"Presidents, Basketball and the Bible"
ILLICK, JOSEPH E.
Presidents, Basketball and the Bible PRESIDENTIAL GREATNESS By Thomas A. Bailey. A ppleton-Century-Crofts 368 pp. $3.95. Reviewed by JOSEPH E. ILLICK Department of History, San Francisco State...
...Let us hope that Professor Bailey's next book does not concern the impact of Holy Scripture on American foreign policy...
...Perhaps the clue to this book appears in the first sentence of the Forward, where it is candidly noted: "Next to a child's version of the Bible, the first book I remember is a juvenile Lives of Our Presidents...
...Reviewed by JOSEPH E. ILLICK Department of History, San Francisco State College...
...they will find, as a general rule, that until now Republicans have been underrated (this is the first time I have seen "an excess of vigor" attributed to Eisenhower) and Democrats overrated...
...Professor Bailey demonstrates here the breadth that has been his stock in trade for decades, but he shows no depth, no powers of analysis...
...Nor is the narrative rescued by the style????an overdose of alliteration and an inability to resist cuteness (Harry Truman "shoots from the lip" several times) simply detract from the story...
...According to Bailey, the polls in some respects (unspecified) "revealed more about the professors than about the Presidents...
...It is probably too harsh to say that Presidential Greatness reveals more about Professor Bailey than about George Washington and his successors, but one will look in vain through this book for a new idea about or a fresh insight into the criteria of greatness...
...At Stanford University he has the reputation of being an amusing lecturer...
...author, "William Penn the Politician" Thomas A. Bailey has already authored nine books on American history, over half of them broad surveys of our national life...
...Bailey claims: "I am an independent in politics," but he argues strongly that most professors are not...
...His wit, the kind of icono-clasm which frequently shocks freshmen, will not amuse more sophisticated readers (the only opportunity he misses to be humorous follows an exceedingly superficial discussion of the magic of Presidential initials...
...Bailey's account is discursive, aphoristic to the point of banality and studded with half-truths and non-sequiturs...
...remarking on unsuccessful Presidential sons, he fails to see the predicament of Robert A. Taft...
...Perhaps some students will be curious about Bailey's reassessment of Presidential greatness in the face of the Schlesinger polls...
...A paragraph later it is suggested that "the towering Lyndon Johnson" may be destined for greatness...
...His virtues as scholar and teacher, as a man of breadth and wit, may be assessed in Presidential Greatness, which appears to have been written in reaction to the polls taken in 1948 and 1962 by Arthur M. Schlesinger...
...Schlesinger had 55 and 75 experts, mostly history professors, rate the Presidents...
...In a section relating height to greatness it is noted: "In an era when basketball is a national sport, a youth of six foot two inches is not regarded as remarkably tall...
Vol. 50 • January 1967 • No. 1
