By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Fans of award-winning biographer Edmund Morris will exult in this personal volume of essays culled, as the author puts it, from 40 years of capital -- "the raw material from which any mature style must derive." In 59 contributions to magazines and newspapers, we are given a buffet of the author's wide and varied interests.
The affair between retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell is but an extreme example of the love/hate history between biographers and their subjects.
The affair between retired Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell is but an extreme example of the love/hate history between biographers and their subjects.
A one-volume macro-history is the best sort of history book. Though it rarely matches the literary panache and Herculean scholarship of, say, Winston Churchill's six-volume history of World War II, or Edmund Morris' three volumes on Theodore Roosevelt, the one-volume history is still a kind of blue blazer or black cocktail dress of nonfiction — an established combination of utility and elegance.
Robert Loomis, one of publishing's most accomplished and longest serving editors, is retiring.
"What are you going to tell me about him that I don't already know?" This question from a friend, writes Ron Reagan, author of this book marking his father's 100th birthday on Feb. 6, "is entirely legitimate if a bit disquieting." It should be disquieting, for the answer is, nothing much.
Guest lineup for the Sunday TV news shows:
Theodore Roosevelt - one of the few presidents to captivate people almost a century after his death - embodied the phrase "collection of contradictions." He was, for example, cerebral and athletic, as well as both radical and conservative. Edmund Morris has spent much of his professional career trying to figure out and explain this paradoxical president.
But perhaps some of the outcry will soften after the author's sensitive treatment of President Reagan's farewell letter he wrote to the American public when he discovered he had Alzheimer's disease ("This Living Hand").
Edmund Morris was a prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, but the chance to write about a living president led him to take unusual license.
The life and difficult times of a biographer: The Petraeus affair →
