Cross-Examining History: A Lawyer Gets Answers from the Experts about Our Presidents

501 Pages·2016·6.199 MB·English

by  Talmage Boston

“The only new thing in the world
is the history you don’t know.”
– HARRY S. TRUMAN –
“In Jefferson’s famous line,
‘When in the course of human events…’
the operative word is ‘human.’”
– DAVID McCULLOUGH –
Previous works by Talmage Boston
Raising the Bar:
The Crucial Role of the Lawyer in Society
Baseball and the Baby Boomer:
A History, Commentary, and Memoir
1939: Baseball’s Tipping Point
T A L M A G E B O S T O N
K E N B U R N S
foreword by
2365 Rice Blvd., Suite 202
Houston, Texas 77005
Copyright © 2016 Talmage Boston
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval devices or systems,
without prior written permission from the publisher, except that
brief passages may be quoted for reviews.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with publisher.
ISBN 978-1-942945-20-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-942945-21-5 (e-pub)
ISBN 978-1-942945-39-0 (e-pdf)
Editorial Direction: Lucy Herring Chambers
Managing Editor: Lauren Adams Gow
Designer: Marla Y. Garcia
Printed in Canada through Friesens
To my parents,
Paul and Mary Jean Boston,
who inspired me
to begin loving presidential history
at the age of seven
Table of Contents
Foreword by Ken Burns 9
........................................
Introduction 11
...................................................
I. FOUNDING FATHERS
1. George Washington ........................................ 19
David & Jeanne Heidler, authors
Washington’s Circle: The Creation of a President (Random House 2015)
2. John Adams ................................................ 39
David McCullough, author
John Adams (Simon & Schuster 2001)
3. Thomas Jefferson .......................................... 47
Peter Onuf, author
The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (University of Virginia Press 2007) and several other
books on Jefferson
4. James Madison ............................................. 67
David O. Stewart, author
Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America (Simon & Schuster 2015)
The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution (Simon & Schuster 2007)
5. The Founders’ Battle with Freedom of Speech ........... 79
Charles Slack, author
Liberty’s First Crisis: Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech
(Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 2015)
II. NINETEENTH CENTURY, AFTER THE FOUNDERS
6. Andrew Jackson ............................................ 97
H.W. Brands, author
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (Doubleday 2005)
7. Abraham Lincoln ......................................... 111
Ronald C. White, Jr., author
A. Lincoln (Random House 2009) and two other books on Lincoln
8. Abraham Lincoln ......................................... 129
Harold Holzer, author
Lincoln and the Power of the Press:The War for Public Opinion (Simon & Schuster 2014)
and several other books on Lincoln
9. Ulysses S. Grant ........................................... 143
Jean Edward Smith, author
Grant (Simon & Schuster 2001)
III. TURN OF THE CENTURY UNTIL THE NEW DEAL
10. The Roosevelts ............................................ 155
Ken Burns, author
(with Geoffrey Ward) The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (Knopf 2014)
documentary filmmaker, The Roosevelts, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Fall 2014
11. Theodore Roosevelt ...................................... 169
Douglas Brinkley, author
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (HarperCollins 2009)
12. Woodrow Wilson .......................................... 185
A. Scott Berg, author
Wilson (Putnam 2013)
13. Calvin Coolidge ........................................... 195
Amity Shlaes, author
Coolidge (Harper 2013)
14. Hoover, Coolidge, and the Birth of
Republican Conservatism 209
................................
David Davenport, author
(with Gordon Lloyd) of The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism:
A Defining Rivalry (Hoover Institution 2013)
Amity Shlaes, author
Coolidge (Harper 2013)
IV. THIRTIES THROUGH FIFTIES
15. Franklin D. Roosevelt ..................................... 227
James Tobin, author
The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency (Simon & Schuster 2013)
16. Franklin D. Roosevelt ..................................... 237
Geoffrey Ward, author (with Ken Burns)
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (Knopf 2014) and three other books on
Franklin D. Roosevelt
17. Harry S. Truman .......................................... 249
David McCullough, author
Truman (Simon & Schuster 1992)
18. Dwight Eisenhower ....................................... 257
Jean Edward Smith, author
Eisenhower: In War and Peace (Random House 2012)
V. THE MODERN ERA
19. John F. Kennedy ........................................... 273
Sheldon M. Stern, author
The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths vs. Reality
(Stanford Nuclear Age Series 2012) and two other books on JFK and the Missile Crisis
20. Lyndon B. Johnson and the Civil Rights Movement ..... 295
Taylor Branch, author
At Canaan’s Edge: America in the Kid Years (Simon and Schuster 2006)
and three other books on the American Civil Rights Movement;
Mark Updegrove, author
Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency (Crown 2012)
21. Richard Nixon ............................................ 313
Evan Thomas, author
Being Nixon: A Man Divided (Random House 2015)
22. The Nixon Tapes 1971-1972 ............................... 335
Douglas Brinkley, author (with Luke Nichter)
The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2014)
23. Ronald Reagan ........................................... 345
H.W. Brands, author
Reagan:The Life (Doubleday 2015)
24. George H.W. Bush ........................................ 365
Jon Meacham, author
Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush
(Random House 2015)
25. Bill Clinton ............................................... 385
David Maraniss, author
First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton (Simon & Schuster 1995)
26. The Post-World War II “Presidents Club” ............... 399
Michael Duffy, author (with Nancy Gibbs)
The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (Simon & Schuster 2012)
VI. PRESIDENTIAL INSIDERS
27. Lynda Johnson Robb & Larry Temple
on Lyndon B. Johnson 411
....................................
Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon B. Johnson;
Larry Temple, White House council for President Lyndon B. Johnson
28. Henry Kissinger on His Life, Richard Nixon,
and the Current International Situation 425
.................
Henry Kissinger, National security advisor and secretary of state to Presidents
Nixon and Ford; and author of fifteen books on American foreign policy
29. James A. Baker, III on Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush 437
...................................
James A. Baker, III, White House chief of state and secretary of treasury to
President Ronald Reagan; secretary of state to President George H.W. Bush; and
author of The Politics of Diplomacy (Putnam 1995); and Work Hard, Stud…and Keep Out
of Politics: Adventures and Lessons From an Unexpected
Public Life (Putnam 2006)
30. John Sununu on George H.W. Bush ...................... 453
John Sununu, White House chief of state to President George H.W. Bush;
and author of The Quiet Man: The Indispensable Presidency of George H.W. Bush
(Broadside 2015)
31. Andy Card on Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush 469
.................
Andy Card, White House staff for President Ronald Reagan; Deputy White House
chief of staff and secretary of transportation for President George H.W. Bush; and
White House chief of staff for President George W. Bush
Closing Thoughts 489
............................................
Acknowledgements 494
..........................................
Index of Topics Covered 497
.....................................
Foreword
KEN BURNS
W
orking on historical documentaries over the last thirty-five years, I’ve been
interviewed thousands of times. Some of my questioners have had little knowledge
about the subjects we’ve covered, but they have known enough to throw me
softballs. Others have had a preconceived idea about the niche in history we’ve portrayed in a
particular film and wanted to argue to show me how smart they were. Very few interviewers have
removed their egos from our conversation and still challenged me to go deeper with my subject.
Talmage Boston is among the few who do exactly that.
Two of my great loves in American history—Abraham Lincoln and the game of baseball—
are what first brought Talmage and me together in 2009. We met at the Dallas Center for the
Performing Arts shortly before my presentation there to promote PBS’s first showing of The
National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Talmage said he was thinking about writing a book about
similarities between Jackie Robinson and Abraham Lincoln and asked me to weigh in. When we
finished our conversation, Talmage gave me copies of the two baseball history books he’d written.
A few weeks later, when I returned to Dallas, he warmed me up in the Texas Rangers batting
cage before it was time for me to throw out the first pitch at that night’s ballgame (a strike!). Then
we watched the game together, and I told him about my next film for PBS, The Tenth Inning, a
four-hour sequel to my earlier eighteen-hour documentary, Baseball.
A few months after that game, Talmage made arrangements for me to talk about The Tenth
Inning (shortly before it was shown on PBS) in front of a large crowd at an event sponsored by
the Southern Methodist University Athletic Forum lecture series. That was the first time I was
interviewed onstage by Talmage. Aware of how much he knew about baseball from our prior
conversations and from reading his books, I expected him to hurl hard verbal baseballs over
the plate—and no softballs. He didn’t disappoint me, and every fan of our National Pastime
knows that a veteran batter can hit a high-speed baseball much farther than a slow-pitch softball.
“Haven’t an increasing number of Latin American ballplayers gotten the opportunity to use their
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