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An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history
George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century--an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely--and ultimately fatally--tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s. The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.
- Sales Rank: #1283798 in Books
- Published on: 2001-08-01
- Released on: 2001-08-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .93" w x 5.50" l, 1.03 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
From Library Journal
Packer has produced a fascinating personal history while examining why people become liberals even though their efforts frequently seem extremely futile. The author describes the life and times of his Alabama-born maternal grandfather, Congressman George Huddleston, whose brand of liberalism was rooted in Southern agrarian populism and who often opposed FDR's New Deal. Packer also tells of his father, Herbert, whose Jewish American background placed him squarely in the urban liberal tradition of the mid-20th century. His father's life and career ultimately came to a turbulent climax as an administrator at Stanford University during the late 1960s. Finally, in a brief, informative, and moving autobiographical section, Packer recounts the development of his own social and political views following his father's stroke and suicide. The author attempts to demonstrate the ongoing relevance to today's world of a political philosophy that many believe has little future. Packer's combination of personal and historical perspectives, as well as his considerable skill at conveying them, make this work both challenging and enjoyable. Written for the lay reader, it nonetheless avoids oversimplification. Highly recommended.DCharles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Family saga and the history of a political idea blend in this thoughtful, gracefully written reflection. Journalist and novelist Packer traces three generations of his own family and the shifting meaning of liberalism over the past century. Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, represented Birmingham, Alabama, in Congress from 1915 to 1937. A Southern Progressive, a "Thomas Jefferson Democrat," he started out arguing for universal suffrage and unions; he quickly learned to avoid race and gender, but his class-based radicalism was firm until the New Deal's elitist tinkering made him a "state's rights" conservative. Nancy Huddleston married Herbert Packer, a Yale-educated Jewish lawyer who taught at Stanford University; both were "Adlai Stevenson Democrats" and "New Deal liberals." But Packer took on administrative duties at Stanford just as a new generation challenged the rational liberalism he championed; he suffered a stroke and, three years later, committed suicide. Twelve when his father died in 1972, George Packer pursued his own vision of liberalism: at Yale, in the Peace Corps, in volunteerism and political activism. A fascinating, thought-provoking narrative. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Splendid . . . [Packer] skillfully weaves the travails of the reformist left through the equally tempetuous story of his own activist family. The result is a politically engaged memoir that sheds more understanding on the problems and promise of liberalism than a shelf full of hand-wringing or wistful post-mortems.” ―Michael Kazin, The Chicago Tribune
“Remarkable . . . Belongs on the shelf next to Angela's Ashes, The Liars' Club, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” ―Jack Hitt, The New York Times Book Review
“Blood of The Liberals is coherent, compelling and desperately urgent.” ―Wilson Carey McWilliams, San Francisco Chronicle
“I've never read a book quite like George Packer's Blood of the Liberals. More than a learned history and revealing memoir, it's also an unsentimental but deeply felt love letter to the father he barely knew and the grandfather he never met. Packer shows American liberals where we've been and where we must go by sharing his story--a story that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and beautifully drawn.” ―George Stephanopoulos
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Martha Anne Dorminy
A 5 star book, elegantly
and clearly written.
64 of 74 people found the following review helpful.
A voice in the wilderness
By Anthony Berno
How did such a basic, rational notion as liberalism turn into the favorite epithet of talk-show hosts? What happened to social justice? Where is the freewheeling spirit of the Sixties? These, and other questions, have haunted me for years. Not being well versed in American history, the seemingly abrupt annhiliation of everything "liberal" has caused me great puzzlement and distress.
Packer, in a beautiful amalgam of memoir and history, has written a book that has almost singlehandedly restored my relationship with the past and pointed my way to the future. While as a historical account it is spotty, and as a memoir it is sometimes dry, the heartfelt combination of these two styles has a vitality and immediacy I've never seen anywhere else.
His conclusions, while expansive, are also poignant, with a touch of desperation. In his consideration of the prospects of liberalism in this country, I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the parrot - "It's just resting!" - while at the same time I'm stirred by its undercurrent of optimism. His last few words ring in my ears: "We will have a more just society as soon as we want one."
If you sense that, like myself, you are a lost liberal that is trying to find your way in the world, this book is for you.
If you are a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who needs a clue as to what "liberal" really means, this book is for you as well.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
If you want to understand why liberals lose elections, read Packer
By Stephen R. Laniel
Blood of the Liberals is a near-perfect blend of the personal and the political. Packer's grandfather was George Huddleston, a Congressman from Birmingham, Alabama who represents for Packer a lot of the contradictions in modern liberalism: desegregation versus states' rights, support for the common man against bigness (whether corporate, governmental, or otherwise), and at the same time a belief that government is sometimes necessary.
Packer's father, by contrast, was a pointy-headed academic. He grew up as a shy Jewish boy and moved into the ivory-tower life after some time spent in World War II; Packer paints the war years as rather uneventful for the senior Packer -- indeed little more than a pause from his books. I felt a lot of empathy with the dad; I was the same way when I was a kid, and I'm sure that if I went off to fight a war I'd be mailing home to ask for books and magazines just as much as Packer Sr. was.
I also drew a lot from Packer's portrait of his father, because in that portrait Packer seems to have discovered why liberals keep losing elections. Packer Sr. was an Adlai Stevenson man -- Stevenson, the charismatic, brilliant loser. In a better world, Stevenson would have been our president, but in this world he lost the race twice. The term egghead became popular because one of the Alsops tagged Stevenson with it.
And ever since Stevenson, says Packer, liberalism has been dominated by rather bloodless intellectuals who can't argue persuasively against the bread-and-butter issues that let Republicans win. The common thread among these intellectuals, says Packer, is a love of abstract debate, and the belief that human problems can be solved by the judicious application of reason -- that we can all get along and solve our issues without yelling or fighting. That's fine and good, and as far as it goes it's no more modern than Jefferson. The Jeffersonian strain is one of the key strands that Packer identifies in liberal thought.
Where it starts losing elections, he says, is when the intellectuals start to take it over. Discussions shift from individual people -- this man lost his land, this man's family is starving because of government policies -- to larger universal themes like freedom, equality, justice, and the rule of law.
This adherence to principles loses us elections. It lost Stevenson the election against Eisenhower when he stood up for fairness and impartiality in the anti-Communist witchhunts; he himself was a strong anti-Communist, but he framed his beliefs in terms that Nixon could tear apart.
This doesn't play with the public. The public is more concerned with outcomes than with processes. If the public doesn't feel safe, it will not vote for abstract principles that seem to help their enemies. We could argue for civil liberties all we want, but Republicans will always come back with the argument that they're helping protect us from terrorists. When it comes to a battle between safety and our Constitutional freedoms, safety will always win.
This, at least, is the message that Packer seems to be sending so far. His diagnosis does seem spot on. And his delivery is just right: he cuts back and forth between an impersonal political tale -- how liberals have ended up in the mess we're in -- and a personal story about discovering his father's and grandfather's role in it all. It is at once autobiography and political cautionary tale. I'm amazed that he could pull it off.
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