Southern Bookman

Voting at Georgia Tech on a record-breaking day for runoff elections

I was among the 301,500 Georgians who set a record Monday for runoff election voting.

Waiting at Georgia Tech's Ferst Center, where I believed the line would be shorter than at other sites I tried, I saw a sign for Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics.

Beam me up Scottie: at the site of cosmic Einstein studies, we had to stand for more than an hour to vote in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

Perhaps someday a bright young Tech engineer will invent an app to allow us to cast our ballots from home.

The afternoon was pleasant, and it was heart-warming to see so many Georgia Tech students voting. Downtown Atlanta's skyline rose majestically into the brilliant blue sky. Nearby, the Coca-Cola building gave silent testimony to Atlanta's commercial history.

Thanks to the valiant poll workers, true American heroes, the line moved quickly.

At last reaching the Ferst Center lobby, I saw a video presentation on a TV screen of a Georgia Tech multimedia project that had won the Smithsonian Institution's People's Choice Award.

In partnership with Auburn University, the multimedia project on display at Tech's Architecture Department examined Bloody Sunday at Selma in 1965, a major turning point in the civil rights movement.

The exhibit is titled "Walking in History's Footsteps." Those of us voting also walked in those footsteps.

Remembering John F. Kennedy on 59th anniversary of his assassination

On another anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination - the 59th - I remember the young president killed on a sunny Friday afternoon in downtown Dallas.

I think about President Kennedy without tears, as New York Times reporter and assassination witness Tom Wicker advised in an article for Esquire.

JFK will always glow in my memory. At home from school, I loved watching  his witty press conferences on TV. His eloquent speeches. His smile, his glamorous wife, and his then small children. With his cultured Boston accent, he somehow spoke to me directly.

For all of his faults, he'll always be my greatest president. The world ended on Nov. 22, 1963. A new one rose in its place, but it never shone so brightly.

An old man now, I'll never stop being a child of Camelot.

Bruce Catton's "The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" a classic Civil War history

Bruce Catton's "The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" combines a great novel's memorable characters with a classic history's understanding of politics and battles.

Recently released in one volume by the Library of America, Catton's "Mr. Lincoln's Army," "Glory Road" and "A Stillness at Appomattox" trace the main Union Army's perilous path to eventual victory over Robert E. Lee's Army of  Northern Virginia.

First published from 1951 through 1954, Catton's books reveal the characters and motivations of a gallery of major and minor figures, from Union Gen. George McClellan and President Abraham Lincoln, to subsidiary generals, cabinet members, and meddling members of Congress.

Confederate generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Joseph Johnston and James Longstreet receive more cursory attention, focusing on their battlefield leadership, which for the war's first fraught years foiled the Union commanders.

The first volume looks at McClellan's organization of the Union Army after the disastrous losses at the first and second battles of Bull Run, also known as Manassas, and other debacles.

In an eerie foreshadowing of today's melodromatic political climate, accusations of treason were freely hurled about, even at McClellan, who when he first took command was urged by some of Lincoln's cabinet members to overthrow Lincoln's government and rule as a dictator.

"Mr. Lincoln's Army" ends with McClellan's victory at Antietam, which led to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. While McClellan disappointed Lincoln by not pursuing Lee's retreating soldiers, the bloody battle was a turning point.

The second volume tells of McClellan's ouster and further devastating union losses at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, followed by the Union's decisive victory at Gettysburg. Once again, the Union Army upset Lincoln by letting Lee escape. This time, Gen. George Meade displayed the exasperating failure of nerve.

"A Stillness at Appomattox" details how U.S. Grant took over the Army of the Potomac. Unlike his predecessors, Grant displayed a willingness to engage Lee's army in a series of bloody battles. The Union Army suffered heavy losses, but outlasted Lee's decimated army, at last achieving the long-awaited Union victory.

A longtime editor at American Heritage after a newspaper career, Catton was a pioneering popular historian of the Civil War, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for "A Stillness at Appomattox." His trilogy helped generate the huge interest in the Civil War among a general readership, and set the stage for Ken Burns' popular PBS history of the war.

From a predominantly conversational, colloquial writing style, Catton rises to passages of eloquent power reminiscent of Proust or Tolstoy.  He's a writer with a wide range, like an organist who can play different registers.

Catton displays a sense of an America moving from a rural to an urban nation at the dawn of a revolution in technology and commerce. He captures the speech and intellectual outlook of an era thrust into a bloody civil war and its wrenching changes.

"The Army of the Potomac Trilogy" reads like a historical novel as well as a consummate history.

Like other classics in the field, it holds up a mirror to our conflicted age.

 

 

  

Paying homage to Henry Adams at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington

During a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., I made a long-desired pilgrimage to the site of Henry Adams' home.

The Hay-Adams Hotel now stands at the Lafayette Square corner where Adams lived next to John Hay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Adams, the great-grandson of President John Adams and grandson of President and U.S. Rep. John Quincy Adams, was best known during his lifetime as the author of the nine-volume "The History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison."

Hay's long career of governmental service included terms as President Lincoln's secretary and secretary of state under presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

We ate lunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel, at 16th and H streets, across Lafayette Square from the White House. The adjoining houses of Hay and Adams were demolished in 1927 for the hotel's construction.

The hotel's restaurant was packed with people in suits and dresses, who gave the air of conducting serious business. Several distinguished looking gentlemen upon leaving exchanged jokes with the middle-aged waiters, promising with handshakes to return soon. Our waiter showed us a photo of him  and Henry Kissinger.

Overhearing the German-flavored conversation of well-dressed young people at an adjoining table, I studied a photo on the wall of Hay and Adams' homes. 

Ever since I read Adams' autobiography "The Education of Henry Adams" as a young man, I've been fascinated with Adams' life. Adams' "Mount St. Michel and Chartres," a study of the medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary and what Adams saw as the 20th century's tragic turn to an obsessive belief in science, is also one of my favorite books.

Adams in "The Education of Henry Adams" laments that his classical education at Harvard ill-prepared him for the 20th century and its technological changes, which he called the rise of "the dynamo." He also felt that his life of writing and a political insider was superfluous compared with his great-grandfather and grandfather's service to the nation.

Unmentioned by Adams in his autobiography was the death of his wife, Marian "Clover" Adams, an aspiring photographer who committed suicide in 1885. She battled depression and felt overshadowed by Adams' eminence.

One day, I'll travel to Rock Creek Cemetery to stand at her grave and contemplate August St. Gaudens' eerie monument to her. Adams, who lived until 1918, commissioned the sculpture, which shows a bereaved woman wearing a shroud.

Adams' old Boston heritage connects with another famous St. Gaudens statue, the monument at Boston's Public Gardens to Robert Gould Shaw, who led the black 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War. Shaw and many of his troops were killed in an attack on Fort Wagner, S.C. on July 18, 1963.

Unlike Shaw and one of his brothers, Adams didn't fight in the Civil War, instead serving as secretary to his father, Charles, the U.S. ambassador to Britain, whose main task was keeping  the British from allying with the Confederacy.

In "The Education of Henry Adams," Adams gives an insightful account of the Civil War, observed from London and his service to his father.

The historic corner where Adams lived and carried out a busy social life hosting leading writers, scientists and politicians hasn't changed that much during the years.

Looking out the restaurant window at historic St. John's Church, Lafayette Square and the White House, I marveled that Henry must have enjoyed a similar view.

 

 

Washington, D.C. visitors honor veterans, nation's history

Crowds in a celebratory mood packed Washington over the Veterans' Day weekend.

We traveled to the nation's capital for an impromptu family reunion, all of us happy at the Democratic surge in the midterm elections.

Visiting museums, the Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln memorials and the Vietnam Memorial, we encountered waves of fellow citizens enjoying the majesty of the nation's capital.

Veterans, many of them in wheelchairs, gathered in our hotel lobby and traveled the National Mall's pathways. A special group of them, Elks from Florida and Virginia, wore Veterans' baseball caps and distinctive red shirts after participating in a special ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial.

Aging baby boomers like me, college students speeding by in ubiquitous bicycles and Lime scooters, and young couples crowded the sidewalks, celebrating the nation's freedom.

I especially loved the children, from infants in their parents' arms to teenagers. Children packed the Lincoln Monument, a new generation receiving the promise of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

While I was enthralled by the Capitol, the White House, and the Washington Monument, I'll strive to carry out a simple message on the sign at St. John's Episcopal Church near the White House:

"Love Your Neighbor."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite pessimism, USA democracy will prevail

A liberal chorus' cries of alarm grew into a crescendo as election day arrived.

In the latest red alert Tuesday, the New York Times' Paul Krugman warned that a Donald Trump-led American fascism could be worst than Viktor Urban's in Hungary.

Krugman, coining an oxymoron, claimed that the MAGA favorite Urban practices "soft fascism," controlling the Hungarian courts and media but not murdering or imprisoning dissenters.

In contrast, Krugman fears, Trump followers might jail perceived villains like Anthony Fauci, Paul Soros and Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, right-wing columnists for Robert Murdoch's New York Post and Wall Street Journal gloat about the approaching red tide.

Despite the rise of Christian nationalism in the GOP and plans to disrupt the government, the Murdoch choir assures its readers that liberal fears are overwrought.

No matter what happens, I'll keep believing in a better America.

 

John F. Kennedy's inaugural address reflects long-shattered American unity

On the eve of the election that could sound the death knell for American democracy, I reread John F. Kennedy's inaugural address.

Kennedy's speech on that frigid March morning in 1961 expressed an American unity that's long been shattered.

His message shadowed by the cold war against the Soviet Union, the young president saw the United States as a beacon of freedom and human rights. 

That fragile moment of shared purpose sinks further into the distant past. Now, the GOP that once supported Democratic presidents engages in brutal political warfare, vowing to end America's system of free elections.

Kennedy's inaugural address asked the nation to renew its commitment to American democracy, now in peril.

Pioneering restaurant critic Gael Greene a star of New York magazine's glory days

Pioneering restaurant critic Gael Greene was one of the stars of Clay Felker's New York magazine.

Greene, 88, who died of cancer Monday at a Manhattan assisted living facility, covered New York City's high-powered restaurant scene from the magazine's founding in 1968 until 2008.

Bringing new journalism excitement to restaurant reviews, Greene saw dining as a sensory experience, recording her impressions with supercharged language like that of fellow New York writer Tom Wolfe.

Felker's New York magazine changed the course of journalism, covering the city's service industries, dining, entertainment, crime and literature with new features and flashy writing styles eventually copied by other magazines and even The New York Times.

The magazine was the successor to the Sunday supplement of the late New York Herald Tribune. In a last flare of brilliance, the Herald-Tribune was a showcase for writers like Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin.

After Rudolph Murdoch purchased New York for a brief reign, Felker moved on to his former publication Esquire, reviving it for a new generation.

Felker's wife, Gail Sheehy, the author of "Passages," gave a vivid portrait of the inventive editor in her memoirs of their life together.

Greene's excelled in her career during an exciting era when New York City rebounded from economic devastation and high crime to new reach dizzying heights of  prosperity and cultural excellence.

While Broadway regains strength, New York struggles with increasing crime and economic problems. The city's history, as reflected in writers like Greene, shows that it'll bounce back. .

UGA professor James C. Cobb's biography of historian C. Vann Woodward gains recognition

Historian C. Vann Woodward's books were a major influence on young Southern progressives in the 1960s and 1970s.

Woodward, who died in 1999 at age 91, demolished many of the prevailing Southern myths about Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Confederate nostalgia and the region's economic and political system.

A new biography of Woodward written by University of Georgia history professor emeritus James C. Cobb, published by University of North Carolina Press, is receiving attention. This week, Cobb's book received a positive review by Columbia professor Eric Foner in the London Review of Books and a more mixed review in the Wall Street Journal by the WSJ's conservative scold Barton Swaim.

Woodward, who attended Emory University and received his doctorate at UNC, grew up in rural Arkansas, inheriting a hatred of segregation from an uncle who was a Methodist minister.

A leftist scholar influenced by Marxism,Woodward like several other 20th century academics gained fame writing for a popular audience. A longtime professor at Yale, Woodward like Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. influenced public policy with his work.

In a biography of Georgia populist Tom Watson, who turned from a supporter of black rights to a virulent racist, Woodruff found that the populist movement in the late 19th century at first sought economic and political cooperation between black and white workers, but fell victim to racial divisiveness pushed by the white ruling class that violently overthrew Reconstruction.

Woodward in "The Strange Career of Jim Crow" found that segregation didn't have deep roots in the South, although he softened that viewpoint later in his career. He also viewed the "New South" ideology of post-Reconstruction leaders like Henry Grady as a cover for economic exploitation of the white and black working class.

In "The Burden of Southern History," a collection of essays, Woodward presented the South as fundamentally different from the North, because it was the only region of the country that had suffered defeat in war. That view turned bitterly ironic in the Vietnam era. 

Martin Luther King cited Woodward's writings as a major influence on the civil rights movement.

Yet, as Foner and Swaim point out, Woodward opposed black studies programs late in his career. His rightward turn cost him his long friendship with the esteemed black scholar John Hope Franklin.

Despite criticism from leftist academics, Woodward remained an esteemed historian. Some of Woodward's beliefs have been discounted, but his work has largely withstood years of critical re-examination.

Woodward's books led to the South confronting its past with unsparing honesty, boosting its post-war economic revival. As the South again reverts to racial politics and white grievance, Cobb's book will help bring a needed return to Woodward's lessons.

 

 

Farewell, Jerry Lee Lewis, a true American original

Once when I was young I saw Jerry Lee Lewis perform at the Baton Rouge State Fair.

It was wild. Jerry Lee, the sorcerer who never stopped leering at his audience, leaped up and down and pounded his piano with boogie-woogie abandon. He even played with his feet, pumping in perfect time.

Lewis' death last week at age 87 brought back my still vivid memories of that afternoon when "the  Killer" held us in thrall.

No one I saw over the years gave such an electric performance.

Little Richard when he burst out of Macon, Ga., or the young Elvis might have matched Lewis' power. Bands that Lewis influenced like the Rolling Stones and the Who worked hard to achieve his natural manic energy.

Lewis was a true American original. His performance was a pure blast of musical libido. Every concert I saw after that carried part of Jerry Lee's essence.