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Of course, the von Moltke family's impact actually reaches back before the Reich into the history of Prussia. The first of three men Otto Friedrich focuses on, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), was Prussia's key military strategist during the Franco-Prussian War, and possibly Germany's greatest strategist ever, surpassing even his friend and mentor, Clausewitz. His nephew and namesake, General Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916), on the other hand, was nervous, indecisive, and largely unable to deal with the responsibilities of command that came to him in part due to his famous name. The third Helmuth, Count Helmuth James von Moltke (1907-1945), was one of nature's noblemen. A liberal (in the European sense), he was actively involved in the opposition to Hitler and Nazism -- a fact that led to his execution shortly before the Reich's own collapse. The letters Helmuth James wrote from prison, to his wife most notably, but to others as well, are deeply moving, and filled with a Christian spirit that reminded me of St Paul's own epistles from prison.
Otto Friedrich is a tremendously skilled historian, and also an excellent writer. 'Blood and Iron' is well documented, logically presented, and also very readable. Plus, he's not afraid to share his opinions and interpretations, most particularly in 'A Note on Sources' following the close of the narrative. His insights there on other documents and histories are well worth reading. As, indeed, is this entire book. I recommend it very highly.
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It gives a good overview of the mathematics, and astronomy that was aquired in these cultures, and the progression of this to the more modern Greek and Roman cultures.
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The book is much more 'Eurocentric' than is 'politically correct' these days. By example the 'zero symbol' is attributed to Greece, thence to Egypt then to the Orient. Others disagree. This author presents data, lists and writings from the original sources ... he has received 'lifetime awards' form mathematical societies but the popular press has called other authors on zero, "ball buster's"
This book is a very deep investigation of the topic of the title. While not a 'page turner' for most if one relishes tidbits of fascinating information on numbers, antique maths, astronomical methods and spends the time to read the notes as well as the text when they finish this book they will have a good grip of the breadth of Mesopotamian knowledge of these subjects.
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Required reading for any self-respecting student of history.
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Biggin's keeps the story buzzing along with a blend of action, humour and a large dose of the ridiculous. I can thoroughly recommend it.
While I am here I would also like to recommend another Biggins novel, "Tomorrow the World". This covers Prohaska's stint at the K.U.K. Naval Academy and his experiences on a voyage of exploration on the S.M.S. Windischgratz. I was fortunate enough to find a copy in London a few years ago and I haven't seen another one since. Anyone who has read the other Prohaska novels will get a kick out it. If you can find it read it!
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The book is episodic -- closer to four or five novellas than a single unified novel -- but that's one of its strengths, giving the narrative an almost kaleidoscopic quality that helps to convey the atmosphere of two of history's most confusing and disjointed phenomena -- the polyglot Habsburg Empire and the war itself. A great deal of action and character are packed into just four months of 1916. Yet Biggins has such a clear grasp of his story that the story itself never becomes confusing.
The book's humor is a great asset as well. Wit runsthrough the book, beginning with its title -- "The Two-Headed Eagle" refers both to the symbol of the Habsburg state and the two-seater airplane with an NCO pilot theoretically commanded by an officer-observer. Satire and even farce make their appearances. One of the best episodes involves the atttempt to execute a deserter, featuring a bureaucratic dispute over who gets to shoot him -- this abbreviated summary may not sound funny, but you will be rolling on the floor when you read it, I promise. Then there is the thorough historical research that has gone into the novel -- including the ethnic infighting of the multinational Empire (which contributes richly to the humor).
But this isn't just a comedy -- far fromit. Biggins' grimly concrete descriptions of life and death on the Isonzo Front are almost photographic. Biggins has the gift of conveying the futility and waste of war -- this war in particular -- without ever seeming overwrought or self-righteous.
Biggins' protagonist, Otto Prohaska, may be a bit too good to be true -- a paragon of civility, common sense and integrity, also heroic, witty, and cultured. Yet like his creator, Otto never seems priggish; he tells the stories engagingly. Prohaska's voice (he narrates the story in the first person) really does sound to me the way I'd expect an Austrian officer of WWI to sound. There are a couple of solecisms -- "orientated" for "oriented," "prospectus" for "prospect" -- but then, English isn't Otto's first language, nicht wahr?
All in all, this is a terrific book.
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Less than two years later, in the still, dark, early morning of May 9, 1976, my father, Otto Kerner - retired U.S. Army major general, former U.S. district attorney for the northern district of Illinois, former Cook County judge, former governor of Illinois, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Disorders, and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals - surrendered his last breath.
The next day, Illinois' poet laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks, penned the opening stanza of a remembrance entitled, Otto Kerner:
He was a man extensive and extending/But we do not love largeness very long/We look with narrowing littleness on largeness.
Brooks' husband, the late poet Henry Blakely, elaborated her insight with these closing lines of his poem, Of Otto Kerner:
and his was the soldier's error/knowing/but not deeply believing/any who followed the flag/could be enemy/And so/he was flanked, taken/and then beheaded/the fate, sometimes, of princes/And I will be remembering/murders/and old kingdoms dead/because of great men killed.
Little has since been written about Otto Kerner, save occasional reference to his chairmanship of the 1968 Commission that produced the so-called "Kerner Report" and his incongruous 1973 federal conviction and imprisonment. Otto Kerner: The Conflict of Intangible Rights, the first biography of him by Chicago Tribune columnist Bill Barnhart and retired Republican Illinois legislator Gene Schlickman is a vital account of a man that Tom Wicker's dust jacket blurb aptly proclaims "an admirably dedicated public servant, later victimized by partisan prosecution."
The Kerner Report's finding that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal" and that "white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto" was a landmark as well as a watershed for America's and Kerner's civil liberty. In January 1969, Richard Nixon - the nation's first critic of the Kerner Report - became president, and his campaign manager, John Mitchell, launched his masquerade as U.S. Department of Justice attorney general. Intangible civil rights of minorities advanced by Kerner were set on a collision course with a specious intangible rights theory invented by Mitchell's prosecutors to denigrate this most respected civil rights advocate. The authors correctly report that, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the government's theory, surviving defendants were granted reversals, while an otherwise timely appeal to reverse Kerner's conviction was denied because he had died.
But they fail to report the broad pattern of government misconduct that made Kerner a target; not crime. Absent are incontrovertible proofs that Kerner was convicted by witnesses whom the government induced to lie, that the government's keystone bribery count named no briber or quid pro quo, that the government obstructed justice in hiding its campaign to ruin his reputation through prejudicial, pre-trial leaks to the media, and that original IRS notes were destroyed and recreated to frame the perjury allegation he steadfastly denied. Uncritically repeated is the government's cover story that the official investigation was inspired - within a year of Kerner's 1968 U.S. Senate confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals - by a tale that he was connected to the Mob. Neglected is the story that government agents on the case commonly joked that their code acronym, CRIMP, stood for Corrupt Republicans Investigating Marje's Pals, "Marje" referring to Marjorie Everett, a key witness suborned by the government to testify in Kerner's trial.
Whatsmore, the authors miss the enormity of the injustice Kerner suffered when they dismiss strong evidence of the political inspiration behind his prosecution. They recount the famous November 1970 meeting where Nixon, Mitchell and cohorts plotted their racist 1972 re-election campaign strategy to split-off southern and northern white voters disgruntled by Democratic national civil rights and integration initiatives of the 1960s and repeat John Mitchell's boast there that Illinois Democrats wouldn't be so powerful after his grand jury got through in Chicago. Admitting that Mitchell's Washington, D.C. Justice Department officials had briefed Chicago prosecutors about Kerner only a month earlier in October 1970, they nevertheless doubt Mitchell's boast pertained to Kerner because no grand jury was then convened, overlooking Mitchell's Kerner grand jury seated in Chicago just a month after the 1970 holidays. To whom else was Mitchell referring, if not Kerner?
Kerner's U.S. Appellate Court opinions in defense of civil liberty and his persistent advocacy of Kerner Report recommendations frustrated, embarrassed and enraged Nixon and Mitchell. He not only blocked their draconian approach to law and order; he criticized their impeding racial progress. In Nixon's Oval Office tapes released October 5, 1999, Mitchell is heard complaining about Kerner just two weeks before he called him in front of the June 1971 Grand Jury: "Now he's out talking about his Kerner Commission Report when he should be keeping his damn mouth shut as a judge."
Long before my father's trial, my sister, Helena, and I sat alone with him at dinner in the Governor's Mansion. "I may not leave you much materially when I'm gone", he said, "but you will have something that will open more doors than all the money in the world: you will have a good name." When his good name was taken, he felt the door to public service shut forever. This book, despite its shortcomings, may prove him wrong about that. It renews hope that his legacy of good works may yet overwhelm the calumny of his enemies, remedy his injuries, exonerate, restore his name and thwart like future injustice. In this light, Otto Kerner: The Conflict of Intangible Rights reveals how we might more fully realize our great capacity for genuine nobility as human beings.
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The warden stood to leave our brief family orientation. "I'll give you a moment to say goodbye", he said, stepping to his office door. When it shut my sister and I turned to our father. His soldier's face fell, vanquished and vulnerable; once sky-blue eyes clouded with sadness and bewilderment. As we left the prison, I said to my sister, "I just saw Dad die." She replied quietly, "I know."
Less than two years later, in the still, dark, early morning of May 9, 1976, my father, Otto Kerner - retired U.S. Army major general, former U.S. district attorney for the northern district of Illinois, former Cook County judge, former governor of Illinois, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Disorders, and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals - surrendered his last breath.
The next day, Illinois' poet laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks, penned the opening stanza of a remembrance entitled, Otto Kerner: He was a man extensive and extending. But we do not love largeness very long. We look with narrowing littleness on largeness. Brooks' husband, the late poet Henry Blakely, elaborated her insight with these closing lines of his poem, Of Otto Kerner:
and his was the soldier's error, knowing but not deeply believing any who followed the flag could be enemy.
And so he was flanked, taken, and then beheaded, the fate, sometimes, of princes.
And I will be remembering murders and old kingdoms dead because of great men killed.
Little has since been written about Otto Kerner, save occasional reference to his chairmanship of the 1968 Commission that produced the so-called "Kerner Report" and his incongruous 1973 federal conviction and imprisonment. Otto Kerner: The Conflict of Intangible Rights, the first biography of him by Chicago Tribune columnist Bill Barnhart and retired Republican Illinois legislator Gene Schlickman, fills a great void. It is a vital account of a man that Tom Wicker's dust jacket blurb aptly proclaims "an admirably dedicated public servant, later victimized by partisan prosecution."
The Kerner Report's finding that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal" and that "white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto" is a landmark. And its insufficiently heeded calling "to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens - urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group" still resonates today.
The new biography digs deeply into the wellspring that fed Kerner's work on the Commission and his forty-year career in public service. The story of his Czech forebears' passion for civil liberty and his parents' struggle that took his father from unskilled laborer to attorney general of Illinois and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals is authoritatively drawn from unpublished private - as well as public - documents. And fresh materials enrich the portrayal of his boyhood, his education, and his early dual careers in the military and the law.
Regrettably, a dark caricature reveals none of the joy in his thirty-nine year marriage with the youngest daughter of Anton Cermak, the Chicago mayor killed by an assassin's bullet intended for President-elect Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. But accounts of his prosecutorial, judicial, and gubernatorial years and his work on the Civil Disorders Commission are valuable. His 1958 judicial struggle with the Catholic Church over adoption reform and his gubernatorial initiatives in mental health, statewide open housing, and economic development are warmly celebrated. And research into his work on the Commission is enlightening, especially the unearthing of a Commission background document entitled, The Harvest of American Racism, likening 1967's urban black activists to colonial revolutionaries.
While the collective effect of these vignettes is somewhat impressionistic, what is missing is mostly implied in the whole. For example, readers may well wonder how Kerner achieved consensus from rival Illinois legislators and contentious Commission members. Nowhere detailed was his capacity to sublimate tactics, strategy and ego to substantive objectives. His quietly efficacious leadership modeled a respected alternative to the politics of noisy confrontation and blatant self-promotion that sold newspapers, but accomplished little.
The book might also have done well to delve into Kerner's view of class in America as it informed his public life. It was a view reinforced by the career of Anton Cermak, benefactor of Kerner's father and creator of the pan-ethnic, labor-based, anti-Prohibition, Cook County Democratic Party that heralded Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 presidential election sweep. Growing up in a neighborhood of laborers, Kerner appreciated the role of the corner tavern. As a child, he carried buckets of beer on a pole over his shoulder to workmen for small change. He and his neighbors ate for free in the beer garden where adults drank and socialized in the Old World custom before radio, television, and movies. And he recalled that the tavern's only neighborhood safe was where laborers put their wages at day's end and that the tavern was where they went to borrow for their first home rather than face formidable lenders downtown. What Kerner understood - and what Cermak capitalized on politically - was that threadbare, ethnic laborers felt disenfranchised by Prohibition in ways never grasped by well-clad, white-collar managers who could afford expensive, illegal Canadian liquor and who felt at home in the city's imposing, marbled halls of commerce. Prohibition sensitized Kerner to the deep-seated political, economic and social misunderstandings between the haves and the have-nots and anchored his belief that we must try harder to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.
The Kerner Report was as much a watershed for America's civil liberty as it was for Kerner's. In January 1969, Richard Nixon - the nation's first critic of the Kerner Report - was sworn in as president, and his campaign manager, John Mitchell, launched his masquerade as attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice. The intangible civil rights of minorities advanced by Kerner were set on a collision course with a specious theory of intangible rights invented by Mitchell's prosecutors to allege Kerner failed to give citizens of Illinois "good and faithful services" as governor. With his conviction, Nixon and Mitchell managed to destroy one of America's most respected civil rights advocates. In a disturbing and poignant account, the authors accurately report that, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Justice Department's overreaching theory eleven years after Kerner died, surviving defendants were granted reversals, while an otherwise timely appeal to reverse Kerner's conviction was denied because he was dead.
But the book fails to relate this injustice to the broad pattern of misconduct by Kerner's prosecutors who made him their target; not crime. Absent are incontrovertible proofs of his assertion that he was convicted by witnesses whom the government induced to lie. Missing is revelation that the government's keystone bribery count named no briber or quid pro quo. Omitted is the government's obstruction of justice in hiding its campaign to ruin his reputation through prejudicial, pre-trial leaks to the press of confidential grand jury proceedings and IRS information. Ignored is the government's admission that original IRS notes were destroyed and recreated to frame the perjury allegation he steadfastly denied. Uncritically repeated is the government's cover story that their investigation was inspired - within a year of Kerner's 1968 U.S. Senate confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals - by a faded moll's yarn that he was connected to the Mob. Neglected is the story that government agents on the case commonly joked that their code acronym, CRIMP, stood for Corrupt Republicans Investigating Marje's Pals, "Marje" referring to Marjorie Everett, a key witness suborned by the government to testify in Kerner's trial.
And the authors fail to recognize the enormity of the injustice Kerner suffered when they dismiss strong evidence of the political inspiration behind his prosecution. They recount the famous November 1970 meeting where Nixon, Mitchell and cohorts plotted their racist 1972 re-election campaign strategy to split-off southern and northern white Democratic voters disgruntled by their party's national civil rights and integration initiatives of the 1960s. They also repeat John Mitchell's boast that Illinois Democrats wouldn't be so powerful after his grand jury got through in Chicago when that meeting turned to winning Illinois. They even admit that Mitchell's Justice Department officials had briefed Chicago prosecutors about Kerner only a month earlier in October 1970.
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The research that they did was real yeomanship delving into the relationships and background of Kerner through their interviews (seven pages of Appendixes), references (twenty five pages of Notes) and a Bibliography of fifteen pages referencing Articles, Books, Dissertations and Oral Histories.
The Index reads like a WHO's WHO from Illinois to Washington, DC. As a former resident of Lake and Cook County from 1950 -1973 a great many of the names have many memories attached to them.
The book provided a new insight for me into Otto Kerner, the person as well as the politician and finally as a fallen hero. Hopefully, through the effort and dedication that was put into producing this book, it will provide generations to come a better understanding of Otto Kerner as an Illinois' icon.
Because of Schlickman's service to the people of Illinois in serving in the Illinois House for sixteen years and his experience in Illinois government and politics this book presents a clear and unbiased knowledge of the greater events in Otto Kerner's life.
I want to thank the authors for providing the opportunity for me to have a much better understanding of Otto Kerner- the man.
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Not that these don't imbue every romance. But the constant references to them throughout the analytic literature get one wondering about a sort of theoretical perversity, a morbid preoccupation with the shadows of love to the cost of illuminating its joys and burning passions.
Though a brilliant thinker, Kernberg occasionally shares the analytic tendency to be centuries behind everyone else. For instance, he recognizes his debt to Stoller, who maintains that erotic love must have "mystery," and to Balint for his emphasis on "tenderness." Nor will the reader gasp in admiration to learn that self-love and love of others develop together and enrich one another. Sorry, but these are NOT revelations--except to a discipline so tradition-bound that only its own coinages are acceptable currency. (Methinks analysts could learn a lot from the Vatican's attitude toward Galileo.)
Nor will the tiresome equation of homosexuality with unsatisfactory object relations prove helpful, least of all to LGBT couples.
Kernberg shines best here in discussing narcissistic and superego influences on relationships. He also makes the case that society tends to attack love relationships, which for that reason need to fortify and ground themselves.
If you're looking for more, I recommend the generally non-reductive ART OF LOVING by Fromm.
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Whenever one wants to dismiss his insistence on, what at times seems like obsession with, theoretical constructs like castration anxiety and penis envy, when he gets to the meat and potatoes of his theory, he convinces. Anyone who has sensed a strange pattern or a strange logic in particularly exciting and frustrating sexual relationships will find a lot to comfort him here. I'd recommend this book to lay readers who have generally strong egos but find that, in sexual areas, their lives don't make sense, their relationships at a much lower level of functioning than the other parts of their lives.
If you have trouble integrating sexuality into your life and relationships, and have a general grasp, and affection for, psychoanalytic topics, you will find this book useful. Kernberg's naievete shows in the obstinacy of his writing, but while one might wish for a clearer explication, it's also clear he's not writing for a general audience. He leaves little room for disagreement, but it could also be argued that the strength of his convictions is what allows for such original and at times disturbing insight.
My gut tells me Kernberg's right more than he's wrong. The bleakness of his vision has integrity, and the hard lessons he seeks to teach are worth heeding.
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