What do you think?
Rate this book
Fulbright: A Biography
J. William Fulbright was the second most successful Oxford-educated politician to come from Arkansas. Author of the Fulbright-Connally resolution that committed the United States to participating in the U.N., and creator of the exchange program that bears his name, Fulbright was the longest serving chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This volume describes the family dynamic, educational process, and environments--Arkansas, Oxford, Washington, D.C.--which produced this remarkable man. It delves into his complex attitude toward race and details Fulbright's role in the civil rights movement. The narrative includes the major international events of the Cold War era--the Suez Crisis, the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the ABM controversies, the Arab-Israeli conflict--and Fulbright's role in them. Woods explains Fulbright's shift from a champion of executive power in foreign affairs to a defender of congressional prerogatives.
736 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 1995
1 person is currently reading
34 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 12, 2008
J.W. Fulbright was a preeminent southern Democrat and was the longest serving chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's best known for his criticism of the Vietnam War from the Senate and for his creation of the Fulbright student exchange program, which has now been running continuously since 1946.
I highly recommend learning about Fulbright for those interested in US discussions of internationalism, the history of the Democratic Party in the South (especially on race issues) and for those interested in Vietnam.
Wood's biography is perhaps too long for a casual reader to learn about Fulbright, but it is very thorough, and each part is engaging and well written. The author was able to do extensive interviews with Fulbright before he died. I would probably recommend a shorter book as an introduction to Fulbright's life, but this book is rich enough for those willing to read 700 pages.
The book really conveys some poignant insights into Fulbright's life. First, this book made me realize much luck played an important role in Fulbright's life. As a young Arkansan from a wealthy family, a chance encounter with a professor led him to apply for the Rhodes scholarship, which he secured with the help of his mother's influence. His experience in England shortly after WWI directly influenced his at times naive faith in international organizations and diplomacy that was characteristic of his early career. After law school, the unexpected death of the president of the University of Arkansas led to his appointment as the youngest university president in history.
When he went to Congress in 1943, he was moved by his deep seated internationalism to propose post-war legislation calling for what would become the United Nations; unbeknownst to Fulbright, his international regime was not a new idea on the Hill, but had rather been kept quiet by the Roosevelt administration. Coincidentally, the Roosevelt decided at that time to begin to push post-war legislation, and chose to make Fulbright's bill the focus of its post-war plans. The fact that Fulbright's bill was chosen, and subsequently passed, cemented his celebrity as a international affairs expert, and paved the way for his future career on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In my reading of the book, luck had greatly aided JWF, who got most of his early positions by chance. However, in 1946, Fulbright finally began to create his own luck, when he used his new Senate position to stealthily make use of funds from excess war supplies as the basis for a large scale international student exchange program. The Fulbright scholars program was the embodiment of Fulbright's internationalist faith: JWF hoped that the exchange of students would lead to shared understandings between cultures, and help create a more unified global community.
The Fulbright program was started at the beginning of JWF's Senate career, which would continue until 1974. Fulbright's foreign policy views evolved greatly during this time, with Fulbright's early faith in internationalism being challenged by the Cold War and later by Vietnam. JWF became a more cautious thinker, and led some of the most significant criticisms of the Vietnam War. As Woods illustrates, Fulbright's prestige with the SFRC helped legitimize criticisms of the Vietnam War, with profound implications for the success of the Vietnam War.
If JWF would have left politics soon after he founded the Fulbright program, he would have merely been an unremarkable and naive internationalist, who'd gotten where he was largely by luck. Instead, by virtue of his intellectual development and dominating presence on the SFRC, he left a much more nuanced legacy, of value for any foreign policy thinkers.
Also, the book has a very fair but critical discussion of Fulbright's racism, with his long opposition to civil rights. Woods does much to explain the paradox of how one of the most thoughtful liberals on foreign affairs could be so backwards on issues of race.
I highly recommend learning about Fulbright for those interested in US discussions of internationalism, the history of the Democratic Party in the South (especially on race issues) and for those interested in Vietnam.
Wood's biography is perhaps too long for a casual reader to learn about Fulbright, but it is very thorough, and each part is engaging and well written. The author was able to do extensive interviews with Fulbright before he died. I would probably recommend a shorter book as an introduction to Fulbright's life, but this book is rich enough for those willing to read 700 pages.
The book really conveys some poignant insights into Fulbright's life. First, this book made me realize much luck played an important role in Fulbright's life. As a young Arkansan from a wealthy family, a chance encounter with a professor led him to apply for the Rhodes scholarship, which he secured with the help of his mother's influence. His experience in England shortly after WWI directly influenced his at times naive faith in international organizations and diplomacy that was characteristic of his early career. After law school, the unexpected death of the president of the University of Arkansas led to his appointment as the youngest university president in history.
When he went to Congress in 1943, he was moved by his deep seated internationalism to propose post-war legislation calling for what would become the United Nations; unbeknownst to Fulbright, his international regime was not a new idea on the Hill, but had rather been kept quiet by the Roosevelt administration. Coincidentally, the Roosevelt decided at that time to begin to push post-war legislation, and chose to make Fulbright's bill the focus of its post-war plans. The fact that Fulbright's bill was chosen, and subsequently passed, cemented his celebrity as a international affairs expert, and paved the way for his future career on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In my reading of the book, luck had greatly aided JWF, who got most of his early positions by chance. However, in 1946, Fulbright finally began to create his own luck, when he used his new Senate position to stealthily make use of funds from excess war supplies as the basis for a large scale international student exchange program. The Fulbright scholars program was the embodiment of Fulbright's internationalist faith: JWF hoped that the exchange of students would lead to shared understandings between cultures, and help create a more unified global community.
The Fulbright program was started at the beginning of JWF's Senate career, which would continue until 1974. Fulbright's foreign policy views evolved greatly during this time, with Fulbright's early faith in internationalism being challenged by the Cold War and later by Vietnam. JWF became a more cautious thinker, and led some of the most significant criticisms of the Vietnam War. As Woods illustrates, Fulbright's prestige with the SFRC helped legitimize criticisms of the Vietnam War, with profound implications for the success of the Vietnam War.
If JWF would have left politics soon after he founded the Fulbright program, he would have merely been an unremarkable and naive internationalist, who'd gotten where he was largely by luck. Instead, by virtue of his intellectual development and dominating presence on the SFRC, he left a much more nuanced legacy, of value for any foreign policy thinkers.
Also, the book has a very fair but critical discussion of Fulbright's racism, with his long opposition to civil rights. Woods does much to explain the paradox of how one of the most thoughtful liberals on foreign affairs could be so backwards on issues of race.
Displaying 1 of 1 review