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Collected reviews from decades of reading — organized by subject and written for clarity, context, and long-term reference.
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The latest in Robert Caro’s monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, “The Passage to Power” opens with LBJ’s perplexing performance in the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. Perplexing because of Johnson’s uncharacteristic political naiveté and his complete failure to size up his competition. In short, Johnson purposively kept out of the race until just weeks before the…
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At the beginning of 1776, the British government was spoiling for a fight. Ira Gruber’s “The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution” tells the story of the opening chapter in the war when British success in smashing the rebellion seemed all but foreordained. “Why, indeed,” Gruber asks, “did [the Howe brothers] have no more success…
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Arguably one of the greatest biographies written in the twentieth century, Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” is an epic piece of historiography on municipal government and urban planning. At roughly 1,200 pages in length, it is not, needless to say, for everyone. Born into a well-to-do, socially…
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I must confess: I’ve never been much of a Thomas Jefferson fan. Much of my understanding of our third president has come by way of his generally unfavorable presentation in popular biographies of his esteemed contemporaries, such as Washington & Hamilton (Chernow), Adams (McCullough), Franklin (Isaacson) and Marshall (Smith). From the perspective of these prominent…
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Marie Antoinette may have never said, “Let them eat cake!” Then again, much of what she had been accused of wasn’t true either, according to Antonia Fraser in this well researched, sympathetic biography of France’s most famous queen. The fifteenth child and youngest daughter of the august Maria Teresa, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire,…
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“Europe is a molehill,” Napoleon is said to have exclaimed, “We must set off for the Orient; that is where all the greatest glory is to be achieved.” The French invasion of Egypt in 1798 was one of the most audacious military and political undertakings of all time. With a fleet of 335 ships and…
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The first in a massive three volume set first published during the centennial anniversary of the War Between the States, Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War: A Narrative” is a timeless classic. Volume One traces what Foote sees as the first phase of the war from the opening shots at Fort Sumter, when most believed the…
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“The Pioneers: The heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west” traces the epic migration of hearty Americans who settled the Ohio River valley from the end of the American Revolution to the Civil War. Author David McCullough uses the obscure town of Marietta, Ohio as his focal point and uses the…
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There is a theme to Walter Isaacson’s award-winning biographies: from Einstein and Jobs to Franklin and Leonardo, he focuses on men “who make connections across disciplines – arts and sciences, humanities and technology – as a key to innovation, imagination, and genius.” This 2017 biography of Leonardo da Vinci is every bit as good as…
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