(Author Doris Kearns Goodwin with her husband, Richard Goodwin, at commencement ceremonies at UMass-Lowell on May 29, 2010)

For over ten years I had the pleasure of living and teaching in Concord, MA, a town with a deep history and a number of famous residents.  One of those residents was Doris Kearns Goodwin who could be seen often on Sunday mornings at the Colonial Inn having breakfast.  It was my pleasure as Chair of the History Department at Middlesex School to welcome her as a speaker at our school and expose our students to a gifted historian with a deep understanding of the American condition past and present.  Her biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, the Roosevelts, and the Fitzgeralds and Kennedys stand out for their deep research, insightful analysis, and a writing style that draws the reader to her subject.  Other books reflected on her experience as a White House fellow in the Johnson administration, an analysis of the leadership of the subjects of her biographies, and even a personal memoir growing up in Brooklyn and sharing a love for the Dodgers with her father.  Her latest work, AN UNFINISHED HISTORY: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE 1960S can be classified as a biography, a memoir, as well as an important work of history assessing and reassessing the impactful events of the 1960s. 

The story centers on her relationship of forty-six years with her husband Richard Goodwin, a significant historian and public figure in his own right. Theirs was a loving relationship between two individuals who loved their country and did their best to contribute to its success.  Richard Goodwin, an adviser to presidents, “was more interested in shaping history,” Doris says, “and I in figuring out how history was shaped.” Their bond is at the heart of her latest work providing an intimate look at their relationship, family, and many of the important historical figures that they came in contact with.  The book focuses on trying to understand the achievement and failures of the leaders they served and observed, in addition to their personal debates over the progress and unfinished promises of the country they served and loved.

(President Lyndon B. Johnson prepares for his State of the Union address with, from left, Richard Goodwin, Jack Valenti and Joseph A. Califano, Jr. at the White House in Washington on Jan. 12, 1966)

Goodwin’s recounting of her life with her husband encompassing Dick’s career before their marriage, and then after they tied the knot.  In a sense it is a love story that lasted over four decades, and it also embraces the many significant roles played by Dick and his spouse.  The events of the 1960s are revisited in detail.  The major domestic accomplishments and foreign policy decisions are examined in detail from the perspective of the participants in which they were familiar with and had personal relationships.  Doris conducts intensive research and analysis and integrates her husband’s actions and thoughts throughout.  In addition, she is a wonderful storyteller relating her own experiences and that of her spouse.

Doris begins her memoir recounting her search for the young “Dick” and searching his early diary entries and letters from the 1950s onward.  She describes a young man in love with America, a theme that is carried throughout the book.  Dick believed in Lincoln’s credo – “the right of anyone to rise to the level of his industry and talents – would inform every speech he drafted, every article he wrote, and every cause he pursued.”   The power couple relied extensively on Dick’s personal archive which he assiduously maintained throughout his career and retirement years for many of the stories and commentary that Doris relates.  This personal archive was in storage for years and emerged during their senior years, i.e.; they had 30 boxes alone on John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

(Bobby Kennedy)

A major theme of the memoir was “the tremor” that existed in their marriage as Dick was loyal to Kennedy, and Doris to Lyndon B. Johnson.  Doris provides intimate details of their marriage and overall relationship relating to personal struggles, politics, and portrayals of prominent figures, i.e.; date night, watching the 1960 presidential debates years later, the origin of JFK’s inaugural address Dicks role in the Peace Corps, Latin American policy, including the Alliance for Progress. etc.  Dick developed a special relationship with JFK which was shattered upon his assassination.  Interestingly, Doris spends a great deal of time discussing Dick’s transition from an early member of the New Frontier who worked on Civil Rights among his many portfolios to taking his talents as a speech writer in support of Lyndon Johnson.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is how Doris recounts meaningful events decades later.  A Cuban Missile Conference in which Fidel Castro and Robert McNamara and co. attending while they were all in their eighties was eye opening, as was Dick’s meeting with Che Guevara which had implications for Dick’s career.  Throughout Doris’ wit and humor are on display as she writes “here I am in my eighties and my thirties at the same time.  I’m burning my life candle at both ends” as she explored the many boxes Dick kept for decades.

(Doris Kearns Goodwin with LBJ/Richard Goodwin with JFK)

The book’s depth is enhanced by the many relationships the couple developed over the years.  The ones that stand out obviously are the two presidents they served, but also Jackie Kennedy, Sarge Shriver, Bill Moyers, Robert F. Kennedy, and numerous others.  For Doris it was a magical marriage full of fun, love, and serious debates; she writes, “….my debate with Dick was not a question of logic or historical citation.  It was about the respective investments in our youth, questions of loyalty and love.”

Dick’s reputation was formed by his almost innate ability as a wordsmith that produced so many important speeches.  From JFK’s Alliance for Progress speech to formulating the term “Great Society,” to authoring the “We Shall Overcome,” Voting Rights, and RFK’s “South Africa’s Day of Affirmation” speeches which all impacted history based on who was speaking Dick’s phraseology and thoughts.  After writing for JFK and LBJ, Dick turned to writing and supporting Robert Kennedy, a move that would sever his relationship with LBJ.

Perhaps the finest chapter in the book in terms of incisive analysis is “Thirteen LBJ’s” where Doris drills down to produce part historical analysis and personality study.  LBJ was very moody and insecure, and he often burst out his emotions.  Johnson was very sensitive about the press as he saw himself as a master manipulator and he always suspected leaks which he despised.  He went as far as planting “spies” among others he feared like Robert Kennedy.  Johnson’s approach to people was called “the Johnson treatment,” which is on display during his meeting with Governor George Wallace of Alabama and Senator Everett Dirkson during the Civil Rights struggles.  Johnson could be overbearing, but in his mind what he was trying to achieve on the domestic front was most important. 

Political expediency was an approach that Johnson and Robert Kennedy would employ during the 1964 presidential campaign when LBJ ran for reelection and Kennedy for the Senate from New York.  Though they despised each other, Kennedy needed LBJ’s political machine and popularity to win, and Johnson needed to shore up his support in New York since he was a southerner.  For Johnson he would rather have had “Bobby” lose, but he wanted his vote in the Senate.  The LBJ-RFK dynamic dominated Johnson’s political antenna.  Johnson was paranoid of Kennedy and feared he would run to unseat him in 1968.  When the Vietnam war splintered America and Robert Kennedy turned against the war it substantiated Johnson’s fears.  Further, when Dick, then out of government came out against the war, later joining Kennedy’s crusade, Johnson once again was livid.  From Dick’s perspective he acted in what he saw as the best interests of America.

Doris nicely integrates many of the primary documents from Dick’s treasure trove of boxes.  Excerpts from many of Dicks speeches, his political and private opinions, transcripts from important meetings inside and outside the White House are all integrated in the memoir.  As time went on Dick turned to Eugene McCarthy and helped him force Johnson to withdraw his candidacy in 1968 after the New Hampshire primary.  Dick would join Kennedy once he declared for president.  The campaign was short lived as RFK was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles after winning the California primary.  Dick was devastated by Kennedy’s death and would eventually attend the 1968 Democratic Convention where he worked with McCarthy delegates to include a peace plank into the Democratic Party platform.  Doris was also in Chicago and witnessed the carnage fostered by Mayor Daley and the Chicago police

(Mr. Goodwin with Jacqueline Kennedy and her lawyer, Simon H. Rifkind, rear, in Manhattan in 1966. Mr. Goodwin was for years identified with the Kennedy clan)

One of the criticisms of Doris’ memoir is her lack of attention to the political right and her obsession with the middle to political left.  That being said it is important to remember that this is not a history of the 1960s but a personal memoir of two people who fell in love, married in 1975, and the narrative correctly revolves around their firsthand experiences and beliefs.  Doris would go on to work for Johnson after he left the White House, splitting her time between teaching at Harvard and flying to Texas , to help with his memoirs.  Doris rekindles the spark of idealism that launched the 1960s which is missing today.  She introduces readers to the Kennedy-Johnson successes in racial justice, public education, and aid for the poor, all important movements.  In addition, she delves into the debate about the conduct of the war in Vietnam, including the anti-war movement, and the toppling of a president.  Doris Kearns Goodwin has done a useful service by recasting the 1960s in her vision.  It is an excellent place to start a study of the period, and its impact on what appears to be a wonderful marriage.

(John C. Calhoun)

Today we live in a country where white supremacism is on the rise, descendants of former slave’s demand reparations, state legislatures try to obstruct the teaching of black history, the College Board gives in to extremists who did not like the content of Advanced Placement African history classes, the Supreme Court ends affirmative action for colleges, and state’s rights advocates seem to have the floor.  Three years short of our 250^th anniversary, the United States finds itself with a bifurcated population politically, economically, and socially over issues of race.  The question is how did we get here, when did it originate, and who is responsible?  Historian Robert Elder tries to provide some of the historical background in his recent biography of the former 19^th century South Carolina Senator, Vice President, and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, in CALHOUN: AMERICAN HERETIC.  Some might argue how a man who was so impactful in the first half of the 19^th century could still maintain such influence today.  The answer offered by Elder is clear.  Calhoun, a slave owner who argued that slavery was a positive good for America, furthered the doctrine of “state interposition” which for many became the legal argument for secession that led to the Civil War, and was the dominant spokesperson for the south, state’s rights, and the enslavement of blacks deserves a great deal of credit for setting the United States on the path it now finds itself confronting – a political climate that does not seem to have an exit ramp, with racial violence on the upswing.

(Henry Clay)

Elder’s monograph should be considered the definitive account of Calhoun’s life through the lens of a cultural and ideological biography.  The account encompasses all facets of Calhoun’s life and covers the most notable events of the first half of the 19^th century.  In doing so Elder traces the intellectual development of his subject very carefully.  He pulls no punches as he outlines in detail how Calhoun went from a proponent of optimistic nationalism featuring what historians refer to as Henry Clay’s American system which consisted of internal improvements such as roads and canals linking the country’s economic development, a low tariff to promote trade, a National Bank, and the use of federal funds to assist the states to achieve his goals. 

As the War of 1812 approached Calhoun justified his views of federal power over the states as a necessity because of the exigencies of war.  Further his ideology was predicated on the concept of “honor,” particularly as it related to British impressment of American citizens.  Throughout his career honor was foremost in his mind especially in debates with colleagues and those who opposed his beliefs.  Elder has engaged in a prodigious amount of research that yields wonderful character studies of Calhoun’s contemporaries.  An interesting example of his commitment to his personal honor belief system is the author’s description of his disagreements reflected in debates with Virginia’s House  leader, John Randolph.  Calhoun as his wont was to employ a carefully crafted barrage of logic that demolished his opponent, raising points with surgical precision one after the other.  It was Calhoun’s strength of debate and putting pen to paper that allowed him to be the equal among the great figures of the period, like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, among others.

(President Andrew Jackson)

However, by the late 1820s he argued that the tariff of 1828 was unconstitutional.  His solution,  referred to as the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, argued the concept of “nullification” whereby the states had the right to declare federal actions as “null and void.” His viewpoint was clear as the Tariff of 1816 was designed to provide revenue, not to encourage manufacturing.  The 1828 version was not a revenue measure.  At this point Calhoun was not calling for disunion, as Elder argues he was trying to find a way to preserve the structure of the Union consistent with the principle that power resided in the people, although the people of states.”  Calhoun would work creatively to find solutions for problems that arose within the system.

Calhoun was always a fervent defender of slavery though his justifications were part of an evolutionary process.  He always argued that treating slaves as property gave masters a financial interest in their well-being.  Calhoun was very wary of the British who ended the transatlantic slave trade in 1807 and ended slavery at home in 1833.  His concern rested on his fear that London would undermine slavery as the United States expanded and their machinations throughout the western hemisphere. He would consistently point out British hypocrisy especially its rule of India and of course with his Irish lineage his dislike of England was predictable.

Calhoun’s mindset could be very convoluted as he saw no connection between European feudalism with its lords and vassals and southern slaveholding society.  For Calhoun slavery was a “positive good” as Africans achieved a degree of civilization they had never previously attained.  Further, he argued that slaves were treated better than European laborers who existed among the poor houses of Europe.  Slavery created a stable society unlike the labor unrest in the north.  Finally, he stated slavery was “an institution uniquely suited – morally, economically, politically – to the conditions of the modern world.”  A believer in English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number, slavery fit perfectly as black inferiority and lack of progress were self-evident.  Calhoun could compromise at times (see the Missouri Compromise of 1820 or the Compromise of 1850), however, when he believed southern rights centering on slavery were threatened he would draw the line.

(Daniel Webster)

Elder is correct when he argues that the second watershed in Calhoun’s development apart from 1828 occurred in 1836 as he finally came to reject Jeffersonian principles he once espoused.  First was conflict with Andrew Jackson who created “Pet Banks” that his administration could fund instead of a National Bank – this would foster the Panic of 1837, the worst depression in US history to that point as cotton prices were hit hard.  Further, the election of Martin Van Buren in 1836 reinforced Calhoun’s fears of hereditary monarchy.  The result Calhoun’s views of state’s rights solidified resulting in his vehement support for slavery.  These views were further exacerbated with the Texas annexation crisis, the Mexican War, and northern attempts to block or limit any expansion of slavery into territories acquired from the war.  For Calhoun legislation like the Wilmot Proviso which would not allow slavery in any territory obtained from Mexico pushed Calhoun over the edge arguing that if this went into effect disunion could only result.

(Floride Calhoun, wife of John C. Calhoun)

Elder’s portrayal is of a brilliant man driven by intensity and unrelenting ambition.  He believed that “Providence had placed him” on earth to complete his duty for his country.  Elder strongly suggests that as Calhoun’s political career evolved his moods began to darken as does his belief system.  Elder states he could be “noble, stubborn, suicidal or delusional,” all of which is supported by Calhoun’s own writings, speeches, political activity, and interaction with his contemporaries.  Had Calhoun simply argued that slavery was a necessary evil whose abolishment would mean disaster for the south instead of arguing in a very tortuous manner that it was a moral good, economically sound, and made the south more democratic, he might be viewed more positively by history.  However, his makeup would not allow this, and his defense of white racism, treatment of his slaves, and stubbornness are responsible for his reputation. 

In Elder’s telling, Calhoun loved his country and his region, and despite his flaws his impact on American history cannot be denied.  Elder’s work is one of objectivity that is well supported by the documentary evidence and should remain the most important biography of Calhoun for many years to come.

(John C. Calhoun)

What impact does one’s lineage have on the course of one’s life?  If you were born into a family where you are the great-grandson of a Founding Father, the grandson of a president, and the son of a Congressman and Minister to England one would assume you would have a great deal to live up to.  In the case of Henry Adams, an important contributor to the “Adams Dynasty” politics was not a passion as it was for those who preceded him, and he chose the path of journalism, historian, and author.  Adams lived a fascinating life based on his writing, travels, and the historical personage he was close to or came in contact with.  Adam’s journey is recounted in David S. Brown’s latest biography, THE LAST AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT: THE BRILLIANT LIFE AND IMPROBABLE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS.

Adams excelled in a number of areas.  His reputation has been formulated in large part by his autobiography, THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS where he warned Americans about unlimited immeasurable power that would be unleashed in the 20^th century which won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in biography.  Adams’ other major work was his masterful HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES DURING THE ADMIMISTRATIONS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON AND JAMES MADISON, a nine volume compilation that historian Gary Wills calls “the non-fiction prose masterpiece of the 19^th century in America.”  Brown’s biography captures the fullness of Adams’ remarkable life that encompassed many highs, as a political reformer, novelist, world and traveler.  It also encompassed a number of devastating lows which include a pressure packed family familiar that was familiar with depression, alcoholism, and suicide along with presenting an important window into 19^th century American history.

Brown emphasizes Adams’ role as a transitional figure between colonial and modern America.  More specifically American history was moving toward “an imperial, industrial identity, one both increasingly beholden to technology and concerned with the fate of the white race. This is the context that the author believes Adams must be viewed in order to understand him.

The book itself is divided into two parts.  The first takes his life to 1885 and the suicide of his wife, Marian Hooper, called Clover.  In this section the reader is exposed to Adams’ impressions, Harvard and European education, and influences and pressure brought forth by his family resulting in the last of his generation of relations to achieve national recognition.  During this period his rural Quincy, MA background which he believed was superior to other parts of America, his bitter reaction to partisan politics, his attraction to a cosmopolitan Europe, and the development of his elitist outlook on life are all explored.  Following Clover’s death, Brown deftly examines a person who seemed to be set adrift resorting to constant travel, darkening meditations on capitalism’s quick expansion, and a propensity toward different personas, i.e., “Henry the 12^th century Norman, the Tahitian prince, and the progress defying and denying conservative Christian anarchist.”  All of the masks that Adams’ personality presents point toward some quiet defiance of modernity, as all were primitive and skeptical of the coming age. 

According to Brown, this component of his personality defined his outlook and “at times threatened to distort his work, leading to caricature, doomsaying, and the uncritical elevation of those civilizations and peoples he often patronizingly regarded as anti-modern.” This aspect of his thought process opened to him an exceptionally wide range of ideas and yielded a complicated and insightful individual as any American thinker for his time period and beyond.  As Adams wrote in his autobiography, “by the unknowable, uncontrollable dynamo of industrial development; it is a world we have inherited, a cultural spirit we have yet to shake.”

(Marian (Clover) Hooper Adams on horseback, 1869)

Brown has a strong handle on the course of American history during Adams’ lifetime.  He effectively integrates important events and characters into the narrative and how they impacted Adams’ opinions, thought processes and actions.  An area that Brown spends a great deal of time is dealing with race and slavery in particular.  Brown makes the important connection between the “Lords of the Leash” and the “Lords of the Loom” as he describes the economically incestuous relationship between northern manufacturers and southern planters.  In Brown’s view Adams saw slaves/blacks as inferior to whites and held many of the same racial views of his time including men like Abraham Lincoln and William Seward.  The difference is that Adams’ views concerning ending slavery did not evolve as Lincoln and Seward’s did.  Henry held the seemingly New England Puritan view that opposed anything compromised, wicked, or wrong.  This is evident in his efforts during the Gilded Age to combat various forms of political, financial, and corporate corruption on the part of “Robber Barons” and their political cohorts.

Adams’ intellectual development was greatly influenced by the trends and political movements he observed before the Civil War.  As he evolved as a “thinker” he was exposed to events leading up to and including the ramifications of the Mexican War that led to the Compromise of 1850 and the slow progression toward war.  For Adams, the difference between north and south presented a dichotomy he found difficult.  The north represented education, free labor, piety, and industry, but he was also attracted to the south’s lack of institutional oversight, of church, state, and school, that pinched him at home in Quincy.  Despite this view of the south and a close friendship with Robert E. Lee’s son, Adams could not shake the divergent views when it came to slavery.  Throughout the pre and post-Civil War period Adams suffered from a failure to grasp the ethical struggle over slavery.  Many of his views were rather fanciful, i.e., the idea that the south would be defeated quickly, he saw Lincoln as a clumsy, rustic and too western etc.  The strength of Brown’s biography emerges as he discusses of Adams’ intellectual evolution as he went from a poor prognosticator to an eminent historian.

Adams’ education was a cacophony of differences.  Harvard for him was not a success as unfortunately he attended the Cambridge institution at a time when it was at the tail end of its older scholastic tradition.  When he graduated in 1858 Harvard was on the cusp of major curriculum changes and approaches to teaching science, economics, and politics.  Adams would travel to Germany to further his education outside the study of law that seemed to be his family’s traditional avocation.  He rejected the stringency of German university education but enjoyed traveling throughout Bismarck’s realm.  While in Europe he wrote a column for a Boston paper reflecting his love of travel particularly Italy where he was taken by the Italian movement toward unity and meeting Giuseppe Garibaldi and learning about Cavour.  While traveling Adams read Edward Gibbons’ THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and decided the Adams family needed a historian.

(Charles Francis Adams)

During the Civil War his father, Charles Francis Adams gave up his congressional seat to become the US Minister to England, Henry served as his secretary.  Their role was to make sure England did not afford the south diplomatic recognition and political and economic support.  After a slow start integrating into English society, Henry was able to adapt in large part because his own snobbish approach to people fit in with the English upper class.  Henry’s elitism plays a major role in Brown’s analysis of his subjects’ behavior and the evolution of his beliefs.  Upon returning to the US after the war it appeared the Adams’s were becoming more and more irrelevant which pushed Henry to leave Quincy for Washington and position himself as a political critic.  Obviously, the key issues of the day surrounded the plight of former slaves.

Brown’s insights into Adams views of race are insightful as he stresses Adams’ refusal to accept slavery’s corrosive and all pervading impact on America.  Brown is accurate when he argues that Adams narrow outlook reduced slavery to a  “repercussion-less fact, a wicked act now mercifully ended.”  In addition, he had an inability to see congressional reconstruction as a moral struggle rather than a political blunder reflecting his indifference to race.  He opposed the 15^th amendment and feared Congress was overstepping its bounds, and he totally misjudged the south’s ferocity to reclaim what they saw was stolen from them.  Adams suffered from the delusion that a virtuous people was unfairly subjugated by a combination of Yankee carpetbaggers, black congressmen, and unscrupulous scalawags.  He had gone to Washington to free Congress from corrupt corporations and lobbyists but failed to appreciate America’s racial problems as” he lacked urgency, insight, or empathy.”

Adams was content to be a political outsider.  He viewed himself as a reformer despite the fact he clung to a patrician system that was on its way out.  He did recognize his personal aristocratic expectation of achieving political power was not going to pan out and resented the new social order that deprived him of this type of success from the monied men at the top to the immigrants at the bottom.  His anti-Semitism was ever present as he tended to blame Jews for the monied interests that appeared to dominate the American economy as it developed capitalist wealth which negatively impacted the American people.  Reflecting his elitism, Adams was the type of person who believed that few men or women were his equal, however his friends loved him, but he definitely was an acquired taste.

Brown does an exceptional job detailing Adams’ career as a writer and an intellectual.  He argues that Adams’ approach is diverse.  He can be considered one of the first “muckrakers” as coined by Theodore Roosevelt as he published a series of articles dealing with corruption during the Grant administration.  His “The New York Gold Conspiracy” zeroes in on Jay Gould and James Fiske’s attempt to corner the gold market.  In this and other articles he warns that a “rising plutocracy threatened to upend the republic.  Brown focuses on Adams’ more literary projects along with the personal drama surrounding the publication of each.  Novels like ESTHER and  DEMOCRACY reflect his talent as a satirist along with many personal details particularly his spouse Clover.  His greatest triumph came as a historian as his nine volume history of the Jefferson and Madison administrations reflected not only American history from 1800 to 1817 but also it places events in the United States in the context of European politics.  Brown points to the major criticism of the work in that Adams downplayed the impact of slavery and ignored its strong presence in the northern economy and society.  Further, women are hidden in the narrative with but a few mentions like Dolly Madison and Aaron Burr’s daughter Theodosia.  Adams’ focus is a dismissal of elitism and praises the contributions of non-elites for American society.  Following this history Adams continued his literary career with MONT-SAINT MICHEL AND CHARTRES, a meditative reflection on medieval culture.

Much of Brown’s approach as a biographer is his ability to analyze Adams’ personal writings and delving into a plethora of primary documents.  Further Brown’s portraits of Adams’ friends, allies, and enemies over his lifetime creates a coherent intellectual and political history of half of the 19^th century.  Brown has created a land bridge through Henry Adams’ eyes that effectively connects the 19^th and 20^th centuries that his readers will benefit from.  But one must remember as Brown points out that Adams suffered a number of personal tragedies from the death of his sister Louise, the suicide of his wife that is reflected in his distinctive fatalism built upon an already “defensive and satirical exterior to stiffen.”

Henry Adams’ life is a historical duality in that he thought of himself as an 18^th century man and argued for decades against corruption and searched for an antidote for Anglo-Saxon materialism.  However, despite his firm belief that capitalism could ruin the United States in the coming 20^th century, he did little on a personal level to disavow his own wealth which allowed him to travel the world, purchase art works and other cultural artifacts, and benefit from the fruits of his societal position.

To sum up Brown has offered  a credible account of America’s transformation during one man’s lifetime, from a Republic where the Adams name was extremely consequential, to an industrialized monolith that had left the family behind.  As historian Amy Greenberg writes “it’s a tribute to Brown’s talent as a biographer that he enables the reader to feel empathy for a man who expressed so little for anyone else.”