Books Briefly: Ten Journeys through Time

Even if we pay attention to history's lessons, we may have to repeat some of its mistakes. Still, it does feel more like moving in a spiral than a circle, an evolving cycle as our planet becomes both more interdependent and more unpredictable. 
     The last elections in the US -- featuring the rise of two popular insurgencies, led by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, two avatars of disruption and change -- appear to have settled little, instead hardening divisions, fueling resentments and spreading widespread anxiety. It feels as if we're living through a unique time. And yet, many of the most gnawing questions do remain the same. 
     Here are ten books that offer some answers.

Dictator, by Robert Harris (2015, Knopf, 385 pages)

How does a republic fall? As retold by Cicero's scribe in the final installment of this remarkable trilogy, it starts with ambition, hubris and endemic corruption. Robert Harris does not downplay Cicero's fatal weaknesses, but also dramatizes some of his greatest triumphs as he struggles to protect Rome, first from Julius Ceasar, and later from Marc Antony and his rival, Ceasar's adopted son Octavian.      
     The writing is vivid and the dialogue surprisingly contemporary. But it's the story itself, of Rome's slow descent into violence and repression, that makes this novel so compelling.

The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire, by Stephen Kinzer (2017, Henry Holt, 320 pages)

Whether praised as "the large policy" or condemned as imperialism, America's expansionist military and economic moves beginning in 1898 transformed the country into an emerging empire. Driving the process was a combination of arrogance, opportunism and conflicting ambitions. 
     In The True Flag, Kinzer sheds fresh light on the Spanish-American War, US occupation of Cuba and annexation of the Philippines, and especially the crucial roles played by war-lover Teddy Roosevelt, anti-imperialist Mark Twain and the equivocating presidential hopeful, William Jennings Bryan.

Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century, by Andrew Cornell (2016, University of California, 416 pages) 

This accessible history is long overdue, showcasing the broad and profound influence of anarchist thinking and institutions from the Progressive era to the 1970s. An epilogue updates the story, tracing links to recent developments like Occupy. Even knowledgable readers will discover fresh connections. 
     Cornell illustrates the movement's diversity, from the Modern School to the Diggers, along with the contributions of leading figures like Emma Goldman, Murray Bookchin and David Dellinger.

Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915-1945, by Richard J.B. Bosworth (2007, Penquin Books, 736 pages) 

Reading this rich and revealing history of Italy under fascist rule, it was hard not to be reminded of Donald Trump. As Bosworth shows, Mussolini's brand of fascism was powered more by charisma than policies, and also drew from a widespread sense of victimhood that fueled aggression, authoritarian quick fixes, and a desperate yearning to recapture a glorious, yet mythical past. 
     World War II ended the Duce's tyranny, but did not excise fascism's totalitarian approach and mindset. Unfortunately, traces and echoes can be found today in most democracies

Henry Alsberg: The Driving Force of the New Deal Federal Writers' Project, by Susan Rubenstein DeMasi (2016, McFarland, 296 pages) 

This revelatory biography eloquently celebrates the life and legacy of a citizen diplomat and arts pioneer, a real life Don Quixote who championed cultural pluralism, prisoner rights and artistic freedom in tumultuous times. Susan Rubenstein DeMasi combines infectious enthusiasm with thorough research and great storytelling, along the way illuminating Henry Alsberg's road from WWI era journalist, human rights advocate and "intellectual anarchist" to founder/ director of the Federal Writers Project, a New Deal program that transformed America's literary landscape. 
     DeMasi's book is a vital, long-overdue addition to American literary history. 

Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made, by Richard Rhodes (2015, Simon & Shuster, 320 pages) 

An intriguing cultural history. Richard Rhodes brings the Spanish Civil War into fresh focus, with revealing details about the volunteers, doctors, nurses, writers and painters drawn into the confict, poignant stories about life on the front line, and insights on the broader impacts, from medical innovations to memorable art. 

The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, the Isolationists, and the Road to World War II, by Nicholas Wapshott (2014, W.W Norton, 464 pages) 

This fresh and timely exploration of the run up to World War II reveals the roots and pitfalls of American isolationism, debunking myths on both sides of the debate. Especially chilling are revelations about the roles played by Joseph Kennedy, as British ambassador, 1940 presidential aspirant and advocate of German appeasement until 1941, and Charles Lindberg, the famous flyer who turned defeatist, ignored Nazi atrocities, and briefly led the anti-war campaign known as America First.

The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston (2017, Grand Central, 304 pages) 

An extraordinary true adventure packed with insights and thrills. Douglas Preston takes readers on a remarkable archaeological journey across Honduras in search of a long-lost civilization. It's a captivating tale, enriched by Preston's research and vivid story-telling. 
     And even when the explorers -- with the aid of new technology -- finally locate this "lost world," Preston and the others confront new dangers and mysteries. Thrilling and timely.

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, by Richard Haass (2017, Penguin, 352 pages)

If you want to know why so many foreign policy experts are worried about a Trump presidency, Richard Haass offers a comprehensive, "insider's" answer. Basically, his message is that global rules and institutions that have kept the world relatively stable since World War II are at risk of being abandoned. Written during the recent presidential race, Haass, who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, makes a convincing case, but avoids a direct critique of Trump, calling instead for continued active engagement (calling it a "sovereign obligation") over narrow nationalism, and mainly reflecting the concerns of the internationalists who have been in control through most of this time.

Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, by Matt Taibbi (2017, Spiegel & Grau, 352 pages)

Matt Taibbi's snappy reportage on the race that may end democracy "as we know it" is reminder that it is possible to be both smart and wrong -- sometimes in the same sentence. Like many journalists, he was both fascinated and repulsed by the rise of Trump, yet repeatedly predicted that his victory simply couldn't happen. This campaign "diary" could have been depressing and redundant. But a sense of the absurd, combined with earnest passion that might have embarrassed Hunter Thompson, keep the pages turning right up to the "unbelievable" climax. 

Progressive Republicans: When That Was a Thing

How GOP reformers challenged the rules and
overthrew Vermont's political establishment

We hear it every day. "America is in peril."  But this particular wording was part of the Republican Party’s 1936 national platform. 

Eighty years ago, the basic pitch was not so different: Unless Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his “Socialist” New Deal could be stopped the country was doomed. Yet, when the votes were counted that November, FDR was re-elected with the biggest Electoral College margin in a century. Only three states elected Republican governors.

One of the holdouts was Vermont, reliably Republican for more than 70 years. On the other hand, the state's new governor represented the Party’s progressive wing. 

By the 1930s George Aiken had built a loyal following as an author, horticulturalist, lecturer, and legislator. After five years in the state House of Representatives, he became lieutenant governor in 1935. But the Democrats were gaining ground in Vermont during the Great Depression, and Governor Charles Smith was a less-than-charismatic 68-year-old. Seeing an opportunity, Aiken broke the Republicans’ unwritten rotation system and challenged Smith after just one term. Organizing young Republicans, he barnstormed the state, and reached out to progressive Democrats like Burlington’s former Mayor James Burke.

On the other hand, Aiken criticized some aspects of the New Deal, and issued dire warnings about “the visible and invisible government in Washington, whose thoughts and actions are so alien to the free-thinking people of Vermont and of the nation; whose policy for the last four years has been one of debt and destruction.”

In some respects he was a limited government conservative, charging that an overreaching President was after “more and more control of all of us and our possessions and resources, public and private.” Another tried-and-true theme. On the other hand, he accepted the money that flowed from New Deal programs, supported Social Security and conservation efforts, and later, as a US Senator, was a key author of the Food Stamp program, which benefited both the poor and farmers. As one of few successful Republican governors in the 1930s Aiken called for changes in the national party.

By 1937 he was being talked about as a possible candidate for President, a push orchestrated by the publicity director of the National Republican Committee, Leo Casey, also a Vermonter. At a Lincoln’s Day dinner organized by the National Republican Club in 1938 Aiken spoke to the nation over the radio, the mass medium of its day. He shocked some Republicans with his assertion that Lincoln “would be ashamed of his party’s leadership today.” 

Two years later Wendell Wilkie won the Republican nod and went down to defeat as Roosevelt won a third term. But Aiken had a plan -- to move from governor to US senator.

He was close to one of the current  senators, Ernest Gibson, Sr., a respected long-term leader of Vermont's progressive movement, as well as Gibson’s son, who became Vermont Secretary of State soon after finishing law school. When Ernest Senior died in office in 1940 – he had been representing Vermont in Congress since 1923 – Governor Aiken appointed Gibson Junior to complete his father’s term. It was the beginning of an alliance that became known as the Aiken-Gibson Wing, liberal Republicans united by a moderate philosophy and distaste for the Party’s "big business" wing, the Proctor faction.

In Washington, Gibson Junior struck up a friendship with a Missouri Senator, Harry Truman, and irritated conservatives back home with his support of the New Deal. According to historian Samuel Hand, he was ultimately just keeping “the seat warm until Aiken mounted his own candidacy” for the Senate. By the time World War II was declared, Gibson had enlisted in the Army. Aiken meanwhile won the Republican nomination to replace him, beginning an illustrious 36-year run as US Senator.

But then, in 1943, something unpredictable happened: Gibson became a war hero in the South Pacific. His achievement was magnified by the national publication of a dramatic photo displaying his wounds. By the time he returned home he was a celebrity and a political inevitability.

In 1944, another Proctor, the third since 1878, became Vermont governor. Mortimer Proctor’s family had been a dominant political force in the state for half a century. Like Republicans before him, he had risen through the legislature and moved directly from Lieutenant Governor to the top state job. In following this path he was obeying the unwritten “mountain rule,” a geographical approach to power sharing in which the office of governor alternated every four years between the east and west sides of the state. With the winner always a Republican, it was a way to avoid factionalism and promote “orderly” succession.

But Gibson said it was time to end this “rule of succession.” Instead, he challenged Proctor as leader of a do-nothing “old guard.” Once Mortimer Proctor went down in the primary, effectively ending the family’s political dynasty, the general election was a breeze. Gibson not only won the support of most Republicans but also many GIs, populists, renegade Democrats and the state’s poor.

Delivering on his promises was a bit more difficult, since conservatives still controlled the state legislature. He did manage to increase human services, establish a minimum wage and a pension plan for teachers, and push through the graduated income tax. He also became “father” of the State Police – to the chagrin of county sheriffs. But success was illusive in areas such as public health and welfare.

Before most mainstream politicians, Gibson recognized that public health would inevitably be one of state government’s biggest responsibilities. Aiken liked his thinking and brought some of his ideas to Congress. But rank-and-file Republicans never bought into the agenda, and many resented the idea that state government’s role should expand to include things like public health and subsidized services for the poor. 

By 1949 Gibson was disillusioned and accepted appointment to a federal judgeship by his old friend, and now President, Harry Truman. Aiken remained in the US Senate until 1975, where he won respect as an independent thinker and fought for energy projects that brought more affordable hydropower to Vermont.

In the midst of the Vietnam War, a myth developed that Aiken had said the US should declare victory and bring the troops home. What he actually said was that the nation “could well declare unilaterally.” The US had “won” the war, he argued – as it turned out, erroneously – because its forces were “in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam."

He knew it was a far-fetched proposal, but offered this ironic defense: “Nothing else has worked."

Burlington in the Age of Burke

For these Burlington stories, let’s start in September 1902, ten years before Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1912 visit to Barre. The President had been to the Queen City a year earlier. That day he was riding with Percival Clement on his railroad after a visit with Vermont Lieutenant Governor Nelson Fisk at Isle LaMotte. Then word came through that President McKinley had been shot by what the papers were calling a “crazed anarchist.”
     Now, a year later, Roosevelt – ridiculed as a “wild man,” that “damned cowboy” hated by Wall Street, Vice President under McKinley for less than a year – triumphantly returned to Burlington as President.
     Clement was about to play a strange and convoluted role in Vermont’s progressive history. Decades before his stiff resistance to womens’ suffrage he was part of a progressive fusion movement that attempted to overthrow the Proctor Republicans. He was also a railroad tycoon, owner of the Rutland Herald, and friend of Teddy Roosevelt.
     In 1902 Mayor Donley C. Hawley stood with the new president at the train barn near the waterfront, surrounded by flags and bunting. Roosevelt told the Vermonters, “You have always kept true to the old America ideals – the ideals of individual initiative, of self-help, of rugged independence, of the desire to work and willingness, if need, to fight.”
     The truth is, Republicans like Hawley were actually suspicious of “their” president. His rhetoric about a “square deal” for working people and control of big business sounded, well…. radical. But Democrats like James Burke were unabashed admirers. Burke was an Irish Catholic blacksmith and a leading spokesman for the city’s growing Democratic Party. He had been an alderman and run unsuccessfully for mayor in 1900 and 1902. Now he was part of a statewide fusion movement with dissident Republicans. Like Roosevelt, he projected himself as a pragmatic reformer, thriving on idealism, moral outrage and an ability to inspire the masses.

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March 3, 1903. The hotly contested mayoral race between Burke and Hawley drew an overflow crowd to the city clerk’s office that night. The men in the room – remember, only men could vote – perched on windowsills or stood on the rail that surrounded the aldermanic table. As the results for various wards were announced the winning side cheered. Hawley, who was a surgeon, came out of top in the affluent areas. But Burke’s persistence was finally paying off in the inner-city, immigrant wards. And he had two compelling issues: a proposed city-owned light plant and local licensing of saloons.
     When the final votes were tallied, Hawley had a three-vote margin. But that was because City Clerk Charles Allen refused to count ballots marked twice. Burke was livid and took the matter to the Vermont Supreme Court – and won, gaining certification of an 11-vote victory by early summer.
     It took more time, but he also got a light plant. Two years later, during his third one-year term, Burke’s daughter Loretta pressed a button at the bandstand in City Hall Park energizing two circuits of streetlights with power from the newly built plant.

Attempted Fusion

Burke’s political vision stretched beyond the borders of the city, and by 1906 he became further embroiled in an effort to wrest control of the governor’s office from the Republicans. To attempt it he forged a delicate personal alliance with Percival Clement.

Percival Clement

    The Burke-Clement alliance was largely rooted in political expediency. Both men wanted to be governor and knew that a Democrat could not win statewide. Both had also been mayors, Clement in Rutland, although his control of the Rutland Railroad didn’t ease negotiations about the Burlington waterfront, which was owned by Clement’s line and Central Vermont Railway. But there was also an ideological affinity that bridged the class barrier between them. Both were ardent supporters of the “local option” to issue saloon licenses and vocal critics of graft by marble and coal interests dominating the GOP.
     In 1906, Roosevelt was on the attack against the beef, oil and tobacco trusts. In Vermont Clement was still warring with the Proctors, especially Fletcher Proctor, the Republican candidate for governor.
     Burke had won another term as mayor over Walter Bigelow, the 40-year-old chairman of the state Republican Party and night editor at the Burlington Free Press.  He saw a “bright and glorious future” for the city and wanted people to move beyond “a narrow or partisan point of view.” That was also part of the reason he was involved in the movement Clement was building.
     At first it was called the “Bennington idea,” referring to the town where petitions first circulated for Clement to lead an independent movement that aimed to “save the state” after 50 years of Republican rule. But Clement’s supporters felt that a fusion with Democrats was essential, so 1906 they tried to induce Burke to join the ticket.
     Burke wasn’t persuaded. Giving Clement the Democratic nomination would effectively put him in control of the party. If a Democrat won the presidency in 1908 Clement would get to hand out the patronage. The Democrats were still divided on June 28, the day both the Independent and Democratic state conventions were held in Burlington.
     The Independents convened in City Hall. The Democrats met at the armory. Meanwhile a joint committee worked out an agreement to divide the state ticket. The Democrats would field candidates for half of the slate, Independents would fill the rest. After accepting the Independent nod Clement walked with Burke to the Strong Theater for a joint assembly.
     The debate over fusion was heated. Some people accused Burke of opposing the idea because he couldn’t head the ticket. Eventually speaking for himself, Burke reminded the audience that he had backed fusion under Clement four years earlier. But the “local option” for alcohol was no longer a galvanizing issue and Clement was, after all, still basically a Republican.
     The Democrats rejected Burke’s advice and approved a joint slate headed by Clement and Democrat C. Herbert Pape. With more than a thousand people packing the theater, Clement took center stage, Burke at his side, and launched into a long and fiery attack on the Republican machine, the marble companies, and the inefficiency and graft that was robbing the people.
     Burke actively backed Clement’s war on the Proctor Republicans, spending much of his time that summer on the campaign trail attacking Republican graft and rule. As usual, his rhetoric was also rich with praise of Roosevelt, calling him “the greatest Republican since Lincoln and the greatest Democrat since Jefferson.”
     “Reform is in the air,” he shouted from the back of Clement’s private train that fall, “and Vermont will share in the benefits that come from the general revolt being made against ring rule and graft.” Burke envisioned a popular coalition of Lincoln Republicans and Jefferson Democrats that would wipe out party lines. It might even combat corporate lobbying on labor issues like the nine-hour day and minimum wage.
     But Fusion was defeated by Republicans united behind Proctor that November. And the following March, Burke came up short in his first mayoral race in five years – to Walter Bigelow. The defeat was devastating for political allies who lost their jobs and watched old opponents return to power. Twelve years later, in 1918, Clement did become governor – as a Republican.

NEXT: On the Waterfront