Category: American History

‘William Clark and the Shaping of the West’

by Landon Y. Jones

Hill and Wang, 394 pp., $25

There are few more revered figures in American history than William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, explorers of the American West. Although Lewis died within three years of his return from the Lewis and Clark expedition, Clark lived a long life in military service to the United States. In “William Clark and the Shaping of the West,” Landon Jones delivers a revealing portrait of Clark’s entire life, not just the famous journey.

Jones, a former managing editor at People magazine and contributor to Life, Time and Money, is on the board of the National Council of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. But his fascination for the expedition notwithstanding, Jones’ work is an unflinching and frankly unflattering portrait of a beloved American hero.

Clark was born in 1770 and was raised in a country still struggling with its newfound independence. Joining the American military when he was just 19, Clark served the federal government for several decades, securing outposts in the West, leading men into the wilderness and, above all, fighting the Indians.

Jones’ masterful biography brings to life the gritty and brutal existence of life on the American frontier. Arriving pioneers found fertile land abounded as they pushed westward, but with the land came the Native American tribes who resented the arrival of white settlers, particularly when it was “guaranteed” by earlier treaties that the settlers refrain from further encroachment. The weak national government was unable to control the settlers, who moved far beyond treaty-established boundaries. When the inevitable hostilities arose, it was the Indians who were blamed as “savages” and were attacked by the military – including at times Clark himself – and then guaranteed peace only in exchange for land and resettlement further west.

The story, familiar as it is, is difficult to read without disgust. Jones’ narrative is superb at bringing the conflict to life: American soldiers digging up Indian corpses to scalp or burn them, pregnant Indian women hung and mutilated, and enormous fields of Indian corn burned to starve the tribes into submission (the same tactic used by the British during the Revolutionary War and decried as “barbaric” by the colonies). While Jones does not attribute any of these incidents to Clark himself, Clark plainly was deeply involved in the conflict throughout his military career and could not have been unaware of them. To modern Americans, it seems almost absurd to question that the young United States would bridge the continent. But, from Clark’s perspective, the outcome was far from certain. French, English and Spanish armies maneuvered and manipulated Native American tribes, shifting alliances to balance power in the unsettled West.

Clark was 33 years old when he was invited by Meriwether Lewis to join him on an expedition to explore the Western interior. The Lewis and Clark expedition has been the subject of scores of books, but Jones manages to cover it in a brisk 30 pages, drawing heavily from the expedition’s journals and correspondence.

Upon his return from the expedition, Clark married 15-year-old Julia Hancock, was appointed principal Indian agent for the U.S. government and settled in the former French city of St. Louis. In his remaining years, Clark acted as the federal representative in negotiating countless treaties with vanishing Native American tribes as they were pushed inexorably westward and toward oblivion.

In 1831, a band of Sauks attempted to return to their tribal homeland on the east bank of the Mississippi in what is now Illinois. As the conflict escalated, the Sauks tried to escape back west but, unable to negotiate peace terms because the pursuing Americans had no interpreters, the Sauks “put up little resistance, as most were attempting to find shelter or help the women and children scramble across the river’s mud flats and small islands. … The carnage was terrible; men, women, and children were shot indiscriminately, and their blood-streaked bodies floated downriver.”

The few who escaped were hunted and killed. Clark – at the time the Indian superintendent for the West – was delighted to hear the “glorious news.”

Clark died in 1838 at age 68. He outlived Lewis by more than 29 years. By the time of his death, Clark had personally signed 37 separate Indian treaties, more than anyone in American history, and supervised the removal of 81,282 Indians from the East. As Clark lay dying, the U.S. Army began moving the 17,000 Cherokee Indians west, on a thousand-mile forced march known as the “Trail of Tears.” Four thousand of them died. It was the culmination of a process started, facilitated and enforced by William Clark.

Clark’s many contributions, including the Lewis and Clark expedition itself, will not soon be forgotten. But this thoughtful biography suggests that Clark’s entire life was a more complex, and decidedly less heroic, affair.

President Clinton visited Seattle a couple of years ago after leaving the White House, and he addressed an overflow lunch crowd jamming the Westin Ballroom. As he surveyed the world’s troubles and how America should respond, the contrast between his approach and that of the new Bush administration could not have been more stark. Reading former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s just-published memoirs, “Madam Secretary” (Miramax, $27.95), brings much the same thought to mind – how far we’ve traveled from working with NATO and the U.N. to address Bosnia and Kosovo, to working around our closest NATO allies and the U.N. to address Iraq.
Madeleine Albright’s life could hardly have been more interesting. Her father was a Czech diplomat and, when the Nazis invaded, Albright’s family escaped on a night train out of Prague. Her father worked in London with exiled Czech President Edvard Bene{scaron}, and then in Prague after the war, until the Communists ousted the democratically-elected leadership. Albright’s father secured a posting to the United Nations in New York, representing Czechoslovakia, but worked behind the scenes to secure refugee status.

After leaving government service, Albright’s father took up teaching, and the family resettled into suburban American life. Madeleine met her future husband, Joe Albright, at Wellesley College, and her marriage brought her wealth (his uncle was Harry Guggenheim) and powerful family connections. Albright became an American citizen, raised three children and simultaneously secured her Ph.D. from Columbia University’s prestigious Russian Institute.

With her degree, Albright worked for U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie and was later invited to join the staff of the National Security Council by her former college professor Zbigniew Brzezinski (who had been selected to be President Carter’s national security adviser). With President Carter’s defeat in 1980, Albright returned to academia and worked on successive presidential campaigns.

When President Clinton was elected, Albright served first as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and, in the second term, as secretary of state. Shortly after her confirmation, news stories surfaced revealing Albright’s Jewish ancestry. Albright achingly writes of her heartbreak at discovering the fate of three of her grandparents in Nazi concentration camps, their names etched in the wall of a synagogue in Prague that she had visited.

Albright’s writing is smooth, captivating and thoughtful. The book provides a sweeping overview of foreign crises during the entire eight-year term of the Clinton presidency, with fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpses into personal encounters with world leaders from across the globe. From Iraq to Bosnia, the tangle of Middle East politics, the slaughter in Kosovo, her management of the relationships with NATO allies, and her visit to North Korea, her story is a short course in near-term world history. Much of it is familiar, but it’s refreshing to review how differently America responded to international challenges just a few short years ago: Albright sought to contain the Iraqi threat with international sanctions and inspections rather than outright war. She responded to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions with containment and engagement. And she used NATO air strikes – working with then-NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark – to bring Slobodan Milosevic to justice when many said that air strikes alone would never resolve the issue.

But far more interesting are Albright’s personal reflections on her appointment as the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the U.S. government. Her insights into the unique challenges posed to a woman serving in a largely male environment are entertaining. At the end of one dinner, for example, she realized that she had spilled some salad dressing on her skirt – a spill that would never have been noticed on a man’s dark suit. For the after-dinner group photo, she turned the skirt around to conceal the stain. She dryly comments: “Not a move with which Henry Kissinger could have gotten away.”

But, for all its thoughtful discussion of foreign relations and international intrigue, the book is surprisingly silent about the single most defining event of the Clinton presidency: his impeachment and trial before the Senate. Albright devotes a handful of paragraphs to the scandal and mentions in passing the president’s apology to his cabinet for misleading them. But future historians will be left wondering about the impact of the impeachment and trial of a sitting president on the foreign relations of the country.

Even with this rather dramatic omission, Albright’s memoirs are a fascinating review of recent American history, a compelling insight into foreign relations up close and personal, and a stirring reminder of the power of diplomacy in achieving peace in a troubled world.

‘Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas’

by Bruce Allen Murphy

Random House, $35

William O. Douglas served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 36 years, longer than any other justice in American history. He wrote the most opinions for the court, issued the most dissents, wrote more books, married more women, endured more divorces and was threatened with impeachment more often than any other justice before or since. Douglas left a legacy that is difficult to imagine, let alone catalog.

Bruce Allen Murphy’s magnificent new biography, “Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas,” rises to the formidable challenge posed to anyone who would attempt the task. Fifteen years in the making, it is the first truly comprehensive biography of the justice – and one well worth waiting for.

Douglas’ life, as he told it, was a stirring victory against the odds. According to Douglas, he suffered polio as a child and regained his ability to walk only through the dedication of his mother and his own steel-eyed grit in hiking the Yakima foothills. He claimed to have been raised in a poor family, to have ridden the rails east to law school at Yale, to have served in World War I, and to have graduated second in his class from law school.

Unfortunately, much of the story isn’t exactly accurate, as Murphy’s biography points out, backed up by hundreds of interviews and a close review of voluminous papers only recently made public.

Douglas did suffer a mysterious illness as a child, but it was never diagnosed as polio then or later. Douglas’ early years in Yakima were challenging, but his widowed mother was hardly destitute. He did ride a “sheep train” to law school, but it was a comfortable passage and hardly counts as riding the rails. Douglas served his country well and long on the court, but he never served in the military, apart from a few weeks of volunteer service in the Students’ Army Training Corps. And, brilliant as he was, he was not second in his class at Yale Law School.

And the sad part is this: None of this myth-making is necessary to recognize Douglas’ extraordinary achievements. Douglas was plainly a brilliant man who succeeded against daunting odds, rising from an obscure (if not entirely poor) upbringing in Yakima. He gained fame teaching at Yale Law School and was appointed by then-President Franklin Roosevelt to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Widely praised by New Deal liberals for his dramatic work in challenging securities fraud, he became an FDR favorite, playing a regular game of poker with the president. Twice he was nearly nominated for the vice presidency. His record hardly needs exaggeration.

He was barely more than 40 years old when he was appointed to the Supreme Court. His service on the court was remarkable by any measure, and his opinions and dissents identified issues that even today continue to resonate – the right to privacy (and later abortion) was founded almost entirely on Douglas’ reasoning in early cases. He broke ground in environmental cases, in free-speech cases, and in search-and-seizure cases. But he chaffed on the court, never entirely happy to be so far from the fray, and frustrated that his hidden presidential ambitions had never been satisfied.

Although Douglas gained fame on the East Coast, he always considered Yakima his true home. He spent his summers at his Goose Prairie cabin, roaming far and wide among his beloved Cascade Mountains. Douglas held hearings in the Yakima County courthouse and once even heard out lawyers with an emergency petition beside a campfire at a high-mountain camp (making them return the following day for the ruling). His spirit still roams the Cascades, with his name often inscribed in trail registers by hikers as an informal tribute to “The Judge.”

Despite his remarkable professional achievements, Douglas’ personal life was a disaster. Douglas had two children to whom he was a cold and distant father. Worse, he relentlessly cheated on his wife and chased women constantly, which ultimately led to his first divorce. He married and divorced two other women before his fourth, and last, marriage to Cathy Douglas. She was 23 and he was 67, leading one Goose Prairie observer to comment that the justice just might have “overstocked his pasture this time.” He was also brutal on his office staff, famous for his harsh criticism of their work.

Douglas was threatened with impeachment four times, most seriously by President Nixon. Informed by the attorney general of the impending impeachment effort, Douglas responded: “Well, Mr. Attorney General, you’d better saddle your horses.” Both efforts ended in failure.

Even trimmed down to a more historically accurate portrait, William O. Douglas’ accomplishments were staggering. “Wild Bill” is an outstanding review of Douglas’ life, legacy, and legend. It’s likely to remain the definitive Douglas biography for years to come and is, indeed, a fitting tribute to Washington’s most famous son.

‘Benjamin Franklin’

by Edmund S. Morgan

Yale University Press, $24.95

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the best known, and least understood, of the American founding fathers.

To the popular imagination, Franklin is remembered as a portly man who shook the world with a novel electrical experiment and authored numerous witty aphorisms. But his contributions to the political, social and scientific history of America can scarcely be overstated.

Franklin played a pivotal role in our nation’s birth – he represented the colonies in London in the stormy years leading to the American Revolution. He returned to America to sign the Declaration of Independence. He negotiated a critical alliance with the French, and even negotiated the terms of American independence.

Edmund S. Morgan brings Franklin’s larger accomplishments alive in his new biography, “Benjamin Franklin,” a thoughtful and imaginative volume that vividly recounts Franklin’s astonishing achievements.

Morgan, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000, is chairman of the voluminous Franklin Papers. He describes the book as “a character sketch that got out of control.”

It’s an apt description. Unlike the popular recent biographies of Lyndon Johnson or John Adams, Morgan doesn’t comprehensively catalogue Franklin’s life. He omits almost entirely any examination of Franklin’s personal life, mentioning only in passing Franklin’s illegitimate son (whose mother has never been identified) and his wife who stayed behind in Pennsylvania during the long years that Franklin spent abroad.

Rather, Morgan draws almost entirely from Franklin’s own writings to weave a comparatively brief (314 pages) essay on his most important contributions to his city, nation and world. It’s a refreshing focus on Franklin’s larger contributions. Morgan’s writing, fluid and thoughtful, narrates Franklin’s life in the present tense, which brings a compelling immediacy to the text.

Franklin was a printer by trade. His immense curiosity led him to constantly experiment on the world around him. He experimented with the effect of oil on water, demonstrated how the temperature of the Atlantic revealed the course of the Gulf Stream, mapped the movement of storms and redesigned common stoves.

Franklin’s experiments with electricity, conducted from 1748-50, were his most famous. Begun at age 40, the experiments explained the fundamental nature of lightning and electricity to a world that barely understood it. He proposed an experiment to demonstrate that lightning was actually an electrical charge, similar to static electricity (the only kind known at the time). This one experiment alone brought Franklin worldwide fame.

Sent to England to represent Pennsylvania in 1757, he was later appointed by other colonies and served, for practical purposes, as the “American” ambassador. In London, he earned fast friends, enormous respect and severe British approbation as the point of contact between restless colonies yearning for freedom and an angry imperial government determined to teach the colonials a lesson. Franklin sarcastically published in response a pamphlet entitled “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One.”

Franklin was convinced that American growth would lead to power and wealth. A reluctant revolutionary, he argued that the colonies should be allowed to legislate for themselves as a co-equal to the British Parliament, both subject to one sovereign. British Parliamentary rule was futile, in his view, and would lead only to alienation and, ultimately, to the exclusion of England from America’s unlimited potential. But as the tension inexorably ratcheted both countries toward war, Franklin was unable to persuade an unyielding Parliament to compromise.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1775. Resigned to the necessity for war, he signed a Declaration of Independence drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, and was appointed to negotiate a critical alliance with the French. He playfully wrote to an English friend early in the war to consider that “Britain, at the expense of three million pounds, has killed 150 Yankies this campaign, which is 20,000 a head; and at Bunker’s Hill she gained a mile of ground. … During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data [you] will easily calculate the time and expence necessary to kill us all, and conquer our whole territory.”

In October 1776, Franklin, now 69, returned to the Continent to represent the new American government in France, borrow money and purchase supplies for General Washington’s army. He was treated with awe and respect by the French, courted by intellectuals, royalty and a seemingly endless supply of beautiful French women.

In 1782, Franklin helped negotiate the end of a war. He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, sat in the 1787 convention that framed the U.S. Constitution (replacing the Articles of Confederation), and died three years later in 1790.

From start to finish, he played one of the most central roles in creating modern America of any of the founding fathers. As Morgan concludes “We can know what many of his contemporaries came to recognize, that he did as much as any man ever has to shape the world he and they lived in. We can also know what they must have known, that the world was not quite what he would have liked.

‘Theodore Rex’

by Edmund Morris

Random House, $35

A bit more than one century ago, on Sept. 21, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency after the death of his predecessor, William McKinley, by an assassin’s bullet. At 42, he was – and remains – the youngest president to hold the office.

Over the next eight years, he towered over the political landscape, built an American empire, and through sheer force of personality bent the political world to his will.

The second in a three-volume biography of Roosevelt’s life, “Theodore Rex” begins with Roosevelt’s ascent to office in 1901 and ends with his departure from the White House in 1908.

The title, bestowed by Henry James, pays tribute to Roosevelt’s power during his presidency. Edmund Morris won the Pulitzer Prize for the first volume of the biography and, with this dazzling effort, could easily win another.

Carefully drawing from Roosevelt’s private papers and those of his contemporaries, Morris compiles a vivid portrait of Roosevelt’s ferocious zest for life, keen intelligence and unerring political judgment.

Roosevelt all but leaps from the pages, flashing smiles, snapping off crisp sentences and, above all, commanding attention.

Roosevelt’s achievements can scarcely be overstated – building the Panama Canal, personally negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize), and arm-twisting both labor and railroad tycoons into an improbable settlement of the violent 1902 coal miners’ strike in Pennsylvania that threatened to disrupt the economy and leave millions without heat as winter approached.

Roosevelt built up the Navy (his infamous “big stick”), extending American naval power throughout the world, and introduced conservation to the American public – single-handedly tripling the size of the national forests (including national forests in the Washington Cascades and Olympics) and creating 51 national wildlife refuges, thus preserving the nearly extinct “Roosevelt” elk and laying the groundwork for the creation in 1938 of Olympic National Park.

On race relations, Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner, a groundbreaking move, but later unfairly discharged 160 African-American soldiers accused without proof of a murderous rebellion against local racism in Brownsville, Texas.

Roosevelt aggressively challenged the powerful corporate trusts, enacting landmark antitrust legislation and launching trust-busting prosecutions of some of the most infamous trusts and industrialists of the time.

J.P. Morgan, still bitter from Roosevelt’s treatment of him, is said to have once raised his glass at dinner, as Roosevelt left on a post-presidential safari, to the toast: “America expects that every lion will do his duty.”

Roosevelt’s White House crackled with energy, noise and bustling confusion as his six beloved children swarmed throughout the grounds. Adored by his children, he was an honorary member of the White House gang of rebellious boys.

But Roosevelt himself had something of the bumptious boy in him. He adored physical challenge, constantly pushing himself to the limit in climbing, hiking, galloping on horseback through Washington’s Rock Creek Park, or leading puzzled European diplomats through the muddy park.

His infamous “walks” often included waist-high wading through water still half-frozen from winter’s chill, or rock-climbing up dangerous outcroppings, his guests struggling to keep up with Roosevelt as he surged ahead.

He was a committed hunter and often returned from his outings with a limp, hiding huge bruises or pulled muscles. Roosevelt once famously refused to shoot a bear, captured by his hosts during a hunting trip in Mississippi and tied to a tree for his convenience. His sportsmanship was noted in editorial cartoons, and the bear later became a symbol, his name forever attached to millions of “Teddy bears.”

Roosevelt was re-elected in 1904 by a landslide, upon which he promptly announced that he would not seek re-election to another term. He was acutely aware of the dangers of overstaying his welcome and felt that, once made, his promise could not be forsaken. He remained true to his commitment and declined the 1908 nomination in favor of William Howard Taft, his chosen successor.

Morris deftly closes this volume with Roosevelt’s departure from Washington to his cherished New York estate, Sagamore Hills, “the image of his receding grin and wave” fading into history.

Morris’ first volume of this biography was acclaimed as a singular triumph. His more recent fictionalized “biography” of Ronald Reagan (“Dutch”) was far more controversial, derided by many as bizarre and self-indulgent.

In “Theodore Rex,” Morris returns to form and produces a rare blend of superb research, engaging writing and a fascinating portrait of one of America’s most interesting presidents. Roosevelt would surely have declared it “bully.

‘Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950’

by Martin Russ Fromm International, $27.50$

In November 1950, the war in Korea seemed close to an end: U.S. troops were approaching the Yalu River that separated Korea from China, about to close in on the remnants of the tattered Korean army, secure victory, and were expected to be home for Christmas. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

Instead, thousands of Chinese Communists silently poured across the border, trapping 12,000 U.S. Marines in the rough, bitterly cold mountains. The story of how these Marines battled their way out of that trap remains today one of the most heroic stories of the century.

In “Breakout,” former Marine and Korean War veteran Martin Russ tells the story of the Chosin Reservoir campaign at ground level. He relies on first-hand accounts from the Marines themselves of the horrific conditions and brutal combat, weaving their voices with official accounts of the battle. It is a compelling story, and hearing it from the voices of the then-young Marines themselves brings it vividly to life.

In November 1950, U.S. troops were advancing both in the east and west of North Korea, closing in a giant pincer movement that would trap the remaining North Korean troops. Commanding generals, confident that the Chinese would not intervene, dismissed concerns by the Marines that they were unprotected and stretched too thinly in the rugged mountains. Indeed, even the initial reports of Chinese troops in North Korea were dismissed as imaginative or nothing more than a handful of volunteers. In fact, as U.S. forces learned to their dismay, the forces were quite real, enormous in number and devastatingly prepared to take maximum advantage of the difficult terrain.

Encircled by more than 60,000 Chinese troops, trapped in mountains with only one narrow road for access – which was quickly cut off by enemy troops – and battling sub-zero weather, the grossly outnumbered U.S. forces were given little hope of survival. Even the newspapers at home described their plight as hopeless. But the story of the raw bravery, skill and firepower focused by the Marines as they blasted their way out of those deadly circumstances is nothing less than astonishing. Reluctant to ever admit a retreat, the Marines famously dubbed their exit an “attack in a different direction.”

Carrying most of their wounded, and many of their dead, the Marines successfully extracted themselves and nearly 1,000 vehicles while inflicting massive numbers of casualties on the surrounding enemy troops. Gung-ho to the end, one young Marine commented that “they’re in trouble, not us.” He was right.

As strong as this story is, it is not quite strong enough to mask the flaws in this account of the battle. Although vivid, Russ’ ground-level approach to the narrative does not often pause to explain the context of particular engagements or provide detailed maps or photographs that might illustrate the topography or location of the combat. Almost 50 years after the fact, such an account could have, but does not in “Breakout,” put the battle in a larger historical context.

Still, the unmistakable feel of this hard reality seeps from the pages of this book: that these young Marines saved themselves from circumstances that would have crushed almost any others. The Chosin Reservoir campaign, and those who fought it, deserves its places as one of our country’s most heroic battles.

‘The Lexicon of Labor’

by Emmett Murray

The New Press, $13.95

“The Lexicon of Labor” is a recently published dictionary of the labor movement in America, inspired by a Washington State Labor Council pamphlet and written by longtime Seattle Times editor Emmett Murray. Organized alphabetically, the small book covers American labor history from A to Z, providing pithy summaries of notable terms, characters and events over the last hundred years.

Some of Murray’s most interesting entries reflect Washington State’s own labor history. Flip to the entries under “C” to find the description of the 1918 “Centralia Massacre,” in which an armed contingent from an Armistice Day parade attacked the union hall of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW – also known as the radical and notoriously violent “wobblies”), resulting in the death of three of the attackers. One of the union men, Wesley Everest, escaped briefly, killing one of his pursuers before capture. Everest was lynched and his body mutilated. The union men were charged with murder and conspiracy and many of them were convicted. None of the attackers were ever charged or jailed.

Under “E,” Murray summarizes the 1916 “Everett Massacre,” a similarly violent – and unjust – confrontation involving the IWW. Arriving in Everett to support a strike, six of the workers were shot down by sheriff’s deputies. Only the workers were charged with murder, but all were acquitted.

Elsewhere, the book covers the basics of the language of labor, from “Boulwarism” to “zipper clauses,” from “impasse” to “salting.”

The book is a handy reference for the newly initiated, but perhaps a bit slow reading for the casual reader. Although at times interesting, it is marred by its relentless union-side political correctness. The labor movement certainly was unfairly and brutally treated over the years, but was hardly without flaws itself. Nonetheless, those committed to the cause are likely to find the book interesting and maybe even worth reading aloud while walking the picket line.

‘Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’

by Ron Chernow

Random House, $30

Good biographies are hard to find, and great ones even rarer. Ron Chernow’s “Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.” is an outstanding biography that commands attention not only because of its outsized subject, but also because of its timely, thoughtful and balanced approach to one of the most significant and controversial lives of the past century.

John D. Rockefeller Sr., who created the Standard Oil Trust, was born in 1839, the son of steadfast Eliza Rockefeller and undependable William Avery Rockefeller, a colorful flimflam man who abandoned his family for months at a time, traveling the countryside passing himself off as a doctor selling patent-medicine “cures.” Unfaithful from the beginning, William had two children by his mistress and eventually married another woman under another identity.

Eliza, in contrast, was a steadying influence in young John’s life, introducing him to the strict Baptist faith he carried throughout his long life (he died in 1937 at age 97). As a young man in Cleveland, Rockefeller stumbled into the business of refining oil into kerosene, which was emerging as an alternative to the more costly natural oils used to light homes. An odd man with extremely demanding and precise habits, Rockefeller seized the initiative in the wildly disorganized Pennsylvania oil fields as well as the local refineries.

Using this powerful leverage over the railroads, he negotiated secret “rebates” that allowed him to lower his costs below anything his competitors could approach. Even those with a geographic advantage found themselves undercut, unaware that secret deals required the railroads to pay “drawbacks” to Rockefeller even when a rival’s oil was shipped on the railroad.

The effect was deadly. His competitors driven to their knees, Rockefeller would buy their refineries out from under them, embrace their executives and move on to the next target. But he stopped short of complete monopoly, allowing a fringe group of competitors to operate while still controlling the market.

This approach to business eventually brought howls of protest from populists, rivals and, ultimately and most dangerously, government lawyers. Rockefeller amassed an astonishing fortune but an even larger reservoir of ill will. As his empire expanded to control nearly 90 percent of the refining industry, the company spilled across borders and developed into one of the nation’s earliest transnational corporations.

Yet after he had made his fortune, Rockefeller turned serious about giving it away. Beset with an avalanche of pleas and petitions, he devoted the same relentless energy and attention to detail to distributing his wealth that he did in building it.

Chernow details the pressure Rockefeller felt as he tried to give away millions of dollars responsibly, ultimately hiring others to assist him and establishing the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. Largely avoiding individual charity, Rockefeller devoted the bulk of his giving to organizations, founding the University of Chicago and Spelman College, broadly supporting the Baptist Church and temperance leagues, and investing heavily in medical research and public health.

By the 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation was the largest grant-making institution on earth.

However, Rockefeller made some surprising investment mistakes. Two church acquaintances, Colgate Hoyt and Charles Colby, persuaded him to invest heavily in Everett, Wash., and its surrounding timber stands, where they imagined the Great Northern Railroad terminus would be located. They were wrong, of course. The terminus was Tacoma, and Everett still bears witness to the mistake: Rockefeller, Hoyt and Colby avenues are major streets in that city.

Although Standard Oil was created in an era with few restrictions, the company prompted landmark antitrust legislation and government regulation over railroad rates. A favorite of muckraking journalists writing lurid accounts of its business practices, the company became a favorite target of lawsuits across the nation.

Eventually, the federal government itself filed a massive antitrust suit against Standard Oil under the newly enacted Sherman Antitrust Act, accusing the firm of monopolistic and unfair practices. After a long, bitter fight, the Supreme Court in 1911 affirmed a decision splitting up Standard Oil.

The news reached Rockefeller while he was playing golf with a Catholic priest, whom he advised: “Buy Standard Oil stock.” It was great advice. What was intended as punishment turned into a staggering windfall – Rockefeller’s wealth nearly tripled as the company was divided and its constituent stocks exploded in value.

For today’s reader, the similarities between Rockefeller’s oil empire and Microsoft’s virtual monopoly over computer operating systems are striking. Like Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Rockefeller brought order to a chaotic infant industry, gained a commanding market share of a crucial resource, and made billions of dollars and untold enemies in the process. And like Gates, Rockefeller confronted a federal government intent on curtailing his power.

Gates, whose wealth has surpassed Rockefeller’s even when adjusted to current dollars, would be well-advised to study his predecessor’s life for important lessons: Public opinion matters, philanthropy pays enormous dividends, and even corporate dismemberment is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Rockefeller story is spellbinding, and Chernow – a National Book Award-winner for “The House of Morgan” – is a fine storyteller, carefully working original sources and presenting a balanced portrait of a man who has been vilified as a vicious, unethical monopolist and deified as the patron saint of philanthropy. Whatever the case, John D. Rockefeller Sr. undeniably left a legacy in business, law and philanthropy that continues to outlive him.

‘Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.’

by Gerald Posner

Random House, $25

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by lone gunman James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, as King leaned over the balcony of the Lorraine Motel and joked with his staff. The CIA was not involved, nor the FBI, nor any other government agency. Just Ray – and maybe his deranged family – motivated by a $50,000 bounty said to have been posted for the killing.

So says investigative journalist Gerald Posner in his definitive study of the King assassination, “Killing the Dream.” Posner, whose 1993 book, “Case Closed,” demolished conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of John F. Kennedy, now takes aim at that other ’60s-era assassination that remains shrouded in innuendo.

“Killing the Dream” sparks immediate interest from its opening account of the last days of the famed civil-rights leader and his involvement in labor turmoil in Memphis. Cutting back and forth between King and his lieutenants and Ray in his sniper’s nest, Posner accumulates evidence of the assassination, of Ray’s escape to Europe and his final capture by an alert customs agent at London’s Heathrow Airport.

Making of a racist

Posner also details Ray’s sorry life and sordid criminal history. Born into crushing poverty, he was initiated into a life of crime and alcoholism by his father and his career-criminal brothers. Ray absorbed his lessons well, committing numerous armed robberies, earning several prison sentences and developing a prodigious ability for creative alibis. In this environment, Ray’s vicious racism took root early and flourished.

In the 30 years since King’s assassination, conspiracy theories have abounded: that there was a covert team of military snipers in Memphis; that the FBI or CIA were involved; even that the supposed “grassy knoll” gunman from Dallas also killed King.

It is an odd, perhaps uniquely grotesque, feature of American popular culture that King’s assassination, like JFK’s, fostered this cult. Perhaps it is too awful to contemplate that men so powerful and inspiring could be silenced by just one lunatic. Life cannot be this fickle; a dream cannot be so easily stilled.

Posner persuasively demonstrates that Ray, who died April 23 still maintaining his innocence, killed King. He reveals, for example, Ray’s marksmanship training in the military (overlooked by those who claim he couldn’t have made the 207-foot shot), and that the trees near the Lorraine Motel were not cut down until two months after the assassination (not before, to give the assassin a clear view, as conspiracy buffs contend). Most convincingly, he cites innumerable inconsistencies in Ray’s own shifting explanations.

Holes in the theories

After confessing to the crime, Ray later claimed he was an innocent dupe led into the crime by a mysterious man named “Raoul.” By any reasonable measure, the story cannot withstand scrutiny. Why would a sophisticated conspiracy use Ray rather than a skilled hit man? Why risk having him run drugs to Mexico before the murder, as Ray claimed? And why allow Ray to live and threaten disclosure after the deed was done?

The most poignant part of “Killing the Dream” recounts the King family’s belief that some larger conspiracy, even including President Lyndon Johnson, had a part in the killing. It is not difficult to sympathize with their loss – King certainly was subjected to FBI surveillance and outrageous efforts to undermine him – but it takes an unreasonable leap of faith to conclude that he was murdered by any government agency.

Overlooking the compelling evidence of Ray’s responsibility does not advance King’s legacy. Posner’s careful analysis overpowers the various flawed and unsupported theories offered over the years. He pronounces this case closed – and his readers likely will, too.

‘The Last Stand: The War Between Wall Street and Main Street Over California’s Ancient Redwoods’

by David Harris

Times Books, $25

California’s redwood forests began growing more than 2,000 years ago – centuries before Columbus set sail, before the Dark Ages began. Neither Wall Street, nor its famed takeover artist Michael Milken, remotely existed.

Yet by some curious twist two millennia later, the fate of these ancient forests somehow ended up the subject of a highly leveraged hostile takeover and a classic battle between corporate America and its environmental antagonist, Earth First!

The Pacific Lumber Company, operated by the Murphy family in the tiny Northern California town of Scotia since 1904, seemed in its prime a highly unlikely target of environmental protests. It was notable not only for its huge stands of virgin old-growth redwoods, but also for its relatively benign approach to forestry. Long before it was fashionable, the company abandoned clear-cutting, instituted selective logging and limited the total cut to the growth during the same year – in other words, sustained forestry.

All that came to a rather screeching halt in 1985, when the firm came to the attention of a Texas-based conglomerate, Maxxam Inc., and Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz. To Hurwitz, Pacific Lumber was grossly undervalued: All one needed to do was borrow money to finance a takeover, then pay back the loans by selling off divisions and liquidating the forest, yielding a tidy profit in the process. Assisted by financing from Michael Milken, Hurwitz and Maxxam set out to do just that.

They met remarkably little resistance at first. But then, enraged by the highly accelerated logging of old-growth, the environmental movement began confronting Pacific Lumber. Earth First! activists staged large-scale protests, sit-ins on trees, and other acts. The battle reached its peak with a car-bombing attack on two leading Earth First! activists, a crime never solved.

“The Last Stand” hardly takes a neutral stand on all of this. David Harris, overwrought and breathless, builds the story in David-and-Goliath terms; in his world, the bad guys are irredeemably evil, and the good guys can do no wrong.

Well, maybe. There certainly isn’t much to be said in defense of unsustainable cutting of virgin old-growth, particularly when dictated by corporate conglomerates trying to fund their own hostile takeovers. But Harris – like Sen. Slade Gorton on the opposite side of the fence – doesn’t even try to imagine a middle ground. Worse, his approach leaves one longing for the sound of Goliath hitting the ground, but that fall, at least in this case, never comes. As Harris well knows, the war is still being played out.

Nonetheless, “The Last Stand” is an arresting portrait of the redwood battle at its high-water mark. For entirely different reasons, the book is likely to cause both sides of the timber dispute to grind their teeth. That alone is a considerable accomplishment.