The American Leadership Tradition

By Marvin Olasky and Charles W. Colson

Private morality impacts public action. This is a lesson Marvin Olasky wants us to see in The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision from Washington to Clinton. Olasky draws a line between religious beliefs and public policy. He demonstrates his thesis by examining the lives of ten United States Presidents and three citizens of notable repute. Reader beware. There are surprises in these pages, both delightful and disappointing. 

The author wants us to grapple with the notion of compartmentalization, i.e. one can lead a duplicitous life in private while publicly parading steady statesmanship. Olasky is out to discredit that belief. He writes, "Integrity stores up principal for future generations, but compartmentalization always leaves a bill, although one that might not be presented for years." 

His case is compelling. His scope is impressive. His work is interesting and instructive.

Here are four reasons to read The American Leadership Tradition:

1. Olasky's careful treatment of the presidents (as well as Henry Clay, Booker T. Washington, and John D. Rockefeller). I particularly appreciated his efforts to "unveil" the darker side of Thomas Jefferson, Clay, and John F. Kennedy. I did not feel this was a vendetta or a paparazzian effort, but a careful scholarly look.

2. Olasky's treatment of the impact of the social gospel vs the gospel of grace.

3. Olasky's emphasis on the mistrust caused by compartmentalization and how such mistrust, unexcused in the armed forces, is tolerated in politics.

4. Olasky's bibliography is stellar. He outfits any reader who wants to dig deeper into the lives of Washington, Jefferson, Clay, Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Rockefeller, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Clinton, with an solid group of works from which to begin that study. 

My only critique is that despite the outstanding bibliography, Dr. Olasky (a thorough scholar), did not source his work throughout this volume. Overall, I highly recommend The American Leadership Tradition.

The Best of O. Henry

By O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

I would buy this book if only for Gifts of the Magi and The Ransom of Red Chief. Gifts of the Magi is a Christmas story that does not lose its shimmer out of season. If you want to know what love is, true love, read Gifts of the Magi. And ANY exhausted and dispirited parent of any rambunctious and precocious ten-year-old must read The Ransom of Red Chief, if only to remind yourself, "I am not alone!" Lively story with a funny twist, it will leave you with that, "Yep. That's a boy!"

Of course, this is O. Henry so you can expect finely spun tales, three-dimensional characters, lively dialogue, intrigue, and enough switch backs to keep one alert and guessing. Such a unique style. Such a command of language.

End Game

By David Baldacci

David Baldacci weaves an intriguing and action-packed adventure with with enough twists and turns to keep one guessing and thoroughly engrossed. The Blue Man is missing and Will Robie and Jessica Reel (an intriguing relationship if there ever were one) are tasked to find him. Time is running out. The fact they face an array of obstacles and more than one group that would like to see them dead.

Baldacci is great dialogue, descriptive expertise, and characters old (Robie, Reel, and Blue Man) and new. There's "principle" behind his narrative, and as with most novels, insight into the human experience. I have read all the Will Robie series. If Mr. Baldacci pens #6 I will read it as well.

Listens to the Audible version will be treated to the stellar narration of Kyf Brewer and Orlagh Cassidy.

Twelve Years A Slave

By Solomon Northup

"So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington--through the Capital of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!" Solomon Northup, kidnapped free man at the outset of his twelve years a slave.

Solomon Northup is the reason the term, "required reading" was coined. Twelve Years A Slave is an eye opening, heart wrenching first-hand account of slavery near the Red River in Louisiana. Gripping and detailed, Northup's story is full of victims and villains, along with a kind-hearted few who, raised in milieu of Southern slavery, were ignorant but willing participants and perpetrators of its insensibility and insanity. Northup's account is well written and unvarnished, the stories as raw as the backs of the whipped slaves we meet. As he notes at the conclusion of his dark account, "If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture." Readers of The Warmth Of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson) will find this a comparable volume for the way it transports the reader to another time and place, albeit an era that preceded the Great Migration about which Wilkerson writes. A "must read" that I wish I read much earlier in life.