Reviews for Personal being

The average rating for Personal being based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-06-26 00:00:00 Jeremy Fleet Robert T. Mann's The Walls of Jericho charts the legislative battles over civil rights and racial equality in the postwar Senate. Mann focuses on three central figures: Hubert Humphrey, the progressive Minnesota liberal who spent decades urging his party to embrace civil rights; Richard Russell, the genteel Georgian who became segregation's most articulate defender; Lyndon Johnson, the domineering Majority Leader-turned-President who finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Mann's book predates Robert Caro's Master of the Senate, which covers much of the same ground; if Mann lacks Caro's epic scope and literary prose, he's adept at sharp portraiture and compelling recreations of political conventions, congressional debates and backroom dealings. Mann has immense admiration for Humphrey, spotlighting his 1948 speech to the Democratic convention and his role as LBJ's point man in the Senate (Johnson showed his appreciation by making Humphrey his Vice President, then constantly humiliating him); Johnson emerges, unsurprisingly, as a tough-minded operator redeemed by sincere idealism. As for Russell, Mann deconstructs his image as the Senate's courtly segregationist; for all the Georgian's high-flown constitutional rhetoric and political skills, Mann peels back the mask to reveal the ambitious (he constantly nominated himself as President), perpetually frustrated bigot underneath. Mann's book is so locked into political details that, unfortunately, he only affords the actual Civil Rights Movement occasional sidelong glances; other figures outside the main trio are thinly sketched, at best. But it's still a solid narrative of a legendary legislative (and moral) battle.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-05 00:00:00 Thomas Peveto Engaging, well written narrative history of the 16-year legislative chess game that climaxed with the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Especially interesting because the architects of resistance, especially Richard Russell, are described as thoroughly as the proponents of change.