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Religion & Spirituality

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Review by Douglas J. Durham There is an old German saying: What is the use of running, if you are not on the right way? Circling the Sacred Mountain, like Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has this question as its theme. The two books are similar in many ways a small group is on a journey, there is a description of the journey itself, and there are serious talks interspersed. The millions who responded strongly to Zen upon the publication of Pirsig’s book will remember that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance caused them to address two questions: What journey am I on? and, Is it the right one? In Circling the Sacred Mountain, Thurman and Wise are on the journey to Mount Kailas, both in the physical and metaphorical sense. Thurman, whose daughter Uma is a well-known movie star, is a professor of Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University. A close friend of the Dalai Lama and a highly visible Tibetan Buddhist scholar, Thurman provides the serious talks. Tad Wise, author of the novel Tesla, was a student of Thurman’s in the 1970s and, like Thurman, is a native of Woodstock, New York. Wise provides the description of the physical journey, lasting 25 days going from Nepal to Tibet and back to Nepal. He also provides his own responses to Thurman’s talks.

Located in remote Tibet, Kailas represents for each man the long-sought-after goal of profound personal transformation. As in Pirsig’s book, the physical journey is away from the familiar habits and responses of home and provides the setting for the metaphorical journey. Its objective is to achieve the dissolution of the ego and achieve freedom from socially conditioned and personally constructed bonds. The serious talks all deal with aspects of dissolving the ego and achieving such freedom.

This book differs from Zen in that the serious talks in Pirsig’s book were based on a combination of Zen Buddhism and classical Greek thought and were delivered in a relatively accessible fashion. The serious talks in Circling the Sacred Mountain are based on a Tibetan Buddhist text, The Blade Wheel. They are, in parts, not something that most people are used to reading. Substantial portions, however, are accessible and might possibly help you find your own Mount Kailas.

Douglas Durham has practiced under a Theravada Buddhist monk for seven years.

Review by Douglas J. Durham There is an old German saying: What is the use of running, if you are not on the right way? Circling the Sacred Mountain, like Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, has this question as its theme.…

NonfictionHumor

Review

Review by bookpagedev

There must be some psychological term for it, the feeling that as you hit a certain age you and your circle of friends cease to age (at least you do). And if you’re a fan of this Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist, when you see the title Dave Barry Turns Fifty, your immediate reaction is: when did he get so old? Come, fellow boomer, coos Barry. Take my hand and let us travel together on a voyage of exploration into our very favorite topic, which is us. He strolls down memory lane as best he can but, hey, memory is one of the first things to go, you know? Or is it hearing? Or eyesight? I forget.

Speaking of bifocals, Barry suggests that diminishing eyesight can actually be a good thing. [W]ithout my reading glasses, the only part of the newspaper I can read is the headlines. After glancing at such horrible displays he realizes: I don’t want to read those stories, and is relieved that they are written in letters the height of bacteria. Barry reminisces about many of the watershed events, fads, characters, and technologies, actual and sometimes absurd, in the years since his birth. Remember Ozzie and Harriet? Rotary phones that only came in black? Air raid drills at school? I know diving under desks ( which were apparently made out of some atomic-bomb-proof wood ) certainly made me feel safe. Following each of these chapters is a series of thinking points/ discussion questions such as Boy, postal service sure has improved since we got the ZIP code, huh? There are plenty of other observations Barry has to make, based on his half-century (which sounds much more impressive than 50 years) of accumulated knowledge: People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. Aside from his historical perspectives, Barry offers sage advice on such topics as putting the kids through school: Without a college education, your child will enter the job market with no useful skills; whereas with a college education, your child will enter the job market with no useful skills and parents who are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Barry has tackled themes before: Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs, Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead, and Dave Barry Turns Forty, to name a few. But with age comes wisdom, among other ailments. Over the years he has morphed from a young whippersnapper to an old curmudgeon. He’s no longer the happy-go-lucky long-haired weirdo of his youth. Now the long hair sprouts from his ears. Getting older may be inevitable, but as Barry shows, there’s no reason to take it with a straight face.

There must be some psychological term for it, the feeling that as you hit a certain age you and your circle of friends cease to age (at least you do). And if you're a fan of this Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist, when you see the title…

NonfictionTrue Crime

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Review by Michael Breen The first thing that will strike you after reading No Heroes is the irony of its title. Heroes fill the pages of this book, men and women doing a dirty, dangerous, and often thankless job for little reward. Their quarry are people who have no respect for the government or its laws, and view law enforcement officials as nothing more than targets. Danny Coulson is one of these heroes, a 31-year FBI veteran, serving in numerous roles including the first head of the Hostage Rescue Team (HRT). Though Coulson did go after bank robbers and drug dealers, the heart of this story is the conflict between the FBI and those who rejected the government and used violence to forward their goals. Coulson discusses several anti-government groups, from the black revolutionaries of the 1960s and ’70s to the white supremacist groups of today, and vividly describes the struggle against these forces. It is a deadly contest, one made more difficult by the government’s unceasing efforts to use lawful and non-violent means against opponents who had no such restrictions.

But the struggle against the forces of crime and terror is only half of this story. Coulson also describes the conflict within the Bureau itself. This second war is one of doers vs. drivers. Drivers were those who worried more about rules, their reputations, political maneuvering, bureaucratic infighting, and spelling errors than catching lawbreakers. This tension is a constant in the book, beginning with the ossified late Hoover era administrators and ending with the finger-pointing after the Ruby Ridge debacle. Coulson shows numerous occasions where the drivers’ shortsightedness led to problems and even risked lives. Coulson’s portrayal of his stresses and their cost is powerful, though his writing style may be a little rough he is, after all, first and foremost an FBI agent. But it is this raw voice of experience that makes the book so gripping. Not only a tale of stakeouts, investigations, and sieges, it is a story that engenders a greater appreciation of those who are on the front lines of the war against terrorism.

Michael Breen is a reviewer in Lawrence, Kansas.

Review by Michael Breen The first thing that will strike you after reading No Heroes is the irony of its title. Heroes fill the pages of this book, men and women doing a dirty, dangerous, and often thankless job for little reward. Their quarry are…
Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Michael Knight opens his first novel, The Divining Rod, with a murder. It only takes two pages to discover the showdown on the front lawn of Sam Holladay, which kills Simon Bell, is actually the conclusion of the novel. Before you get angry with the reviewer for giving away the ending, remember it is Knight that does it. Normally such a narrative move would absolutely sink a novel, appearing as a cheap gimmick. However, Knight’s risk pays solid dividends. Even though the reader is constantly aware of whatis going to happen, Knight’s slow unraveling and deliberate description make engaging reading. Simon Bell, a lonely lawyer of 28, moves into his late mother’s suburban spread. Complete with a pool and a view of the golf course, the house seems to haunt Simon, who wallows in a funk that belies his surroundings. He wonders about his mother’s years-ago affair and befriends Betty Fowler, a widow who wants to learn to cuss (Simon obliges). Betty, the substitute for Simon’s dead mother, walks the golf course with a divining rod, searching futilely for the gold coins her dead husband says he buried in a fairway. Simon also begins an affair with Delia Holladay, the wife of his neighbor Sam, an older history professor. Most of the novel traces their stolen moments, hidden evening and blooming love. Together they search for clues to Simon’s mother’s affair, swim in the pool and endlessly try to justify what they are doing. Obviously, it ends very badly. Knight’s understated prose gives the book its power, moving slowly, but fully, though the gamut of his character’s emotions Sam’s concern that his wife is too young; Simon’s overwhelming sadness; Delia’s rationalizations and bald-faced lies; Betty’s Sisyphus-like dedication to finding the hidden treasure. The mysticism motif of Betty’s quest with the divining rod seems slightly forced, a symbol of blind faith juxtaposed with the transgression of Simon and Delia’s affair. Despite this glitch, Knight’s debut is still impressive. He crafts excellent supporting characters and captures the jejune existence of suburban life its emotional facades, material trappings, and undercurrent of blase resignation. Knight, who concurrently has published a well-received collection of short stories, Dogfight, proves himself a fresh, formidable talent in The Divining Rod, and he has breathed new life into the world’s oldest story. Mark Luce is a writer in Lawrence, Kansas.

Michael Knight opens his first novel, The Divining Rod, with a murder. It only takes two pages to discover the showdown on the front lawn of Sam Holladay, which kills Simon Bell, is actually the conclusion of the novel. Before you get angry with the…

LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Review by Eliza R. L. McGraw Unsurprisingly, Philip Hamburger’s collection of essays from his years at the New Yorker is dedicated to Harold Ross, the curmudgeonly and astute editor who presided over the tenures of such New Yorker writers as James Thurber, E.B. White, and, of course, Hamburger.

Hamburger is in many ways a true Ross production, the kind of writer that made the New Yorker legendary. Friends Talking in the Night delightfully collects his best and most varied moments, from profiles to movie reviews.

Ever the New Yorker himself, Hamburger comments on the mayors of Gotham from the vantage point of his apartment across the street from Gracie Mansion in his 1953 essay, Some People Watch Birds. He writes that Fiorello LaGuardia was the busiest of our recent mayors and he spent, for a mayor, an inordinate amount of time at City Hall. Thanks to this perversity, I didn’t see as much of him as I would have liked. Hamburger’s comments on world affairs are equally as detailed as those on Gracie Mansion, but naturally graver. In Milan during Northern Italy’s 1945 liberation from Fascism, Hamburger stood in the Piazza Loreto as war criminals were executed: There were no roars of bloodcurdling yells; there was only silence and then, suddenly, a sigh a deep, moaning sound, seemingly expressive of release from something dark and fetid. Such serious events evoke Hamburger’s more somber tone, providing balance in the collection between his lighter work and his comments on global events.

Any student or lover of writing who leafs through Friends Talking in the Night may have a similar response to the one Hamburger had while watching Jimmy Stewart’s 1955 performance in High Noon: The mules know that no ordinary actor has hold of the reins. They know when a star has hold of the reins, and their ears go up. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times.

Eliza McGraw is a graduate student in English in Nashville, Tennessee.

Review by Eliza R. L. McGraw Unsurprisingly, Philip Hamburger's collection of essays from his years at the New Yorker is dedicated to Harold Ross, the curmudgeonly and astute editor who presided over the tenures of such New Yorker writers as James Thurber, E.B. White, and,…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

For the self-absorbed, albeit, likable heroine of Catherine Schine’s new novel, The Evolution of Jane, the rites of friendship can be summed up as survival of the fittest. Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution provides not only a philosophical context but a geographical backdrop as well.

Fresh from a rather boring divorce, Jane is sent to the Galapagos Islands by her mother, who recalls her daughter’s fascination with science. Of course, like many well-intentioned parents, Jane’s mother is harboring fond memories of her daughter as a nature-loving child. Nonetheless, Jane doesn’t have the heart to shun her mother’s offer of a free vacation. Jane arrives in the Galapagos with optimistic visions of finding her true self, only to discover her nemesis waiting at the airport. No, Jane’s ex-husband is not amid the island’s tortoises and parched soil. Instead, Jane encounters her long-lost childhood friend, Martha Barlow, a tour guide for the eclectic group of travelers.

Martha is perky, poised, and pleasantly pedantic, the polar opposite of her morose and somewhat mean-spirited former buddy Jane, who also happens to be a distant cousin. And therein lies the most enjoyable and interesting sub-plot of Schine’s novel the legendary Barlow family feud.

Schine is adept at creating seamless transitions from the present the Galapagos excursion to the past, when Jane and Martha were best friends. When the novel reaches back to the past, depicting a pair of dysfunctional childhoods, Schine is at her best. Despite Jane’s tendency to whine, it is hard not to sympathize with her plight. For Jane is crushed by the weight of her insecurity and paranoia, especially in regards to Martha, who unceremoniously dumped her best friend after high school.

As Jane struggles to understand Martha’s abrupt departure from her personal universe, the tenuous bonds of friendship are held hostage by the sinuous strands of DNA. Thus, the hardiest species and friendships survive and flourish, as the weak flounder and fail.

Still, the denoument of the novel is pure Jane, at her worst and best on every level. When the sea-sick heroine finds redemption, it is not without a price. Nothing is black and white in Schine’s novel, and the true nature of the characters is a subtle shade of Galapagos gray. While the resolution leaves the reader clinging to at least a few unanswered questions, Schine has delivered a surprise ending that makes this literary trip to the Galapagos a journey worth taking.

Karen Ann Cullotta is a writer in Chicago.

For the self-absorbed, albeit, likable heroine of Catherine Schine's new novel, The Evolution of Jane, the rites of friendship can be summed up as survival of the fittest. Indeed, Darwin's theory of evolution provides not only a philosophical context but a geographical backdrop as well.

LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Review by George Cowmeadow Bauman In 1997’s Booknotes, Brian Lamb collected a number of his interviews with writers who had appeared on his TV program of the same name. Now the man responsible for the oxymoronically named Book TV is at it again compiling irresistible reading for fans of C-SPAN’s Booknotes program, and for anyone interested in good writing and interesting lives.

Booknotes: Life Stories is being published to celebrate the program’s tenth anniversary, and it is Lamb at his finest. He’s collected 75 interviews with biographers who responded to Lamb’s questions about their subjects and the process of turning inspiration into print. Included are Susan Butler on Amelia Earhart, Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King, Jr., and Norman Mailer on Lee Harvey Oswald. Walter Cronkite, Frank McCourt, and Katharine Graham discuss their own lives, public and private. Lamb describes his interviewing style in the book’s Introduction: I’m not in that chair on behalf of intellectuals; my job is to ask questions on behalf of the average George and Jane, Cathy and Jim. In the interest of making the collection more readable, Lamb’s questions have been deleted. The biographers’ comments about their subjects are conversational.

An appendix lists all of the Booknotes interviews over the ten-year run of the program. It’s an impressive collection of the best nonfiction writers during that period.

Readers who enjoy American history will find a wealth of material here. Historical misunderstandings are corrected. For example, Paul Revere never said, The British are coming! The colonists still thought they were British. Instead, he shouted, The regulars are out! Whether Booknotes: Life Stories is read for enjoyment or is used as a reference, it will cause the reader to give thanks for the national literary treasure known as Brian Lamb.

George Cowmeadow Bauman is the co-owner of Acorn Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio.

Review by George Cowmeadow Bauman In 1997's Booknotes, Brian Lamb collected a number of his interviews with writers who had appeared on his TV program of the same name. Now the man responsible for the oxymoronically named Book TV is at it again compiling irresistible…

Memoir

Review

Review by bookpagedev

You can put fame to all sorts of uses. In Family Outing, Chastity Bono, daughter of actress and singer Cher and the late politician Sonny Bono, puts it to one of the best: encouraging social change. Family Outing is Bono’s coming out story and much more. It’s also the story of how Cher came to terms with her daughter’s homosexuality. While Cher’s and her daughter’s notoriety will undoubtedly attract readers, possibly even readers not directly confronting homosexuality, notoriety has a drawback: many people curious about the personal lives of movie actors and academy award recipients can’t identify with them. Bono and her co-author, Billie Fitzpatrick, anticipated this problem and solved it by interviewing other gay men and lesbians and their parents and including the coming out stories of these less notorious but more accessible people in the book. With the wealth of perspectives Family Outing provides, any gay or lesbian person struggling to come out, and any parent coping with the reality of a gay child, will find a story with which to identify.

Bono expands the definition of coming out to mean a series of adjustments that parents of lesbians and gays, as well as lesbians and gays themselves, have to go through. The organization of Family Outing reflects this expansion. The book is divided into two sections called Coming out Ourselves and Parents Come out Too. Both sections are organized around themes, such as unearthing homophobia and learning to accept, that describe what Bono and Fitzpatrick call the universal stages of coming out. While the organization makes it difficult to trace any one family’s coming out process from beginning to end, it does allow readers to quickly locate experiences directly relevant to their own.

One of the most interesting and valuable stories in the book is Bono’s description of how, in response to her unauthorized outing by the tabloid The Star in 1990, she let her own homophobia drive her back into the closet. I was afraid, she explains that I would hurt my budding music career if I were honest. Another revealing story is Cher’s explanation of why, even though she had many homosexual friends, when she first suspected Chastity was a lesbian, she couldn’t get past the negative stereotypes. It’s a different thing that happens with your child, Cher says, it’s not the same. Chastity Bono and Cher are scheduled to appear together on Oprah, Dateline NBC, and Good Morning America. While their appearances will undoubtedly promote book sales, the true value of the publicity lies elsewhere. By telling their stories, the two women are demystifying the coming-out process and providing a role model for families who want to focus on the positive qualities of a gay child rather than on the stereotypical misconceptions that associate homosexuality with failure and defeat.

Connie Miller lives and writes in Seattle.

You can put fame to all sorts of uses. In Family Outing, Chastity Bono, daughter of actress and singer Cher and the late politician Sonny Bono, puts it to one of the best: encouraging social change. Family Outing is Bono's coming out story and much…

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Microsoft is the five-hundred-pound gorilla of the PC world that sits where it wants, goes where it wants, and does what it wants. Bill Gates is its keeper, and he is a mix of genius and proletarian everyman. He has the instincts of a banker and the soul of a buccaneer. The Microsoft File is mostly about Gates, who can be charming one moment and an eruptive volcano the next. He is short-fused at the most inappropriate times, but, as long as things go his way, he is a complete charmer.

Things have generally gone his way, thanks early on to an administration in Washington that was pro-big business and had a laissez faire attitude about such things as fair trade or the whiff of monopoly. It wasn’t that everybody at the Federal Trade Commission was asleep at the wheel, but when the people at the top are less than interested in horrors anti-trust matters, not a great deal gets accomplished on those fronts. So it was in such an atmosphere that Bill Gates thrived and watched Microsoft do the same. It made billions and so did he.

According to Wendy Goldman Rohm, as Microsoft grew in size and power it was able to practice some extraordinary things, such as demanding linkage in its operating systems; putting the squeeze on some competitors, buying out others, and, where that failed, simply lifting other programs and converting them to its own uses.

Rohm tells how Microsoft inserted a hidden code in the beta version of Windows 3.1 and created the fear in the marketplace unfounded or not that competing products would likely crash. At one point, Apple, which had an operating system of its own, considered discarding its system for Windows although the Apple system has always been known for its simplicity and ease of use. Still, Gates decided to invest in Apple. Rohm explains why.

The author has used informants, internal company documents, external e-mail messages, and other sources to paint a picture of the goings on in the computer industry. The book includes the sometimes desperate attempts by competitors to evade and survive the colossus known as Microsoft. Gates may try to retaliate against everyone involved in this book’s publication. But who knows? He is unpredictable. He may shrug it off as inconsequential. One thing is crystal clear: Bill Gates will not like this book.

Lloyd Armour is a retired newspaper editor.

Microsoft is the five-hundred-pound gorilla of the PC world that sits where it wants, goes where it wants, and does what it wants. Bill Gates is its keeper, and he is a mix of genius and proletarian everyman. He has the instincts of a banker…

Biography

Review

Review by bookpagedev

David Michaelis notes, in this handsomely illustrated and carefully detailed biography, that the artist acclaimed as dean of American illustrators did not want to think that his future reputation depended upon his narrative painting. Even though, by 1942, his name was stamped on the spines of a long shelf of literature, more than a hundred volumes, Newell Convers Wyeth still felt after 40 years of picture making that everything he had done seemed insufficient. Part of the reason for that sense of inadequacy was that, all his life, N.C. Wyeth wanted to shake the dust of the illustrator from his shoes and emerge into the art world as a real painter. Following Wyeth’s death, October 19, 1945, in a car-train collision, the magnitude of his work still appeared ambiguous if not misunderstood. The Washington, D.C. Evening Star wrote: Thousands of people admired his achievements without comprehending why they were good. On the other hand, he was a painter’s painter, an illustrator’s illustrator. But those qualities that made him supreme as an illustrator are just those qualities that distinguish Wyeth as a real painter. Through his narrative paintings for Treasure Island (1911) to those in The Yearling (1939) in masterpiece after masterpiece of illustration Wyeth thrilled the viewer with the danger and excitement of seeing

David Michaelis notes, in this handsomely illustrated and carefully detailed biography, that the artist acclaimed as dean of American illustrators did not want to think that his future reputation depended upon his narrative painting. Even though, by 1942, his name was stamped on the spines…

Review

Review by bookpagedev

We need Annie Dillard. She thinks thoughts and makes connections that you won’t find in any other writer. Her new book, on the 25th anniversary of her classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is a small, modest-looking volume entitled For the Time Being. As the Author’s Note expresses it, Its form is unusual, its scenes are remote, its focus wide, and its tone austere. It is all of these things, but far more warm and engaging than her description sounds.

As always, Dillard is concerned with the creativity of nature and the silence of God and, here especially, with the suffering of animate creatures. But she makes of these topics a lively meditation on the mystery of being a thoughtful animal in a thoughtless world. She has created not merely a collection of essays but a collage pieced into a unified whole from fragments of themes and scenes. The recurring themes are diverse and seem unrelated birth defects, sand, encounters with strangers, clouds. Dillard loves the quietly significant tidbit. She notes that the entire population of Earth could be stacked in England’s Lake Windermere. She surveys the horrific statistics of our century.

Each scene is a polished fragment that contributes to the slowly growing mosaic. The disparate pieces are surprising and compelling imagining what the Talmudic blessing would be for encountering a decapitated snake, an encounter in an Israel airport with a sexagenarian skycap who imitates Elvis, thousands of people searching a Massachusetts woodland for a missing child.

Slowly the reader of For the Time Being realizes that these scenes are adding up to not only a work of art but a vision of the human condition. This is a small book but not a small accomplishment. To say that it is as good as anything Annie Dillard has written is to say how fine it is. She cherishes the mystery of the evanescent which, come to think of it, includes the author and her grateful readers.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt).

We need Annie Dillard. She thinks thoughts and makes connections that you won't find in any other writer. Her new book, on the 25th anniversary of her classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is a small, modest-looking volume entitled For the Time Being. As the Author's…

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Welcome to Elmwood Springs, Missouri the fictional setting of Fannie Flagg’s long-awaited novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl. As near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies, this neighborly town is filled with charming, quirky characters and has a strong, endearing sense of community.

Dena Nordstrom otherwise known lovingly as Baby Girl is the surprisingly well-adjusted daughter of Norma and Macky Nordstrom. And though Dena has left Elmwood Springs to become a TV anchorwoman and the pride and joy of her network, her hometown is still an intrinsic part of her, and she of it. With a future full of promise, Dena survives her complicated present and her mysterious past, all of which are tied to Elmwood Springs.

Flagg, an Alabama native, has, time and again, proven her mastery of storytelling, her ability to make each character vivid and real. Welcome to the World is no different. With an expert ear for language, Flagg, through her narrator, lovingly invites us to be a part of this community that is Elmwood Springs, this community with bounds far more reaching than any map could measure.

Much of this novel is vintage Flagg. For instance, Aunt Elner blesses Dena’s heart from afar over the fact that she eats in restaurants day and night up in New York City. Mourning the lack of anything homemade in Dena’s diet, Aunt Elner decides to make use of her stockpile of hickory nuts and send her my hickory nut cake with the caramel icing. There are no hidden symbols in this cake, no hidden answer to a mystery. This and other examples have little or no bearing on the plot at all. These entertaining asides, however, are ultimately the essence of Flagg’s novel.

Through unmistakable voices and rich ties to home, Welcome to the World illustrates how much a part of a person place can be. You can take the baby girl out of Elmwood Springs, but you can’t take Elmwood Springs out of the baby girl.

Pat Patrick is a reviewer in Nashville.

Welcome to Elmwood Springs, Missouri the fictional setting of Fannie Flagg's long-awaited novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl. As near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies, this neighborly town is…

History

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Henry Kissinger is one of the towering and most controversial American statesmen of this century. Even his critics can attest to his brilliance. In the third volume of his memoirs, Years of Renewal, Kissinger offers a detailed account of his service as Secretary of State to Gerald Ford. He also offers insight into the legacy Richard Nixon left foreign policy and reflections on the nature and practice of American foreign policy. Kissinger writes gracefully, and his subject is an important one.

Discussing Nixon the man, Kissinger writes, The Richard Nixon with whom I worked on a daily basis for five and a half years was generally soft-spoken, withdrawn, and quite shy. Nixon, according to Kissinger, had a fear of being rejected, but also a romantic image of himself as a fearless manipulator. Kissinger contrasts Ford’s decent, straightforward leadership style with Nixon’s. Ford worked hard to grasp the essence of issues, and, unlike Nixon, was far more involved in the execution of policy. Kissinger discusses Ford Administration foreign policy achievements, including disentangling the U.

S. from Vietnam and keeping the U.

S. military strong while continuing talks with the U.

S.

S.

R. Kissinger also answers his critics on both the Right and Left of the political spectrum. He and Nixon viewed foreign policy as a continuing process with no terminal point, unlike the dominant view among liberals and conservatives, who were seeking a series of climaxes, each of which would culminate its particular phase and obviate the need for a continuing exertion. This is a major work of diplomatic history, and anyone who wants to better understand American foreign policy from the 1960s on will want to read it.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

Henry Kissinger is one of the towering and most controversial American statesmen of this century. Even his critics can attest to his brilliance. In the third volume of his memoirs, Years of Renewal, Kissinger offers a detailed account of his service as Secretary of State…

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