I’ll get this out of the way at the outset: I didn’t like this book. Why give it four stars, then, you ask? Well, it’s not a bad book. There’s nothing wrong with it, per say. I just didn’t like it. It took me eight months to read it. I’d like to blame it on the fact that my family increased by one 7 pound boy during that time, but there’s no getting around the fact that I simply struggled to get through this. I […]
This Cold War needs a little ray gun to warm things up.
My father bought into the myth of Ronald Reagan like a dying man holding onto the promise of an after life. He spent his life in the military, and would talk about not having actual rounds to fire under Jimmy Carter because of budget cuts. But Ronald Reagan? He gave us our soul back. This country was reborn after Vietnam, and Watergate, and the Iran hostage crises. Ronald Reagan cut taxes, and ended the Cold War, and reigned in an out of control government. He […]
Wall to wall tragedy, with nary a lasagna to be found.
Apart from The Emperor and the Assassin, this is a different beast from the other biographies I’ve been reading. Dispensing with the straight telling of James Garfield’s life, Candice Millard instead paints the portrait of an era. Taking place between the war that sundered the nation and the dawn of the new century, the era in which Garfield rose to prominence was nothing if not propitious. It was a time for momentous change and novel invention. The light bulb and the telephone came to prominence. […]
He’s pretty great if you forget about the whole “owning humans” thing.
James Madison and James Monroe are interchangeable in mind. Both were important Founding Fathers, their names are fairly similar, they served consecutive dual terms as president, they both hailed from Virginia, were both proteges of Thomas Jefferson and turned against George Washington and the Federalists. Both served as Secretaries of State. Madison and Monroe were even close friends for 25 years (before temporarily severing ties with one another). There are numerous differences between the two men, but the one that stands out for me is […]