Jean H. BakerRecensioni

A concise but complete description of Buchanan's presidency which was followed by Lincoln's. Some historians feel that Buchanan's presidency was over shadowed by the Lincoln's which led to major changes in America with the Emancipation and a stronger interpretation of the Constitution when it came to state rights. This historian feels that Buchanan was poor president because he let his strong bias towards the South to interfere in what he truly wish to protest- the Union. Ironically, his actions especially with the slavery issue in Kansas and the lack of fortifying Fort Sumpter encouraged the Secessionists to be bold in their actions against the Union.

This historian puts him the list of the our worst presidents in US history.

Briefly summarizes the case for the conclusion that Buchanan was indeed, as often supposed, the worst US President prior to 2001. In contrast to his predecessors he not only failed through omission to take the steps that would have avoided the Civil War, but acts of commission (the collusion with Taney in the Dred Scott case was only the most notorious example) were so wrong that they made the war inevitable. Recommended.

Bought my copy after a very well done tour of the Mary Todd Lincoln house in Lexington on the recommendation by one of the guides. An interesting story, an interesting and insightful book.

An excellent, brief biography of the worst president in US history, and nearly a traitor at that.

This short work is a part of the American Presidents series of short biographies of our nation’s chief executives, and while I understand the concept, and can make allowance for the comparative obscurity of the subject in this case, 150 pages is simply not much book.

I wouldn’t recommend the American Presidents series for Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, either Roosevelt or most of the Presidents in the 20th century. However, for many of the 19th century Presidents, 200 pages of material will contain about all the material you need to know about Presidents such as Pierce, Tyler, Buchanan, Arthur, Garfield, Van Buren, Fillmore, Hayes, etc.

Buchanan is routinely ranked among the least effective of U. S. Presidents. The antebellum triumvirate of Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan routinely join Harding and Nixon at the bottom of most lists. In some ways, Pierce and Buchanan were handicapped by the looming Civil War and the issues involved made a successful presidency unlikely. It is no coincidence that three of the most maligned U.S. Presidents are the three immediately preceding the War, as if their actions precipitated the War and that others in their position might have somehow avoided it.

Surprisingly, Buchanan was one of the most well prepared and experienced candidates to ever win the Presidency. He served several terms in the House of Representatives and the Senate, before serving as Secretary of State and Ambassador to both Russia and England. His policies toward Kansas statehood and the events leading up to the Civil War revealed him to be an ardent southern sympathizer and slavery apologist. As a result, he was unable to generate any support from either the Republican politicians or even northern Democrats. His tacit approval of South Carolina’s secession, not only made the War inevitable (which it probably was anyway), but in some cases bordered on treason.

Certainly, the life of James Buchanan and the events of his presidency would easily support a longer biography, but at the end of the day, who wants to read about James Buchanan?½

Short biography, straight to the point. Seems to be objective portrait of the very unsuccessful president. It's kind of tragedy since he was a capable administrator and politician but totally lacked a good judgement while in Oval office. This together with stubbornness ensured a tragical consequences for the country. It seems that if a more reasonable and pragmatic president was in his place then the war could have been avoided. It's widely and in my opinion undeservedly accepted that his predecessors, such as Millard Fillmore, are failed presidents. If Fillmore have been in the office around Buchanan's time we could have avoided the war.½

I took a very long time to get to this excellent biography of one of the most fascinating First Ladies in history. Mary Todd Lincoln was very intelligent, well educated, extremely interested in politics, and incredibly adept at playing the political game for her husband. She was also her own worst enemy, though she never realized that. She was badly mistreated by her own family, experienced many great tragedies, and was virtually friendless near the end of her life. She loved her husband deeply, but often mistreated the poor man, usually in public. Jean Baker is very respectful of her and does an excellent job of explaining why she things other historians have misunderstood her, but she is not blind to her faults and hides none of her mistakes from the reader. This was an excellend look into the life and times of a very complex woman.

Joy's Review: I learned a lot from this book! It's good to remember how far reproductive rights have come in a very short time even though it feels like, in the current political climate, things are going backwards. Sanger was an incredibly committed, energetic and passionate advocate for women's right to birth control. She even coined the phrase 'birth control'. This book is a bit over long, though as Baker rehashes and repeats Sanger's arguments against critics over and over. I also could have done with a bit less of: "then she published this and then she wrote that and then she went to this meeting". But I'm very glad I read this book.

Well, I certainly understand her better now, but I can't say that I like her any more. Granted, she lost a mother, 3 sons and a husband so deserved to be depressed. But her faults preceded her misfortunes. One wished that Lincoln had been blessed with a less self-involved partner, someone who could have been more of a support to him rather than the trial she often was.

An interesting look at one of American history's most controversial first ladies. Mary Lincoln's life was a tragic story. She lost her mother at a young age, she had an extremely strained relationship with her stepmother, she lost three of her four sons, and she endured the assassination of one of America's most beloved presidents. This book gives us a good view of Mary's life, one where she was consumed by the tragedies that seemed to haunt her.

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), founder of the American Birth Control League, which became Planned Parenthood, has always been a controversial figure. She attacked the Catholic Church for its position on contraception, but she also alienated many progressives because of her unrelenting radicalism and flamboyance, which seemed more in the service of her own ambition than the causes she promoted.

As Jean Baker notes in her new biography, "Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion" (Hill and Wang, 349 pages, $35), Sanger remains a target of groups opposing abortion, which accuse her of killing babies as part of a eugenics program that was Nazi-like in its effort to create a master race.

Lost in the attacks on Sanger, Baker notes, is the fact that she advocated the legalization of birth control so as to make unnecessary the crude back-room abortions that destroyed many women's lives.

What critics on the right and left forget, Sanger's latest biographer argues, is that eugenics was once a perfectly mainstream and even progressive movement supported by no less than Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and H.G. Wells. These public figures were concerned about the health of the human population and did not foresee how fascist governments would twist the desire to improve humankind into a monstrously inhumane killing machine.

Sanger could be her own worst enemy, in part because from a very early age she imbibed from her father a tendency to go it alone. She watched him attack the Catholic Church, challenge the authorities in a company town, and proclaim his socialism and atheism without worrying about what his outspoken opinions would cost him. Maggie, as Sanger was called, was her father's favorite, and Baker shows how the daughter made goodness out of her father's often counterproductive rebelliousness.

Indeed, Sanger realized that for all his forthright actions, her father also acted with considerable social irresponsibility. Drunk and often without a job, he nevertheless fathered a large family. Her many siblings, too, served as object lessons for Sanger, who later wrote, "Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, and jails with large families."

Sanger grew up not only determined to improve society, but to enjoy herself along the way -- which meant having an affair with H.G. Wells, not only a progressive thinker but also a notorious womanizer. She held her own in his company, deserving -- and receiving -- his admiration. Baker accepts her subject, warts and all, and believes that by situating her in the context of her own times, Sanger emerges as a far more complex and sympathetic figure than her latter-day critics acknowledge.

This book is more a history of the battle to develop and legalize safe contraceptive methods than it is a biography of Margaret Sanger, which makes it dry and boring in many long passages, but it left me with a greater understanding of how we got the pill, and why, and to wonder at the continuing effort of the Roman Catholic church against virtually any form of contraception. So I'm glad I read the book, as this is, amazingly enough, once again a timely political issue in an election year.

i read 1/2 and then the library wanted it. i really liked the first 1/2. when i got the book back i enjoyed it less???
woodrow wilson seems to be a real dickhead.

Undoubtedly the most influential advocate for birth control even before the term existed, Margaret Sanger ignited a movement that has shaped our society to this day. Her views on reproductive rights have made her a frequent target of conservatives and so-called family values activists. Yet lately even progressives have shied away from her, citing socialist leanings and a purported belief in eugenics as a blight on her accomplishments. In this captivating new biography, the renowned feminist historian Jean H. Baker rescues Sanger from such critiques and restores her to the vaunted place in history she once held.

Trained as a nurse and midwife in the gritty tenements of New York’s Lower East Side, Sanger grew increasingly aware of the dangers of unplanned pregnancy—both physical and psychological. A botched abortion resulting in the death of a poor young mother catalyzed Sanger, and she quickly became one of the loudest voices in favor of sex education and contraception. The movement she started spread across the country, eventually becoming a vast international organization with her as its spokeswoman.

Sanger’s staunch advocacy for women’s privacy and freedom extended to her personal life as well. After becoming a wife and mother at a relatively early age, she abandoned the trappings of home and family for a globe-trotting life as a women’s rights activist. Notorious for the sheer number of her romantic entanglements, Sanger epitomized the type of “free love” that would become mainstream only at the very end of her life. That she lived long enough to see the creation of the birth control pill—which finally made planned pregnancy a reality—is only fitting.

I picked up this book at the bookstore last week because I had just finished the section in McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom that dealt with the time during Buchanan’s presidency and I wanted to know more about the man. Although I did learn more about his life and his career before he became president I found this biography not to be as helpful as I had hoped it would.

No one is going to dispute that Buchanan was one of the worst—maybe even the worst—president we have had. However, Baker wrote her work as if she were afraid he might rise again and run for public office and she wanted to be very sure that no one would vote for him. Often her language bordered on vitriolic. Sometimes even in areas where he is acknowledged to have been somewhat successful she managed to convey the feeling that it was not because of his ability but either because he was well advised or someone else was incompetent and made him look good. Her descriptions of him would also change according to the point she was trying to make. Before he became president she described him as being indecisive, unable to make up his mind, and relying on others to guide him, especially if he did something right. Later she describes him as “…a strong president intent on having his own way, surrounded by advisers who agreed with him.” It seems if things went well it is because he followed good advice and when things went badly it’s because he wouldn’t take advice. Perhaps that is true. But he had a reputation as a competent office holder for many years before his debacle as president. He must have had some redeeming traits. If McCullough, in his biography of John Adams, errs on the side of being too fond of him, at least he has no hesitation in pointing out his flaws and his mistakes. Baker errs on the side of so detesting Buchanan that she can find nothing about him that she can praise.

I would recommend if you want a more balanced view of Buchanan read what McPherson says in Battle Cry of Freedom.½

A nicely turned biography of one of the first presidents to use "presidential" or "executive" privilege before the term was coined. Baker makes the story of an experienced politician who craved the office and who, once he was elected, nearly allowed two countries to emerge because he would not or could not see what was happening around him. An excellent introduction to this president;

James Buchanan by Jean Baker is a concise overview of the former presidents life before, during and after his time in office. Knowing that he is not the most electrifying topic, I thought Prof. Baker wrote with and a clear and economic style of prose, which made it quite easy to read and comprehend, she hits many of the low and high notes of his life, and at 192 pages you can't go wrong! If one does not want to wade through larger biographies of our 15th president, I suggest this title as a nice substitute.½

2967 The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family, by Jean H. Baker (read 22 Mar 1997) This 1996 book by a history professor at Gaucher College gives an account of the Stevenson family from Scotland in the 18th century thru Adlai E. Stevenson (1835-1911), Cleveland's second vice-president, Lewis Green Stevenson (1868-1929), who did very little and was not an inspiring figure, and Adlai (born Feb 5, 1900, in Los Angeles, died 14 July 1965 in London) and some on Adlai III (born 1930). This book does not hesitate to criticize Adlai--he was really weak on civil rights, but that was the climate of his time. I found the book fascinating, though the events of 1952 still seemed awfully familiar. Adlai's wife was a real hellion, and was mentally unbalanced before she died in 1972. The book did not increase my admiration of Adlai, but it is a good book, fun to read.½

I bought this book because of all tjhe strange things I heard about her but she wasn't really all that weird.½

The author describes the lives of five leaders in the 19th Century suffrage movement. The book is well researched, and I liked the author's attempts to show the similarities and differences in their backgrounds. But this was not the most entertaining book I have read on this subject. For just one example, Not for Ourselves Alone, by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns, written as a companion to their TV series on PBS, gave a much more interesting presentation of Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.½