Vol. 21 No. 8 (August, 2011) pp.469-471
POLITICAL AND LEGAL ADVENTURERS: FROM MARX TO MOYNIHAN, by Jeffrey O’Connell and
Thomas O’Connell.
Durham, NC: Carolina Academic
Press, 2009. 302pp. Paper. $30.00. ISBN: 9781594602849.
Reviewed by Sheila Suess Kennedy, Professor of Law and Public Policy, School of
Public & Environmental Affairs, Indiana University Purdue University
Indianapolis. Email: shekenne [at] iupui.edu.
I enjoyed reading this book. Unfortunately, I found it enjoyable for the same
reason I found it flawed: reading it was like eavesdropping on a conversation
between two men of a certain age (in this case, brothers) who are reminiscing
over drinks about people they had known and worked with over the course of
accomplished careers. There were all sorts of interesting tidbits and insights
into the lives and characters of those they chose to chronicle, but the book
also has the meandering, uneven, unstructured quality that characterizes such
reminiscences.
The book is best described as a collection of “mini-biographical chapters,” some
of which are devoted to one person, others of which compare and contrast two
people who may or may not have been contemporaries and may or may not have had
any other recognizable connections.
Some of the figures chosen for inclusion will be familiar to most readers – Pat
Moynihan, Karl Marx, Felix Frankfurter, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippman.
Others are considerably less well-known: Joseph Tumulty, William Beveridge,
Keith Joseph, Belle Moskowitz.
The authors divide the book into four sections, focusing first on figures who at
one time or another held elective office, then on people who operated “behind
the throne,” and concluding with subjects whom they categorize as “zealots” and
“litigants.” Those somewhat arbitrary and unexplained section headings provide
the entirety of the book’s structure. There does not seem to be any overarching
theme or expository thesis that would explain why the authors chose the
particular individuals they included in the book and why they did not choose
others. The book does not appear to be chronologically ordered or discernibly
thematic. Most of the subjects were from the United States, but several others
were not. Some were lawyers; others were not. In short, if there was any
systematic justification for either the choice of their biographical subjects or
the decisions to pair up some of them and not others, it was not apparent to
this reader. If, as one suspects, these subjects were chosen because the authors
either knew them personally, or found them interesting, an introduction
explaining that fact would have been preferable to simply presenting readers
with an unconnected jumble of chapters.
In the first chapter of the first section, “The Elect(ed): Political
Adventurers,” the O’Connells compare Eisenhower and Stevenson, and note the
dramatic changes in the way both are perceived [*470] today. The comparatively
recent availability of letters and other contemporaneous documents allows the
authors to give context to the careers of both men, and to flesh out what was
previously known about each of them. In this chapter, a reader encounters what
is best about the book – the use of more recently available biographical
information to flesh out previously one-dimensional impressions of political
actors, to humanize them and to ground them in their time and place. Many of the
chapters make use of such resources to good effect.
The other three chapters in the first section offer similar insights into Pat
Moynihan, Averill Harriman and Winston Churchill. Moynihan is clearly the
authors’ favorite subject; both authors had worked with him and both held him in
high esteem. Their affection for him shines through, and the chapter includes
several stories and quotes that are not only vintage Moynihan, but that serve to
remind the reader why Moynihan was so influential a figure for so long a period.
The chapters on Moynihan and Harriman also underscore the interactions and
relationships of men in positions of power. This is partly attributable to the
fact that the O’Connells knew and worked with both, but it also reflects the
reality that for much of American history, men of substance and wealth tended to
run in the same (comparatively small) circles.
The fourth chapter focuses on Winston Churchill and his relationship with the
Zionist movement and the Jews. It was interesting and readable, but seems
totally unconnected to what precedes and succeeds it.
The chapters in the second section continue this pattern. A chapter on the
anti-Catholic bigotry faced by Woodrow Wilson’s long-time aide Joseph Tumulty is
followed by a chapter comparing two twentieth century British intellectuals,
William Beverage and Keith Joseph. (Beverage is best remembered as the “Father
of the British Welfare State,” and Joseph – who came along a
generation-and-a-half later – is best known as the person who convinced Margaret
Thatcher to enter electoral politics.) Then it is back to the United States, and
the unlikely life-long friendship of Tommy Corcoran and Ben Cohen, who created
major elements of FDR’s New Deal. A chapter on Felix Frankfurter and Walter
Lippman and how they met and mingled at a Washington, D.C. residence called “The
House of Truth” is followed by a chapter devoted to Frankfurter alone.
The last three chapters in the second section focus on John Kenneth Galbraith, a
somewhat strained comparison of Belle Moskowitz (the only female subject
included in the book) and Bayard Rustin, and Kenneth O’Donnell (this latter
chapter titled “Kenny’s Kennedys: The Rise and Fall of a Courtier”).
The last two sections of the book seem to be afterthoughts. Each contains only
two chapters, and whatever tenuous connections may or may not have existed
between the subjects of the preceding chapters disappears entirely in the
concluding four chapters.
Section III is devoted to “Zealots.” As with the other sections, there is no
section introduction, nor any description of what the category was intended to
[*471] encompass. The first “zealot” featured was Edward Carson, “The Lawyer Who
Brought Down Oscar Wilde and Raised Up Northern Ireland.” The second, more
intuitively appropriate, isdevoted to a comparison of Karl Marx and Michael
Harrington. Why these individuals and not others? Who knows?
The authors save their most puzzling choices for the final two chapters, in the
section they title “The Litigants.” Again, one might think of literally hundreds
of “litigants” – lawyers and clients alike – who changed the course of the law,
or otherwise attained renown or historical stature. The O’Connells chose the
Wright brothers (who engaged in patent litigation) and Truman Capote (whose most
famous book, “In Cold Blood,” did focus on a crime and subsequent trial).
As noted above, the absence of structure is the most glaring deficiency in the
book, and the most consequential, but it was not the only distraction from the
book's merits. The writing style occasionally seems somewhat old-fashioned, or
even quaint; it was jarring to read a description of Belle Moskowitz as a
“Jewess,” for example. And in their discussion of the lifelong “friendship”
between Corcoran and Cohen, it never seemed to occur to the authors that – at
least given the way in which they described that friendship – others might
speculate on the nature of men’s relationship. (I hasten to add that I possess
absolutely no knowledge on that score; I simply note that the way in which the
authors described their personal lives would give modern readers reason to ask
the question.)
Far more annoying is the very poor proofreading evident throughout. The
publisher bears much of the blame for this. There are multiple typos, and in
places words and even whole lines were dropped. For the more pedantic among us,
this is cause for considerable irritation.
After this enumeration of the book's deficits, it is only fair to reiterate that
it had considerable merits as well. The individual chapters are readable and
interesting, and there are citations to more comprehensive resources for those
who wish to follow up to learn more about the people being discussed. In those
chapters devoted to people the authors had personally known, there were
interesting tidbits and savvy analyses and insights.
In short, what this book lacks in incisive scholarship and authorial coherence,
it makes up for in readability.
*********************
© Copyright 2011 by the author, Sheila Suess Kennedy.