On first encountering a very strange book!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

The nation's latest best-seller:
There's nothing so dumb that it won't be hailed within our upper-end press corps, just so long as it flogs a currently popular theme.

Consider Alexis Coe's remarkable book, You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.

We first encountered this very strange book when the Washington Post let Coe write a Sunday Outlook piece, Five Myths About George Washington.

We thought that piece was perhaps a bit odd. A few of its links were comically "hinky."

The very next day, Coe wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times. We thought this seemed even more odd:
COE (2/17/20): For nearly two and a half centuries, most of the stories Americans have told themselves about their country’s past have been by and for white men—and it shows, particularly when it comes to presidential history. When female historians have managed to elbow their way in, however, they often remind us that we don’t always know what we think we know.

My own preoccupation with Washington began with an attempt to read between the lines of his major biographies. All of his biographers are obsessed with his body; Ron Chernow’s “Washington: A Life,” to take just one example, sometimes reads like a romance novel: Washington, Mr. Chernow writes, was “powerfully rough-hewn and endowed with matchless strength. When he clenched his jaw, his cheek and jaw muscles seemed to ripple right through his skin.”
That sounded a little bit odd. Were all of Washington biographers really "obsessed with his body?" We decided to take a look at Coe's book.

We proceeded to do so. In the Introduction, we found some peculiar claims about Washington's male biographers. We include Coe's actual title:
Introduction
The Thigh Men of Dad History


[...]

First, his biographers stick a portrait of the man [Joseph] Ellis calls America's “foundingest father" on the cover. Many favor Washington's most iconic image, his rigid and gloomy face on the one-dollar bill, but most prefer a painting that shows his whole body, because his thighs drive them wild. [Richard] Brookhiser, examining a portrait from 1792, can't help but notice how “well-developed” they are. Ellis admires how they "allowed him to grip a horse's flanks tightly and hold his seat in the saddle with uncommon ease." For [Ron] Chernow, Washington's "muscular thighs" were just the beginning. He was a “superb physical specimen, with a magnificent physique...powerfully rough-hewn and endowed with matchless strength. When he clenched his jaw, his cheek and jaw muscles seemed to ripple right through his skin."

[...]

The Thigh Men, as I came to think of these kinds of biographers over the years, are a decidedly "size matters" crowd. Chernow's book on Washington, which won the Pulitzer Prize, clocks in at almost a thousand pages, a record among single-volume editions on our first president—in no small part because it takes every opportunity to remind readers that the great general was very, very manly...After a while, it begins to feel as though there's something hinky behind these biographers' repetitive insistence on Washington's conspicuous masculinity—because there is.
Those are paragraphs 3 and 5 of Coe's Introduction. We thought her claims seemed possibly odd.

Really? Do Washington's thighs actually "drive [his biographers] wild?" (The italics belong to Coe.) Do they drive his biographers wild in a way which involves "something hinky?"

Can Washington's traditional and recent biographers—"The Thigh Men," as this borderline crackpot dubs them—sensibly be described as "a decidedly 'size matters' crowd?" And just how "repetitive" is their "insistence on Washington's conspicuous masculinity?"

Meanwhile, is Chernow's book really so long—allegedly, "almost a thousand pages"—because "it takes every opportunity to remind readers that the great general was very, very manly?"

(For the record: excluding endnotes, Chernow's book ends at page 817.)

Coe's claims struck us as possibly odd. We decided to check them out. We started by checking to see how often the words "thigh" or "thighs" appear in the three books Coe specifically cites.

We'll tell you what we found next week. But this is an extremely strange book, and it's being hailed by various flyweights across our upper-end press corps.

We still can't show you what Brian Williams said when he interviewed Coe on February 20. We can tell you this—he specifically identified the passage about "The Thigh Men" and their "hinky" attractions as his favorite part of the book.

We're not sure we've ever seen a dumber or stranger book. But because it flogs a currently popular theme—those white male historians screwed everything up!—the children want to affirm it.

It seems to us that significant chunks of this (extremely slender) book have imaginably been "borrowed" from the very sources its author is constantly sliming. But so what? Doris Kearns Goodwin blurbs this very strange book on the back cover, perhaps in admiration of one of the statements about Washington which grace the start of the book:
"I heard that motherfucker had like thirty goddamned dicks."
BRAD NEELY, COMIC BOOK ARTIST, YOUTUBE VIDEO (2009)
The next statement (there are four in all) is rather tangy too. Does anyone know if Doris Kearns Goodwin has ever set eyes on this book?

Personally, we have no views about George Washington. Beyond that, we have no views about Ron Chernow, Coe's number-one target, or about his various books, none of which we've read.

We do have a view about people who peruse this very strange book and feel they want to affirm it.

This very slender, highly padded, rather derivative book is very strange and highly peculiar pretty much all the way down. We'd say its author could use some help—and needless to say, she got it!

Coe's book is now a New York Times best-seller! A remarkably credulous New York Times editor delivers the good news here.

More on this peculiar matter next week. But a major nation can't run on such fuel. If you doubt that, just take a look around.

Donald J. Trump is now in the White House. Such are the wages of the inanity unto death.

70 comments:

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    In other words, she knew what she was doing, and she did it right. Made a bunch of dough. Your fellow zombies love this shit, and they get what they want. What's your problem, dear Bob?

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  2. Odd. Everything that Somerby decides to write about causes Trump to get elected.

    He never asks if the previous 3000 biographies of Washington, by and large by men, had any effect on shaping the electorate.

    No, it is only when a liberal, a “woke” one we presume, decides to take a fresh look at GW that the usual WWC suspects react.

    Liberals best not counter the prevailing views with alternative ones, if Somerby is any guide.

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  3. Meanwhile, Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash”, another previous bestseller, has a new book, ranking higher than Coe’s, entitled “Profiles In Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite.” Based on the stunning accuracy of Clinton Cash, I’m sure this one is equally truthful.

    But I digress. Of course Coe’s book has a much more profound effect on our world. There is absolutely no reason for TDH to say a single word about Schweizer.

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    Replies
    1. If you decide that there ever is a reason to talk about Schweizer’s book, be comforted in the knowledge that you can start your own blog and do that.

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    2. Cecelia, don't play dumb. This is supposed to be a liberal blog that examines the mainstream media. There is nothing "liberal" about what Somerby wrote here today. An actual liberal would have talked about the coverage of Schweizer's book and the damage done when the press covered his previous book, not complained about the oddity of Coe's new book. Somerby has clearly forgotten how to pretend to be liberal these days. Attacking feminists for criticizing male biographers isn't very liberal.

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    3. Anonymouse 4:12pm, are the rules on what liberals are suppose to discuss written down somewhere? Maybe a pamphlet by Saul Alinsky or something? Rule #1 Don’t criticize women critiquing men or some other bit of brilliance in that vein?

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    4. Liberals are liberals because they share a set of values and support policies consistent with their ideology. These are typically written down as the Democratic Party Platform. You can go back and read the last one (from 2016). Of course there will be disagreement on one or another plank, but liberals share a substantial overlap, or they do not call themselves liberals.

      Liberals support women's struggle for equality, whether it manifests as equal pay for equal work, access to political participation, or respect for the work of women trying to break into male-dominated fields (such as writing of history).

      Somerby doesn't just criticize women, he obsesses over them and stalks them (especially Maddow) in his blog. And he doesn't focus on their premises and arguments -- he focuses on them, mocking their age, college attendance, and so on. In Coe's case, he doesn't mount any kind of defense of male historians but uses words such as "odd" and "hinky" to describe Coe's work, never telling us anything about it, or why he considers her work odd. That is just an attack. And what triggered it? Insufficient respect for the manliness of Washington's thighs, apparently. No other reason is given (except he was tipped off by a cave-anthropologist).

      Liberals don't do that. Sexist assholes do.

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    5. Liberals should realize when they’re mewing the most self- referential crap in the world, and they should think that liberals prize intellectual rigor and authenticity in their work. Liberals should know the difference between literary criticism and silliness.

      Both Coe and you should.

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    6. I don't know that Coe or I have claimed to be liberals. I have been saying that Somerby isn't a liberal even though he refers to himself as one, when he says "us liberals" and so on.

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    7. "It's a losing strategy girl"

      Meh. It's a standard cult practice, is what it is. And that's the only way a cult can exist: by constantly searching for, exposing, denouncing, and banishing the infidels. Strict homogeneity is a must.

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    8. I vote @5:28 off the island.

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    9. Sanders himself has said he is not a Democrat.

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  4. Somerby's attack on Coe is perhaps because of her feminist scholarship. He uses words such as odd, but his objection is probably to her different perspective on a figure with more than enough male biographers.

    Somerby says he is busily counting the number of references to thighs, but how does he know what the standard number of such references is? I would think that one such reference is odd, because what does it have to do with being President or a leader of the American Revolution? Nothing at all. Why would a biographer insert such a description? And I agree that it is hinky and perhaps a little gay, although Somerby avoids that word like the plague, just as he avoids the word "feminist" so we won't know the basis for his actual objections to Coe. And he barely mentions that Coe's new book is intended as humor, or that her first book, now being made into a film, was about a lesbian romance that ended in murder in 1892 Memphis.

    Somerby wonders why Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a blurb. Coe worked with Kearns on a three-part series about Washington on PBS.

    Somerby's penchant for defining anything that deviates from his own button-down sexualty as odd or "hinky" or icky, is about as far from liberal, much less "woke," as you can get. He is sounding like a sour old man who has been passed by in the culture wars but needs to rage against uppity women and The Gays, for being too damn odd.

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  5. "clocks in at almost a thousand pages, a record among single-volume editions on our first president"

    Then later Somerby says that the book ends on pg 817, leaving off the end-notes and index.

    This is an interesting comparison because it illustrates the difference between an actual historian and a layman (such as Somerby). An untrained reader will skip the endnotes (which is the current name for putting all the footnotes at the end of the book, to make life easier for production staff and any readers who find footnotes annoying). A history aficionado or professional historian will look at every footnote, as they are mentioned in text, finding the references almost as interesting as the text (which is a straightforward summary that excludes controversies and diversions into ambiguities and unresolved questions that historians debate among themselves, aka the fun stuff). Saying that those last almost 200 pages of notes and indexing are not part of the book itself shows that Somerby is not only an amateur, but one who doesn't care about the fine points (except when they concern thighs).

    Somerby says that Coe's references are "hinky". He doesn't ever tell us what he means by that. Does he think that her references are going to be the same sources used by the male historians? How would you find anything new in the same old sources? Or is he just trying to damn Coe with a meaningless word that implies that she doesn't have the credentials to be writing history, or making fun of previous historians, as it appears from reviews that she is doing in her book. That makes her book "meta-history" and not "revisionist history".

    In any case, Somerby's objections make me want to read Coe's book. And I don't care anything about George Washington or his previous biographers. I was a student of history at UCLA when Fawn Brodie was denied tenure in the history department because too many of her biographies made the bestseller list. They also objected that she jumped around too much in time, writing about Thaddeus Stevens, Thomas Jefferson, and Joseph Smith, and finally, Richard Nixon, instead of sticking to one time period. Those are the kinds of objections that kept women off of faculties in the bad old days. She may also have been called "hinky" too.

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    Replies
    1. Hinky was a word originally used by the author. Somerby used the word to make fun of her, Speaking of untrained readers ;)

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    2. Somerby has a habit of addressing articles that are behind the NY Times paywall. That means that unless he quotes or explains, people who don't subscribe have no way to follow what he is complaining about.

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    3. And far from Somerby raging at "The Gays", it was Coe who found it "odd" that Washington's male biographers lauded his physical strength and athleticism.

      Possibly in the way that FDR's male biographers did not.

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    4. It's quoted here Einstein.

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    5. In bold no less.

      What is the matter with you?

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    6. When Somerby used the word "hinky" what do you suppose he meant by it? The same thing as Coe? I doubt it. But you think you know. I don't see enough quoted to know what Coe meant by it, much less Somerby. But you go right ahead believing that you understand everything...

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    7. Everyone rode horses during that time period. Or they walked. In what sense was Washington athletic? It only leaves the gay meaning, to be admiring someone's strong manly thighs.

      I don't have Coe's book, but I suspect that she is mostly suggesting that women might write history different from men. And I don't know why Somerby is objecting to that idea.

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    8. Didn't artists during that time period tend to enhance the actual appearance of a subject, in order to make them fit an ideal or look better? Maybe this thigh thing is attributable to whoever did the painting, but why then would male biographers swoon over his thighs, if they weren't even what Washington looked like?

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    9. Maybe Somerby will quote more of Coe's book so we can find the answer to such questions without spending money.

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    10. "Everyone rode horses during that time period. Or they walked. In what sense was Washington athletic? It only leaves the gay meaning, to be admiring someone's strong manly thighs.

      I don't have Coe's book, but I suspect that she is mostly suggesting that women might write history different from men. And I don't know why Somerby is objecting to that idea."

      I have a hunch that if Coe read this, she'd ask you not to defend her.

      Delete
    11. Google Coe's career and see if your hunch is substantiated.

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    12. "But you go right ahead believing that you understand everything..."

      Look who's talkin', ;)

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    13. If Coe is suggesting that describing the physical attributes of a biographical subject is...homoerotic...when coming from a male author, then Somerby was far too uncritical of her.

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    14. “When Somerby used the word "hinky" what do you suppose he meant by it? The same thing as Coe? I doubt it. But you think you know. I don't see enough quoted to know what Coe meant by it, much less Somerby. But you go right ahead believing that you understand everything“

      Oh, right, it’s a complete puzzle.

      How could we ever ascertain what Coe meant by “hinky” when she was in the process of accusing her male peers of selling the car by butching-up the 1st President?

      What, oh, what could Somerby have meant when he then turned around and used the same word to describe Coe’s links?

      I guess we’ll just never ever know.

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    15. hinky definition: "dishonest or suspect"

      When Somerby uses that word to describe Coe's references, he is saying they are dishonest or suspect.

      Coe used the word as follows: "it begins to feel as though there's something hinky behind these biographers' repetitive insistence on Washington's conspicuous masculinity—because there is."

      So, she is saying that their description of Washington's masculinity is dishonest or suspect. That implies either that he was a 90-lb weakling or not manly, which in those days referred to being gay. More context is needed to know which of these (or which other) interpretation makes sense. But she was calling their descriptions false, suspicious, dishonest.

      It is a major insult, libellous, to call a historian's references dishonest. Academics lose their jobs over that. For a writer, it can affect their ability to publish work. So, when Somerby says that, it is a major accusation and he offers no evidence whatsoever. I find that appalling.

      I assume that Coe says more in her book than what Somerby excerpted. I have no intention of buying a book to settle an internet beef, but I have enough evidence of Somerby's accusation to say that he is seriously out-of-bounds with it.

      What is wrong with him that he would make a charge like that against a woman for the offense of writing a book he doesn't like? Somerby is disgusting!

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    16. Cecelia says:

      "she was in the process of accusing her male peers of selling the car by butching-up the 1st President?"

      Just like Somerby accuses Maddow of doing. Only today, it is Coe's fault for complaining about that sales job, whereas Somerby was the one complaining when it was Maddow doing the selling.

      What does "butching up" mean? Here is one definition:

      "a warning or admonition, among gay men, to affect a more manly comportment when the situation warrants it as in the presence of strangers or when homophobes and rednecks are lurking about"

      But Cecelia said I was all wrong when I suggested that interpretation. Then she turns around and says the same thing herself.

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    17. Anonymouse 8:11pm, so who sues for libel first? Coe’s peers sue her for unconscionable and disgusting wrong of having implied in her book that their work is “dishonest and suspect” or Coe sues Somerby for using her word against her?

      Or maybe they’ll just let bygones be bygones?


      Delete
    18. Anonymouse8:25pm, let me get this straight (no pun intended).

      So Coe wasn’t saying her colleagues were trying to turn GW into a super hero in the way that the NYT declares that our history had been sold to us by white males?

      Coe was implying that her peers thought that Washington, in his powdered wig and frilled shirt, was the sort who needed some butching up lest the hillbillies be in danger of suspecting Gen. George Washington of being a girly man.

      Or Coe was implying that Pres. Washington’s biographers are bunch of slobbering homos with the hots for the Father of the Country?

      You make up your mind on this and get back to me.

      Delete
    19. Somerby could have been less opaque and quoted more of Coe so that we would know what Coe was saying. But what would be the fun (for him) in that? Maybe he'll tell us her thesis in a few weeks, after trashing her book a few more times.

      As has been taught in college-level history classes for 50+ years now, and is well documented, our nation deliberately created myths around its founding fathers in order to create unity and pride in a newly formed nation. Cherry tree, cannot tell a lie, sound familiar? But why would massive thighs be a myth that appeals to anyone? Coe might have explained that, but Somerby doesn't tell us.

      Men, of course, idolize other men. They hang posters of athletes and rock stars on their bedroom walls. Or some chose pictures of Einstein (probably Somerby's choice). Biographers form an emotional bond with their subjects, and perhaps choose them because of an affinity. Hence the heated language. But why thighs?

      I still won't buy and read a book I have no interest in, just to address Somerby's quirks or your goading. How should I know what Coe is saying when Somerby only hints and stops his quotes before any such question is clearly answered?

      If you haven't read Coe's book and don't know the answer yourself, you are just making noise.

      Delete
  6. More about Bernie and African American voters, from Political Wire (Taegan Goddard):

    "“A political advocacy group founded by Bernie Sanders entered into a nondisclosure agreement with an African American political consultant that bars her from discussing a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination at the organization and the Vermont senator’s 2016 presidential campaign,” the AP reports."

    ReplyDelete
  7. How can a book be both derivative and also idiosyncratic?

    "This very slender, highly padded, rather derivative book is very strange and highly peculiar pretty much all the way down. "

    And Somerby has the nerve to complain that it isn't long enough!

    Derivative is perhaps meant to imply that she copied it, but Somerby doesn't want to get sued (as he should be) so he uses this not-quite-right word choice, so we'll still get the message. What a creepy coward this man is!

    And the hate that oozes from his words today! He must really dislike feminist historians who question the over-blown descriptions of historical figures, to have invested so much affect in his attempted take-down of Coe, his latest female target. Would men be this aggressive in their sexism if they understood how much women hate them back for this kind of crap?

    Time for Somerby to hang up his spurs. His exposure of his feelings about women who write, direct, entertain on TV, and otherwise succeed at the jobs he has failed at, is making him a pathetic figure and it is time to retire.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The book is derivative in the author’s fashionable appeal that as a woman, she has something to say that is beyond the mythic-hero castings of her male peers.

      The book is idiosyncratic in it’s contention (evident even in the book’s title) that Washington has been fetishized.

      Delete
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      Delete
  8. It does sound like a dumb book, modeled after the “sex sells” school of writing. Add the word “hinky” and voilá! Some weird kind of sex appeal was introduced. Add some spicy blurbs, with endorsements from popular authors to the book cover: Now you know you’re reading the real thing!

    Aside from the obvious implication that Washington’s contemporary biographers were (gasp!) possibly gay, an obvious inference for the romance-novel readers might be: Maybe Washington was gay!

    Of course, there is an alternate explanation to the biographers’ observations. Maybe Washington really was a magnificent animal.

    If you’ve ever been around men who are physically superior to you in every possible physical dimension, my experience is that I, and any men women around me, obtain a certain sense of humility. How could you do otherwise? It’s an evolutionary imperative. Does ANYTHING mess with a male sliverback gorilla, besides other males?

    Admiration of the human physique is innate in us, and cuts across countless aesthetics, and babes are babes, everyone knows one when they see one, male or female or in-between. We’re like any other species. How else can we know what to fuck? That is, until you grow a pre-frontal lobe, and can get imaginative with a cantaloupe. Never did figure that out. NO sex appeal.

    Another good, quirky essay by Bob.

    Leroy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "How else can we know what to fuck?"

      See, Leroy agrees. How else will those male biographers know who to fuck, if not for men's powerful thighs?

      Delete
  9. https://digbysblog.net/2020/02/which-candidate-would-you-trust-to-manage-a-pandemic/

    ReplyDelete
  10. From Taegan Goddard at Political Wire:

    "At a town hall meeting, Joe Biden was asked about women’s empowerment and “rambled for 19 minutes, and wound up discussing how unfair it is for women’s outfits to be discussed in rape cases — a topic that wasn’t implied in the question,” Politico reports."

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is why dictators are bad -- from Democratic Underground:

    "In what appears to be a rather drastic measure to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID 19), North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un allegedly sanctioned for the execution of the first North Korean patient tested positive for the deadly strain." International Business Times (Singapore)

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  13. Alexis Coe's book was intended to present Washington without the white-washing and hero-making, the puffery of male biographies. Here is her substance (from Amazon):

    Young George Washington was raised by a struggling single mother, demanded military promotions, caused an international incident, and never backed down--even when his dysentery got so bad he had to ride with a cushion on his saddle. But after he married Martha, everything changed. Washington became the kind of man who named his dog Sweetlips and hated to leave home. He took up arms against the British only when there was no other way, though he lost more battles than he won.

    After an unlikely victory in the Revolutionary War cast him as the nation's hero, he was desperate to retire, but the founders pressured him into the presidency--twice. When he retired years later, no one talked him out of it. He left the highest office heartbroken over the partisan nightmare his backstabbing cabinet had created.

    Back on his plantation, the man who fought for liberty must confront his greatest hypocrisy--what to do with the men, women, and children he owns--before he succumbs to death.

    With irresistible style and warm humor, You Never Forget Your First combines rigorous research and lively storytelling that will have readers--including those who thought presidential biographies were just for dads--inhaling every page."

    -----------

    It is hard to escape the impression that Somerby dislikes Coe's book because of an emotional reaction to women taking down the pompous inflation of male heroes. I doubt there is any educated woman who doesn't know that Einstein mistreated his first wife and family. I doubt there is any educated woman who doesn't know that Mozart had a talented sister. But Somerby seems to feel threatened by the realities of history, those that include women's contributions as historical figures or as historians. I first heard about Washington's philandering when I was an undergrad in college in the 1960s. Somerby can't pretend that Coe made all this stuff up, so he must be upset about her tone, which is perhaps insufficiently respectful of male egos.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "This very slender, highly padded, rather derivative book is very strange and highly peculiar pretty much all the way down."

    If the focus of Coe's book is to debunk the myths that have arisen around George Washington's life, then how long should it be? It should be as thick as the myths themselves. It won't be 812 pgs long because it isn't about his life but about how his life has been distorted by biographers.

    It is unclear how a book can be both slender (not many pages) and highly padded at the same time. Derivative means that her approach was copied from someone else. Somerby needs to say who she stole from, where she "derived" her material from, if he is going to make such a serious charge against a relatively new author. His own review consists entirely of accusations without a shred of evidence. His intent to torpedo her book is obvious.

    Somerby needs to leave these youngish women alone and let them pursue their careers unmolested by him. His peevishness about their success would embarrass anyone with the slightest bit of self-awareness. Her crime is perhaps being funnier than Somerby.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Tend to trust Bob here, but I cursory look at some of those books might give us a clue if he is right. You know, the don’t be lazy thing.

    ReplyDelete

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