Reviews

• I shouldn’t watch C-SPAN’s Book-TV quite as much as I do. There are so many great books presented by the authors themselves. What is more inviting (in most cases) than that? Sometimes I get enough information just by watching the reading. Other times, as with this book, I can’t resist buying my own copy. Rosenfeld researched this book for over thirty years, not because he wanted to, but because he was forced to sue the FBI repeatedly to induce the agency to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act. As the author states in his preface, “Many pages were disclosed for the first time, including those concerning the surveillance of law-abiding citizens and efforts to disrupt political organizations. Many others were reprocessed to release additional information, such as the names of people Ronald Reagan informed on” (loc 64). Almost fifty percent of the book consists of appendices, FBI files, notes, selected bibliography, documents, interviews, other sources, acknowledgments, and a subject index. While Rosenfeld was speaking on C-SPAN, I became reacquainted with this era of unrest, the early and middle 1960s, and after I finished the book I became more and more satisfied with the fact that I’d never mustered much respect for the gipper (or is it gypper?). Rosenfeld produces evidence that Reagan began buying favors from J. Edgar Hoover by turning in certain Hollywood celebs who were suspected of being communists. In exchange, he would later ask Hoover to tail his eighteen-year-old daughter, Maureen, in the Washington, D.C. area to see if she was truly living with a man much older than she. Why would a leader who hated excessive government exploit said government for private reasons instead of hiring his own private investigator? Was he just cheap? Why would Reagan use his power as California governor to remove a liberal chancellor at UC Berkeley by seating himself as one of the regents? All throughout his life as a politician of “less government,” he used more government to further his own political standing. Our upstanding Reagan, according to Rosenfeld’s information, was quite promiscuous by way of starlets as much as fifteen years his junior during the period following his divorce from Jane Wyman and before he met Nancy Davis. He neither cared much for nor spent much time with his “Wyman" children, and, well, we know through Patty Davis how great a father he was to the “Davis" kids. What an all-around wonderful human being he seems to have been—having justified all his actions on behalf of his brilliant career. If you can stand getting angry all over again, as I did, you might enjoy reading how Rosenfeld documents everything that seemed to be true about Reagan and his horrible misuse of power but which one couldn’t prove. By the end of the book, you realize that Rosenfeld’s title, Subversives, is true not only (according to the media and popular culture) of the UC students who rioted for reform but also of Reagan, who used his power to subvert democracy, the very ideal he purported to be protecting.

• From page 99 of the hard back edition: "It would be one of the first decisive battles of what would soon be called the Sixties." When you read that sentence in a book you know you are reading a great book. The key to this book can be found on page 203 of the hard back edition where the author tell us: "Hoover still was operating on the secret authorization that FDR had given him twenty-five years earlier when the nation was on the brink of war. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had hardly altered the directive, which Hoover continued to cite as the basis for his investigations..." The great man FDR did on a couple of known occasions wind up guys like Hoover sending them on missions just mainly for the amusement of the president. And then of course FDR died leaving these machinations in place. Hoover was just one of these guys who could get wound up for his leader and please the great man as requested. Some men live for that and Hoover was one. You can tell what FDR thought was important from what were his amusements because the amusements were done secretly and out of public attention. The dominating personality of the president was somehow drawn to these types of people and loved to toy with them. Another interesting aspect of this author's book is that it gives the reader an inside look at how Hoover ran his agency. It appears that subordinates would write drafts and memos that Hoover would review and "scrawl" his OKs or objections in the margins. In blue ink as the books author notes. Thus one man was able to set the tone and direction for an entire government agency. There are a few shortfalls. The first 50 or so pages are written in a "breathless" and "shocked" tone that gets tiring. And then the author's tone changes to a just the facts monologue that might make the reader feel lost in a sea of 500 pages. It's an extremely good story and well told but another complaint is the style of using associated words in places where they do not add to the narrative. For example: on page on page 39 we read "the Tailwaggers' Association put up a ferocious opposition." Tailwaggers Association and ferocious are two things that might readily be associated with dogs but to compose a sentence that way doesn't really add to the narrative. It's just kind of annoying and the author makes these kind of meaningless word associations gratuitously. It kind of makes the reader wish that at long last the author would get over his clever self. Another annoyance is that there are three different typefaces used on every page. The numbering is done in courier, the body text is in another type face and the titles are in yet another type face. I've never seen that before and there is probably a reason. It's distracting. It makes the book seem cheap. Aside from some minor annoyances, impeccable research in an interesting topic, logically arranged, makes this one of those books every American should read. In conclusion let me recount some priceless color from 1965 on the Berkeley campus as found on page 243: "...wrote what The Daily Californian later reported was `a four-letter word for sexual intercourse.' Then sat down...and waited. Mario Savio walked by, did a double take, and paused. He remarked on the versatility of the word- `it could be a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, gerund.' Thompson nodded, wrote `(verb)' under it, and waited some more." Priceless. Also, for all you haters of Reagan here's a gem from page 331: "the Berlin Wall wouldn't have come down unless it had been for..." True, so true.

• Still only part way thru the book, but it's a fascinating read. Amazing what the FBI got (gets?) away with. In all, 441,000 files were opened on individuals whom the FBI suspected of being "subversive". Hoover's megalomania and paranoia of communists, real or imagined, gave him, in his mind, the authority to tap phones, bug private homes, and even the classic "man in the bushes" taking down license numbers at "commie gatherings". The FBI's complicity with the House Un-American Activities Commission is talked about. Names are named. And the author does a good job of fleshing out the people involved in the narrative. Clark Kerr, President of the CSU Berkley campus is an amazing person of true conviction who stands up to the pressures of HUAC and other associated anti-commie organizations when "loyalty oaths" were being forced on educators and staff. But what really promises to get interesting is the relationship between Reagan and Hoover. As I said, I'm still only 20% into the book, but so far it is most interesting. Recommended for anyone who is interested in how "the 60s" got started.

• I was still a young teen when most of the action of the Sixties was taking place, but the antiwar movement really had gotten cranking by the time I was 16 and my father committed suicide. Because of the numinousness of the events--600 bombings in 1971 alone--the whole series of events from the beginning of the civil rights movements to the end of the Vietnam war in 1973, I was especially affected. After reading Rosenfeld's superbly researched book, I've come to realize just how much of an effect right-wing extremists have had in influencing how Americans think of this important turning point in American history. I've read a number of books about the period, but "Subversives" is the first book to take the issue strictly from the viewpoint of the University of California-Berkeley's Free Speech Movement. I knew only a little about Mario Savio, and didn't understand until reading this how important an influence he had on the events to come after his stirring 1964 speech during a rally motivated by restrictions against students advocating political issues on university property. Not only did Savio galvanize the UC Berkeley students and move the regents to allow political activity on campus, but he appeared at a crucial moment when students were risking their lives to register Blacks in the South to vote--only to see the very people they were trying to help get shipped off to Vietnam. Rosenfeld brings this and other issues to the fore, and this is important, mainly because years of right-wing propaganda has branded the New Left that emerged in the Sixties as "Socialist" or "Communist" when those involved were merely citizens concerned over America's seeming racism in once again putting its boot down on people a world away, people who didn't happen to be white. "Subversives" certainly cleared this particular issue up for me--while illustrating with newly-released FBI records exactly what kind of snake Ronald Reagan actually was. Not only did he snitch on his fellow "non-conformist" actors during the horrible blacklistings of the late 1940s, he secretly stayed in touch with J. Edgar Hoover even as he later denied all of it. Reagan was absolutely consumed by the supposed Red threat in the 1960s and his viewpoint has predominated what was really much more complex than a few red-diaper babies carrying-on the subversion begun by their parents in the 1930s. Now, with the Occupy movement gone "accidentally-on-purpose" underground as the commercial press ignores its similar message about war for profit and the rising corporatism in America and beyond, Rosenfeld's "Subversives" is an important and eye-opening book. I'm glad I found out about it by accident. Otherwise, I would have known nothing about it, mainly because the world is consumed by "Real Housewives of New Jersey" rather than by the issues that indeed will affect the future--unless we begin to take action. Perhaps the Sixties was only the prelude.

• Studying, or rather simply learning about America history can be an exercise is the mundane and convoluted as many things, persons, or events over time can and do become homogenized, gentrified and sanitized and the truth is not what we always have been told and as you drill down you sadly come to understand that this is not accidentally. As they say when one controls the past they then control the future and American exceptionalism is no different. This excellent book showcases in painstaking details, through hundreds of citations, and dozens of FOIA requests, the birth of the Free Speech movement, Hoover's and Reagan's accession to power and the various players who have helped shaped or inadvertently hinder our country to present day. It is hard to fathom the likes of J. Edgar Hoover today being in a position of power for decades while throwing Constitutional right and due process out the window, almost on a daily basis mind you, for the majority of his public service career but this book will fill in that complicated picture of the father of the " War on Terror". Then there is the idolized and equally despised, 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Who might be the biggest political enigma of the 20th century, who contrary to his working class upbringing during the Depression and almost socialist leanings while in college, as that soon falls away as Reagan became enthralled in the Red Scare of the early 1950's. Which entailed him, as well as his brother, to spy on members of the Screen Actors Guild and soon after was ratting out peers to the FBI. Only in America would this eventually helped open the doors to political office for Reagan at a time in which the fundamental veneer of America's social and political paradoxes were being threatened and challenged by students, activists, and teachers at UC Berkeley. Seth Rosenfeld's efforts present a clear, concise and historically accurate picture into the chaos of the turbulent 1960's as well of what preceded it...the McCarthyism of the 1950's, Hoover's secret files on thousand of Americans, FBI black bag jobs and more. What is not to love about this book? If you love our country you owe yourself to read this book regardless if you are conservative or a progressive...either one should be equally stunned and ashamed at what happened when in American one rocks the proverbial apple cart. The Free Speech Movement was a period that was equally as evocative and it was vital to continuing efforts to make America a more perfect Union; as well as documenting the mistakes, boarding on the criminal, that have been intertwined in America history by policy makers since her inception. America as it was then and is to this very day still is struggles with the most basic questions that our Republic was founded on and as history shows we have made the same mistakes in the past that we are now making. Why you may ask? We simply forget history. As Hal Holbrook once said " Study history"

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