War and Politics Books

I bought this book in order to be able to write my senior high school history paper on the extent to which the public opinions of WWI were reflected in the songs written and sung in France during that time. Needless to say, this book was the only thing that made that paper possible. I couldn't have asked for a more well-researched, well-supported book, that was not only informative, but also written in a way which kept it interesting. I only wish I could have spent more time with it, instead of racing through so as to finish my paper by the deadline. A highly recommended read to anyone.

There is not enough I can say about Regina Sweeney's book. It is absolutely ineffable in every sense. The depth of topic and research involved is astounding to any scholar. I highly suggest this book to anyone. It was a most enjoyable and enlightening read!!

Sweeney has struck gold in the minefield that was World War I. Terrific scholarship! Her thesis is novel: her research impeccable. The book captures the reader from page one and never lets go.

Absolutely, this is the most riveting and explosive book I have ever read. I served 2 tours of combat duty in the Korean WAR; futhermore, had I been privy to this read, you could never have gotten me back to Korea- never -. The Big Lie, spawned out of the Beltway since 1945 to the present, is inconcievable, that the DoD, State Dept, Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff [all], deny the existense of American GI"s languishing in Siberia, Red China, North Korea and North Vietnam . Imagine, former POW"s readily admit, they had seen American POW"s herded off to the Soviet Union and to Red China. Whose hearts go out to our MIA/POW families whom have been grossly and deliberately LIED to by government officials ?? Whereas, our Presidents [all] since 1945, turned their backs on all captured American POW"s. I pray, from this hurt, that one American staggers out of the Soviet Union to corroborate all, in this vale of tears- maybe, just maybe - the apathetic American populace will wake up to being had by a devious lot in our nation"s capital, as they go about THEIR business as usual. If this read doesn"t make your blood boil, then you aren"t alive; however, the assertions, send an ambigious message to any teenager who may be thinking about enlisting: "I wonder, will my President and countrymen come to my rescue if I am captured by the enemy"?? It is your call youngsters. Sayonara.

Soldiers of Misfortune, covering World War II, the Korean war, and Vietnam, is a profoundly shocking insight as to what has become of thousands of U.S. POW's during these wars. According to the authors, years of investigative work went into the formulation of the book and it is clearly evident in the text.

Painstaking attention has been given and recorded to remove anyone's doubts of this books authenticity. The authors list a staggering record of POW's forever lost to our enemies, the names of prison camps and gulags where they were held, intricate dates and timelines of events, and eyewitness accounts of vital information pertaining to U.S. soldiers forgotten by our govenment.

In the years following World War II, the Korean war, and Vietnam, the actions by our govenment to conceal data concerning our POW's and it's campaigns to silence anyone investigating the issue is absolutely apalling. This book will define for the reader the gross misuses of power, illegal tactics to manipulate and humiliate citizens seeking honest answers, and the use of outright threats and intimidation to bury the subject forever.

Great credit is due to the authors of this book for their courage and perseverance to expose the plight of our lost U.S. servicemen. This book is very highly recommended to everyone who would like an untainted and factual look into the heartbreaking saga of missing U.S. soldiers.

Readers may also be interested in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States betrayed its own POW's in Vietnam" by Monica Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson. Excellent source material here that reiterates much information found in Soldiers of Misfortune.

....Absolutely, this is the most riveting and explosive book I ever read!!...I served two [2] combat tours in the Korean War; furthermore, had I been privvy to this read, you could never have gotten me back to Korea--never!....The Big Lie, spawned out of the Beltway since 1945 to the present is inconceivable that the DoD, State Dept, Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff [all] deny the existence of any American GIs languishing in: Siberia-Red China-North Korea-Vietnam...imagine, former POWs readily admit, they had seen American POWs herded off to the Soviet Union [1945-1953] and off to Red China/North Korea [1950-1953] and off to Vietnam [1962-1973]...whose hearts go out to our MIA-POW families, whom have been grossly and deliberately ...LIED...to by our government and military officials; whereas, all of our Presidents since 1945 have turned their backs to our tormented American POWs...I, pray from this hurt, that one American straggles out of the Soviet Union to corroborate all, in this vale of tears....maybe, just maybe, the apathetic American populace will finally wake up to being had by a devious lot in our nation's capitol, as they just go about business as usual...if this clarion expose doesn't make your blood boil then you are not alive; in addition, these assertions send an ambiguous message to any teenagers who are thinking of joining up...I wonder, will my President and countrymen come to my rescue, in the event I am captured by the enemy??...it is your call, youngsters!!...sayonara...SSGT CHRIS SARNO-USMC FMF

More than a history of arranging Soviet defectors to escape, this gives an intense perspective from time and age. It would make a wonderful screenplay for a Spielberg adoptation. As an American Jew I am proud to know that James Milano performed like Oskar Schindler when he learned firsthand of the German policy of extermination. The gripping chapter on the Mauthausen concentration camp describes Milano's feelings: "Now, after the war, the nightmare stories were proved true- and short of the truth." Milano's moto of making the damn decision after an intelligent manipulation of risk descibes why his operations were so successful. Because we know that Milano himself is the primary source, it fortifies the accuracy of the amazingly clandestine rat line. I highly commend this exciting book.

There are many books to be found on clandestine intelligence operations. Most of these focus on the organs of the US State Department, and corresponding agencies in other countries. This book is a rare gem in that it deals with military intelligence operations and techniques, and provides an extremely useful insight into operational procedures used by US military intelligence during and immediately after the Second World War. For this alone it is worth the purchase, but the authors also manage to amaze and intrigue along the way with tales of operations gone wrong as well as the flotsam and jetsom of post war Europe.

This is a first hand account of CIC operations in the cockpit of the Cold War-Austria. It is now little remembered that Austria was the only European country occupied by the Soviets to be evacuated during the Cold War. (Although in Asia, they did leave Iran and North Korea.)Both sides' focus was on the North German plain, the traditional invasion route between East and West, and vice versa. Not the southern route from the Adriatic through the Ukraine. Thus the major Allied intelligence effort was was in Germany. Most of the activities described herein are the usual tradecraft--doubling agents, honey traps, sneak and peek, etc. This would be just another tale and not of great importance, except for the Rat Line. This was a clandestine evacuation operation run for persons escaping from the Soviet-controlled areas. Because the occupation of Austria ended in 1955, and Austria was then neutralized, it was easier to run penetration and escape operations from there than through the hard border further north. Actually, there were more than one Rat Line. It is said that Martin Bormann, Adolf Eichman, and other top Nazis escaped via Italy. Be that at it may, Klaus Barbee did get out in a U.S. sponsored operation. But the U.S. Rat Line was more important for getting out persons of intelligence value, who once debriefed, had to be put under deep cover in a safe place. (Imagine a witness protection program, but with the whole USSR intellops looking for you, instead of a few mobsters.)This is probably the last first-hand account of CI field ops we will get of those days. After all, all of the vets are well over 70 and most were middle aged then. I also recommend Ib Melchior's book on his service as a CI agent. (cf)

An intriguing book. Rather too detailed (but don't give up -- it's full of good stuff). A good reference for managers on how to run a business by maintaining excellent rapport with one's employees (Marcus Woolf style) and an excellent example of professional ethics (again, Marcus Woolf style towards his moles). Some amazing ideas by the East German intelligence, e.g.Romeo agents, are described.

Having travelled to East Berlin during the 50's and 60's, I thought this book would be of some interest. I was not prepared to be as thoroughly enthralled by this account of the East German secret police and its deputy minister, Markus Wolf, as I was. It was an unexpected find! Colitt obviously knows his subject and has created a spellbinding historical account.

Having travelled to East Berlin during the 50's and 60's, I thought this book would be of some interest. I was not prepared to be as thoroughly enthralled by this account of the East German secret police and its deputy minister, Markus Wolf, as I was. It was an unexpected find! Colitt obviously knows his subject and has created a spellbinding historical account.

Beau Grosscup reveals the history of bombing and its effects and does this well for the reader who is looking for a good source for this information. The notion that bombing is somehow humane and ethical is dismantled through exploration of historical precedent. If someone wants to know more about this subject, this text is a very good place to start (as exploring this issue should not end with this book).

Beau Grosscup, Professor of International Relations at California State University, has produced an excellent survey of bombing. He shows that its aim is to terrorise civilians.

Under the laws of war, the deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime. Article 52 of the 1977 Protocol One of the Geneva Convention says, "attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives." Article 54 says, "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas ... crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works." Article 57 warns those planning military attacks to "refrain from deciding to launch any attack which might be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof."

Bombing cities, towns or villages guarantees that civilians will be killed. This killing is known in advance, premeditated, purposeful, intentional. As law professor Michael Tonry says, "In the criminal law, purpose and knowledge are equally culpable states of mind."

In the 1920s, the RAF bombed Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Somaliland, Transjordan, Iraq, South West Africa, India and Burma, to terrify the colonies into submission. Similarly, the French bombed Morocco and Syria, the Italians bombed Libya, Ethiopia and Spain, and the USA bombed Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and China.

In the Korean War, General MacArthur ordered Allied forces to destroy `every factory, city and village'. US and British forces killed 20% of Korea's people.

General Wastemoreland said, "the Oriental doesn't place the same high price on life as does the Westerner. ... life is cheap in the Orient. As the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important." This apparently justified killing three million Vietnamese people. Kissinger ordered attacks on `anything that moves'. The USAF dropped 285 million cluster bombs on Vietnam and killed 10% of the Vietnamese people.

In Yugoslavia, NATO Commander General Clark ordered the USAF to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure of Yugoslavia." They bombed TV and radio stations, phone and computer networks, airports, railways, trains, roads, vehicles, bridges, factories, warehouses, power plants, water plants, 33 hospitals, 344 schools, dams and parks. The RAF dropped cluster bombs throughout the 70-day blitz.

Pentagon officials have admitted that the USAF directly targets Iraqi and Afghan civilians, for example, one told CBS News, "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad." Any attack likely to harm more than 30 civilians required Rumsfeld's personal approval - which he always gave, fifty times between 19 March and 18 April 2003. An Army private said, "We were told there were no friendly forces ... If there was anybody there, they were the enemy. We were told specifically that if there were women and children to kill them." Another said, "Basra is a military town", which is like saying Manchester is a military town.

The media ignore the current intense bombing of civilians in Iraq, and highlight roadside bombings, in which occupation troops can be portrayed as victims. The USAF uses anti-personnel weapons like cluster bombs, phosphorus and napalm, says, "We don't do body counts", then claims that casualties are low.

Similarly, in Gaza, Sharon told the army to use force `without limitation' and one of his officials said, "we may have to use weaponry that causes major collateral damage, including helicopters and plane, with mounting danger to surrounding people."

This book is a well thought out work which explores terrorism from the air, from its beginning. Grosscup documents exactly how this occurs and why it does not work -- except to line the pockets of the corporations that profit from it.

I enjoy books by James P. Cannon-they brim over and bristle with confidence in the working class. This book first and foremost. Cannon takes on the faint hearts and doubters who try to undermine the workers party from within. He provides a text book on how a communist party must organize itself to stand up to the patriotic pressure of a war drive. On clarifying the relationship between the intellectuals and the workers, he points out that the intellectuals are welcome in the party if they come all the way over to the working class side-they cannot expect that the workers meet them half-way. The party must be proletarian in composition as well as program. Cannon writes with clarity, force, and wit.

As always this book carries lot of Cannon's humor, wit and wisdom. The is a lot of interesting his back and forth in Cannon's correspondence here with leaders like Trotsky, Cannon's collaborator in the 1939-1940 fight to preserve revolutionary communist politics. This is a book for people who retain the faith of the founders of Marxism, the faith of Gene Debs, the faith made real by people like Malcolm X, that workers can change the world and run it themselves. Cannon lead a fight that stopped middle class elements fleeing their fears of the coming of World War II toward anti-communism, from taking the Socialist Workers Party with them. This is not history, but a vibrant guide to building a revolutionary movement, about what principles are, about how to fight for what you want, about the practical realities of building a real revolutionary workers movement.Also recommended: History of American Trotskyism, First Ten Years of American Communism, In efense of Marxism, Capitalism's World Disorder. ...

This is a collection of documents and letters written by James P. Cannon, the central leader of the Socialist Workers Party for many years. The documents and letters are the product of an internal debate that began in 1939 and led to a split in this party in 1940. They tell the story of how a workers' party successfully strove to be faithful to its own revolutionary roots and thus protect itself from losing everything that it had struggled to build up. The battle that took place within the Socialist Workers Party reveals what kind of work goes into building a party that can become the leading element of the struggle for a government that puts human needs before profits - a workers and farmers government.

The initial nucleus of the Socialist Workers Party was formed when a group of Communist Party members was expelled in 1928 for adhering to the program of Trotsky, although that party name was not adopted until 1938. Trotsky was the Russian revolutionary leader, and collaborator of Lenin, who opposed the rise of Stalinism in the USSR. Living in exile in Mexico in 1939-40, Trotsky worked with Cannon to see this faction fight through to its conclusion. For Trotsky's contribution to the debate see his book, "In Defense of Marxism."

In the late 1930s the U.S. capitalist class prepared to enter the war, expecting to use its military might to massively increase its world influence, and thereby its capacity to skim off the cream of the world's labor and natural resources (a goal which was essentially achieved - for a period of time). The working class came under intense political pressure to give up its class independence, to stop fighting for trade-union goals and for socialism; and instead, to knuckle under to the war drive, to put uniforms on its young men and send them overseas to sacrifice themselves for the profits of the capitalist class.

A substantial portion of the membership of the Socialist Workers Party did indeed knuckle under, in their own way, to this pressure. Trotsky called them the petty-bourgeois opposition. Their arguments in the debate reflected their deeply-felt need to get out of the line of fire, to retreat from the struggle for socialism. Cannon led the proletarian party majority, which not only defended the proletarian principles of the party as it answered the arguments of the minority, but also conducted the discussion in such a way that the party's democratic internal norms were preserved and strengthened.

This book is necessary reading for rebellious young people and workers seeking a way of finding out how they fit in to the political trajectory of the workers movement. Making a revolution requires deep knowledge not only of the nature of capitalism, but also of the developmental course of the political vanguard movement of the working class. The lessons we learn from this are the common bond we share as we build anew.

At one time an African nation composed of two large tribes has a slaughter, a genocide. The people in power, let's call them Tribe 1, decided to eliminate the Tribe 2. A few years later Tribe 2 has gained power so began the slaughter/genocide of Tribe 1.

In this book Tribe 1 is the Huto, Tribe 2 is the Tutsi. Unfortunately this is a story so often repeated that the names almost do not matter. This could have been any of a number of countries.

And the countries do not have to be in Africa. We had the Holocaust in Germany, Ethnic Clensing in what was left of Yugoslavia. We've had people seemingly going nuts as they did in China's Cultural Revolution. And then there are places like Israel, Northern Ireland and oh so many more.

The story though keeps coming back to Africa. Taking place in the mid 1990's, this is a story of Africa, its leadership, such as it is. And it's a story of Africa before AIDS.

The story in this book is a story of the survival of a Huto woman at the hands of the Tutsi. It's a story of struggle against terrible odds -- and she made it.

I love this book but I am sickened by its content. I'm willing to bet that few people reading "Surviving the Slaughter" have ever had a bad year that adds up to just one day of Marie Beatrice Umutesi's many bad days depicted in this memoir. This is the story of the incredible hardship and endless courage and stamina of a lone woman who, miraculously, lived to tell her tale.

Why didn't we in the USA know more about this genocide? In New York City I am surrounded by the "survivors" of the WTC attack on 9/11/01 and constantly assaulted by their self-serving weeping and wailing. If one half the population of New York City had died on 9/11/01 the numbers would begin to equal the slaughter of this one genocide in Rwanda. Reading this book definitely gives the reader a context within which to judge the relative impact and importance of current events.

Having read my share of translations I must tip my hat to Julia Emerson for bringing this memoir to the attention of the English speaking world by making such a clear, readable and intelligent translation.

This is the tragic and triumphant autobiography of a Rwandan Hutu woman who, after living for a couple of years as an internally displaced person in Rwanda and then surviving the horrific conditions in the camps that were - illegally - set up in by the UN in Zaire within shelling distance of the Rwandan border and further down the road in the death camp at Tingi Tingi, decided, along with tens of thousands of others to try to escape from the murderous attacks of Kagame's RPF, UN bounty hunters and Kabila's troops by taking to the roads in an effort to find a way out of the country. She took around ten children, none of them her own, with her and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep them alive during months of trekking through trackless tropical forests during the rainy season, walking barefoot on blistering roads, eating whatever they could scavenge in the deserted villages along the way.

We have heard a lot about the tragedy of the Tutsi genocide in 1994. What we haven't heard, partly because the press has been manipulated by the current Tutsi regime in Rwanda and partly because the U. S. continues to count on Kagame to keep our access open to the minerals in Congo - particularly coltan, which is used in cell phones and computers - is that as many Hutu as Tutsi have been killed both before and after 1994. Books like "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch were highly misleading and only served to reinforce the mistaken view that all Hutu were genocidal and all Tutsi innocent victims, and as a result the world has let at least 750,000 innocent Hutu be slaughtered while their killers enjoy impunity. And that is not even counting the 3,000,000 Congolese who have died.

The first chapters of the book give an overview of the history Rwanda and life in the camps, and the rest of it deals with Umutesi's trek across Zaire. It is even handed, understated, immensely powerful and very timely. It was published in French, Spanish, Catalan and Dutch before being translated into English.

This text served as the basis for a course taught by the author (Theodore Caplow) at the University of Virginia. It is highly informative and thankfully easy to read. Useful to students of history, international relations, and sociology, I would recommend this title to anyone hoping to gain an understanding of the causes, courses, and consequences of war.

April 6, 1999: Systems of War and Peace has been reprinted and is back in stock!!!

The publisher was out of stock, but the book is now being reprinted and should be available very soon.

This account of the Vietnam War is a good. I really think it was important for me to find out more about how Americans conducted this war and how people felt about it It is especially interesting now that the Iraq War is happening and Americans are being accused of holding people without trial and torturing people.

Should be read in small segments, so overwhelmong is the inhumanity recounted here. The South Korean "allies" were worse torturers than the Americans.. several My Lais every day, and torture was ongoing for years for many of the civilians imprisoned in camps, too sickening to recount here. Brave book by a brave American woman.

The people of Vietnam tell what it was like when the Americans came to their country and destroyed it. Things you would not believe the Americans would do to a population. Publisher's Weekly said " It is difficult to imagine a more powerful indictment of American military conduct in Vietnam than these testimonies." With Photos by the author.

Thomas Dewey is one of the forgotten figures in American politics and is explored thoroughly in this book. Dewey built his career the old fashioned way through legal victory and gang busting of the mob. More interesting than the presidential runs is actually his work at developing early thorough investigation techniques coupled with accounting strategies. These early years developed an end to the prohibition era and foreshadowed the rise of the methodical calculating man that would become the guiding light of the Republican Party.
Dewey ran for office and failed for a variety of reasons each time. Although coming close to defeating Truman the second time it was a lost cause due to the publics perception of him. He was seen as stiff and unfeeling and the votes always shifted around him. While he was not the warmest candidate he was a great political operator who understood the system. He gathered as many votes as he did through his sheer political brilliance. He became the antithesis of Robert Taft who typified the isolationist branch of the Republican Party. Dewey became the internationalist branch espousing the UN and fighting against communism through economic expansion. While still a part of the Republican Party at the time he represented what his party would become under Eisenhower and develop into under Reagan. The isolationist branch weakened as time went on. (For more on Taft read Mr. Republican by James Patterson). Although unsuccessful as a presidential candidate he was an excellent governor and had the support of the people there. He kept excess funds from the World War II years and used them to develop transportation and help to alleviate crisis following the war.
The final phase of Dewey's life was to serve as the savior of the Republican Party and the organizer of Eisenhower's campaign and election. In order to stop Taft and promote the new internationalist policies that Eisenhower elected himself with. It was a pro Korean strategy and an activist strategy across the world to check Russian expansion. While Dewey did not ever want to admit he had anything in common with Truman he did develop many of the same viewpoints but took them further with Eisenhower. Dewey became essentially the chairman of the Republican National Committee and served as the platform and ideals manager of the time.
Overall if you are going to pick up a book on Dewey this is the perfect one. It is also great for those who want to understand the post world war II world through American politics. Highly recommended for those who want to understand how America and the Republican Party developed.

Thomas E. Dewey, the epitome of Manhattan Avenue politics to conservative Republicans, was himself born and bred further west than the venerable Robert Taft himself. A product of Owosso, Michigan, Dewey attended the University of Michigan, studying literature and law, all the while pursuing a career as a professional singer. It was music that brought him to New York, one of many surprises unveiled in Richard Norton Smith's biography of one of America's most prolific political campaigners.

Dewey was a capable enough performer that in 1924 he was booked for a solo performance in the cultural heart of America. In the audience was the noted music critic Deems Taylor. Taylor commented upon what he perceived as Dewey's contrived emotional stage effects, but this flaw was dwarfed by a more essential one: suffering from laryngitis, Dewey's voice totally shut down halfway through the program. A thoroughly mortified Dewey was forced to take stock of his career, and as a second choice he decided to pursue a law degree. Columbia University of the 1920's enjoyed a plethora of great legal minds, and even the frustrated singer came to develop a passion for law and the potential theatrics of the courtroom.

Dewey's rapid ascent through the law profession was abetted by two factors: his labors on behalf of New York City's struggling Republican party, and the patronage of George Z. Medalie, who would become Dewey's legal and political rabbi. Medalie, a major character in this treatment, enjoyed a thriving private law practice, but he was drafted for one of the city's frequent, and usually unsuccessful, forays against organized crime, which literally held New York in a stranglehold in the 1920's and 1930's. Medalie, who had once consulted for Dewey's firm, brought this "prodigy" into his investigations of the seamy criminal underbelly of New York including, as it turned out, the disappearance of Judge Crater.

Not even Medalie could have imagined what kind of courtroom tiger he had unleashed. It was to Dewey's advantage that few intrepid souls wanted to tackle the dangers of addressing organized crime, particularly when corruption pervaded the police department and the courts. Dewey became New York City's district attorney in 1935, prosecuting famous gangsters, politicians, and public figures with a take no prisoners approach. Smith describes several of the most famous investigations in considerable detail, but it is Dewey's style that is most intriguing: a workaholic perfectionist whose "when in Rome" style and prosecutorial armtwisting were not for the prudish. Dewey's face became one of the most recognizable in America-through newspapers, newsreels, and a series of Hollywood B-movies in which Dewey lookalike actors reenacted the more famous of his investigations.

After the substantive defeats of Hoover in 1932 and Landon in 1936 many Republican voters in the 1940 primaries turned to the fresh aggressive look of Dewey. By May 1 Dewey stood at the head of the pack, but May 1940 proved to be his undoing. Smith observes that it was not a Republican challenger who derailed Dewey's victory train, but Hitler himself. After the disaster of Dunkirk, Dewey became "the first American casualty of the Second World War," as one wag put it at the time. As the war came visibly closer to American life, Dewey's youth and limited international experience became glaring obstacles to his White House hopes. Defeated for the nomination by Wendell Wilkie, Dewey captured the New York state house in 1942. A genuinely compassionate man, Dewey's lengthy tenure as governor was marked by fiscal conservatism and social reform. His vision was remarkable: he predicted the postwar housing shortage and developed a state surplus for postwar needs. He saw the fiscal possibilities of a better highway system and sowed the seeds for what would become the interstate highway system by his advocacy of the New York State Thruway, which now bears his name.

Had Dewey's ambition been quenched in Albany, he would probably be remembered as one of the most effective state leaders of the century. Regrettably for his posterity, it is his unsuccessful runs for the presidency in 1944 and particularly 1948, when he "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory," that most Americans associate with Dewey. Smith does not psychoanalyze the 1948 event, as many historians do, nor does he demonize Truman, whom he credits with conducting a masterful if brutal campaign. Smith concedes that Dewey's 1948 campaign was too ethereal, but in the final analysis Dewey was a victim of himself. Like Nixon, he was not a natural gladhander, and his perfectionism in crafting his speeches not only resulted in a wooden product but devoured time better spent in personal appearances.

Smith describes Dewey's personal life as that of, well, a rich suburban Republican. Early in his career Dewey made the acquaintance of journalist Lowell Thomas, who gradually drew him into the social circle of Quaker Hill, an exclusive mountain community near Pawling, New York, north of the city. Dewey remained a presence in Republican circles until his sudden death by heart attack in 1971. He labored to keep his party moderate, campaigning vigorously for Eisenhower and against the Taft wing. Smith brings to light several interesting anecdotes of Dewey's later years. In 1970 a coterie of leading congressional Republicans, deeply concerned about the style and direction of the Nixon White House [read Haldeman and Ehrlichman], nominated their former party leader to speak privately with the president. Dewey apparently agreed to approach Nixon, but his sudden death intervened. Smith also records that the widowed Dewey courted Kitty Carlisle Hart [then a panelist on the popular TV program "To Tell The Truth"] and asked her to marry him. [The question was still under negotiation at the time of his death.] On the last day of his life, in Miami, he played golf with Carl Yastrzemski. His final regrets, it appears, had less to do with presidential campaigns and more to do with his belief that he had worked too hard and played too little.

Thomas E. Dewey, unfortunately, is probably best remembered by most Americans as the little fellow who lost the 1948 Presidential election to Harry S. Truman in one of the greatest upsets in American history. But thanks to the work of Richard Norton Smith, we can now see Dewey for what he really was - a crusading, crime-busting district attorney; perhaps the best governor New York State ever had; and the man who "modernized" the Republican Party and allowed it to survive through the Depression years and the 1940's. Dewey came from a small town in Michigan, and his rise to fame and fortune came remarkably fast. A compulsive workaholic and "neat freak", Dewey graduated from the University of Michigan and Columbia University Law School in the 1920's. He briefly considered a career as a singer - he had an award-winning baritone voice and liked to sing Broadway tunes in his bathtub - but decided that the law would be a more stable and suitable career. He married an actress, settled in New York City (although he never really liked New York, and bought a large farm 70 miles north of Manhattan in the late thirties and happily became a weekend farmer). In 1933 Dewey, only 29, became the assistant DA and helped to send several gangsters to prison. In 1935 he was elected District Attorney for New York City, and he soon achieved national fame as the "gangbuster" - the honest lawyer who sent dozens of famous mafia leaders to jail. His most famous target was "Lucky" Luciano, the mafia boss of all New York and who was even more powerful than Al Capone. Dewey's conviction of Luciano made him a national hero and propelled him into presidential politics at the incredible age of 38. Hollywood even made movies about him. In 1940 he ran for the Republican presidential nomination and nearly won, despite his youth and inexperience. In 1942 he was elected governor of New York. During his twelve years as governor he passed the first state civil rights laws in America, lowered taxes AND cut a budget deficit in half, and founded the State University of New York. He also rooted out political crooks and ran a remarkably honest administration. In 1944 he ran for President and came closer to defeating Franklin D. Roosevelt than any of his four opponents. Dewey's great moment was supposed to have been in 1948, when he was considered to be a sure bet to defeat President Harry S. Truman and restore the Republicans to the White House. All the polls showed Dewey winning easily, and Dewey refused to even mention Truman's name - even as Truman insulted and ridiculed him in speech after speech. This was a costly mistake - Truman won a narrow victory in one of the great political upsets of all time. At the age of 46, Dewey was a "has-been". Smith does a wonderful job of explaining why, despite Dewey's honesty, intelligence, and obvious leadership skills he was never able to win the White House. Partly this was due to Dewey's personality - many people felt him to be cold and calculating, a short man with a bad temper and an arrogant attitude towards others. Smith fills this biography with plenty of delicious quotes (Dewey's secretary - "He was as cold as a February icicle"), and he also offers a superb history of the Republican Party in its lean years between the 1920's and the Eisenhower Fifties. Although Dewey will probably always be remembered more for his 1948 upset than for his substantial achievements, Smith's biography will at least ensure that those who read this book will come away with a much better appreciation for the man and for what he accomplished. A terrific book!