The Founders (I’m old enough that it was the Founding Fathers) of America were some amazing people. Stories of Benjamin Franklin, inventor, diplomat, statesman, and printer were a staple of what was taught as history when I was a kid. It was great stuff and inspired me to read his Autobiography as a teenager, and that was a great read, too. Franklin embodied much about the nascent country: innovation, progress, a desire for liberty, and the ability to chart one’s own course. Washington’s life was also the stuff of legend. Surveying sounds boring as a career, but in the Revolutionary era, it was outdoorsmanship at its finest, supplemented by frontier action. Washington added to his status by being a competent military leader, fearless under fire. Finally, he was the country’s first and probably greatest president, in large part because he was a reluctant leader (those are typically the best kind).
Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward J. Larson (ISBN: 978-0-06-288016-1) takes an often detailed look at how Benjamin Franklin and George Washington worked toward common goals during the Revolutionary era, often working in concert to attain the desired outcome of a free United States. Larson provides an overview of each man’s life, which establishes that even before they knew each other, they had much in common. They were colonists, their early fortunes were tied to the western frontiers of their respective colonies, and they were involved in military and political matters. While their person routes to success were different, with Franklin rising to wealth and fame via hard work, ingenuity, and learning and exploiting the political scene, Washington had a slightly easier route that involved coming into land and marrying into a wealthy family. Ultimately, though, he, too, was a self-made man, parlaying his surveying and military skills into productive aspects of management and leadership, letting him be a successful estate owner and businessman with a strong ability to find workable compromises in otherwise explosive situations. Once both were convinced that British rule was not the way to go for the colonies, they poured their hearts and souls into independence. They believed strongly in liberty, and put their money where their mouths were, sacrificing time, money, and more to the cause of liberty. Franklin spent years abroad; Washington spent years leading the Continental Army. Once independence had been secured, both turned their attention to helping the thirteen colonies unify, something both strongly believed in. This was more time and sacrifice. They were leaders at the Constitutional Convention. Their styles there sometimes differed, but they worked toward a common goal of a unified country with a federal government strong enough to keep the states in check at times. Larson also spends a significant amount of time talking about one of the biggest differences between the two, which was their outlook on slavery. While they started life someone on the same footing there, Franklin slowly evolved to eventually come to an abolitionist viewpoint. Washington never moved from his position as a slave holder, although he was willing to go along with the anti-slavery clauses in the Constitution.The book was mostly interesting, and I found the comparison between the two storied leaders to be an interesting approach to studying the Revolutionary era. Even though their stories are well known, the biographical section was good and had some details that were at least new to me. The author claimed Franklin to be a deist, which is the popular thing to do, and while the first Franklin quote he used to prove that could possibly support that assumption, I thought the next three God-related quotes from Franklin were much more supportive of his believing in God. The author didn’t really touch on Washington’s religiosity (a good thing, too, considering that George Washington’s Sacred Fire thoroughly destroys any argument to the contrary on that score), which I found a little disappointing. If they really thought so differently about God, it could’ve been a good point about how men of differing fundamental beliefs still found common ground and worked together, a very appropriate lesson for today. If their beliefs were closer in nature, it could’ve been another point where these great men saw eye to eye. The slavery discussion had its interesting moments, but was too much. The point was made early in the book that these two didn’t see eye to eye on this issue, but then the reader had to read fifty pages about it. There was also a rather accusatory approach to Washington’s views (“views” being a stretch as one really only reads about his actions and not what he said about it, which, as I have read in other places, were conflicted), seemingly pointing out that Franklin came to the abolitionist side, so automatically Washington should’ve, too. In any case, the historian is not supposed to judge the actions of yesteryear’s figures by today’s standards. All modern readers know slavery is wrong, and the Constitution they helped create set up a system that allowed for the abolition of slavery to happen much faster than many would’ve preferred, so the focus should’ve been, again, on how the two managed to work together and have strong respect for each other until their dying days despite this. Both of these problems seemed like missed opportunities by the author in what was otherwise a good book about two great men.
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Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry (ISBN: 978-0-399-15437-9) is a compilation of those year-end columns for the first few years of the 2000s. Since those were always multi-page columns, the book is a decent length even though it doesn’t even deal with a full decade. The style of Barry’s columns relies on a couple main devices. One is to make fun of real events, and given the state of American politics, that is easy to do. Often, it seemed like he didn’t have to do a lot of writing; the material was writing itself. Another is to start by reporting a real event and then, suddenly and usually rather abruptly, turn it into something surreal or absurd. The subject of the jokes is wide ranging and includes politics, religion, sports, crime, popular culture (singers, movie stars, and generic celebrities who are famous for now real reason), and some bizarre things that make hometown papers only. As the cover to the book suggests, the Republican Party and President Bush are the subject of many jokes, but politicians at all levels find themselves in Barry’s crosshairs. Another continuing theme throughout the book is that things really are getting worse. Each year’s summary starts out with a comment about how we all hoped the year would be a good one and would improve on the past, but that, as usual, we were all disappointed with just how the latest year turned out. Given the ineptitude around us, why should we keep being so optimistic? It’s never dark humor, but there is a level of sarcasm or cynicism that often gives the jokes an edge.
Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended by Jack F. Matlock, Jr. (ISBN: 0-679-46323-2) is a very detailed, play-by-play recounting of most (all?) of the diplomatic events leading up to the end of the Cold War. Matlock was a career diplomat that served on the National Security Council. This position and his academic and diplomatic career as a specialist on Russia provided him with an insider’s perspective on the processes that led up to the end of the Cold War. The book chronicles, often in great detail, various meetings, negotiations, summits, and communications that involved leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. The focus was, of course, on what the two countries’ leaders, Reagan and Gorbachev, did, including their preparations before their meetings, their political efforts in their home countries in order to secure the ability to push their preferred policies forward. Matlock talked about the papers prepared for Reagan and how Reagan studied them. He talked about the negotiation processes. He recounted meetings between secretaries of state and foreign ministers. Those meetings, though, and the preparations were made possible by the leaders’ efforts to put people in place that would assist them. The preparations were made because the leaders desired that, something that was not always the case with the leaders who came before them. While Matlock endeavored to explain that so-called summit meetings weren’t the most important things in the diplomatic arsenal, those are what got headlines and what, ultimately, required the most preparation and resulted in the headline deals that moved the West and the Soviets away from nuclear war and toward peace. He, therefore, spent most of the book talking about these meetings that took place in Moscow, Washington, Geneva, and Reykjavík.