The Debs Factor--Option the Screen Rights Now!

Got another book review assignment from the Los Angeles Times, this one for Democracy's Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, The Great War, and the Right to Dissent. The author is Ernest Freeberg, a historian at the University of Tennessee. Great story, well told. Debs was an extraordinary figure, more than I realized, and the historical parallels with the present are striking. Check it out--or at least read the review and see what you think. The piece runs on Sunday in the book review section.

For those seeking a complete Debs bio, Haymarket Books recently reissued a paperback edition of Ray Ginger's The Bending Cross (1947) with a new introduction by Mike Davis.

Outstanding in the Field

This blog is devoted to California culture, but aside from a few references to farm labor, I've pretty much ignored agri-culture. Mostly I like to eat food, not talk about it, but I recently attended an event that fanatical readers of this blog will want to know about.

The event is called Outstanding in the Field. Jim Denevan, whose cookbook of the same name was recently lauded by the New York Times, convened the event at Route 1 Farms. That's an organic farm run by Jeff Larkey just off Waddell Creek, which is surrounded by state parkland and drains into the Pacific Ocean just south of Pescadero. Jim barnstorms the country in a refurbished 1953 bus to raise awareness about food, sell a few cookbooks, and serve a square meal right there in the fields.

Mission accomplished. We drank some wine and listened to Jeff talk about his land and the challenges of organic farming. One of the things we learned is that wild pigs roam the area. They got into his potatoes one year, so Jeff and his friends decided to stake them out one night. He saw the alpha male first, a 600-pounder that in the darkness he mistook for a pony.

After our little seminar, we settled into a tasty multi-course meal prepared right there: turnip soup, beet salad, sardines, roasted chicken and green beans and squash, and an orange-almond pie with creme fraiche.

It was dark and chilly when we left, the sky was clear, and the stars were out. As Woody Guthrie might say, they hung like grapes on vines that shine, and warmed a lover's glass like a friendly wine.

Book Expo America

Just back from Los Angeles, where I attended Book Expo America. As usual, I assumed it would be an empty experience and then had several serendipitous encounters that redeemed the effort.

One such encounter was with Warren Hinckle, who was there to promote a new book, Who Killed Hunter Thompson? I haven't had much luck cornering him here in the Bay Area to talk about Ramparts, but there he was, big as you please, in the bar of the Los Angeles Convention Center. He's not that keen on rehashing the whole Ramparts experience for posterity, but he was very forthcoming and helpful and good company in every way.

I also met Tom Hayden for the first time. (We've spoken over the telephone about Ramparts). He and Elaine Katzenberger, his editor at City Lights, said hello while I was chatting with Ellen Adler from The New Press.

My only inadvertent celebrity sighting was Alec Baldwin. Unless Vincent Bugliosi counts. And Arianna Huffington. And the guy who plays the Microsoft nerd in the Apple commercials.

Navasky on Buckley

This one goes to my two major preoccupations: Carey McWilliams and Ramparts magazine.

In a recent New York Times book review, Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus of The Nation, mentions McWilliams in his remarks on books by or about William F. Buckley. Navasky's book, A Matter of Opinion, also noted the similarity between the two men. Somewhere on this blog I passed along the fact that Lou Cannon, Reagan's biographer, once sent out 40 letters trying to interest people in his first book, on Reagan and Jesse Unruh. He got exactly two replies, from McWilliams and Buckley.

But Buckley had a Ramparts connection, too. On Firing Line, he debated Robert Scheer during the magazine's heyday. In my forthcoming book, I argue that Buckley had at least two reasons for being interested in the San Francisco muckraker. First, it started as a Catholic magazine, and Buckley was a lifelong and very vocal Catholic. Its transition to radical muckraking must have been a source of concern. Second, Ramparts exposed the CIA, for which Buckley had been an agent before starting National Review.

I tried to interview Buckley in what I didn't realize was the last month of his life. His note said he was so far behind on other work that he couldn't spare the time.

Boyarsky on McWilliams and Kerby

Bill Boyarsky's Truthdig article today on citizen journalists gave kudos to Carey McWilliams and Phil Kerby, editor of Frontier, which was finally folded into The Nation. Boyarsky has seen a lot of changes since that era, and I appreciate the historical perspective he brings to old school figures like McWilliams. If you didn't know any better, you might think that bloggers and citizen journalists are the only ones who have escaped the dominion of the dreaded MSM (mainstream media).

Boyarsky is also the author of Big Daddy, the Jess Unruh bio. But you already knew that. You also knew that Truthdig is produced by Robert Scheer, the former editor of Ramparts. Boyarsky and Scheer both teach at USC, as does Marc Cooper, whom Boyarsky mentions in his article. Cooper also writes for The Nation, where Scheer is still a contributing editor. Starting to get it?

Madam Speaker

I flew through Marc Sandalow's Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi's Life, Times, and Rise to Power. It was built for speed; short paragraphs, newspaper style, probably the result of Sandalow's former day job at the Chronicle.

Readers expecting a full-blown, soup-to-nuts critical biography won't find it here. Also, the "Times" part of the subtitle isn't quite apt. This is Pelosi's life story, told quickly and effectively, but without the benefit of much retrospection or even cooperation from the subject or her staff. (Pelosi is planning to write a memoir.) For this more replete kind of biography of a San Francisco politician, the gold standard is still John Jacobs's Rage for Justice, which features Phil Burton, one of Pelosi's mentors.

Still, I enjoyed Madam Speaker and learned a lot from it. In fact, one of the things I learned is that Pelosi wasn't Burton's creature, though Burton's widow essentially bequeathed her House seat to Pelosi on her death bed. According to Sandalow, Pelosi said that Phil Burton might not have supported that move. Interesting.

The other thing I learned is how much political savvy Pelosi picked up from her family in Baltimore. Her father was elected both to the House and as mayor, and he did retail politics the old-fashioned way--right in the neighborhood. In fact, he did a lot of it in the house, which was frequently full of constituents seeking favors and whatnot. Pelosi's father also provides a good deal of the book's color. Her messaging is very disciplined, which is necessary these days. He was more willing to open up his game, and Sandalow records some of his zingers, at least two of which I found hilarious.

The picture that emerges from Sandalow's biography is that of an organized, hardworking, business-like leader. She's sure of her convictions but focused on results, self-respecting but more than willing to share the credit. Most of her peers describe her as a tough Italian grandmother--which happens to match her self-description. "I'm not taking complaints today," she used to tell her five young children when the lamentations began. But like all good legislative leaders, she knows what motivates her colleagues, tracks every detail, and takes no mess.

Very worthwhile. (Full disclosure: I edit Pelosi's daughter, Christine.)

Big Daddy

Just finished reading Bill Boyarsky's Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics. A man of huge appetites--for power, food, drink, and women--Unruh shaped a political culture that was rough around the edges but got a lot of work done for the people of California.

As an AP and LA Times reporter, Boyarsky covered Unruh in Sacramento and brings a valuable, first-person perspective to the story. He resisted the temptation to produce a tome; this nifty little book (265 pages) can be read in a few sittings. As a significant political figure in a fascinating era, Unruh could support a longer work, but I like Boyarsky's decision to keep it relatively brief and moving quickly.

Boyarsky's portrait jibes well with a growing list of books on California politicians of that period. These include John Jacobs's bio of Phil Burton, Lou Cannon on Ronald Reagan, James Richardson on Willie Brown, and Ethan Rarick on Pat Brown. Naomi Schneider at UC Press has edited almost all of these books. We've never met, but my hat is off to her. She deserves a great deal of credit for sponsoring an impressive collective portrait of mid-century California politics.

This photograph doesn't feature Unruh very well--that's him falling out of the right frame--but it's the best photo I could find that shows Unruh, Brown, and Burton together. That's Bobby Kennedy with his back to us.

BookFest

I may have died and gone to book heaven last weekend.

I attended my first Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA. The experience worked at a lot of different levels for me--as an editor, author, teacher, and reader.

On the Carey McWilliams front, I was definitely in the heartland. Many of his fans were there, and the biography came up twice: once in my question to Jim Newton, the LA Times editor and Earl Warren biographer, and again when Philip Fradkin picked me out of the crowd and mentioned the book. Both moments were televised on C-SPAN that day, I later learned.

It was also a good visit on the Ramparts front. I met and interviewed Robert Scheer and one of his early co-authors, Maurice Zeitlin. That deserves its own treatment, so more on that later.

If that weren't enough, I also had a chance to visit with Judith Freeman (author of The Long Embrace, her book about Raymond and Cissy Chandler) and Anthony Arthur, Upton Sinclair's biographer. Judith gave the 2006 Bonnie Cashin lecture, so we also had that in common.

I'm skipping some very energizing contacts I had with other attendees, but you get the idea. The place was lousy with people who like to read and write about California. I think I found my tribe.

White/Milk

The CSA conference came off this weekend and produced various pleasures--some predictable, others less so. I met some email and telephone correspondents face-to-face for the first time (Rick Wartzman, Frances Dinkelspiel, John Scott, David Bacon, etc.) and had a good chance to visit with others I don't see often enough (Susan McWilliams, Peter Schrag, Louis Freedberg, Rose Aguilar, Yumi Wilson, Sasha Abramsky, Mary Moreno-Richardson, and many others). Splendid that way.

One of the less predictable benefits was meeting John Geluardi of SF Weekly. He came to the conference to hear about the environmental impacts of ports, but he also mentioned a piece that he wrote on Dan White, whose story will resurface with the release of Milk, the Sean Penn film about the gay San Francisco county supervisor Harvey Milk. (Josh Brolin will play Dan White.)

John suggests that White's personality and motives for murdering Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone have been more or less systematically misunderstood. Check out John's article--very worthwhile.

The Real McCain

One of Carey McWilliams's biggest achievements at The Nation was turning a journal of opinion into a forum for investigative journalism. Ramparts, of course, pushed that even further. Not only did the San Francisco muckraker break big stories, but its staff also had the publicity savvy to make the mainstream media pick them up.

That seems to be happening with a new PoliPointPress book called The Real McCain, which is charging to the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list. Cliff Schecter's profile of the GOP presidential candidate has given the mainstream media permission to talk about McCain's nasty temper, which insiders have known about for some time.

I highly recommend the FoxNews interview in which McCain claims, after a false start or two, that the reports are "false or exaggerated." He then bridges quickly to his talking points about what really makes him angry: bloated budgets, corruption, etc. Not very convincing. Other news sites and blogs haven't been as accommodating as Fox.

As PoliPointPress's editorial director, I'm not exactly a neutral observer. But there should be a place in our political discourse for frank assessments of a major candidate's temperament.

BTW, the book is an original trade paperback; on Amazon.com, it costs $10--about the same price as a beer in New York or a bank-owned house in Stockton.