Blood of the Liberals - Hardcover

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Praise for Blood of the Liberals

"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

"Here is a family's story that tells us so very much about America, and about idealism as it engages, at a cost, with politics, a book that will teach all of us so very much about our nation's history."-Robert Coles

"With thoughtful compassion and scrupulous decency, George Packer has written a stunningly honest, *necessary* memoir of his family, which doubles as a political history of the last hundred years. Parts of it have the absorbing quality of a murder mystery or a horror film: you cringe at the collision of good intentions and bad judgment, wanting to yell out to the participants "No! don't!"-only to realize their confusions mirror uncannily your own. An admirable work of conscience and literary art."-Philip Lopate

Rezensionen

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.

"It is difficult to imagine a more precise and pointed summary of the current state of American liberalism."

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
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