His entry begins:For the previous weeks, I have been enjoying On His Own Terms, a biography of Nelson Rockefeller by Richard Norton Smith. I have enjoyed it immensely. It is a surprisingly touching book. Smith has a superb grasp of how power traveled through the family from the grandfather to the son to the grandsons like Nelson. You get a remarkable appreciation of their hopes and disappointments. Little did I realize, for instance, that Nelson was dyslexic and for a long time was considered retarded. Even more fascinating are the pages that narrate Rockefeller’s political career, as he wends his way through Washington DC with various presidential appointments, and eventually flings his enormous energy into...[read on]About The Great Divide, from the publisher:
History tends to cast the early years of America in a glow of camaraderie, when there were, in fact, many conflicts between the Founding Fathers—noneVisit Thomas Fleming's website.more important than the one between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Their disagreement centered on the highest, most original public office created by the Constitutional Convention: the presidency. It also involved the nation’s foreign policy, the role of merchants and farmers in a republic, and the durability of the union. At its root were two sharply different visions of the nation’s future.
Acclaimed historian Thomas Fleming examines how the differing characters and leadership styles of Washington and Jefferson shaped two opposing views of the presidency—and the nation. This clash profoundly influenced the next two centuries of America’s history and persists in the present day.
Writers Read: Thomas Fleming.
--Marshal Zeringue
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