a dispatcher for a charter airline operating out of Fairbanks, Alaska.  In her book, The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska (2011, Lyons Press), Mondor shares her experiences in running the operations center and her interactions with the pilots who flew missions for her company.  Because of the harsh weather and rough terrain, it is no surprise that the casualty count among Alaskan pilots is high.  This is not a new problem, nor is it a diminishing problem.  Plane crashes claim lives in Alaska more than the people who rely on air transport want to think about.  Along with dozens of pilots — some grizzled veterans, some astonishingly inexperienced — plane crashes in Alaska have claimed the lives of hundreds, including people like Will Rogers, Wiley Post, Hale Boggs, and Ted Stevens.

The Map of My Dead Pilots attempts to give some insight on Mondor’s experiences, although she does so while not giving out too much information.  Maybe it is to protect the pilots who were lost, maybe it was to protect the company she previously worked for, but one drawback to the book is that is sometimes feels as if there are important details that would help flesh out the story.  I imagine that Mondor is trying her best to be respectful of the pilots she knew, but there is a generic aspect to many of those that she writes about which makes it difficult to differentiate between pilots and incidents.

Some of the better parts of The Map of My Dead Pilots are when Mondor tells of the interesting history of aviation in Alaska dating back to the pioneers of the 1920s, bush pilots who risked (and often gave) their lives while exploring the massive state and pushing themselves to learn more.  I was also fascinated when Mondor recounted some conversations about the pilots who survived as they tried to explain why they were drawn to Alaska and why they allowed their company (which remains unnamed throughout the book) to send them on missions that could have been deadly for them; missions that were often deadly for others.

Mondor’s book tackles an original subject, and The Map of My Dead Pilots shines when it focuses on the history of certain flights or Alaskan aviation in general.  When the book turns into a conversation between Mondor and the pilots she knew, it drags and becomes redundant.  In reality, the book could have been 50 pages shorter and readers wouldn’t have missed out on anything.  There are moments where heavy-handed attempts at something more literary than it needs to be brings it back to Earth (so to speak).  Overall, I would definitely recommend it as it is a quick read and features insight on an occupation that remains important and necessary, daring and sometimes deadly, no matter how far technology advances.

The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska by Colleen Mondor is available now from Lyons Press.  You can order the book from Amazon, or download it instantly for your Kindle.  Colleen Mondor’s website is www.chasingray.com.

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.

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan
Jeff Greenfield
Trade Paperback.  434 pp.
February 2012.  Berkley Books.

Alternative history is not really my thing.  Don’t get me wrong: I think that imagining “what if” can be done really well, and I think that it can be an important and helpful exercise in understanding the role of our leaders, the consequences of their actions, and the impact of events.  Picturing what could have happened is often an effective vehicle for teaching people the significance of what really did happen.

But alternative history is not really my thing.  Perhaps it is because I read so much true history and biography that it’s difficult for me to fit alternate histories into my reading schedule, and it’s often difficult for me to suspend my disbelief and allow my brain to think of “what if”.  I have the same problem with reading historical fiction.  In order for me to enjoy it — or even read it from cover-to-cover — it has to be really good, and the author has to know their subject.

Fortunately for Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan (Trade paperback released February 7, 2012, Berkley Books), it comes from the mind of one of the most astute political analysts of our time, Jeff Greenfield.  Most observers of politics or viewers of television know Jeff Greenfield from his work as a political commentator for CBS, ABC, CNN, PBS, and NBC, work for which he has won three Emmy Awards.  Greenfield has written for Time, the New York Times, and Slate.com, among others,  and authored or co-authored a dozen books — important because a good alternative history book requires solid writing skills as well as in-depth knowledge of the subject(s) at hand.  And that knowledge — in this case, in-depth knowledge of the inner-workings of some of the most game-changing political campaigns of the 20th Century — is definitely one of Greenfield’s attributes.  Besides analyzing nearly ever major campaign of the past three decades, Greenfield was on the front lines of New York Democratic politics — as a speechwriter and aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he was working for RFK’s 1968 Presidential campaign in Los Angeles on the night Kennedy was assassinated.  Greenfield was also an aide and speechwriter to New York City Mayor John Lindsay.

In Then Everything Changed, Greenfield focuses on three moments in American political history of the past half-century and speculates on the possibilities where a subtle, split-second difference could have wrought massive changes to the historical narrative.  I really liked the way that Greenfield sets up the moment and then expands on how and what would likely have changed if things had gone differently.  Because of Greenfield’s deep knowledge and the politics and players in each instance, these situations play out in great detail.  If there is any stone left unturned, it’s a stone that nobody else would have stumbled upon either.  Some of Greenfield’s alternate histories can be easily imagined, some require a more faithful suspension of disbelief, but the best aspect is that all of Greenfield’s reworkings remain entirely plausible.  I didn’t find myself being taken out of the alternate history by wild variations on what I know actually occurred. 

The first situation that Greenfield examines in Then Everything Changed was the most interesting, and focuses on an incident that remains remarkably unreported to this day.  On December 11, 1960, a 73-year-old man named Richard Pavlick waited in his car outside the vacation home of President-elect John F. Kennedy, and was seconds away from a suicide bombing that would have killed JFK before he was even inaugurated and likely brought about a Constitutional crisis.  Pavlick’s car was packed with dynamite and he held the ignition switch in his hand as JFK walked out of his home.  Had he detonated the bomb, it would have killed Kennedy and dozens of nearby press and onlookers.  The only reason that Pavlick didn’t detonate the bomb is because Jacqueline and Caroline Kennedy came to the door to say goodbye to the President-elect, and Pavlick didn’t want to kill Kennedy in front of his family.  Greenfield takes a look at the ramifications if Kennedy hadn’t even made it to Inauguration Day.  Most likely, the Electoral College (which hadn’t made their official votes yet) would have switched their votes for President to Kennedy’s running mate, Lyndon Johnson.  And while LBJ did eventually succeed JFK after an assassination, Greenfield looks at the differences if Kennedy had never made it to the White House and it was LBJ instead who faced issues like that disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Greenfield’s second alternate history looks at how things might have changed if New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy had not been shot on June 4, 1968 after he won the California Primary and picked up some momentum in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  This chapter of Then Everything Changed is where Greenfield’s truly shines, as he was an aide for RFK and at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of Kennedy’s assassination.  Because of his knowledge of Kennedy’s 1968 campaign for the Democratic nomination, there is fascinating speculation about how RFK would have proceeded from California as he attempted to close the gap between him and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.  Potential strategies for winning enough delegates to force a battle at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago raise interesting possibilities, and Greenfield not only plays out what might have happened in a race that pitted RFK vs. Richard Nixon, but the role that outgoing President Lyndon B. Johnson may have taken.  Would LBJ have supported his hated rival, RFK, or would he not-so-secretly have worked to elect Nixon as his successor?  Going even further, Greenfield envisions what an RFK Administration would have looked like in the troubled period of protests, civil unrest, and the Vietnam War.

The final reimagining in Then Everything Changed begins with the least dramatic of the three seminal moments in the book as Greenfield visualizes the 1976 Presidential campaign without President Gerald Ford’s verbal stumble at the October 6, 1976 debate with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter.  At that debate in San Francisco, President Ford famously said “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”, a miscue that gave voters a perception that Ford was either, at best, stubbornly ignoring the facts or, far worse, woefully out-of-touch.  At the time of that debate, Ford had closed a seemingly insurmountable lead by Carter and was riding a wave of momentum.  Ford’s debate disaster likely cost him the support of ethnic, blue-collar voters in the Midwest, cut off any momentum he had previously enjoyed, and was possibly the difference in Carter’s narrow victory.  Greenfield contemplates a Ford victory and the effects that may have had on the history of Iran and Iraq, the American economy, the 1980 and 1984 campaigns, and the political careers of Ford, Carter, Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Sandra Day O’Connor and Gary Hart, among others.  Of the three scenarios, I found the Ford/Carter/Reagan alternative history to be the weakest — not so much because of its believability, but because it’s almost too expansive and ambitious.  While Greenfield’s knowledge of the players and politics is, as always, spot-on, I felt as if he attempted to shoehorn far too many people and events into the post-1976 era as he possibly could.  If Greenfield overreaches at all, it is in this chapter.

To me, however, everything is redeemed by Greenfield’s concluding chapter, which he titles “How Reality Shapes Speculation” and which acts as part bibliography, part reset to the real history that we are familiar with.  In that afterword, Greenfield gives examples of why his mind took him down certain alternative paths to the history that we know, and it shows you just how closely connected to reality many of his imagined situations are.  Greenfield never tries to sneak anything past the reader except a few bad, forced jokes that could be seen coming from miles away.  With that said, there’s also some good humor, mostly based in irony, that longtime observers of Greenfield will appreciate.  Then Everything Changed is the best of alternative history — well-written, entirely plausible, deeply-researched, and entertaining.  When this genre is done well, it helps readers perceive what was and what could have been, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who is able to help others understand history from a variety of viewpoints.  Greenfield does just that, and this book is appealing to hardcore history nerds or political junkies, casual fans of some of the giants of recent American politics, and people who just love a good story.

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield is available now from Berkley Books.  It can be ordered from Amazon, or downloaded instantly for your Kindle.  Jeff Greenfield is on Twitter and his website is jeffgreenfield.net.