Review: Liberalism and Its Discontents
| Author: | Alan Brinkley |
| Review Date: | 08/29/2003 |
| Basic Summary: | A collection of essays on American politics in the 20th century, by Columbia Professor Alan Brinkley. |
I am not familiar with Alan Brinkley, but I probably should be. He strikes me as someone who must have shown up in the New Republic's pages over the years, writing biting book reviews for Leon Wieseltier. In my intellectual universe, this association reflects quite well upon Brinkley.
Like the New Republic, Brinkley is liberal, but objective enough to take conservatives seriously and criticize liberals. His writing is detailed, but never tedious. The essays are long enough to inform, but not so long that they lose the reader's attention. As I read the book, I alternated between fascination at Brinkley's insights, and pleasure at his descriptive anecdotes.
The book jacket advertises a "history of liberalism since the 1930s" that explains "where [liberalism] came from, where it has gone, and why." This exaggerates. But publishers need to find a thread to tie essay collections together, because they believe that consumers would never buy a book that merely collects disparate essays. Even books need slogans.
Reviewers suffer from the same phobia of themeless books, although where publishers use themes to draw readers closer, reviewers use them to push reader away. To a reviewer, admitting that book lacks deeper meaning is tantamount to relinquishing intellectual authority. After all, any mere mortal can say whether the writing is good.
Well, call me a mere mortal: I think the writing is good, but I can't find the theme. This is not criticism: each essay can stand on its own, and that's all I demand. Taken together, these vignettes - ranging in subject from FDR to Oral Roberts - add color and definition to the history of American politics since 1932. It is not the whole story, but then Liberalism and Its Discontents is not a textbook.