Spies, Dead Presidents and America in the World

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Asia’s Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century (Viking), by Richard McGregor

Donald Trump’s blusteringly incoherent foreign policy pronouncements on China and the Far East might destabilize the region—and inadvertently aid in China’s ascent or trigger a war among East Asian neighbors with long histories of discord. In his well-argued account, Richard McGregor, ex-Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing, carefully examines the recent past and finds much to worry over the future. Although sometimes resented, the U.S. military presence in the region had helped stabilize the area by discouraging military ambitions in South Korea and Japan and curbing China and North Korea. But under China’s more assertive leader Xi Jinping, the country’s military has grown capable of striking well beyond its borders and the idea of reclaiming age-old imperial grandeur is in the air. The complexities would bedevil any American president, but Trump appears uniquely unable to understand either the limits or the purpose of American power.

Grant (Penguin Press), by Ron Chernow

Ulysses S. Grant, hero of the Civil War, with a larger strategic sense than his opponent, Robert E. Lee, was elected president. And then his reputation frayed as one scandal and failure after another shook his administration. Ron Chernow, whose Hamilton biography became the unlikely source for a hip-hop Broadway hit, sets out to revive his reputation as a flawed but humane, even visionary leader in war and peace. Despite odious earlier episodes, including banishing Jews from Memphis as a Union general, Grant became a champion of equal opportunity as president, appointing unprecedented numbers of Jews, African-Americana and Native Americans to federal offices. He was the best friend blacks and Indians had in the White House until Lyndon Johnson. He was, on the other hand, guilty of nepotism, favoritism and hasty decision-making. Chernow writes with his usual clarity and simple eloquence, painting his subject in generous terms. Could another musical follow Hamilton’s lead?

Shooting Lincoln: Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner and the Race to Photograph the Story of the Century (Da Capo Press), by Nicholas J.C. Pistor

As Nicholas J.C. Pistor reminds us several times, security around Abraham Lincoln was usually careless and lax. But in Shooting Lincoln, Pistor, a crime reporter by trade, focuses less on the usual narrative than on the photographers who competed with each other for an “exclusive”—as we say in the 20^th if not the 19^th century—on the assassination, the crime scene and the trial and execution of the conspirators. A few interesting details surface: well-known Washington photographer Alexander Gardner had done studio portraits of John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor before he tried to decided to kill the president. And crime scene photography, as a tool for investigators as much as media sensationalism, was a new idea in 1865. The book includes photos by Gardner, including a startling shot of one of the conspirators manacled in a dungeon-like cell.

Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals (Potomac Books), by Mary Kathryn Barbier

Many books have been written about the often-covert aid given by the U.S. government to Nazis deemed useful in the Cold War that followed World War II. Mary Kathryn Barbier explores the fascinating subject through the lens of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, established in the 1970s after a flurry of bad publicity about war criminals living comfortably in the U.S. She carefully exhumes the old cases, showing that some defendants were falsely accused or—perhaps—accused of the wrong crimes, and captures the murky web of motivations. Despite less than workmanlike prose (Did Josef Mengele really decide “it was time to get out of Dodge”?) and a copy-and-paste approach to European history, Spies, Lies, and Citizenship is too interesting a set of case histories to put down.

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur (Da Capo Press), by Scott S. Greenberger

When a disappointed office seeker assassinated James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur became the unexpected president of the United States. After leaving office without running for a term of his own, he became the forgotten president. In his new biography, Scott S. Greenberger not only seeks to roll back the obscurity but to make a case for Arthur as a premature progressive. Greenberger’s account is revisionist;  during his stint in the White House, Arthur was reviled in the press as a product of a corrupt patronage system and if he was reform-minded, his efforts have largely been overlooked by historians. Greenberger identifies Arthur’s bedridden pen pal, Julia Sand, as the president’s voice of conscience, the “little dwarf” speaking truth to the king, as she described herself in one of her letters. He makes a case that Sand’s opinions may have swayed Arthur to take stands against racism and corruption, but they were, admittedly, of little influence. The president lacked support in a Congress that ignored his admonitions and overrode his vetoes.