Social Studies Books

I knew nothing about this memoire but the title before i picked it up so you can imagine my suprise as the plot became clear.

I enjoyed this book more than i expected because the characters pulled me in and the pace seemed to be more like a mystery than a memoire. Knowing that the story was not dreampt up made the characters feelings weigh a bit more heavily.

I really enjoyed the journey the author goes through...knowing he's venturing down the wrong path but going anyway, for the immediate satisfaction that lays there.

Benderson, Bruce, "The Romanian: Story of an Obsession", Tarcher/ Penguin, 2006.

An Intellectual Triumph

Amos Lassen and Literary Pride


If you are in the mood for a serous book that will indeed make you think, pick up a copy of Bruce Benderson's "The Romanian: Story of an Obsession" and I can promise you that you will not be disappointed. I knew nothing about it and the more I read the more surprised I became and the more I loved this book. Written as a memoir, it is really more of a mystery. It s one thing to go down the wrong road but it is something else when you knowingly do so. The book is honest (sometimes too much so) and realistic (because it really happened).
Anyone who has ever loved a person or a place with pain and obsessed, fantasized, felt not at home, or thought about the concepts of history and fate will have a pleasurable read. Benderson takes Romanian history and enmeshes it with the love story of a forbidden hustler. Benderson's obsession with a Romanian rent boy parallels the scandal of a royal family and in doing so takes us with beautiful insight into the modern perspective. Benderson has created a whole new form of travel memoir with this book. He transforms his obsessions to matters for the intellect and we get a psycho-sexual soap opera where danger and truth hide in run down hotels, dim cul-de-sacs and unknown foreign landscapes. The titillation he could have provided his readers by writing this as a soft-core porn novel is instead relates as depraved, masochistic luminous and comical story. There is no hint of redemption and no patented wisdom. The style of the author is depressing and decadent and seems to be infused with mind altering drugs but this is what makes this book so great.
Benderson is at times self-indulgent but we never lose interest. It seemed to me that the author was trying to exorcise some of his guilt feelings about exploiting a young hustler but this is not really of importance as we see when the book draws to a close. Everything is just dirty and the man brought about his own fate.
Benderson felt that his mother had suffocated him emotionally and it is through this knowledge and his relationship with a young man that he begins to realize that everyone of us carries some kind of flaw and that above all, we are human. In learning this, the book shocks us into the reality of the way we live and we start to search within ourselves. Benderson shocks us out of any preconceived notions we may have about the nature of sexuality and we learn that we are mainly responsible for our undoing.
The layers of the book are plentiful as past and present intertwine and the passion of Benderson becomes the passion of the person reading his book. The language is beautiful and the way three different themes are bound together is nothing short of amazing. The descriptions are lush and I bet that Romania has never looked so good before. Benderson uses his beautiful narrative to tell us of things that should ordinarily shock us but his way of relating what he has to say is absolutely gorgeous.

I loved this book. It was honest, although at times it did teeter on the pretentious. I'm not sure if there really was a valid point to his parallel tale of Romania's last king and mistress and Benderson's affair with the his Romanian hustler. Perhaps Benderson was just trying to displace some of his guilty feelings over exploiting a poor and desperate young man. By the end it really doesn't matter - his rose tinted glasses are off and it's all just grime, grit as dirty as uncut diamonds. I came to realize that everyone is an accomplice in their own undoing.

I am straight and was wonderfully surprised how "The Romanian" depicted facets of my own love life and how Benderson's relationship with his mother was similar --the same suffocating control and tenderness. Benderson jolts us right out of our outdated heterosexual and homosexual bourgeois notions. Whether it is his mother or a shameful street hustler, Benderson is only too aware that we are all flawed; that we are only all too human. A shocker for sure but almost right from the beginning, we stop judging and start to search, along with Benderson, deep into our own souls.

"The Romanians," multi- layered intertwines the past with and present in such a brilliant way that we not only learn something about ourselves but also about several cultures. A smart director like Paul VERHOEVEN or TARANTINO would be smart to snatch up the rights.

While I may like this book partly because I know its main locale, anyone who has ever loved a person or a place with pain, obsessed, fantasized, felt exiled, or contemplated history and fate, will find this a fascinating read.

you can make this as easy or as challenging as you like. You learn words when they keep popping up in the stories

A book of short stories from famous Russian Authors, Half in Russian and Half in english. The book loks intimidating, but the stories are selected to appeal.
The stories were capitvating and all were easy to follow except the cave. I did attempt to read the russian and the layout makes this easy.
I have now been introduced to different Russian authors that I will follow up.

This book works on two levels: One, these short stories are by the Russian masters of the genre. In English translation, they are powerful, evocative, and moving, on their own. There is a reason why Pushkin, Chekhov, and Dostoevsky are still popular: Those guys didn't write any garbage. They set the bar for all writers as high as it could go. I would especially recommend "Sleepy" by Anton Chekhov. Read it on Halloween night, as I did, for a good old fashioned fright.

Secondarily, for those of us learning Russian, these short stories provide fascinating and very challenging works to translate. Be advised, this is a high level of Russian literature, written for educated and literate native speakers, so it's a big challenge. Pack a lunch.

The short story format is especially beneficial. If you can get through one story, believe me, you are ready for the psychological reward of starting a new story.

Got this book a while ago, its way too hard for me for my level but the good thing is you can work through at a slow pace and still get a lot out of it. Stress marks are very helpful, would have been useless to me without them basically, and the glossary is also helpful although it doesn't include everything (good to have a dictionary nearby). Layout is good, that is, having the english on the adjacent page, makes for very easy reference to the english. Archaic language is usually noted and explained as such, which is useful. Great for reading practice, highly recommendable book for all skill levels (i have only been learning for around 6 months but have still got a lot out of it so far). Good selection of stories and enough to keep an beginner reader going for a long time!

I bought this book as part of my ongoing acquisition of the Russian language. The layout is excellent and typical of these types of book; the stories are well selected and entertaining, with a wide range of vocabulary and grammatical usage.

But...

Anyone wanting to use this book as a booster to their contemporary Russian language skills should bear in mind that a Russian person learning English would not be best served by heading for the library and taking down Dickens, Tennyson, and Gaskill. Languages shift, change, and evolve and today's spoken Russian is as different from that of Gogol as English in San Francisco is different from that of Thackerey. Arguably the English spoken in San Francisco is fairly nasty ("He was like, that was so totally awsome, and I was like, cool...") because it is imprecise and unfocused and in fact fails to convey much meaning; nevertheless a solid grounding in Henry James wouldn't prepare someone for a close encounter with the local natives of the Sunset District. Likewise, the stories here won't really help you much with contemporary Russian as spoken by a teenage girl in Peter or a xenophobic hoodie near Red Square.

But as a pleasure in itself, this book is a gem and a worthwhile addition to the library of anyone who is just establishing a beach-head in the language.

Hannah Breece was an amazing woman--strong, independent, and driven by her desire to help the people of Alaska during the early 1900s. This book is well-written, interesting, and informative. If you love reading about early Alaska, you will love this book! You might also check out a new release, When the Water Runs: Growing Up With Alaska.

When the Water Runs: Growing Up with Alaska

This book is a great read. I was swept along by this story of a single woman working in the Alaskan back country. She takes a matter-of-fact approach to all sorts of alarming situations (e.g. being buried in a snowdrift and having a bear and her cub wandering about outside her tent).

A great adventure story. Fascinating snapshots of turn of the century Alaska. Many of the most interesting parts of this book are those which talk about Alaska's relationship with Russia, particularly the power of the Czar and the Russian Orthodox church. Reading about this, Alaska seems more like a colony than a part of Russia. Maybe the Alaska America purchased wasn't Russia's to sell.

The book presents attitudes as they were without varnishing or apology. Some are decidedly racist. Hannah definitely saw her job as 'civilizing' the natives (nobody seems to have asked them if they wanted to be civilized). She talks about communities who lived underground - this was dying out as the US government didn't approve - the story of colonization the world over...

An excellent story with plenty of meat. Hannah Breece is a woman both of her time and ahead of her time. This book, although covering the early 1900's, really tells of a time when the balance and control of Alaska was switching from Russian influenced culture to American influenced culture. It is interesting to see that what was "correct" then is now "incorrect" and reminds the reader that values and judgements are culturally bound.

The action of the book takes place over most of the major regions of the state including the gulf coast, the interior and the southeast.

Jane Jacobs the editor did an excellent job of organizing and illuminating Hannah Breece's story. Without her careful introductions the story would have not had quite the same postive impact.

This book is largely alone in covering the topic of teaching in the early 1900's. For those of you interested in the early history of teaching in English in Alaska then this is your book.

In 1904, Hannah Breece (1859-1940), was recruited by the Department of the Interior to teach in Alaska. Alaska at that time was quite different than today. Preferring to work in poorer, more backward areas, she saw a side of Alaska that does not normally appear in the history books. This is Hannah stories, as told by her, and edited by Jane Jacobs.

This is a really great story. I found its depiction of life in 1904+ Alaska to be quite enthralling; Hannah certainly found her way into many fascinating adventures. The book shows life in 1904+ Alaska, as lived by the common people, including dealing with wild animals, sled dogs, fish famines, earthquakes, racism at many levels, and so much more.

All I can say is that Hannah Breece must have been a formidable woman. I have never said this before of a book, but I actually felt honored to be able to look in at Hannah's life. I highly recommend this book!

I fell in love with Alaska as described by Hannah Breece. She told an amazing story of a time that is long gone. She also showed great restraint in not "telling tales" on those who were her contemporaries. Her niece, Jane Jacobs, who compiled and edited her memoirs, fills in the "gaps," after Miss Breece's personal story is complete. I recommend this book to lovers of history, Alaskan history, early American history, education history and those with a romantic notion of how the "good old days," really were.

This is a touching book. Although the descriptions of the author's self centered friends are nauseating at times, the exploration of the bizarre bond between mother and son is very illuminating. I highly recommend it to anyone out there who has a mother.

Nicholas Weinstock's book plainly delivered. It made me see the relationship my son and I have now that he is 'grown up', married, and out of my home, in a whole new light. The feelings expressed from sons of all ages were illuminating. Mothers, read this book and learn that out of sight is not out of mind.

One heck of a great read. Captures the truest truths, and spits them back at you in a manner that evokes Orwellian insight and Dickensian wit. Read it and weap, or guffaw.

This is one of the best books I have read in the last 10 years. Although it is written mostly from a son's point of view, as a mother of a 32 year old male, the feelings described in the book helped me so much to better understand my own experience with my son. Nicholas Weinstock's mother deserves serious accolades for raising a son with the SPIRITUAL AUTONOMY to write such a book. It is filled with heart and a loving humanity. A beautiful book and one of maybe 5 or 6 in my collection that I will own 2 copies of: one to refer back to and one to loan to my friends who also have sons and want to understand more about this singularly unique and profound relationship.

You could have knocked me over with a feather at the intensity of my feelings when my son was born. The oldest of seven siblings, I had never had such feelings for my brothers. I had been much closer to my sisters. My own firstborn was a daughter, and I love her dearly. But there was something about the way my son seemed to adore me that creeped into my heart and made him so very, very special, in spite of my "feminism" and my need to rage, rage against the Patriarchy. In fact, it was the Patriarchy itself that put him most at risk, and one I did not want him to become a part of, if I could help it.

Nor did I want to become the kind of mother who emasculated her son. His father was out of the picture, for our own safety. I did not want him to grow up like so many of the men I saw around me. I wanted him to discover and unfold whoever he really was, and I wanted him to be happy with that.

Now, he is 24 years old, and we are so close it scares us sometimes. I wonder if I was wrong, and he assures me that though it was difficult, he's sure that I was right. He can make me laugh with his magnificent insight into my soul, he sees things about me that no one else can see ... and sometimes, I swear he doesn't see me at all, even though he's sure he does. And then there is that terrible awkwardness when we push each other away because neither one of us wants to suffocate the other...

Such is the beauty of this book. Written from the point of view of a loving and devoted son, I now have a much clearer sense of the cautious territory in which I am privileged to tread. Written like the true love story that it is, Weinstock puts words together so beautifully (with the help of his mom ;-) that I no longer feel like I am walking blindly into a mine field. I understand the rhyme and reason of this madness that pulls us together while it keeps us apart, and I have a clearer sense of what to expect. I may not agree with everything the man says about the inevitable definition of what it means to be a man, but I can respect it, because if I cannot respect the man's point of view, I have no business mothering a son at all. It's been a tightrope walk from the beginning. Thanks to the awesome gift of this author, I am no longer walking on eggs.

I wish I'd read this book 30 years ago when it came out. It's still as relevant today as it was then--and in many ways just as revolutionary. I'm not black, but it applies to anyone who does not run with the crowd and has a strong desire to look at things honestly in spite of the personal discomfort involved. Things need to change in the US--we need to see ourselves as in this thing together(life, the "American experiment"),and this book drives that home.

If you are looking for some consiousness raising, inspiring, and honest words - then this is the book that will bring that to you.I highly recommend it.

Audre Lorde is a black woman, a feminist, a lesbian, mother of two children, daughter of Grenadian immigrants, and a cancer survivor-yet none of those descriptives paints the complete picture of who she is, or how her words will undoubtedly transform all of those who read them. "Sister Outsider" is a collection of writings-including reprinted magazine articles and speeches- that spans 15 years and includes the famous riposte to Mary Daly after Lorde read "Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism" and the oft-quoted article "Poetry Is Not a Luxury". Those who ponder the difference between eroticism and pornography will find the distinction elucidated in the piece "Uses of the Erotic". In the selection "Grenada Revisited: An Interim Report" the author meticulously details the U.S governments' affinity for imperialism, propaganda, and hypocrisy as exemplified by the invasion of the tiny island nation of Grenada. Readers will find the obvious parallels between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Grenada in 1983 unsettling, especially in light of the fact that this book was published in 1984. This collection is imbued with Lorde's personal experiences yet you will feel as if she is speaking directly from a place within yourself that has longed to find words of expression that until reading this book remained unspoken. When Audre Lorde writes of racism, sexism, and imperialism she is truly writing for everyone. This book is an excellent choice for someone seeking an introduction to Lorde.

No poems this time around, folks: prose that gets under your skin and into your head. The late, great Audre Lorde, known primarily for her poetry over the years, wrote what is one of the most compelling books on sociology, sexuality, racism and the nature of human character and existence in the last 20 years. Her charges are damning, but dashed with more than a spoonful of hope when appropriate, and it is impossible to walk away from this book unchanged.

No New Age-isms, no agendas...just common-sense reactions to everyday experiences told in a way that not only everyone can understand, but in a way everyone SHOULD understand.

"I have come to work on you like a drug or a chisel" wrote the late Audre Lorde. Her passing created a hollow space in my soul that is now full again, thanks to Audre Lorde. Despite the fact that 'Sister Outsider' is assigned in virtually every women's studies and gender studies 101, do not think it is dry, ultimately a mere 'academic' book. Audre Lorde lived in and for a radical poetics and a radical pedagogy. If you have not discovered her work yet, please get a hold of a copy. It might save your life the way it saved mine, and I am white, male and straight, with a fierce hatred of white supremacy, patriarchy, and homophobia. But never mind my repeating a mantra you have heard, simply read this book as soon as possible.

I bought this book to send to a teacher in Meghalaya, India who is taking a graduate degree in Sociology and it was a text in his own classes. He was thrilled to receive it because the standard of his work is raised according to the textbooks from his own reading list he is able to obtain.
I cannot review the book (as I didn't read it), but repeat his appreciation and his promise to use it to serve his community.

The only thing more amazing than the fact that Mills wrote this book almost 50 years ago is the fact that he was able to get his provocative cultural critique published in America. For starters, he is one of the earliest scholars to use the term and concept "postmodern"--way back in 1959 (for convenience, 1989 is a popular transition date these days). He attacks American scholars in the "social sciences" (or "social studies" as he preferred) for giving in to division of labor and other specialization trends in order to do "trivial" rather than "important" work. Both sociologists and historians still shy away from "theory" under the cover of "abstracted empiricisms." Mill calls their bluffs by pointing out that the very selection of data and avoidance of "theory" is itself loaded with uncritical theoretical assumptions most of which are in bland conformity with the "bureacratic ethos" in which such scholars operate. None of this has changed much in America. (Many independent thinkers, like George Santayana complained that they just could not think within the homogenizing ethos of America.) In working on a thesis in history at a major university,for example, I needed some help with formulating a theoretical methodology for my research--not only could no one in a very large history department handle it but when I went to the sociology department, only one professor knew anything about theoretical sociology (he was an import from Eastern Europe, home of some of really fine social theorists--like Bauman, Zizek, Sloterdijk, and Mestrovic among others)and he complained that the demands are all for "practical" studies and noone cares about theory. Mills says that when scholars present their historical research without placing it within a larger sequence of events or "theory" that gives it meaning and importance, they "entertain" and can even do really fine data collection sometimes but they are not "writing" history. Mills stresses how essential it is to have a clearly formulated critical theory of your own times (postmodern times, he calls it)that informs your selection of subjects and how you approach them. My own approach is to search for seams of difference between the modern and the ancient (my area)--so for example, modern rationalist trends denigrated emotions and one of the most denigrated is "pity"--it means the same thing as "shame" now and noone wants it. Strange, then when I read ancient Greek and Roman accounts of kings, heroes and warriors all being moved by pity. So much so that pity was included (even expected, which is one thing that got Socrates in trouble) in the determination of guilt/innocence phase of trials (not just in the sentencing phase where moderns confine it). Having a critical theory of modernity helped me select that subject to study. Moreover, that very critical theory not only keeps me from "reading" modern assumptions about emotions and much else "into" the ancient material but also it helps bring "important" insights and challenges to those very assumptions themselves. With a well-thought out critical theory, good history writing is full of meaning and worth from the very first sentence of the book onward. Without such theory, one gets a thin coat of whitewashed "parallels" or "morals" largely at the end of the work--Mills would call this "trivial" stuff and he is correct. Mills' call for historians, sociologists, political theorists and so forth do "important" work that engages our imaginations to think about how it is we are actually living and how we might really do better is even more urgent now than it was a half century ago when he first wrote this.

Probably one of the most influential books in modern sociology, combining not only a wonderful characterisation of styles of sociology but also a commitment to interpreting the world and changing it.
His appendix "On Intellectual Craftmanship" is a chapter I have ALL my graduate students read every year, and would wish all social scientists did so!

A classic of sociological thought, and one of the best (if not the best) accounts on the purpose and tasks of sociological mindset. Sociological imagination (or perspective, if you will) as intersection of biography and history - pure and simple, yet succinctly incisive and elegantly descriptive. Still a very relevant, influential and timely text for each and all.

"It is my aim in this book to define the meaning of the social sciences for the cultural tasks of our time. I want to specify the kinds of effort that lie behind the development of the sociological imagination; to indicate its implications for political as well as for cultural life."

The first chapter of this book is "The Promise" and in it Mills takes his stand with the great tradition of the Enlightenment and the idea of liberation by learning. For Mills, the promise is that cultivation of the sociological imagination may enable people to place personal worries and concerns in the larger social and historical context, and thus to think more effectively about them.

Chapters on Grand Theory and Abstracted Empiricism show how the understanding of social processes is impeded by immersion in certain types of theory and in narrow-minded "nomal science". Other chapters explore the many and varied ways that the critical and probing "sociological imagination" can be subverted or frustrated. His description of the Machieavellian tactics employed by academics to sideline rivals is especially revealing (for example, have a potentially dangerous book reviewed by a junior member of a hostile faction). His comments on the function of professional associations and conferences are equally deadly.

The fatal flaw of the book is Mill's Marxism and lack of understanding of economics, exemplified by his dismissive reference to people who could not see the value of the New Deal. The author's theoretical and ideological stance is not explicitly articulated but was clearly in the rational and humanistic Marxist tradition. He yearned for a viable alternative to liberalism and Marxism as he saw them in the 1950s but he clearly did not perceive classical liberalism as a candidate that was worthy of mention. It seems that classical, non-socialist liberals were so thin on the ground during his lifetime that he did not see any need to engage with them. That is a major weakness and it prevented Mills, and this book, from reaching the full extent of insight and understanding that his scholarship, his integrity and his industry should have permitted.

The Appendix on Intellectual Craftmanship is worth reading every few years to keep focussed for effective reading, thinking and writing. The remainder of this review consists of extracts from the appendix to convey some of its flavour.

"It is best to begin, I think, by reminding you, the beginning student, that the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have chosen to join do not split their work from their lives.They seem to take both too seriously to allow such dissociation, and they want to use each for the enrichment of the other."

"You must set up a file, which is, I suppose, a sociologist's way of saying: keep a journal...In such a file as I am going to describe, there is joined personal experience and professional activities, studies under way and studies planned..."

"One of the very worst things that happens to social scientists is that they feel the need to write of their 'plans' on only one occasion: when they are going to ask for money for a specific piece of research or 'a project'. It is as a request for funds that most 'planning' is done, or at least written carefully about. However standard the practice, I think this very bad: it is bound in some degree to be salesmanship, and, given prevailing expectations, very likely to result in painstaking pretensions; the project is lilely to be presented', rounded out in some arbitrary manner long before it ought to be; it is often a contrived thing, aimed at getting the money for ulterior purposes, however valuable, as well as for the research presented."

"Any working social scientist who is well on his way ought at all times to have so many plans, that is to say ideas, that the question is always, which of them am I, ought I, to work on next. And he should keep a special file for his master agenda, which he writes and rewrites just for himself and perhaps for discussion with friends. From time to time he ought to review this very carefully and purposefully, and sometimes too, when he is relaxed."

"Any such procedure is one of the indispensable means by which your intellectual enterprise is kept oriented and under control...In [a vigorous and free intellectual community]...there would be interludes of discussion among individuals about future work. Three kinds of interludes - on problems, methods, theory - ought to come out of the work of social scientists and lead into it again: they should be shaped by work-in-progress and to some extend guide their work. It is for such interludes that a professional association finds its intellectual reason for being."

An amazing exploration of fairy tales, what they mean and how they affect us. I learned so much. If you love fairy tales, grab this book and don't put it down.

As we saw in the movie, 'The Brothers Grimm, fairy tales are not about sweetness and light but scary things and the dark side of humanity. In 1850, the brother were still alive in Vienna where children were abandoned on a steady basis. Many of the sad stories were about motherless girls who suffer heartache for lact of female guidance, like Madam Bovary, Mary Lennox in 'The Secret Garden,' and Hester Prynne.

There is prevalent in many fairytales the nightmare projection of female fears: an old woman living alone, humpbacked. The myth of Demeter and Persephone was about the final stage of a woman's life, a spirit in old age. This book is about women, the metamorphoses at each stage of a woman's life, the changes in biology which propel woman from one level of being to another. The last stage (old) restores her to the first (young).

There are personal stories in this book about 'Sleeping Beauties' who fell asleep in puberty and awoke ten years later to find themselves married to the wrong man. That also happens in real life. After I married an older man, I lost a whole decade, the '60s.

This books shows the magic of fairtales. It is a song of praise for life itself. Myths are falsehoods, complete lies. There are hidden meanings in beloved stories and what they reveal. 'The Seal Wife' had a demanding husband and a demeaning life. Wisdom learned from experience in each of the phases women grow through is shown in some of the stories. In others, it is the opposite. There is no wisdom. Choices, demands, and changes a woman must face each day shows recognizable truths about women's lives.

Some people haven't the ability to articulate for themselves. In 'The Ash Girl' ('Cinderella') she has the help of turtledoves and pigeons as two guardian doves protect her from the nasty step-sisters. The pigeons point out the way things are not going well, and the cook chases a goose to prepare for supper. The pigeons sleep in the gutter as they are now allowed to do their mess on the buildings to corrode the fancy ornamental dogwoods, according to GSA. Whitt even told me that the excrement from one pigeon, if you touch it and rub your eye, will cause blindness. How low can you go!?

Your favorite fairy tale conveys a significant something about you, your soul, and your experiences in life. It shows the public roles each woman must face in her life. Mine was 'Little Red Riding Hood' as she was concerned about her grandmother enough to follow a scary trail where she encounters a wolf. Rape is subjecting herself to the man's control. But innocent Little Red Riding Hood picks flowers on the primrose path where the starveling wolf is hiding. Children, especially girls, should never talk to strangers. The conclusion is that the wolf (guess that's why a man sometimes is called a wolf on the make) satisfies both of his appetites: gobbling up little girls and getting them into bed. The brothers Grimm movie showed the wolf to turn into a tall werewolf (actually the father of the girl) who swallows her whole. It's strange that the girl screamed for her father rather than her mother, showing the power of the male, but hoped to see her mother again. So much for fairy tales.

A hawk tore off her cloak. In Knox, falcons are roaming the downtown skies in search of pigeons and other birds they can consume. When they finish them off, I guess they will go after human babies and small persons like myself. All courtesy of GSA. The women in fairy tales wouldn't have the ending any other way, as they waited too long for what they got. Maybe, the old adage is true, you get what you deserve. And, the awful truth of the matter is, fairytales are written for children.

I didn't want the book to end! I felt like I was in therapy. Verey cathartic.

I am on page 316 and don't want it to end. I have written reference notes to be able to get back to those pages I want to read over and over. Born in 1940 in midwest farm country, most of my teen age years was spent wishing I would have been born a boy; I saw a man's world out there. Now as mother, and grandmother I am loving myself as crone, savoring every word Joan Gould has written on her pages in Part Three, my life is as she writes. Learning about the sexual meaning of the shoe from the Cinderella pages and The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe nursery rhyme was so evident when I was watching the film Spanglish by James L. Brooks. The young wife is getting ready to leave the house to have an affair, and the camera is focused on her changing to a new pair of shoes as her mother (obviously a crone) focuses on her feet. What an aha moment for me. Gould adds very personal thoughts from her life between her interpretations of the stories. From the fear of falling down the stairs as we live alone, wondering who would find us, to handling every item we have accumulated over our lifetime and visualizing where we got it and what memory goes with it and to knowing our adult children don't need us anymore. Our lives are records that were passed to us from our mothers and grandmothers and we pass these records on to our children. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell gave us the understanding of the collective consciousness and Joan Gould interpreted in depth what spinning straw into gold really means for us females. What a great read. Thank You Joan Gould

For the record, my answer to Joan Gould's first question--"What's your favorite fairy tale?"--is "Beauty and the Beast".

This question begins a beautiful, lyrical exploration of many fairy tales, both famous and obscure, and how they relate to the different stages of women's lives. In the Sleeping Beauty chapter, for example, she delves into the psyche of a young woman just awakening into sexuality; for Beauty and the Beast she explores a woman's experience with courtship and the beginning of marriage, and for the tale of Demeter she talks about being an older woman, watching one's child choose her own path. These are just a few examples. For every tale Gould draws parallels to other, more modern novels and movies that contain fairy-tale archetypes, like Jane Eyre, Pretty Woman, The Story of O, Harry Potter, and Wuthering Heights. I saw myself reflected over and over in these pages, both in the chapter that best fit my current circumstances and in all those that preceded it. I concur with the reviewer who says she wished she'd had this book when she was 18. It just "clicks" so well with things I'd experienced but not known how to name, and ties them in with the stories I've always loved, revealing to me just why those stories never lose their resonance with me.

My only quibble is that Gould focuses more on the biological aspects of womanhood--menstruation, sex, childbirth, menopause--than on other sorts of choices women make, like career and creativity. She does mention these things, but they are not given as much emphasis.

The author notes that as a ten year old in Detroit he loved the program SEA HUNT. Scuba diving led to a journey to uncover a slave ship's past. The book opens with a timeline of events significant to the operation of the HENRIETTA MARIE.

Mel Fisher is probably the most well known treasure hunter in the world. Moe Molinar, a successful black treasure hunter, found the shackles. Additional diving in 1973 produced more rusted shackles. They were stored in a warehouse in Key West. The first artifact identifying the wreck was a bell inscribed HENRIETTA MARIE, 1699. This was discovered by David Moore, an archeologist, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The author conducted research at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. David Moore and the author were haunted by the one hundred shackles found in the wreck of the HENRIETTA MARIE. Their presence showed without a doubt the ship's purpose. The author had been taught by his mother to use the story of slavery for inspiration.

On its second slave voyage, and what proved to be its last, two hundred fifty Africans began the trip. Landfall after the Middle Passage was a location in Jamaica, Port Royal, where the African people were sold for three thousand one hundred forty four pounds. In the Florida straits the HENRIETTA MARIE was blindsided by strong winds. The ship sank thirty seven miles west of Key West.

In Jamaica Michael Cottman, the author, may have met descendants of the people transported on the HENRIETTA MARIE. They had the same surname as a family of Jamaican plantation owners and English manufacturers of the cannon installed on the HENRIETTA MARIE. The meeting in Jamaica occurred after four years of research.

In 1992 Michael Cottman attended his first national conference of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. It was the organization's second national meeting. Safe diving practice means sticking to a buddy system. The association of black divers grew out of the need to obtain partners to follow the sport of scuba diving.

The dive to the HENRIETTA MARIE was undertaken in May, 1993. It was quite an accomplishment to find the wreck after an absence of nine years; sand shifts, currents move and displace objects. Visibility underwater is frequently poor. Having located the wreck of the slave ship the HENRIETTA MARIE on New Ground Reef, the divers paid tribute to those ancestors and others who lost their lives during the Middle Passage. The dive was a sort of pilgrimage.

In 1996 Cottman went to Dakar, to Goree Island. Historians believe the HENRIETTA MARIE once sailed along the West Coast of Africa. In 1996 since there were severe problems in Nigeria, Cottman elected to travel to Senegal. Michael Cottman and his guide went to a structure named the House of Slaves. Goree Island was a place of mass suffering and tormented souls.

The book is moving. The terrible wound inflicted, slavery, needs to be discussed in this country. There is a Holocaust Museum memorializing a European event. No museum memorializes the peculiar institution.

I have always wanted to visit the Motherland, but never more than after reading Michael Cottman's "Spirit Dive." I thoroughly enjoyed his rich descriptions of the people and places he encountered there on his quest, especially his visit to the Door of No Return on Goree Island and scuba diving the clear water off the west African coast. I enjoyed the passages about scuba diving--the kinship between the black divers, the adventures of the underwater treasure hunters, Cottman's encounters with playful schools of fish and no-so-playful sharks. I also found impressive the detail the book included of the workings of the slave trade from a business perspective--the way the enslavers were so single-minded in their greed that they completely disregarded the value of black life. I will never forget the image of the tiny shackles imprisoning babies--it was disturbing but richly described. I found it difficult to put "Spirit Dive" down and have shared it with my young son, nephews, nieces and several friends. So many of the stories about slavery and the struggle of our forebearers are written in a disconnected way. This book was a warm and personal account of a journalist and father's search for truth about his heritage.

The account of the discovery of this slave ship and the painstaking research that went into telling us its history is inspiring. Cottman writes it in a spiritually uplifting and journalistically compelling manner. Every American should read it and share it with every child they know.

It's not often that a book successfully makes the link between contemporary man and the past. Spirit Dive by Michael H. Cottman is a notable exception.

Cottman's journey back through time to research the history of a slave ship is an eye-opening work, rich with details about the operation of the slave trade, the risks and the lucrative payoffs for the slavers, which helps to explain why it became a major industry.

It's also a story of how contemporary men -- black and white -- came together to document an accurate history of an event that was a perfect example of scenes that were played out repeatedly as slave ships traversed the Atlantic.

It was a perfect circle in many ways. Slavery drove white and black apart over an uncommon evil, but hundreds of years later, the search for the slave ship brought black and white together for a common good.

I really enjoyed reading Spirit Dive. I found it very interesting, inspiring and informative. It was an excellent way to learn about slavery without feeling depressed. I liked the idea of weaving one man's personal experience with the history of one slave ship. The book made me laugh and cry. But it gave me a new way of thinking regarding the issue of slavery - African Americans survived slavery and continue to be a strong race of people.

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" remains one of the most important books written about post-Reconstruction Southern America. In the space of very few pages, Woodward brings to us the proposal that the assumptions we have all been making about Jim Crow laws and the development of segregation were all wrong from the very beginning. We are taught the lie from grade school forward that "that's just the way it always has been in the South." Not so, according to Woodward.

We learn very quickly when reading this book that not only were there three or four decades following the Civil War wherein there was virtually no major segregation in the South - but the conditions with regards to segregation and equal rights in the South were actually better than in the North for several decades as well.

The lies of a racist South and a desperate North (desperate to make a moral issue of something that they too were guilty of in trying to keep blacks from having equal rights) somehow stuck in the Southern psyche, and all along we've been thinking that people were racist because "that's all they knew." Woodward blows this theory out of the water, and exposes the truth about the post-Reconstruction South.

Not only was segregation not popular in the South in much of the late 19th Century, but blacks voted often. There was very good participation - enough to put a lot of blacks and Republicans in public office in the South - for a time. It was not until the 1870s that a gradual change began in the South. That change brought about the Jim Crow laws - changes that were unwelcome to all of humanity. Booker T. Washington believed that the South could not advance and still leave the blacks behind: Woodward came about a few decades later and showed us all just how right Washington really was.

C. Vann Woodward's "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" was the first major effort to analyze the segregation system in the American South. Appearing in 1955, the author's treatment of this institution refuted contemporary statements made by several public figures who argued that racial separation was an ancient phenomenon that would last indefinitely. Not so, argued Woodward, as he proceeded to prove that the South experienced a time after the Civil War when the two races often intermingled without widespread hostility on the part of southern whites. Woodward's book expresses the heartfelt belief that since segregation was a recent development, the possibility existed for the South to reject its separatist doctrine and eventually embrace integrationist principles. The first chapters deal with the period during and after Reconstruction, what Woodward refers to as the First Reconstruction, when the South grudgingly accepted conditions forced upon it by the North. The author argues that blacks in southern urban areas often lived side by side with white citizens, as well as rode in the same streetcars and dined in many of the same restaurants. There were exceptions to these incidents, but overall monolithic, legalized segregation measures simply did not exist.

One of the reasons for this lack of overarching segregation policies concerned southern politics in the post-Civil War South. The author outlines three political philosophies during the 1880s and 1890s that worked to capitalize upon black support. Southern liberalism went nowhere with its arguments that all citizens must have equal rights in all social spheres. Conservative southerners took a position between liberals and radical racists, arguing that in every society there existed superior and inferior elements. Obviously, conservatives claimed, blacks occupied an inferior position to whites. This did not mean that blacks should be treated harshly or denied privileges. The conservatives were paternalists and used the goodwill they earned from blacks to capture elective offices from the Redeemers. The conservative political philosophy collapsed when widespread corruption swept its proponents from office. The Populists, the last southern political structure Woodward discusses, also attempted an alliance with blacks. The movement was short lived, and with external pressures of the 1880s and 1890s such as economic depression and northern indifference to blacks, southerners blamed blacks for their social ills. Moreover, southern politicians weary of the years of malicious infighting decided to seek a measure of unification, and they achieved this fusion by blaming black voters for economic and political discord. It is at this time, writes the author, when segregation laws blossomed across the South.

The second section of the book deals with the emergence and consequences of what Woodward calls the Second Reconstruction. Starting during the Second World War and emerging fully during the 1950s and 1960s, this era of race relations saw increasing waves of attacks directed against Jim Crow in the South. The first maneuvers came from the White House, with Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman launching several initiatives aimed at integrating defense jobs and the armed services. The second wave came with a series of Supreme Court actions seeking to integrate the school systems. With action came reaction as the segregationists finally launched an offensive against Brown vs. The Board of Education when lower court judges in the South upheld the higher court's ruling. The resulting attempts to undercut the judgment by southern state governments coupled with periodic outbreaks of violence led to even more civil rights initiatives from the federal government. Kennedy proposed and Johnson pushed through Congress measures aimed at accelerating integration and restoring the black vote in the South. The Second Reconstruction ended after the riots of the 1960s in northern cities caused civil rights organizations to shift from a role of non-violence to militant black nationalism. Woodward's book concludes on a rather pessimistic note when he observes that black-white relations seem to be reverting to a new form of racial separation.

It is difficult to find problems with "The Strange Career of Jim Crow." The book was the first work to sum up the civil rights movement in the United States. Moreover, the author wrote a book broad enough to give historians plenty of material for further research, something scholars always appreciate. Even the form of the book, with its lack of footnotes and energetic style, is more of a plus than a minus. By writing a friendly, accessible treatment of the issue, Woodward managed to reach beyond the walls of academia and find a wide public audience. It is not difficult to imagine that many of the young people registering black voters or going on freedom rides could cite this book as a major influence in their decision to make a stand against segregation. As the afterword shows, even Martin Luther King, Jr read and quoted Woodward on occasion. Finally, the fact that this book has never gone out of print underscores its seminal influence on the country at large.

No book is immune to criticism, however. Woodward often fails to incorporate into his narrative what actions blacks took in response to segregation. This critique is not always valid: the author does cite a black newspaperman who toured the South in the late 1800s, along with several members of the Black Panther Party. But in several places the book needs some description of black agency, especially the chapter concerning southern politics. Woodward presents the black population in the 1880s and 1890s as a passive force palmed off from one white political faction to another. Are we to assume that black voters simply bowed their heads and acted the role of dupes to savvy white politicians? Perhaps many did due to a lack of education and a lingering submissiveness from the days of slavery, but there were people who attempted to participate in the system in order to earn their rights.

The most fascinating thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how truly complex the issue of race is in America. Since emancipation, there has always been a struggle between and among whites and blacks to figure out how to understand each other and themselves, and how to occupy the same place. This history is indeed strange, and to have an idea of why race is still such an issue today, it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.

Woodward's book cautions us against taking simplified views that the South was always racist, and the North was not, and he begins by describing various accounts of life in the South right after the Civil War. According to Woodward, the venomous prejudice that sustained the Jim Crow laws decades later wasn't foreseeable at that time. Much of his explanation of the racist sentiment that so desired segregation is framed in the context of politics, and he tries to analyze many of the events he discusses in terms of political and economic pressures, as well as in terms of reactions to preceding actions.

If the Civil War is to be seen as a war for racial equality (and there are many other ways of seeing it), then it can easily be argued that it continues to this day. It is often most comforting to think of the wiping out of Native Americans, and then the enslavement of Africans as hideous scars that America carries in the past, while believing that America today is a different, tolerant place. But Jim Crow laws were a product of the twentieth century, and the racial tensions still exist in a very real way. Woodward's book, first published in 1955, and last revised in 1974, is still immensely relevant today, and reading it can only enhance your sense of American history.

I have the 1957 edition of the book, and so can't comment on the new chapter.
This is a fascinating book which should be read by anyone interested in racial issues, US history, or US politics.
The major surprise to me is Woodward's description, complete with many contemporary quotes, of a time in the late 1800's post-Reconstruction South where African Americans were treated largely equally with regard to public accomodations and voting. Segregation, then, was considered to be a "lower-class white attitude."
It wasn't until approximately 1900 that a very segregationist attitude came about in the South, largely as the result of the interplay of Republican, Democratic, and Progressive politics.
This is course gives the lie to assertion through much of the 1900's that de jure racial segregation was a time-honored part of Southern life, and there was no possible alternative.
Woodward then goes on to describe the depths to which Jim Crow legislation sank, describing the effect of African American migration within the country, World War II, how our segregationist policies hurt the US image abroad, and on to the beginnings of the civil rights movement, ending shortly after _Brown v. Board of Education_, well before the major civil rights events and legislation.
Fairly quick read, and a great book!

C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow is not only a fine introduction to its topic -- the segregationist period in the South -- but one of the most significant and influential books of its time.

Originally published in 1955 (by Oxford University Press), Professor Woodward's tome kicked off the Civil Rights era with a bang, debunking the ludicrous myth (and mantra among segregationists) that separation of the races had always existed in Southern life, and generally dissecting an ugly monstrosity which had come to be accepted simply as "the way things are." Ten years later, in a second revision which came just as the legal battle against segregation was almost won, Woodward added a wealth of information which helped finish the job of winning the people's hearts and minds: in the words of Robert Penn Warren, Woodward's work was "a witty, learned, and unsettling book. The depth of the unsettling becomes more obvious day by day; which is a way of saying that it is a book of permanent significance." And ten years later still, in this -- the third and final revision -- Woodward capped off the era with an examination of the more violent, less integrationist movements which arose after Watts, with leaders like Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale.

Woodward is an equal-opportunity myth-exploder. On the one hand, he demonstrates at great length that segregation was not a mere expression of racism, but in fact a complex and corrupt outworking of many political and economic interests in the impoverished, post-Reconstruction South. On the other hand, he also shows conclusively that segregation took time to develop: it was not, as its supporters claimed, the way things had always been, or even the way things had come to be immediately following the war, but had actually arisen thirty and even forty years later, with the removal of Northern troops, the disintegration of Republican influence, a national "taking up of the white man's burden" with regard to "colored" peoples abroad, and increasing economic distress which allowed successive Populists and Democrats to consolidate power by limiting white exposure to the threat of competing (and competitive) blacks. These things, combined with a series of Supreme Court rulings sanctioning segregation, produced a wicked stew which more modern readers found extremely unpalatable upon Woodward's closer examination.

Beyond these things, Woodward's treatment of the Jim Crow era itself, as well its demise, were and are excellent, and were especially provocative at the time of their writing. Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954, the book is not annotated, and even in a third edition remains quite brief; yet it is thorough and engaging, and suffers only a bit for these points. In all, it remains not only an excellent history -- produced by one of America's finest scholars -- but also a key source document of its era, and is a very good read as well. It continues to be vital to a proper understanding of the South, as well as the whole misbegotten concept of "separate but equal."

John Lewis Gaddis is probably the foremost historian of the Cold War.

Strategies of Containment provides a complete basic overview of the subject of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. It is specifically a history of the U.S.'s containment policy toward the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc and its evolution over time.

It begins with U.S. diplomat George Kennan's famous memomorandum or "long telegram" from the Soviet Union which provided the guide for interpreting the intentions of the Soviet that was used by the State Department and the Executive Branch in formulating U.S. foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc nations - especially during the early stages of the Cold War. If a U.S. foreign service officer or other U.S. official wanted to understand the Soviet Union's foreign policy or history and the considerations which would impact the Soviet leadership's behavior - he or she was directed to read it.

The initial assessment by Kennan and his subsequent use of the term "containment" in a Foreign Affairs magazine for the first time, was controversial and volumes have been written on what he meant.

His approach basically was to advise against a wholesale reordering of the world order based on U.S. values which would cause consternation in the Soviet leadership and trigger Soviet defensive diplomatic (and potentially more drastic measures) in opposing the new international framework.

Kennan wanted diversity in the international system, to allow the Soviet Union to participate within it, and not undermine or be alienated from it, and thus transformed by it over time. The history of the Soviet Union's participation in the UN and its institutions confirms his analysis.

Kennan initially argued for a particularist approach as opposed to a universalist approach. He also argued for strong point as opposed to wide-scale perimeter opposition to expanding Soviet spheres of influence.

Kennan's writings set the stage for an interpretation of Soviet behavior and intentions. He studied Soviet and Russian history and knew that the Soviet Union would seek to build buffer zones between it and any potential adversary. The Napolean invasion, Germany's invasion, etc. as well as the Crimean War, and the Russo-Japanes War of 1905, and the U.S. and European intervention in the Russian civil war, all shaped the Soviet leadership's thinking.

Kennan wanted to restore a balance of power at the interface between the East and West in the European theater as well as in Asia, but without contesting every Soviet move for influence along its borders and without alienating the Soviet Union from the new international order.

Truman subsequently instituted a policy review process that led to NSC-68 which expressly stated that the U.S. policy was to promote U.S. values of freedom and human dignity. Containment then moved into the shape of a perimeter-type defensive strategy in which Soviet moves on its periphery for political and military influence was to be contested.

The book then describes U.S. national security policy and how U.S. containment evolved over time into Eisenhower's "New Look" policy in which no further Soviet expansion of its power into other nations was to be uncontested and then later into "flexible response" under Kennedy and Johnson and then detente under Kissinger.

The book is an excellent introduction to the Cold War, the U.S. policy of containment and its evolution.

This book show us the strategies of Containment in the Cold War Era; an important beginning had been made with the Truman Doctrine and the Containment thesis, which established a defensive position holding back Soviet expansionism.
In 1947 the US had an exclusive monopoly on the ultimate weapon, the atomic weapon, and this monopoly should be used -the bomb "makes politically possible....the domination of the world by a single sufficiently large state". The architect of containment was George Frost Kennan, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War.
He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers. The NSC-68, the most important of all Cold War documents, was "a plan of military rearment and development is at present going forward". It's the central document of the Cold War that transformed containment into a global crusade. Approved by Harry Truman in April 1950, it still lacked Congressional funding and support, and Truman was too weak a president to push it throught in the absence of a major crisis.
It would have been interesting if the author of the book had also used an approach from the Soviet point of view, as well as one in the West and the United States. In addition, Henry Kissinger has been widely studied and detailed, but it seems that is not mentioned in the book the figure of the first Secretary of State of the Nixon presidency, William Rodgers.

Strategies of Containment, by John Lewis Gaddis, is a description of the evolving strategy of containment that was the basis of US policy toward the Soviet Union from 1946 through 1989. Gaddis traces the concept of containment from its inception by George F. Kennan through the modifications applied by five administrations and assesses the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of each version. This book is more than another chronology of the cold war; it provides deep insights into strategic thinking and is essential reading for any serious student of the cold war. Here's a brief summary:

Kennan's Original Doctrine of Containment

* Identify and defend vital interests based on the centers of industrial strength - Britain, Western Europe, Japan -don't try to defend the entire world.
* Use all instruments of power: economic, diplomatic, political, and cultural power as well as military power. Rebuilding the economic vitality of the above areas is a high priority.
* Seek to divide the communist world. Our primary adversary is the Soviet Union. Other communist countries, if not actively supporting Soviet policy, may be led to serve as quasi-allies by depriving the Soviets of their support.
* General war with the Soviets is unlikely, so we can afford to take risks. We can limit our defense spending and not try to defend the world. A point defense of our vital interests is probably adequate.
* Define threats in light of US vital interests, not in terms of Soviet capabilities

Truman and NSC-68

* The policies articulated in NSC-68 moved toward a perimeter defense covering the entire world rather than a point defense of vital interests.
* Primary emphasis was switched to military power and to the entire spectrum of war
* US interests were redefined in response to perceived threats (anything that is threatened must be an interest).
* US strategy became based on a symmetric response to threats - responding in the same time, place, and with the same means as the adversary (e.g., the Korean War).

Eisenhower, Dulles, and the New Look

* Eisenhower's guiding philosophy was that defense is not just defeating the enemy - it is the preservation of our economic and political systems.
* Spending too much on defense could destroy these systems by leading to either inflation or the imposition of autocratic controls. He reduced the defense budget by 33% from Truman's last year and held it at about that level for eight years.
* Alliances relied on allies for ground forces with the US providing Air and Naval support.
* The nuclear threat became the cornerstone of deterrence across the spectrum of conflict - with goal of avoiding war - in belief that any war was all too likely to escalate to nuclear.
* Asymmetric response to threats - response need not be in same place or using same methods as Soviet threat
* Anti-colonial Conundrum: The communists are fomenting wars of national liberation while the US is trying to rebuild Europe (the colonial powers). If the US backs decolonization, it undermines the European allies it is trying to rebuild. If the US backs the colonial powers, it loses any chance of support from the colonies. The Soviets really put us in a no-win position on this issue.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Flexible Response

* Kennedy and Johnson return to NSC-68 reasoning by lowering threat of nuclear response and replaced it with flexible response, requiring a direct, symmetric response to threats - a respond in same time and place using the same means.
* These administrations applied a circular logic: Threats create interests which demand responses which require capabilities even where no interest previously had been identified. This was articulated in the "bear any burden, pay any price" rhetoric.
* This strategy necessitated greater reliance on military response versus economic, political, etc which increased demands on the defense budget.
* Kennedy abandoned Eisenhower's commitment to a balanced budget and relied on Keynesian fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. Spending was predicated on the potential of the economy rather than its actual performance. Lack of budgetary constraints led to inability to prioritize, to distinguish the essential from the peripheral, the feasible from the infeasible which encouraged more "bear any burden, pay and price' reasoning because it wasn't real money.
* Flexible response led to graduated escalation in Viet Nam which became "never enough to defeat the enemy, just enough to prolong the war". Stakes were repeatedly raised to prevent the humiliation of a defeat but this only made the eventual defeat more humiliating.
* Calibrated escalation yielded the initiative to the enemy - allowed him to define the terms of conflict. Deterrence can be made effective only if the adversary can be made to doubt that he can retain control of the situation. Taking the nuclear option away encouraged adversaries to call our bluff.

Nixon, Kissinger and Détente

* Nixon and Kissinger moved the US government from a bi-polar to a multi-polar world view by positing the existence of five significant power centers: US, USSR, Western Europe, China, and Japan. They recognized that these five power centers were far from equal. Only the US and USSR were superpowers able to exert substantial influence via military, economic, political, or diplomatic means. This strategy was a return to the balance of power envisioned by Kennan.
* In the military arena, they focused on sufficiency rather than superiority over the Soviet Union and sought to persuade Brezhnev that a similar policy would be in his country's best interest as well. Sufficiency won the logical argument over superiority because the latter invariably provoked the other side into matching every military advance, producing and endless and unwinnable arms race.
* Conceptually, Kissinger and Nixon changed the country's strategic definition of US interests and threats to those interests. For most of the interval between Kennan and Nixon-Kissinger, the US strategic view had started with the USSR, its capabilities and intentions, then identified the impact these capabilities could have. These impacts became viewed as threats and US interests were defined as anything thus threatened. Nixon and Kissinger reversed the logical flow, much as Kennan did, starting with the identification of US interests, independent of any adversary. They then identified as an adversary an entity with capability and intent to harm these interests.
* Again returning to Kennan's approach, Nixon-Kissinger sought to use negotiations to influence Soviet behavior. They took a long-term approach to negotiations, discarding the tendency of previous administrations from Roosevelt on to use negotiations and agreements with the Soviets for domestic political purposes. They discarded the approach of seeking agreements on specific areas where they could be reached and adopted a strategy of linkage - maintaining that Soviet unwillingness to negotiate in good faith on military and strategic issues of importance to the US would result in US refusal to accommodate Soviet desires for economic and trade relations and recognition of the post war division of Europe.
* The next step in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy was to seek an accommodation with China to reduce US-Chinese tensions and, thereby, free China to take a more assertive stance in its own dealings with the USSR. This was a return to Kennan's goal of dividing communism and redefined our prime enemy as the Soviet Union

Reagan

Reagan continued the return to Kennan's original concept of containment:
* Adopt an asymmetric strategy - don't let the enemy determine the time, place, and terms of conflict
* Apply economic, political, diplomatic, and moral power more than military power. A prime example was his Berlin speech: "Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down this wall!" He put the Soviets in the same kind of no-win position that they had inflicted on Eisenhower over colonialism in the 1950s by setting the Eastern Europeans at odds with the Kremlin.
* He recognized that Soviet system was bankrupt financially, intellectually, morally and turned up the pressure until it collapsed.
* Reagan was also lucky. Kennan had hoped to transform the Soviet Union with the help of a new generation of Russian leaders. Gorbachev turned out to be the leader Kennan had hoped for. He and Reagan together ended the cold war and transformed the Soviet Union from a totalitarian system to one that might have evolved into a more liberal one had the 1991 coup d'état not destroyed it first.

Now in a revised edition, Strategies Of Containment: A Critical Appraisal Of American National Security Policy During The Cold War is a revised and expanded edition of Bancroft Prize winner and Cold War expert John Lewis Gaddis' classic on understanding the history of containment as a policy, its role in bringing the Cold War to an end, and its possible value or pitfalls in the future. Originally published during the Regan presidency when the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Strategies Of Containment includes a greatly expanded chapter on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the completion of containment, as well as a new epilogue. A welcome scrutiny of history with the advantage of post-Cold War hindsight.

This book is still useful even 20 years after publication. Gaddis view US policy toward the USSR as a pendulum that swings between"symmetrical" and "asymmetrical" approaches. The periods are split into: Kennan's original containment, NSC-68, Eisenhower's "New Look", JFK and Nixon's détente. There is a coda covering Carter, but it is less helpful.

The symmetrical approach confronts the USSR wherever the USSR chooses to probe. In this approach, wherever the Soviets seek to advance is, by their very actions, a US interest. In contrast, the asymmetrical view seeks to identify those areas that are inherently vital US interests and protect those.

The first seeks to build a fence (containment) around the Soviets. The second approach builds its fences around US interests and lets the USSR do what it wants - within reason - elsewhere. Heck, why let them do that? The answer is "means." Gaddis stresses the point that US means are not unlimited. The US must balance means and ends and this leads to the pendulum swings.

The reasons I do not give the book the last star are: It does not cover the Carter-Reagan-Bush era and Smith over draws the magnitude of the swings. The book makes it sound like there were tremendous differences between the various administrations and does not pay enough attention to the essential consistency of US Cold War strategy. Smith acknowledges this in a retrospective on his own book available at the Hoover Institute web site.