John Adams

By David McCullough
736pp, Simon & Schuster, $35



reviewed by John Coggin | Yale Review of Books

When David McCullough won the National Book Award in 1981 for Mornings on Horseback, his rendering of Theodore Roosevelt’s struggle to manhood, he said that his childhood in Pennsylvania amid the horror of World War II had spurred his love for history. He then described his undergraduate experience at Yale as the crucial period when he seriously considered writing as a lifelong endeavor. He later concluded that, “one of the lessons of history—one of the lessons of life—is that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman.” In John Adams, McCullough teaches the significance of this lesson. He studies Adams, a man of honesty and wisdom, so we might learn his story, and then delight in his triumph.

At age 25, John Adams resembled his college friends. Ambitious and vain, he yearned for distinction, but needed “ballast.” “Why have I not genius to start some new thought?” he wondered in his diary. “Let me search for the clue which led great Shakespeare into the labyrinth of human nature. Let me examine how men think.” Adams began writing portraits of “original characters” around his home of Braintree, Massachusetts—brief, poignant sketches of human failure and conquest. McCullough examines Adams with the same tenacity these diary entries display. The historian draws from a marvelous collection of family letters and diaries (especially the voluminous correspondence between John and Abigail) to illuminate the “labyrinth” of John Adams’ mind. McCullough explores his public and private persona with equal vigor, relating even the humiliations that resulted from Adam’s obstinacy and vanity. While depicting these flaws, McCullough reveals that Adams’ abiding honesty and courage carried him from his Massachusetts law practice to the presidency of the United States. McCullough highlights these traits beautifully.

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The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

From Publishers Weekly

Global warming is hardly new; in fact, the very long-term trend began about 12,000 years ago with the end of the Ice Age. Anthropologist Fagan (The Little Ice Age) focuses on the medieval warming period (ca. 800-1300), which helped Europe produce larger harvests; the surpluses helped fund the great cathedrals. But in many other parts of the world, says Fagan, changing water and air currents led to drought and malnutrition, for instance among the Native Americans of Northern California, whose key acorn harvests largely failed. Long-term drought contributed to the collapse of the Mayan civilization, and fluctuations in temperature contributed to, and inhibited, Mongol incursions into Europe. Fagan reveals how new research methods like ice borings, satellite observations and computer modeling have sharpened our understanding of meteorological trends in prehistorical times and preliterate cultures. Finally, he notes how times of intense, sustained global warming can have particularly dire consequences; for example, by 2025, an estimated 2.8 billion of us will live in areas with increasingly scarce water resources. Looking backward, Fagan presents a well-documented warning to those who choose to look forward. Illus., maps. (Mar.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"An alarm bell ringing out from a distant time."—Kirkus

"Superbly integrating the human and climatological past, Fagan’s expertise wears easily in a fine popular treatment relevant to contemporary debate about climate."—Booklist

"This is not only World History at its best, sweeping across all of humankind with a coherent vision, but also a feat of imagination and massive research. If Fagan has given the medieval period throughout the globe a new dimension, he has at the same time issued an irrefutable warning about climate change that is deeply troubling."--Theodore Rabb, author of The Last Days of the Renaissance

“Climate has been making history for a very long time, though historians have rarely paid much attention to it. But as it turns out, a few less inches of rain, a change in temperature of just a degree or two can make all the difference in how human events unfold. The Great Warming demonstrates that although human beings make history, they very definitely do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing.”--Ted Steinberg, author of Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History and American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn

“Looking backward, Fagan presents a well-documented warning to those who choose to look forward.”--Publisher's Weekly

How to Make Friends and Influence People (Bush-Style)

Chilean Envoy to U.N. Recounts Threats of Retaliation in Run-Up to Invasion

Colum Lynch | Washington Post | Sunday, March 23, 2008

UNITED NATIONS -- In the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration threatened trade reprisals against friendly countries who withheld their support, spied on its allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S. pressure to endorse the war, according to an upcoming book by a top Chilean diplomat.

The rough-and-tumble diplomatic strategy has generated lasting "bitterness" and "deep mistrust" in Washington's relations with allies in Europe, Latin Americaand elsewhere, Heraldo Muñoz, Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, writes in his book "A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons," set for publication next month.

In the aftermath of the invasion, allies loyal to the United States were rejected, mocked and even punished" for their refusal to back a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Saddam Hussein's government, Muñoz writes.

But the tough talk dissipated as the war situation worsened, and President Bush came to reach out to many of the same allies that he had spurned. Muñoz's account suggests that the U.S. strategy backfired in Latin America, damaging the administration's standing in a region that has long been dubious of U.S. military intervention.

Muñoz details key roles by Chile and Mexico, the Security Council's two Latin members at the time, in the run-up to the war: Then-U.N. Ambassadors Juan Gabriel Vald¿s of Chile and Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico helped thwart U.S. and British efforts to rally support among the council's six undecided members for a resolution authorizing the U.S.-led invasion.

The book portrays Bush personally prodding the leaders of those six governments -- Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan -- to support the war resolution, a strategy aimed at demonstrating broad support for U.S. military plans, despite the French threat to veto the resolution.

In the weeks preceding the war, Bush made several appeals to Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Mexican President Vicente Fox to rein in their diplomats and support U.S. war aims. "We have problems with your ambassador at the U.N.," Bush told Fox at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperationin Los Cabos, Mexico, in late 2002.

It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long," Bush told the Chilean president on March 11, 2003."

Bush had referred to Lagos by his first name, but as the conversation drew to a close and Lagos refused to support the resolution as it stood, Bush shifted to a cool and aloof 'Mr. President,' " Muñoz writes. "Next Monday, time is up," Bush told Lagos.

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How Bush coerced allies to support invading Iraq-1/3

Taking Back the Constitution--A Case for Impeaching George W. Bush

Taki's Magazine | Posted by Kevin R. C. Gutzman on March 21, 2008



On Saturday, March 8, 2008, President George W. Bush vetoed a congressional bill that would have explicitly banned interrogation techniques like waterboarding. In doing so, Bush cemented his worthiness of impeachment.

The impeachment power allows Congress to keep the other two branches from grasping at powers that the Constitution gives to the Legislative Branch. Congress is described in Article I of the Constitution, and its structure was the chief issue in the Philadelphia Convention. Why? Because in a republic, it is to be the most important branch.

People commonly repeat the idea today that the federal government features three equal branches. This is an error. Congress is to be the most important branch. The Founders generally feared the power of the executive and assigned the traditional royal powers in foreign policy to Congress instead of the president. The courts were to be even weaker, the “least dangerous” branch.

Yet, over time, the three have come to be more equal. This is the result of Congress’s supine attitude toward the other branches’ overreaching. When federal courts legislate, Congress does nothing. When presidents and their subordinates—generals, cabinet officials, and others—ignore statutory law, refuse to comply with congressional demands for information, or flat-out lie to Congress, Congress does nothing.

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25 Intolerable Contradictions: The Final Undoing of the Official 9/11 Story

Elizabeth Woodworth | Global Research | Tuesday, March 18, 2008

A review of "9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press," by Dr. David Ray Griffin. Interlink Publishing, March 2008. 368 p. List

At last there is a book about 9/11 that politicians and journalists can openly discuss without fear of being labeled "conspiracy theorists".

9/11 Contradictions advances no theories. It simply exposes 25 astonishing internal contradictions that will haunt the public story of this unparalleled event for all time.

Until now, the persistent and disturbing questions about the day that changed the world have confused and alienated journalists and politicians, because:

The technical issues regarding the collapse of the towers, the failure of the military to intercept the flights, and the relatively minor damage to the Pentagon have been considered too complex for analysis in the media.

However, Griffin’s new book requires no technical expertise from the reader, because each readable chapter revolves around one simple internal contradiction inherent in the public story. “If Jones says ‘P’ and Smith says ‘Not P’, we can all recognize that something must be wrong, because both statements cannot be true.”

Many who have doubted the official story have offered alternative theories which have been dismissed as “conspiracy theories” by a press which must understandably place a high value on its credibility.

However, this book offers no alternative theories to explain the contradictions within the public story. It simply presents the glaring contradictions that have never been probed by Congress or the media, and beseeches members of these institutions come to grips with the reality and lead the charge for a truly independent investigation.

The 9/11 issue is six years old, journalists are busy people, and the world has moved on.

Though six years have passed, this matter is by no means closed, nor is the trail cold. "The accepted story about 9/11 has been used to increase military spending, justify wars, restrict civil liberties, and exalt the executive branch of the government." Indeed, this reviewer notes, the public story has recently been challenged in foreign forums (Japan Parliament, January 10, 2008, and at the European Parliament building in Brussels, February 26, 2008). The 9/11 Commissioners themselves have cast doubt on the credibility of the Commission Report in their January 2, 2008 New York Times article, "Stonewalled by the CIA." (Ref. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html)<

Let us now turn to the contradictions.

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Dr. David Ray Griffin Book Carousel

A Chosen People without God--The Rise of the Neocons

Grant Havers | Taki's Magazine | March 13, 2008



It is always risky to write the obituary of neoconservatism, despite the now fashionable view that this is an idea whose time is finally gone. As Jacob Heilbrunn demonstrates in They Knew They Were Right: The Rise Of The Neocons, the neoconservatives have always been a tenacious bunch. Who could have predicted that a small group of ex-Trotskyite intellectuals would not only shape foreign policy for the Republican Party in the last three decades but also reinvent conservatism in America? Heilbrunn, a former senior editor of The New Republic, wisely prefers to emphasize the past success of the neoconservatives rather than offer ironclad predictions about their future influence, settling for rather safe forecasts such as his claim that American soldiers will be in Iraq for another four years, whoever wins the election in 2008.

The title of the book is Heilbrunn’s essential explanation for the success of the neoconservatives—they knew they were right. Their sheer self-confidence of the neoconservatives, their belief that they have The Answer, is astounding and goes a long way in explaining their stunning victories. For this reason, the author emphasizes the radical origins of the movement. Heilbrunn offers a readable (though not terribly original) account of how the future leaders of neoconservatism (especially Irving Kristol) got their start as public intellectuals engaged in various fratricidal battles between Trotskyites and Stalinists in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite this parochial beginning, these former leftist radicals—who eventually became ardent anti-Communists—possessed the will to power necessary to enter and then transform the mainstream of American politics, especially on the right. As they eventually moved from the left to the right in the 1970s, this will to change the world through endless promotion of their ideas never flagged.

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Lou Dobbs: New World Order Can Be Defeated

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet | Friday, March 7, 2008

CNN host Lou Dobbs says that the New World Order can be defeated but only if "Americans awaken and soon," as he attacked the Bush administration's "shameless" destruction of U.S. sovereignty on a nationally syndicated radio show.

"What we have permitted in allowing the Bush administration to have effectively further reduced our sovereignty and respect for our laws and certainly regard for our borders and our ports - it's been a shameless, shameless period in American history that we're going to have to reverse," Dobbs told the Alex Jones Show.

Dobbs said that if people did not wake up to the unfolding North American Union agenda as well as the Trans Texas Corridor under the banner of the Security and Prosperity partnership, then America could "kiss its future goodbye."

The CNN host said that the New World Order could be defeated, but only if the American people awakened and did it soon.

They Knew They Were Right

From Publishers Weekly
News of neoconservatism's demise has been greatly exaggerated, according to prolific journalist Heilbrunn, who profiles the largely (though by no means exclusively) Jewish makeup of the movement. Heilbrunn roots his interpretation of neoconservatism's Jewish character in the American immigrant experience, the persistent memory of the Holocaust and Western appeasement of Hitler, among other phenomena. Charting the movement's philosophy from its inception through the foreign policy vision crafted in the 1970s and the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s, Heilbrunn employs a quasi-biblical spin echoed in Old Testament-inspired chapter headings. With the exception of his grasp of neoconservatism's right-wing Christian contingent, Heilbrunn displays an innate understanding of the movement. He argues persuasively that though these self-styled prophets embrace an outsider stance, and though he believes they are happiest when viewed as the opposition, they will remain a formidable influence for the foreseeable future. Heilbrunn's analysis lacks rigor concerning foreign policy assumptions and ideological and economic motives, thus unintentionally leaving his subjects more historically isolated than they really are. His proximity to the conservative movement brings benefits and limitations to this historical analysis. (Jan.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
The neocons have become at once the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. Critics on left and right describe them as a tight-knit cabal that ensnared the Bush administration in an unwinnable foreign war.

Who are the neoconservatives? How did an obscure band of policy intellectuals, left for dead in the 1990s, suddenly rise to influence the Bush administration and revolutionize American foreign policy?

Jacob Heilbrunn wittily and pungently depicts the government officials, pundits, and think-tank denizens who make up this controversial movement, bringing them to life against a background rich in historical detail and political insight. Setting the movement in the larger context of the decades-long battle between liberals and conservatives, first over communism, now over the war on terrorism, he shows that they have always been intellectual mavericks, with a fiery prophetic temperament (and a rhetoric to match) that sets them apart from both liberals and traditional conservatives.

Neoconservatism grew out of a split in the 1930s between Stalinists and followers of Trotsky. These obscure ideological battles between warring Marxist factions were transported to the larger canvas of the Cold War, as over time the neocons moved steadily to the right, abandoning the Democratic party after 1972 when it shunned intervention abroad, and completing their journey in 1980 when they embraced Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. There they supplied the ideological glue that held the Reagan coalition together, combining the agenda of “family values” with a crusading foreign policy.

Out of favor with the first President Bush, and reduced to gadflies in the Clinton years, they suddenly found themselves in George W. Bush’s administration in a position of unprecendented influence. For the first time in their long history, they had their hands on the levers of power. Prompted by 9/11, they used that power to advance what they believed to be America’s strategic interest in spreading democracy throughout the Arab world.

Their critics charge that the neo-conservatives were doing the bidding of the Israeli government -- a charge that the neoconservatives rightfully reject. But Heilbrunn shows that the story of the neocons is inseparable from the great historical drama of Jewish assimilation. Decisively shaped by the immigrant exerience and the trauma of the Holocaust, they rose from the margins of political life to become an insurgent counter-establishment that challenged the old WASP foreign policy elite.

Far from being chastened by the Iraq debacle, the neocons continue to guide foreign policy. They are advisors to each of the major GOP presidential candidates. Repeatedly declared dead in the past, like Old Testament prophets they thrive on adversity. This book shows where they came from -- and why they remain a potent and permanent force in American politics.