University of Missouri Books

Let me say right up front that I was disappointed in this book. Maybe I am too stuck in my ways, but when I pick up a history like this I was looking for an well-organized book. I want each President with his own chapter, some details that are presented for each person i.e. year of terms, Vice President etc, and then a nice review of what took place while in office, the good and the bad. The book just did not provide this; the presidents were grouped into chapters on what seemed to be on a basis as to total average chapter page length not by political or situational similarities. The basic facts that I wanted were not there for every President, and if they were there you needed to hunt for them. And if you are going to give me pictures then at least give me a picture of every President covered in the book, what we got were pictures of a few Presidents, a few campaign adds or jokes, and unbelievably to me pictures of city political bosses.

The book was positive; I give the author that. When there were negative issues they were glossed over if even mentioned. I new based on the size of the book that it was not going to be an exhaustive history, but even this brief look at each President left me disappointed. Also I kept thinking that the author wanted to write a history of the Democratic party and the publisher wanted a history of the Democratic Presidents and what came out was a compromise that did not serve either cause very well. I would have much rather had a few more pages on FDR (then the 15 offered) and less about the Kansas City and Chicago political bosses and the third party candidates on some elections. I do not want to be all-negative, there were a number of interesting facts and he hit the high notes on each man. I was interested enough to finish the book. I am just going to have to keep looking for a better effort at this topic.

From the start one thing needs to be made very clear about this book. It is a nice read for a Democrat, especially a partisan Democrat like myself. My Republican friends on the other hand would, I'm afraid find very little interesting about this book. Simply put, this is a very one sided view of history. Democrats tend to be pictured in the best possible light from page one. This is not to say that Mr. Rutland has not done his homework for he has. I don't think he ever set out to write an impartial historical epic. What he seems to have intended is basicly a survey type textbook for Democrats. If that was his goal he has accomplished it. Someone looking for a quick political history of the United States told from the Democratic point of view will find it here.

The simple fact is that Mr. Rutland took upon himself a rather large task in writing a history of the Democratic party. To do this task justice one would have to turn out a work that would rival in length the volumes written by Shelby Foote on the Civil War. In fact, this subject would probably require even more volumes since the subject covers over two hundred years of history. As it is the book in its 241 pages is only able to deal in the most superficial way with its subject.

Still this book does a fair job of following America's oldest party from its roots as Jefferson looks to a nation of farmers to today's urban America. Along the way we see the Democrats changing to become the party of the common man and the underdog. We see the party begin to take its present form in 1896 as William Jennings Bryan and his populists take control of the convention. We see more change in 1912 with the nomination of the progressive Woodrow Wilson. Then in 1932 FDR comes along and the Democratic party is forever changed. Old Democratic issues like tariffs and free silver give way to civil rights and labor relations. The direction of the party continues on the course set by Roosevelt as Harry Truman takes over and then LBJ sets off an a path of sweeping social change that for good or bad forever changes the United States. Oddly, the book gives little credit for the present positions of the Democratic party to JFK.

There are also a few places in the book where Mr. Rutland's facts are wrong. For example he states that in the election of 1896 William McKinley took T. Roosevelt with him to Washington as his Vice President when in fact T.R. wasn't on the ticket until 1900. For the most part however his facts do seem straight and he covers the subject as well as could be expected in such a short book.

Overall, the book could have been more in depth and such a large subject should probably never have been undertaken. I remember in high school english I always tried to choose a very broad topic for any paper I had to write because I figured it would be easy to turn out twenty pages that way. My teacher always called me on my plan though and I had to narrow it down. Maybe Mr. Rutland needed a good high school english teacher to make him do the same here.

On the other hand it is hard to study American history without a study of the Democrats. The party of Jefferson has been here through most of our history. So while this book gives one a quick look at the history of one party it also for the most part does the same for American history. Its not a waste of time to read this book by any means but it is more gravy than meat.

A scholar of the Truman administration, Ferrell has compiled six reworked essays that mainly concern the origins of the Cold War. The first three in particular lay waste to the arguments of leftist historians who blame the United States for the Cold War. More specifically, he exposes the inadequacies of their research and the way in which their political agendas pre-determined the outcomes and conclusions of their books. Ferrell points out that the revisionists constructed their arguments before State Department records had become available. He essentially asks, "If the United States was bent on using nuclear weapons to intimidate the Soviets after WWII, why did it do such a slipshod job of producing them?" Ferrell shows how puny the US military became between 1946-50, something which Truman would not have allowed if he had been pursuing confrontation with the USSR.
The only way Ferrell could have produced a better book would have been to synthesize his essays into more of a single entity that examined the origins of the Cold War.
His is a fine addition to the growing list of scholarship that is thoroughly refuting and disproving the evidence and the arguments of the Cold War revisionists.

Robert Ferrell, who for many years was a or the leading diplomatic historian of the U.S. has had second and third careers as a biographer of non Mt. Rushmore Presidents, such as Coolidge and Harding, and characteristics of presidential history such as presidential health, and finally as a Truman biographer. His many books on aspects of Truman's life (on the farm, with the Pendegast machine, getting the VP nomination)are nicely complemented by this book which simply and directly takes apart the revisionist claims re: dropping the bomb, starting the cold war, and other subjects.

Arthur Schlessinger theorized that every thirty years, the political pendulum swings between the left and right wings. No surprise then, that nearly 60 years after his death, there has been a slew of books slamming Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wartime leadership. No surprise, either, is that this book is published by University of Missouri press, since Robert Ferrell goes out of his way to all but directly state that Missourian Harry Truman saved the world from the sick and incompetent FDR.

Ferrell's thesis is that FDR's poor health made him largely ineffective during his last year. His doctors had recommended four-hour work days. Ferrell fails to note that FDR largely ignored his doctors mandates, and continued to submit himself to a punishing schedule which included exhausting summit trips, numerous press conferences, and a re-election campaign. He arbuably worked harder that the physically healthier George W. Bush, and may have worked himself literally to death.

Ferrell's credibilty is obliterated by the ridiculous statement that FDR was nearly as incapacitated as was Woodrow Wilson in 1920. Wilson was a near vegetable following his stroke. But anyone who has read the minutes of the Yalta conference--which I doubt Ferrell has--will realize that despite his physical condition, FDR remained mentally sharp.

There is no denying that FDR was in poor physical shape during his last 15 months in office. He suffered from congestive heart failure and high blood pressure. Ferrell also presents the theory, neither denying nor endorsing it, that FDR may have had melanoma and/or stomach cancer, but there is no evidence for that. What were the root causes of FDR's decline? Common sense points to diet and excercise. FDR's diet during the white house years left much to be desired. For example, the President breakfasted every morning on scrambled eggs and bacon. Of course, in the 1940s far less was known about the dangers of cholesterol that today. Despite his paralysis, FDR tried to remains physically active and healthy by swimming daily. (His correspondence with Daisy Suckley indicates that he was mildly preoccupied with his weight, and he tended to "yo-yo" in weight during his first two terms in office.) As the war made greater demands on his time, he abandoned his excercise routine, which was accompanied by weight gain, loss of upper body muscle tone, and increasing blood pressure.

There is no doubt, also, that FDR husbanded his strength during his last year. He concentrated his work on two overriding goals: 1) Allied victory in World War II, with the greatest possible speed, and the smallest possible loss of Allied soldiers (four of whom were his own sons). 2) The creation of the United Nations as a means of preventing a Third World War, which FDR knew humanity would not survive.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was successful on both counts.

Some have written that Ferrell's work is sloppy and depressing. I disagree. Ferrell does an excellent job of showing 21st Century readers just how different this country was 50 years ago. That the entire country could look at Roosevelt during his last run for office - and know that he was a dying man - and not know it at the same time, is amazing. This is the same country that couldn't deal directly with a President in a wheel chair. The country knew it, but didn't know it, all at the same time. How different was the relationship between the press and the White House!

The purpose of this book is not simply to drive home the point that Roosevelt was a dying man when he ran for a fourth term. The point of this book is about collective denial. The fact that most of the country suffered from it, used it, and both benefitted from it in some ways, and paid for it in others. Collective denial isn't much different from individual denial. It is a powerful mechanism that existed not only in the relationship between FDR and the country, but between FDR and himself. It also is the mechanism that allowed the United States to fight WWII to "make the world safe for democracy," while at the same time the country was somehow unaware of its own racist, anti-democratic values. Ferrell's book should be read within the context of the times, so that it may shed light on ours.

The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt 1944-1945 by Robert H. Ferrell isn't much of a book, and it doesn't cover much information not previously published.

Most FDR fans know the basic facts about his life and death. In 1944, his daughter, Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, insisted that her father have a complete physical because of what could be seen as a visible and marked physical decline. Prior to that, the president's standing physician, Dr. Ross McIntire, was a Navy doctor whose specialty was Ear, Nose and Throat. A battery of doctors from Bethesda Naval Hospital discovered that FDR suffered from severe hypertension and congestive heart failure. In 1944, there was little the medical profession could do for these two maladies. Unbelievably, the president was kept in the dark about his health, and he never asked questions about his health, constant medical testing, or his treatments. These medical experts (who took over his treatment) were also not consulted about FDR's decision to run for a fourth term.

There is not much new in The Dying President, except what comes from the diaries of FDR's distant cousin and confident, Margaret Daisy Suckley. But even these revelations don't add much to the story, other than the fact that FDR did know that Dr. Howard Bruenn was a cardiologist. Ferrell does offer the theories that FDR could have suffered from stomach cancer or melanoma. But he provides no additional research to prove or disprove these already published speculations.

When discussing a book written by Dr. Ross McIntire about FDR, Ferrell describes it as "absurdly thin." The same can be said about The Dying President. The body of this book is only 152 pages, and 36 of these pages are photographs. Ferrell also claims that FDR was such an ill man, that his omissions and mistakes changed the course of history. History reveals otherwise. Even his own cabinet member, Frances Perkins, was quoted as saying "He has a great and terrible job to do, and he's got to do it, even if it kills him."

I recommend you save your money and read The Hidden Campaign by Hugh Evans or FDR's Last Year by Jim Bishop for a better accounting of Roosevelt's last years.

I couldn't help but contrast this book with the Bishop book, 'FDR's Last Year'. This writer paints FDR as someone and something far different than I've read in many, many other books. He most certainly was ill, he had poor medical care, and possibly he deceived the nation about his true condition. However, he also provided the nation with reassuring leadership and contributed to our war effort literally until his death. This book is poorly organized, but worse, is mean-spirited. Definitely a 'pass'.

In the 1970's Jim Bishop wrote an excellent book titled "FDR's Last Year," which contained some inaccuracies and a lot of very relevant history, (despite sometimes making it sound like FDR could have died at any given moment), but this book by Robert Ferrell is a real mess. Bishop's book was good reading, and followed his subject along through a consistent chronological pattern over the course of a year, and while it did focus a lot on FDR's health, it also revealed all the work FDR accomplished up until his death. This new book is completely unnecessary and a pale comparison to Bishop's. The author's personal agenda must be to prove that FDR tricked the nation into re-electing him when he knew he was dying. An old theory, and there's never been any substantial proof, and certainly not in Ferrell's book. Who really needs several pages of FDR's recorded blood pressure readings on different dates (especially in a book this small)? Who wants to read a book that is so inconsistent in chronological sequencing that it is impossible to understand what the author is attempting to construct or prove? Is this book necessary at all when virtually all the information in it has been known for decades from other books and sources? The book is not well-written and the subject material is derivative. Avoid it and search out better material such as Bishop's book or other more accomplished biographies such as the recent book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, "No Ordinary Time."

The book contains a few interesting points about the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers. Almost all of these are collected by the author from other works. Buffalo migration patterns for instance were news to me.

The rest of the book is a waste of time and paper, full of zany slams at what the author characterizes as "euro-americans". These are amusing for a short time, then tiresome.

Buy it used or nor at all.

The subtitle cites the Yellowstone and Upper Missouri as this book's subject matter. Upper Missouri is defined as the Missouri above its confluence with the Platte River. The book's basic precept is that the rivers set the rhythm for the region, although the author acknowledges the river's dependence on climate and weather. Before Europeans interfered on the natural systems, the bison moved in accordance to the rivers, and the humans (Native Americans) responded to the rivers and the bison.

The author appears to believe that almost everything the Europeans did constituted negative interference. Perhaps the biggest crime was damming the Missouri. However, nearly exterminating both the bison and the Native Americans was arguably worse. Plowing the land and building fences was not far behind. Include a good deal of governmental politics in the list of crimes. The book presents a great deal of research to support all these points. It is set into a holistic, ecological context. A quote from the final chapter captures the tenor of the book: "... maladjustment is most conspicuous in the present geography, which is out of sync with the Upper Missouri's ecological and hydrologic rhythms."

While I acknowledge the validity of the charges Mr. Schneiders levels against Euro-Americans, the conclusions reached are suspect. The ecological and political context is artificially constrained, almost as if the conclusions came first and drove the model that derived them. There were many factors; regrettable perhaps, but nevertheless uncontrollable; that drove Euro-American intrusion into the bison-culture of the Yellowstone and Missouri country. Factors just as powerful will keep humans from voluntarily reversing the changes they have wrought.

The author believes in removing dams and reintroducing free-roaming bison. This is in line with those who advocate the "Buffalo Commons." Admittedly, some arid land in the west is changing from farming to grazing, and in some cases bison are doing the grazing. However, to achieve Mr. Schneiders' recommended state, the cities and irrigated farmland along the rivers must virtually vanish. Human history in the United States, Europe, and around the world indicates that this is not going to happen.

This book is well-written. It contains a lot of factual history. However, unless pre-disposed to accept this book's conclusions, the reader will finish reading the book with the feeling that the time and effort spent could have been used better in other ways. The arguments presented are too weak to change many minds.

The field of Ezra Pound studies is now very crowded, and justly so, as there is much to ponder in order to achieve a balanced judgment about the work of this major poet.

Unfortunately, compared to the work of Christoph de Nagy, Herbert N. Schneidau, and Hugh Witemeyer (all indispensable), this book tells us little about Pound's pre-Cantos work. Grieve's theory that Pound displaces the self from the poetry fails to convince, as some of his work is clearly about the struggle to be a poet in an unpoetic change. Also, if Pound had succeeded in banishing subjectivity, how are the Pisan Cantos, which are very subjective, even possible?

Skip this one.

Which one of these is endorsed by Saban?
Try "A Tailgater's Guide to SEC Football by Chris Warner. It's worth your money and time. This is not. I found several errors inside.

As an autobiography "Walkabout Yours" is a very good book, giving a slice of the life of Pickering family. As a travel book, it is very disappointing since Pickering is too involved in himself to describe parts of Australia. One can only find glimpses of information about Australia scattered among the daily concerns of Pickering family. Where you expect to find descriptions of Australian people, you find how much Samuel Pickering paid for his breakfast ($13.50), how much gas costs (76.5 cents) and other trivialities of daily life. Samuel Pickering is too absorbed with himself to describe Australia. Although Pickering's writing style is fluid and witty, the lack of observation of his surroundings makes this book a boring travel book

I tried to read this book and after 50 pages of repeating the same story I gave up.If I am desperate I may try again to read this book,real desperate!

The Prodigal Daughter: Reclaiming an Unfinished Childhood

This book is more of a diary from Margaret's childhood and I would say not too much different than anyone else living in that time. I could get past all of this if the book was complete. The title leads us to believe this book is about her leaving and then returning. She doesn't develop this at all. What intrigued me about the book was the "how, when, why, where" of her leaving and then returning, again as the title states . . . but then she speaks 90% of the book to her childhood and writes about as much about her being a prodigal and reclaiming her unfinished childhood as it states on the inside of the cover. I was very disappointed in this book.

After reading this book I must say that Ms. Zilboorg certainly has included much speculation and an active would-be psychologists' imagination. Unfortunately there is not a clear grasp of her subject, and in fact there is much here that leads one astray from the real Mary Renault and her life. I cannot recommend this book to anyone who has a genuine appreciation for Ms. Renault, and urge those who do to persue the excellent and informative book "Mary Renault, A Biography",
by David Sweetman; someone who really 'knows' her.

There's something about Mary that's clearly missing when a "literary" biography doesn't even contain complete listing of the subject's works, much less a synopsis of each that puts it into a context. Rather than follow the interwoven themes of Renault's work and her life in a logical and sequential manner, Zilboorg has compiled a collection of psychobabble essays rich with quotes from some of Renaults work, citations from other sources, and superficial observations straight from her own psyche.

I bought this book for an article I was working on to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "The Last of the Wine." It was a waste of my time and money. The only insight I got was into the state of academic writing at Cambridge these days.

Robbyh777 is as right today as he/she was five years ago... if you want an interesting and helpful biography of this remarkable writer, go to David Sweetman's "Mary Renault, A Biography." My apologies to anyone who bought this book between the time I did and my getting around to writing this.

A waste of money. Don't read this for any information on quail habitat.