I am about 2/3rds through ace biographer David Maraniss' biography of his father, his mother, and their families, as well the world in which they lived and the Second American Red Scare (1944-1960). It is a powerful, fun, yet poignant read. It tells us much about life for radicals and African-Americans in Detroit, Michigan in the process, which has echoes and fits patterns of others in other states and around the nation who suffered as Maraniss' families did.
I only have two quibbles thus far: I think Maraniss makes it sound like he still believes the Harry Truman lie about the Japanese accepting unconditional surrender after Truman ordered atomic bombs dropped over Japan at the end of WWII. Maraniss appears to believe there was just some snafu that led to Emperor Hirohito not being prosecuted for war crimes. Maraniss may need to consult Gar Aperovitz, who makes clear Truman dropped the unconditional surrender terms, by dropping the postwar prosecution of the Emperor. That more likely led to the Japanese surrender, as the Japanese took days after the second bomb was dropped to surrender, but quickly acted when Truman sent word the Emperor would not be prosecuted.
The other quibble is taking Gerald Ford at his word, when Maraniss writes about Ford, a football player at University of Michigan, and who was in college around the same time as Maraniss' father, allegedly refusing to play a whites-only southern football team because the southern team's coaches and players threatened to forfeit and even threatened the life of a University of Michigan black football player if that player, a star on the team, played. It is possible Maraniss knew better, as Marnaniss wrote "Jerry Ford" refused, but allowed the Michigan teams' coaches to talk Ford into playing, which they did. Gerald Ford, as an adult and congressman, always followed orders from hierarchical superiors and advisers for the National Security State, and was an FBI snitch during his time on the Warren Commission. I don't see much "profile in courage" action from Ford to justify giving Ford any benefit of the doubt about the instance Maraniss notes in the Marannis family biography.
The other quibble is taking Gerald Ford at his word, when Maraniss writes about Ford, a football player at University of Michigan, and who was in college around the same time as Maraniss' father, allegedly refusing to play a whites-only southern football team because the southern team's coaches and players threatened to forfeit and even threatened the life of a University of Michigan black football player if that player, a star on the team, played. It is possible Maraniss knew better, as Marnaniss wrote "Jerry Ford" refused, but allowed the Michigan teams' coaches to talk Ford into playing, which they did. Gerald Ford, as an adult and congressman, always followed orders from hierarchical superiors and advisers for the National Security State, and was an FBI snitch during his time on the Warren Commission. I don't see much "profile in courage" action from Ford to justify giving Ford any benefit of the doubt about the instance Maraniss notes in the Marannis family biography.
A more substantive criticism is Maraniss non-ironic use of the word "marranos," to talk about his family's Sephardic Jewish roots and crypto-Judaism. That term is now archaic and is now considered racist/anti-Semitic because the term literally means "pigs." Maraniss clearly does not use the term "marrano" in any negative way to describe his ancestors. However, it is surprising Maraniss uses the term without knowing the modern term is "crypto-Jews."
However, these quibbles and criticism pale in comparison to the brilliant insight, investigation, and reporting that fill these pages of this wonderfully loving biography. Maraniss skillfully shows how and why people became Communists in the 1930s, how one's view of the race question in our nation at that time was an indicator as to whether one became a Communist Party member, and the fact it was the American Communist Party most wanting to help the Spanish Republic against Franco, and indirectly, Mussolini and Hitler. Maraniss goes behind the scenes of newspapers, and understood how the NY Times was providing schizophrenic coverage of the Spanish Civil War, with competing stories from Herbert Matthews and James Carney. Maraniss is no hagiographer. He is not afraid to be critical of his parents' political views, particularly as his parents try to follow the shifting Party-lines of the late 1930s and start of the 1940s. Maraniss has a great insight about the romanticism and literary sensibilities his father had, and how his mother was the more hard-line Communist, owing to a personality that would have been an abolitionist and temperance radical in the 19th Century. Maraniss understands this all so very well.
Maraniss also knows enough about the early post-WWII Cold War period to explain how a not insignificant motivator for the local Red Scare investigations in Detroit was to undermine and divide the United Auto Workers union--and how the Red Scare did so. It is nice to see Maraniss recognize Walter Reuther as a "moderate" who sacrificed liberal-left union members and leaders in the UAW to get through that historical period, and ever so gently call out Reuther for that decision and conduct.
Maraniss also knows enough about the early post-WWII Cold War period to explain how a not insignificant motivator for the local Red Scare investigations in Detroit was to undermine and divide the United Auto Workers union--and how the Red Scare did so. It is nice to see Maraniss recognize Walter Reuther as a "moderate" who sacrificed liberal-left union members and leaders in the UAW to get through that historical period, and ever so gently call out Reuther for that decision and conduct.
For those who are not likely to read the biography, here is a short video on the book, and Maraniss' fifty odd minute speech regarding his book. In the speech, I loved Maraniss' answer to the first audience question about how, since the end of WWII especially, we, so influenced through corporate media, demonized and still demonize anything we call "left" through tactics perfected during the Red Scare.
And now, some words about Maraniss generally as a biographer, why I revere Maraniss, and comparisons with a few other modern biographers.
Maraniss is one of my two favorite modern biographers, having read and loved his biographies of Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente, and the life stories of Americans participating in the 1960 Olympics. Maraniss has also written the best (so far) biography of William Jefferson Clinton. Maraniss is very learned beyond living in the stacks of documents of a biography subject. In each of these biographies he has written, Maraniss shows how widely read he is, how he has listened to a wide variety of elders with life experiences, and has recognition that we humans are complicated beings, with multiple motivations in so many things we do and say.
Maraniss is not in that category of biography writers known as hagiographers, unlike say, David McCulloch, or even my otherwise revered and long departed Catherine Drinker Bowen (who remains brilliant and inspiring for me, but who admittedly overwhelms a reader with the bright side of a biography subject's life, say Oliver Wendell Holmes, slightly less so with John Adams).
My other favorite modern biographer is Ron Chernow. Chernow, besides properly resurrecting Alexander Hamiltion, and being one of the few biographers who knows how to read balance sheets and knows the deeper parts of political economy (having written about Robber Baron titans including Warburg), is the only biographer of George Washington who really understood Washington's psyche and motivations in evaluating Washington's life (I do take some credit in that regard, in my sometimes Zelig-existence*). I highly recommend Chernow's Washington biography. Chernow's biographies are, admittedly, a longer read, as he writes meaty books. Marannis is more succinct, and not as interested in proving every point made. I am fine with that, as Bowen is the most succinct and not at all interested in citing sources for points made, something that has led scholars to (wrongly) discount her work.
If you ask me about Walter Isaacson, I have to say this: Isaacson is a downer biography writer. His biographies tend to destroy any love for the people he claims to venerate. When one scans, if not reads fully Isaacson's bios of Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein, one likes these people much less after finishing Isaacson's bios. What is amusing is seeing interviews with Isaacson, where he will try to say how much we should revere these guys, but, really, he makes it so difficult with his relentless digging and prose. For example, at the end of the Franklin bio Isaacson wrote, I had grown to despise Franklin for being such a player who terribly neglected his family and friends. I quickly found my worst opinions of Einstein and Jobs confirmed when reading Isaacson's bios. The one area where I delighted in Isaacson's biography skills was with Henry Kissinger. Isaacson had previously written a fawning story about the military and political leaders who gave us the Cold War, and I could only sardonically laugh at his conventional wisdom, and lack of any real deep dive into the assumptions that drove the initial part of the Cold War. So it was with trepidation I heard he was going to write the Kissinger biography. Imagine my happy surprise to see that, by the end of reading Isaacson's Kissinger biography, one clearly sees Kissinger as an arrogant, self-centered, pompous ass monster. That, at least, was satisfying. Still, the greatest negative biography of a major American statesman in the past 50 years is Seymour Hersh's The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House. One learns so much, and Hersh is so much fun in his meticulous digging into public sources. One smiles with his on-the-record interviews with people associated with Kissinger, and learns to trust Hersh's "National Security State" off-the-record sources, of which there are far less off-the-record sources than critics often made regarding the biography.
Overall, I highly recommend most of Maraniss' biographies. They are gems, and this one is a delightful, and, again poignant portrait of what his father called a "good American family."
Overall, I highly recommend most of Maraniss' biographies. They are gems, and this one is a delightful, and, again poignant portrait of what his father called a "good American family."
* Not long after Chernow's biography of Hamilton was released, and which I devoured upon its release, I met Chernow one early morning during the first or second day of the Los Angeles Times Book Festival in 2005. Chernow had shown up early, too, waiting for his publisher to arrive in his publisher's booth. I saw him, recognized him, and went over to him. I told him how much I adored the Hamilton bio, and how glad I was he got around to it because, I said, Chernow understood economics and political economy in a way few Hamilton biographers ever did. Chernow loved that, and said so. I then asked what he was working on now, if anything. He sighed, and said he was researching the life of George Washington, but that he was thinking of dropping the project. I asked why, and he said because he found Washington as inscrutable as other biographers, and felt he had nothing to add in writing another Washington biography. I said, Have you ever read Gore Vidal's take on Washington? He said, No, but what does Vidal say? I explained Vidal's take is Washington was in favor of big government from the start, unlike his fellow Virginians, owing to his being head of the Continental Army, and was highly influenced in his thinking by Hamilton. I added Washington was also a social striver and climber, though not in any extreme way as Hamilton's life. I recommended he read Vidal, particularly Burr, and Inventing a Nation, among other works. Chernow looked stunned. He said he would look at Vidal's take on Washington, and said he could definitely see Vidal's point based upon what he was reading thus far. Chernow asked my name, and I gave him a work card, but I never heard from him again. I don't mind, as I am so glad Chernow wrote such an insightful Washington biography, as he truly gets to Washington's life in a way others did not achieve--with much, but not all, owed to Vidal's insight, I should say.
