American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation
Jon Meacham, 2006
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812976663
Summary
The American Gospel—literally, the good news about America—is that religion shapes our public life without controlling it. In this vivid book, New York Times bestselling author Jon Meacham tells the human story of how the Founding Fathers viewed faith, and how they ultimately created a nation in which belief in God is a matter of choice.
At a time when our country seems divided by extremism, American Gospel draws on the past to offer a new perspective. Meacham re-creates the fascinating history of a nation grappling with religion and politics–from John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” sermon to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence; from the Revolution to the Civil War; from a proposed nineteenth-century Christian Amendment to the Constitution to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call for civil rights; from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.
Debates about religion and politics are often more divisive than illuminating. Secularists point to a “wall of separation between church and state,” while many conservatives act as though the Founding Fathers were apostles in knee britches. As Meacham shows in this brisk narrative, neither extreme has it right. At the heart of the American experiment lies the God of what Benjamin Franklin called “public religion,” a God who invests all human beings with inalienable rights while protecting private religion from government interference. It is a great American balancing act, and it has served us well.
Meacham has written and spoken extensively about religion and politics, and he brings historical authority and a sense of hope to the issue. American Gospel makes it compellingly clear that the nation’s best chance of summoning what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” lies in recovering the spirit and sense of the Founding. In looking back, we may find the light to lead us forward. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 20, 1969
• Where—Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
• Education—B.A., University of the South
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize
• Currently—lives in New York City and Sewanee, Tennessee
Jon Meacham is an American publisher, journalist and author of historical works. His books include Thomas Jefferson: the Art of Power (2012); American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (2008); American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (2006); and Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship (2003). Meacham was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for American Lion.
Currently executive editor and executive vice president of Random House, Meacham is also a contributing editor to Time magazine, a former editor of Newsweek, and has written for the New York Times and Washington Post, among other publications. He is a regular contributor on Meet the Press, Morning Joe, and Charlie Rose. A Fellow of the Society of American Historians, Meacham serves on the boards of the New-York Historical Society, and the Churchill Centre.
Background
An only child, Meacham's parents divorced when he was young and he spent his middle and high school years living with his grandfather, Judge Ellis K. Meacham. A legendary figure in Chattanooga and a renowned author, the Judge is credited with giving Meacham his interest in history.
Meacham attended the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating summa cum laude in English Literature. He studied religion under the revered professor Herbert S. Wentz, was salutatorian and elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Meacham began his journalistic career at the Chattanooga Times. In 1995 he joined Newsweek as a writer, became national affairs editor in June of that year, and was named managing editor in November 1998 at age 29. In September 2006, he was promoted to the position of editor. He supervises the magazine's coverage of politics, international affairs, and breaking news, and has written cover stories on politics, religion, race, guns in America, and the death of Ronald Reagan.
He and his wife, a Mississippi native, University of Virginia and Columbia University Teachers College graduate, and the former Executive Director of the Harlem Day Charter School, live in New York City and Tennessee. (Adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
[E]xamines over 200 years of American history in its quest to prove the idea of religious tolerance, along with the separation of church and state, is "perhaps the most brilliant American success." Meacham's... insights into the religious leanings of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Co. present a new way of considering the government they created.... [A] remarkable grasp of the intricacies and achievements of a nascent nation.
Publishers Weekly
Meacham here holds that, despite the strong religious differences of the Founding Fathers, religion...shaped the Constitution and the nation without strangling it. This is quite an argument to make given the...Quakers were at odds with Anglicans, and New Englanders engaged in witch trials while building a "City of God." Others massacred Indians.... [Yet] it was recognized that... God provided could and would serve as a uniting factor. Meacham provides a balanced account. —George Westerlund, formerly with Providence P.L., Palmyra, VA
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for American Gospel:
1. Begin by talking about the religious views of each of the Founding Fathers. In their writings, they considered religion to be the basis for morality, but what were their individual, personal religious beliefs? Were they Deists, Christians, or aethists? Or doesn't it matter?
2. Why did the Founding Fathers consider religion important for the nation? What role did they envision it playing in communal life and in government? What was meant by "religious freedom"? What do we mean by it today? What about the phrase "separation of church and state"—where did it come from and what did it mean, then and now?
3. Jon Meacham says of the early years of this nation that "their time is like our time." What does he mean...and do you agree?
4. How would you describe the religious environment in colonial, revolutionary and post-revolutionary times? Why, for instance, in 1774 was there opposition to prayer in the Continental Congress? Why did the Episcopalians object?
5. In a treaty ratified by the Senate in 1797, John Adams wrote that "the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," a statement that has caused much discussion and controversy as to its intent. What does Meacham have to say about Adam's statement? In what context does he place it?
6. Overall do you find that Meacham's discussion of religion in politics—arguably America's most divisive issue—makes any progress in moderating the subject? Do you find his book satisfying...enlightening...or off the mark? Has it altererd, or confirmed, your understanding of the place of religion in America?
7. Meacham seems to place himself in the middle: neither a religious zealot nor a diehard aethist. What does it mean to be moderate, to be in the middle of the road when it comes to religion in public life? Is compromise weakness, a betrayal of deeply held principles? Or is moderation the basis of tolerance? Where do you place yourself?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan, 2013
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400069224
Summary
From the internationally bestselling author of No god but God comes a fascinating, provocative, and meticulously researched biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the man we know as Jesus of Nazareth.
Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal.
Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God.
Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God.
This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy.
Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime.
Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity.
Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 3, 1972
• Where—Tehran, Iran
• Raised—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Santa Clara University; M.T.S, Harvard
University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop; Ph.D.,
University of California-Santa Barbara
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in Hollywood, California
Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American writer and scholar of religions. He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, a Research Associate at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, and a contributing editor for The Daily Beast.
His books include the international bestseller No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005, 2011), which has been translated into 13 languages, and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013), which offers an interpretation of the life and mission of the historical Jesus. Aslan currently lives in Hollywood, California.
Background
Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the age of 15 he converted to evangelical Christianity. He converted back to Islam the summer before attending Harvard. In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California.
Aslan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. Aslan also received a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, focusing in the history of religion, from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation was titled "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework."
In August 2000, while serving as the Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Aslan was named Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Iowa, becoming the first full-time professor of Islam in the history of the state.
Aslan was the 2012–13 Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict.
Writing
As Contributing Editor, Aslan has written articles for The Daily Beast. He has also written for various newspapers and periodicals, including the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and The Nation. He has made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and ABC Australia's Big Ideas.
War on terrorism
Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against the west as "a cosmic war," distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism," Aslan says, is a precise "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad.
Aslan draws a distinction between Islamism and Jihadism. Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan-Islamic, borderless "religious communalism." Aslan's prescription for winning the cosmic war is to not fight, but rather engage moderate Islamic political forces in the democratic process. "Throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished."
Religious freedom
Aslan has argued for religious freedom and protection for religious minorities throughout the Middle East. He has called for Iran to protect and stop the "horrific human rights abuses" against its Baha'i community. Aslan has also said that the persecution and displacement of Middle Eastern Christian communities "is nothing less than a regional religious cleansing that will soon prove to be a historic disaster for Christians and Muslims alike."
FoxNews controversy
On 26 July 2013, Aslan was interviewed on "Spirited Debate," a FoxNews webcast by anchor Lauren Green about his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Green was "unsatisfied with Aslan's credentials," and she pressed Aslan, questioning why a Muslim would write about Jesus. The interview lasted about ten minutes and focused "on Aslan's background more than the actual contents of the book. Reading comments from Aslan's critics, Green included negative criticism from William Lane Craig, a noted Christian apologist.
In the end, Green claimed that "Aslan had somehow misled readers by not disclosing his religion," whereupon he pointed out that his personal religious faith "is discussed on page two of his book" and called himself "quite a prominent Muslim thinker in the United States." Green was almost universally criticized for the premise of her questions during the interview.
The video clip of the interview went viral within days and the book, which was up to that point selling "steadily," appeared at the 4th place on the New York Times print hardcover best-seller list. By late July 2013, it was topping the U.S. best-seller list on Amazon.
Academic credentials
Following Aslan's interview with Fox News, some questioned Aslan's academic claims. An article written by Manuel Roig-Franzia in the Washington Post entitled "Reza Aslan: A Jesus scholar who's often a moving target" observed that Green had asked "astonishingly absurd questions," but that Aslan was a "moving target" and described him as being "eager—perhaps overeager—to present himself as a formidable academic with special bona fides in religion and history" and "boast[ing] of academic laurels he does not have." The article quoted Aslan's dissertation adviser, Mark Juergensmeyer, as saying that he did not have a problem with Aslan’s characterization of his credentials.
A day later, the New Republic printed an article critical of the Washington Post piece entitled "Now The Washington Post Owes Reza Aslan An Apology, Too." The Philadelphia Inquirer article entitled "Reza Aslan's 'Zealot': Muslim's book about Jesus stirs things up" also defended Aslan’s characterization of his academic credentials, noting that UC Santa Barbara "is famous for its interdisciplinary program—students tailor their studies around a topic, not a department. They choose a department only for the diploma." The Nation's Elizabeth Castelli wrote that Aslan "reasonably opened himself to criticism" on the basis of his claim to speak "with authority as a historian."
Awards
2013—Media Bridge-Builder Award, Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
2013—Peter. J. Gomes Memorial Honor, Harvard Divinity School
2012—East-West Media Award, The Levantine Center (Author bio from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/16/2014.)
Book Reviews
A real strength of the book is that it provides an introduction to first-century Palestine, including economics, politics and religion. Mr. Aslan uses previous scholarship to describe the precarious existence of Jewish peasants and the lower classes, and how the Romans and the Jewish upper class exploited the land and the people…Zealot shares some of the best traits of popular writing on scholarly subjects: it moves at a good pace; it explains complicated issues as simply as possible; it even provides notes for checking its claims…[Aslan] is a good writer. Zealot is…an entertaining read. It is also a serious presentation of one plausible portrait of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
Dale B. Martin - New York Times Book Review
[A] compelling argument for a fresh look at the Nazarene, focusing on how Jesus the man evolved into Jesus the Christ.... Carefully comparing extra-biblical historical records with the New Testament accounts, Aslan develops a convincing and coherent story of how the Christian church, and in particular Paul, reshaped Christianity’s essence, obscuring the very real man who was Jesus of Nazareth. Compulsively readable and written at a popular level, this superb work is highly recommended.
Publishers Weekly
Aslan brings a fine popular style, shorn of all jargon, to bear on the presentation of Jesus of Nazareth.... He isn’t interested in attacking religion or even the church, much less in comparing Christianity unfavorably to another religion. He would have us admire Jesus as one of the many would-be messiahs who sprang up during Rome’s occupation of Palestine.... You don’t have to lose your religion to learn much that’s vitally germane to its history from Aslan’s absorbing, reader-friendly book
Booklist
A well-researched, readable biography of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth is not the same as Jesus Christ. The Gospels are not historical documents, nor even eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life..., and they certainly weren't written by the men whose names are attached to them. In fact, every word written about Jesus was written by people who never knew him in life.... Why has Christianity taken hold and flourished? This book will give you the answers in the simplest, most straightforward, comprehensible manner.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Zealot:
1. Begin with a discussion about the many ways Jesus has been presented throughout the ages—as itinerant preacher, faith healer, lover of peace, charismatic teacher, moral philosopher, Jewish rabbi, apocalyptic prophet, Messiah and the son of God. Do you have a particular way of seeing Jesus that predominates over others?
2. Overall, what is your opinion of Aslan's portrait of Jesus? Do you take issue with it? If so, what in particular do you find problematic? Or...do you find Aslan's book enlightening? Has it altered or made you rethink your ideas of who Jesus was? Or...does Zealot basically reaffirm your previous understanding?
3. In what ways does Aslan's portrait of Jesus add to, contradict, and/or confirm what others have said and written about Jesus?
4. Aslan claims that Jesus was a provocateur, that he entered Jerusalem in what was construed as a royal entrance. Do you accept the idea that Jesus was a "politically conscious Jewish revolutionary,” whose kingdom is rooted in this world, not the next?
5. Much has been made of Aslan's academic background. Does he have, in your opinion, the credentials as an historian and/or theologian to write this book?
6. What do you think of Aslan's own religious background: a conversion to Christianity followed by reconversion to Islam? As a non-Christian, can he rightfully claim credibility when writing about Christianity? Is he writing about Christianity...or is he writing about an historical figure? Is there a difference?
7. How and why did early Christians attemtpt to discredit John the Baptist and diminish his stature?
8. How does Aslan describe first-century Palestine, it's economic, political, and religious life? Who in this society consorted with whom...and at whose expense? In other words, who were the winners and who were the losers?
9. In what way was the Temple more than a place of worship? When Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers, why were Jews and Romans alike enraged?
10. How does Aslan describe the spread of Christianity?
11. The author insists that it was unthinkable for Jesus in his time to have been unmarried. Other recent scholarship has overturned that assumption. Perhaps you might do some research to explore the issue of marriage in first-century Palestine.
12. Follow-up to Question 11: What other current scholarship challenges or supports Aslan's book? How much of any Biblical scholarship, inlcuding Aslan's, is backed by evidence and how much is speculative?
13. One could say that Zealot is not a work of academic scholarship; it was written, instead, to appeal to a wider audience. If this was indeed Aslan's intent, has he succeeded in engaging you?
14. Talk about the parts of the New Testament about which Aslan is skeptical. Which Biblical narratives does he question...and why?
15. Have you read Bill O'Reilly's Killing Jesus, also published in 2013? If so, compare the two books: what do they have in common and what are their differences? What other Biblical histories or works of textual analyses have you read? How do they compare with Reza Aslan's Zealot?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret War
Stephen Kinzer, 2013
Henry Holt
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780805094978
Summary
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s world.
During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.
John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?
The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country’s role in the world.
Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.
The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 4, 1951
• Raised—Brookline, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Boston University
• Currently—lives in Boston, Massachusetts
Stephen Kinzer is a United States author and newspaper reporter. He is a veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents.
During the 1980s he covered revolution and social upheaval in Central America. In 1990, he was promoted to bureau chief of the Berlin bureau and covered the growth of Eastern and Central Europe as they emerged from Soviet rule. He was also New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul (Turkey) from 1996 to 2000. He currently teaches journalism and United States foreign policy at Boston University.
Kinzer has written several non-fiction books about Turkey, Central America, Iran, the US overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present, and about Rwanda's recovery from genocide.
Views
Kinzer has spoken out widely against a potential U.S. attack on Iran, warning that it would destroy the pro-US sentiment that has become widespread among the Iranian populace under the repressive Islamic regime. He is also a fierce opponent of US foreign policy toward Latin America. In a 2010 interview with Imagineer Magazine, he stated:
The effects of U.S. intervention in Latin America have been overwhelming negative. They have had the effect of reinforcing brutal and unjust social systems and crushing people who are fighting for what we would actually call “American values.” In many cases, if you take Chile, Guatemala, or Honduras for examples, we actually overthrew governments that had principles similar to ours and replaced those democratic, quasi-democratic, or nationalist leaders with people who detest everything the United States stands for.
In Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq, published in 2006, Kinzer critiques US foreign policy as overly interventionist.
In his 2008 book A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man who Dreamed It, Kinzer credits President Paul Kagame for the peace, development, and stability that Rwanda has enjoyed in the years after the Rwandan genocide, and criticizes the leaders of Rwanda before the genocide such as Juvenal Habyarimana.
His 2013 biography The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret War examines the Dulles brothers—Secretary of State and Director of the CIA, respectively—and their prosecution of the Cold War, including US government-sanctioned murders of foreign officials. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/16/2014 .)
Book Reviews
Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. The Brothers is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of "inconvenient" regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world…In his detailed, well-constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer…shows how the brothers drove America's interventionist foreign policy.
Adam LeBor - New York Times Book Review
[A] fluently written, ingeniously researched, thrillerish work of popular history… Mr. Kinzer has brightened his dark tale with an abundance of racy stories. Gossip nips at the heels of history on nearly every page.
Wall Street Journal
[A] bracing, disturbing and serious study of the exercise of American global power… Kinzer, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, displays a commanding grasp of the vast documentary record, taking the reader deep inside the first decades of the Cold War. He brings a veteran journalist’s sense of character, moment and detail. And he writes with a cool and frequently elegant style.
Washington Post
[A] fast-paced and often gripping dual biography.
Boston Globe
Born into Eastern establishment privilege, these two men strode into the uppermost strata of the U.S. government with a virulent anti-communist bent that infused US foreign policy during the Cold War. The siblings were temperamental opposites.... This approachable history is a candid appraisal of how the Dulles's grandiose geopolitical calculations set in motion events that continue to reverberate in American foreign policy today.
Publishers Weekly
Award-winning foreign correspondent Kinzer uses Wild West mythology—with the good guys gunning down the bad guys in a lawless town—to explain the policies of Cold War Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen Dulles.
Library Journal
An author tending toward criticism of American foreign affairs, Kinzer casts a jaundiced eye on siblings who conducted them in the 1950s. Framing his assessment as a dual biography of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles, Kinzer roots their anti-Communist policies in their belief in American exceptionalism.... A historical critique sure to spark debate. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist
[T]he dark side of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the activities of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, the director of the CIA. The author reveals the pair's responsibility for the wave of assassinations, coups and irregular wars.... [T]he author clearly presents the Dulles family's contributions to the development of a legal and political structure for American corporations' international politics. A well-documented and shocking reappraisal of two of the shapers of the American century. (Best Nonfiction Book of 2013.)
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Brothers:
1. Start with the personalities of the two brothers: how do they differ from one another, and how they are similar? How did the family background shape the brothers' beliefs, attitudes, and actions as adults? Do you admire one brother more than the other?
2. Talk about the brothers' personal lives as adults: their relationship with one another, their spouses, and their children.
3. Kinzer examines the brothers' outsized influence in foreign policy as Secretary of State and Director of Central Intelligance. Is the author overly condemnatory...or are his criticisms on target? Critics say Kinzer does not take into account the tenor of the times: the fact that the Soviet threat was real and increasing and that China had come under Communist control, threatening to destablize the East. What are your views? Did the Dulles brothers overreach ... or were their policies and actions appropriate for the time?
4. To what degree does the United States have the right to interfer in other countries' governments? Do we have the right to overthrow foreign governments? Assist with or spur assassinations? What if our vital national interests are at stake? How do we determine what our national interests are? Have those "interests" changed over the past 50-60 years, since the time of the Dulles brothers? Or do our national interests remain the same—only the tacts change?
5. Talk about the Dulles family's financial support of preNazi and Nazi Germany. To what degree was the family complicit in the rise of Nazi power?
6. To what extent did the Dulles brothers operate foreign policy for the benefit of American corporations? Is that a fair, or unfair, assessment?
7. Talk about the CIA era under Allen Dulles. Lyndon B. Johnson once referred to it as "Murder Inc." Was he right?
8. Does this book alter or confirm your views of American foreign policy over the years? Were you suprised by what you read in The Brothers?
9. How would you describe the long-term influence of the Dulles brothers on US foreign policy?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
Paula Byrne, 2013
HarperCollins
380 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061999093
Summary
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the revered writer through a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work.
Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen’s daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Paula Byrne’s portrait—organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources—explores the lives of Austen’s extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories, we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character.
Byrne transports us to different worlds—the East Indies and revolutionary Paris—and different events—from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic—wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.
Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen’s novel’s often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world—a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine—hold significance in her emotional and artistic development.
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1967
• Where—Birkenhead, England, UK
• Education— PhD., University of Liverpool
• Currently—lives in Oxford, England
Paula Byrne is a British author and biographer who wrote Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson (2005) and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (2009). Her debut book was the study of Jane Austen, Jane Austen and the Theatre, which was published in 2002 by Hambledon and later reissued by Bloomsbury. Byrne has a Ph. D. from University of Liverpool.
In 2005 her biography Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson was featured on the Richard & Judy Book Club on Channel 4, propelling it into the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Her book Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead was published by HarperPress in the UK in August 2009 and HarperCollins New York in the USA in April 2010. An excerpt was published in the Sunday Times of August 9 under the headline Sex scandal behind Brideshead Revisited. . An illustrated extract appeared in the April 2010 issue of Vanity Fair in advance of American publication.
In a television programme broadcast on BBC2 on Boxing Day 2011 she explored the possibility that a Regency pen and ink drawing of graphite on vellum, labelled on the verso 'Miss Jane Austin', might be an authentic portrait of Jane Austen. The film presented forensic and art historical evidence that the work was authentic to the period, not a forgery, but the case for its being Austen was fiercely debated, both in the programme and subsequently in the Times Literary Supplement. Byrne lent the drawing to Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, where it was exhibited from summer 2012.
In January 2013, coinciding with the bicentenary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, Byrne published a new biography called The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. Featured as BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, it approaches the subject's life by means of an array of key objects, including her portable writing desk and the topaz cross given to her by her brother.
Byrne is married to Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare scholar and Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/10/14.)
Book Reviews
Vividly persuasive…. The Real Jane Austen is excellent… particularly on the dissonant topics of theater and slavery….Byrnes section on slavery is better still, establishing links between Austen’s protagonists and contemporary figures, her pointed references and contemporary events, which highlight her supposedly oblivious fiction’s sharp views on the slave trade.
New York Times Book Review
Byrne takes Austen seriously as a writer...[she] brings to life a woman of “wonderful exuberance and self-confidence,” of “firm opinions and strong passions.” Little wonder that every other man she meets seems to fall in love with her.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
Magnificent…explodes the old view of Jane Austen. Byrne’s research is wide, deep and meticulous…a more vivid and memorable Jane Austen emerges than a relentlessly "straight" old-fashioned narrative could deliver.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
[Byrne] breathes yet more life into Austen and her works by considering the objects that populated her days…. [The] thematic approach offers a revealing picture of Austen and a lively social history….paints a fresh and vivid picture of an inimitable woman.
Economist
Biographer Paula Byrne has taken objects from Jane Austen’s real life and times and used them as if we were dropping in on Austen on any given day...a dynamic new biography in which Austen lives and breathes.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR
A vivacious new portrait.... [E]ach chapter unfolds from the biographer's description of a small object associated with Austen's life.... Byrne's Austen, as revealed through this archive of objects, emerges as a worldly woman, profoundly enmeshed in a wider world than she's often acknowledged to occupy.
Publishers Weekly
Byrne begins each essay in this collection with an image and description of an object of particular importance to Austen...[and] how these items influenced her life and informed her work. This premise is stretched thin at some points...but it is an engaging narrative technique.... Austen intentionally drew inspiration from life in order to add what was at that time an innovative realism and verisimilitude to her novels. —Megan Hodge, Chesterfield Cty. P.L., Richmond
Library Journal
For Austen obsessives, this latest study offers a few flashes of revelation amid long stretches of minutiae.... Ultimately, all of this accumulation of detail doesn't bring readers much closer to a woman the author admits was "a very private person" and "the most elusive of all writers with the exception of Shakespeare."
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Real Jane Austen:
1. Paula Byrne's use of material objects to limn Jane Austen's life is considered an innovative approach to biographical writing. Does it work? Did the book engage you? Is her discussion of the various objects and their influcence in Austen's writings persuasive?
2. What conventional views of Jane Austen does Byrne reject in writing her biography. How does her portrayal of Austen differ from, say, her brother's?
3. How much did you know about Austen's life before you read Byrne's book? What new insights have you gained into the author...and, most especially, into her novels? Is there anything that surprises you as a result of Byrne's biography?
4. After reading The Real Jane Austen, how would you define Austen?
5. Talk about Austen's attitudes toward marriage and children. What were her views on slavery?
6. Which essays, detailing which objects in particular—e.g., the East Indian shawl, ivory miniature, or velvet cushions—do you find most enlightening and or persuasive?
7. Do you find any parts of Byrne's book stretched a bit thin...or lacking in persuasiveness...or bogged down in minutiae?
8. Which is your favorite Austen novel (if you have a "favorite")? What insights have you gained into that work after reading Paula Byrne's biography?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2013
Simon & Schuster
928 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416547860
Summary
One of the Best Books of the Year as chosen by The New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, Time, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, and more. “A tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue” (Associated Press).
The gap between rich and poor has never been wider…legislative stalemate paralyzes the country…corporations resist federal regulations…spectacular mergers produce giant companies…the influence of money in politics deepens…bombs explode in crowded streets…small wars proliferate far from our shores…a dizzying array of inventions speeds the pace of daily life.
These unnervingly familiar headlines serve as the backdrop for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s highly anticipated The Bully Pulpit—a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air.
The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history.
The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S. S. McClure.
Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men.
The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 4, 1943
• Where—Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Colby College; Ph.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 1995 for No Ordinary Time
• Currently—lives in Concord, Massachusetts
Doris Kearns Goodwin is an award-winning American author, historian, and political commentator. She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1995. She is the author of biographies of U.S. Presidents, including Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln; Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream; The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga; and her Pulitzer Prize winning book No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Homefront During World War II.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Goodwin actually grew up in Rockville Centre on Long Island. She attended Colby College in Maine where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa; graduating magna cum laude in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964 to pursue her doctoral studies. She earned her Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.
In 1967, Goodwin went to Washington, D.C., as a White House Fellow during the Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) administration, working as his assistant. After Johnson left office, she assisted Johnson in drafting his memoirs. After LBJ's retirement in 1969, Goodwin taught government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American Presidency. In 1977, her first book, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream, was published in which she drew on her conversations with the late president. The book became a New York Times bestseller and provided a launching pad for her literary career.
Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Homefront During World War II. In 1998 she received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College. In 2005, she won the 2005 Lincoln Prize (for best book about the American Civil War) for Team of Rivals.
In 1975, Kearns married Richard N. Goodwin, who had worked in the Johnson and Kennedy administration as an adviser and a speechwriter. They have three sons, Richard, Michael and Joseph. One of her sons is heading to Iraq for a second tour of duty. As of 2007, the Goodwins live in Concord, Massachusetts.
Goodwin was the first female journalist to enter the Boston Red Sox locker room. She consulted on and appeared in Ken Burns' 1994 award-winning documentary Baseball and is a life-long supporter of both the Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[A] revealing portraits of Theodore Roosevelt and his close friend, handpicked successor and eventual bitter rival, William Howard Taft…Ms. Goodwin uses the Roosevelt and Taft presidencies to view timely issues through the prism of the early 20th century, prompting us to reconsider the ways political dynamics have, and have not, changed. She also uses her impressive narrative skills to give us a visceral sense of the world in which Roosevelt and Taft came of age, and the wave of populism that was beginning to sweep the land. She creates emotionally detailed portraits of the two men's families, provides an informed understanding of the political forces…arrayed across the country at the time, and enlivens even highly familiar scenes like Teddy Roosevelt's daring charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and the "near riot" that broke out between Roosevelt and Taft delegates at the 1912 Republican Convention in Chicago
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times
There are but a handful of times in the history of our country," Goodwin writes in her introduction, "when there occurs a transformation so remarkable that a molt seems to take place, and an altered country begins to emerge." The years covered in this book are such a time. It makes a pretty grand story…Goodwin directs her characters with precision and affection, and the story comes together like a well-wrought novel…Roosevelt and Taft and their wives and siblings and parents and children all wrote each other copious, loving and often eloquent reports. Goodwin seems to have read them all, along with every newspaper and magazine published during those years…and used them to put political intrigues and moral dilemmas and daily lives into rich and elegant language. Imagine The West Wing scripted by Henry James
Bill Keller - New York Times
Goodwin’s evocative examination of the Progressive world is smart and engaging.... She presents a highly readable and detailed portrait of an era. The Bully Pulpit brings the early 20th century to life and firmly establishes the crucial importance of the press to Progressive politics.
Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin has scored again with The Bully Pulpit, a thorough and well-written study of two presidents, as well as the journalists who covered them and exposed scandals in government and industry….Her genius in this huge volume (750 pages of text) is to take the three narratives and weave them into a comprehensive, readable study of the time ….The Bully Pulpit is a remarkable study of a tumultuous period in our history.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
These fascinating times deserve a chronicler as wise and thorough as Goodwin. The Bully Pulpit is splendid reading.
Dallas Morning News
In her beautiful new account of the lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin spins a tale so gripping that one questions the need for fiction when real life is so plump with drama and intrigue.
Associated Press Staff
This sophisticated, character-driven book tells two big stories.... This is a fascinating work, even a timely one.... It captures the way a political party can be destroyed by factionalism, and it shows the important role investigative journalists play in political life.
Economist
(Starred review.) [A] narrative around the friendship of two very different Presidents, Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.... Goodwin links both presidents' fortunes to the rise of "muckraking" journalism...and its influence over political and social discussion.... Goodwin manages to make history very much alive and relevant. Better yet—the party politics are explicitly modern.
Publishers Weekly
President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and his successor William Howard Taft, with a new breed of investigative reporter, took on greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians. Goodwin excels in capturing the essences of TR and Taft.... The best part of this volume is the author's presentation of the muckrakers (investigative reporters), whose research TR, in contrast to Taft, was willing to use..... Verdict: It's a long book, but it marks Goodwin's page-turner trifecta on the evolution of the modern presidency. —William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps.... A considerable contributor to the split was TR's progressivism, his trust-busting and efforts to improve the lot of America's working people, which Taft was disinclined to emulate. Moreover, Taft did not warm to TR's great talent, which was to enlist journalists to his cause.... It's no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Talk about the differences in the economic arena between the early 20th century, the historical period of this book, and the early 21st century. How similar are the issues of economic disparity?
2. Define populism...during Rooevelt and Taft's era and during our own? The same...different? What has spurred the growth of the movement then and now?
3. What role did the press play in the Roosevelt and Taft administrations? What role do the media play today? What exactly is muckraking? Can today's journalists be considered modern muckrakers? Do we have anything comparable to McClure's magazine today?
4. This is the first book in Goodwin's oeuvre that focuses prominently on women: especially Ida Tarbell and the wives of the two presidents. Talk about the ways in which those women made a difference...and talk about the times in which they operated. How amenable was society of powerful women?
5. Of the two primary figures, Roosevelt and Taft, which do you feel made the greatest difference? Which one most impressed you—and why? How did the two men differ in personality, as well as in their political view, tactics, and effectiveness?
6. How would you explain the deterioration of the friendship between two presidents?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)