Randall's early work in this biography is drawn primarily from Washington's own letters. Obviously no better source exists on Washington's thoughts than these, and in this regard Randall fairly interprets the writings without bias or misconstruction. Washington's early campaigns as an English-officer-wannabe and his early courtship of Martha Dandridge are poignantly human, but once the Revolution begins, Washington almost drops from the text. Only sparingly do we see Washington the man during these 8 years, but rather the results of Washington the military commander (something retold in countless histories and biographies). Once President, Randall tells us too little of Washington's influence on the unprecedented office of Chief Executive and its relationships with Congress and foreign powers, something vitally important to American History. Overall, the first half of this biography tells a clear picture from Washington's own thoughts and ideas, but fails to follow this precept in the second half. Throughout the book, Randall appends lengthy phrases between his subject and verb (sentence-ending verbs), much like the 18th-century correspondence he followed (a common practice then, but tiresome and objectionable in this book). On the whole, the work bogs down in its subject matter and its semantics, becomes tedious in the reading and arguably fails to deliver on "a life" so promised.

Unlike the first volume where Jefferson dominated every page, Madison is virtually invisible in the first 400 pages. During his administration, his principles and acts were either thwarted by a bungling 13th Congress, or superseded by an energetic 14th Congress. As well (according to Adams) this was the last age in which ambassadors and envoys carried so much weight in the administration. Afterwards the Congress became the premier power in the United States, with ambassadors playing important but less conspicuous roles, and the President becoming less of a political force. In the first 400 pages, Adams painstakingly describes the diplomatic engagements that embroiled us into a war with England and France, and then brilliantly describes the naval and land battles that occurred during the War of 1812. After Washington was burned (for which Madison was jeered and vilified when passing from village to village), the United States broke into an economic vitality not known before (which tended to make the public forget the burning of Washington). Massachusetts, which had threatened secession with Connecticut and Rhode Island, was humbled by the new Republican Treasurer, whose autocratic policies helped to reduce one state's superiority over another. An interesting and energetic portrayal of life in early America, and the sudden maturation process of our diplomatic and economic infancy.

Fantastic collection of sources (American, Tory, Whig, British, etc) that tells the chronological tale of the American Revolution. Troop movements, political undertones, the effects on the communities, the horrors and kindnesses of villains and heroes, and the full kaleidoscope of the human experience are generously provided here. The book moves from the ride of Paul Revere to the moving resignation of Washington's commission, a very dramatic narrative pieced together skillfully by a wide variety of independent accounts.

This book collects together Paine's Common Sense (which was instrumental in collecting and gathering America's attention to the benefits of strict independence from Great Britain); his letters or series entitled "the American Crisis," which galvanizes his previous topics; gives a brief account of his engineering work for arches bridges; provides another span of letters on his involvement in the French Revolution, and finishes with his Age of Reason, in which he examines and debunks the Bible. Though his reasoning and conclusions may alarm some and even offend others, his thinking and writing is lucid and cogent, and for reflective minds will provide much food for thought. Accused of sophistry and impudence by some of his contemporaries, his reasoning is normally sound and simple, as he inquires into the root of things, and only seldom does he make debating points fit only for the playground. A sensible and likable man, Paine's writing should engage any American for its historical sense, any lover or researcher interested in human rights and the hope of removing human misery, and any person interested in reading the entertaining but vital arguments of a man whose love of liberty and order forced him late in life to become one of America's most influential revolutionary and socially-minded voices.

The first dozen pages of this book promised one of the best biographies I would likely read, when I was quickly disabused of my expectations. Though Pringle ably exposes Roosevelt's political theories and doctrines and their strange inceptions, the presentation of the book tediously presents a few details, then gives Roosevelt's reaction, then a new set of details, then Roosevelt's reaction, ad infinitum. I realize that histories and biographies are usually chronologically linear, but even though Pringle runs forward or looks back as it suits the situation, the whole presentation seems a tedious catalog of action and reaction.

Lincoln very engagingly takes the reader into the private memoirs of hundreds of principal characters, into the thinking of Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin, and into the changing and complex fabric of Russian life during its Civil War. Every page breathes the idea "revolution" as the cure-all in the Reds' minds for every ill in Russian society, while the Whites seem more bent on democracy or a dictatorship (like the tsarist days), so long as there was some kind of order, during a period when "corruption" was their own festering and ultimately destructive cancer. Politics, the maker of strange bedfellows, and a background as broad and as varied as Russia itself, make for key components in this fascinating examination of political theory and efforts at self-government on the heels of the First World War.

Adams' work here ranks with Macaulay and Carlyle in terms of telling an intricate history through the private letters and conversations of the players involved. From the first pages where he describes the America over which Jefferson presided, Adams clearly defines idealogies and principles as they were defended and practiced by the Federalists and Republicans of the day. Throughout Jefferson's two terms, the president was forced to abandon favorite principles and to defend others that were ulimately (if not immediately) untenable. Through skillful hands we watch how moods changed and policies switched, and how the main characters attempted to reconcile their inconsistencies. Jefferson hoped to expose the wrongfulness of Federalist policies, yet wound up forwarding the same tenets in his management. The President who rose to such a height of popularity and power left the office as disgraced and as generally disliked as any Chief Executive before or after. A masterful work about eight important and formative years in the early republic.

From the title, one would think this a type of travel journal, a panorama of episodes along the way, a sequence of stations between the starting off point and the destination. Instead, the overall weight of the book is given to glaciers, their descriptions, their influence on the landscape, their geological record, the discovery of new glaciers, and other characteristics of these moving rivers of ice. While Muir offers descriptive powers unequaled among authors on nature, never repeating himself though constantly repeating his subject, the sheer repetition tends to bog the work down. Two whole pages might contribute to our view of a particular glacier, and suddenly Muir reports that he's finished a 200-mile leg of his journey on foot. He tells us when he's climbed a glacier, and along the way we've missed an entire week. Time and space almost have no medium in this publication, utterly lost when gazing upon a glacier. For nature lovers who will never go to Alaska, the descriptions in this book make the ranges and glaciers come alive in print, but as a dramatic journey, a travelogue, or a field manual for the Alaskan bush, this book forms only a vague shadow.

Better than even Eisenhower and certainly better than Patton, MacArthur tells us a little about himself, his family and his father's legacy before seeing his first (and later decorated) action in WWI. Taking over at West Point in 1919, his book begins to expose particular weaknesses in American idealogy when it comes to the "expense of defense." As MacArthur continued his tale, I could scarcely trust my eyes. In WWII, the Pacific theater had no unified command like Europe and other theaters. MacArthur controlled only part of his forces; those not under his command were oftentimes pulled away on other missions, sometimes at the last moment. For a time he enjoyed command over his own air power, but later he lost this luxury as other missions took precedence. MacArthur's tactics and strategy are always clearly defined and easily acceptable as intelligent courses. His hope and duty to protect his men appears on every page. His objections to frontal assaults on what he termed "militarily insignificant" objectives (both to the Allies and to Japan) on Okinawa and Iwo Jima made me groan anew for the men we lost there. "Only poor commanders turn in large casualties" he wrote. His masterly reconstruction of Japan (1945-50) shows his open and fair concepts of what we now call "nation building." He knew that the reconstruction and reforms would not succeed unless authorized by the people of Japan. Shouts of rage greeted him in 1945 when he entered Tokyo; tears of sorrow witnessed his departure. In Korea, my stomach turned on almost every page, as Mac describes the indecision or timidity that put men in harm's way without a clear objective, without support, and without even the formal declaration of war. The "police action" as Truman insisted it was seemed to Mac (and to any reader or soldier) as actual war, yet the more acceptable phrase continues to be repeated today. Persons who think so today should read this book and reconsider. For instance, the mass murder in Bosnia in the 1990s was diabolically reduced to "ethnic cleansing." In the 1940s we called this "extermination." When the concentration camps ran full speed in Poland in 1945, the German clerks merely wrote "released" whenever they bothered to record names. This book gives a heroic picture of American military might and the idealogy of freedom, but also a horrid picture of inaction and misinformed policy, and a glimpse behind a curtain of US Government-propagated disinformation.

As always, Molvar gives us an in-depth look at what we need to know: the weather, the terrain, the animals and their normal habitats, reading from maps, packing supplies, essentials on clothing, what foods on the trail to avoid and what to watch for, how to interpret the forests, etc. There is very little in the book that a backpacker or angler would not find pertinent to his visit to Alaska. The writing flows smoothly and evenly, and no part gets greater treatment than the rest. I recommend this as a useful manual to hikers and campers ready to visit Alaska, both novice and veteran. Molvar's firsthand experience shows on every page.