Skip to main content

Meandering with the Presidents

By

I was so smitten with this series of photos (linked above) and the fact that I could get started on TR online that I subscribed to Vanity Fair. Time will tell if all issues live up to these two samples, but it does seem like they have interesting stories from time to time.



This photo booth snapshot may be from the Kennedys' honeymoon.

Comments

  1. James FergusonAugust 1, 2009 at 9:31 AM

    Woodrow Wilson looks the kind of guy you could never warm up to.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsAugust 1, 2009 at 5:57 PM

    Wilson's also strangely out of focus -- even compared to this little snapshot of Kennedy who really does have something extra when compared to the others.

    I thought these photos were very revealing in their way. How about that Nixon playing the piano?

    I just hope the magazine can deliver an issue or two over a year to live up to this, and it's not just movie stars and their love lives.

    ReplyDelete
  3. NYT PerduAugust 2, 2009 at 6:32 AM

    That JFK pic reminds me that San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (heavy emphasis on photography) is featuring not only 6 decades of Richard Avedon photos but Robert Frank's earlier huge work "The Americans"--truly an eyefiller and thought-provoker about non-celebrities "in situ" in the 40's-50's, I need to go back for more (feet wore out long before interest did).
    http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/exhib_events

    ReplyDelete
  4. NYT PerduAugust 2, 2009 at 7:25 AM

    I absolutely LOVE the pic of Nixon playing for Miss Pearlie Mae!!! Oh Lord, if only he'd stayed with the piano...

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsAugust 2, 2009 at 7:49 AM

    This one also looks fascinating:

    http://www.sfmoma.org/exhibitions/383

    ReplyDelete
  6. avrdsAugust 3, 2009 at 4:16 PM

    Finally finished Lear and it was worth the investment of time. The book concludes with a look at WWI, the ultimate regeneration of the nation through war -- and the ultimate failure (the chapter is called Conclusion: Dying in Vain).

    Interestingly, he sees Wilson as a stark contrast to TR with his emphasis on the manliness of war, and his push for unconditional surrender. He believes that in spite of all of Wilson's failures, he has been misunderstood. "He hated war, and was even willing to abridge national sovereignty to avoid it." Makes me want to read more about Wilson now.

    Lear also notes that Wilson, in spite of his support of Birth of a Nation and his segregation of the White House denounced lynching in 1918. "How shall we commend democracy to the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace our own by proving that it is, after all, no protection of the weak?" He also came out in support of women's suffrage.

    After the war, Lear believes TR and his regeneration through war idea lost their allure. But then in an amazing wrap, he ties together the end of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, the resurrection of TR's reputation, and the rise of GW. Some, he says, have called Bush Wilsonian, but he sees Bush as another TR, promoting the idea of solving the nation's weakness through invading other countries.

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsAugust 3, 2009 at 4:19 PM

    He also brings up Randolph Bourne's critique of the war and his "war is the health of the state." I need to read him.

    And ends with Pat Barker's novel, Ghost Road, which I've been meaning to read.

    ReplyDelete
  8. avrdsAugust 3, 2009 at 4:26 PM

    In his acknowledgments he cites Jonathan Lear's book _Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation_, about the Crow.

    This is a book I've never even heard of before, but apparently it talks about how even though the Crow came to terms with the US government early, "they lost their reference points for moving into the future." Looking at Amazon, it appears the book examines the leadership of Plenty Coups.

    http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Hope-Ethics-Cultural-Devastation/dp/0674023293

    Lear concludes that "... there are times when our public challenges seem so complex and overwhelming that it is hard to imagine a future without some version of radical hope." Interesting book.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more