Another of my WWII reads, but an absolutely first-rate oral history that, like the Bradley bio, seems to have threads that connect to RAH's background -- perhaps not quite so much as the Bradley, but enough to make me mention it here.

"In rural America, a man's word was his bond, and a handshake sealed all deals. Harry Truman, growing up in nearby Independence, Missouri, a few years earlier said, 'You never had to sign a piece of paper when you made a bargain....you just lived up to what you'd agreed on....That's what your word meant."

Seems pertinent to RAH, particularly when he ran into the problem of author rights during and after WWII, when the contract he had signed with Astounding ran directly counter to the oral agreement he had with Campbell -- and led to him not returning to the stable after the war, along with other better-known factors.

1953 speech by Eisenhower, describing growing up in Abilene, Kansas: "Now, that town had a code and I was raised as a boy to prize that code. It was: Meet anyone face to face with whom you disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an enraged citizenry. If you met him face-to-face and took the same risks as he did, you could get away with almost anything, as long as the bullet was in front."

There is more comparing it to the fifties, but that struck me as very much like the values of BTH, and the general attitude RAH had about dealing with your problems. It does explain the Arthur Clarke confrontation in the eighties.

One of his childhood friends said: "It never occurred to him [Eisenhower] that the world owed him a living. He believed in getting ahead on his own."

Think TCWWTW and Bill.

And this, which may explain the slew of anecdotes about people RAH cut out of his life: "There were certain things he did not believe in, personal revenge, for example, personal vengeance. He did not believe in getting even; he did not hold grudges, but he did not forgive people either; if they had done something to offend him, they simply no longer existed."

There is this midwestern culture that forms Bradley and Eisenhower and RAH, and all three of them left the midwest behind and rarely returned, and never lived there again after their youth -- but they took those values with them, and when the world disappointed them or upset them, all three of them tended to promote those values.

One of the striking things about RAH's late works is how much he is re-creating those values for a younger generation to take on.

What is also striking is that his rebelliousness, his heretical side, struck out against much of the matrix that produced those values -- the religious fundamentalism, the blue-belly painting, the parochialism, and so forth.

He doesn't ever seem to have considered that in rejecting much of that restriction, he was undercutting what he wanted to promote from it as well.

You probably already know it, but you can skip - if not hunt down and burn - the recent biography Ike. A complete waste of time and dead trees.

I didn't know, but having read Stephen Ambrose's multi-volume bio, I hadn't planned on reading another. I was just attracted to the oral history aspects.

Fluffy bunny name-dropping and speculation throughout. I read it early and then read a number of reviews that excoriated Korda for it. His interest and focus seems to be that (dimly recalling) his father was an attache or something who crossed DDE's path, and that was his qualification for writing the bio.

I can usually sift nuggets from second-rate books and move on, but this one is a stinker.

Personally, I go right for the primary sources. Ike's own memoirs of WWII and his presidency are pretty first rate.

Yes, I do too -- although later secondary sources can be useful correctives for any number of issues -- mistaken memories, obfuscations, and outright lies.

The Bradley autobio I discussed in another post does much of this for earlier sources, such as Patton, Monty, and Ike.

This anecdotal history is a fine read. Very revealing.

Peter, for the general run of people, they don't think about why they believe what they believe. As is spoofed in reverse in the classic "Inherit the Wind", "I do not think about,,,the things I do not think about."

The blue-belly painting is a reference Heinlein makes that when everyone around you paints their belly blue, you must prepare to do so too.

And yes, in America, there is an intense surface connection between behavior and church attendance -- or used to be. Lots of Americans these days don't attend church, and still call themselves Christians. but as a boy, we went to church because if we didn't, other people would not associate with us socially.

Eisenhower began attending church regularly as a part of his presidency, for the same reason.

It's always seemed to me ironic that Reagan got the born-again vote, but rarely attended church, while Clinton was, and is, a devout church-goer.

And yes, that undercuts the connection in modern times. But with the rise of fundamentalism in this country over the past three decades, as evidenced by the elections of Reagan, and especially Bush -- and the building in the last 10-20 years of enormous nondemoninational fundamentalist churches, I think that strain of American public life known as Great Awakenings is in full roar again -- perhaps in the Fifth of Sixth iteration.

Does that make more sense, or open more questions? Both? Neither?

But I do feel like RAH never really pondered what would happen to the general run of human being if one rejected what he rejected, simply because he retained the sense of morals, manners, and (selective) mores that he did. He kept the good stuff, and threw away the bad, as so many thinking people do -- but I find that most people, particularly when they are not trained to think by our culture, educational system, and the literalism of many fundamentalist faiths, simply do not think -- at all.

Of course, they say they think -- but try to get one of them to examine what is unexamined, and they get very, very frustrated and angry.

Which is why they don't like Heinlein....

The reference is to the ancient Celts as the Romans found them.

You too, Geo?

I always have at least four books going lol

FOUR!!?? Shameless promiscuity.......g

I should get a t-shirt written up to say things like "will work for books...."