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From 1926 to 1941, Sweden’s famed export made 24 Holly-wood films, all of which are detailed in Mark A. Vieira’s Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy. Featuring 250 photos, many never before seen (including an unretouched portrait of Garbo at 36), the book utilizes newly available MGM documents and articles of the day to examine the career that enshrined Hollywood’s ultimate woman of mystery.
When not writing about movies, Los Angeles-based journalist Pat H. Broeske likes to watch them.
In his acclaimed biography, The Beatles, Bob Spitz delivered an intimate and enduring portrait of four rock stars who changed the course of popular culture. Now, timed to coincide with Julia Child’s 100th birthday, Spitz offers an admiring portrait of the woman who became a rock star in her own world, changing forever the way Americans think about food and cooking.
Drawing deeply on Child’s diaries and letters, Dearie exhaustively—and exhaustingly—chronicles her life from her rambunctious childhood and her socially active days at Smith to her early adult life in government service, her whirlwind romance with Paul Child, and her rapid rise to becoming the television star without whom the Food Network and the passion for celebrity chefs might never have developed.
As Spitz points out, Julia Child wasn’t a natural when it came to the kitchen. In November 1948, an extraordinary meal in Paris changed her life, and she enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu, gaining the skills she needed to prepare everything from sauces to soups to soufflés. In 1961, she published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and though critics called it a monumental work, it was not until Child promoted the book on the “Today” show that it began flying out of bookstores and ended up on kitchen counters around the country. In 1962, Child’s energetic personality and her love of teaching landed her before the camera for her groundbreaking public television show, “The French Chef,” where she cultivated an audience with her down-to-earth ways, her off-color humor, her lack of concern for perfection and her devotion to making sure that everyone—even the unskilled—could cook the dishes she prepared.
As Spitz so cannily observes, Child was determined to stand at the center of her own world. The story of her emancipation runs parallel to the struggles of post-war American women who were frustrated that the demands of being a perfect hostess and a perfect wife kept them from pursuing other dreams and desires. In Julia Child, these women had not only a role model who steered them from beans-and-franks casseroles to Sole Meunière but also a fiercely independent woman who lived above the rules of both the kitchen and culture.
The advance buzz for Barack Obama centers on the diary entries kept by Genevieve Cook, who was the one-time girlfriend of the man who would become the 44th president of the United States. Obama was 22 at the time, a recent graduate of Columbia University, living in New York and searching for his place in life. The diary entries, excerpted in Vanity Fair prior to the book’s publication, are intriguing because they reinforce the image of Obama being cool and aloof. Indeed, the 18-month relationship collapses under the weight of inertia as Obama decides to move to Chicago to become a community organizer. The rest, as they say, is history.
While Cook’s often-whiny diary entries are juicy, they represent only a fraction of what makes Barack Obama a great book. Author David Maraniss, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, uses his skills as a journalist to uncover new details about Obama and his ancestors. The book traces the Obama family tree back to his great-grandparents in Kansas and in Kenya. It follows Obama as a young boy as he hopscotches across the globe from Hawaii to Indonesia, and then as a young man attending college in Los Angeles, and later New York. The chronicles of this circuitous journey only reinforce how remarkable a story it is that Obama ended up in the White House.
Barack Obama fills in the blanks of Obama’s own memoir, Dreams from My Father, because Maraniss is such a thorough reporter and researcher. The author of a memoir has a singular perspective, and can be selective with the particulars, while a biographer strives to find all the facts. Obama’s book creates the frame for the portrait. Maraniss’ book connects the dots.
What is fascinating about Barack Obama is that it ends before Obama enters politics. In fact, the protagonist doesn’t appear until the seventh chapter. Maraniss explains that he took this approach to delve deeply into Obama’s background and discover what shaped his character: Growing up as a biracial child with no father and a mother who was often gone; raised by white grandparents who struggled with their prejudices, the future president faced many challenges. “It helped explain his caution, his tendency to hold back and survey life like a chessboard,” Maraniss writes. As Obama finishes his fourth year in office, some say he is even more of an enigma. Barack Obama is a book guaranteed to bring more clarity to his story.
In the same way that Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan recognized and used the power of folk music to prophesize about matters of economic and social injustice, Bruce Springsteen has used rock and roll to urge us to transform our cultural and political landscape. In the words of his song, “Thunder Road,” he’s “got this guitar, and he’s learned how to make it talk.”
In Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Marc Dolan’s fan notes trace the conversation that Springsteen’s guitar has carried on with rock and roll from the moment The Boss first picked up the instrument to his latest album, 2012’s Wrecking Ball. Not a conventional biography, Dolan’s compelling book follows Springsteen’s development as a rock and roll musician song by song, album by album and concert by concert as a way of telling the cultural history of our times. Springsteen has famously said that his role is “to be here now,” and Dolan demonstrates in exhaustive detail how Springsteen’s music has been the soundtrack of our lives from the defaulting of Manhattan in the early 1970s, to the shame and hope of Ronald Reagan’s U.S.A., to the shaky good fortune of Bill Clinton’s America, to the haunting days after 9/11 and the culturally estranged home front of the Second Gulf War.
Springsteen’s glory days began in 1957 when his mother let him stay up to watch Elvis Presley on “The Ed Sullivan Show”; he immediately wanted to play the guitar, and the first song he learned to play was “Twist and Shout.” In 1964, his mother bought him an electric guitar and amp for Christmas, and practicing harder than ever before, Springsteen started his journey down the highway littered with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. Over the course of the next decade, Springsteen played in several bands around New Jersey and New York, honing his guitar riffs and songwriting licks as well as the canny leadership skills that led to the formation of the E Street Band. Springsteen emerged in an era dominated by introspective songwriters such as Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, but although many of his songs were covertly autobiographical, what made Springsteen’s songs “personal” was not so much their specific autobiographical detail or insights as the vision that they communicated of the observed world.
Springsteen fans may disagree with many of Dolan’s readings of his lyrics, but they’ll likely agree that The Boss is a remarkable performer who can shape an audience’s perception, just as a remarkable audience can shape a performer’s perception, and that together they can shape and be shaped by the moment itself. After all, that’s what rock and roll is all about.
According to author Rich Cohen, a corporation “tends to have a life span, tends to age and die.” Remember United Fruit, which at one point controlled 70 percent of America’s banana market? It was the U.S. Steel of easily bruised produce.
The man behind its success was Samuel Zemurray, a Russian immigrant who turned $150 worth of bananas into a $30 million fortune. He was one of the most powerful men in America, the embodiment of immigrant industriousness. Zemurray has since fallen into irrelevance, but in The Fish That Ate the Whale, Cohen resurrects the memory of America’s Banana King in a rollicking, colorful tale that proceeds with a spy novel’s pace. You swallow the prose in big, greedy gulps.
That partly has to do with Zemurray’s life, a mixture of hustle, power and philanthropy. His hands-on approach—he planted banana fields in Honduras, he loved the rhythms of the docks—helped turn his company into a model of efficiency.
When shifts in government policy in Honduras and Guatemala threatened United Fruit, Zemurray helped stage government overthrows. But he also donated to Tulane University, founded an agricultural school in Honduras and was instrumental in securing votes to partition Israel.
Cohen, displaying the rhythm and keen introspection that made his Sweet and Low so good, knows when to delve into Zemurray’s psyche. His stylistic touches enhance the story of a man propelled by “righteous anger.” Zemurray may be fading from the country’s entrepreneurial lore, but Cohen says America would be wise to follow his example: “As long as you’re breathing,” Cohen says, “the end remains to be written.”
When Lyndon Johnson was a teenager, in a family of modest means, he predicted that some day he was going to be president of the United States. In the fourth volume of Robert Caro’s superlative multi-volume biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, this one titled The Passage of Power, Johnson reaches that office but only because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Caro’s narrative grabs us from the beginning and, with his meticulous research and insight, shows how the two hugely ambitious and competitive politicians dealt with each other in a town where gaining and using power is the name of the game. Although there are forays into other areas, the author tells essentially two stories. The first story deals with the period from late 1958, when Johnson began to think seriously about gaining the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination for himself, and ends when President Kennedy is killed. LBJ agreed to be JFK’s running mate, although, pragmatist that he was, he remained on the ballot in Texas as a candidate for his Senate seat. He endured three years of humiliation and embarrassment as vice president. The second story begins when Johnson masterfully takes charge and details his presidential leadership, including very significant legislative achievements, in particular a historic civil rights bill, during the first seven weeks after he became president. The period covered in this volume is no doubt one of the high points of Johnson’s career.
Political biography doesn’t get any better than what Caro does. When I interviewed him for BookPage in 1990 on the occasion of the publication of the second of his LBJ volumes, Means of Ascent, he said he would cover his subject in four volumes. But as his research, including interviews with many participants, has continued, Caro has uncovered important details that make his books indispensable to anyone interested in how LBJ gained and used political power, and he wants to share them with his readers. With the rest of the 1961-1965 presidential term to be completed, the 1964 presidential election triumph, the Vietnam War and his decision to not run again, there may be more than one additional volume to be written.
Caro always shows us the many sides of LBJ. He could be “crude, coarse, ruthless, often cruel” and had a penchant for deception and secrecy. But he could also be cool and decisive under pressure, as he demonstrated in the weeks following the assassination. He was definitely a political genius, a legislative strategist and tactician of the highest order. This book is filled with examples of his mastery in this regard, but it is especially shown by LBJ’s approaches to senators Harry Byrd and Everett Dirksen when he needed their help in moving legislation forward. While Caro is well aware of how power can corrupt, he also believes it is equally true that power reveals a politician’s deepest commitments. In LBJ’s case, this led, despite his friendship with Southern senators who were opposed, to his vigorous effort to pass the 1964 civil rights bill. LBJ went on to introduce other groundbreaking progressive legislation, including the War on Poverty.
After Johnson retired from the presidency, he said, “The one thing I feared from the first day of my presidency” was that Robert Kennedy would announce “his intention to reclaim the throne in memory of his brother.” Caro details the LBJ-RFK relationship, based on mutual distrust, disdain and hatred. The author notes the opposition by some liberal groups and their disappointment at the 1960 Democratic convention to Johnson’s nomination as JFK’s vice presidential choice. But he discounts Robert’s contention that his brother did not really want Johnson on the ticket. JFK’s close aide and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen acknowledged that Kennedy had “gambled” on LBJ and the “gamble paid off.” The presidential race was so close that, without Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy would have lost the election to Richard Nixon.
Caro concludes that in the seven weeks after assuming the presidency, Johnson did much more than give the country continuity and reassurance. He achieved those objectives masterfully. But in addition, he used the momentum brought on by JFK’s death to launch what he envisioned as the transformation of American society, a pivotal moment in the history of the United States, a time to launch a crusade for social justice on a grand new scale.
There is much more to come. We eagerly look forward to Caro’s next volume.
Yes, Virginia, there really was a man named Birdseye behind the Birds Eye® frozen food brand.
Clarence Birdseye, who was born in Brooklyn at the end of 1886, did not originate the idea of fast-freezing food—he always credited the Inuit for the concept. But as Mark Kurlansky points out in this charming biography, Birdseye “changed our civilization. He created an industry by modernizing the process of food preservation and in so doing nationalized and then internationalized food distribution.”
Locavores certainly won’t think that’s such a great legacy. Fresh food is definitely better than frozen, but Kurlansky notes that at the time, many people, especially the urban poor and middle classes, were eating canned food of inferior quality. Before Birdseye began tinkering with food-freezing processes in 1923, attempts to freeze fish, meat and vegetables often turned to rancid mush. As a result, consumers were extremely skeptical about frozen foods. So Birdseye pushed relentlessly for a high-quality product, which he marketed with energetic creativity. Just before the 1929 stock market crash, Birdseye sold his company to what would soon become General Foods for the astonishing sum of $23.5 million. He stayed on with the new company as an executive, and later as a consultant, continuing to invent new products and processes.
Birdseye was 37 years old when he began trying to preserve food by freezing it. Before that his life seemed to be an almost random assortment of efforts, beset by failure. He liked to tinker and invent. He liked to hunt and was always interested in food. He was insatiably curious and eager for adventure—first in the territories of the western U.S. (where he often worked in life-threatening circumstances as a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher) and later in the iced-in reaches of Labrador (where he tried and eventually failed to build a fox-farming business). He believed in taking risks; rather than being defeated by failures, he culled from them the lessons he needed to bring his grandest project to fruition.
In Kurlansky’s telling, Birdseye was both ahead of and a product of his era. A prodigious inventor/marketer, he rarely recorded anything about his personal thoughts or inner life. He wore a necktie while gardening, for heaven’s sake. But the prolific Kurlansky, whose marvelous bestsellers Salt and Cod demonstrate a knack for discovering the vibrant details that bring a subject to life, manages to correct many of the myths that have accreted to the Birdseye story. And while he does not solve all the mysteries of Clarence Birdseye’s personality, he offers an account of his life and accomplishments that is sympathetic, informative and eye-opening.
We Americans have long been privy to the peaks and valleys in the Kennedy family story; we’ve watched them on TV, read about them, listened to their speeches and, at times, been appalled by their actions. The bright promise of JFK’s presidency, and the awful end of a would-be fairytale, have become a part of our collective American consciousness. Still, a comprehensive portrait entailing so many players is a tall order, which may be why J. Randy Taraborrelli considers his 17th book, After Camelot, his most challenging endeavor to date.
In After Camelot, Taraborrelli expands on his best-selling Jackie, Ethel, Joan and brings the whole Kennedy clan onstage. They are, he explains, “a family of complex, fascinating, and sometimes troubled personalities,” but despite unspeakable tragedy and loss, the Kennedys as a family “tried to hold on to the sense of hope, promise, and national service that had been so integral to the public personas of their fallen heroes.”
That struggle, despite its difficulties, is at the heart of Taraborrelli’s behind-the-scenes tale. In a fascinating chronicle that sweeps across a lengthy and tumultuous time period, from the impact of the inscrutable Kennedy patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, to his children, their spouses and the ensuing generation, Taraborrelli draws on extensive interviews and research to give each persona a distinct voice. We can hear Ted Kennedy inspire his audience when, with what must have been a heavy heart, he announced his withdrawal from the presidential race at the Democratic National Convention in 1980: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
The Kennedy ability to inspire, to find strength at times of intense sorrow or shame, and to uphold each other as a family, is perhaps what we admire most about them, and what makes After Camelot such a page-turning, emotionally riveting saga.
During the pivotal immediate post-World War II period—the beginning of the Cold War and the dawn of the age of nuclear weapons—the U.S. was led by two quite different presidents from the Middle West. Their decisions during the nearly 16 years of their presidencies affected the lives of millions of people for decades to come. William Lee Miller, perhaps best known for his two acclaimed Abraham Lincoln volumes, Lincoln’s Virtues and President Lincoln, compares and contrasts the public and private lives of these two men in his well-researched and wonderfully readable Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World.
The interweaving between Miller’s two subjects, their similarities and differences, makes for fascinating reading. A scholarship to West Point took Dwight Eisenhower away from Abilene, Kansas; eventually he found great success as a commander in World War II. A lack of money kept Harry Truman from attending college. But unlike Eisenhower, who remained in the United States during World War I training officers and learning much about tank warfare, Truman left the family farm near Grandview, Missouri, and volunteered for the army. He served with distinction as a captain in a field artillery unit in France, and his service in the war became the foundation for his leadership of a Senate committee investigating war production abuses. Truman was a lifelong politician and a candidate eight times at the county, state and national levels. Eisenhower disdained politicians and, as far as we know, did not vote in any election until he was almost 60 years old. That refusal to vote was a tradition among the army’s officer class.
At the same time, both men had Franklin Delano Roosevelt to thank for their elevated roles at key moments in history. When James Roosevelt, FDR’s son, asked his father why he had chosen Eisenhower to command the D-Day operation, FDR replied that “Eisenhower is the best politician among the military men,” a “natural leader” who could convince others to follow him. Miller writes that Eisenhower’s performance at that time was the supreme moment in his career, much greater than anything he achieved as president. As for Truman, FDR had several other options for his running mate in 1944, but he dropped his sitting vice president, Henry Wallace, from the ticket, passed over Senator James Byrnes, who was regarded as the likely choice, and, after meeting with Democratic Party leaders, agreed to their consensus selection of Truman.
Until the presidential campaign of 1952 the two men appeared to have a positive working relationship. But during that campaign, the relationship soured. Candidate Eisenhower criticized foreign policy positions that he had helped to develop during the Truman administration, and in a campaign appearance, he was convinced, for political reasons, to delete from a speech a paragraph praising General George Marshall, Truman’s former secretary of state, who had been instrumental in advancing Ike’s career. Truman believed that the omission was a “shameful” and disloyal decision.
Miller has an especially insightful chapter on the subject of race. His conclusion is that Eisenhower finished what Truman started with regard to integrating the federal workforce and the armed forces. When the latter established his extraordinary Committee on Civil Rights, the first such body in American history, in 1946, its report recommended actions that were to come in the next 20 years. Miller also considers public perceptions of the two men’s legacies. A chapter on judging the two presidencies notes that despite his incredibly low public opinion ratings when he left office, Truman continues to be ranked among those past presidents now termed “great,” while Eisenhower has been steadily gaining ground, showing up now among the “near great” occupants of the office.
In Two Americans, Miller’s masterful ability to combine biography, history and analysis is consistently compelling and a delight to read.
Cary Grant was the embodiment of grace and perfection. And, my, but he looked good. But beneath the suave demeanor was a man of darkly troubled complexities. As Cary Grant: The Biography details, the former Archibald Leach was forever haunted by his English childhood and his relationship with the mother who wound up in an asylum. Marc Eliot, who previously penned the musical sagas of Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles, relies largely on previously published books and articles for source material. He makes good use of Grant’s own interviews and the memories he shared on the lecture circuit. And Dyan Cannon’s divorce testimony is an eye-opener. Wife number four, Cannon was 35 years younger than Grant who ruled the roost as if he were, well, her daddy. (He once locked her in her room to keep her from wearing a short skirt in public.) Less convincing, but no less entertaining, are recycled accounts of Grant’s alleged relationship with western star Randolph Scott. If this really happened, Grant truly should have won the Oscar he craved. Pat H. Broeske is the co-author of Howard Hughes: The Untold Story, which would also make a terrific holiday gift.
James Madison remains one of the most important political thinkers in American history. His eloquently expressed opinions and leadership were indispensable to the development of the young republic and remain crucial and relevant to our lives today, yet some of his many contributions in a long career are often misunderstood or even forgotten. Fortunately, Kevin R. C. Gutzman, relying for the most part on primary sources, gives us an authoritative, vivid and wide-ranging exploration of Madison’s public career in James Madison and the Making of America.
Madison is often called “the father of the Constitution,” and he certainly was a major figure in its drafting and ratification by the states as well as its implementation. Gutzman makes all of this activity come alive in such a way that it is easy to imagine you are watching it firsthand. Before the 1787 Philadelphia Convention Madison engaged in research, reading deeply in ancient, medieval and modern writings on history and politics, and was the chief note-taker for the proceedings. Considering that he was a leader, thinker and orator who spoke more than 200 times himself, this last role seems almost impossible. A delegate from Georgia, who was neither his ally nor his opponent, described Madison as a combination of a profound politician and scholar and the best-informed man in every debate. But Madison himself was not enthusiastic about the prospects for the Convention before it started and remained ambivalent about its value after it was over. In a letter to his close friend Thomas Jefferson recounting the entire session, Madison described how difficult it had been to reconcile different views, by far the most difficult being how to resolve the division of powers between the federal government and the states. He felt that without a federal veto of state laws and with members of the Senate elected by state legislature, the Constitution was bound to fail.
Despite Madison’s major role with the Constitutional Convention, Gutzman thinks that his greatest accomplishment was his work with Jefferson on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Madison felt strongly about the separation of church and state, writing that for legislators to overstep the bounds of their authority and try to regulate religion would make them “tyrants.” Gutzman emphasizes that freedom of religion, freedom to emancipate one’s slaves and free trade were critical elements in Madison’s overview of society and government.
Gutzman gives a careful analysis of Madison’s major contributions to The Federalist Papers and a riveting account of the debate for ratification in Virginia. Madison had never felt the necessity for a bill of rights as part of the Constitution. When he finally did propose what evolved into the Bill of Rights, there was contentious legislative activity, but its adoption seemed far less momentous than we regard it today.
A perfect example of the high esteem in which Madison was held came right at the beginning of the new government. It was Madison who drafted his friend George Washington’s first inaugural address. Madison also drafted the House response and then the Senate’s response to that address—and he also drafted Washington’s responses to the House and Senate.
Gutzman points out that “Madison was at his best in mastering large bodies of data, in synthesizing extensive bodies of information, in wrestling measures through parliamentary assemblies.” As Jefferson’s secretary of state and as president, Madison did have some successes, but his most significant achievements had come earlier as thinker and legislative strategist. Madison’s presidency is usually remembered for the British burning of the White House and the Capitol during the War of 1812.
James Madison and the Making of America is a solid and insightful biography that should appeal to both those readers who know a lot about Madison and those who want an introduction to him.
Who was Dwight Eisenhower? His extraordinary leadership of the Allied forces in Europe led to victory in World War II. Under his presidency the nation enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity. Yet several years after his death, when his widow Mamie was asked whether she felt she had really known him, she replied, “I’m not sure anyone did.” Jean Edward Smith, whose last book was the best-selling FDR, explores the public and personal life of the man he regards, second to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as the most successful U.S. president in the 20th century in his absorbing Eisenhower in War and Peace.
Eisenhower wrote of himself: “I’m just folks. I come from the people, the ordinary people.” Smith goes behind such statements and perhaps comes as close as a biographer can in capturing those qualities of personality and judgment during his military career that so impressed his superiors. His affability and common sense enabled him to deal effectively with such strong personalities as Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, his longtime friend George Patton, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Early in his career, Eisenhower worked with General John Pershing and General Douglas MacArthur; the latter found Ike so indispensable to him in Washington as a speechwriter and in other ways that he requested that he go with him to duty in the Philippines.
Smith emphasizes that Ike was not a battlefield commander, nor a great soldier, but outstanding as a theater commander and military statesman. He also had exceptional ability as an executive and knew how to assume ultimate responsibility and yet delegate to others. Among the many achievements of his life, Smith discusses his crucial role in the formation of NATO, his presidency at Columbia University and his “behind-the-scenes” approach in dealing with Senator Joe McCarthy’s abuse of power.
One clue to Eisenhower’s successes comes from his belief that his mother had by far the greatest personal influence on him and his brothers. All four of his remaining brothers (another had died as a child) agreed that Ike was the most like their mother. In contrast to their rather distant father, she was the constant presence who organized their lives, soothed them if necessary, praised their achievements and could often see the humor in virtually every difficult situation. When General Dwight Eisenhower was hailed as an international hero at the end of WWII, a newsman asked her if she was proud of her son. “Which one?” she responded.
As president, Eisenhower was a fiscal conservative, but he was not an ideologue of any kind. He was for a balanced budget but also aware of the need for such significant public works projects as the St. Lawrence Seaway and the interstate highway system, the largest public works project ever attempted. Among other initiatives, he expanded Social Security in 1954 to provide coverage for an additional 10 million self-employed farmers, doctors and others; he established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare; and he approved funds to provide the Salk polio vaccine to the nation’s underprivileged children. He said that the decision to send federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the law regarding integration of the schools was the hardest he’d ever had to make except for the decision to go ahead with D-Day.
Meticulously researched, Smith’s book gives us a fresh and insightful understanding of the many aspects of Eisenhower’s full life.
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