Books

Jim Cullen, Review of Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" (Pantheon, 2012)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. His new book, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions, is slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Murray Polner: Review of Peter Beinart’s “The Crisis of Zionism” (Henry Holt, 2012)

Murray Polner, a book reviewer for the History News Network, was editor of Present Tense, a magazine published by the American Jewish Committee from 1973 until 1990, wrote Rabbi: The American Experience, and co-edited, with Stefan Merken, Peace, Justice & Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition.Peter Beinart is an American Jewish writer who attends an Orthodox synagogue. In The Crisis of Zionism he breaks ranks with the long-established American Jewish guardians of everything Israel does and says about war, peace and justice.Beinart is a former New Republic editor and now Daily Beast blogger/writer and City University of New York professor whose book was preceded by his earlier essay “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” in the New York Review of Books, where he wrote “In the American Jewish establishment today, the language of liberal Zionism—with its idioms of human rights, equal citizenship, and territorial compromise has been drained of meaning.”

Jim Cullen: Review of Andrew Naborski's "Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power" (Simon & Schuster, 2012)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. His new book, Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions, is slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Jim Cullen: Review of Thomas Mallon's "Watergate: A Novel" (Pantheon, 2012)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Luther Spoehr: Review of Craig L. Symonds's “The Battle of Midway” (Oxford University Press, 2011)

Luther Spoehr is an HNN Book Editor and Senior Lecturer in Education & History at Brown University.

Jim Cullen: Review of Dave Zirin's "Bad Sports: How Owners Are Runing the Sports We Love" (The New Press, 2012)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Jim Cullen: Review of Robert K. Massie's "Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman" (Random House, 2011)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Andrew Feffer: Review of Steven J. Ross's "Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics" (Oxford, 2011)

Andrew Feffer is Associate Professor of History and Co-Director, Interdepartmental program in Film Studies at Union College.Long before Rupert Murdoch used his media empire to sway his first election, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer put Hollywood’s shoulder to the wheel of American politics. A close friend and advisor of Herbert Hoover (and Hoover’s first overnight guest at the White House), Mayer actively mobilized friends and associates to bankroll a string of Republican politicos through the 1930s and 40s. Not satisfied with mere influence peddling however, Mayer also used the film industry’s cultural and technical resources to twist elections to the right, in one notorious instance producing and distributing a series of doctored newsreels that turned public opinion decisively against Socialist Upton Sinclair’s bid to become California governor in 1934. 

Jeremy Kuzmarov: Review of S. Brian Willson's "Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson: A Psychohistorical Memoir” (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011)

Jeremy Kuzmarov is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tulsa and author of a book on Vietnam and the War on Drugs and a forthcoming volume on American police training and counterinsurgency and its link to human rights abuses in the developing world.On September 1, 1987, S. Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran, was run over by a train outside the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Northern California while trying to block munitions shipments to the Nicaraguan Contras. Willson lost both of his legs and suffered brain damage. After his miraculous recovery, he was greeted as a national hero in Nicaragua and also received a letter of apology from Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, who told him that she was sickened by her father’s “aggressively anti-Sandinista rhetoric” and “absurd reference to the Contras as freedom fighters.”

Murray Polner: Review of Randy Roberts’s “Joe Louis: Hard Times Man” (Yale University Press, 2010)

Murray Polner, a book reviewer for the History News Network, wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and co-authored Disarmed and Dangerous: The Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan and We Who Dared To Say No To War.Boxing has often been corrupted by exploiters and racists. A brutal, much celebrated entertainment masking as a manly ideal, it’s been glorified by Hemingway, Mailer and an army of writers while overlooking far too many onetime club fighters left brain-damaged and dead.

Ron Briley: Review of Peter Rollins's "America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind" (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2010)

Ron Briley is a history teacher and an assistant headmaster at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has taught for thirty years.What in the world do Orestes Brownson, Benjamin Whorf, Will Rogers, and Hollywood have in common? The answer is that this eclectic array of intellectual and cultural subjects are essential to the work of scholar Peter C. Rollins, Emeritus Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University and a pioneering figure in the academic investigation of American popular culture. America Reflected is an overview of Rollins’s scholarship, and in his introduction the author argues that Brownson, Whorf, Rogers, and Hollywood “show an actual consciousness of American values, reflecting them in creative ways that can deepen our awareness of their times” (1).

Joel K. Goldstein: Review of Ira Shapiro's "The Last Great Senate" (Public Affairs, 2012)

Joel K. Goldstein is the Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law at the Saint Louis University School of Law.  He is the author of The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution and other works about the presidency, vice presidency and constitutional law.These are terrible times for the United States Congress. In six separate polls during January, 2012, its approval ranged from 11 to 13 percent, with disapproval ratings of 79 to 86 percent.  Fidel Castro, Hugh Chavez and the prospect of America becoming communist have comparable recent approval scores. Richard M. Nixon was about twice as popular during Watergate.  Congress’ recent conduct has produced these embarrassing scores and expectations for the near future are low.It wasn’t always this way, especially not with respect to the United States Senate. That’s the message of Ira Shapiro’s fascinating new book, The Last Great Senate (Public Affairs, 2012), which portrays the Senate from the early 1960s to 1981 with particular focus on its last four years during the Carter presidency (1977 to 1981). Shapiro draws on insights (and anecdotes) from his dozen years as a staffer to senators of both parties to produce this inside, yet scholarly, account.

Luther Spoehr: Review of Jack Schneider's “Excellence for All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America’s Public Schools” (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).

Luther Spoehr, a Senior Lecturer at Brown University, teaches about the history of American school reform.Jack Schneider of Carleton College has written a clear, original, thought-provoking book about three significant strands in the fabric of contemporary school reform:  the “small schools” movement, Teach For America, and the Advanced Placement program.  In the process, he manages both to emphasize how in his estimation they are improving public schools and to highlight some of the ironies involved in their implementation.  Not until his concluding chapter, however, does he really come to grips with their most significant vagaries and limitations.  [Full disclosure: the author and I have exchanged several emails on education-related topics.]

Murray Polner: Review of Michael Hastings’s "The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan" (Blue Rider Press/ Penguin, 2012)

Murray Polner, a book reviewer for the History News Network, wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran and co-authored Disarmed and Dangerous: The Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan and We Who Dared To Say No To War.Michael Hastings is a young journalist who was assigned by Rolling Stone to do a profile of General Stanley McChrystal, who willingly agreed to be interviewed. For one month in Europe and Afghanistan he hung around the general and his devoted hand-picked team while they partied and drank before departing for the war zone. They must have been aware that, as they spoke freely and critically about their political and civilian bosses back home, Hastings’s tape recorder was running.When the Rolling Stone profile was published McChrystal was fired and replaced by General David Petraeus, now head of the CIA. It reminded many, including President Obama, of President Harry Truman’s dismissal of General Douglas McArthur for insubordination during the Korean War. NBC News quoted Obama saying that Chrystal’s comments “undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.” 

Jim Cullen: Review of Robert Harris's "The Fear Index: A Novel" (Knopf, 2012)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Jim Cullen, Review of Kent Greenfield's "The Cult of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits" (Yale 2011)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Murray Polner: Review of Conor O’Clery’s “Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union" (Public Affairs, 2011)

Murray Polner is the author of numerous books, the former editor of Present Tense, and a book review editor for the History News Network.

Jim Cullen, Review of Julian Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending" (Knopf, 2011)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

Jim Cullen: Review of Roger Ebert's "Life Itself: A Memoir" (Grand Central, 2011)

Jim Cullen, who teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, is a book review editor at HNN. He is completing a study of Hollywood actors as historians slated for publication by Oxford University Press later this year. Cullen blogs at American History Now.

J. Stanley Lemons: Review of John M. Barry's "Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State and the Birth of Liberty" (Viking Press, 2012)

J. Stanley Lemons, Professor of History Emeritus at Rhode Island College, is the author of First: The History of the First Baptist Church in America (2001) and Rhode Island: The Ocean State (2004), among other works.John Barry has written one of the best and clearest books about Roger Williams that I have ever read, a book about the ideas of Roger Williams and their context. It is not a biography in the usual sense, but it tells what ideas, forces, and events shaped Williams’ thinking. Barry concludes that Williams was truly revolutionary and was the source of one of two major versions in the American “soul.” He was the fountain of the stream of religious freedom, separation of church and state, and political liberty. The other stream was represented by John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts. Winthrop presented America as a Christian “city on a hill” whose continued success required the state to be a “nurturing father” to the church. The government and the church had to be partners in curbing the human wickedness and preserving their covenant with God. If they failed, God would surely make an example of their city, treating it as if it were Sodom or Gomorrah. Williams, on the other hand, said that the state had absolutely no role to play in religion.