David Herbert Donald's "Charles Sumner" is an exhaustive biography touching all areas of the man's life. Throughout, Donald is balanced in his treatment of a controversial man who was described, quite accurately by another reviewer, as the country's first "politically correct" politician. As a person I do not think I would have liked Charles Sumner nor agreed with his extremism in many of the positions he took (most other people in the government did not either), but his life is well worth reading about for a fuller understanding of the decades immedaitely prior to and immediately following the Civil War.

Donald goes into many speeches, newspaper reports, letters, personal opinions of others, and proposed legislation to give one a real feeling for the man. His controversial life and opinions give one much to think about regarding the complex issues of race, reconstruction, and society in mid-nineteenth century America. Although this is not the most lively written of biographies, it is judicious and scholarly. Well worth the time.

Harvard historian David Donald applies his keen intellect to the life of Charles Sumner and writes a worthy biography of a man Americans should know more about. Sumner might be described as the first "PC" politician. If you're interested in the Civil War, race relations, or the perils (and triumphs) of a public life devoted to principle, you'll learn much from this book.

I thought that this was a very assured and informative biography of Thomas Wolfe, not only shedding light on his development and work as an author, but also bringing the reader close to getting a feel of what Wolfe the human being must have been like.

I felt that Donald, whilst being a fan of Wolfe's work, maintained a balanced assessment of him: Wolfe had highly unattractive traits - a heavy drinker, untidy and unkempt, intolerant (especially of Jews, which was ironic given the fact that he had a long relationship with Mrs Aline Bernstein, who was herself Jewish) and frequently overbearing.

Wolfe's early struggles to establish himself as a playwright and his emergence as a novelist are described in detail. Wolfe was essentially a "prose machine" unable to control the flows of words and thus the length and structure of his novels. I found the accounts of Wolfe's relationship with his editors, Maxwell E Perkins and latterly Edward C Aswell, fascinating.

A must for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of this interesting novelist.

Did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway all had the same editor at Charles Scribner's and Sons: Maxwell Perkins. Some critics have said that Perkins basically wrote Tom Wolfe's last novel because it was a too-long mess that needed to be edited into a cohesive whole. I read halfway through "Look HomeWard Angel" and "Of Time and the River". Both read like a hot day in Asheville, North Carolina. When I have time I plan to go back and reread these novels because Shelby Foote and Walker Percy spoke highly of them.

The author focuses his attention on Sumner's pre-Civil War years when his influence on behalf of the Union and the antislavery cause reached its zenith.

David Donald is renowned for his meticulous research and well written books. He used diaries, manuscripts, scrapbooks, family histories, letters, newspaper files, and valued secondary sources to flesh out his subject. Donald spent ten years on this book and during that time had to absorb the arcane knowledge of the 19th century in such subjects as medicine, law, politics, etc. His scholarship is impeccable. Though forty years have elapsed since the original publication of this book it still satisfies both the casual and serious reader.

If a theme can be assigned to this very good book, it would be, "Sumner was a man who wouldn't compromise his principles no matter the cost." Sumner believed, "...to sanction the enslaving of a single human being was an act which cannot be called small, unless the whole moral law which it overturns or ignores is small." He was convinced that the appeasement of slave holders was impossible; that the various compromises enacted by the Senate were abdications of Northern principle in order to placate the South and to forestall an inevitable constitutional crisis. Sumner pointed out that supporters of the Compromise of 1850 were in fact extreme sectionalists, while antislavery agitators were the true nationalists.

The author points out that slavery was the one great issue beginning in the late 1840s and continuing through the Civil War. Sumner battled the "peculiar institution" for years and made the abolition of slavery paramount. He became the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a post which he made more important than that of any Ambassador and more influential than that of the Secretary of State of the United States. By 1851, Sumner was one of the most powerful men on the North American continent and was known throughout Europe.

When first viewing slaves Sumner said, "They appear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh, unendowed with anything of intelligence above the brutes." This book clearly illustrates why his opinion changed and why this complex man fought the lonely fight to remove all legal barriers that sustained racial discrimination. Sumner believed such discrimination fostered racial inferiority and was psychologically harmful to Blacks. He believed the pledge in the Declaration of Independence for universal equality was as much a part of the public law of the land as the Constitution.

In this regard, Sumner continually excoriated the public to reform slavery and eventually influenced hundreds of thousands of Northern voters. When read today, his fiery speeches seem ponderous and stilted. Further, Sumner often used illogical reasoning and had a tendency to extend a principle to its utmost limits - he could be irritating and obtuse at time. Regardless, he was a powerful spokesman for the antislavery movement and his speeches solidified Northern opinion in the "great crusade."

In reading this book, its clear Sumner was insensitive to the power of his words. He really didn't care as he had a remarkable power of rationalization and convinced himself that expediency and justice coincided where the abolition of slavery was concerned. The author hasn't overlooked the part that fortuitous circumstances played in the selection of Sumner as one of the most powerful and enduring forces in the pre-Civil War government. (He led the Radical Republicans during the Civil War) While the borderline between myth and history is often blurred, the author proves that the myth in Sumner's life more often than not matched the real Charles Sumner.

Sumner's involvement in the slavery issue seems compulsive to 21st century readers but it was an outgrowth of his life and times. The humanity of a society can be measured by the quality of its compassion and its ability to feel the anguish of others. In contrast, the inability to feel the lash that strikes another's back is the most destructive trait a society can possess.

Sumner's moral compassion wouldn't allow him to act otherwise when it came to slavery. Sumner believed the issue was simple: Slavery was evil, stamp it out!

This is superb Americana.

Professor Donald provides insight into how the collective decisions of the past have led to so many of the problematic circumstances we face as a nation today. Professors Donald, Baker and Holt take the reader back to over twenty years before the beginning of the Civil War and continue through Reconstruction to examine the various factors and angles from which the entire history of the Civil War and Reconstruction is derived. The student of American History has everything needed in one concise volume to gain a working knowledge of the Civil war and Reconstruction era. This work is a well-documented, factual and detailed account of the most trying period of history our nation has seen to date. The work is accurate, comprehensive and concise. No doubt The Civil War and Reconstruction by David H. Donald will maintain a prominent place in any serious historical library for years to come.

Herbert A. David turned 70 in 1995. Much of his long career was spent as chairman of the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University. David is well known for his authoritative texts on pairwise comparison methods and order statistics.

He is known as H. A. at Iowa State so as not to confuse him with his colleague Herbert T. David who also is a Professor of Statistics at Iowa State. In fact at the end of this book Herbert T. David write a very interest review of the life and career of Herbert A. David.

H. A. David made major contributions to the theory and application of order statistics, biostatistics and the design of experiments. This is reflected in the topics chosen by the distinguished statisticians that contributed articles, most of whom are students or colleagues of David.

Noel Cressie write on a generalization of Akaike's information criterion for model selection. Dunnett talks about applications of the multivariate t distribution. Galambos and Xu discuss multivariate Bonferroni-type inequalities. Kale and Sebastian provide some interesting examples of distributions that are symmetric and have kurtosis equal to 3 (the same as for the Normal Distribution) but are non-normal. Some of the densities have very unusual shapes. These are a few of the papers under the general category of "General Distribution Theory and Inference". The articles are all entertaining and interesting and some contained discussion of David's contributions to statistics. Other anecdotes and appreciation letters were combined in the last chapter in this volume.

The volume includes six papers on general distribution theory and inference, six on the distribution theory of order statistics, five on the use of order statistics for statistical inference and applications, three on analysis of variance and experimental design and four on biometry and biomedical applications.

when will come new publish of this book ?

There are many excellent textbooks about Internal Medicine on the market, and I own a lot of them. But the Kelley's book is the one I look up more often. It stands out, since it gives you the broadest and deepest clinical coverage of the internal medicine you can find in a two-volumes textbook. The forthcoming 4th edition, which is scheduled for 8/2000 and will be edited by Humes, will expand furter the coverage, reaching an unprecedented range, at least as can be judged by the anticipated index. For the sake of clarity and completeness, each subspecialty (cardiology, endocrinology and metabolism, and so forth) is divided in three parts: the first group of chapters is devoted to the pathophysiologic foundations, the second to diseases and the third to the diagnosis and treatment. This format is clever, because allow you to study each section separately without being overwhelmed by the astonishing amount of information it contains. A lot of chapters are devoted to the approach to the patient with different symptoms, to the interpretation of instrumental data and to the treatment: they are another distictive feature of the book, making it invaluable. If you are a physician or a serious student searching for an authoritative, encyclopedic textbook with broad pathophysiologic coverage and wide sections about the management of the patient, the Kelley's textbook will not disappoint you. For many of us, it is a must buy. For all, it is a bargain. This textbook is the gold standard as Internal Medicine textbook: it got 5-stars from Doody, and as far as I know, it was the only one awarded with such a high acknowledgement. I agree: five stars.

most comprehensive work ever.an edge over Harrison &Cecil.must buy.

The author is a well-respected historian with a brace of books, many of them on politics in the Civil War era. Here he has written what is essentially a political life of Abraham Lincoln, and he shows us Lincoln the politician in great detail. To be sure, Lincoln's early years are here, and his stumbling love life, but to an extraordinary degree Lincoln was an ambitious man who saw that law and politics were to be his path, and he single-mindedly applied himself to becoming a lawyer, and to political work.

There is much of interest in this book, but it lacks the warmth and the narrative felicity that make a chronicle of a life really come alive. Throughout, Donald uses "Lincoln"-never "Abe" or even "Abraham". It's a small thing, but it contributes to the book's impersonal tone. Moreover, he almost never describes Abe Lincoln's feelings, and only occasionally touches on his personal life, such as his relations with Mary, or how he reacted to the deaths of his sons. Lincoln comes to seem a man almost independent of his environment-certainly indifferent to food or comfort, or, we suspect, love-who reserves his real passions for the machinations of politics. However, the author does make credible Lincoln's moral and political greatness; he just does not quite give us a feel for the man. It sounds like Donald's more recent book, "Lincoln at Home", could be the ideal companion volume to this one.

The joy of reading is one that cannot be adequately expressed. The sense of accomplishment along with gaining another life chapter of knowledge is why I continue to seek out great literature. I have had the pleasure of reading several books on President Lincoln, but will always consider this masterpiece the biography to base the life of a complex hero. Along the course of the swiftly reading, eloquently paced chapters, we find our way meandering through a river of Lincoln's experiences. From his humble Kentucky beginnings and following him on the trail to his greatest challenge (No, I do not mean Mary Todd, all together as exasperating as she appears to be), the White House. Donald brings to life the vignettes of Lincoln engaged in playtime with his sons, to pacing frantically through the Telegraph office awaiting word on the recent war events. We tend to think of Lincoln as a stone figure, but we see insecurities and doubt with the fate of the Union resting in his hands, but never surrendering the belief in a Unified nation. After finishing a novel of this caliber, my gratitude must be given to the author for a job well done. I recalled that the dedication was to his children thanking them for "living their entire lives with Lincoln". After absorbing this book, I can't imagine a better person to have lived near.

Donald's book is the remarkable product of an enormous amount of research, replete with quotes and insight not only from Lincoln's personal writings, but also from countless individuals who surrounded Lincoln at any given time in his life, resulting in a balanced portait of our most beloved President. What is perhaps most surprising is the book's readability - Donald masterfully avoids getting bogged down in insignificant detail, and succeeds in keeping the book moving along the major events of Lincoln's life.

The reader (at least, this reader) is left with a sense of awe at Lincoln's humble integrity, tested in the most trying of circumstances and confronted with the most impossible of choices. The accuracy of his foresight has been amply confirmed by our hindsight, and we as a nation are left with deepest gratitude for his service.

I disagree with criticism that Donald's book lacks sufficient information about Lincoln's personal life and emotions. The biography is designed to be primarily a story of Lincoln the statesman, not Lincoln the husband or father. Those elements are introduced at relevant times, but Donald (appropriately, in my view) does not dwell extensively on those relationships. There are other books which explore those aspects of Lincoln's life in greater detail. I appreciate that Donald avoids engaging in supposition at what Lincoln "must have" been feeling at any particular time - he sticks to what is evidenced in Lincoln's writings and what others observed in him. This inspires in the reader greater confidence in the accurary of Donald's analysis.

Finally, my one criticism: at times I would have appreciated getting the full text of some of Lincoln's short, remarkable speeches, such as the Gettysburg Address or Lincoln's second inaugural address. Donald wrote about them and quoted certain phrases, but we do not get the text in full, which I thought would have been appropriate and feasible. Also (okay, maybe two criticisms), I would have liked to see a few pages or a short chapter about the immediate aftermath of Lincoln's death - the reaction of the nation, the funeral, his legacy. Donald ends the book the moment Lincoln expires.

That said, I would recommend the book to anyone interested in learning about the man who lead our nation through its greatest crisis. I am not normally a big fan of histories or biography, but this one is indispensable.

Donald starts off his book as an iconoclast, intent on reversing the apotheosis of Lincoln. Lincoln was not, he asserts, the god among us that many ardent admirers believe. He gives examples of this uncritical adulation and states that Lincoln has been claimed by Mormons, vegetarians, and other disparate groups anxious to claim a popular figure as their own.

But, as it turns out, Donald's iconoclasm is a bit false. He reexamines Lincoln's more controversial points, and casts his verdict with the purveyors of the Lincoln legend. Did Lincoln imprison thousands of people without charges or trial? He did, but they deserved it. Did Lincoln destroy the Constitution by starting a war without the approval of Congress? Yes, but he had to abrogate the Constitution in order to save it.

Donald starts out bravely but in the end, cops out in favor of sentimental Lincolnism. I thought it a bit disappointing.

Lincoln Reconsidered is a collection of provactive essays that probe the multiple depths of Abraham Lincoln--life and mythology. He paints Lincoln's portrait onto the background of the sectional conflict that led to the Civil War. Originally published about 1961, Donald's stories remain fresh and relevant. In fact the reader will encounter the thesis and outline for his recent prize-winning biography of Lincoln. I first encoutered LR in 1962 when I taught Advanced Placement American History and assigned portions of the book to my students. They loved it; you will. Donald is a superlative historian and stylist. Listen to these chapter headings: Getting Right With Lincoln, Reconsideration of Abolitionists, Herndon and Mrs. Lincoln, Folklore Lincoln, An Excess of Democracy. Readers of Donald's Lincoln will want to have this as a companion reference piece. It's rare for an historian's essays to experience such a rich and extended publishing history. Here's a quote from my faded copy of LR, a touch of wisdom for our parlous times: "...Lincoln knew that there were limits rational human activity, and that there was no virtue in irritably seeking to perform the impossible. As President, he could only do his best to handle problems as they arose and have a patient trusdt that popular support for his solutions would be forthcoming. But the ultimate decision was beyond his, or any man's, control. 'Now at the end of three years struggle,' he said, 'the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.'" Page after page runs like this, and virtually every theme connected to the Civil War gets enough discussion to stimulate and edify.

The book is good for anyone who wants a quick understanding of certain possibilities of why the North won. However, some of the essays(this is no reflection of the actual book) are not that well justified in my opinion.

Reissue of a classic collection of essays from the 60's...Currents's "God and the Strongest Battalions" is alone worth the price!...Economic, political, social, etc., aspects are all considering by the "big-gun" historians of 40 years past...Scholarly enough for the serious student, yet very reader-friendly for the novitiate...recommended in the strongest possible terms!

This is an excellent book which contains six essays on the various economic, miliary, diplomatic, social, and politiical reasons why the Confederacy lost and the Union won the Civil War. This book saved my butt

A star-studded cast, but not a lot of topical or scholarly innovation in this collection of essays. Many of the essays seem to be simple narratives of battles that whole books have been published about elsewhere. There are some interesting bits -- Griffith's article on tactics is a bright spot, as is Trudeau on entrenchment. In this sort of work, though, I'm really looking for more innovative, new scholarship, and that's not what I see here.

I'm unable to refrain from mentioning that I feel the concept of Jackson having a "learning disability" is poppycock. I recommend Robertson's biography of the general.

I am greatly torn over whether to give With My Face to the Enemy three or four stars. Four stars ultimately prevails because it seems to me that just about any book about the Civil War is almost by definition worth reading, and there is much in With My Face to the Enemy that will please both Civil War aficionados and those with but a passing interest. Of particular moment are two articles about the Confederate pirate ships (and let's be honest, they *were* pirate ships sans the physical violence) Alabama and Shenandoah, which reveal the genuinely global reach of the conflict. Every article has something to recommend it, even if, like Stephen Sears' essay on Chancellorsville, you've read it all before.

But there are some flaws, too. Most glaring and annoying is the lack of an index. Is there any Civil War student who does not rush to the index first to find references to his (or her) favorite general or battle? No such luck here; you'll have to read the entire book for those brief references to Howard, Hancock, McPherson, et al. Second, the articles lack two of the major selling points of military history magazines - color maps and illustrations. Now, I'm a big boy and I don't *need* pictures with my text, but often the art that accompanies an MHQ article is more powerful than the text. Third, there is a fault that lies with far too many Civil War pieces: biographies of important figures devolving into hagiographies. For too many Civil War biographers their subject can do, and did no, wrong. Crowley himself uses the word "hagiography" in one of his introductions. Whether it's Stonewall or Lee, or Admiral Porter or Sheridan, the lavish praise becomes tiring. And the final gripe to be made is toward Crowley's introductions, which borrow too liberally from the essays, adding nothing yet stealing the thunder of the contributors. (The same complaint can be made of Crowley's introductions to the What If? series.)

These are not much more than petty gripes, however. The Civil War remains a fascinating topic, and With My Face to the Enemy provides a wide range of essays covering many areas of the war. The collection deserves a spot on the bookshelf.

This collection of essays, compiled by Donald and Cowley, is a real treat. It offers a nice mix of storylines from both Union and Confederate perspectives. Maps abound to assist the text pertaining to various battles/troop movements. A word of caution, however - these essays have been collected from past issues of Military History Quarterly. This may explain why no notes or bibliographies are offered. Many of these offerings present novel twists on Civil War subjects - Lincoln's genius with the English language, Charles Stone's ordeal with the Federal legislature and Nathan Bedford Forrest's role at Ft. Pillow are just three of 30+ topics brought to bear. Finally, on a structural note, this book is 500+ pages of somewhat small print.