Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Tom Watson Agrarian Rebel by C. Vann Woodward ISBN: 0-19-500707-7 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: March, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Searing and Memorable
Comment: Watson's story is a fantastic one, and this book tells it well. This book is superlative to follow Georgia politics in years Watson affected it. One is totally repelled by Watson after 1904, not only by his vicious anti-Catholicism but even worse by his role in the Leo Frank case. This book is a sheerly interesting book about an awful man. It is of interest that Woodward describes Autobiography: The Story of an Old Man's Life, by Nathaniel E. Harris as "one of the most remarkable books ever written." I wonder where I can find the book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Not only a seminal scholarly work, but a literary classic
Comment: Woodward, the dean of southern historians, was the author of numerous definitive works on the south from 1865-1900, including THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW and ORIGINS OF THE NEW SOUTH. He won the Pulitzer prize for editing the diaries of Mary Chestnut, but he probably deserved it for this, his first work. Woodward was a master prose stylist, but I don't quite think he ever quite matched this book in wit and irony. The first half of the book is replete with CHARACTERS worthy of Anthony Trollope, John Brown Gordon, the "plumed knight of Appomattox" and main player in one of the great stock market scandals of the day; Joe Brown, the former confederate governor of Georgia also known as "Old Judge-MENT"; Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice-president of the Confederacy and a force to be reckoned with even in declining health; and last but not least Robert Toombs, a TRUE unreconstructed rebel, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Union after the war, who hated the railroads (and the use of public funds in their development) almost as much as he hated the North. Even though he was unable to hold public office, he maintained influence just by his force of personality. Above them all is Watson, a man who loves (and hates) not wisely but too well. A man of infinite paradoxes. An apologist for the "old south" who proclaimed the common interests between black farmers and white farmers. A white man who, more than once, would defend black political allies from lynching, but later would be the most vociferious defender of the practice. A crusader against corporations, he would grow fearful of socialism. A democrat with authoritarian personality. A man of the people who was one of the largest landowners (and landlords) in Georgia. A powerful "demagogue" (in the root sense of the word) who was a remarkably BAD politician and political strategist, eventually turning on every constituency and ally. Incorruptable, but in the end wholly given over to his (and his region's) prejudices, hatreds, and pathology.
This is a definitive biography, but not the last word on Watson--certainly not the last word on populism. As much as we see of Watson's psyche, this book is very much an account of a public life, the personal dimension and familial relationships are only touched on, sometimes only hinted at. If every there was a subject fit for a "psychobiography" it is Watson.
As to the movement he lead, the somewhat idealized portrait needs to be balance with reference to THE WOOL-HAT BOYS and BLACKS AND THE POPULIST REVOLT. But when all is said, this book is a classic. Worthy of sharing shelfspace with Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON and even Trollope's politcal novels and Gore Vidal's historical novels.
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding scholarship & elegantly written
Comment: Woodward was a master, and is sorely missed. Tom Watson is an epic and tragic story of a man, and the history of Populism as a movement, with all the aspirations and limits of American democracy. The single best work of history i have ever read. If it is out of print, that is a true shame.
 |
Title: The Leo Frank Case (A Brown Thrasher Book) by Leonard Dinnerstein ISBN: 0820321451 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
 |
Title: And the Dead Shall Rise : The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by STEVE ONEY ISBN: 0679421475 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
 |
Title: The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward, William S. McFeely ISBN: 0195146905 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
 |
Title: Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, by Comer Vann, Woodward ISBN: 0807100196 Publisher: Louisiana State University Press Pub. Date: January, 1972 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
 |
Title: The Silent and the Damned: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by Robert Seitz Frey, Nancy Thompson Frey, Nancy Thompson-Frey, John Seigenthaler ISBN: 081541188X Publisher: Cooper Square Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
