The Invisible Bridge

Rick Perlstein has apparently angered conservative historians enough that they're suing him for plagiarism. The iconoclastic historian has opted for a new technique in endnotes, publishing them on the Internet in order to safe space in the book. The endnotes would have direct links to the sources, making it easier to double check Perlstein. But, this apparently doesn't satisfy Craig Shirley, who has accused Perlstein of lifting chunks of his 2004 book on Reagan's first major bid for the President without giving the author proper attribution.

Perlstein has made a name for himself by going after major conservative political figures like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon. In his latest book, he charts "The Invisible Bridge" between Nixon and Reagan, which apparently is none too flattering to the latter. I don't think very many persons care about the former, except maybe Pat Buchanan. All though, Nixon hasn't had this much attention paid him since Watergate.

Perlstein's style has also come under fire, as he is less a biographer than a cultural historian. I greatly enjoyed Nixonland, which as the title suggests focused as much or more on the political climate surrounding Nixon as the man himself. Frank Rich offers a review in the spirit of the book, noting that the title comes from some cynical advise Nikita Khrushchev gave Nixon,

"If the people believe there's an imaginary river out there, you don't tell them there's no river there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river."

That seems to sum up the conservative movement rather well.

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Team of Rivals Reading Group

''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

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified. After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution. Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through. But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 . The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others. Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified. A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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