Blood of the Liberals

Rating:
Summary: Hard to read...harder to live
Review:

What a grand legacy was left to author George Parker by his father and grandfather.

This is not light or easy reading, but is worth your time because it gives you a real sense of history and a terrific overview of how politics has shaped modern thinking and vice versa.

Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: A liberal dose of liberalism's trials and tribulations....
Review: An extraordinarily intelligent detective story, in which the author/detective seeks both the history of his family and the meaning of democracy in the United States. A thoughtful combination of history and memoir, engagingly written throughout. George Packer provides fresh historical insights into, among other things, the Alabama poll tax, Stanford University, Woodrow Wilson, the McCarthy era, the student demonstrations of the late 60s, and Herbert Hoover.

Memorable quotation: "Millions don't rally to the banner of Uncertainty."

Rating:
Summary: A voice in the wilderness
Review: How did such a basic, rational notion as liberalism turn into the favorite epithet of talk-show hosts? What happened to social justice? Where is the freewheeling spirit of the Sixties? These, and other questions, have haunted me for years. Not being well versed in American history, the seemingly abrupt annhiliation of everything "liberal" has caused me great puzzlement and distress.

Packer, in a beautiful amalgam of memoir and history, has written a book that has almost singlehandedly restored my relationship with the past and pointed my way to the future. While as a historical account it is spotty, and as a memoir it is sometimes dry, the heartfelt combination of these two styles has a vitality and immediacy I've never seen anywhere else.

His conclusions, while expansive, are also poignant, with a touch of desperation. In his consideration of the prospects of liberalism in this country, I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the parrot - "It's just resting!" - while at the same time I'm stirred by its undercurrent of optimism. His last few words ring in my ears: "We will have a more just society as soon as we want one."

If you sense that, like myself, you are a lost liberal that is trying to find your way in the world, this book is for you.

If you are a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who needs a clue as to what "liberal" really means, this book is for you as well.

Rating:
Summary: A rallying cry for modern liberalism
Review: I really enjoyed Packer's book. I'm roughly a contemporary of his, and experienced the same wrenching events that occurred in modern liberalism during the late 1960s and early 1970s.I'd just finished reading Roth's "American Pastoral", and it was great to follow it up by reading Packer's book.

Like Packer, my father was an academic at an elite university, and as a traditional liberal who voted for Adlai, he was shocked by what he saw during the late 1960s. On a personal level, I liked reading a book by a writer who likes the same authors I like - Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift), Christopher Lasch, Irving Howe et al. There is a passage in which Packer perfectly summarizes the thesis of Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" - gated communities like the ones that dot my hometown in Southern California.

The only area where I would fault Packer's book is that he does not criticize the dogmatic, politically correct tone that liberalism took on during the late 1980s and early 1990s and which still haunts liberalism. What alarmed Packer's father was exactly that, and I'm afraid Packer only devotes one paragraph to it. Left liberalism has, I'm afraid, taken on a neo-Stalinist quality on some college campuses, viz, stealing copies of conservative campus newspapers which take politically incorrect stands on such issues as affirmative action. Liberals should decry that just as much as the depredations of the Right. David Horowitz shouldn't be the only one who claims the moral high ground on that issue. I don't know if Packer's father would be a neoconservative today, but he might have been, if he'd lived.

Aside from all that, I commend Packer's book. It is a decent, humane and intelligent work that says that there's still a place at the political table for liberalism, even for disheartened liberals like me!

Rating:
Summary: George Packer is a literary and historical genius!
Review: Words can simply not do justice to the rapturous "Eureka! I have found it" feeling I experienced when I found, read and re-read this timely, vivid and insanely insightful book. (Perhaps I should mention that I have been searching in vain for nearly two years to find material on George Huddleston Sr. written in the literary style of eminent historians Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch which also serves as both a caustic critique and a dynamic defense of the very concept of American liberalism). Packer is a great writer! He surveys the modern history of the American reform movement from 1869 to 2000 in a penetrative yet highly readable style and the word pictures he creates both engage and enlighten the reader immediately and throughout. His highly personal depictions of his family lineage - including triumphs and more than a few tragedies - make the story so poignant and touching that your heart will simply melt even if you don't agree with all of his premises or conclusions. And his understanding of the broad sweep of history is astounding - anyone who reads this book will come away with a much more enlightened view of 20th century American reform efforts than they would ever get from a more traditional historical author. There are only a few flaws (which I will not detail here), but those should be arrived at only after thoroughly studying this absolutely amazing book. Blood of the Liberals is simply one of the very best books I have ever read and I recommend it highly!

Rating:
Summary: George Packer is a literary and historical genius!
Review: Words can simply not do justice to the rapturous "Eureka! I have found it" feeling I experienced when I found, read and re-read this timely, vivid and insanely insightful book. (Perhaps I should mention that I have been searching in vain for nearly two years to find material on George Huddleston Sr. written in the literary style of eminent historians Richard Hofstadter and Christopher Lasch which also serves as both a caustic critique and a dynamic defense of the very concept of American liberalism). Packer is a great writer! He surveys the modern history of the American reform movement from 1869 to 2000 in a penetrative yet highly readable style and the word pictures he creates both engage and enlighten the reader immediately and throughout. His highly personal depictions of his family lineage - including triumphs and more than a few tragedies - make the story so poignant and touching that your heart will simply melt even if you don't agree with all of his premises or conclusions. And his understanding of the broad sweep of history is astounding - anyone who reads this book will come away with a much more enlightened view of 20th century American reform efforts than they would ever get from a more traditional historical author. There are only a few flaws (which I will not detail here), but those should be arrived at only after thoroughly studying this absolutely amazing book. Blood of the Liberals is simply one of the very best books I have ever read and I recommend it highly!