James F. Simon

5580. Eisenhower vs. Warren The Battle for Civil Rights and Liberties, by James F. Simon (read 12 Sep 2018) This book was published in 2018 and the author is dean emertius of New York Law School. It amounts to a biography of both Eisenhower and Warren. It is not very scholarly and doesn't pretend to expatiate on the many interesting cases it discusses, paying more attention to the conflicts arising from those cases. The author looks pretty favorably on both Eisenhower and Warren, though is probably a bit more disapproving of Eisenhower than he is of Warren. It reads very easily and I found it consistently interesting. .There is no bibliography as such, the author saying it would be too large to set out--which is kind of a lazy way to not list one.. The footnotes are not very inclusive and one gets the idea there was not much search for alternative sources. On page 135 the book says Fred Vinson was elected as a Senator from Kentucky, which is not true. On page 256 it is said that Hungary "shared a common border with the Soviet Union", which I believe untrue. Such errors make me wonder what other falseness there is in the book which I did not note. But there is lots of interesting discussion in the book and I am glad I read it.… (altro)

I am not sure who sent this to me since this was not one of the books I requested from Early Reviewers or Member Giveaways. However; it is an extremely well written book that focuses on the battle for Civil Rights and desegregation during the Eisenhower presidency. This is particularly in relation to Eisenhower's conflicts with Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren on how desegregation was to be ended. Eisenhower favored a slower gradual process while Warren felt that African Americans had been denied fair and equal treatment under the law for far to long and that the change should be instantaneous. This book was well written and the references are well documented. Well suited either for academic or casual historians… (altro)