Roger Bishop

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

American Republics

Review by Roger Bishop

In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall reviewed the history of America and concluded, “The Union has been preserved thus far by miracles. I fear they cannot continue.” Alan Taylor, professor of history at the University of Virginia and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, explores the complex and often tragic history behind Marshall’s thinking in his sweeping, beautifully written, prodigiously researched and myth-busting American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850.

Contrary to popular belief, most of the Founding Fathers didn’t intend to create a democracy. Instead, they designed a national republic to restrain state democracies. Additionally, the founders didn’t agree on principles or goals for their republic, and most believed that preserving slavery was the price to pay for holding the fragile Union together. 

Taylor’s powerful overview explores this fierce struggle between groups and governments as settlers expanded the country westward. Any challenges to the supremacy of white men or their reliance on slavery were met with threats of secession by enslavers and their political allies. Breaking treaties with, dispossessing and killing Native Americans were commonplace, and those who spoke out against prevailing ways often suffered strong rebukes.

When New York journalist John L. O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” in 1845, he justified annexing Texas and Oregon as part of a moral empire based on citizen consent, in contrast to European empires built from violent conquest. O’Sullivan overlooked a lot. For example, slavery became more entrenched and profitable as the country expanded. By 1860, the monetary value of enslaved people was greater than that of the nation’s banks, factories and railroads combined. Slavery divided the country, but racism united most white people. Even in the North, free Black Americans couldn’t serve on juries, weren’t hired for better-paying jobs and were denied public education.

Anyone interested in American history will appreciate this richly rewarding book.

Pulitzer Prize winner Alan Taylor’s latest American history is sweeping, beautifully written, prodigiously researched and myth-busting.
NonfictionBiographyAmerican History

Lincoln in Private

Review by Roger Bishop

Five hours after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his son Robert Todd Lincoln wired David Davis, one of the president’s closest friends and an associate justice of the Supreme Court, to come to Washington “to take charge of my father’s affairs.” At the same time, Lincoln’s two devoted secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, assembled the president’s papers, including Lincoln’s private notes to himself, called “fragments.” In Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President, Lincoln scholar Ronald C. White selects 12 of the 109 known fragments, places them in their historical context and analyzes their representations of the president’s life and thoughts.

Almost every fragment begins with a problem Lincoln was facing, and it’s fascinating to see how he grappled with each one. A few fragments may have been first drafts for speeches, but most are reflections that never reappeared elsewhere. Among the issues Lincoln examined are slavery, the birth of the Republican Party, God’s role in the Civil War and how to be a good lawyer.

Lincoln frequently tried to see things from his opponents’ points of view. In a fragment on slavery, Lincoln does this by giving three justifications for being pro-slavery. Then he shows the basic contradictions within each reason and demonstrates how race, intellect or interest could easily be turned around to make the enslaver the enslaved.

Lincoln wrestled with his decision to join the Republican Party. As a longtime Whig, he questioned the meaning, mission and challenges of the new party. To sort out his thoughts, his fragments reveal that he turned to the U.S. Constitution and the historical record, two sources he often used when analyzing a problem.

A fragment on the Civil War begins, “The will of God prevails.” Both the Union and the Confederacy claimed God was on their side, but that couldn’t be true. As Lincoln meditates on how God acts in history, he writes that “it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.”

These glimpses of Lincoln’s thinking offer us a fresh way to view him. White’s commentary is excellent, and anyone interested in Lincoln will want to read this book.

In a must-read book for anyone interested in Abraham Lincoln, a scholar analyzes the president’s most personal notes to himself.
NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistory

Nuclear Folly

Review by Roger Bishop

“We are eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked,” whispered Secretary of State Dean Rusk to national security adviser McGeorge Bundy when he heard that Soviet ships carrying missiles had turned away from Cuba. It was October 24, 1962, in the midst of the most dangerous nuclear missile crisis in history. President John F. Kennedy had given the order to attack Soviet ships before he realized they’d changed course 24 hours earlier. Kennedy was greatly influenced by Barbara W. Tuchman’s The Guns of August and wanted to avoid the kind of misunderstandings, misinformation, stupidity and individual complexes of inferiority and grandeur that had led to World War I. But here was a communication problem.

The dominant narrative in the U.S. has long been that when the missiles in Cuba were removed, it was because Kennedy’s grace under pressure and skillful diplomacy had prevailed. Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy takes a different approach as he considers the many instances when both sides got things wrong in his riveting Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Drawing on KGB documents, Soviet military memoirs and more American and Cuban sources, he outlines all the times catastrophe was averted.

This excellent re-creation of events begins by explaining the relationship between Cuba and the U.S. and placing the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the context of the Cold War. We see how changing details drove the daily debates as diplomatic, military and political assumptions were tested. As the meetings with his advisers dragged on for almost two weeks, Kennedy went from being a “dove” to a “reluctant hawk” and back again, always hoping for a diplomatic solution while remaining tough. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev shared a fear of nuclear weapons, and neither was prepared to pay the price for a nuclear war victory. Throughout Nuclear Folly, Kennedy “plays for time” as he considers his next move in the complex and tense negotiations.

In February of 2021, the U.S. and Russia formally agreed to extend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between their countries. This well-told account is a timely reminder of a danger we must still live with today. 

Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy considers the many instances when Cuba and the U.S. got things wrong during the Cuban missile crisis.
NonfictionHistory

The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen

Review by Roger Bishop

From the mid-18th century to the beginning of World War I, two approaches to transforming the world—warfare and constitutions—played in tandem. The unusual relationship between them is the fascinating and important subject of Princeton historian Linda Colley’s The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World. 

By 1750, the costs of warfare, in both money and lives, for such European powers as Britain, France and Spain had significantly increased. This pressure, combined with the rise of revolutionary conflicts, expanded the use of written constitutions and the ideas they expressed. In 1767, Catherine the Great published her most important work, the Nakaz, or Grand Instruction. Although it wasn’t a formal constitution, it shows how the concept developed and proliferated. She also developed techniques for political communication that later exponents of constitutions, including Benjamin Franklin, borrowed and built on. 

Colley’s wide-ranging survey covers many aspects of the global impact of constitutions, from the crucial importance of printers and publishers, to Thomas Paine’s interest in putting political and legal concepts on paper, to Toussaint Louverture defying the French in 1801 and publishing his own constitution for a future Black-ruled Haiti. In 1838, for the first time in world history, the inhabitants of Pitcairn, a tiny island in the South Pacific populated by descendants of Tahitian people and British mutineers of the HMS Bounty, proclaimed in their constitution that both adult men and women were to be enfranchised in elections.

This carefully crafted exploration shows how constitutions have helped to bring about an extraordinary revolution in human behavior, ideas and beliefs. Though constitutions are flawed, Colley writes, “in an imperfect, uncertain, shifting, and violent world, they may be the best we can hope for.”

Linda Colley's fascinating and important book shows how constitutions have helped to bring about a revolution in human behavior, ideas and beliefs.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Hitler and Stalin

Review by Roger Bishop

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin never met, but between 1939 and 1945 they had a strong relationship, briefly as allies and then as enemies. In his riveting Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War, Laurence Rees, historian, bestselling author and acclaimed BBC documentary producer, brings this six-year period vividly alive. Rees has devoted his professional life to World War II and Holocaust history. What sets his newest account apart is that he interviewed more people who had direct experience working for these two men than any other historian to date. Rees’ skillful incorporation of these eyewitness accounts, carefully checked for reliability, gives a “you are there” feeling to events.

The most important connection between Hitler and Stalin was that each believed he had uncovered the secret of existence, but those “secrets” were definitely distinct. Hitler’s starting point was race—that the Jewish people were responsible for all that was wrong in the world. Stalin, inspired by the work of Karl Marx, became a revolutionary. Each hated the other’s belief system, though Stalin was a keen reader of Mein Kampf.

Rees gives us detailed, nuanced portraits of these two men. Hitler was charismatic, but only to those who agreed with him. Stalin exercised power through his profound understanding of working through committees. Hitler expressed a vision but was not realistic about implementation, while Stalin was much more detail oriented. They both demonstrated contempt for weaker nations and ruthlessly pursued actions that showed their total disregard for the lives of their supporters as well as their enemies. During their leadership, they were responsible for the deaths of at least 27 million people, but because they were suspicious of others, they were emotionally isolated from the suffering they caused. Rees also notes that because of the infamy of Hitler and the Holocaust, less attention has been paid to Stalin’s horrendous crimes, which has allowed him to escape the level of censure that he deserves. 

There are other fine, very long biographies of these dictators. However, this excellent book for the general reader is shorter and gives an authoritative and very readable understanding of who Hitler and Stalin were and what they did.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin never met, but between 1939 and 1945 they had a strong relationship, briefly as allies and then as enemies, and Laurence Rees brings this six-year period vividly alive.

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The Crooked Path to Abolition

Review by Roger Bishop

Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist. Instead, as noted Civil War historian James Oakes believes, Lincoln’s evolving views on racial equality were based on an antislavery view of the Constitution. According to such a view, the text of the Constitution refers to people who were enslaved as “persons” and never as property, making it (with the exception of two carefully defined rights of enslavers) an antislavery document. By the time he was inaugurated, Lincoln had gone on record to support the major principles of such an interpretation, and now Oakes explores this subject in his compelling and detailed The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution.

Oakes demonstrates that the goal of all antislavery politics through the Civil War was to use federal power to prevent new territories from becoming slave states and allow existing slave states to do away with slavery on their own. Slavery was abolished, Oakes shows, because the Civil War radically accelerated the decadeslong shift in power between slave and free states. Lincoln’s object in emancipating enslaved people, as important as that act was, was not an end in itself as much as a means to pressure the states to abolish slavery individually.

Lincoln spoke eloquently of a society in which everyone had a “fair chance in the race of life,” but on several occasions he made disturbing public comments that raised questions about his views on racial equality. In 1858, he specified four areas in which he did not advocate equality: voting, serving on juries, holding elective office and intermarrying between Black and white people. All of those areas were regulated by the states during this age of “constitutionalism,” during which major issues were debated in constitutional terms.

This relatively short book is richly rewarding and helps us see the full context of political decisions that put slavery, as Lincoln said, on “a course of ultimate extinction.”

The Crooked Path to Abolition is richly rewarding and helps us see the full context of political decisions that put slavery, as Lincoln said, on “a course of ultimate extinction.”

NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Ruin and Renewal

Review by Roger Bishop

When World War II ended, Europe was devastated. There were over 40 million displaced people across the continent, including 8 million civilians in Germany alone, 10% of them Jewish. Malaria, tuberculosis and famine were serious threats in areas that lacked a stable society, moral authority and basic infrastructure. In his wide-ranging and consistently enlightening Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II, Paul Betts shows how efforts to “civilize” these devastated regions influenced much of our world today. His account combines political, cultural and intellectual history, while also touching on science, religion, photography, architecture and archaeology.

The first humanitarian efforts were waged by foreign volunteers from both secular and religious groups. Among the many agencies was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, made up of workers from 44 countries. They offered help to the “victims of German and Japanese barbarism,” and their legacy is mixed, but the organization “did forge a new language of civilization . . . for postwar Europe.”

Other types of aid had religious overtones. In 1946 Winston Churchill asserted that there “can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.” His message of forgiveness went as far as a personal contribution to the defense fund for German officers accused of war crimes. Likewise, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower shaped a good deal of U.S. foreign policy according to their Christian beliefs.

The first half of the book focuses on the European continent, and the second half concentrates on Europe’s changing role in the wider world with regard to empire and decolonization. In all, this splendid overview provides striking new insights about where the Western world has been and where we may be going.

When World War II ended, Europe was devastated. There were over 40 million displaced people across the continent, including 8 million civilians in Germany alone, 10% of them Jewish. Malaria, tuberculosis and famine were serious threats in areas that lacked a stable society, moral authority…

NonfictionBlack HistoryAmerican History

South to Freedom

Review by Roger Bishop

In the conventional understanding of American history, enslaved people fled north to “free” states or to Canada. And many did—between 30,000 and 100,000 people. But others, probably no more than 3,000 or 5,000 people, went south to Mexico. Although a relatively small group, their collective story had strategic and political significance out of proportion to their numbers. Historian Alice L. Baumgartner details the reasons why in her deeply researched and eloquently argued South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. Her book shows that “enslaved people who escaped to Mexico . . . contributed to the outbreak of a major sectional controversy over the future” of slavery in the U.S.

Baumgartner focuses on a complex series of events between Mexico and the U.S. in the early 19th century until 1867, often related to property rights and individual freedom, including the Texas Revolution, the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War. American slaveholders relentlessly pushed for the expansion of slavery through their elected officials, while Mexico gradually restricted and then abolished slavery in 1837. Complicating matters even more, the Mexican government had 49 presidents, including some dictators, between 1824 and 1857.

Many individuals on all sides are portrayed here, but the most compelling stories are those of enslaved people who, at considerable risk, escaped for what they hoped would be a better life in Mexico. Sadly, not all of them found improved conditions. They had few options for work or military service, but they did have the opportunity to choose.

Baumgartner’s fast-paced yet detailed exploration is consistently illuminating and offers a new way to understand the past. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a fuller awareness of our history.

In the conventional understanding of American history, enslaved people fled north to “free” states or to Canada. And many did—between 30,000 and 100,000 people. But others, probably no more than 3,000 or 5,000 people, went south to Mexico. Although a relatively small group, their collective…

NonfictionPoliticsMemoir

All About the Story

Review by Roger Bishop

In his extraordinary 44-year career as a reporter and top editor at the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. was deeply engaged in making critical decisions about what was considered newsworthy. He writes about the key roles he played in the superb All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post.

Downie writes, “Newsrooms are not democracies. Someone must make final decisions about what goes into the newspaper, on the air, or online.” He delegated some decisions, but he was a hands-on managing editor and executive editor, personally dealing with what went on the front page, the accuracy and fairness of potentially controversial stories and concerns about libel or language and photographs that might offend readers.

Downie contributed to the coverage of dozens of historical events, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks; the Unabomber’s threat and the decision to publish his manifesto; the Iraq War and related national security issues, such as the decision to reveal the secret “black sites” where prisoners were sent for interrogation; and the impeachment of President Clinton. He was the deputy metro editor in June 1972 when the Watergate scandal broke, and he recalls his relationship with “what became the most famous reporting partnership in American journalism,” Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. They were an “odd couple” but perfectly complemented each other. When they wrote competing versions of a story, Downie would sometimes rewrite the opening paragraph after determining which direction the piece should go.

When it came to revealing the private lives of public figures, Downie concedes that he made mistakes in this area, and that his newsroom staff and readers strongly disagreed with him about, for example, reporting on the personal lives of the Clintons. He says he was wrong, too, not to have run more stories on the front page about the Bush administration’s rhetoric in the run-up to the Iraq War. He insisted on complete nonpartisanship in his paper’s news coverage, and he even stopped voting when he became managing editor in 1984.

Downie shows the vital role a free press plays in our democracy. His splendid recounting should be of interest to everyone.

In his extraordinary 44-year career as a reporter and top editor at the Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. was deeply engaged in making critical decisions about what was considered newsworthy. He writes about the key roles he played in the superb All About the Story:…

NonfictionAmerican History

Break It Up

Review by Roger Bishop

The dream of independence, not union, inspired the early European settlers of what is now the United States to leave their old world for a new one. The colonies were founded for different reasons, had different economies and pursued distinctively different interests. Race, religion, class, regional resentment and culture have always divided us. Our most powerful myth, that the many melded into one, has never been true. In his engaging and enlightening Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union, journalist and historian Richard Kreitner explores this hidden thread of disunion in a fresh, well-documented and persuasive way, focusing on four distinct eras during which some sought to break away from the larger Union. 

Consider the following narrative: The American Revolution was a spontaneous response to colonists’ realization that they could not separately fight the British Empire and win. The creation of the U.S. was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The drafting and ratification of the Constitution were done in secret in the midst of secessionist movements in the West and insurrection in the East. The Founding Fathers were careful to protect their own interests, including their interest in owning enslaved people.

The first popular disunion movement in our history developed in the North when the Federalists, out of power during the Jefferson presidency, discussed leaving. The War of 1812 led to the Hartford Convention and more secession talk. There was also Aaron Burr’s scheme to form a new Western empire.

For years, Southerners cared more about continuing slavery than Northerners did about stopping it, until the abolitionist movement changed politics. Northern resentment boiled over after years of Southern intimidation. In this way, the Civil War could be seen as a Northern resistance movement after years of compromises with the South to try and hold the Union together. 

There is so much more in this provocative and often surprising book, including the ways that secessionist movements have continued into the present. Kreitner challenges readers to rethink what the Union means to us and how we can help it live up to its highest ideals. Reading Break It Up is an excellent place to start.

The dream of independence, not union, inspired the early European settlers of what is now the United States to leave their old world for a new one. The colonies were founded for different reasons, had different economies and pursued distinctively different interests. Race, religion, class,…

NonfictionMilitary History

To Start a War

Review by Roger Bishop

The mistakes in judgment that led to the United States invasion of Iraq have frequently been described as a failure of the imagination. However, as Robert Draper demonstrates in his compelling and richly documented To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, in reality, imagination drove the policy.

Saddam Hussein denied having weapons of mass destruction, but he had used them in the past, and his government had repeatedly lied about them, so his past behavior did raise some questions. Even so, the case for Hussein possessing more of these weapons was based on badly outdated information, almost all circumstantial and often fabricated. President George W. Bush and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted, for their own reasons, to believe the weapons were there and that the U.S. should use that “fact” to oust Hussein.

CIA analysts tried to give the president what he wanted. Eventually, the president needed to know if what the CIA had was sufficient to persuade the public that the “Iraqi threat” justified war. Although Secretary of State Colin Powell thought invading Iraq was a foolish idea, when the president asked him to make the case before the United Nations, he went along.

Draper’s exhaustive research includes interviews with key figures such as Powell, Wolfowitz and Condoleezza Rice, as well as dozens of others from the CIA and the State and Defense Departments. He also makes extensive use of recently released documents to give a vivid picture of how events unfolded. There really was not a process, Draper reveals. For example, there was no plan for what to do following a military victory. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to give more importance to finding fault with other government agencies and micromanaging his department than to urgent follow-through. Vice President Dick Cheney was allowed to make misleading or false public statements without correction. 

As we continue to live through the ripple effects of this momentous decision in American foreign policy, Draper’s revelatory account deserves a wide readership. 

The mistakes in judgment that led to the United States invasion of Iraq have frequently been described as a failure of the imagination. However, as Robert Draper demonstrates in his compelling and richly documented To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into…

NonfictionBiography

Cross of Snow

Review by Roger Bishop

During his lifetime, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was one of America’s most highly regarded poets, a phenomenally successful bestselling writer both here and abroad. An author of stories and essays, a translator of Dante and an editor of a multivolume anthology of poetry from around the world, he played a major role in shaping middle-class culture during the 1800s. As the Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard, he brought a cosmopolitan vision to his writing and was influential in bringing European culture to the U.S. and dramatizing American themes overseas. (He is still the only American to have a bust of his likeness in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey.) His many literary friends included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julia Ward Howe and Charles Dickens.

Longfellow and his times are brought vividly to life by Nicholas A. Basbanes in his authoritative and wonderfully readable Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He traces the poet’s life from Maine, where Longfellow knew early on that he wanted to be a professional writer, to becoming a major literary presence. Basbanes draws on a rich abundance of correspondence, diaries, journals and notebooks and gives readers generous excerpts from Longfellow and many others.

At the heart of the book is the relationship between Longfellow and his second wife, Frances Appleton Longfellow. Fanny, as she was called, was educated, multilingual and skilled as an artist. She was remarkably well read and wrote very well herself, and her relationship with Longfellow thrived on intellect as much as romance. Describing their relationship, a friend once remarked, “Of all happy homes theirs was in many ways the happiest.”

Longfellow usually preferred not to be involved in controversial issues but was a noted antislavery advocate who decried war and violence of any kind. His best friend was Charles Sumner, a noted abolitionist who almost lost his life for the cause of abolition when he was attacked in the U.S. Senate. Long before that incident, Longfellow published Poems on Slavery at Sumner’s request.

Basbanes uses his sources well, transporting readers beautifully to the world of a poet who is often overlooked. If you enjoy literary biography, this is a book to savor.

During his lifetime, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) was one of America’s most highly regarded poets, a phenomenally successful bestselling writer both here and abroad. An author of stories and essays, a translator of Dante and an editor of a multivolume anthology of poetry from around…

NonfictionBlack HistoryAmerican History

The Black Cabinet

Review by Roger Bishop

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945, he was praised for the significant advances African Americans made during his administration. One editorial said black Americans had “lost the best friend they ever had in the White House.” The New Deal did provide African Americans with substantial assistance and more reason to hope, but FDR needed the support of Southern Democrats in Congress to advance his agenda, and he was reluctant to take actions on race that would upset them. What he was able to achieve came largely thanks to the efforts of an informal group of black activists, intellectuals and scholars working within the government. As historian Jill Watts shows in her meticulously researched and beautifully written The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt, these “black cabinet” members succeeded in stopping or modifying many policies that would have made institutionalized racism even worse than it was.

At the center of this effort was Mary McLeod Bethune. A passionate advocate for civil rights and the first African American woman to head a federal division, Bethune was an educator, the founder of a college and a magnetic and strong-willed personality with a talent for organizational politics. Watts includes portraits of many other figures, as well, including Robert Weaver, who, in the 1960s, became the first African American to serve in a White House cabinet position.

Two other African American women, though not part of the black cabinet, also played crucial roles. Eva DeBoe Jones, a Pittsburgh manicurist, was able to organize a meeting that led to many black voters deserting the Republican Party. College graduate Elizabeth McDuffie was a maid at the White House who was close to the Roosevelts and helped manage their relationship with the black community.

This absorbing look at a pivotal point in civil rights activity before the 1950s and ’60s is well done and should be of interest to us all.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt died in 1945, he was praised for the significant advances African Americans made during his administration. One editorial said black Americans had “lost the best friend they ever had in the White House.” The New Deal did provide African Americans with…

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