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Title: Scandalmonger: A Novel (Harvest Book) by William Safire ISBN: 0-15-601323-1 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.05 (39 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Federal Period Politics Made Fascinating!
Comment: Wow! Want to get beneath the saccharine veneer most historians put on America's Federal Period? Want to see politics-as-usual so bad that you'll think today's politics-as-usual is positively altruism? Want to find out what life was like for newspaper editors in the days when truth was no defense against libel suits? Read Safire's Scandalmonger. Using their own letters and speeches, Safire gives us the Founding Fathers as we never saw them in our school rooms: the proud George Washington obsessed with his public image, the erratic and volatile John Adams, the dreamy and sensual Thomas Jefferson, the practical and flawed Alexander Hamilton, the crafty and self-assured Aaron Burr, the naive but loyal James Madison, and the coldly calculating, slightly reptilian James Monroe. And through it all walk two of the most remarkable, powerful newspapermen in American history, William Cobbett and James Callender, bitter enemies in politics but accidental allies in promoting freedom of the press. Adding to the book's educational and entertainment value, Safire reveals his sources and separates truth from fiction at the end of his novel. Novel? Well, maybe.
Rating: 3
Summary: Scandalmongering of his own
Comment: Safire writes an entertaining, educational piece of fiction. The lengths to which he goes to separate fact from fiction only highlights what I believe to be the true weakness of the book, that Safire is himself scandalmongering. By dragging us through the human frailaties of Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton and Burr, Safire's inuendo is that there is little difference between politics and personalities then and now. Also, there is little difference between partisan press then and now.
I don't buy his argument. The ideologues of the early 19th century were fighting to shape the character of an infant nation. History has lionized these men as the Founding Fathers. The truth that they were far from perfect humans and driven by common impulses of humanity does not detract from what these men on both sides accomplished.
Throughout the book there is an undercurrent that today's scandals actually pale by comparison to these early issues. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Today's scandals do not occur on a backdrop of a nation stuggling to define itself. Rather they showcase an individual possessed with more power than anyone else on earth abusing the charisma of his office for self gradification.
I'll give the book 5 stars for accuracy, subtract one for duplicity and one for his own scandalmongering.
Rating: 1
Summary: Vacuous
Comment: I love history reads, and particularly so when it seems relevant to me in some way. I'm probably related to Thomas Callender, so I doubly expected to be glued to this book for a weekend. Sadly, this book was so dry and devoid of historical value in the first 5-10 pages that I just couldn't keep enough interest to pay attention after that and sent it to another relative, who I hope won't hold that against me too much.
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Title: Freedom: A Novel of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War by William Safire ISBN: 038071938X Publisher: Not Avail Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: WORDS OF WISDOM by William Safire ISBN: 0671695878 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 April, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: American Aurora : A Democratic-Republican Returns : The Suppressed History of Our Nation's Beginnings and the Heroic Newspaper That Tried to Report It by Richard N. Rosenfeld ISBN: 0312194374 Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco, William Weaver ISBN: 0140259198 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Glorious Cause by Jeffrey M. Shaara ISBN: 0345427580 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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