Over the past seven years we have watch the most corrupt administration in American history and yet the approvals ratings are threw the roof. As a society have we just taken this for granted or are we fed up with the politics of Washington?

Robert Shogan's book, Double Edged Sword, enlightens this reviewer with a new and insightful reading about how this is not the first case of living and talking the double standard. Shogan has presented a clear case that politics and civilians are sometimes intertwined.

I enjoyed this book, and although there are some things I may disagree with, overall the author has a convincing set of arguments. Shogan has facts and data to back up what he talks about. Shogan makes reading enjoyable and fun with this book.

Whether Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal and everyone in between, The Double Edged Sword, should be on the must read list. A perfect book for the times and an impressive look into what makes the Presidency the most difficult job in the world today.

Over the past seven years we have watch the most corruptadministration in American history and yet the approvals ratings are threw the roof. As a society have we just taken this for granted or are we fed up with the politics of Washington?

Robert Shogan's book, Double Edged Sword, enlightens this reviewer with a new and insightful reading about how this is not the first case of living and talking the double standard. Shogan has presented a clear case that politics and civilians are sometimes intertwined.

I enjoyed this book, and although there are some things I may disagree with, overall the author has a convincing set of arguments. Shogan has facts and data to back up what he talks about. Shogan makes reading enjoyable and fun with this book.

Whether Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal and everyone in between, The Double Edged Sword, should be on the must read list. A perfect book for the times and an impressive look into what makes the Presidency the most difficult job in the world today.

A worthwhile historical overview of how "cultural conflict" (including such phenomena as the youth movement/counterculture, the '68 Democratic convention, the invention of the silent majority, "family values," the Moral Majority and the Christian Right, the impeachment of Bill Clinton over lies regarding his sexual misbehavior) became such an important, galvanizing and polarizing force in modern American politics. But Robert Shogun really needs to bone up on his knowledge of pop culture. The book is riddled with embarrassing factual errors about the music and movies it cites to reinforce its account of American pop-culture history, and consequently leaves you wondering about its veracity in other areas. Don't publishers hire editors anymore?

A few examples:
1) The post-WWII movie "The Best Years of Our Lives" did not "capture the bullish national mood in 1946," but quite the contrary. It's a poignant, disturbing, and uncommonly realistic account (based on a Life Magazine article) of three returning servicement and their harrowing struggles to re-adjust to domestic life after the life-altering trauma of war. As one reviewer put it: "this powerful classic explores the cynicism and despair underlying the nation's prevailing optimism and prosperity following World War II."

2) The 1954 giant-atomic-mutant-ant science-fiction/horror film "Them!" was NOT "made in Japan, the only nation to have yet absorbed the full fury of the bomb," but was an all-American movie set in New Mexico (yes, think Los Alamos) and shot in California. They don't have Joshua Trees in Japan.

3) The Beatles did not take their name from Keroac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and "the Beats." The name is a pun, playing off of Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets, and beat music (as beat-based rock & roll was often called in the UK -- think "Mersey Beat"). There's also a story (apocryphal) about the name being taken from Lee Marvin's motorcycle gang, The Beetles, in the seminal Marlon Brando rebel picture, "The Wild One," but nobody (until now) has ever suggested that the Fab Four named themselves after Greenwich Village beatniks.

4) The radical political group known as the Weathermen did not take their name from the line "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," in Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" (from "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," 1963). Those lyrics are from the famous rap-like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" (from "Bringing It All Back Home," 1965), immortalized in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary "Don't Look Back" with an early "music video" treatment involving Dylan flashing selected lyrics on a series of cue cards in time to the song.

The thesis of "War Without End" is that the U.S. is in a constant cultural civil war. A sub-thesis is that culture shapes American politics. For example, the electorate's sense of morality-a cultural value-was violated with the Lewinsky scandal. As a consequence, the democrats were deemed immoral. To correct the electorate's suspicions about immorality in a democratic president and to gain votes, in the 2000 presidential campaign, Gore advertised his religion. Gore's catering to American's morality and religiosity in this election is one illustration of political behavior shaped by largely held cultural values. Another argument the book makes is that there are cultural issues that never go away no matter how often they've been fed or beaten down. Religion is one of these. For example, the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial's ruling that religion and schools be separate did not prevent Reagan in 1980 from making campaign promises to permit prayer in schools. Because religion is a fundamental cultural value, religious issues are bound to rise to the surface time and time and time again, as illustrated by the decade long struggle between those who want religion to play a part in public schools and those who don't. Religion is one facet of the never ending Cultural War.
The thesis--that America is divided by a never-ending struggle for cultural power--cannot be argued. Whereas political leanings (such as rooting for or booing Social Security) are important, they are not held close to the heart. Cultural values are. And when one side feels a value they hold dear is being violated (for example, the Christian Right feels its cultural values are violated by feminist ones, and vice versa), they will fight to defend not only their beliefs, but their life styles. I would recommend this book because it is a summary of the past forty years and gives the reader an understanding of U.S. history and of the tremendous impact that culture plays in shaping Government and politics-arguably a much larger impact than political issues such as Social Security, which hold little or no cultural significance.

I was very disappointed with this book. The ideas were not new and the coverage was very superficial. This could be forgiven if there wasn't such a clear bias in the book. There were shades of bias in the early chapters, but as the book moved into the more modern elections it became clear that Shogan has a serious axe to grind. His coverage of the 2000 election is particularly skewed. His disdain for President Bush is quite evident. An example of this disdain can be found in his summary of the 2000 election from page 243: "Here was the governor of Texas, possessed of slim credentials, a nondescript intellect, and an underwhelming persona running a nose ahead of the incumbent vice president of an administration that had presided over a time of unparalleled prosperity. What's wrong with this picture?"

IÕm a bit of a political junky, but an unusual one in that I get almost all my news from print. Before I was old enough to vote I realized that television news didnÕt have much to tell me, and I stopped watching. Except for election results, and an occasional breaking story, I havenÕt watched television news since Nixon was president. Still, I realize that itÕs where most Americans get their news, and so IÕm curious about how it covers candidates and how (or if) it shapes opinions. ThatÕs why I picked up this book Ð a survey of how the media (especially television) have covered presidential elections since 1968.

I was very disappointed. I rarely pay attention to t.v. coverage, but even I knew almost everything in here. Robert Shogan has been covering presidential elections since 1948. I expected some professional insight, a few peeks behind the scenes, at least some thought-provoking opinions. Forget it. This is a bland recitation of everything you already know -- the press doesnÕt understand much about the making of a president, the press is more interested in the horse race than the issues, charismatic candidates do better than substantive ones on t.v., politicians avoid talking about issues and the press lets them get away with it. Is there anyone with even a mild interest in politics who doesnÕt know this already?

The lack of insight is especially frustrating in ShoganÕs coverage of the 2000 election, which the media tripped all over itself trying to cover. Surely all the mistakes the media made in reporting on the election and its aftermath offers plenty of material for analyzing exactly how the media messes up when it tries to cover elections. But no. Shogan tells us the press adored McCain Ð which was pretty obvious Ð but doesnÕt offer an opinion about why. McCain was an underdog, but the press isnÕt always kind to underdogs Ð they certainly werenÕt kind to Bradley, Buchanan, or Nader. Shogan argues that the press went a lot easier on Bush than Gore, even though the majority of reporters probably voted Democratic. But once again, he offers no explanation of this paradox.

I think this book deals with an important topic. It just doesnÕt cover it very well. Shogan accuses the press of dealing superficially with presidential elections. But in the end I think this book is guilty of the same superficiality.

A former Los Angeles Times political reporter, Shogan offers an inside account of the nature of the press-presidency relationship in the modern era. Joining an ever-lengthening list of critical accounts of the media by current and former members of the Fourth Estate, Shogan's book is a good read, full of telling anecdotes and insightful observations. His account focuses on the media treatment of presidents and presidential campaigns from the late 1960s to the present--appropriate enough given the transformation of the national media in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. Shogan is certainly not alone in emphasizing that the modern media have overreached in treating public figures with disdain. Most media scholars and journalists will agree with Shogan's assessments of where press coverage has gone wrong in the past three decades. Shogan's book is clearly written and sensibly argued. Scholars may find it frustrating in some regards, for example, the lack of references to many of the leading works in the field and the use of dated earlier editions of some studies rather than more recent material; accordingly it will be most useful in general and undergraduate collections.

Robert Shogan has an axe to grind, even though he disclaims that intent from the start of his book.

Shogan opens "Fate of the Union" by explaining that he is examining why Presidencies fail. However, this is a thinly veiled thesis for covering his real intention, which is to blacken Bill Clinton.

Shogan, of course, has very little good to say about anyone. His commentary on every single political figure dealt with in "Fate of the Union" is negative, and as a result he comes across as a man rendered very bitter by his many years covering the Washington scene. The only real question is not whether he approves or disapproves of a given politician, but to what extent he disapproves. The main target for his bile is Clinton, however. The strength of this book is in the magnitude of it's detail. He gives extensive biographies of every major player, and details each major issue. As a work of the political history of the early-to-mid-90s, it is excellent, if biased.

The irony of the book is in Shogan's terrible logic. He would have been better off if he had just stuck to writing about how little he thought of Clinton and politicians in general. However, by portraying the book as an example of why President's fail, he becomes entangled in his own contradictory reasoning.

For example, he clearly believes very strongly that America would be better off if the political parties stopped compromising and slugged it out over ideas. I would agree, except that he also believes the reason that legislation and policy initiatives fail is because our government was designed to gridlock, because of the checks-and-balances system. Shogan is critical of compromise and governing from consensus (he is relentlessly critical of Clinton for trying to govern from the center). However, with a system designed so that the executive and the legislative branches are competing (even when both are in the hands of the same party), how is anyone expected to accomplish anything significant without compromise and consensus politics?

Ironically, the one figure that (according to Shogan) had real vision, real talent, and ran on his ideas was Newt Gingrich - and Shogan has very little positive to say about him either. It is a measure of how negative Shogan's tone is that, while condeming Clinton's compromises and the very notion of governing from a centrist consensus, he accuses Gingrich of reaching too far with his Contract with America, and thus blowing his electoral victory. Clinton is deplorable for seeking compromise; Gingrich is a fool for being too much of an idealist to seek compromise.

The book is well-researched and makes for a fascinating read. However, I think the reader should be forewarned of one thing - the author has an axe to grind, and he seems to want to hit everybody with it!

The very title "Hard Bargain" leads one to believe that the book is going to focus on the negotiations that took place between Roosevelt and Churchill to obtain the desired result. The subtitle of "How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency" begs for a somewhat different story.

In this book, Robert Shogan does a great job of explaining the deal that was struck between Roosevelt & Churchill to trade 50 aging US destroyers for leases on British posessions near the US. However, Shogan does not (in my opinion) do the subtitle of his book justice (with the exception of the "new" preface) until the very last chapter.

This book seems to paint FDR as an egocentric who was more concerned about his Presidency than the defense of Britain, and more concerned about keeping his nose clean in the eye of the public than consummating a deal that could greatly benefit the nation.

My recommendation is that anyone interested in the acts that brought about the idea of Lend-Lease read this book with a carefully inquisitive view about the author's treatment of FDR. Anyone interested in understanding how FDR really changed the Presidency to be the office held by Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush, really should skip this book and find one more focused on politics than the history of a single deal between two nations.