The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman

You see, the man is mad. MAD. He could see nothing but that woman.~Prime Minister Baldwin quoted in The Crown in Crisis

Drawing from newly released archival sources, interviews, letters, and diaries, here is the full story of Edward VIII whose love for American divorcee' Wallis Simpson caused him to give up the throne, threatening the stability of the British government and the monarchy.

Edward was charming and beloved by the common people, but he preferred pleasure to work and freedom to upholding the narrow conventions expected from a monarch. He had no intellectual interests, no Christian faith (although head of the state church), and hated the drudgery of being a monarch.

Readers learn about Edward's personality and weaknesses, his gay life and affairs, and how Wallis came to be his obsession.

The British newspapers would not publish stories about Edward's affair with the married Wallis. The couple took a pleasure cruise across the world with friends, the foreign press filled with photographs and stories about them.

Wallis found herself trapped by Edward's compulsive addiction, trying valiantly to talk him out of his determination to marry her if her divorce was granted. He was too powerful; he would not listen to her pleas; and the divorce and the abdication went through.

The once-king lost his homeland, his property, his power, and his family to gain the woman he loved. Wallis was imprisoned in a marriage she had hoped to avoid.

In that moment, I realised how heavy was the price I had paid... ~Edward VIII quoted in The Crown in Crisis

This is more than a love story, more than a history of a deeply flawed man. It tells the story of a government in crisis, struggling to deal with the most unexpected challenge. It is riveting as history, and disturbing as a portrait of a self-centered leader who put the personal above their duty to nation.  

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication

by Alexander Larman

St. Martin's Press

Pub Date  January 19, 2021   

ISBN: 9781250274847

hardcover $27.99 (USD)

From the publisher

The thrilling and definitive account of the Abdication Crisis of 1936

On December 10, 1936, King Edward VIII brought a great international drama to a close when he abdicated, renouncing the throne of the United Kingdom for himself and his heirs. The reason he gave when addressing his subjects was that he could not fulfill his duties without the woman he loved—the notorious American divorcee Wallis Simpson—by his side. His actions scandalized the establishment, who were desperate to avoid an international embarrassment at a time when war seemed imminent. That the King was rumored to have Nazi sympathies only strengthened their determination that he should be forced off the throne, by any means necessary.

Alexander Larman’s The Crown in Crisis will treat readers to a new, thrilling view of this legendary story. Informed by revelatory archival material never-before-seen, as well as by interviews with many of Edward’s and Wallis’s close friends, Larman creates an hour-by-hour, day-by-day suspenseful narrative that brings readers up to the point where the microphone is turned on and the king speaks to his subjects. As well as focusing on King Edward and Mrs. Simpson, Larman looks closely at the roles played by those that stood against him: Prime minister Stanley Baldwin, his private secretary Alec Hardinge, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang. Larman also takes the full measure of those who supported him: the great politician Winston Churchill, Machiavellian newspaper owner Lord Beaverbrook, and the brilliant lawyer Walter Monckton.

For the first time in a book about the abdication, readers will read an in-depth account of the assassination attempt on Edward’s life and its consequences, a first-person chronicle of Wallis Simpson’s scandalous divorce proceedings, information from the Royal Archives about the government’s worries about Edward’s relationship with Nazi high-command Ribbentrop and a boots-on-the-ground view of how the British people saw Edward as they watched the drama unfold. You won’t be able to put down The Crown in Crisis, a full panorama of the people and the times surrounding Edward and the woman he loved.

 

History Mini-Reviews: You Never Forget Your First and Caste

These two books on American history seem to have little in common. 

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is a history of American society based on a caste system that dehumanizes and devalues African Americans. 

You Never Forget Your First demythologizes George Washington. Both offer new ways of interpreting America, past and present.

Alexis Coe's entertaining biography of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First encompasses a wide consideration of the man. One of the most sobering considerations looked at the enslaved people he owned, including a reading of the slave schedule. The reader is fanatic. A good first biography due to its entertaining nature, sure to appeal to younger people and those who don't usually delve into biographies. I borrowed an audiobook through the local library.

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
by Alexis Coe

Brittany Pressley (Narrator)
ISBN: 139781984842527

from the publisher

As the first woman historian to solely write an adult biography on Washington in more than a hundred years, Alexis Coe combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling each page.

In You Never Forget Your First, Washington's wild ambition is encouraged by his single mother and solidified by Martha Washington, the young, wealthy widow he marries. After the Revolutionary War, Washington is unanimously elected to the presidency, twice, and readers finally understand why his more educated, wealthy, and outwardly hungry Founding Fathers knew he was the only man for a seemingly impossible job. Washington loved to dance, offered unsolicited romantic advice, lost more battles than he won, and was almost felled by a life-threatening disease and a backstabbing cabinet. But he emerged successful, establishing values that ensured the survival of the United States of America to this day. Yet presidential biographers have always presented him in the same, stale way.

In a genre overdue for a shake-up, Coe highlights juicy details and skillfully differentiates between the legend and the man--and confirms she's a historian to be reckoned with

*****

Wilkerson argues that American racism has all the hallmarks of Hindi caste. She lays out her argument logically and illustrated with a multitude of examples from history, American slavery and Nazi Germany and the Hindi caste system. 

It’s heart-wrenching stuff. I am sick and disgusted by our history and current conduct as a society and as a political system. I have had to put this away for a bit. Brilliant, horrifying.

I purchased an ebook.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson

Random House 
Published August 4, 2020  
ISBN: 0593230256 (ISBN13: 9780593230251)

from the publisher

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown

 

Henry Adams was born in 1838, the year the telegraph was first demonstrated. Native Americans were  forced to relocate and the Underground Railroad was being established. Meanwhile in Britain, slavery was abolished, Victoria was newly on the throne, and Dickens published Oliver Twist. Adams died in 1918 during WWI, the year of the Spanish Influenza and the first time airplanes were used by the USPS. 

Henry was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, 'the Governor' of Henry's childhood, and the great-grandson of founding father President John Adams. His own father Charles Francis had served as ambassador to England, as had generations of Adams men.

Unlike his predecessors, Adams did not committ his life to public service. He never had children and his wife committed suicide when he was in his late 40s. He spent some time teaching at Harvard, and was popular with the students, but it did not suit him.

Henry became a historian, a world traveler, and an insider Washingtonian socialite. 

"What could become of such a child of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when he should wake up to find himself required to play the games of the twentieth? " he wrote in the first chapter, continuing, "As it happened, he never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it."~ from The Education of Henry Adams

It was his book The Education of Henry Adams that introduced me to him. It is a strange book, self-published and shared with his friends. He writes about his childhood in Quincy and his later life, skipping the death of his wife and his most regarded histories. He writes about the changes in society, the rise of capitalists and industry and the power of money.

Like his predecessors, Henry was intellectual, high-minded, and could be contrary. Like his predecessors, he believed one should be called to public duty, not seek it, an 18th c concept dated by his time. Unlike his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he was not called to serve as an ambassador, although he was his father's private secretary in London. 

Instead, he wrote. He wrote an eight-volume history of Jeffersonian America, he wrote political commentary, he wrote travel pieces and about architecture and medieval history.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams were men of  their time, men of action, called upon to serve their country. Henry was an observer and an outsider, out of sync, never at home.

John Adams was against slavery and John Quincy Adams fought Congress over the ban to discuss abolition.  His father Charles Francis was involved with the anti-slavery Whig party. Henry was uninterested and unengaged with the problems of African Americans. 

As capitalism and business men rose to power, Anti-Semitism became mainstream, and Henry was not immune. He despaired to see that the big money of the 'northern plutocracy" was the rising power in Washington. He railed against corruption and the patronage system, and despaired that too many 'good men' avoided politics as a dirty business. He railed against the rise of the Boston Irish. 

He married a cerebral woman overly attached to her father, a woman liked by few.  After her early death, Adams built her a enigmatic memorial, the details of which he left up to the famed sculpture Saint-Gaudens while he went on a world tour while claiming he died to the world with her. 

The arc of Adam's life crossed a part of American history and politics I was not well versed on, and I found this aspect of the biography to be very interesting. The problems we see today in American politics have deep roots.

Some trivia tidbits from Adams life:

• Henry James wrote in a letter to Edith Wharton that Adams read Jane Austen's Persuasion aloud in the evenings.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's character Thornton Hancock was inspired by Adams; he had met him when a boy.
• Adams studied under geologist Louis Agassiz at Harvard, saying his class was "the only teaching that appealed to [my] imagination."
• Adams wrote two novels, including Democracy about Gilded Age Washington DC politics; Teddy Roosevelt found it "essentially mean and base."
• Adams fell in love with an unhappily married, beautiful and intelligent socialite who counted on his friendship but rejected him as a lover. She did not find him physically attractive.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
by David S. Brown
Scribner
Pub Date: November 24,  2020
ISBN: 9781982128234
hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A revelatory biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals of his era, who witnessed and contributed to America’s dramatic transition from “colonial” to “modern.”

Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist.

Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted powerful figures, including Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era.

The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence.

Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, The Last American Aristocrat shows us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.

Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Iconic Poet by Marta McDowell

 

I purchased Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life by Marta McDowell as part of my reading about Emily Dickinson as I developed a quilt. 

This is a gorgeous book, from the cover and the end papers to the illustrations that fill the pages. 

McDowell incorporates Dickinson's poems flawlessly. 

Readers are taken on a year-long journey into the garden, from early spring to winter, each season telling a part of Emily's life journey. 

It was a joy to read, an escape from lock-down in the early spring, an inspiration as I tended our own garden, and this autumn found me dreaming of visiting The Homestead some day when this pandemic is over.

Chapters include an annotated list of Emily's plants and a visit to her home and garden.

This would be a wonderful Christmas gift for the reader of Dickinson or gardener in your life.

I have McDowell's book All the President's Gardens on Kindle. But after holding this book in my hands, with its lovely artwork and illustrations, the heft of it, I may need to buy a hardcover copy...along with Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life!

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge

I listened to the 'Hammerklavier' on YouTube with the music appearing in the visual. "Beethoven's impossible piece" was dedicated to his student Prince Rudolf whose health precluded him from actually playing it. In the year of its composition, Beethoven said that he had not known how to compose, but he knew now. 

I was stunned by the music. I studied piano as a girl and have enjoyed playing (badly) for my own enjoyment. I had some idea of what was required to perform it. Few could actually conquer it, Laura Tunbridge writes in her new biography, Beethoven.

I have heard Beethoven in concert many times. I had never heard this piece before and would have remained ignorant if not for Tunbridge including it in her book. It is one of the nine pivotal compositions she uses to tell the story of Beethoven's life.

The composer lived through turbulent times and decades of war. 

The age of reason morphed into the romantic era. Beethoven took music into the sublime and beyond, shocking people with its dissonance and loudness. Some complained that the music was too cerebral, 'elaborate musical puzzles.' 

Through Beethoven's music, Tunbridge presents a complete biography. The familiar questions of the identity of 'The Immortal Beloved' and the changing dedication of the 'Eroica' are discussed, but also the development of the piano and the role of the conductor in his time, self-marketing and sheet music, Beethoven's religious life, and the long custody battle over his nephew. I found it all fascinating, and I felt I had a better grasp of this iconic composer.

I listened to the music as Tunbridge discussed the piece, added so much to my appreciation, doubling my enjoyment of this biography.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces
by Laura Tunbridge
Yale University Press
Pub Date: October 26, 2020  
ISBN: 9780300254587
hardcover $35.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A major new biography published for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, offering a fresh, human portrayal

The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven’s career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation. 

Each chapter focuses on a period of his life, a piece of music, and a revealing theme, from family to friends, from heroism to liberty. We discover, along the way, Beethoven’s unusual marketing strategies, his ambitious concert programming, and how specific performers and instruments influenced his works. 

This book offers new ways to understand Beethoven and why his music continues to be valued today.

About the author

Laura Tunbridge is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford. She is the author of three monographs—Schumann’s Late Style, The Song Cycle, and Singing in the Age of Anxiety—and the recipient of a three-year Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for a project on string quartets. 

Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour by Neal Garbler

 

I don't know when I was more moved by a biography. I was inspired and I suffered and cried along with Ted Kennedy. I was informed and I understood how we got to 'here'.

The "Shakespearean tragedy" of the Kennedy family is experienced through this youngest son. The most affable Kennedy, the pleaser, the people person, the least son, inherited a heavy mantle.

When President Kennedy was assassinated, Bobby took up his cause and legacy, grew into the liberal leader role with a heightened moral awareness. And when Bobby was assassinated, it was up to Ted to finish their work, and he became the liberal lion of the Senate, the moral consciousness of America politics.

Neal Gabler's biography Catching the Wind reads like a epic poem, the flawed hero doing battle for the least and the lost. The story is a tragedy, the hero's fatal flaws bringing his downfall, but in this story, the hero gets up over and over to take up the sword once more. 

This volume delves deeply into the Kennedy family character and history as the formation for the development of the children.

Finding his way to the Senate, Ted found his place in life, but the pressure to run for the presidency was both a siren call and a warning. Ted was sure he would be the target of one more assassin's bullet. 

Ted was a workaholic, and a drinker, and he had girlfriends and a wife who felt lost and, like her parents, resorted to alcohol. Then there was the encounter with the bridge on an island that gave his enemies the weapon they needed. 

Liberalism has been under attack for most of my adult life. I embraced it since mock voting in junior high; a classmate explained that Goldwater was a hawk and LBJ wanted to end poverty. My faith and my politics embraced the values of fighting for the meek and the weak and the downtrodden and the stranger and the impoverished.  

Following Ted Kennedy's career, Garbler shows how racism and fear led to the rise of 'law and order' after the social unrest of the 1960s, the anti-war and black rebellions in the cities. 

I lived through much of this history, my first awareness of politics coming with John Kennedy's presidential run, Ted's nightmare Chappaquiddick occuring when I was in college, the Watergate break-in carried out on my wedding night. 

As a teenager I was resentful of these conflicts and the pressure to politicize my life when all I wanted was to 'grow up'. I was also sympathetic, for I had seen the inner city and the racism espoused by working class neighbors. I was too naive to understand the racist implications of 'law and order'. And as I entered young adulthood, I watched in dismay as liberalism was abandoned by Americans.

Joe McCarthy's fear-mongering populism, Nixon's deep hatred of all persons Kennedy leading to his dirty tricks, and the fact that America ultimately rejected them, brings some hope that we can and will do so again.

I can not wait for Garbler's second volume. I usually read several books at a time, but I was so immersed in Catching the Wind I could not read anything else. 

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975 

by Neal Gabler

Crown Publishing

Pub Date:  October 27, 2020   

ISBN: 9780307405449

hardcover $40.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The epic, definitive biography of Ted Kennedy—an immersive journey through the life of a complicated man and a sweeping history of the fall of liberalism and the collapse of political morality.

In the tradition of the works of Robert Caro and Taylor Branch, Catching the Wind is the first volume of Neal Gabler’s magisterial two-volume biography of Edward Kennedy. It is at once a human drama, a history of American politics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and a study of political morality and the role it played in the tortuous course of liberalism. 

Though he is often portrayed as a reckless hedonist who rode his father’s fortune and his brothers’ coattails to a Senate seat at the age of thirty, the Ted Kennedy in Catching the Wind is one the public seldom saw—a man both racked by and driven by insecurity, a man so doubtful of himself that he sinned in order to be redeemed. The last and by most contemporary accounts the least of the Kennedys, a lightweight. he lived an agonizing childhood, being shuffled from school to school at his mother’s whim, suffering numerous humiliations—including self-inflicted ones—and being pressed to rise to his brothers’ level. He entered the Senate with his colleagues’ lowest expectations, a show horse, not a workhorse, but he used his “ninth-child’s talent” of deference to and comity with his Senate elders to become a promising legislator. And with the deaths of his brothers John and Robert, he was compelled to become something more: the custodian of their political mission.

In Catching the Wind, Kennedy, using his late brothers’ moral authority, becomes a moving force in the great “liberal hour,” which sees the passage of the anti-poverty program and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Then, with the election of Richard Nixon, he becomes the leading voice of liberalism itself at a time when its power is waning: a “shadow president,” challenging Nixon to keep the American promise to the marginalized, while Nixon lives in terror of a Kennedy restoration. Catching the Wind also shows how Kennedy’s moral authority is eroded by the fatal auto accident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969, dealing a blow not just to Kennedy but to liberalism.

In this sweeping biography, Gabler tells a story that is Shakespearean in its dimensions: the story of a star-crossed figure who rises above his seeming limitations and the tragedy that envelopes him to change the face of America.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne

 

Every scholar brings their own interpretations and insights to their subject. No matter how many books on Jane Austen I read, there is always something new to learn.

Byrne's book is entertaining and I enjoyed reading it. She considers Austen through the lens of physical objects that impacted her life. Yes, the famous amber cross gifted by her brother is one, and her writing desk gifted from her father. Also, the card of lace her aunt was accused of stealing and the bathing machines Austen would have used when staying at her beloved oceanside resorts. Each object is symbolic of an aspect of Austen's life discussed in the chapter. 

Of particular interest are insights into Austen's novel Mansfield Park. 

Jane had visited the estate of  the real Lord Mansfield who adopted a niece to be their heir. She was raised with Dido, the illegitimate daughter of Mansfield's nephew and an enslaved black woman. Byrnes explores Jane's knowledge of slavery through Mansfield, close and distant relatives, and her naval brother Franks' interception of slave vessels and his abolitionist beliefs. The Norris family name also had associations, for it was the name of a notorious slave trader.

Byrnes dissects the background to the novel's plot as reflecting what was going on in Antigua, the reliance on slave labor, the depletion of the soil, and brewing unrest. She notes that Fanny is the only one who wished to ask Mr. Bertram about the slave trade.

After reading Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, I was the only one of my university classmates who liked Mansfield Park. The morally superior, powerless, and sensitive Fanny stood her ground, which impressed me. But I did not consider what Byrnes addresses: that the word 'home' was used 140 times in the novel. She asserts that the importance of home is a main theme. "Is it a place or is it a family?", she queries. One of the transformative events in my life was moving at age ten, leaving me homesick and forever wondering about true homes and the homes we make out of necessity.

We can only know Austen through her surviving letters, her novels, and one authenticated portrait--of her back. I appreciate Byrnes deep exploration of these sources which helps to further fill out our understanding of the 'real' Jane Austen.

I purchased an ebook.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917-1956 by Fredrik Logevall

My first biography of John F. Kennedy was a comic book. One image that has always remained in my memory is of the Kennedy family at the dinner table, father Joe quizzing his children on current events.

My family never talked about current events or politics at the dinner table. When my school friend Christine asked if my family was going to vote for Kennedy I was clueless. I had never heard of him. Then she asked if we were Democrats, but I had never heard of them either. Finally, in exasperation, she asked if we were Catholic or Protestant, because if we were Catholic we were voting for Kennedy, and if we were Protestant we were going to hell.

In great duress, I ran home to ask mom these vital questions. In one moment I learned of our politics, our religion, and eternal damnation.

I was in sixth grade when my teacher took told us the president had been shot and sent us directly home. All those long blocks I fretted, feeling vulnerable, wondering if the Soviets could take over since we had no president to protect us. I remember gathering in my grandparents' living room, watching the black horse and carriage as it passed Carolyn and John and black-veiled Jackie.

souvenir Kennedy scarf

Every home had Kennedy souvenirs, a book, a photograph.

Over the years his image was tarnished. We doubted his authoring of his Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage (which I unsuccessfully tried to read as an early teen). There was his multitude of affairs before and after marriage. We heard that his daddy bought his political offices. We doubted his leadership, blamed him for Vietnam.

Who was the real John F. Kennedy?

I opened volume one of Fredrik Logevall's biography JFK hoping to understand this man, this icon, this American president.

It is a marvelous study of the man in context of his times and his family, from his childhood to his decision to seek the presidency.

Plagued with health problems, careless about his person, a man of great intelligence and inquisitiveness and charm, a womanizer, a workaholic, a man of unquestionable courage, a family man who did not hesitate to veer from his father's beliefs, the real Jack Kennedy was complicated and everything you thought he was and somehow more than what you thought he was.

Believe the hype about this book. I enjoyed it as a biography and as an exploration of the times and the political process. I look forward to reading the next part.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
by Fredrik Logevall
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9780812997132
hardcover $40.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A Pulitzer Prize–winning historian takes us as close as we have ever been to the real John F. Kennedy in this revelatory biography of the iconic, yet still elusive, thirty-fifth president.

“An utterly incandescent study of one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history. And while hagiographic portrayals of his dazzling charisma, reports of his extramarital affairs, and disagreements over his political legacy have come and gone in the decades since his untimely death, these accounts all fail to capture the full person.

Beckoned by this gap in our historical knowledge, Fredrik Logevall has spent much of the last decade searching for the “real” JFK. The result of this prodigious effort is a sweeping two-volume biography that properly contextualizes Kennedy amidst the roiling American Century. This volume spans the first thirty-nine years of JFK’s life—from birth through his decision to run for president—to reveal his early relationships, his formative experiences during World War II, his ideas, his writings, his political aspirations. In examining these pre–White House years, Logevall shows us a more serious, independently minded Kennedy than we’ve previously known, whose distinct international sensibility would prepare him to enter national politics at a critical moment in modern U.S. history.

Along the way, Logevall tells the parallel story of America’s midcentury rise. As Kennedy comes of age, we see the charged debate between isolationists and interventionists in the years before Pearl Harbor; the tumult of the Second World War, through which the United States emerged as a global colossus; the outbreak and spread of the Cold War; the domestic politics of anti-Communism and the attendant scourge of McCarthyism; the growth of television’s influence on politics; and more.

JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956 is a sweeping history of the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as well as the clearest portrait we have of this enigmatic American icon.

His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

The day of John Lewis' death I began reading the egalley for His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and The Power of Hope by Jon Meacham.

It was a hard book to read, and heartbreaking, for Lewis was willing to lay down his life to achieve a just society, and he faced the most vicious violence. 

Lewis has left behind a country still divided and angry, the dream of a Beloved Community unfulfilled. The struggle for the promise of America continues.

Meacham writes, "John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term," a man who answered the call to do the Lord's work in the world. A man who faced tribulation and persecution for seeking the justice we are called to enact as our faith responsibility. A man who sought redemption for his country. A man whose faith never flagged, not in the face of hate and blows, not when the movement shifted away from non-violence. He was faithful to his Gospel call of peace and the establishment of The Beloved Community.

"The tragedy of man," the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed, "is that he can conceive self-perfection but cannot achieve it," Meacham quotes, adding, "And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it."

I was only twenty when I married a seminary student. Professors and the school Dean had worked to integrate churches in the South. (see NYT article here.) I audited classes taught by these men. One wrote a seminal work on White Privilege, Segregation and the Bible. Another taught Niebuhr Moral Man in Immoral Society. It was an atmosphere that believed in faith in action, changing society to bring the Gospel to fulfillment.

The world has changed, including the church. Personal salvation and sanctity replaced social justice. Church as entertainment and community evolved. Separation from general society was the norm, with Christian music and businesses arising. We hardly recognize contemporary Christianity, especially it's alignment with Trump's divisive and racist actions.

We are at a decisive moment in history. What future will American choose?

Meacham is an inspirational and eloquent writer. His portrait of Lewis begins in his childhood through the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights act, ending with the rise of  Black Power.

Meacham calls for us to be inspired by the life of John Lewis as we decide on our future in America. Will we remain divided and filled with hate? Or will we embrace love and faith in the value of every being? "God's truth is marching on," he reminds us, "We can do it...I believe we can do it."

Meacham ends his book with hope that America will yet achieve a just society.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
by Jon Meacham
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  August 25, 2020
ISBN: 9781984855022
hard cover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America 

 John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, was a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” 

From an early age, Lewis learned that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family’s chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it—his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis’s commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God—and an unshakable belief in the power of hope. 

Meacham calls Lewis “as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the Republic itself in the eighteenth century.” A believer in the injunction that one should love one's neighbor as oneself, Lewis was arguably a saint in our time, risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful. In many ways he brought a still-evolving nation closer to realizing its ideals, and his story offers inspiration and illumination for Americans today who are working for social and political change.

The Story of Jane Goodall by Susan B.Katz

Growing up, when I was bored I would delve into my father's National Geographic collection. He built a long shelf in the basement with the magazines ordered by year and month. I was fascinated by the stories of Jane Goodall and her chimpanzees that used tools. I remember when she married her photographer and I remember their son, Grub.

Now, young people of today can learn about Goodall's life and contributions through The Story of Jane Goodall by Susan B. Katz.

Children will relate to Jane the animal-loving child and be inspired by her courageous choice to be the first to observe chimpanzees in the wild.

Timelines, a glossary, maps, and quiz and challenges aid the learning process.

For sixty years, Goodall has studied and protect the chimps and is now an activist to protect their vanishing habitat. 

I loved to read biographies as a child, especially of women who impacted the world. Katz has also written books in this series on Frida Kahlo and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

I was given a free book through Callisto Publishing in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Story of Jane Goodall: A Biography Book for New Readers
by Susan B. Katz
Rockridge Press
May 19, 2020
$6.99 paperback
ISBN: 9781646118731

The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey

When we lived along Lake Michigan people would ask me if I knew about the King of Beaver Island. I had never heard of him. All I knew was that quilter Gwen Marston lived on Beaver Island. I had seen photos of her home and studio and the classes she held there. A lovely place.

Then along comes Miles Harvey's The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch, finally my chance to learn about this Michigan king.

I'll cut to the chase: Harvey's book is rollicking, page-turning, riotous good fun...and a sobering reminder of the American penchant to be taken in by quacks, con-men, and self-aggrandizing wannabes.

As a boy, J. J. Strang dreamed of the big achievements awaiting him--like marrying the girl Victoria who was destined to become queen of England. He wanted to be king.

Over his lifetime, Strang reinvented himself, from teacher to lawyer, from atheist to the heir to Mormon founder Joseph Smith, from self-proclaimed king to pirate to legislator. And from husband to one wife to husband to a harem.

Harvey could have given us a somber, and perhaps tedious, exploration of Strang's place in American history, with insights into our current political craziness as well as Strang's antebellum  social, economic, and political craziness.

OK; he did cover these themes. But with pizazz and ironic fun to create an entertaining narrative that makes one want to keep reading.

Chapters have lively titles and chapter quotations. Such as,"In which one charlatan is run out of town, only to be replaced by an even greater scoundrel", the following quote being a discussion between the Duke and the King from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

Yes, this is a book that Michiganders must read, but also those interested in how Americans gravitate to extremes during troubled times. Harvey's insights into human nature and society transcends time and place.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. 

From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country.

The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.

The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch
by Miles Harvey
Little, Brown and Company
Publication: May 12, 2020 
PRICE: $29.00 (USD)
ISBN: 9780316463591

The Story of Harriet Tubman: A Biography Book for New Readers by Christine Platt

The Story of Harriet Tubman by Christine Platt
Shown with Harriet Tubman detail on my quilt
I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet

"Stories about Dreamers JUST LIKE YOU," the back cover promises. And Harriet Tubman had big dreams and with fearless courage changed her life and the lives of over 300 other enslaved persons over ten years. And she never lost a passenger on the Underground Railroad.

During the Civil War, Tubman became a spy. Concerned for the indigent and homeless former slaves, she created a home. And she worked to secure voting rights for women.

Who would have imagined that an enslaved, illiterate field hand could make such a dramatic impact?

The Story of Harriet Tubman by Christine Platt relates Tubman's dramatic and inspirational story with learning aids including a glossary, quiz questions, timelines, and discussion questions.

Platt does not sugar-coat the horror of Harriet's life as a slave. Readers read that she was beaten and nearly died and experienced 'sleeping spells' and visions after she recovered.

"How will her courageous spirit inspire you?" the back cover asks. And that is the purpose of the biography. One may be on the lowest rung of the social ladder, seemingly without power or control over one's one life, but with vision and commitment, sometimes one does the impossible.

Colorful illustrations by Lois Lora bring the text to life.

I received a free book through Callisto Publisher's Club in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

Discover the life of Harriet Tubman―a story about courage, bravery, and freedom.

Harriet Tubman became a celebrated leader in the fight to free people from slavery. Before that, she was a determined young girl who believed that everyone deserved to be free. Harriet Tubman bravely used the Underground Railroad―a network of secret routes and safe houses―to free herself and many other enslaved people. Explore how Harriet Tubman went from being a slave on a plantation in Maryland to one of the most important figures in American history. 

How will her courageous spirit inspire you? 

This Harriet Tubman biography includes:

• Path to freedom―Explore a visual timeline of Harriet’s life so you can see her progress over time.
• Helpful definitions―Discover a glossary with easy-to-understand definitions for the more advanced words and ideas in the book.
• Test your knowledge―Take a quiz to make sure you understand the who, what, where, when, why, and how of Harriet’s life.

If you’ve been searching for Harriet Tubman biographies for kids, look no further―this one has it all.

About the author:

Christine Platt is a literacy advocate and passionate activist for social justice and policy reform. A believer in the power of storytelling as a tool for social change, Christine’s literature centers on teaching race, equity, diversity and inclusion to people of all ages.

The Story of Harriet Tubman
by Christine Platt
Rockridge Press
Publication April 7, 2020
$6.99 paperback
ISBN: 978-1646111091

Odetta by Ian Zack

In 1978 my husband and I went to the Philadelphia Folk Festival. Our interest in folk rock turned into a deep love of folk music.

We attended concerts around Philly and bought recordings and listened to WXPN on the radio, discovering favorite singers.

One name we heard was Odetta, Odetta, and we knew she was a queen who had once ruled and was still worshipped.

I was a child in the 1950s, cushioned in my working class white neighborhood, unaware of things beyond my front door when Odetta was breaking into songs that stirred souls and feed movements and engendered a whole generation of singers whose names filled the airwaves of my sixties teenage years.

I knew so little about her.

Ian Zack's Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest  is a wonderful biography of Odetta that presents her life, her art, and her legacy.

Odetta's amazing voice spurred teachers to encourage training and her mother scrimped to find the funds for voice lessons. After high school, Odetta worked menial jobs days and studied European classical music nights, singing in the Verdi Requiem and Bach's Mass in B Minor. Odetta loved opera and art songs but knew her career options were nil because of her color.

Odetta was cast for a revival of Yip Harburg's Finian's Rainbow in 1950 which led to her work with Turnabout Theater Jr.

Folk music was the new big thing, The Weavers success spurring an interest in folk songs. Friends took Odetta to hear a concert including Lead Belly songs and it "touched the core of me," she said. It changed the twenty-year-old's life.

The shy girl whose voice was a powerful instrument sang with her eyes closed as she inhabited the songs of her people.
She eschewed straightening her hair, cutting it short and leaving it natural, unwittingly engendering a movement.

Pete Seeger became her biggest fan and promoter. Generations claimed Odetta as their spiritual mother including Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, The Kinks, Grace Slick, and Janis Ian.

There are so many interesting stories in these pages. Odetta was on the TV Western Have Gun--Will Travel because Richard Boone was a fan. The script was a "clear endorsement of black rights," Zack writes.

With the arrival of the Beatles, popular music took a new turn and Odetta struggled to attract the new audience--basically, my generation. She had a series of flops. Her love life had its ups and downs, mostly downs, with a failed marriage and unsustainable relationships.

And yet with age, she became more comfortable with herself, confident on stage, celebrating her African American heritage. President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities, confessing that she had inspired him as a boy.

I enjoyed this biography as a vehicle for learning more about this iconic singer and the role of folk music in American history. It was also a nostalgic trip 'down memory lane', recalling the first time I heard many of the artists who inform the story.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is fair and unbiased.

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
Ian Zack
Beacon Press
Publication Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN 9780807035320, 0807035327
Hardcover $28.95 USD, $38.95 CAD, £22.50 GBP

from the publisher:

The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” who combatted racism and prejudice through her music.

Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change.

A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus.

But Odetta’s importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her “Freedom Trilogy” songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere.

Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade

These five women...all pushed the boundaries of scholarship, of literary form, of societal norms: they refused to let their gender hold them back, but were determined to find a different way of living, one in which their creative work would take precedence.~ Francesca Wade, Square Haunting

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade links writers H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Virginia Woolf, Eileen Power, and Jane Ellen Harrison through their time residing in London's Mecklenburgh Square. They were born in the late 19th c. and by full adulthood saw a changed world that allowed women to vote and the opening of professions to women.They defied the narrow role assigned to women to become masters of their craft.

Each woman's life and career is illuminated through their shared experience in one place. Their time in Mecklenburgh Square was pivotal to their development.

I was familiar with Woolf, knew the work of Sayers and a bit about H.D., but Power and Harrison were unfamiliar. How sad! Harrison broke through the gender barrier to become a professional scholar.  Her research impacted the Imagist writers and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Power was a fashionable and attractive academic of economics. I realized that I had read her book Medieval People several times!

I was fascinated by these women and their stories. Wade delivers a compelling narrative that combines insight and significance and good story-telling.

...real freedom entails the ability to live on one's own terms, not to allow one's identity to be proscribed or limited by anyone else.~ from Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:

In the early twentieth century, Mecklenburgh Square—a hidden architectural gem in the heart of London—was a radical address. On the outskirts of Bloomsbury known for the eponymous group who “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles,” the square was home to students, struggling artists, and revolutionaries. 

In the pivotal era between the two world wars, the lives of five remarkable women intertwined at this one address: modernist poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf. In an era when women’s freedoms were fast expanding, they each sought a space where they could live, love, and—above all—work independently. 

With sparkling insight and a novelistic style, Francesca Wade sheds new light on a group of artists and thinkers whose pioneering work would enrich the possibilities of women’s lives for generations to come.

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
by Francesca Wade
Crown Publishing
Tim Duggan Books
Pub Date April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780451497796
hardcover $28.99 (USD)

The Story of Frida Kahlo by Susan B. Katz

Born with a birth defect, a polio victim as a child, her body smashed in a tragic accident, Frida Kahlo's indomitable spirit overcame everything that life had thrown at her. The eclipsed wife of a larger-than-life artist, those who knew them both believed she was the better artist. 

Katz took on a big job in writing a children's book about a woman who contended with society, love, and the art world to reap world recognition in her brief 47 years. 

Katz's Frida is vulnerable yet strong and young readers will find her life romantically tragic and inspirational. 

The story of Frida's final exhibition is especially moving. A bed was brought into the exhibition hall so she could attend the opening days before her death.

detail of illustration from The Story of Frida Kahlo by Susan B. Katz

The book focuses on the use of art as therapy, self-expression, and connecting to the female experience, showing how creativity can give us strength and a voice.

Katz includes teaching aids including a glossary, timelines, content questions, and discussion starters.

Ana Sanfelippo's colorful illustrations enrich the volume, bringing Frida's life alive to young readers.

The Story of Frida Kahlo: A Biography for New Readers
by Susan B. Katz
Rockridge Press
$6.99 paperback
ISBN-10: 1646111605
ISBN-13: 978-1646111602
Grades 1-3

Susan B. Katz is a teacher, educational consultant, and author. She has also written The Story of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman by Maegan Parker Brooks

Nobody's free until everybody's free. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer

I first heard of Fannie Lou Hamer when I was struggling to find a focus for a quilt celebrating women's contributions to freedom. I contacted a professor of African American Studies at our son's school who referred me to Freedom's DaughtersThe Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970  by Lynn Olson. It was just the inspiration I needed.

Fannie Lou Hamer, I Will Life My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

After completing my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet, which appeared in two national juried quilt shows, I continued reading biographies of leaders in the abolitionist movement and Civil Rights, which brings me to Brook's new biography of Hamer, subtitled America's Freedom Fighting Woman.

At the heart of Hamer's story is the fight to end voter discrimination, a battle that is ongoing to this very day. People in power are afraid of the power of the people and use every method possible to limit their voice.

For Hamer, seeking to vote in Mississippi in the 1960s, that fight included huge sacrifices. Arrested, beaten, and raped, the attack permanently destroyed her health.

Hamer could not be stopped. She knew first hand the suffering of the people. Her own daughter was a victim of malnutrition and the lack of affordable and available health care. Hamer saw her beloved community starving when the cotton jobs disappeared. White Supremacists literally blocked governmental assistance. Without a political voice, the poor--white and black--were powerless victims.

quotation from Fannie Lou Hamer on I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

Hamer's crusade was born in her Christian faith and she raised her voice in hymns and speeches across the country, working with all the important leaders from Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael to Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis.

Hamer was broadly a human rights activist. As a Black Feminist, she appeared with Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Hamer was pro-life, distraught over a forced hysterectomy. She was an anti-war voice.

Hamer didn't only talk and sing, she ran for political office and created the Freedom Farm Collective to provide food to thousands in her starving county.

Give us food and it will be gone tomorrow. Give us land and the tools to work it and we'll feed ourselves forever.~ Fannie Lou Hamer

Hamer's life demonstrates the power of 'ordinary people.' As a nation, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African American leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the martyrs who gave their lives. It is important that we remember women like Hamer who rose up from the most powerless class in America and relentlessly stood up to power.

Brooks has given us a heroine whose example is much needed in these troubling times.

Fannie Lou Hamer on I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet by Nancy A. Bekofske

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman
by Maegan Parker Brooks
Rowman & Littlefield
Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 9781538115947
PRICE: $34.00 (USD)

With my quilt I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet at AQS Grand Rapid 2013

Joe Biden by Jules Witcover

Jules Witcover's biography Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption has been updated and rereleased. Reading this book helped me to understand Biden's career, his consistent strengths and weaknesses, and his deeply held values. I found the biography to be interesting, informative, accessible, and enoyable.

Witcover gives us details of Joe's legislative career, illustrating his long-held views. I was thoroughly engaged while experiencing many 'ah-ha' moments of clarity on issues currently being discussed, such as his view on busing which came up in an early Democratic primary debate.

Biden's ability to connect with people, coupled with his winning smile, his accessibility in a small state, made him Delaware's "Joe." Readers learn that Delaware is such a small state that politicians can't afford to not get along, a quality Joe brought into national politics. Joe also was unafraid to stand up against his own party's stance, such as busing. 

It was also very interesting to learn about Joe's leadership in vetting supreme court justices. The book is detailed and yet so interesting and relevant. Also, Joe's experience in foreign affairs is very revealing and relevant.

As a family man, Joe offers much to recommend as a role model. The 'life of trial,' as many know, includes the early loss of his wife and child and the more recent loss of his son Beau. Joe's commitment to his family took precedence over becoming a Washington insider, as his daily commute from Washington D.C. to Delaware isolated him from other congressmen.

Witcover doesn't shy away from exploring Joe's 'fatal flaws' which have labeled him. For instance, the charge that Joe talks too much is explored while also affirming that Joe really knows what he is talking about. Although a lackluster student, Joe is an avid reader and lifelong learner, which with his years of experience, makes him an authority.

Previously, I had read Joe's profoundly moving and inspirational book Promise Me, Dad and The Book of Joe. I had also read about how Joe and Beau Biden supported Sarah McBride in her memoir Tomorrow Will Be Different.

I won a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read a sample from the book at https://aerbook.com/books/Joe_Biden-81529.html?social=1&retail=1&emailcap=0

from the publisher:Based on exhaustive research by one of Washington's most prolific journalists, including numerous exclusive interviews with Biden's confidants and family members, as well as President Obama and the former vice president himself, Joe Biden goes beyond conventional biography to track the forces that have shaped a man who, with his plainspoken style and inspiring life story, has resonated with millions of Americans and whose work has shaped modern American life.