anutim's review against another edition

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challenging informative tense medium-paced

5.0

jedwardsusc's review against another edition

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2.0

2.5 stars. There's an underlying intellectual clumsiness running though this book. The "great men" approach to history always invites some clumsiness, but Herman magnifies the effect by trying to identify every possible correspondence between Lenin and Wilson. I kept expecting him to find evidence that Lenin and Wilson once ate a salad for lunch ON THE SAME DAY...and then attach some significance to this event--most likely involving its anti-capitalist implications.

In short, Herman writes history well, but his history doesn't bear up that well under the weight of his insistent, ideological arguments about capitalism, interventionism, and post-Wilsonian American hegemony.

evdoyleii's review against another edition

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2.0

Halfway through and this is where I end. I was hoping for an intelligent and informative account of 1917 but I can't deal with the author's biases any more. I believe his personal opinions and views are coloring and distorting events to fit into his conservative worldview. He seems to bear a strong animus for Woodrow Wilson and portrays him as a wannabe dictator. Certainly Wilson had his flaws but the direction Mr. Herman was going was too far. His interpretations of Wilson's (and Lenin's) actions are seen through his opinions which supplanted Mr. Wilson's and Lenin's objectives. It reminds me of the popular adage: You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.

fictionfan's review

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2.0

Save me from the exceptional...

In 1917, the USA finally entered World War I after years of pusillanimous dithering, and Russia threw its revolution after years of poverty and imperialist wars. In this book, Herman looks at the two men who led those events, Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin, and suggests that out of their respective philosophies of power grew the 20th century and all of its horrors.

Normally, when reviewing a major history book, I find that even though I might not like the style or may feel the author hasn’t entirely convinced me with his or her arguments, I still feel at the end that I have gained enough from reading it to have made it worthwhile. Sadly, this is the exception. I have thoroughly enjoyed each of Arthur Herman’s books which I’ve read to date. He is often biased, but usually openly, so that I feel the reader can allow for his bias in forming her own judgements. Here, however, his bias seeps into every analysis he makes and it seems as if he’s perhaps not even aware of it. American capitalism is good, Russian communism is bad. Wilson is an idealist, Lenin is a cynic. America is a shining beacon on the hill, the USSR is a blot on the escutcheon of history. I realise these are standard viewpoints on the other side of the Atlantic, and some parts of them would be accepted over here too, though perhaps less so after the last couple of years. But a history book with this level of bias teaches nothing, except perhaps that history should never be written by those with a dogmatic belief in the superiority of one particular nation or form of government.

It’s not that Herman is uncritical of Wilson and America – in fact, sometimes he’s almost sneeringly contemptuous of Wilson. It’s more in the language he uses. Some of his statements are simplistic and unnuanced in the extreme, and his facts are carefully selected to support his basic argument that both Wilson and Lenin were more interested in forcing their worldview on the rest of the world than in acting in their own nations’ self-interest. He speaks of “American exceptionalism” with a straight face, clearly believing the propaganda which has done so much damage in convincing so many Americans (but not many other people) that they are somehow intrinsically superior to other races, nations, etc. And yet this is exactly the kind of propaganda he condemns in his despised USSR. His conclusion, broadly summarised, is that everything bad in the 20th century comes from Russia, while America could have done better in the world, but did pretty well. An arguable stance, and I’d have appreciated an argument about it rather than it being presented as if it were an indisputable statement of fact.

Please don’t think I’m an apologist for the extreme communism of the USSR, nor the horrors carried out in its name. But nor am I an apologist for the extreme capitalism of the USA, complete with its own murky history of horrors. Unfortunately Mr Herman is, and appears to believe that America must stay engaged with the world to save it by exporting its form of capitalism to the rest of us. Personally, I think the world needs to be saved from all nations who think they have the right to force their views on other people and from all extremists who believe they are “exceptional” in any way. I find it difficult to recommend this one – the overwhelming weight of bias prevents it from adding any real insight into the subject.

PS Yes, I’m aware my own biases show here, but I’m not writing a history book. Nor am I advocating that the world should submit to the intrinsic superiority of Scotland.

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socraticgadfly's review against another edition

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2.0

I wanted to read this because Herman had written a very good dual biography of Churchill and Gandhi.

That said, dual biographies have a certain conceit, that there must be some sort of frisson between the two subjects for it to be m ore than two parallel bios. Churchill and Gandhi certainly had that. Luther and Erasmus, subjects of another dual bio I've read, did to a fair degree. Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, subjects of a phone-in dual bio by H.W. Brands, really did not.

And, neither do Wilson and Lenin. Per another reviewer, I think a backgrounded issue was that Herman thinks Wilson, racism and all, was some sort of leftist.

Given that Herman works for a winger think tank, this shouldn't be surprising. His Conclusion badly jumps the shark. Had he not written it, he'd still have three stars for sure, maybe four.

The following is notes I took about the book while reading, the bad stuff first, followed by the interesting stuff, some of which is good, some speculative but yet somewhat good. Anyway, it couldn't offset the bad stuff.

Problems:
1. Kind of superficial on run-up to American entry vis-à-vis illegality under naval law of both sub warfare and blockade by extension plus food as blockade weapon.
2. Almost seems to accept Wilson’s POV on causes of the Civil War
3. Claims Alexander II was still a progressive at time of assassination. Not so much.
4. The phrase “white supremacist dogmas and Darwinism” was the tipping point that dropped Herman to 4 stars. He had enough very good stuff elsewhere, but calling “social Darwinism” as “Darwinism” (and I’m assuming it’s deliberate, not a mistake) was too much. After all, he works at the wingnut Hudson Institute as a senior fellow.
5. As for his claim that Lenin had booted out Stravinsky and Chagall along with Rachmaninov? Stravinsky had been living abroad in 1918; Chagall left the USSR freely in 1923.
6. Says that Harding and Coolidge needed to turn Wilson’s Progressivism around. From there, the rest of the Conclusion descends even further into political hackery.


Interesting notes
1. Kerensky’s dad was headmaster at Lenin’s gymnasium. Why doesn’t any history of the two revolutions mention that?
2. Both Lenin and Wilson strongly influenced by Hegel. Marxism is based, of course, on a materialistic reinterpretation of Hegelian dialectic, though the core of that is actually Fichte, not Hegel. Herman says that Wilson hugely studied Hegel in college, and implies he was the greatest influence on Wilson’s political science outside of Walter Bagehot (who, weirdly, is not mentioned by Herman). The reality is that Bagehot was certainly more of an influence than Hegel. As for Hegel? Any good academic in the US, after Johns Hopkins and other institutions brought the “Humboldt model” of higher education to the US, would have read Hegel.
3. The Provisional Govt shot itself in the foot with Order No. 1 on March 14. Directed only to the Petrograd garrison, but assumed to apply to all the military, it included ordering officers not to use honorific titles and said that soldiers off duty didn’t have to salute officers, etc. Again, NOT Lenin doing this. (And yet, Herman spin-polishes Kerensky.)
4. Very good on just how much was known to Kerensky about Lenin taking German money. Related? His coverage of the July Days and Lenin’s loss of nerve, though brief, is interesting. (If it was a loss of nerve, rather than tactical smarts by Lenin realizing that he couldn’t pull off a successful revolution yet.)
5. Claims that Kerensky didn’t want “Entente terms” but did want something like “peace with honor” before ending the war. What if Germany had said “Independent Finland, Independent Poland (maybe with boundaries shoved east a bit)” but hadn’t sought land itself, other than maybe at the western edge of Poland? Back to the point at hand? It’s unclear WHAT Kerensky wanted. Even Pipes, treated as a semi-guru by Herman, admits this.
6. Reminds us that the worst acts out West against the “Wobbies” happened after US entry into the war.
7. Notes Wilson helped stoke the fires against German-Americans and did nothing to dampen them. Among those hit the worst? Mennonites, since they were also pacefists. Notes that Wilson and AGs Gregory, then Palmer “highlight the curious self-righteousness of the American Progressive mind.” Then goes to Wilson’s Hegelian background and him … ascending to the mark of a world-historical leader. Already in 1890, Wilson wrote “such as will not be convinced are crushed.” Notes that Wilson and AGs Gregory, then Palmer “highlight the curious self-righteousness of the American Progressive mind.”

Head-scratchers
1. I have NO idea who these supposed "Radical Free Churchers" are that David Lloyd George supposedly belonged to. He was a Liberal Party member. Wiki and other online encyclopedias don't even have a listing by that name. He did seek the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, but that was a religious movement, not a political party, and I don't think was organized by name as such. Weirdly, it's not listed in the index.

chewdigestbooks's review against another edition

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4.0

Honesty time, Not much of this was new to me and there were times that it read as slow as molasses, maybe because of that.

BUT, the conclusions about Wilson were insightful and in line with what I have always thought. They were the true golden nuggets Herman's work.

In a nutshell, his actions have always seemed noble; it was his stubbornness, the ideals of upbringing in the Protestant faith and bigotry that really failed him. They failed him and the believers in him then and they fail a deeper inspection now. You can't run around proclaiming that you stand for the people's of the world when you don't even count many of them as people, you can't get along in life without compromise, and newsflash, no one is always right.

Wilson was indeed caught between a rock and a hard place and near the end obviously in poor health. His 14 Points were good and eventually, they were one of the things that led to the concept of the United Nations. Still, United or League implies a group think that he was never going to be able to stomach. Every time I hear someone list Wilson as one of their favorite presidents, I either cringe and zip my lip or get on my soapbox, it depends on the audience.

If this is your first introduction into the Revolution of 1917, you can't go wrong. It was in no way smooth like many assume and Lenin was not guaranteed or even really involved in the beginning. Surprised? Then you need to read this....soon!

timsa9cd0's review

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4.0

Here I learn of visionary (and racist and naive) Woodrow Wilson and the visionary (and ruthless) Lenin. Both were children of Hegel (not that I've ever read Hegel). Wilson steps into WW1 after hoping to wait for the exhausted and destroyed nations to come to him to broker a new world order, feeling that if he could remain neutral to the end that all parties would take his lead. But the U boats of Germany and much else forced his hand. And in the end he spent his last months in office out of his mind after suffering strokes that were kept secret and losing his other dream, the League of Nations, at the hands of Henry Cabot Lodge and William Borah. Lenin almost missed out on the revolution, getting back to Russia only after learning that the Czar had given up his crown. But he got there, thanks in part to the Germans' offer to give him a ride across Europe (they needed Russia out of the war and figured Lenin would add to the chaos that the revolution was creating) along with a few million dollars that they gave him and his Bolsheviks Even so, it was not clear that Lenin would prevail, with his Bolsheviks seemingly a distant 3rd in the ranks of revolutionary parties. But he, with the help of Trotsky and Stalin and others, grabbed the country – when there was no one else in control he promised enough to get the backing of enough soldiers to grab it. The history of these two, and the leaders of Germany, France, and Britain, and the long term effects of WW1 was fascinating.

josephb8694's review

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3.0

I so wanted to give this book a higher rating because I liked the concept. The research was excellent but at points it seemed like the author needed to include so much of the resource material that it become cumbersome and ..... well, tedious reading. This was especially true when it came to describing the Russian Revolution and Lenin's takeover of the government. The author frequently references Richard Pipes' "The Russian Revolution", which I read some time ago. Unfortunately, the difficulty of Pipes book flows into this book.

The best part of the book are the final couple of chapters the deal with Wilson's time in Paris, his campaign to get the League of Nations passed by Congress and his trip around the country attempting to drum up popular support. In the final chapter, the author summarizes his conclusions and applies his understanding of the 1914-1919 period to the more recent political situation. Very well done. Worth paying attention to.
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