John Marshall or Daydream Believers

John Marshall: Definer of a Nation

Author: Jean Edward Smith

A New York Times Notable Book of 1996

It was in tolling the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835 that the Liberty Bell cracked, never to ring again. An apt symbol of the man who shaped both court and country, whose life "reads like an early history of the United States," as the Wall Street Journal noted, adding: Jean Edward Smith "does an excellent job of recounting the details of Marshall's life without missing the dramatic sweep of the history it encompassed."

Publishers Weekly

The most famous chief justice of the U. S. has been dead for 161 years, but his life and work continue to fascinate legal scholars, political scientists and biographers. Smith, a University of Toronto political scientist, is the most recent devotee. His endnotes and bibliography mention at least a dozen previous books about Marshall. It would be helpful to the lay reader if Smith explained why he believed another book, especially such a massive one, was needed. Like the recently published The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law by Charles F. Hobson (Forecasts, July 29), Smith's version of the life is both respectful and a revision of the revisionism. He acknowledges his debt to Hobson, editor of the Marshall papers, just as Hobson alerted readers to Smith's upcoming tome. While Hobson focused on Marshall's mind, Smith focuses on the externals of Marshall's life. This is essentially a chronological account of a life lived fully. There are few flourishesfor example, Marshall's death is handled matter-of-factly in two pages. The 151 pages of endnotes are frequently livelier, more interpretive and more informative than the matching portions of the text. The pedestrian nature of the text stems mainly from Smith's decision to let Marshall speak for himself. The biography is almost devoid of interpretation and speculation. Sound scholarship, yes; lively lifetelling, only occasionally. (Nov.)

Library Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court has the power and the obligation to reassess any lower court decision where a substantial issue of public law is involved. Yet this power of judicial review was not granted to the Court in the Constitution but asserted by Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1803 decision. This was only one landmark opinion in a remarkable 35-year tenure as chief justice. Smith (political science, Univ. of Toronto) helps us to understand Marshall's real accomplishments in defining and shaping the form of our modern constitutional system. Like Charles Hobson's The Great Chief Justice (LJ 9/15/96), she interprets John Marshall's impact on our federal system. But as a political scientist Smith looks more at Marshall and the Court as an institution with power. Hobson as a historian and editor is more concerned with Marshall's written record. Still, both books highlight Marshall's accomplishments in defining the scope of the Court and its real powers. Scholars and informed lay readers will want to compare both interpretations, which are highly recommended for academic, law, and larger public libraries.-Jerry E. Stephens, U.S. Court of Appeals Lib., Oklahoma City

Joseph J. Ellis

A wholly satisfying modern biography that immediately establishes itself as the authoritative life....This splendid biography deserves a large readership. -- Joseph J. Ellis, New York Times Book Review

Table of Contents:

	Preface
	Introduction: The Inauguration of 1801	1
	Marshall's Virginia Heritage	21
	Soldier of the Revolution	37
	Student and Suitor	70
	Husband, Lawyer, Legislator	87
	The Fight for Ratification	115
	At the Richmond Bar	144
	Virginia Federalist	169
	Mission to Paris (The XYZ Affair)	192
	To Congress from Richmond	234
	Secretary of State	268
	Opinion of the Court	282
	The Gathering Storm	296
	Marbury v. Madison	309
	The Center Holds	327
	Treason Defined	348
	Yazoo	375
	"A Band of Brothers"	395
	National Supremacy	417
	Steamboats	446
	The Chief Justice and Old Hickory	482
	Notes	525
	Bibliography	677
	Acknowledgments	709
	Index	713

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Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

Author: Fred Kaplan

America's power is in decline, its foreign policy adrift, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past eight years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. In Daydream Believers, celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan combines in-depth reporting and razor-sharp analysis to explain just how George W. Bush and his aides got so far off track—and why much of the nation followed. Kaplan demonstrates that their disasters stemmed not from mere incompetence but from two grave misconceptions. First, they believed that the world changed after 9/11, when it didn't. The nature of power, warfare, and politics among nations remained the same, no matter how deeply they wanted to break free from the real world's constraints. Second, they thought that America emerged from its Cold War victory stronger than before, when in fact it was weaker. The disappearance of the Soviet Union brought freedom to much of the globe. But by the same token, the shattering of their common enemy gave many of America's allies leave to go their own way and pursue their own interests, without regard for what Washington desired.

For eight years, Kaplan reminds us, the White House—and many of the nation's podiums and opinion pages—rang out with appealing but deluded claims: that we live in a time like no other and that, therefore, the lessons of history no longer apply; that new technology has transformed warfare; that the world's peoples will be set free, if only America topples their dictators; and that those who dispute such promises do so for partisan reasons. They thought they were visionaries, but theyonly had visions. And they believed in their daydreams.

Kaplan traces the genesis and evolution of these ideas—from the era of Nixon through Reagan to the present day—and reveals how they have been either twisted through the years or rebutted as illusions at every step.

Packed with stunning anecdotes, hidden history, and a level of insight only Fred Kaplan can bring to issues of national security, Daydream Believers tells a story whose understanding is central to getting America back on track and to finding leaders who can improve the world, and America's position in it, by seeing the world as it really is.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

What sets Mr. Kaplan's Daydream Believers apart is his emphasis on the Bush administration's failure to come to terms with a post-cold-war paradigm, which, he argues, left America's power diminished, rather than enhanced, as former allies, liberated from the specter of the Soviet Union, felt increasingly free to depart from Washington's directives. Also illuminating is his close analysis of the impact that the White House's idees fixes had, not just on the Iraq war but also on other foreign policy problems like North Korea, and his detailed examination of the formative role that the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky played in shaping President Bush's determination to try to export democracy around the world.

The Washington Post - Anne-Marie Slaughter

A lively and entertaining—if occasionally horrifying—read, it offers a cautionary tale for any administration and for the men and women who hope to serve in one…Even when the facts are familiar, Kaplan weaves these stories together in a way that highlights the often hidden connections between them. The result is an account of the pathologies not only of individuals and departments in the Bush administration, but also of Washington itself.

Publishers Weekly

America's leaders have gone from hubris to waking fantasy, according to this caustic critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Kaplan (The Wizards of Armageddon) argues that the Cold War's end and 9/11 persuaded President Bush and his advisers to unilaterally impose America's political will on the world, while remaining blind to the military and diplomatic fiascoes that followed. Rumsfeld's "Revolution in Military Affairs," a doctrine touting supposedly omnipotent mobile forces and high-tech smart weapons, convinced Pentagon officials that Iraq could be pacified without a large force or a reconstruction plan. Bush abandoned Clinton's diplomatic rapprochement with North Korea, then stood by as Kim Jong-Il built nuclear weapons. And imbued with a "mix of neo-conservatism and evangelism" that was peddled most flamboyantly by Israeli ideologue Natan Sharansky, Bush backed clumsy pro democracy initiatives that backfired by bringing anti-American and sectarian groups to power in the Middle East. Eschewing Kaplan's favored approach of fostering international security through alliances and consensus building, Bush assumed that "by virtue of American power, saying something was tantamount to making it so." The particulars of Kaplan's indictment aren't new, but his detailed, illuminating (if occasionally disjointed) accounts of the evolution of the Bush administration's strategic doctrines add up to a cogent brief for soft realism over truculent idealism. (Feb.)

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