It's Monday, What are You Reading? The Wise Men

It's Monday, What are You Reading?
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas

This post is the one-hundred and twenty-sixth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

https://www.amazon.com/Wise-Men-Friends-World-They-ebook/dp/B00768DB2S/

This book, nearly 900 words, was on my Wish List to get on Kindle. Annette sent a Father's Day gift card, so I used part of that to get this. It may take me a few years to read, but should be worth it! I haven’t read a lot about this period in recent years, so thought it would be a good idea!
These were 'the adults in the room' to the national leaders I grew up with...

Book Description from Amazon:

A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)

It's Monday, What are You Reading? The Loyal Son

It's Monday, What are You Reading?
The Loyal Son 

by Daniel Mark Epstein

 

This post is the one-hundred and twenty-fifth entry for this meme suggested by Sheila@ One Persons Journey Through A World of Books. [Entries 22-25 in the series were posted at  the Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories]

 

https://www.amazon.com/Loyal-Son-War-Franklins-House/dp/0345544218/


This is my April 2017 Early-Reader book from LibraryThing… in the Colonial/Founding Fathers category of historical nonfiction, still my favorite!! ;-)

Book Description from Amazon:

The dramatic story of a founding father, his illegitimate son, and the tragedy of their conflict during the American Revolution—from the acclaimed author of The Lincolns.

Ben Franklin is the most lovable of America’s founding fathers. His wit, his charm, his inventiveness—even his grandfatherly appearance—are legendary. But this image obscures the scandals that dogged him throughout his life. In The Loyal Son, award-winning historian Daniel Mark Epstein throws the spotlight on one of the more enigmatic aspects of Franklin’s biography: his complex and confounding relationship with his illegitimate son William.

When he was twenty-four, Franklin fathered a child with a woman who was not his wife. He adopted the boy, raised him, and educated him to be his aide. Ben and William became inseparable. After the famous kite-in-a-thunderstorm experiment, it was William who proved that the electrical charge in a lightning bolt travels from the ground up, not from the clouds down. On a diplomatic mission to London, it was William who charmed London society. He was invited to walk in the procession of the coronation of George III; Ben was not.

The outbreak of the American Revolution caused a devastating split between father and son. By then, William was royal governor of New Jersey, while Ben was one of the foremost champions of American independence. In 1776, the Continental Congress imprisoned William for treason. George Washington made efforts to win William’s release, while his father, to the world’s astonishment, appeared to have abandoned him to his fate.

A fresh take on the combustible politics of the age of independence, The Loyal Son is a gripping account of how the agony of the American Revolution devastated one of America’s most distinguished families. Like Nathaniel Philbrick and David McCullough, Epstein is a storyteller first and foremost, a historian who weaves together fascinating incidents discovered in long-neglected documents to draw us into the private world of the men and women who made America.

Happy Reading!

Dr. Bill  ;-)