Here is a link to a story about a very good friend of mine, Scott Mackler, who I wrote about in my book You’re Stronger Than You Think. Scott was diagnosed with ALS almost 15 years ago. His first symptoms were when he lost grip of a tennis racket, playing against me. And I thought it was just the strength of my forehand! If you want to be inspired, read this story.
My kids are interested in learning how to use Facebook. So I figured it was time for me to learn something about this tool, meaning that at the ripe young age of 47, I’ve joined the ranks of the Facebook users. Now I need help from all of you to teach me how to learn…
Followers of this blog, and I mean both of you, know by now that I am a fan of getting the word out about good writing. Here’s a nice example from the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It is from the cover article, titled “We Will Never Run Out Of Oil.” The whole article…
If you ever want to know why one is the loneliest number, consider the words of John Tukey, a prominent American mathematician from the 20th century. Not the most socially adept person in the world, he relied heavily on his wife Elizabeth to help them live a normal life. When she died in 1998 Tukey…
Back in early February, Brown authored an article on the North Dakota oil boom. It is a great piece of reporting. Also, a fine bit of writing, as captured by this sentence: In a way, of course, this kind of frontier is as much a state of mind as an actual place, a melancholy mood…
Another great quote from Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree: “My mother didn’t want me to be gay because she thought it wouldn’t be the happiest course for me, but equally, she didn’t like the image of herself as the mother of a gay son. The problem wasn’t that she wanted to control my life—although…
Jon Meacham’s best-selling biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, is at best a solid read, presenting the basic facts of Jefferson’s life competently but with little grace and an almost invisible point of view. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Robert Caro’s amazing series of books on Lyndon Johnson, four volumes so far that not only make Johnson come to life (his ruthless genius as well as his fascinating contradictions) but also illuminate a whole era in U.S. history, all the while enveloping readers in gloriously rhythmic paragraphs. It is not fair, perhaps, to compare any biographer to Caro. Meacham’s book, after all, is just a single volume, so it cannot explore Jefferson in the same depth that Caro portrays Johnson. Meacham also had the disadvantage of writing about a man who lived a couple hundred years ago, whereas Caro could interview people who knew the subject of his biography firsthand. In addition, Meacham is a busy man, running a publishing company and appearing on television shows, whereas Caro lives the life of an obsessive, dedicating the better part of his adult life to understanding the ins and outs of Johnson’s life.
Nevertheless, if you are going to write a book about an American president and subtitle it “The Art of Power,” you better expect some Caro comparisons.
As it turns out, however, being compared to Caro is the least of Meacham’s writerly problems. Because there is another great writer that readers won’t be able to ignore when making their way through Meacham’s book. That writer, of course, is Thomas Jefferson.
I’m going to give you a sprinkling of Jefferson’s prose in a bit, and follow-up later this week with several other great Jefferson quotes. But first, a little bit more on Meacham’s book. I was really disappointed, because in Meacham’s hands, Jefferson rarely comes alive on the page. Time passes by and suddenly the reader realizes: “Jefferson just became governor of Virginia? Was that something he was trying to accomplish? Which of the arts of power did he employ to reach that position?” Meacham never provides answers to these kinds of questions.