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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.