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Book reviews for "Moynihan,_Daniel_Patrick" sorted by average review score:

A Passion for Truth: The Selected Writings of Eric Breindel
Published in Hardcover by HarperCollins (1999)
Authors: Eric Breindel, John Podhoretz, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Taut, critical writing of high quality
This collection is a fitting tribute to a gifted writer who chose to deploy his first-rate intellect in writings whose quality elevated them above the normal round of newspaper columns. The book comprises articles grouped across three broad subjects: anti-Communism, New York, and the fate of the Jews. The op-ed column may be an ephemeral form, but the subjects are of enduring significance and and Breindel's insights into them are often of startling originality.

It is salutary to note just how indulgent the American press can be of Communist totalitarianism, in a way that it never would be of extremism on the opposite flank. Clearly McCarthyism has had a disastrous effect on American public life, but not in the way that what Lionel Trilling termed the 'adversary culture' has ever understood. Breindel saw this, and reminded his readers that the tawdry history of Communist espionage in America, as revealed in the Venona decrypts, demonstrated that Communism really was a threat to the democracies and that opposing it was axiomatic to democratic politics.

Breindel's passionate commitment to the defence of Israel was, likewise, a function of his commitment to democratic values. When slippery evasions and idle prejudices make their way into so much commentary about Israel, it is heartening to read an intelligent and robust assertion of the essential truth that Israel's defence is as much a liberal cause as the overthrow of apartheid.

This book is an example of fine style and intellectual substance, eloquently expressed; it is well worth reading.

Eric Breindel Wrote The Truth - And Died Too Young!
I have just finished reading "A Passion For Truth: The Selected Writings of Eric Breindel" and have been truly stunned by the power and truth of this young man's writings. And I cannot keep his book down - nor one of the final pieces that he wrote (not in this slim volume) - a scathing criticism of State Department official Aaron Miller for shoving Yasser Arafat down the throat of the United States Holocaust Museum.

Breindel died two years ago, 42 and way too young.

In many ways he might have been a contemporary of mine - his worldview of the former Soviet Union and of those stupid Americans who spied for "Uncle Joe" based upon his impeccable research was the same as mine; his unbridled contempt of Racists whatever their skin color mirrored my own feelings; as well as his blunt perspectives on the refusal of the Democratic Party to ferret out Left Fascists.

And while I might not be a son of Holocaust survivors as the author was, I too share the views on Israel and on Nazi collaborators and terrorists expressed by the author in the chapter entitled: "Fate of the Jews".

This small book which only scratched the surface of Breindel's powerful writings, is one that should be a part of every thoughtful American's home library whatever your race, religion, or creed might be. For Eric Breindel was a decent, true patriotic Jewish American whose writings reflected his deep love of Country and Religion, and who sadly passed on much too early.


Secrecy: The American Experience
Published in Paperback by Yale Univ Pr (1999)
Authors: Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Richard Gid Powers
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mediocre at best
Moynihan presents an array of anecdotal evidence of instances where secrecy produced unintended, and unfortunate results, and draws that sweeping conclusion that secrecy is bad. A more modest conclusion, such as that the government designates too much stuff as secret might be supported, but Moynihan's generalization is too much. Also, the introduction to the book written by Richard Gid Powers far outshines the portion written by Moynihan. Moynihan's stuff is a dry as dust.

Supplementary book for American Politics Course
A very interesting account of governmental secrecy during various times of conflict. Would make a nice supplemental reading for professors teaching a American Politics course. I touches upons foreign policy and the relationship between the Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Most of the material deals with the development of secrecy as a standard operating procedure during WWI and WWII. Vietnam and the Iran-Contra Affair are touched upon but could have been expanded.

Extraordinary Contribution to National Sanity and Security

Senator Moynihan applies his intellect and his strong academic and historical bent to examine the U.S. experience with secrecy, beginning with its early distrust of ethnic minorities. He applies his social science frames of reference to discuss secrecy as a form of regulation and secrecy as a form of ritual, both ultimately resulting in a deepening of the inherent tendency of bureaucracy to create and keep secrets-secrecy as the cultural norm. His historical overview, current right up to 1998, is replete with documented examples of how secrecy may have facilitated selected national security decisions in the short-run, but in the long run these decisions were not only found to have been wrong for lack of accurate open information that was dismissed for being open, but also harmful to the democratic fabric, in that they tended to lead to conspiracy theories and other forms of public distancing from the federal government. He concludes: "The central fact is that we live today in an Information Age. Open sources give us the vast majority of what we need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Decisions made by people at ease with disagreement and ambiguity and tentativeness. Decisions made by those who understand how to exploit the wealth and diversity of publicly available information, who no longer simply assume that clandestine collection-that is, 'stealing secrets'-equals greater intelligence. Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security....Secrecy is for losers."


Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy
Published in Paperback by Harvard Univ Pr (1997)
Author: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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A wealth of wisdom
I must first note that this book is extremely poorly edited. It oscillates from current commentary to previously published essays and articles without significant distinction. This along with an introduction that occupies a third of the book makes for a frustrating read. Moreover, Moynihan doesn't always state what he is trying to say so the reader must be alert for not-so-obvious implications.

Having said all this, this book is a true resevoir of wisdom. In tackling issues from moral decline to welfare reform to the drug war to "Reaganism," Moynihan both parts ways with contemporary liberalism while offering sharp critiques of past and current policies. Ever the social scientist, Moynihan is quick to demonstrate how "conventional wisdom" can be utterly wrong while at the same time dismissing those who would sieze on simplistice generalizations of scientific research in furtherance of radical agendas.

A difficult read but well worth it.

A call to arms for a political social science
First, let's realize what this book isn't. It is not a collection of previous essays, although it excerpts heavily from a number of essays, both from the 60s and the 90s. It is also not a memoir.

It's an argument for a different role for the social sciences in policy making. First, it's an argument by repeated example of the predictive power of the social sciences. And, second, it's a call for social scientists and the government to start doing work seriously on the issues of the day.

So, first. He's telling us that we can do social science that tells us things about the world that we live in. Like what? One, government supervision of the economy from WWII to the present day. Two, his observation in the 70s that the Soviet Union was already in the early stages of collapse. Three, his argument that the illegitimacy rates where (1) going to skyrocket and (2) that it would be a problem. He tells us that these were not mysterious phenomena and that had the data not been ignored, public policy could have addressed them appropriately. This is important, partly to remind us of it, but also to challenge some writers on the right, such as Thomas Sowell, who argues, essentially, the opposite.

Second, this book argues that both the social scientists and the politicians need to take social science seriously. And, furthermore, part of the problem is the liberal professionalization of "Do Gooders". Why wasn't illegitimacy attacked in the 60s and 70s? Because some of the people on the left really are as morally squishy as the people on the right say they are! They were afraid to push a family structure, especially a "traditional" one. However, the people on the right were too moralizing to achieve anything. Furthermore, he argues, that this phenomenon had been described by Durkheim in the Rules of Sociological Method.

This book is, in the end, a call for a scientifically-informed moderate social policy. A social policy that is not afraid to speak of "values" and, indeed, "family values", but is also not vindictive or punitive. Furthermore, it's proof-by-example that it is achievable.


Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City
Published in Paperback by MIT Press (1984)
Authors: Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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dated, but informative and well written
Beyond the Melting Pot is informative and very well written, but a little dated. Of the five ethnic groups profiled - blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Irish, and Italians - the last two are not so ethnic anymore, nor numerous. Also, Arabs, Asians, and South Americans are missing. (though I suppose much of what is written about Jews would sound familiar to someone with knowledge of East (and South) Asian-Americans)

However, as a history of the five ethnic groups it sets out to profile, Beyond the Melting Pot is excellent. It outlines the differing values each group had, plus the niches each group filled. Beyond the Melting pot also avoids misrepresentation by not reducing everything to economics, and admitting that certain groups/cultures really can value (and excel at)different things, something probably offensive to pc'ers.

Good Book
To JSB-Chicago What you said about Italians not being ethnic you have to be playing almost every Italian I know loves being Italian and still gos to the Italian Feasts each year

The Definitive Study of Urban Life.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's sociological study, " Beyond The Melting Pot; The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City" provided sociologists a basis for interpreting the cultural differences in an urban society. Besides being a fascinating and amazingly well written book, it truly is a must read for anybody who wants to truly understand the racial/ethnic conflict in America today. This book rings as true in the year 2000, as it did in the 60's


The Gentleman From New York: Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- A Biography
Published in Hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Co (16 August, 2000)
Author: Godfrey Hodgson
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IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A 4 BUT FOR ITS SUBJECT....
Godfrey Hodgson is a stand-out as a political historian of the second half of the twentieth century. If you read anything of his, read "World Turned Right Side Up" and "America In Our Time". Excellent, crisp writing accompanied by balanced judgment and comprehensive coverage are Hodgson's trademarks. This book was also well-put together.

It is obvious that Hodgson really likes his subject and strives mightily to shore him up, very often without success. An appropriate title for this book could very well have been "Forrest Gump Goes to the Senate." Moynihan turns up at every critical juncture in the history of American social policy....to what purpose, it is never clear. In fact, his entire career leaves one with the feeling, why was he here? This book does nothing to lay these questions to rest and does much to raise them over and over again. Since Jefferson, other men of thought have entered public life to build coalitions and accomplish great things. In this book, Moynihan's first impulse always seems to be to drape himself in a toga and write a monograph. Rather than building alliances with others, he builds moats around himself with gratuitously acerbic commentary.

By all means read the book. However, we can only hope that Hodgson will find a worthier subject for his next book.

A revealing, if biased, political biography
Godfrey Hodgson, the author of this new biography of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is admittedly a long-standing, close friend of his subject. This is at once the major strength and major weakness of this portrait of the senior Senator from New York. On the one hand, Hodgson has enjoyed unprecedented access to Moynihan in writing this book, which stops just short of being an official biography, making the book extremely revealing. Yet as an intimate of Moynihan's, the author cannot seem to achieve the distance and perspective which objectivity demands.

Nonetheless, anyone interested in American or New York politics--or contemporary American history--is bound to find this an absorbing volume. After all, Moynihan's friends and associates have ranged from Averell Harriman to Henry Kissinger, from Arthur Goldberg to Richard Nixon, from Lyndon Johnson to Irving Kristol. He has exercised power in locales as varied as Albany, the U.S. Labor Department, the Nixon White House, the United Nations, New Delhi, and the U.S. Senate. Perhaps more than most political biographies, this is not just the story of one man but a political and intellectual history of the period in which his career flourished.

Yet the author's biases are apparent. He strives mightily to reconcile and explain Moynihan's political inconsistencies, styling him at one point an "orthodox centrist liberal"--whatever that means. (It strikes me as an oxymoron.) He tries to find consistent strains in what seems to me to have been a political career characterized most of all by opportunism, if not outright caprice. He tries to explain away Moynihan's alcohol problem, while reporting that his staff employs the euphemism that the Senator is "with the Mexican ambassador" to explain that he is enjoying Tio Pepe, his favorite dry sherry. He justifies the Senator's long-standing feud with the liberal wing of his party in light of some early slights at the hands of liberal New Yorkers, referring at one point to "the authoritarian left," an interesting turn of phrase in the wake of Gingrich and Co.

There are a number of obvious errors in the book. The author notes that in 1953, the Democrats had been out of power in New York State for 20 years, ignoring the fact that Democrat Herbert Lehman served as Governor through 1943, following FDR and Al Smith. He refers to the Comptroller General of the U.S. as a "Treasury official," although the C.G. is in charge of the U.S. General Accounting Office, a Congressional agency, not part of the Treasury Department. He suggests that President Clinton pledged that he would "vote for" the welfare reform legislation he eventually signed, missing the fact that America is not a parliamentary democracy.

Despite the weaknesses, this is a beguiling biography, which is for the most part well written, and sure to captivate anyone with more than a passing interest in U.S. politics. I do not regret for a minute the time I spent reading it.

A biography worth reading
I found this to be a fascinating biography, which a good author can accomplish regardless of what one thinks about the subject.

Unlike another reviewer, I do not think that History will remember Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the same thoughts as the great American senators, alongside L.B.J. or Daniel Webster. As noted, Moynihan is not known as one of the Senate's great legislators. Critics regularly pointed to the fact that he was never (at least, in a leadership role) associated with any sweeping legislation, and his lofty presence made accommodation and the give and take of the Senate was difficult for him.

This is a wonderful biography, which (except for the occasional errors pointed out by other reviewers) remains well written and an engrossing story. Biographer Godfrey Hodgson is admittedly a long-observing and apparently close friend of his subject. Some assert that this the major strength and major of this work while others assert that this is the major weakness of the biography. However, I remain unconvinced that for such an intimate portrait, complete (or even relative) objectivity is impossible to attain. It is hard to imagine a subject letting someone get close enough to do a thorough job who is not a friend. And as we too often see, without the at least tacit blessing of the subject, many people who can offer good insights will not cooperate.

Moynihan was seldom predictable from an ideological perspective. Who else could work for both Kennedy and Nixon, and end up vilified by both liberals and conservatives? Yet, he was consistently respected by Senate colleagues in both parties. Few seriously question the fact that he had a massive intellect. This makes even more interesting the fact that Moynihan so assiduously sought verification and validation of positions which he had taken years before (evidenced by the satisfaction he took as seeing the NAACP - endorsed writings with regard to his decades-earlier call to alarm with regard to the state of the Black family). While many on the left decried some of his positions (the author seems to infer that the occasional, but continued reference to his comment re "benign neglect" was more painful that the stenosis which afflicted his spine), he remained a champion of those whom society left behind.

All of those who are interested in American or New York politics will enjoy this read. However, I do not find it to be (nor do I think it tries to be) as much an in-depth tome on contemporary American history as another reviewer has suggested. For anyone looking for a study (and an attempted explanation) of an incredibly complex figure in 20th century American history, this is a fine addition to the mosaic.

The book concludes with Moynihan's musings regarding what now means to be a liberal, and the role (and ability) of government vis a vis social problems. This is thought provoking and a challenge to many readers (including myself). What else can we expect from a biography?


From Rocky to Pataki: Character and Caricatures in New York Politics
Published in Hardcover by Syracuse Univ Pr (Trade) (1999)
Authors: Hy Rosen, Peter Slocum, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Alfonse M. D'Amato
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Must reading
This book is must reading for anyone who has any hope of understanding the unintelligible -- New York government. With an insider's view and an outsider's objectivity, author Peter Slocum offers a fun and fascinating look at New York, its characters and why it is what it is today (dysfunctional). Hy Rosen's classic cartoons are a constant reminder that we never really had to take any of it seriously. All in all, a fun read for anyone remotely interested in Empire State politics.


Swedish Americans (The Peoples of North America)
Published in Library Binding by Chelsea House Pub (Library) (1988)
Authors: Allyson McGill, Fred L. Isreal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Dewayne E. Pickles
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Swedish emigrants
I enjoyed all four books in the series. It was very informative in my research to understand what happened in Sweden in the 1800's, and why people left there to come to America.


The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Notre Dame Pr (1999)
Authors: Michael Glazier and Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Reliable Information - NOT!
I purchased this book as a researcher to assist me in my work and serve as a tool to both speed-up processes and use as a source to back-up my findings. One would imagine that the publishers would have provided accurate information. I found several errors in the information provided which demonstrates a lack of research and sloppiness in proofing of material contained within it. For instance; Judy Garland (a well known Irish American with very public information) is listed as the granddaughter of a FITZGERALD she was a FITZPATRICK ( big difference when you are using the information for research and genealogy and want a reliable source document for footnotes or bibliographies! the errors can result in un-substantiated work and wrong information. There are other errors less obvious but are too numerous to list. In short, this book was a waste of money and time on my part being of no help at all. I question all the data contained in it. The publisher has not provided a correction of the page as requested by me.

So Many Names, So Much History!!
This encyclopedia is a wonderful source of information that is delightfully synthesized into one volume. The beauty of this book is that it acts as a source of historical information and provides hours of leisure entertainment in one volume. From Bing Crosby to Eamon De Valera, the Irish American relationship is well embraced and honored wonderfully. With reference to the Irish influence in virtually every state, this book provides a unique look at the history of these hard-working and successful immigrants. A must have in any Irish-American household.

Comprehensive, definitive survey of Irish-American history.
This weighty volume will appeal to holdings with strong Irish history interests: it is compiled by a panel of scholars drawn from various nations and details the Irish people in Ireland and America. The inclusion of listings by state and area allows students to narrow their studies to local Irish history, while the listings include notable individuals, events, and social and religious topics affecting the Irish. A comprehensive and important addition to any serious Irish history collection.


Came the Revolution: Argument in the Reagan Era
Published in Hardcover by Harcourt (1988)
Author: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Needed More Argument
Let me start off by saying that I was disappointed when I started reading this book. What I was hoping for was a well written, constructed and documented book talking about the major policy points of the Reagan administration and the mature Democratic response to the issues. Instead what the author has given the reader is basically a reprint of selected speeches, letters to supporters and op-ed pieces, all by year. Given that I had the book and the author is a rather good writer I kept reading and it turned out I was the better for it.

What I found was some very interesting, but short arguments against certain Reagan era policies mainly focused on the deficit and missile programs. The arguments were not knew if you have read some on the Reagan years and the predictions are proving to be on the money as the years go by. It was interesting, given the author's history and position, his view of the 80's and some of his arguments were not what I would have expected from a Democrat. Given these few positives I finished the book but ended thinking that I gained very little from reading it. If you are a huge fan of the Senator or just want a starter book on the arguments against some of the Reagan positions then you might enjoy the book, if you have read a number of books on the topic then you will be disappointed.

The Loyal Opposition
The master shows his metal.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan shows that there was mature dissent during the Reagan years. Mature in that he took on the Reaganites on there own terms and avoided the simplistic ranting of those who saw no problem with the explosion of government during the 1970's.

Moreover, this collection serves as an encyclopedia of political wit (see the Gridiron Club address), prophecy (i.e. triple digit deficits and the fall of the Soviet Union), and the function of government.

Highly recommended for those seeking sophisticated agruments to demonstrate that Reagan and "Reaganism" did not have a positive influence on this country.


A Dangerous Place
Published in Hardcover by Little Brown & Company (1978)
Author: Daniel Patrick. Moynihan
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the UN intricacies
if political machinations are interesting to you, then this book will wholly appease. i found it too complex for the most part from an outsider's point of view.


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