James K Polk or The Looming Tower

James K. Polk (The American Presidents Series)

Author: John Seigenthaler

The story of a pivotal president who watched over our westward expansion and solidified the dream of Jacksonian democracyJames K. Polk was a shrewd and decisive commander in chief, the youngest president elected to guide the still-young nation, who served as Speaker of the House and governor of Tennessee before taking office in 1845. Considered a natural successor to Andrew Jackson, “Young Hickory” miraculously revived his floundering political career by riding a wave of public sentiment in favor of annexing the Republic of Texas to the Union.
Shortly after his inauguration, he settled the disputed Oregon boundary and by 1846 had declared war on Mexico in hopes of annexing California. The considerably smaller American army never lost a battle. At home, however, Polk suffered a political firestorm of antiwar attacks from many fronts. Despite his tremendous accomplishments, he left office an extremely unpopular man, on whom stress had taken such a physical toll that he died within three months of departing Washington. Fellow Tennessean John Seigenthaler traces the life of this president who, as Truman noted, “said what he intended to do and did it.”

Publishers Weekly

This newest addition to the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. offers a solid portrait of an unlikable man who achieved extraordinary things. A Tennesseean like Polk, Seigenthaler (founding editorial director of USA Today) agrees with those who rate this dour, partisan, grudge-holding, one-term president a success. Polk took office in 1845 with four aims in mind: to lower the tariff, take federal deposits away from private banks, wrest the Oregon territory from joint possession with Great Britain and make California an American territory. In achieving everything he sought, Polk was more successful than most presidents. National sentiment favored him. He was politically skillful. And by declaring that he'd serve for only one term, Polk freed himself to push ahead without his eyes on re-election. But Seigenthaler fails to evaluate the consequences of Polk's successes. His first three goals were reasonably uncontroversial, their effects specific and contained. But his last-to take California from Mexico-ended in war with that nation, ostensibly over Texas. The war brought Texas, California and the entire Southwest into American possession. It also cost Mexico half its territory. More consequentially, it heightened national tensions over slavery and set in motion the bitter events that culminated in civil war. To be sure, those events lie beyond the biography of a man who died long before the Civil War began. But a presidency takes on meaning from its context and consequences. In the end, this biography nicely paints a four-year term, but leaves us wanting an assessment of its significance within the longer span of history. (Jan. 4) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

James Knox Polk is so little known to even the educated public that essayist James Thurber once suggested that a society be formed to invent and circulate amusing anecdotes about him. Yet Polk, who acquired roughly one-third of the territory that today comprises the United States, is consistently ranked by historians as one of the most effective U.S. presidents. Seigenthaler crisply summarizes the conventional case for Polk's (near) greatness. Coming into office, Polk listed four goals for his administration: reducing tariffs, acquiring California from Mexico and Oregon from the United Kingdom, and introducing the "independent subtreasury" system to take U.S. funds out of the coffers of private banks. He accomplished them all. As to why Polk is not better remembered, Seigenthaler notes that historians have generally sympathized with Whig critics of the Mexican War and that Polk's journals reveal an unsympathetic and small-minded personality. One could add to this that the battles over tariffs and bank policy are utterly incomprehensible to all but a handful of specialists today, and the fall of the British Empire makes it hard for Americans to appreciate how much skill and daring went into the diplomatic bluff that led Sir Robert Peel's government to accept a division of the Oregon Territory that so markedly favored the weaker United States.

Kirkus Reviews

James K. Polk waged war against Mexico, and almost against Britain, to increase the size of the US by a full third. Yet, writes fellow Tennessean Seigenthaler, "somehow he is the least acknowledged among our presidents, which is somewhat mystifying." Perhaps not so mystifying, given that the Mexican-American War, widely known at the time as "Mr. Polk's War," was highly controversial, protested by the likes of Emerson, Thoreau, and a young Abe Lincoln. Even today, a certain amount of shame attaches to the American invasion of Mexico, which netted California, New Mexico, most of Arizona, and other territories, serving to lessen Polk's reputation. Seigenthaler, founding editorial director of USA Today and veteran Tennessean journalist, allows that Polk, like his mentor Andrew Jackson-Polk's career, he writes, "was grafted as a limb to the trunk of Jackson's political tree"-was always spoiling for a fight. But, he argues, Polk worked from a sense of "moral certitude and self-righteousness" and probably believed, as did so many of his compatriots, that only American intervention could save Mexico from its innate barbarism. Interestingly, Seigenthaler adds, Polk seems to have been reading the mood of the nation correctly when he advocated annexation of the then-independent Republic of Texas in 1844, which the leading politicians, Democrat Martin Van Buren and Whig Henry Clay, refused to do. Swept into national office, Polk came to see states' rights as secondary to the national interest, and he became a champion of American empire-building. His work in this regard won him admirers, but it also led him to "virtually incarcerate himself in the White House for the full tenure of his presidency"and to micro-manage his generals 2,000 miles distant, who disregarded his orders anyway. The stress of his presidency, the author suggests, condemned him to an early grave, and he died soon after leaving office. Against many historians, Seigenthaler applauds Polk for achievements that he insists are "nothing short of remarkable, changing forever the geography and economy of the country."

New interesting textbook: Not with a Bang but a Whimper or Stablizing an Unstable Economy

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Author: Lawrence Wright

A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.

As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.

The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life--he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence--and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.

Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.

The Washington Post - Bruce Hoffman

Although there have been many biographies of bin Laden -- two of the best of them written by Peter L. Bergen and Michael Scheuer -- surprisingly little attention has been devoted to Zawahiri, an Egyptian jihadist. Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for the New Yorker who wrote a memorable profile of Zawahiri four years ago, magisterially redresses this imbalance in The Looming Tower.

Wright tells the compelling story here of a symbiotic relationship between bin Laden and Zawahiri: Their respective strengths complemented each other and created a sum far greater than its parts. The two men's shared strategic vision of a global jihad transformed al-Qaeda into an organization that can punch far above its weight.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Though the broad outlines of his story have been recounted many, many times before, Mr. Wright fleshes out the narrative with myriad new details and a keen ability to situate the events he describes in a larger cultural and political context. And by focusing on the lives and careers of several key players on the "road to 9/11" — namely, Mr. bin Laden; his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri; the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal; and the F.B.I.'s former counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill — he has succeeded in writing a narrative history that possesses all the immediacy and emotional power of a novel, an account that indelibly illustrates how the political and the personal, the public and the private were often inextricably intertwined.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review - Dexter Filkins

… what a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvelous book. The Looming Tower is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve, and carried along by villains and heroes that only a crime novelist could dream up. It's an education, too — though you'd never know it — a thoughtful examination of the world that produced the men who brought us 9/11, and of their progeny who bedevil us today. The portrait of John O'Neill, the driven, demon-ridden F.B.I. agent who worked so frantically to stop Osama bin Laden, only to perish in the attack on the World Trade Center, is worth the price of the book alone. The Looming Tower is a thriller. And it's a tragedy, too.

Publishers Weekly

Wright, a New Yorker writer, brings exhaustive research and delightful prose to one of the best books yet on the history of terrorism. He begins with the observation that, despite an impressive record of terror and assassination, post-WWarII, Islamic militants failed to establish theocracies in any Arab country. Many helped Afghanistan resist the Russian invasion of 1979 before their unemployed warriors stepped up efforts at home. Al-Qaeda, formed in Afghanistan in 1988 and led by Osama bin Laden, pursued a different agenda, blaming America for Islam's problems. Less wealthy than believed, bin Laden's talents lay in organization and PR, Wright asserts. Ten years later, bin Laden blew up U.S. embassies in Africa and the destroyer Cole, opening the floodgates of money and recruits. Wright's step-by-step description of these attacks reveals that planning terror is a sloppy business, leaving a trail of clues that, in the case of 9/11, raised many suspicions among individuals in the FBI, CIA and NSA. Wright shows that 9/11 could have been prevented if those agencies had worked together. As a fugitive, bin Ladin's days as a terror mastermind may be past, but his success has spawned swarms of imitators. This is an important, gripping and profoundly disheartening book. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

This disturbing book (a Pulitzer Prize winner) is undoubtedly the best place to get a real understanding of just what led an Arabian hate group to carry out its cruel attack on the Twin Towers, and how it managed to accomplish such a disaster. In the days following Al Qaeda's spectacular coup, the FBI and CIA quickly unraveled just how the attack was carried out, but much of the public still wonders why, and just what it was supposed to accomplish: to humiliate the nation in some way? To kick off a Moslem jihad against the Western world? Or was it simply to kill as many Americans as possible, just because they were Americans? Author Lawrence Wright, a professional writer with experience in the Middle East, has assembled a remarkably detailed reconstruction of the events leading up to the attack, going back to the older Islamic intellectuals and dissidents who first inspired a youthful Bin Laden. The narrative leads us through the days in which his group jelled in Afghanistan and carried out its long series of predecessor attacks against the US: bombing its embassies in Africa, the U.S.S. Cole, and other atrocities that properly ought to have alerted the US to the existence of an implacable enemy group. Instead, the lack of a proper response only confirmed the plotters' most extreme conclusion: that America had become too wealthy and too decadent to really care. Wright's biggest contribution is to ferret out the key personalities in the conspiracy and to explain their mindset. He does the same for various American agencies and individuals who were involved in tracking Al-Qaeda even before the attacks in New York. This is a distinct service to readerswho have become overwhelmed by subsequent events. A glossary of the principal characters is a most useful feature of the book, as is a series of extensive notes. Scholarly apparatus aside, the narrative reads like an action book and will definitely appeal to interested YAs. Age Range: Ages 15 to adult. REVIEWER: Raymond Puffer, Ph.D. (Vol. 42, No. 1)

Library Journal

Wright (fellow, Ctr. on Law & Security, NYU Sch. of Law; Twins) goes back—way back—to 1948 to dissect the personal influences and political radicalization that would lead to al Qaeda's attack on America. Delving into the tangled roots of Egyptian political dissenters, he carefully draws out the biographical background of Osama bin Laden's number two man, Dr. Ayman-al-Zawahir, who was notable for being implicated in the plot to assassinate Anware Sadat and later became a key figure in Islamist groups as he allied with bin Laden. The matter-of-fact story of the founding of al Qaeda is almost an afterthought as Wright's narrative follows bin Laden in his business and terrorist ventures from Saudi Arabia to Sudan to Afghanistan. A chilling counterpoint to the story of this growing organization is what little attention was paid to the trickle of information that made its way to Western intelligence agencies. While illustrating the CIA and FBI responses, or lack thereof, to the emerging threat of Islamist terrorism, Wright attempts to tie in an important law-enforcement figure, John O'Neill. At one time a counterterrorism agent for the FBI who deeply understood the global nature of bin Laden's threat, O'Neill ironically perished on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. The thrust of O'Neill's story, however, does not merge well with the rest of the book (for a closer look at O'Neill, see Murray Weiss's The Man Who Warned America). However, Wright's research is exemplary, including dozens of primary-source interviews and first-person perspectives, and he provides welcome insight into the time line leading up to 9/11. Recommended for large libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/06.]-Elizabeth Morris, Illinois Fire Svc. Inst. Lib., Champaign Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A comprehensive and compelling account of the events preceding and causing 9/11, with a tight focus on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and on the men who were pursuing him before the attacks. Wright, a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of titles dealing with subjects as divergent as "recovered memory" (Remembering Satan, 1994) and Manuel Noriega (God's Favorite, 2000), has written what must be considered a definitive work on the antecedents to 9/11. (He does deal briefly-and horrifyingly-with the attack itself.) Wright argues that the 1948 arrival of Sayyid Qutb in New York City was pivotal. Qutb saw a vast battle between Islam and the West and was disgusted by the decadence in the New World. His disciples would one day be myriad. The author shows the psychological effects on radical Islamists of the 1967 six-day war, examines the rise of Khomeini in Iran, the assassination of Sadat, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, the Soviet struggles in Afghanistan, the attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the suicide attack against the USS Cole, and other ominous, sanguinary events. But at the center is the story of Osama bin Laden. Wright carefully charts bin Laden's upbringing and gradual metamorphosis into the world's most notorious terrorist. (In a long note at the end, Wright acknowledges the difficulties of being certain of his facts in some cases.) The author profiles, as well, the redoubtable and complex FBI agent John O'Neill, who pursued bin Laden ferociously and then retired to become chief of security at the WTC, where he died on 9/11. Wright shows with devastating clarity that the CIA's reluctance to share itsintelligence was a principal reason the FBI did not apprehend the hijackers beforehand. Bin Laden reportedly wept with joy when the planes hit their targets. Essential for an understanding of that dreadful day. First printing of 40,000

What People Are Saying

"Lawrence Wright provides a graceful and remarkably intimate set of portraits of the people who brought us 9/11. It is a tale of extravagant zealotry and incessant bumbling that would be merely absurd if the consequences were not so grisly."
---Gary Sick

"Lawrence Wright's integrity and diligence as a reporter shine through every page of this riveting narrative."
---Robert A. Caro

"A towering achievement. One of the best and more important books of recent years. Lawrence Wright has dug deep into and written well a story every American should know. A masterful combination of reporting and writing."
---Dan Rather

Larry Wright's account of the militant jihadist movement from its beginnings in Egypt in the mid-20th century to its strongest blow against the West on 9-11 is deeply reported, beautifully written and authoritative. The Looming Tower is peopled by wonderfully drawn and extraordinary characters from Sayid Qutb, the Egyptian jihadist theoretician, to John O'Neil the hardcharging FBI agent who understood the al Qaeda threat early on. I found it to be intensely readable and a deeply satisfying book."
-----Peter Bergen, author of The Osama bin Laden I Know and Holy War, Inc. "Comprehensive and compelling...Wright has written what must be considered a definitive work on the antecedents to 9/11...Essential for an understanding of that dreadful day."
---starred Kirkus review

Table of Contents:

1	The martyr	7
2	The sporting club	32
3	The fonder	60
4	Change	84
5	The miracles	99
6	The base	121
7	Return of the hero	145
8	Paradise	163
9	The silicon valley	176
10	Paradise lost	187
11	The prince of darkness	202
12	The boy spies	213
13	Hijira	224
14	Going operational	237
15	Bread and water	245
16	"Now it begins"	262
17	The new millennium	287
18	Boom	301
19	The big wedding	333
20	Revelations	362