Book Thread!

Since apparently it's a slow-news/throw-everything-at-the-post-and-see-what-sticks week for the blog, I thought I'd just talk about a couple books that have come out recently. And yes, they're history-oriented, because that's what I do, but they're also books conservatives should check out.

While there are a lot of new good books out right now, I thought for today I'd focus on two biographies. They're both well-written and about important people, and they reveal some things about the past.

Coolidge: By Amity Shlaes

Shlaes is also the author of The Forgotten Man, a somewhat revisionist history of the Great Depression, and by "revisionist" I mean she definitely does not portray it as the story of FDR arriving to save us all from our laissez-faire sinfulness. So, clearly a woman who should be given the benefit of the doubt, and her biography of our 30th President more than justifies this trust. Stylistically, I thought the book maybe left a bit to be desired in how it abruptly shifted from one aspect of Coolidge's presidential life to another, but that's a rather pedantic, nitpicky criticism. As to what she actually has to say, her portrait of "Silent Cal" absolutely shatters the frequent image we have of a cold, callous man who did nothing to help the country. Coolidge, who had warm relationships with his family and friends, was also a principled man who was not only active in his own way, but had to really fight to carry through his vision of what the government and the country should be.

The pro-business climate of the '20s, for example, did not just happen--progressives in Washington fought to block plans for low income taxes and reductions in spending, and it required a great deal of tenacity and maneuvering by the President to overcome them. The flip side of Coolidge's reticence was his ability to make his opponents underestimate him, and time and time again he used that to blindside them. Partly he did it with a careful command of the facts--he clearly pointed out that everything they knew suggested tax cuts would actually increase government revenue over the long run, and sure enough, he was right. I have never yet met a liberal who will admit to this unfortunate truth, or who even seems aware of it.

Perhaps the most interesting that comes through in Shlaes' book is Coolidge's vision of the presidency as an institution. As the author has said in interviews, he interpreted his position quite literally--as "Presiding Officer." He would do what he needed to do to preserve or enhance national security or prosperity, but beyond that, it was his job to give his fellow citizens as free a hand as possible, and not to micromanage their affairs. Indeed, that was why, despite immense popularity, he chose not to run for another term in 1928; staying in Washington much longer, he feared, might inflate his ego and corrupt his principles. Thinking of how far we've fallen from that view, I could almost cry.

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life: By Jonathan Sperber

Okay, full disclosure on this one: I know Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri, and in fact he is currently my graduate advisor. No, that does not make this a shameless plug. Actually, being no conservative himself, he finds the idea of Karl Marx as a bloodthirsty totalitarian rather humorous. (My moonlighting as a right-wing blogger, if he knew about it, probably less so.) So you're definitely not going to find anything in this biography about how terrible Marx and Marxism were and are.

Why am I bringing it up, then? Well, it has a lot of keys to Marx's psyche and thus to how he developed his "philosophy." The book's main theme is that the Communist founder was more of a journalist than a careful theoretician; were he alive today, he would likely become a blogger. (The author's words, not mine. Just clarifying.) He wrote better in catchphrases and slogans than in lengthy treatises; everyone knows "Workers of the World, Unite!" but even his most devoted followers never made it through Das Kapital.

Plus, a look at Marx's personal affairs makes it much easier to understand how he could have such an inhuman outlook on the world. Only a handful of people could ever stand the guy; he belittled and alienated practically every one of his political colleagues at some point, and indeed probably delayed the growth of a broad leftist movement because of the rivalries he got bogged down in. And while he clearly loved his wife and kids, he also had no problem taking advantage of the family maid and then getting his poor friend Engels to take responsibility for the result nine months later.

Now, Sperber pedals some of this a bit more softly than I am here, and treads rather lightly on the issue of Marx's anti-Semitism. But unlike many historians of a leftist persuasion, he lets the facts speak for themselves, and they reveal a very smart, very harsh, very flawed individual who undoubtedly would have been quite the dictator if he'd ever had the chance.

*****

So those are my mini-reviews for the "Conservative Book Club," as it were. I could probably go on if I had the time, but let's turn it over to you. Any thoughts on these books? And are there other recent publications you would recommend?