F.C. Schaefer's Blog

Anybody remember Spiro Agnew? If you don’t, and care about American democracy, then by all means read BAG MAN: THE WILD CRIMES, AUDACIOUS COVER UP, AND SPECTACULAR DOWNFALL OF A BRAZEN CROOK IN THE WHITE HOUSE, by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz. For those who have forgotten, and for those who are way too young, Spiro Agnew, the son of Greek immigrants, rose within a few short years in the 1960s from Baltimore County Executive to Governor of Maryland, then becoming Richard Nixon’s running mate on the 1968 Republican ticket, that won the election, elevating Agnew to the Vice Presidency. Though considered a political non-entity by most pundits at the time, Agnew quickly carved out a niche for himself as the Nixon Administration’s attack dog against those it considered enemies—anti-Vietnam War demonstrators, hippies in general, radical Blacks, young people, and most of all, the news media that critically covered the events of the day. With the help of speech writers William Safire and Pat Buchanan, the latter an old school Irish Catholic bigot, Agnew railed against An effete corp of impudent snobs and the Nattering nabobs of negativism, winning him a big following among middle Americans who felt that their very way of life was under attack during the turbulent ‘60s, and was glad to see somebody in authority stand up and fight back. When the Nixon/Agnew ticket won re-election in ’72, the Vice President immediately became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in ’76. But things changed very fast in the spring and summer of 1973, as first the Nixon Administration was engulfed in the Watergate scandal revelations, then soon followed by the news that Agnew was under investigation for taking bribes and kickbacks from contractors doing business with the state of Maryland going back to the time when he was county executive and continuing through his years as Vice President. It truly was brazen corruption, made plain by the fact that Agnew was accused of taking money right in his White House office. The Vice President was defiant at first, denying the charges, and attacking the Federal prosecutors, but ultimately, they had the goods on him, and he knew it. It ended with him pleading “no contest” to the charges, and escaping jail time by resigning his office in disgrace, before fading into relative obscurity.

I really liked Maddow, and her co-writer Yarvitz’s, take on this sordid story. My hardback copy comes in at 269 pages, making it a short read. Maddow writes in the conversational style of one of her monologues from her MS-NOW cable show, laying out the facts, but also giving some real context to the events described. The Spiro Agnew who emerges from these pages is one of a shallow grifting opportunist, and total hypocrite. The piety he put on in public hid a venomously hateful nature that came out in private. The authors make quite the contrast between the corrupt Vice President and the Federal Prosecutors who pursued his crimes and brought him to justice; they were public servants in the finest sense of the word, not once letting partisan political considerations get in the way of justice—men like George Beall, Tim Baker, Ron Liebman, and Barney Skolnick. They are true heroes. Also deserving praise is Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who understood early on that if the Watergate scandal took down the Presidency of Richard Nixon, then he could not be succeeded by his equally corrupt Vice President. Richardson backed his men all the way, and helped broker the deal that got Agnew’s resignation in the nick of time. There are also some interesting revelations concerning some very real attempts to quash the Agnew investigation early on, actions that amounted to obstruction of justice pure and simple. Another disgusting revelation is how Agnew, in the years after his resignation, was happy to take Saudi money to denounce Israeli influence in the United States. And Maddow is right in pointing out that the principal legacy of Agnew’s sordid career is the “best defense is a good offense” style of politics, where politicians under attack punch back by admitting to nothing while throwing haymakers at their accusers, and undermining the motives of investigators.

One thing Maddow leaves out is the big reason why Nixon picked Agnew as his Vice President in the first place: a deal with segregationist South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond to pick a Vice President acceptable to the Senator in return for Thurmond’s support before the ’68 Republican National Convention. Agnew, who had called out the National Guard to keep order in Baltimore in the wake of MLK’s assassination, was the kind of tough “law and order” man from a border state that appealed to the aging white supremacist. The Agnew nomination, along with the Democratic Party’s self-inflicted wound with Thomas Eagleton in ’72, is why both political parties began seriously vetting their Vice-Presidential prospects in the years ahead, a practice that continues to this very day.

While BAG MAN is a story of justice triumphing over corruption and malfeasance, it is impossible not to be struck when reading it how very different the world is today. The Department of Justice, as it operates in the present day, would look the other way at the corruption of Spiro Agnew for no other reason than his political affiliation. We have fallen far.

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The Old West will never really die, certainly not as long as writers like Tom Clavin give us books like THE LAST OUTLAWS: THE DESPERATE FINAL DAYS OF THE DALTON GANG. I’ve read other books on the subject of the West by Clavin, where he covers the exploits of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and Bat Masterson, during their times in Dodge City and Tombstone, and found him to be the master of research and detail, along with the ability to make nearly forgotten figures from the 19th Century American West live again.

The Dalton brothers, and there were a lot of them as it was a big family, are vaguely known to any fan of western films, or the paperback novels that used to fill the book racks at drug stores. The far more famous James and Younger brothers (to whom the Daltons shared family connections) were the superstars among the outlaw class of the Old West, but Bob, Grat, Emmett, and Bill Dalton would make their mark just the same. They, and their accomplices, plied their illegal trade in Oklahoma (then called the Indian Territory), Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, with a foray to California, during the late 1880s and early 1890s. With grit and nerve, they had success robbing trains and banks, and for a time, eluding the law, usually represented by poorly paid US territorial Marshalls. But like most of the criminally minded, they didn’t always think things through. Such was the case when Bob convinced Grat and Emmett, along with two other gang members, to attempt the spectacular feat of simultaneously robbing two banks in the town of Coffeyville, Kansas, in October of 1892. To say it didn’t go well is to put it mildly; the gang was recognized as soon as they hit town, and the well-armed citizens were waiting for them when the gang attempted to get away. Brother Bill, who was not part of the Coffeyville raid, continued in the outlaw life for few more years, partnering with Bill Doolin to form the Dalton-Doolin gang, but their days were numbered.

Coming in at 250 pages, Clavin’s history of the Dalton gang is a short read, but the pages are packed with the customary detail and character sketches. We get the full story of the Dalton family, and why they turned to the outlaw life after the eldest brother, Frank, a lawman, was killed in the line of duty. There are the Clavin usual sidebars, where he gives us the back story of some particular outlaw or lawman, and you have to pay attention to keep it all straight. Not only are the Daltons covered, but the men who chased them down are given their due as well: Heck Thomas, Chris Madsen, and Bill Tilghman. All of them living fascinating lives that took some interesting turns in the years after the Daltons had been put out of business. Hanging Judge Isaac Parker, and his executioner, George Maledon, make appearances, along with Belle Starr, Al Jennings, Blue Duck, Cattle Annie and Little Britches, and a host of lawbreakers with colorful names like Ol’ Yantis, Arkansas Tom Jones, and Richard “Little Dick” West. Clavin paints a picture of Oklahoma and its surrounding states and territories, and the people who lived there, that could have easily been taken from the pages of TRUE GRIT and LONESOME DOVE. But I would add my name to those reviewers who wish that Clavin would add a “Who’s who” to the front of his book just so we could keep all these people straight. The high point of the book is the recounting of the attempted robberies at Coffeyville, which in Clavin’s hands, reads like a western version of the bank robbery and shootout sequence from Michael Mann’s great film, HEAT. What I also found interesting was how many participants in this story got involved in the early film industry, some of them, lawman and outlaw alike, portraying themselves onscreen.

And speaking of films, I don’t think any one has quite done justice to the Daltons when it comes to the movies. If any screen writer and director should want to tackle the subject, they should start with Tom Clavin’s excellent book.

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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
and on Draft2Digital at: https://bit.ly/1iuzXXf

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I came to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books mainly because I am a sucker for a good time travel story, and made it through the first four books in the series that centered on Claire Randall, a nurse in 1946 Scotland who “goes through the stones” and ends up in that country circa the 1700s. There she meets the love of her life, even though she’s married back in the 20th Century. The lucky gentleman is Jamie Fraser, a Scottish highlander, a red-haired physically perfect highland warrior who is brave in battle and a devil of a lover in the sack. Together they go through many an adventure that takes them from 18th Century Scotland, to France, to the Caribbean, and ultimately Colonial America. Along the way they are separated repeatedly, once when a pregnant Claire goes back to the 20th Century for the better part of a couple of decades, reunited again and again, while getting mixed up with a lot of political intrigue. More than once things look bad for this intrepid couple, but Claire’s knowledge of history yet to be made repeatedly gets them through a rough patch. Also, they have a lot of sex. Gabaldon writes long books brimming with historical detail, the kind that builds up a passionate base of readers.

But THE FIERY CROSS, the fifth book in the series really puts the most devoted Outlander fan to the test. As has been stated in many other reviews, this massive doorstopper (my paperback clocks in at 1443 pages) has almost no real plot or central narrative. The story picks up with the Fraser clan settled in the mountains of North Carolina in 1771, with the American Revolution somewhere just over the horizon. The story, what there is of it, consists mainly of a bunch of plot threads: the Frasers go to The Gathering of Scottish clans in the Carolinas, and there is some mild intrigue; everyone gathers for rich Aunt Jocasta’s wedding to Duncan Innes, and a slave woman is mysteriously murdered; the Royal Governor calls up the militia (in which Jamie is a captain) to potentially put down an insurrection by the Regulators, who disband without a fight; there’s a side trip to an isolated farm where foul deeds have been committed; there’s a hunt for a killer bear; some bison make an appearance; son-in-law Roger nearly gets his neck snapped in a hangman’s noose; Jamie gets bit by a poisonous snake, and so on…and so on. In between these events, there’s lots of sitting around and talking about what has happened and what might happen; housekeeping chores, random characters wandering into the story, lots of breastfeeding, and little grandson Jemmy being annoyingly cute as a button when he isn’t messing his diapers. Arch villain Stephen Bonnet makes a couple of cameo appearances in another plot thread that is basically to be continued. Easily half of this book could have been edited out, you can skim whole sections and not miss much.

The problem with THE FIRERY CROSS is the excess of success, Gabaldon came up with an interesting hook, one that mashes together time travel, hot and heavy romance, and historical fiction, and found a huge readership that simply can’t get enough of Jamie and Claire and their extended family. This whole premise probably would have worked better if it had been kept to a three-book trilogy, one that wrapped up Jamie and Claire’s story in a neat bow. But I do understand that writers put in a lot of hard work in a profession where genuine financial reward comes to a relative few, so the pressure is to keep a good thing going once you have found a rabid readership that can’t wait for the next book. So, in that, I cut Gabaldon some slack. Still, she could have produced a genuine page turner, and it is not that she didn’t have the plot elements to produce one: the desire for vengeance on the heinous Stephen Bonnet, who raped Jamie and Claire’s daughter, Brianna, in a previous book, could have taken center stage and propelled a great revenge storyline. Then there is the plot thread that Claire and Jamie know how they will die in the near future, and a good book could be written about how they attempt to thwart a fate that may be carved in stone, or is it?

Still, I’m going to give THE FIERY CROSS a decent three-star rating for a couple of things. One is that Gabaldon is a very good writer when it comes to historical fiction, her immersive detail and world building is never short of impressive. So is her ability to create characters you root for, and want to follow through whatever adventure the happen upon next. And I will say that, with the confirmation that there are other time travelers with their own agenda out there in 1770s North America, she pulls off an ending that makes me want to read the next book in the series, A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, a copy of which is already on my bookshelf. But I will be taking a not so short break before jumping back into the Outlanderverse so soon, THE FIERY CROSS has left me very tired.

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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
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I really enjoyed the FX mini-series, FEUD: CAPOTE VS THE SWANS, a few years back; produced by Ryan Murphy, it was a peak into the world of the high and mighty of a bygone era filled with fascinating real-life characters, and enough drama for a dozen novels. The story centered on the fractured relationship between author Truman Capote, and the wealthy and very stylish women who befriended him and then welcomed into their elite social circle. These women—Barbara “Babe” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Pamela Churchill Harriman, Slim Hayward, C.Z. Guest, Lee Radziwell—whom he dubbed his “Swans,” invited Capote into their homes, dined with him in fancy restaurants, and often traveled overseas together, all the while gossiping with, and confiding in, the celebrated author, who took it all in while working on a novel that he promised would be a masterpiece surpassing the astonishing success he achieved with IN COLD BLOOD. Then, in 1975, Esquire magazine published an excerpt from this work in progress, titled ANSWERED PRAYERS, which contained characters who were clearly modeled on the “Swans.” Much of it was not flattering, and even worse, the fictional novel contained mortifying incidents from these women’s private lives that they never intended to be made public. It was an epic act of betrayal, and Capote paid the price for it with severed friendships and social banishment.

As much as I enjoyed Murphy’s mini-series, and well aware that his shows sometimes (often?) can play fast and loose with the facts in order to make a story better, I wanted to know more about these people. That’s why I picked up Laurence Leamer’s CAPOTE’S WOMEN: The True Story of Betrayal and the Swan Song for an Era. A swift read—my paperback copy comes in at a little over 300 pages—Leamer’s book goes deep into the background of the “Swans,” detailing who they were, where they came from, and what they did in order to become the stylish icons the public saw, while interspersing the narrative with Capote’s story, the son of a single, and negligent, social climbing mother from a small town in Alabama, who rises to become one of the hottest literary talents in post WWII America. Capote was also an out of the closet homosexual at a time when that was anathema virtually everywhere in the country.

I thought the “Swans” came off much worse for the wear in Leamer’s book than in Murphy’s show, where they were played by Naomi Watts, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Chloe Sevigny, and Diane Lane. As Leamer’s book makes clear, from the time they were young, it was drummed into these women’s heads that it was imperative that they marry well, which meant snagging a rich husband. And if the first marriage didn’t work out, you married a richer man the second time. Personal happiness, much less true love, did not matter, wealth and appearance were everything. It didn’t matter that their cold and distant husbands (men often much older than them) openly pursued other women, that just meant that they could discreetly have affairs of their own. Big houses with opulent gardens, luxury apartments, dinner parties with guest lists that people died for to be on, fashionable clothes, and lunches at the best restaurants, were what life was all about. Meanwhile, the children of these loveless unions were given over to nannies and governesses to raise because who has time to be a mother when being one of the “beautiful people” is a full-time job. On top of all that, they were all big snoots and snobs who truly believed the wealthy were better than the great unwashed. They would have recoiled at anything that smacked of the common touch. This book is full of great gossipy anecdotes with a lot of bearing of claws, and it is all very entertaining to read, a full picture of a time and place long gone. Of the “Swans,” I think I liked C.Z. Guest the best, she seemed to really have some grit, and I could say the same for Slim Kieth, but the portrait of “Princess” Lee Radziwell (Jackie Kennedy’s sister) in these pages is truly pitiable.

Though not nearly as pitiable as the picture of Truman Capote that emerges from Leamer’s book. The man was a giant literary talent, renown for BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S and even more so for IN COLD BLOOD, but what he really excelled at was being a public personality, reveling in being the gay gadabout seen in all the right places with all the right people. But as I noted in my review of Murphy’s mini-series, Capote’s talent seemed to be not enough to bear the weight of success, excess, and middle age. He became a raging alcoholic, and after being ostracized and cut off from the women whose friendships he supposedly valued so much, he medicated the pain with a cocaine habit. It was the late ‘70s, and he looked ridiculous cavorting at Studio 54 in the company of C.Z., the only “Swan” who forgave him. His end was not a happy one. Why did Capote betray his friends? Leamer, like others who have documented the author’s life, cannot give us a definitive answer, but does give us enough background that we can speculate. There were abandonment issues from childhood, and like many people damaged at a young age, the broken adult Capote simply could not help himself, he deliberately hurt those most important to him, and then grieved mightily over his own actions. Perhaps the saddest thing is that Capote did not need his “Swans,” unlike them, he had risen in the world on the strength of his own gifts and skills, a well-earned reputation as a writer gained by all the books bought by the kind of average Americans his wealthy lady friends would have looked down upon. Then again, those who crave attention go where they can find it.

Laurence Leamer’s book is an excellent deep dive into an era that came and went, a culture where status was everything, and appearances mattered more than the truth. The manuscript for ANSWERED PRAYERS (if it ever existed at all) was never found in Capote’s possessions after his death, but CAPOTE’S WOMEN leave no doubt that it would have been a great read.

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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
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Movies with unlikable protagonists can be hard to pull off, and ones where the hero is an outright A-hole can be particularly difficult to sell to an audience, but director Josh Safdie manages to thread that needle magnificently in his MARTY SUPREME, which also happens to be one of the best sports films in decades, even though the sport in question is table tennis (ping-pong), which is mostly played in rec centers, and not known for packing stadiums, especially in the United States. But don’t tell that to the film’s protagonist, Marty Mauser, a twenty something Jewish kid selling shoes in early 1950s New York City, who is determined to compete in a championship game in Tokyo that ends in him being proclaimed the best table tennis player in the world, a champion who in his own words, will be on the front of a Wheaties box. Marty does have the skills to be a champion, but what he has in spades is attitude and determination. Despite his meager circumstances, Marty is always scheming and scrambling to find a way to further himself, always on the lookout for any opportunity that will boost him up another rung on the ladder. He is always aggressive in selling himself to anyone who will listen, especially someone who can be of value to him, though he is quick to discard them when they are no longer of any use to him or his plans. Marty often has more self-confidence than smarts when it comes to the situations he gets himself into, often proving more than once that he is his own worst enemy, and the tight spots he finds himself in are truly of his own making. Nevertheless, Marty careens from one hustle to another, never accepting a defeat or setback, always moving forward until he does get to Tokyo, and faces the Japanese table tennis champion, Koto Endo, on his own turf. But anyone expecting an underdog triumphant Hollywood style ending may be disappointed, but the finale does feel deserved and earned, and I didn’t feel sorry for Marty, knowing that he has everything it takes to go on and be a success.

Written (along with Ronald Brownstein) and directed by Josh Safdie, MARTY SUPREME, is a terrific New York movie, and a lot of credit for this has to go to veteran production designer, Jack Fisk, who really nails the era in the Big Apple, a time when America was getting out from under the long shadows of the Depression and WWII. This movie not only has great dialogue, but terrific rhythm and flow of it, as scene after scene has characters going at each other in a back and forth of verbal aggression, defining themselves and their time. There maybe a few scenes too many that are essentially the same set-up, but honestly, I didn’t mind.

And MARTY SUPREME is a supreme star vehicle for Timothee Chalamet in the title role; skinny, with a pencil thin moustache and glasses, and always flashing a confident smile, he inhabits the role in a way that is truly astounding. But Safdie backs his star up with an amazing supporting cast, some of them non-actors, to flesh out Marty’s world of fellow hustlers, chumps, and those just caught up in his schemes who become collateral damage. Special praise must go to Gwyneth Paltrow as a faded movie star Marty hooks up with along the way, and SHARK TANK’s Kevin O’Leary, as her wealthy husband, a hard-nosed industrialist whose patronage Marty is desperate to acquire. Paltrow reminds us what a good actress she really is when given the right material, and you can all but smell the arrogance coming off O’Leary. Odessa A’zion makes a very strong impression as the girl Marty has been sneaking around with behind her husband’s back, a situation that has become more complicated now that she is pregnant with Marty’s child. Movie director Abel Ferrara plays a sinister character Marty and his girlfriend run afoul of in the course of one of his schemes. Koto Kawguchi makes a big impression in a wordless performance as Koto. Fran Dresher, Sandra Bernhard, Tyler the Creator, David Mamet, Fred Hechinger, Pico Iyer are among the many notable names who turn up at one time or another, and I didn’t recognize Penn Jillette in his pertinent cameo. But I did pick out Ted Williams, “the man with the golden voice,” in the background in one scene.

If I have a criticism of MARTY SUPREME, it might be that it is about a half-hour too long, but that is true of so many films these days. One thing I really liked is the unconventional choices made for the musical soundtrack; there are some oldies from the era used in the background in some scenes, but the use of a couple of great tunes from the ‘80s, anachronistic as they may be, really hits the right note.

I think the highest praise I can give MARTY SUPREME is that it is a film where we truly do not know what is going to happen next, unlike the third sequel to some rebooted franchise that comes out of Hollywood at a depressing regularity now. And I think that in its own way, MARTY SUPREME is a deeply patriotic film, as guys like Marty, who have guts and ambition and determination to prevail no matter how dire their circumstances, have always thrived in America. The guys, and now women, who get it done despite all obstacles in front of them, and who make their dreams come true. I’m sure there are some virtuous betters among us who will throw bricks at this film for the way it celebrates naked ambition and the ruthlessness it portrays in pursuit of it; they’ll probably hurl accusations of “toxic masculinity” or some other nonsense at it. Pay no attention to them, MARTY SUPREME is the best American film in years. It is a literal descendent of that other essential American classic, THE HUSTLER, from way back in the day.

Order my latest alternate history book, WORLD WAR NIXON now at: https://amzn.to/45HEw34

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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
and on Draft2Digital at: https://bit.ly/1iuzXXf

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I am a huge reader of history, especially my American history, and one of my favorite writers of it was Stephen Ambrose, whom I discovered decades ago through his multi-part biographies of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, and then his excellent account of the Korean War, THE COLDEST WINTER. His account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, UNDAUNTED COURAGE: Merriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, sat on my shelf longer than it should have, but I finally took it down and read it, and discovered I had been missing out on what might have been Ambrose’s best book. If you think you know the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and haven’t read this book, then think again for you have a lot to learn.

Everyone who has ever sat in an American history class has heard the short version of the story: how President Thomas Jefferson bought the vast territory of Louisiana from the French Emperor, Napoleon, in 1803, doubling the size of the United States with a pen stroke, then sent a pair of intrepid adventurers, Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, to explore this new country far to the west all the way to the Pacific Ocean, helped along the way and guided by the Shoshone Indian maiden, Sacagawea. That account doesn’t begin to cover the half of it, but Ambrose’s book does so and then some, giving the reader a fascinating deep dive into a time and place that existed for such a short time, before politics, ambition, and the onrush of technological change swept America and the world full on into the 19th Century and beyond.

Using a vast number of historical records, Ambrose tells us why Louisiana and the city of New Orleans was so important to the future of the United States, and why Jefferson was so determined to obtain it. We learn of the competing interests of not only the French and the Americans, but of the Spanish and the British, both of whom had also made investments in the territory, the latter through a very lucrative fur trade out of Canada. In between all these great powers were the tribes of the great plains: the Blackfeet, Mandans, Sioux, Nez Pearce, and Shoshone. Commerce was the driving force behind all these common interests, and if a route by water could be found between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, tying east and west together very neatly, then fortunes unimaginable could be made. That was the hope of Jefferson and many others in the east, and it was one of the primary reasons why an armed expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific was commissioned and outfitted by the American government even before the ink was dry on the bottom line.

The bulk of Ambrose’s book (my paperback copy runs to nearly 500 pages), tells of the expedition itself, frequently drawing on the journals of Merriweather Lewis, who wrote down a detailed account of the journey, telling of the new species of plants and trees discovered, along with vivid pictures of the wild life encountered, including some harrowing collisions with Grizzley bears, and the sight of great herds of buffalo and bison, the latter soon to be gone within a few generations. The land and the elements prove challenging as these men make a trail up the Missouri River into the Rocky Mountains (which must have been incredibly intimidating on first sight), cross the Continental divide, and then down the Columbia River to the Pacific. All the way there are the Indians, some of whom are most friendly, others not so much, and always there is the possibility that a misunderstanding on someone’s part could have resulted in bloodshed, which could have led to the entire expedition being wiped out. The sheer courage of Lewis and Clark and the men they led so successfully into such an immense country cannot be overstated, many would follow them and truly stand on the shoulders of giants. Such is the talent of Ambrose the writer, who had a novelist’s flair for narrative and pacing, that we are right there with these men, fighting the arctic cold in the winter, sharing their sense of wonder at what is lying around the next bend in the river, or over the ridge in the distance.

The primary focus of Ambrose’s book is on the two men mentioned in the title, Lewis and Jefferson. He paints a vivid picture of Lewis, a Virginia gentleman, like his benefactor Jefferson, as an intrepid leader of men, courageous and with an insightful mind, a man who thrived on challenge and did not fear adversity. Cool under pressure, decisive under fire, and when he made an error in judgement in the wilds of North America, he was able to correct it, while still holding the confidence of those he led. But Lewis was a hero with demons that seemed to surface once he was back in civilization, and his ultimate fate, described at the end of the book, is heartbreaking. This book makes an excellent case for why Thomas Jefferson is one of the most truly essential American leaders. With his keen engineer’s mind, Jefferson, unlike so many of his contemporaries, could see over the horizon of the future, and act upon it. It is not just that he purchased Louisiana, but that he wanted to make it truly and equally a part of the nation, not a colony to be administered and plundered. Because of him, we became an America from sea to shining sea.

There are some great insights in Ambrose’s book, especially his comment that how everything in the world in 1800 moved at the speed of a horse, the same it had done since before the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was soon to change. He notes that members of the expedition heard what sounded like booming cannon fire out on the plains in the far distance on a sunny day, an unexplained occurrence that still happens to this very day. William Clark gets somewhat shortchanged in the narrative, but he comes off as one of the best friends and traveling companions that any leader could have wanted, where Lewis was weak, Clark compensated. Sacagawea, who was married to a French fur trader, and who gave birth to a son during the journey, must have been one tough woman, the sole female to make the trip.

Ambrose’s book, which was published in 1996, does deal with the unavoidable subjects of slavery and the treatment of the Indians, well before those issues become so incendiary in the far more sensitive 21st Century. Ambrose does not white wash or sugar coat, he lets facts speak for themselves, and makes clear that the men and women in his book were products of their times. But unlike some recent historians, does not moralize and virtue signal, something that feels refreshing now.

The book ends with a very long single sentence, written by Jefferson a few years after Lewis’s untimely death, in which he praises the young man he picked to lead a great adventure into the unknown and then return to tell his fellow countrymen what they’d found. This piece of writing is also a pertinent reminder of the kind of extraordinary talent that once occupied the highest office in the land, but has been seldom seen there since.

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I love a good history book that focuses on the less well-known aspects of the past. The people and events at some pivotal moment that made an impact on the world, but whose lives and actions have faded into obscurity with the passage of time, and the confluence of events that followed. A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan, is certainly one of those books. I have read enough of the history of the 1920s to know that there was a resurgence of the Klan during that decade, and have seen pictures of the huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue the Klan staged in Washington D.C. in the summer of 1925, but this book really goes behind the scenes, and reveals the who, the what, and the why, of how this most disreputable of organizations flourished at that point in time.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND is the story of D.C. Stephenson, a gifted conman and serial liar, who helped build up the Klan in the state of Indiana in the early 1920s. The man was a gifted salesman, an entrepreneur, and possessing no small amount of charisma. He also had a Napoleonic complex with all of its attending vanity, and a true dark side as a philanderer and adulterer capable of committing depraved sexual abuse against women. A cunning opportunist with a talent for self-reinvention, Stephenson drifted into the Midwest from Texas early in the decade and quickly grasped the potential of a revitalized Ku Klux Klan, a lawless vigilante group that gained great notoriety in the defeated Confederacy after the Civil War by terrorizing the newly freed slaves. It took the actions of the federal government during Reconstruction to suppress that version of the Klan and drive it underground, but it found new adherents after World War I among White Protestants alarmed at the surge of immigrants, most of them Jews and Catholics, into America from Europe, and seemingly overnight, the Klan rose from the grave, still virulently opposed to any advancement toward equality by Black Americans, but now filled with animus toward the Jews and Catholics. It was all a grift, as someone commented on how the good citizens of Indiana could be induced to pay $10 for the privilege of hating their neighbors and wearing a sheet. Stephenson, as the Grand Dragon of Indiana, was a tireless salesman for this group, recruiting not only farmers and businessmen to his cause, but their wives and children as well.

I learned a lot from A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND, starting with how this incarnation of the Klan was far more powerful and influential in the Midwest of the time than in the Deep South, numbering among their ranks everybody from sheriffs and police chiefs to Governors, all elected on slates filled with candidates who had sworn the secret oath. This helped make Stephenson the man who pulled the strings, so much so that he could truthfully say “I am the law” in the state of Indiana. What this book also makes plain is that the Klan’s poison reached into both the Democratic and Republican parties, with office holders from both of them lining up to swear the secret oath. This refutes a talking point popular on some current right-wings who claim that the Klan was wholly an apparatus of the Democrats.

In the popular imagination, the Roaring 20s is romanticized as the Jazz Age with its flappers and high fashion, speakeasies and gin joints, where everyone looked like they just stepped out from the pages of THE GREAT GATSBY. The truth of it was that a culture war raged behind all the gaiety, and the Klan was the tip of the spear of the reactionaries who wanted no part of a changing modern America. Besides terrorizing “the other” with whippings and beatings, they also inflicted violence on bootleggers, gamblers, those committing infidelity, or anyone else suspected of violating their pious and puritanical view of society. All the while, D.C. Stephenson, a man who had deserted his first wife and child, drank continuously and pursued any woman who caught his fancy, often committing sexual battery against them behind closed doors. This was well known to the circle of hucksters and hustlers, and those who simply wanted to be near power, that surrounded him, but never said a word, easily enabling Stephenson, who they referred to as “the old man” even though he was only in his mid-30s. This sorry state of affairs came to a head in early 1925 when he kidnapped and brutalized a young woman named Madge Oberholtzer to the point where she poisoned herself in what was ultimately a successful suicide attempt to escape her tormentor. What followed was a trial where dark secrets were revealed, and justice, as much as it could be said, was done. The ensuing scandal did much to discredit the Klan in the eyes of the public. But the hate it stoked and fed off of was not defeated, it simply went into retreat, lying not very far under the placid surface of American life, ready to show itself again whenever it felt threatened by social change, easily called forth by no end of talented demagogues and hate mongers of which there were no short supply.

I found Egan’s book to be an easy read, my hardback copy coming in at a little over 350 pages, with a strong narrative voice. The author has done his research well, really making the era and the people who lived through it come alive, both the obvious villains, and the brave few who stood up to the Klan at the height of its power. Occasionally, Egan lets Progressive piety get the better of him, and a judgmental tone that I found unnecessary works its way into his writing when it would have been far better to simply let the facts speak for themselves. And I think his title is a little misleading in that it paints Madge Oberholtzer as a heroine, when to me, she clearly comes off as a victim, though a brave one.

Though Egan does not explicitly point it out, the events and persons recounted in A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND, now a century in the past, do bear a striking resemblance to the America of today. Our politics is again riven by hatred of “the other,” and cunning demagogues and serial liars stoke fear and resentment to gain power, and the wealth and fame that comes with it, while their followers and supporters hang on their every word. After the Klan had fallen out of favor and its adherents had been voted out of office, and observer back in the late 1920s said that “the air in America was too friendly” for a disease like the Klu Klux Klan to last for long. I hope that is still true.

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In my novel, WORLD WAR NIXON: An Alternate History of the 1970s, I ask what would have happened if President Richard Nixon had gotten away with Watergate, and had not been forced to resign ahead of being impeached. It is also a world where Chairman Mao dies before there could be an opening to China, radically altering the course of the Cold War. The story is told in the form of an oral history, one where many characters caught up in the turmoil of an alternative world where history took a much different course than the one we know. In this excerpt, a young enlistee in the United States Army, Timothy Reilly, suddenly finds himself about to be caught up in a war he didn’t see coming. Joining the army right out of high school because jobs were scarce and he needed a steady paycheck to support a new wife, Timothy thought that with Vietnam over, he would have an easy gig in a peacetime military. Then a potential conflict between the Soviet Union and China spills over into the Korean peninsula, and American forces are rushed across the Pacific to the Philippines in advance of deploying to defend South Korea. What Timothy doesn’t count on is Richard Nixon, and his ambition to end the Cold War once and for all, even if that includes throwing guys like Timothy into a very hot war by coming to the aid of a sworn enemy. In the excerpt below, Timothy, while waiting for deployment in the Philippines, learns that he is not in the peacetime army anymore.


An excerpt from WORLD WAR NIXON:

We had been baking in the heat of Clark Field for exactly one week and a day when the whole battalion crowded into a hangar at 0900 hours on a Friday to hear President Nixon speak live from the White House. We expected him to announce the commencement of military operations in defense of South Korea, but that was not what we heard. “The United States and the Soviet Union will stand together in the face of Chinese aggression,” were the words of the President which came through the loudspeakers in that sweltering hanger on that morning. He went on to add, “Therefore, American forces will commence immediate ground operations on the Korean Peninsula in concert with troops of the Soviet Union with the objective of driving back the Chinese and restoring peace to that land.” He went on to explain how Air Force and Naval units of the United States stationed in Japan and Okinawa would join their Russian counterparts in the western Pacific in supporting this effort. General Alexander Haig, whom I had never heard of, was being immediately dispatched to assume command in South Korea. The President further added that American and Soviet troops were on their way to Iraq, presumably to take sides in that war. Lucky for us, the Marines got the honor of putting boots on the ground in the Middle East. There was some more stuff about how American and Russian naval vessels were going to confront Chinese ships on the sea before the President ended with, “The coming days and weeks will be hard, and sacrifices will be made, but they will be worth it, if when peace is restored, it ushers in a new era of harmony, not just between the superpowers, but between all nations and peoples.”

A lot of us looked at each other when the President’s speech was done—the Russians were on our side? We thought we were going in there to fight to protect the people of South Korea. And this General Haig, we were told, had been commanding a desk at the State Department for the past few years, none of which inspired confidence.

Whatever doubts we had, there would be no time to ponder them. The next day, a battalion of the 1st Cavalry Division crossed the DMZ and began pushing northward toward the Russians, who were cut off from their beachhead at the port of Wonsan. They came under fire almost right away from Chinese MiGs, and the battle was on. Just to make things even more interesting, four more Chinese divisions crossed over from Manchuria to the North. We didn’t know it, but between the Americans and Russians on the peninsula, the Chinese outnumbered us nearly two to one.


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My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
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In my novel, WORLD WAR NIXON: An Alternate History of the 1970s, I ask what would have happened if President Richard Nixon had gotten away with Watergate, and had not been forced to resign ahead of being impeached. It is also a world where Chairman Mao dies before there could be an opening to China, radically altering the course of the Cold War. The story is told in the form of an oral history, one where many characters caught up in the turmoil of an alternative world where history took a much different course than the one we know. In this excerpt, President Nixon is in Moscow for a summit with the Soviet leadership in September of 1972 in order to finalize a nuclear arms control agreement. But behind the scenes, a clandestine meeting in the Kremlin between Nixon and the leadership of North Vietnam has been arranged with Soviet foreign minister Andre Gromyko presiding. They hope to find a way to end the stalemated Vietnam War.


An excerpt (told from Nixon’s POV) from WORLD WAR NIXON:

I wanted peace in Vietnam with honor, not peace at any price. That is what the Democrats would have settled for, even though they were the ones responsible for the war in the first place. I replied to Brezhnev that I would hear the North Vietnamese out but nothing more. For over a year at the talks in Paris, they had been demanding a complete American withdrawal from Vietnam and the elimination of the Thieu government in Saigon, which was to be replaced with one that included the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese Communists), as a prelude to reunifying the country presumably under Hanoi’s rule. They flat out refused to discuss the return of our brave POWs until these demands were met. While they were refusing to budge even one inch at the negotiation table, the North had invaded the South with a force of over 60,000 troops in April of ‘72, an offensive which required an equally tough response on our part, as wave after wave of bombers pounded the North on a daily basis.

That was where things stood on our third day in Moscow when I went to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation in the great hall of the Kremlin. I was accompanied by Kissinger and his aide, General Alexander Haig, among others. Though there had been no intelligence before arriving in Moscow as to who from Hanoi we might be meeting with, upon arriving, word got to us that Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnamese Prime Minister, was in the city. That was who greeted us upon arriving in the great hall; Pham was one of the late Ho Chi Minh’s most devoted followers and was known to be a hardline Communist. He and a half dozen of his fellow members of the North Vietnamese Politburo were seated at a table in the middle of the immense hall, all of them dressed in the same drab khaki uniform popular among Communist leaders in Asia. None of them stood when we entered, nor so much as allowed even the hint of a smile on their faces, acknowledging our arrival with only the slightest nod and a stony expression. We were shown seats at a table facing Pham and his delegation. About 20 feet separated us, and just off to the side was a much smaller table; sitting at it was Gromyko, playing the role of host.

Once we took our seats at the table, Gromyko spoke, welcoming both sides and saying it was in the interests of peace that the Soviet Union had asked the North to send a delegation to the summit and stressing that perhaps a meeting like this one, held behind closed doors, unseen by the prying eyes of those who do not share a desire to see the war end, could surely help the cause of peace. I immediately took notice that Gromyko left out the usual Communist boiler plate about the solidarity of socialist countries or a mention of the Soviets’ support of their brave allies in the North. He actually sounded sincere.

Since there was no itinerary, I spoke up as soon as Gromyko was finished, saying that though there was nothing that would cause America to waver in its support for the free people of South Vietnam, I had come to this meeting with an open mind, ready to listen and take part in any honest discussion that might end the war, which had gone on far too long at the cost of far too many lives. In effect, I was saying, I’m listening, Premier Pham; the ball is in your court.


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My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
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In my novel, WORLD WAR NIXON: An Alternate History of the 1970s, I ask what would have happened if President Richard Nixon had gotten away with Watergate, and had not been forced to resign ahead of being impeached. It is also a world where Chairman Mao dies before there could be an opening to China, radically altering the course of the Cold War. The story is told in the form of an oral history, one where many characters caught up in the turmoil of an alternative world where history took a much different course than the one we know. In this excerpt, William Harlan Brady, a veteran of political espionage and “black bag” jobs is introduced to the reader when he details his back story, and why the Nixon White House would want to hire him during the 1972 Presidential campaign.



An excerpt from WORLD WAR NIXON:

How did I end up in a fancy suite in the Watergate complex on the first evening in August of 1972? By being willing to step forward and do the hard jobs, or shit jobs, a lot of others went out of their way to avoid. Like jumping out of a plane and landing behind North Korean lines when I was only 20 years old in 1953 or working for army intelligence in West Germany a few years later, where I slipped through the Iron Curtin in Berlin and spent 62 days gathering information on Warsaw Pact forces, all of which I committed to memory since my commanding officer thought it much too risky for me to carry any radio equipment because they didn’t want to risk having any of their technology fall into the hands of the KGB. I was thankful to the army for providing me with a place to live after my father divorced my mother and my new stepfather evicted me from the Marion, Indiana, home she owned the day after their marriage, but I didn't want to turn it into a career. I left the service in 1957, intent on making some real money, and as it turned out, the Central Intelligence Agency was paying well for people with my experience. No, I was never officially a Company man because I lacked the Ivy League pedigree necessary to get ahead in their little club. I was more of a gun for hire, and if I can’t go into specific detail as to what I did to earn a paycheck, let’s just say I saw the inside of many cargo planes flying back and forth across the Pacific in the late ‘50s. My last work for Langley took me to Cuba during Castro’s first year, an operation that ended when a boat was sunk out from under me in Cuban waters, and I very nearly ended up spending time in one of Fidel’s prisons.

That close call convinced me to seek other, less risky work. My next job was for a private investigator named Vance Harlow, a former FBI agent who worked in the Miami field office. Harlow also worked for the Senate Investigations Committee, where he made the acquaintance of Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and his brother, Robert, the committee’s counsel. I thought I knew a thing or two, but I learned a lot from Harlow, especially about surveillance and black bag jobs and about how to make connections. His clients ranged from Howard Hughes to the Hollywood studios, insurance companies, and the Big Three in Detroit, but Harlow’s most consistently lucrative clients came from the political world, starting with the Kennedy brothers. Harlow once told me how, right after the Missile Crisis, he proposed to Bobby Kennedy a plan that would have guaranteed Castro’s removal before the ‘64 election.

I said it was a shame Bobby didn’t go for it, and Harlow replied, “Who says he didn’t go for it; sometimes things just don’t work out.”

I never could get him to tell me the whole story.

Most of my work from the mid 60’s was in the field of what is politely called “opposition research.” This meant that I was hired by political campaigns to get the dirt on their opponents, usually on a cash-only basis, as the candidate’s manager didn’t want any direct link to me in case things went south on my end. Picking locks and wall safes, opening mail and photographing documents, taking pictures of married men leaving motel rooms after spending time with a woman most definitely not their wife—that’s just the stuff I can talk about. I had a lot of meetings in parking lots in the wee hours of the morning where I handed over a stuffed envelope to some political operative who handed me one stuffed with hundred-dollar bills in return. Harlow got out of this side of the business after 1964, handing it off to me, and my name had a good reputation among Democrats running for state-wide office during the LBJ years.

But things got lean after 1968. It seems that after Bobby Kennedy was killed and Lyndon Johnson went back to Texas, there weren’t as many Democrats who wanted to play hardball anymore. I made some good money from the growers and ranchers out in California, giving them the lowdown on what the United Farm Workers were up to, which mainly meant screwing over some poor guy who just wanted to make more money so he could take care of his family. It was not my proudest moment, but I was married by then to a woman I’d met in the Philippines, and we had two small children, so I had bills to pay.



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and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb

My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH

My other alternate history novel, BEATING PLOWSHARES INTO SWORD: An Alternate History of the Vietnam War, can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/12RMOT5
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