BOOKS OF THE TIMES, New York Times, August 11, 2009
In ‘Battle for America 2008,’ Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson Revisit the Presidential Campaign - Review - NYTimes.com
Presidential Horse Race, the 2008 Version
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The authors’ retrospective reminds us of the daunting odds that Barack Obama overcame to win the White House.
Nine months after the presidential election of 2008, is there anything new or revealing to say about that momentous event? Can a post-mortem on the marathon campaign preceding that vote shed any new light on the participants or the process?
_____________________________
THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA 2008
The Story of an Extraordinary Election
By Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson
415 pages. Viking. $29.95.
______________________________
Given the voluminous coverage of that race, it might seem as if the obvious answer to these questions were no. But “The Battle for America 2008,” a new book by Dan Balz, the lead political reporter for The Washington Post, and his former Post colleague Haynes Johnson, actually makes for engaging reading — for both politics addicts interested in small new details and the more casual reader interested in a broad, savvy overview of the run-up to a historic election.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/books/11kakutani.html?th&emc=th
Showing posts with label Book Reivews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Reivews. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Books and Book Reviews: "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass
Book Review:
Huffington Post July 24, 2009
"JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass
by Oliver Stone, the Award-winning filmmaker
Posted: July 23, 2009 05:05 PM
The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. It put an abrupt end to a period of a misunderstood idealism, akin to the spirit of 1989 when the Soviet bloc to began to thaw and 2008, when our new American President was fairly elected.
Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/jfk-and-the-unspeakable_b_243924.html
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Memoirs of Anthony Blunt, British Spy, Made Public - NYTimes.com, July 24, 2009
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 23, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, England — After keeping it sealed in a steel container for 25 years, the British Library made public on Thursday a 30,000-word memoir in which Anthony Blunt, one of Britain’s most renowned 20th-century art historians, described spying for the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-1930s, as “the biggest mistake of my life.”
The memoir offers few new insights into the details of Blunt’s spying, about which he said little in public before he died in 1983. Its main interest, according to historians, lies in Blunt’s account of his recruitment by another Soviet spy, Guy Burgess, when both were at Cambridge University in the 1930s, and in his exposition of his motives and feelings, including his disillusionment with Marxism and the Soviet Union after World War II.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/world/europe/24blunt.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
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Huffington Post July 24, 2009
"JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass
by Oliver Stone, the Award-winning filmmaker
Posted: July 23, 2009 05:05 PM
The murder of President Kennedy was a seminal event for me and for millions of Americans. It changed the course of history. It was a crushing blow to our country and to millions of people around the world. It put an abrupt end to a period of a misunderstood idealism, akin to the spirit of 1989 when the Soviet bloc to began to thaw and 2008, when our new American President was fairly elected.
Today, more than 45 years later, profound doubts persist about how President Kennedy was killed and why. My film JFK was a metaphor for all those doubts, suspicions and unanswered questions. Now an extraordinary new book offers the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance. That book is James Douglass's JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the power to change it.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/jfk-and-the-unspeakable_b_243924.html
* * * * *
Memoirs of Anthony Blunt, British Spy, Made Public - NYTimes.com, July 24, 2009
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: July 23, 2009
CAMBRIDGE, England — After keeping it sealed in a steel container for 25 years, the British Library made public on Thursday a 30,000-word memoir in which Anthony Blunt, one of Britain’s most renowned 20th-century art historians, described spying for the Soviet Union, beginning in the mid-1930s, as “the biggest mistake of my life.”
The memoir offers few new insights into the details of Blunt’s spying, about which he said little in public before he died in 1983. Its main interest, according to historians, lies in Blunt’s account of his recruitment by another Soviet spy, Guy Burgess, when both were at Cambridge University in the 1930s, and in his exposition of his motives and feelings, including his disillusionment with Marxism and the Soviet Union after World War II.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/world/europe/24blunt.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
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