My Top Books of 2012

Classics: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Heirloom Collection)

Prompted by my appreciation of the excellent trio of Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Andrew Scott in Sherlock, I began to search for a one-stop gathering of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the detective. Several years ago, Easton Press released an elegant three-volume, leather-bound set, but my budget wouldn't stretch to that. So it was with glee that I discovered this new box set from Thomas & Mercer. The binding is solid, the illustrations whimsical and the box itself, with two Sherlock quotes ("The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes" and "It is a capital offense to theorise before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.") an attractive edition to any bibliophile's shelves.

Contemporary Fiction: Alan Furst, Mission to Paris

This year I went a little nuts with World War II, Cold War and Putin-era Russia novels, devouring David Downing's entire back catalogue (not literally - that'd lead to horrible indigestion), Alex Dryden's Finn series and much of John Le Carre's work. Yet the writing of Alan Furst stands alone in the genre, and Mission to Paris is his best book for at least five years. In it, actor Frederic Stahl is sent to the French capital to make a film, and is unwittingly swept up in espionage involving the Nazis, the US and his host country. Furst shows off his intimate knowledge of Paris - he lived there for several years - with evocative descriptions, and his ability to raise and lower tension at just the right time to keep you hooked until the end.

Politics - Douglas Carswell, The End of Politics
Carswell is a small-government Conservative, but it would be unwise for a prospective reader to dismiss The End of Politics as a right-leaning missive, because it isn't. In addition to his political work, Carswell is a proven writer, contributing to The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times, amongst others, and composing insightful daily blog posts. In this book, he explains the chronic ailments of today's Western governments - their bloated size, their unrestrained spending and their increasing distance from the will of the electorate - and then explores how technology can help right the ship. The End of Politics is bold, witty and practical - and let's hope to goodness its author is right to be optimistic.

Read the full article on the Huffington Post's website here.

A Legacy of Leadership: Happy 138th, Winston

November 30 was Winston Churchill’s birthday. 138 years after his birth, historians, politicians and the public are still as fascinated as ever about this most iconic of British Prime Ministers. Of course, as with every major historical figure, the amount of one-sided deconstructionismhas increased over the past few years, no more useful to the reader than one-sided hagiography. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle–a deeply flawed (aren’t we all!) larger-than-life figure who botched a lot of decisions–notably his resistance to home rule for India and well-meaning but ill-conceived support of Edward VIII during the 1936 abdication crisis–who got the big things right.


Among the latter was Churchill’s foresight over the divisions between the democratic West and the Communist East. Since the inception of Communism and its violent manifestation in the Russian Revolution, Churchill had despised the movement, calling it a “pestilence.” Certainly, his monarchial devotion was part of this, but more so, Churchill believed Communism destroyed the very principles of liberty and freedom that he would devote his career to advancing and defending. 

Certainly, with his love of Empire, there were some inconsistencies in his thinking, but above all, Churchill believed that the individual should be able to make choices and that systemic freedom–of the press, of religion, of the ballot, must be upheld for individuals to enact such choices. That’s why he vowed to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,” though his plan to bolster anti-Communist forces was quickly shot down by Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George as another of “Winston’s follies.”

In this case, his plan to oppose Communism was indeed unrealistic. There were a small amount of British, Canadian, and American troops and a trickle of supporting materiel going to aid the White Russians toward the end of World War I, but once the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918, the Allied leaders wanted to get their boys home, not commit more to a seemingly hopeless cause.

But over the next three decades, Churchill’s ideas on how to deal with Communism became more informed, more realistic and, arguably, more visionary. Though he reluctantly accepted Stalin as an ally when Hitler turned on Russia in the fateful summer of 1941, Churchill’s pragmatism and public admiration of the Marshal did not blind him to the ills of the Communist system. The Percentages Agreement he signed with Stalin in a late 1944 meeting has since been blamed for hastening the fall of democratic Eastern Europe, but what Churchill was actually doing there was essentially recognizing that the Communist takeover was a fait accompli, and guaranteeing Stalin’s agreement to largely leave the Greek Communists to their own devices in Greece after World War II. Though Moscow did supply arms and it took the Marshall Plan to prop up the anti-Communist side in Greece, Stalin largely honored this pledge.

He was not so good on his word with many other things, however. Among the promises he made to Churchill and FDR were to include the London Poles (exiled during the war) in a so-called representative government in Poland. In fact, the Communist puppet Lublin Poles ran the new regime after the war, and the old guard was either shunned or killed. In fact, horrifyingly, many of the leaders of the Polish Underground were taken out by Stalin’s henchmen, and others were held in former Nazi camps that the Red Army had supposedly “liberated.” 

At the Potsdam Conference in July 1946, Stalin showed that his vows at Yalta were mere lip service to the British and American leaders. He made demands for bases in Turkey, threatened the vital British trade route through the Suez canal and refused to withdraw troops from oil-rich Iran.

Churchill, still putting his faith in personal diplomacy, believed he could reason with Stalin, particularly if Harry Truman backed him up. But halfway through the Potsdam meeting the British public sent the Conservative Party to its second worst defeat in one of the most surprising General Election decisions. Churchill was out as Prime Minister and Clement Attlee was in. Off Attlee went to Germany to finish the dialogue with Truman and Stalin. Churchill feared he was headed for political oblivion. 

Yet, after a few weeks of moping, he realized that he still had his pen and, as arguably the most famous democratic leader of the age (only FDR came close in global renown), his voice.

  Click here to keep reading at the blog of Boston University's Historical Society

An Election Apart: Harry Truman and the Last Time an Incumbent President Was Strapped for Cash

In our hyperbole-infected 24/7, anywhere, anytime news cycle, many reporters have become too quick to judge elections in exaggeration. If you believed stories from the Obama-Romney coverage chapter and verse, you’d think this was “the most negative campaign ever.” Never mind that contest between two chaps by the names of Adams and Jefferson, in which Jefferson’s election managers slammed Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Sniping back, Adams’s team dismissed Jeffersonas "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

Depending on where your political sympathies lay, you’d also be resolved that Mitt Romney orpresident Barack Obama were the two most mendacious candidates of any that have vied for the White House. Hmmm. Because political candidates never stretch or bend the truth to further their arguments, of course. Like the time that Al Smith’s detractors took their anti-Catholicism line intocomical territory by circulating a photo of Smith dedicating a new tunnel and claiming he was planning to extend the passageway under the Atlantic to Rome, so he could take direct orders from the Pope if he became president.

But one claim about this year’s Obama-Romney face off that is accurate is that it is the most highly funded election in US history, with more than $6 billion dollars flowing into Democratic and Republican coffers, and then out again to pay for TV ads, logistics, calling campaigns and the rest.

This cash-rich election is the opposite of another that I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time studying lately: The Harry Truman vs. Tom Dewey presidential election of 1948.

Clifford K. Berryman, October 19, 1948

Before we look at the money side, let’s first look at the context of this election. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been president for 12 years, authored the New Deal, forged the historic wartime alliance with Winston Churchill and become an indelible imprint on the nation’s consciousness, died on April 12, 1945. In his place was a man who had been vice president for just 82 days, and was as unlike Roosevelt as was possible. FDR was born into privilege, had been to the best schools, and mixed in the elite East Coast liberal circles, making his ascension to the presidency seem natural and, in some ways, almost pre-destined. In contrast, Harry Truman had been a soldier, a farmer and a failed haberdasher, had never been to college, and preferred to mix with his old friends from Missouri. Yet, with FDR gone, he was now at the helm of the US, which had become an industrial powerhouse during World War II.

Just three months into his presidency, Truman was charged with brokering a lasting peace with Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Potsdam – though Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe was a fait accompli and Stalin wasn’t well known for bending for anyone, let alone a rookie president, albeit it a fiery one.

Then, in August 1945, Truman was faced with the monumental decision of whether to use the fruits of the Manhattan Project to force Japanese surrender. Believing his generals’ assertions that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki would save up to 500,000 American troops, he authorized this decisive, and most deadly, action.

When the war ended, organized labor wanted pay rises to compensate for stagnant levels during the war, while industrial leaders desired increased prices and keeping wages steady. Massive strikes ensued, with 116 million of work days lost in 1946. Truman recognized the need to keep the Democrats’ traditional labor voting happy, but couldn’t tolerate it when the UAW, AFL, CIO, coalminers, John Lewis’s steelworkers and others brought the country’s economy to a standstill. So he seized the mines, the steelworks and the railroads, telling train worker leaders A.F Whitney and Alvanley Johnson in the Oval Office, “I’m going to give you the gun.” Truman was pulled back by special counsel Clark Clifford when he wanted to tell Congress he should hang a few strikers to send a message to Big Labor, though in his revised speech to a joint session on May 26, he did ask for the right to draft strikers into the Army – a proposal that didn’t become law.

To add to Truman’s woes, the GOP seized control of the House and Senate in the 1946 midterms. And as Truman’s lame duck Presidency continued to struggle, his pursuit of a bold civil rights plank, passage of Executive Orders to desegregate the US armed forces and ensure equality for civil servants of all ethnicity and speech to the NAACP caused Southern Democrats to break away and form the States Rights Democratic Platform. One split in the party would’ve been bad enough, but former vice president Henry Wallace captured the imagination of the far left when he formed the Progressive Party. To make matters worse, the New Deal old guard, including Eleanor and James Roosevelt, had little to no confidence in Truman, considering him to be a poor substitute for the giant of the age, FDR.

The hapless Truman had no reprieve in foreign affairs. Not only was Stalin securing his grip on Eastern Europe, he was also demanding bases in Turkey, providing support to Greek Communists and threatening the vital British trade route through the Suez Canal. In Asia, Moscow was backing Mao’s takeover in China and, foreshadowing the coming conflict, periodically cutting off power to South Korea. And then, Truman controversially recognized the nascent Israeli state on May 14, 1948, the first world leader to do so. A month later, the Soviets started the Berlin Blockade, refusing to allow food, medical supplies or other aid to flow from the Allied-controlled zones.

With such calamities at home and abroad, Truman would have struggled against any Republican opponents in the 1948 election. But when the GOP nominated the ‘dream ticket’ of New York Governor Thomas Dewey and popular California Governor Earl Warren, a whole forest was thrown onto the fire. Clare Booth Luce, wife of Time publisher Henry, spoke the opinions of many when she said that the Man from Missouri was a “gone goose.”

Click here to read the rest of this post at the blog of Boston University's The Historical Society

What's the Story Behind Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech? Find out at the National Churchill Museum on Sunday, November 11

In March 1946, Winston Churchill arrived in the unlikely venue of Fulton, Missouri, where he introduced the world to the phrases "the iron curtain" and "the special relationship" in what he later called the most important  speech of his career.

How did he end up in the American heartland?

Who was the college president who brought him to Westminster College?

How did Fulton prepare for the arrival of Churchill and thousands of visitors?

What role did Harry Truman play?

And what's the lasting significance of this speech, which articulated the divide between liberal democratic principles and Communism?

To find out, come to see me speak at the The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, in Fulton, MO, which houses the wonderful National Churchill Museum, on Sunday, November 11 at 2:00 pm. Click here for directions.

I'll be selling signed copies of my book on the topic, Our Supreme Task: How Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech Defined the Cold War Alliance, after the talk.

I hope to see you there. Can't make it but still want to buy a signed copy? Then e-mail me at philwhite7@gmail.com

A Better Boris: Johnson's Prime Ministerial Showcase at the Conservative Party Conference

David Cameron's speech at the recent Conservative Party Conference was billed as the headlining act. After all, he is prime minister. And he did very well, boldly communicating his vision for the party, how to build on current successes - such as the establishment of independent schools, and - how to do better, including bold plans on Britain crime, terrorism and, of course, the still-stagnant economy.

But despite Cameron exceeding expectations at the podium, he was upstaged by a man who might one day take his place (though of course, he won't overtly admit this): Mayor of London Boris Johnson. Boris swept into Birmingham with a large entourage, his trademark blond mop tousled further by the autumnal breeze and his voluminous personality pulling in all those in the near vicinity. Buoyed by his starring role as cheermeister at the Olympics and Paralympics, the launch of his well-received book and, of course, a hard-fought win over nemesis Ken Livingstone in the mayoral election, Hurricane Boris blew into the conference centre threatening to destroy all in its path.

And yet, by the time he took the podium for the pre-speech teaser (as only Boris can do, at a welcome reception the night before the main event) he was atypically reserved, disciplined (aside for the odd imaginative meandering) and even follically presentable. He didn't do away with his Borisness - wit, irreverence, unnatural confidence - but managed to keep his exuberance in check enough to come across as a, gulp, statesman. The question was whether he could repeat the feat the following morning. And, much to the chagrin of the Cameroons who view him as a usurper and a loose cannon, he did.

The audience in the crowded hall laughed at his jokes not because they were obliged to, but because Boris is genuinely funny. They were inspired by his bold policy statements about Britain's future as "a creative, confident, can-do country" because he has vision, and doesn't worry about towing the party line. He instinctively knows what is important to this country, and can explain this in clear, jargon-free terms. Furthermore, Boris can simplify the principals of the party he represents as mayor: "I am a Conservative. I believe in a low tax, low regulation economy."

More so than any other current British politician, there is something distinctly Churchillian about Boris, though Winston's wit was less overt. Yes, the Mayor does on occasion go off tilting at windmills as Churchill did. And true, he is certainly not lacking in ego. But on the big things - including keeping the EU's greedy hands off the City of London's assets, the need to do better for the middle class ("the backbone of London"), and supporting entrepreneurship, Boris is quite correct. As Churchill's career proved, this is perhaps the defining assessment of any politician's body of work.

Much like the Churchill that Peter Clarke brilliantly portrays in his book, Mr. Churchill's Profession, Boris has made his living by his pen. And, as with Winston, he actually writes, or at least is a significant contributor to, his own speeches (or, in some cases, just speaks extemporaneously). Cameron cannot claim that, nor can his counterpart across the Atlantic, whose inauguration address was, for good or for ill, crafted by a 27-year-old in a Washington DC Starbucks. (Yes, blogging police, I've used this example before.) The reason that Boris's rhetoric resonates is because there is a consistency between his writing, his off-microphone conversation and his public addresses. In all settings, Boris is Boris, and people can either take him or leave him.

Click here to read the full story via The Huffington Post

The College Writing Problem: Stop the Presses for Journalism and English Majors

In the course of the Atlantic’s recent series, The Writing Revolution, contributors have explored how to inspire struggling students, discussed the need to go beyond curriculum requirements, and delved into the disparity between how American society treats its high school athletes and their star student classmates.

Each of these pieces has merit, and yet as I read them, I was inspired to move beyond what works and what doesn’t for K-12 writing instruction and jump ahead to the problems of writing in higher education.

In his fine essay, Arthur Applebee writes that in 2011, 40 to 41 percent of public school students at grades 8 and 12 were assigned less than a page of writing homework per week, and that 80 percent of these assignments didn’t involve composition.

You may think and hope that this dearth of practical writing is overcome once students pack their bags for college and that our higher education institutions have challenging syllabi that prepare able students to write the next great American novel, become the new David McCullough, or, heck, just eke out a living as a poet or freelance journalist. But, in many cases, such an assumption is ill founded.

The composition courses required at liberal arts colleges (typically Comp 1 and Comp 2) are usually a joke, covering the basics of grammar and style that previous generations mastered in high school or before. If you don’t know a verb from an adverb by the time you’re 18, what hope is there for you? Indeed, enterprising students can and should do all they can to avoid such rudimentary instruction—and the cost of six useless credit hours—by taking a CLEP test that exempts them from Comp course requirements.

The picture is little brighter when it comes to those brave and creative souls who choose an English or journalism degree. The typical limitation of the former is a lack of practical exercises that allow students to critically evaluate a text in a way that sharpens analytical skills applicable outside academia. The length and scope of such essays have been steadily reduced, to the point where a two-page, double-spaced exercise in brevity is the norm. There’s nothing wrong with being succinct, but such an assignment is a cakewalk for most able undergraduates. Many won’t excel unless they’re pushed, and a few hundred words now and again just isn’t going to cut it.

There are many challenges for journalism degree programs, but these can be distilled into two main points. First, the newspaper game has changed so much with the closing of many dailies and weekly publications, the staff cuts at others and the rise of online-only pubs like The Huffington Post, which rely ever more on unpaid contributors from its vast blogging network.

The same is true of magazines: while there are an increasing number of specialty publications and overall reading stats are up (if you believe the claims in the 2010—2011 Power of Print campaign run by the Big Five of Time Inc., Hearst, Advance Publications' Condé Nast, Wenner Media, and Meredith), many more have folded and many of the surviving titles are run by skeleton crews. Still more titles have become online-only ventures that require Web 3.0-ready writing—complete with tags, optimized search terms and such—elements all too often ignored by behind-the-times journalism programs.

Click here to read the rest of the post at the blog of Boston University's Historical Society

On The Road Again: Upcoming Speaking Events

Hello all. Hard at work on the next book so it has been a while since the last post.

I've got a couple of speaking events for Our Supreme Task coming up. I hope you can make it to one of these:

1) Olathe Library Foundation Fundraising Dinner

When: Saturday, September 22, 6:30 pm CST

Where: Ballrooms A & B, 101 West 151st Street, Olathe, KS

How to Get Tickets: Call Library Director, Emily Baker at 913-971-6880 (RSVP before Sept 17th)

The Olathe Library Foundation raises supplemental funds for literacy programs, adding books and updating facilities. We need to get our kids more involved in reading, and your support of this event will help. 

2) International Churchill Conference

When: October 11-14

Where: Toronto, Canada

How to Get Tickets: Click here to register online

This is the annual convention for the Churchill Centre, which provides educational materials worldwide to educate people on the life and legacy of Sir Winston Churchill. I'll be speaking about the impact of Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech on the relationship between Britain, the US and Canada. 

3) Communiversity Address, MidAmerica Nazarene University

When: Friday, October 26, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Where: Bell Cultural Events Center, MNU campus, 2030 E. College Way, Olathe, KS

How to Get Tickets: This is a free lecture, with seats provided on a first-come, first-served basis

Communiversity is a free lecture series designed to provide access to university alumni of note, and to promote innovation and scholarship. It is held during MNU Homecoming each year and this year I will speak on “Liberal Arts and Leadership: Preparing the Next Generation for a Rapidly Changing World.”

4)  National Churchill Museum

When: Sunday, November 11, Time TBA

Where: National Churchill Museum, 501 Westminster Avenue  Fulton, MO 65251

How to Get Tickets: Contact Mandy Plybon at (573) 592-5369

This is coming back to the place where my book project started. Museum Director Rob Havers and his staff were a great help with my research and manuscript review, and if you've never been to the museum you're in for a visual treat, as it's housed in a Christopher Wren-designed, white Portland stone church that was shipped to Fulton from London and re-assembled stone by stone.